Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Virological and immunological responses to HAART in asymptomatic therapy-naive HIV-1-infected subjects according to CD4 cell count

ObjectiveWhen to start highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) in asymptomatic chronically HIV-1-infected subjects with CD4 cell counts of 300 × 106–500 × 106/l is debated extensively. Retrospective analyses of virological and immunological responses following HAART have been evaluated in both blood and lymph nodes according to pre-treatment levels of CD4 cells either above or below 500 × 106/l. DesignOpen-label, observational, non-randomized, prospective study. SettingOutpatients attending the Centre of Clinical Investigation in Infectious Diseases, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois, University of Lausanne, Switzerland. ParticipantsFifty-four HIV-1-infected antiretroviral-naive subjects with CD4 cell count ⩾ 250 × 106/l and plasma viraemia ⩾ 5000 copies/ml who had been treated with HAART for at least 48 weeks. Controls were 49 HIV-negative subjects. InterventionsAll patients received abacavir, nelfinavir, saquinavir soft gel capsules, and amprenavir in varying combinations for 72 weeks. Main outcome measuresThe extent of immune reconstitution following HAART in 43 and 11 subjects with either more or fewer than 500 × 106 CD4 cells/l at baseline was evaluated in blood and lymph node, and compared with immunological measures observed in 49 HIV-negative controls. ResultsAfter 48 weeks of therapy, plasma viraemia was suppressed effectively in both groups of patients. Normalization of both CD4 cell count in blood, divided equally between memory and naive cells, and percentage of CD4 cells in lymph nodes occurred in the two groups. Consistently, the net increase over baseline in CD4 cell count and in memory and naive CD4 subsets was greater in patients with fewer than 500 × 106 CD4 cells/l at baseline. Recovery of HIV-specific responses was similar in the two groups. ConclusionsThis study suggests that virological and immunological responses are comparable in asymptomatic therapy-naive HIV-1-infected subjects with CD4 cell counts above or below 500 × 106/l.
A teachable semi-automatic web information extraction system based on evolved regular expression patterns

This thesis explores Web Information Extraction (WIE) and how it has been used in decision making and to support businesses in their daily operations. The research focuses on a WIE system based on Genetic Programming (GP) with an extensible model to enhance the automatic extractor. This uses a human as a teacher to identify and extract relevant information from the semi-structured HTML webpages. Regular expressions, which have been chosen as the pattern matching tool, are automatically generated based on the training data to provide an improved grammar and lexicon. This particularly benefits the GP system which may need to extend its lexicon in the presence of new tokens in the web pages. These tokens allow the GP method to produce new extraction patterns for new requirements.
Moisture absorption in biodiesel and its petro-diesel blends.

Biodiesel has the characteristic of absorbing more moisture than petroleum diesel. High moisture content in biodiesel can cause problems such as water accumulation and microbial growth in fuel handling, storage, and transportation equipment. Currently, there is a lack of information on moisture absorbance in biodiesel and biodiesel/diesel blends. Experiments were conducted to determine the water absorbance in biodiesel of different feedstocks (three vegetable oils and two primary alcohols) at three temperatures. The effects of temperature and blending levels were explored through a central composite experimental design. Dynamic moisture absorption was studied at three constant relative humidities. Petroleum diesel was used as a reference. It was found that there were no significant differences in moisture absorbence among the biodiesel samples of different origins at given temperatures. Saturation moisture in biodiesel ranged from 0.10 to 0.17%wt in the temperature range of 4°C to 35°C, which was 15 to 25 times higher than that of diesel. Results also showed that in biodiesel/diesel blends, both temperature and level of blending affected the moisture absorbence. Moisture content of the blends was not a simple addition of the two moisture contents of biodiesel and petro-diesel. Blending created a mixture that had a lower capacity for moisture absorption.
Molecular Testing for Clinical Diagnosis and Epidemiological Investigations of Intestinal Parasitic Infections

SUMMARY Over the past few decades, nucleic acid-based methods have been developed for the diagnosis of intestinal parasitic infections. Advantages of nucleic acid-based methods are numerous; typically, these include increased sensitivity and specificity and simpler standardization of diagnostic procedures. DNA samples can also be stored and used for genetic characterization and molecular typing, providing a valuable tool for surveys and surveillance studies. A variety of technologies have been applied, and some specific and general pitfalls and limitations have been identified. This review provides an overview of the multitude of methods that have been reported for the detection of intestinal parasites and offers some guidance in applying these methods in the clinical laboratory and in epidemiological studies.
Comparison of the Long-Term Results of R3 and R4 Sympathicotomy for Palmar Hyperhidrosis

Background Video-assisted thoracoscopic sympathicotomy has been determined to be the best way to treat palmar hyperhidrosis. However, satisfaction with the surgical outcomes decreases with the onset of compensatory hyperhidrosis (CH) over time. The ideal level of sympathicotomy is controversial. Therefore, we compared the long-term results of R3 and R4 sympathicotomy. Methods We retrospectively reviewed 186 patients who underwent video-assisted thoracoscopic sympathicotomy between September 2001 and September 2015. We analyzed the long-term results with respect to hand sweating and CH, and the overall satisfaction in 186 patients. Results With respect to hand sweating, significantly more patients complained of overly dry hands in the R3 group (25% versus 3.7%, p<0.001) and of mildly wet hands in the R4 group (2.9% versus 13.4%, p=0.007). There was a significantly increased occurrence rate of CH in the R3 group (97.1% versus 65.9%, p< 0.001). The most frequent site of CH was the trunk area. The overall satisfaction was higher in the R4 group, but without significance (75% versus 85.4%, p=0.082). Significantly more patients reported being very satisfied in the R4 group (5.8% versus 22.0%, p=0.001). Conclusion The R4 group had a higher rate of satisfaction than the R3 group with respect to hand sweating. CH and hand dryness were significantly less common in the R4 group than in the R3 group. The lower occurrence of hand dryness and CH resulted in a higher satisfaction rate in the R4 group.
Complete Genome Sequence of a Velogenic Newcastle Disease Virus Isolated from an Apparently Healthy Village Chicken in South India

ABSTRACT We report the complete genome sequence of a Newcastle disease virus (NDV) isolate, NDV-D1/1998, from an apparently healthy village chicken in South India. This class II, genotype II virus is 15,186 nucleotides in length with unique amino acid variations and was found to be a velogenic pathotype by standard pathogenicity tests.
Blood system formation in the urochordate Ciona intestinalis requires the variable receptor vCRL1.

Adaptive immune systems are present only in vertebrates. How do all the remaining animals withstand continuous attacks of permanently evolving pathogens? Even in the absence of adaptive immunity, every organism must be able to unambiguously distinguish "self" cells from any imaginable "nonself. " Here, we analyzed the function of highly polymorphic gene vCRL1, which is expressed in follicle and blood cells of Ciona intestinalis, pointing to possible recognition roles either during fertilization or in immune reactions. By using segregation analysis, we demonstrate that vCRL1 locus is not involved in the control of self-sterility. Interestingly, genetic knockdown of vCRL1 in all tissues or specifically in hemocytes results in a drastic developmental arrest during metamorphosis exactly when blood system formation in Ciona normally occurs. Our data demonstrate that vCRL1 gene might be essential for the establishment of a functional blood system in Ciona. Presumably, presence of the vCRL1 receptor on the surface of blood cells renders them as self, whereas any cell lacking it is referred to as nonself and will be consequently destroyed. We propose that individual-specific receptor vCRL1 might be utilized to facilitate somatic self/nonself discrimination.
The relationship among periodontal condition, serum lipid, and electrocardiographic abnormalities in the elderly: A prospective cohort study

Periodontal disease is recognized as a risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD). Some studies have suggested that serum lipids might play a role in the association between periodontal disease and CVD. However, this hypothesis remains unproven. Present study evaluated the association between periodontal disease and CVD-related parameters including electrocardiographic (ECG) parameters and serum lipid levels in the elderly. This study was a prospective cohort study. A total of 107 subjects (57 males and 50 females) from Niigata City’s community-dwelling elderly (all aged 75 years old) who possessed at least 20 teeth and did not exhibit ECG abnormalities at the baseline underwent annual examinations for 5 years. Logistic regression analysis was used to assess the relationship between periodontal condition and the presence of ECG abnormalities, after adjusting for confounding factors including serum lipid levels. Logistic regression analysis showed that the subjects who exhibited a poor periodontal condition at the baseline had a 2.97 times greater risk of suffering from ECG abnormalities than the subjects who displayed a good periodontal condition at the baseline (p = 0.019). Furthermore, the subjects who displayed a poor periodontal condition and an unfavorable serum lipid profile at the baseline showed a significantly higher frequency of ECG abnormalities (63.6%) than those who exhibited a healthy periodontal condition and a favorable serum lipid profile (21.6%, p = 0.008) as well as those who displayed a healthy periodontal condition and an unfavorable serum lipid profile (21.4%, p = 0.010). As a conclusion, periodontal condition could be a marker of CVD, even in the healthy elderly.
Global Memory Model For Improved Memory Efficiency

Modern data centers are presenting unprecedented demands in terms of cost and energy consumption, far outpacing architectural advances. Consequently, blade designs exhibit significant cost and power inefficiencies, particularly in the memory system. We propose a HyperTransport-enabled solution called the Dynamic Partitioned Global Address Space (DPGAS) model for seamless, efficient sharing of memory across blades in a data center, leading to significant power and cost savings. This paper presents the DPGAS model, describes HyperTransport-based hardware support for the model, and assesses this model’s power and cost impact on memory intensive applications. Overall, we find that cost savings can range from 4% to 26% with power reductions ranging from 2% to 25% across a variety of fixed application configurations using server consolidation and memory throttling. The HyperTransport implementation enables these savings with an additional node latency cost of 1,690 ns latency per remote 64 byte cache line access across the blade-to-blade interconnect.
Event-triggered consensus for second-order leaderless multi-agent systems

Future multi-agent systems will be equipped with embedded microprocessors with limited resources to gather information and update the control law of each agent. It has been shown that the event-triggered strategy is an effective way for designing control protocol of multi-agent systems. In this paper, we consider the consensus problem of a second-order leaderless multi-agent systems where the control strategy is event-triggered. The controller of each agent updates when a certain function is triggered, which depends on the ratio of a defined measurement error with respect to the norm of a disagreement vector. For multi-agent systems with a connected topology, we give sufficient conditions to solve the event-triggered consensus problem in a centralised way. Finally, a numerical simulation is given to validate the proposed strategy.
Fish as food: aquaculture's contribution

Historically, the oceans were considered limitless and thought to harbour enough fish to feed an ever‐increasing human population. However, the demands of a growing population, particularly in poorer countries, now far outstrip the sustainable yield of the seas. At the same time as fishing has become more industrialised, and wild fish stocks increasingly depleted, aquaculture production—fish and shellfish farming—has grown rapidly to address the shortfalls in capture fisheries. But aquaculture has come under intense scrutiny and criticism as environmentalists fear that it could cause significant environmental problems and further impact wild species that are already threatened. Indeed, both capture fisheries and aquaculture must have environmental costs—all human activities of significant scale do—but it is necessary to fairly evaluate and compare the ecological and economic impact of both. In fact, a thorough analysis shows that the ecological threat of aquaculture is much lower than continuing to supply the majority of fish protein from wild capture. Fish is a vital source of food for people. It is man's most important single source of high‐quality protein, providing ∼16% of the animal protein consumed by the world's population, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations (1997). It is a particularly important protein source in regions where livestock is relatively scarce—fish supplies <10% of animal protein consumed in North America and Europe, but 17% in Africa, 26% in Asia and 22% in China (FAO, 2000). The FAO estimates that about one billion people world‐wide rely on fish as their primary source of animal protein (FAO, 2000). > A consistent source of fish is essential for the nutritional and financial health of a large segment of the world's population Fish also has substantial social and economic importance. The FAO estimates the value of fish traded internationally to be US$ 51 …
A Game-Based Learning Framework For Controlling Brain-Actuated Wheelchairs

Paraplegia is a disability caused by impairment in motor or sensory functions of the lower limbs. Most paraplegic subjects use mechanical wheelchairs for their movement, however, patients with reduced upper limb functionality may benefit from the use of motorised, electric wheelchairs. Depending on the patient, learning how to control these wheelchairs can be hard (if at all possible), timeconsuming, demotivating, and to some extent dangerous. This paper proposes a game-based learning framework for training these patients in a safe, virtual environment. Specifically, the framework utilises the Emotiv EPOC EEG headset to enable brain wave control of a virtual electric wheelchair in a realistic virtual world game environment created with the Unity 3D game engine.
MANAGEMENT OF CARDIAC ARREST, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO METABOLIC ACIDOSIS.

mean that these individuals are presumably less resistant to anticonvulsant therapy than the bulk of those in the trial who represent the " hard core " of uncontrolled drug-resistant epileptics. Transitory side-effects were seen in 10 patients and sideeffects of sufficient severity to lead to withdrawal of the drug occurred in 28. The nature of these side-effects and their frequency are shown in Table V. No evidence of liver damage or of any blood dyscrasia was found.
Complex Genomic Rearrangements at the PLP1 Locus Include Triplication and Quadruplication

Inverted repeats (IRs) can facilitate structural variation as crucibles of genomic rearrangement. Complex duplication—inverted triplication—duplication (DUP-TRP/INV-DUP) rearrangements that contain breakpoint junctions within IRs have been recently associated with both MECP2 duplication syndrome (MIM#300260) and Pelizaeus-Merzbacher disease (PMD, MIM#312080). We investigated 17 unrelated PMD subjects with copy number gains at the PLP1 locus including triplication and quadruplication of specific genomic intervals—16/17 were found to have a DUP-TRP/INV-DUP rearrangement product. An IR distal to PLP1 facilitates DUP-TRP/INV-DUP formation as well as an inversion structural variation found frequently amongst normal individuals. We show that a homology—or homeology—driven replicative mechanism of DNA repair can apparently mediate template switches within stretches of microhomology. Moreover, we provide evidence that quadruplication and potentially higher order amplification of a genomic interval can occur in a manner consistent with rolling circle amplification as predicted by the microhomology-mediated break induced replication (MMBIR) model.
TLT-CRF: A Lexicon-supported Morphological Tagger for Latin Based on Conditional Random Fields

We present a morphological tagger for Latin, called TTLab Latin Tagger based on Conditional Random Fields (TLT-CRF) which uses a large Latin lexicon. Beyond Part of Speech (PoS), TLT-CRF tags eight inflectional categories of verbs, adjectives or nouns. It utilizes a statistical model based on CRFs together with a rule interpreter that addresses scenarios of sparse training data. We present results of evaluating TLT-CRF to answer the question what can be learnt following the paradigm of 1st order CRFs in conjunction with a large lexical resource and a rule interpreter. Furthermore, we investigate the contigency of representational features and targeted parts of speech to learn about selective features.
Clinical and histologic spectrum of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease associated with normal ALT values

A retrospective study was performed to (1) characterize the clinical and histologic features of those with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and normal alanine aminotransferase (ALT) values, (2) compare the spectrum of NAFLD associated with normal versus elevated ALT levels, and (3) determine whether there were differences in the clinical or histologic spectrum of NAFLD between those with a low normal versus high normal ALT value. A total of 51 subjects with NAFLD and normal ALT were identified and compared with 50 consecutive subjects with NAFLD and elevated ALT. The major indications for liver biopsy in those with normal ALT were unexplained hepatomegaly (n = 21) and evaluation as a potential donor for living donor liver transplantation (n = 16). The 2 groups were comparable with respect to age, gender distribution, and ethnicity. Approximately 80% of cases in both groups had at least 1 feature of the metabolic syndrome, the major risk factor for NAFLD. The 2 groups were also comparable with respect to the grade of the individual histologic parameters of NAFLD. A total of 12 subjects with normal ALT levels had bridging fibrosis, whereas 6 had cirrhosis. Diabetes was the only factor independently associated with an increased risk of advanced fibrosis (bridging fibrosis or cirrhosis) by multivariate analysis (relative risk: 2.3, P < .01). The mean steatosis (1.6 vs. 2.16, P < .04) and perisinusoidal fibrosis scores (0.35 vs. 0.9, P < .049) were lower in those with low normal (<30 IU/L) ALT versus high normal ALT. However, the prevalence of advanced fibrosis was similar (5 of 15 vs. 13 of 36, respectively). In conclusion, (1) the entire histologic spectrum of NAFLD can be seen in individuals with normal ALT values, (2) the histologic spectrum in these individuals is not significantly different from those with elevated ALT levels, and (3) a low normal ALT value does not guarantee freedom from underlying steatohepatitis with advanced fibrosis.
(Anti-)strangeness production in heavy-ion collisions

The production and dynamics of strange and antistrange hadrons in heavy-ion reactions from √sNN ≈ 3 GeV to 200 GeV is analyzed within the Parton-Hadron-String- Dynamics (PHSD) transport model. The PHSD results for strange baryon and antibaryon production are roughly consistent with the experimental data starting from upper SPS energies. Nevertheless, hadronic final state flavor-exchange reactions are important for the actual abundances, in particular at large rapidities where hadronic dynamics, parton fragmentation and string decay dominate. A striking disagreement between the PHSD results and the available data persists, however, for bombarding energies below √sNN ≈ 8 GeV where the strangeness production is significantly underestimated as in earlier HSD studies. This finding implies that the strangeness enhancement seen experimentally at FAIR/NICA energies cannot be attributed to a deconfinement phase transition or crossover but probably involves the approximate restoration of chiral symmetry in the hadronic phase.References
Identifying honeycombing structure in HRCT lung images by high intensity pixel pattern

Lung diseases in most often results in fatality. Smoking, infections, and genetics are some of the factors that cause lung diseases. In 2014 alone 72489 Indian people were affected by lung disease among them 65672 people died. CAD system is of best help to doctors for diagnosis of lung diseases in higher degree of accuracy and timely treatment. High-resolution Computed Tomography (HRCT) is the popular and efficient method for diagnosing a number of lung diseases. Most of the diseases involving fibrosis of are diagnosed by the presence of Honey comb structures in lungs. The lungs affected with certain end-stage interstitial lung diseases (ILDs) are seen with fibrotic cystic changes and known as Honeycomb lung. Lung images of patients suffer from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (over 70%) and other causes of usual interstitial pneumonia (UIP), cystic bronchiectasis, pneumoconiosis and tuberous sclerosis show honeycomb structure. Image processing techniques play a significant role in the diagnosis of lung diseases. This paper presents a novel image processing method to identify the honeycomb structure in lung CT images using the pattern identification of the presence of the number of high intensity pixels with pixel intensity level >200 in the identified ROIs (Region of interest). The results obtained show the feasibility of the proposed method to diagnose the honeycomb structure of lung CT image.
The quest for a Proto-Romani infinitive

This article addresses the origin of several inherited non-finite forms in Common Romani and the reconstruction of their usage in Proto-Romani, with particular focus on the reconstruction of a pre-Early Romani infinitive. The core of the article is devoted to the nominalisations in -(i)ben. It is argued that, before the morphosyntactic convergence with Greek, their predecessors in *-(i)bo were used in various subordinate clauses. In connection with their origin in necessity participles, the Proto-Romani modal construction of necessity is reconstructed. The final part of the article deals with two other non-finite forms: the imperfective participles continued in contemporary gerunds as well as in adjectives derived from some psych verbs, and the absolutives (conjunctive participles). The article shows that, contrary to earlier opinions, the Indo-Aryan absolutive has been preserved in certain Romani varieties in the converbs in -i. A restricted usage of both latter formations in the Proto-Romani complementation is also examined.