Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The correlation between renal transplantation and liver carcinoma: a meta-analysis

Objective Much of the related researches have reported the correlation between renal transplantation and different tumors in the post transplant recipients. However, there are not exact essays revealed that renal transplantation is definite causation for liver carcinoma, thus we systematically evaluated the association between renal transplantation and the risk of liver carcinoma in this meta-analysis from all available researches. Methods All useful data were collected through searching of PubMed and Web of Science until the date of 31 September 2015. Random-effects model were adopted to calculate the standardized incidence ratio and 95% confidence interval (CIs) of the risk of liver carcinoma among renal transplant recipients. Other statistical analyses like heterogeneity tests, sensitivity analysis and publication bias were also performed in this meta-analysis. Results Among 17,4256 kidney transplant cases and 25,6736 patients-years observation, 9136 post-transplant cancers were diagnosed. We identified a 2.08-fold higher standardized incidence rate (SIR) (95% confidence interval (CI): 1.24-3.47, P=0.005) of liver carcinoma following renal transplantation compared with the general population. Observation and publication bias were not observed in this study. Conclusion This study suggested that the risk of liver carcinoma among renal transplant recipients with chronic hepatic disease is higher than general population. Such results alert clinical doctors the importance of anti-virus therapy with chronic virus hepatitis and enough attention of periodic liver screening with chronic liver diseases in renal transplant recipients.
Title : Experiences and views of the pregnant women regarding the Basic Antenatal Care approach to health care services provision in eThekwini district , KwaZulu-Natal

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to describe the experiences and views of the pregnant women regarding the antenatal care services received in the Primary Health Care clinics that were implementing the Basic Antenatal Care (BANC) approach. The BANC approach is listed as one of the priority interventions for reducing maternal and child mortality in South Africa and is used in the public health institutions to provide health care services to the pregnant women.
Clustering inter-subject correlation matrices in functional magnetic resonance imaging

We present a novel clustering method to probe inter-subject variability in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data acquired in complex audiovisual stimulus environments, such as during watching movies. We calculate voxel-wise inter-subject correlation matrices across individual subject fMRI time-series and cluster them over the cerebral cortex. We address correlation matrix clustering problem and modify a standard K-means algorithm to cope better with spurious observations. We investigate suitability of the modified K-means with hierarchical clustering based postprocessing to correlation matrix clustering with several artificially generated data sets. We also present clustering of fMRI movie data. Preliminary results suggest that our methodology can be a valuable tool to investigate inter-subject variability in brain activity in different brain regions, such as prefrontal cortex.
Demand response with model predictive comfort compliance in an office building

The change in the electricity supply towards solar and wind is creating new stability and balancing challenges for the electricity grid. A solution to these challenges is to change the consumption of the demand-side in particular buildings. Efforts to help change the demand-side in buildings evolves around the idea of Demand-Response. However, the impact of moving, shedding or filling loads in buildings has a large impact on building occupants. In order to further the spread of DR systems, it is necessary to consider the impact of DR on comfort. In particular to assess it to ensure compliance with both soft demands for comfort, as well as harder demands such as minimum running systems and law requirements. Furthermore, the impact on comfort needs to be calculated to an order of accuracy that is high enough to ensure proper scheduling of DR events while also meeting acceptable thresholds for the effects on the occupants. In this paper we evaluate to which degree a Model Predictive Control (MPC) system can deliver comfort compliance. We will discuss the design of a DR capable MPC system that can plan ahead and use a building's potential for DR while also providing comfort for occupants. We also present the results from a case-study utilizing MPC in an office building. We study the compliance over multiple times a day and week to consider different building states and occupancy patterns, taking into account external factors such as weather patterns and building structures. Lessons learned are summarized to inform the design of such systems and characterize their applicability. We also study the value of occupancy predictions and how these affect predictions compared to utilizing standard schedules for a building.
MrPhi: An Optimized MapReduce Framework on Intel Xeon Phi Coprocessors

In this work, we develop MrPhi, an optimized MapReduce framework on a heterogeneous computing platform, particularly equipped with multiple Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work to optimize the MapReduce framework on the Xeon Phi. We first focus on employing advanced features of the Xeon Phi to achieve high performance on a single coprocessor. We propose a vectorization friendly technique and SIMD hash computation algorithms to utilize the SIMD vectors. Then we pipeline the map and reduce phases to improve the resource utilization. Furthermore, we eliminate multiple local arrays but use low cost atomic operations on the global array to improve the thread scalability. For a given application, our framework is able to automatically detect suitable techniques to apply. Moreover, we extend our framework to a heterogeneous platform to utilize all hardware resource effectively. We adopt non-blocking data transfer to hide the communication overhead. We also adopt aligned memory transfer in order to fully utilize the PCIe bandwidth between the host and coprocessor. We conduct comprehensive experiments to benchmark the Xeon Phi and compare our optimized MapReduce framework with a state-of-the-art multi-core based MapReduce framework (Phoenix++). By evaluating six real-world applications, the experimental results show that our optimized framework is 1.2 to 38× faster than Phoenix++ for various applications on a single Xeon Phi. Additionally, the performance of four applications is able to achieve linear scalability on a platform equipped with up to four Xeon Phi coprocessors.
Efficient GPU Spatial-Temporal Multitasking

Heterogeneous computing nodes are now pervasive throughout computing, and GPUs have emerged as a leading computing device for application acceleration. GPUs have tremendous computing potential for data-parallel applications, and the emergence of GPUs has led to proliferation of GPU-accelerated applications. This proliferation has also led to systems in which many applications are competing for access to GPU resources, and efficient utilization of the GPU resources is critical to system performance. Prior techniques of temporal multitasking can be employed with GPU resources as well, but not all GPU kernels make full use of the GPU resources. There is, therefore, an unmet need for spatial multitasking in GPUs. Resources used inefficiently by one kernel can be instead assigned to another kernel that can more effectively use the resources. In this paper we propose a software-hardware solution for efficient spatial-temporal multitasking and a software based emulation framework for our system. We pair an efficient heuristic in software with hardware leaky-bucket based thread-block interleaving to implement spatial-temporal multitasking. We demonstrate our techniques on various GPU architecture using nine representative benchmarks from CUDA SDK. Our experiments on Fermi GTX480 demonstrate performance improvement by up to 46% (average 26%) over sequential GPU task execution and 37% (average 18%) over default concurrent multitasking. Compared with the state-of-the-art Kepler K20 using Hyper-Q technology, our technique achieves up to 40% (average 17%) performance improvement over default concurrent multitasking.
Nuclear Interaction between ADR-Induced p65 and p53 Mediates Cardiac Injury in iNOS (−/−) Mice

Adriamycin (ADR) treatment causes an imbalance in the levels of nitric oxide (•NO) and superoxide (O2 •−) production leading to cardiac injury. Previously we demonstrated that mice lacking inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) have increased oxidative stress and mitochondrial injury. The molecular events leading to increased mitochondrial injury in iNOS deficient mice is unknown. ADR in the absence of iNOS preferentially activates a proapoptotic pathway without a concurrent increase in prosurvival pathways. Treatment with ADR leads to an increase in DNA binding activity of nuclear factor kappa B (NFκB) and p53 in wildtype mice. Following ADR treatment, p53, but not NFκB DNA binding activity, as well as the level of Bax, a p53 target gene, was increased in iNOS (−/−) mice. This apoptotic signaling effect in iNOS (−/−) is alleviated by overexpression of manganese superoxide dismutase (MnSOD). Increases in NFκB and p53 in ADR-treated wildtype mice did not lead to increases in target genes such as MnSOD, bcl-xL, or Bax. Moreover, co-immunoprecipitation analysis revealed that p65, a prominent member of the NFκB family, interacts with p53 in the nucleus. These results suggest that NFκB and p53 may counter act one another's actions in ADR-treated wildtype (WT) mice. Further, these results identify a novel mechanism by which oxidative stress may regulate transcription of proapoptotic genes.
Anchor-Free Correlated Topic Modeling

In topic modeling, identifiability of the topics is an essential issue. Many topic modeling approaches have been developed under the premise that each topic has a characteristic anchor word that only appears in that topic. The anchor-word assumption is fragile in practice, because words and terms have multiple uses; yet it is commonly adopted because it enables identifiability guarantees. Remedies in the literature include using three- or higher-order word co-occurence statistics to come up with tensor factorization models, but such statistics need many more samples to obtain reliable estimates, and identifiability still hinges on additional assumptions, such as consecutive words being persistently drawn from the same topic. In this work, we propose a new topic identification criterion using second order statistics of the words. The criterion is theoretically guaranteed to identify the underlying topics even when the anchor-word assumption is grossly violated. An algorithm based on alternating optimization, and an efficient primal-dual algorithm are proposed to handle the resulting identification problem. The former exhibits high performance and is completely parameter-free; the latter affords up to 200 times speedup relative to the former, but requires step-size tuning and a slight sacrifice in accuracy. A variety of real text copora are employed to showcase the effectiveness of the approach, where the proposed anchor-free method demonstrates substantial improvements compared to a number of anchor-word based approaches under various evaluation metrics.
Green tea and death from pneumonia in Japan: the Ohsaki cohort study.

BACKGROUND Experimental and animal studies have shown the activities of catechins, the main constituents of green tea, against infectious agents. No data are available on the association between green tea consumption and the risk of pneumonia in humans. OBJECTIVE We examined the association between green tea consumption and death from pneumonia in humans. DESIGN We conducted a population-based cohort study, with follow-up from 1995 to 2006. The participants were National Health Insurance beneficiaries in Japan (19,079 men and 21,493 women aged 40-79 y). We excluded participants for whom data on green tea consumption frequency were missing or who had reported a history of cancer, myocardial infarction, stroke, and extreme daily energy intake at baseline. We used Cox proportional hazards regression analysis to calculate hazard ratios (HRs) and their 95% CIs for death from pneumonia according to green tea consumption. RESULTS Over 12 y of follow-up, we documented 406 deaths from pneumonia. In women, the multivariate HRs of death from pneumonia that were associated with different frequencies of green tea consumption were 1.00 (reference) for <1 cup/d, 0.59 (95% CI: 0.36, 0.98) for 1-2 cups/d, 0.55 (95% CI: 0.33, 0.91) for 3-4 cups/d, and 0.53 (95% CI: 0.33, 0.83) for > or =5 cups/d, respectively (P for trend: 0.008). In men, no significant association was observed. CONCLUSION Green tea consumption was associated with a lower risk of death from pneumonia in Japanese women.
Business activity monitoring system design framework integrated with process-based performance measurement model

Recently, strong interests in the real-time performance management are increasing to gain competitive advantages in the rapidly changing business environment. For better business performance or continuous process improvement of an enterprise, real-time measurement and analysis of the performance of managerial activities is essential. Business activity monitoring (BAM) which provides real-time access to key performance indicators or business processes is one of core elements for successful business process management (BPM) system. Since performance measurement cannot be managed independently of business processes, BAM system needs to monitor performance metrics in terms of business process. This paper proposes BAM system design framework integrated with the process-based performance measurement model (PPMM), in which monitored KPIs are closely related with business processes. The proposed PPMM consists of three sub-models: KPI model, process model, and K-P model. To show the applicability of proposed framework, BAM system prototype was also developed using a real case. This paper is expected to be a practical help to the practitioners who are planning and executing the BAM system implementation for continuous process improvement.
Anemia Prevalence May Be Reduced Among Countries that Fortify Flour

The effectiveness of flour fortification in reducing anemia prevalence is equivocal. The goal of this study was to utilize existing national‐level data to assess whether anemia in non‐pregnant women was reduced after countries began fortifying wheat flour, alone or in combination with maize flour, with at least iron, vitamin A, vitamin B9 or vitamin B12. Nationally representative anemia data were identified through DHS reports, the WHO‐VMNIS database, and other surveys. Countries with at least 2 anemia surveys were considered for inclusion. Within countries, surveys were excluded if data were not available for non‐pregnant women, if altitude was not consistently adjusted for, or if the blood‐draw site (e.g., capillary or venous) or hemoglobin‐quantification method (e.g., HemoCue or Cyanmethaemoglobin) differed. Anemia prevalence was modeled for countries that had pre‐ and post‐fortification data (n=12) and for countries that never fortified flour (n=20) using logistic regression models that controlled for time effects, human development index (HDI), and endemic malaria. After adjusting for HDI and malaria, each year of flour fortification was associated with a 2.4% reduction in the odds of anemia prevalence (PR=0.976, 95%CI: 0.975, 0.978). Among countries that never fortified, no reduction in the odds of anemia prevalence over time was observed (PR=0.999, 95%CI: 0.997, 1.002). Although this type of evidence precludes a definitive conclusion, available evidence from national‐level surveys suggests that after controlling for time effects, HDI, and endemic malaria, anemia prevalence has decreased significantly in countries that fortify flour with micronutrients, while remaining unchanged in countries that do not. Funding: Emory, FFI.
Pairwise Check Decoding for LDPC Coded Two-Way Relay Fading Channels

We present a novel partial decoding method at the relay, called pairwise check decoding (PCD), for two-way relay fading channels. The proposed PCD method forms a so-called check-relationship table for the superimposed Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC)-coded packet pair during the multiple access phase. Meanwhile, it incorporates adaptive network coding by using closest-neighbor clustering mapping (CNCM) to compensate the phase deviation of the fading channels. The proposed PCD method is a practical and efficient realization of the promising denoise-and-forward relay strategy with advanced channel coding and non-linear network coding. Simulation results show that under the same LDPC-coded two-way relay system, our proposed PCD considerably outperforms the case where the relay performs only adaptive network coding without channel decoding. It also performs better than the case where the relay adopts the belief propagation decoding along with conventional XOR-based network coding under certain regions.
A human monoclonal antibody that specifically binds and inhibits the staphylococcal complement inhibitor protein SCIN

ABSTRACT Staphylococcus aureus is a serious public health burden causing a wide variety of infections. Earlier detection of such infections could result in faster and more directed therapies that also prevent resistance development. Human monoclonal antibodies (humAbs) are promising tools for diagnosis and therapy owing to their relatively straightforward synthesis, long history of safe clinical use and high target specificity. Here we show that the humAb 6D4, which was obtained from a random screen of B-cells producing antibodies that bind to whole cells of S. aureus, targets the staphylococcal complement inhibitor (SCIN). The epitope recognized by 6D4 was localized to residues 26 to 36 in the N-terminus of SCIN, which overlap with the active site. Accordingly, 6D4 can inhibit SCIN activity as demonstrated through the analysis of C3b deposition on S. aureus cells and complement-induced lysis of rabbit erythrocytes. Importantly, while SCIN is generally regarded as a secreted virulence factor, 6D4 allowed detection of strongly increased SCIN binding to S. aureus cells upon exposure to human serum, relating to the known binding of SCIN to C3 convertases deposited on the staphylococcal cell surface. Lastly, we show that labeling of humAb 6D4 with a near-infrared fluorophore allows one-step detection of SCIN-producing S. aureus cells. Together, our findings show that the newly described humAb 6D4 specifically recognizes S. aureus SCIN, which can potentially be used for detection of human serum-incubated S. aureus strains expressing SCIN.
The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: cosmological implications of the full shape of the clustering wedges in the data release 10 and 11 galaxy samples

We explore the cosmological implications of the angle-averaged correlation function, ξ (s), and the clustering wedges, ξ ⊥(s) and ξ � (s), of the LOWZ and CMASS galaxy samples from Data Releases 10 and 11 of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III) Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey. Our results show no significant evidence for a deviation from the standard � cold dark matter model. The combination of the information from our clustering measurements with recent data from the cosmic microwave background is sufficient to constrain the
Maintenance of Fish Health in Aquaculture: Review of Epidemiological Approaches for Prevention and Control of Infectious Disease of Fish

Aquaculture is rapidly growing part of agriculture worldwide. It makes up around 44 percent of total fish production globally. This increased growth of production is achieved despite facing many challenges in the aquaculture environment. Among production limiting challenges, the infectious disease takes the lion share by causing multibillion-dollar loss annually. To reduce the impact of the fish disease, it is necessary to address health constraints based on scientifically proven and recommended ways. This review aims at pointing out some of the best approaches to prevention and control of infectious disease in aquaculture. Among the effective prevention and control strategies, vaccination is one of the key practices. Types of vaccines for use in fish include killed vaccines, attenuated vaccines, DNA vaccines, recombinant technology vaccines, and synthetic peptide vaccines. Administration techniques of vaccines in fish include oral, injection, or immersion methods. Antibiotics are also in use in aquaculture despite their side effects in the development of drug resistance by microorganisms. Biological and chemical disease control strategies such as using probiotics, prebiotics, and medicinal plants are widely in use. Biosecurity measures in aquaculture can keep the safety of a facility from certain disease-causing agents that are absent in particular system. Farm-level biosecurity measures include strict quarantine measures, egg disinfection, traffic control, water treatments, clean feed, and disposal of mortalities. In conclusion, rather than trying to treat every disease case, it advisable to follow a preventive approach before the event of any disease outbreaks.
Fish consumption during pregnancy, prenatal mercury exposure, and anthropometric measures at birth in a prospective mother-infant cohort study in Spain.

BACKGROUND Birth size has been shown to be related to maternal fish intake, although the results are inconsistent. OBJECTIVE The objective was to assess the association of consumption of different types of fish and prenatal mercury exposure with birth weight, birth length, and classification as small for gestational age (SGA) in newborns. DESIGN Cord blood total mercury was measured in 554 newborns in a population-based cohort born from 2004 to 2006. Fish consumption was classified in 4 frequency categories (<1 portion/mo, 1-3 portions/mo, 1 portion/wk, and > or =2 portions/wk). RESULTS When multivariate models were adjusted, newborns in the higher quartile of total mercury weighed 143.7 g less (95% CI: -251.8, -35.6; P for trend = 0.02) and had higher odds of being SGA for length (odds ratio: 5.3; 95% CI: 1.2, 23.9; P from likelihood ratio test = 0.03) without a linear relation (P for trend = 0.13) compared with those in the lowest quartile. Mothers consuming >/=2 portions/wk of canned tuna had newborns who weighed more than those who consumed <1 portion/mo (P for trend = 0.03) and a lower risk of having infants who were SGA for weight (P for trend = 0.01). Consumption of > or =2 portions/wk of large oily fish was associated with a higher risk of being SGA for weight and consumption of lean fish with a lower risk of being SGA for length compared with the consumption of <1 portion/mo, but in neither case was there a linear relation (P for trend >0.05). CONCLUSIONS The role of fish in fetal growth depends on the amount and type of fish consumed. The findings for mercury warrant further investigation in other settings.