Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Quality of prescribing in chronic kidney disease and type 2 diabetes

Chronisch nierschade (CNS) en type 2 diabetes (T2D) hebben beide een potentieel grote ziektelast, waarbij adequate medicamenteuze therapie belangrijk is. Beoordeling van de geleverde zorg is belangrijk voor kwaliteitsverbetering. Het eerste deel beschrijft een overzicht van bestaande procesindicatoren voor de CNS-zorg en toont aan dat er veel indicatoren zijn, maar slechts enkelen voldoende gevalideerd zijn. Vervolgens wordt de ontwikkeling en validatie van zestien voorschrijfindicatoren voor CNS met behulp van een Delphi expert panel beschreven. Deze voorschrijfindicatoren richten zich op het voorschrijven van antihypertensiva, albumineverlagende middelen, statines en fosfaatbinders zoals aanbevolen, als ook het mogelijk ongeschikt voorschrijven van verschillende andere geneesmiddelen. Deze set toonde operationele validiteit en bruikbaarheid in zowel de eerstelijns- als tweedelijnszorg. Het tweede deel beschrijft de ontwikkeling en validatie van twintig voorschrijfindicatoren voor T2D. Deze set evalueert het voorschrijven van glucoseverlagende middelen, antihypertensiva, albumineverlagende middelen, statines en fosfaatbinders, met de focus op de huidige medicamenteuze behandeling en medicatiekeuzes, intensivering van medicatie indien nodig, evenals indicators over medicatieveiligheid en mogelijk overbehandelen. In de daaropvolgende cohortstudies zijn associaties gevonden tussen verschillende voorschrijfindicatoren en patientuitkomsten op de korte termijn. Er zijn geen associaties gevonden tussen kwaliteit van voorschrijven en kwaliteit van leven bij T2D patienten. Dit proefschrift beschrijft een aantal belangrijke stappen naar een betere beoordeling van de kwaliteit van voorschrijven en optimale medicamenteuze therapie bij patienten met CNS of T2D.
Shear Strength of Reinforced High-Strength Concrete Beams with Shear Span-to-Depth Ratios between 1.5 and 2.5

Thirty high-strength concrete beams were tested under concentrated loads at midspan to determine their diagonal cracking strength and nominal shear strength. The test variables were the compressive strength of concrete, the shear span-to-depth ratio, and the vertical shear reinforcement ratio. The effects of each test variable were studied separately. Test results were compared with strengths predicted using American Concrete Institute (ACI) 318-95. It was found that for beams with shear span-to-depth ratios between 1.5 and 2.5, ACI Eq. (11-30) generally underestimates the shear strength contributed by the vertical shear reinforcement. New equations are presented for a more accurate prediction of the diagonal cracking strength and the nominal shear strength of reinforced concrete deep beams.
Development and validation of processing maps for nickel based powder metallurgy superalloys

A simple instability condition based on Ziegler's continuum principles as applied to large plastic flow is extended to define the deformation processing maps that delineate ‘safe’ and ‘non-safe’ hot working conditions. Processing maps were developed utilising the measured flow stress data of nickel based powder metallurgy superalloys in a constitutive equation. The applicability of the processing maps developed has been examined by comparing with the reported microstructural observations of deformed compression specimens. Optimum hot working conditions for the materials are suggested, based on the maximum values of the strain rate sensitivity index.
A user clustering algorithm on web usage mining

Data mining on web log files is called Web Usage Mining (WUM). User clustering based on access patterns is an important part of WUM. Most papers just consider web pages hits, but ignore the succession of pages during user clustering. Therefore, a new user similarity measurement method is put forward in this paper, which takes not only web page hits but also the succession of pages into account. And at the same time, a new clustering algorithm named DBSCAN&Chameleon based on DBSCAN and Chameleon is introduced in this paper. Finally, experiments show that the clustering quality of this algorithm is much higher than DBSCAN and Chameleon.
TRIM8 regulates stemness in glioblastoma through PIAS3‐STAT3

Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most malignant form of primary brain tumor, and GBM stem‐like cells (GSCs) contribute to the rapid growth, therapeutic resistance, and clinical recurrence of these fatal tumors. STAT3 signaling supports the maintenance and proliferation of GSCs, yet regulatory mechanisms are not completely understood. Here, we report that tri‐partite motif‐containing protein 8 (TRIM8) activates STAT3 signaling to maintain stemness and self‐renewing capabilities of GSCs. TRIM8 (also known as ‘glioblastoma‐expressed ring finger protein’) is expressed equally in GBM and normal brain tissues, despite its hemizygous deletion in the large majority of GBMs, and its expression is highly correlated with stem cell markers. Experimental knockdown of TRIM8 reduced GSC self‐renewal and expression of SOX2, NESTIN, and p‐STAT3, and promoted glial differentiation. Overexpression of TRIM8 led to higher expression of p‐STAT3, c‐MYC, SOX2, NESTIN, and CD133, and enhanced GSC self‐renewal. We found that TRIM8 activates STAT3 by suppressing the expression of PIAS3, an inhibitor of STAT3, most likely through E3‐mediated ubiquitination and proteasomal degradation. Interestingly, we also found that STAT3 activation upregulates TRIM8, providing a mechanism for normalized TRIM8 expression in the setting of hemizygous gene deletion. These data demonstrate that bidirectional TRIM8‐STAT3 signaling regulates stemness in GSC.
Unlocking the Power of Word2Vec for Identifying Implicit Links

This paper presents a research on using Word2Vec for determining implicit links in multi-participant Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning chat conversations. Word2Vec is a powerful and one of the newest Natural Language Processing semantic models used for computing text cohesion and similarity between documents. This research considers cohesion scores in terms of the strength of the semantic relations established between two utterances, the higher the score, the stronger the similarity between two utterances. An implicit link is established based on cohesion to the most similar previous utterance, within an imposed window. Three similarity formulas were used to compute the cohesion score: an unnormalized score, a normalized score with distance and Mihalcea's formula. Our corpus of conversations incorporated explicit references provided by authors, which were used for validation. A window of 5 utterances and a 1-minute time frame provided the highest detection rate both for exact matching and matching of a block of continuous utterances belonging to the same speaker. Moreover, the unnormalized score correctly identified the largest number of implicit links.
Scale-model study of the seismic response of a nuclear reactor core

The use of scale models to study the dynamics of a system of graphite core blocks used in certain nuclear reactor designs is described. Scaling laws, material selection, model instrumentation to measure collision forces, and the response of several models to simulated seismic excitation are covered. The effects of (1) Coulomb friction between the blocks, and (2) the clearance gaps between the blocks on the system response to seismic excitation are emphasized. 6 refs., 10 figs., 6 tabs.
iVOLUNTEER: a digital ecosystem for life-long volunteering

Volunteering is an indispensable cornerstone of our society, covering nearly every part of our life, from social care to emergency management and education. This omnipresence of volunteering led to a plethora of volunteer management systems (VMS), mainly supporting NPOs in scheduling and allocating tasks to volunteers. In contrast to this NPO-centric approach of existing VMS, we focus on volunteers by investigating the following core question: "How can the engagement of volunteers be digitized and exploited in a life-long way". To provide a first step towards answering this question, the contribution of this paper is threefold. First, an in-depth study of related approaches is provided identifying shortcomings but also promising concepts. Second, challenges which have to be tackled to deal with the broad spectrum and peculiarities of volunteering are identified and a vision for a next-generation VMS called iVolunteer is pointed out. Third, promising technologies are identified and discussed in detail to lay the basis for the technical architecture of our envisioned iVolunteer-prototype.
Current development of microfluidic immunosensing approaches for mycotoxin detection via capillary electromigration and lateral flow technology

Mycotoxin contamination in the food chain has caused serious health issues in humans and animals. Thus, a rapid on‐site and lab‐independent detection method for mycotoxins, such as aflatoxins (AFTs), is desirable. Microfluidic chip based immunosensor technology is one of the most promising methods for fast mycotoxin assays. In this review, we cover the major microfluidic immunosensors used for mycotoxin analysis, via flow‐through (capillary electromigration) and lateral flow technology. Sample preparation from different matrices of agricultural products and foodstuffs is summarized. The choice of materials, fabrication strategies, and detection methods for microfluidic immunosensors are further discussed in detail. The sensors application in mycotoxin determination is also outlined. Finally, future challenges and opportunities are discussed.
Exploring the Use of Native Spider Silk as an Optical Fiber for Chemical Sensing

A spider uses up to seven different types of silk, all having specific functions, as building material, weapon, and sensory organ to detect the presence of preys on its web. Recently, scientists have put under the limelight the extraordinary properties of this ancient material. Indeed, native silk, directly extracted from spiders, is a tough, biodegradable, and biocompatible thread used mainly for tissue engineering and textile applications. Blessed with outstanding optical properties, this protein strand can also be used as a bioresorbable optical fiber and is, moreover, intrinsically sensitive to chemical compounds. In this communication, the waveguiding properties of native dragline silk are assessed and a pioneering proof-of-concept experiment using pristine spider silk as an optical fiber to measure humidity content is demonstrated. The feasibility of using silk-based optical fiber chemical sensors is also discussed.
Virological Consequences of Early Events following Cell-Cell Contact between Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1-Infected and Uninfected CD4+ Cells

ABSTRACT Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1)-infected cells transmit viral products to uninfected CD4+ cells very rapidly. However, the natures of the transmitted viral products and the mechanism of transmission, as well as the relative virological consequences, have not yet been fully clarified. We studied the virological events occurring a few hours after contact between HIV-1-infected and uninfected CD4+ cells using a coculture cell system in which the virus expression in target cells could be monitored through the induction of a green fluorescent protein reporter gene driven by HIV-1 long terminal repeats. Within 16 h of coculture, we observed two phenomena not related to the cell-free virus infection, i.e., the formation of donor-target cell fusions and a fusion-independent internalization of viral particles likely occurring at least in part through intercellular connections. Both events depended on the expression of Env and CD4 in donor and target cells, respectively, whereas the HIV-1 internalization required clathrin activity in target cells. Importantly, both phenomena were also observed in cocultures of primary CD4+ lymphocytes, while primary macrophages supported only HIV-1 endocytosis. By investigating the virological consequences of these events, we noticed that while fused cells released infectious HIV-1 particles, albeit with reduced efficiency compared with donor cells, no virus expression was detectable upon HIV-1 endocytosis in target cells. In sum, the HIV-1 transmission following contact between an HIV-1-infected and an uninfected CD4+ cell can occur through different mechanisms, leading to distinguishable virological outcomes.
High-Resolution Ultrasound in the Diagnosis of Upper Limb Disorders: A Tertiary Referral Centre Experience

The purpose of this study is to determine the reliability of high-resolution ultrasound (HRUS) in the diagnosis of upper limb disorders compared with the initial clinical opinion. We prospectively studied 178 patients referred for HRUS examination (47.2% hand, 34.8% wrist, and 18% elbow examinations) by recording the clinical opinion, the specific ultrasound diagnosis, and the final diagnosis, as established by surgery (79.9%) or follow-up (20.1%). HRUS examination was highly reliable in diagnosing cystic lesions, synovial disease, ligament injury and foreign bodies (100%), and slightly less reliable for solid lesions (82.1%) and nerve, bone, and tendon disorders (97%, 91.7%, 86.5%, respectively). HRUS examination resulted in significantly more correct diagnoses (92.1%) than the clinical opinion (70.8%) (McNemar test, P = 0.001). The agreement between the HRUS diagnosis and the clinical opinion was slight (Kappa test, k = 0.16). HRUS examination is more reliable than clinical examination in diagnosing upper limb disorders.
Successful refolding and NMR structure of rMagi3: A disulfide‐rich insecticidal spider toxin

The need for molecules with high specificity against noxious insects leads the search towards spider venoms that have evolved highly selective toxins for insect preys. In this respect, spiders as a highly diversified group of almost exclusive insect predators appear to possess infinite potential for the discovery of novel insect‐selective toxins. In 2003, a group of toxins was isolated from the spider Macrothele gigas and the amino acid sequence was reported. We obtained, by molecular biology techniques in a heterologous system, one of these toxins. Purification process was optimized by chromatographic methods to determine the three‐dimensional structure by nuclear magnetic resonance in solution, and, finally, their biological activity was tested. rMagi3 resulted to be a specific insect toxin with no effect on mice.
Serological evidence for the circulation of flaviviruses in seabird populations of the western Indian Ocean

SUMMARY Birds play a central role in the epidemiology of several flaviviruses of concern for public and veterinary health. Seabirds represent the most abundant and widespread avifauna in the western Indian Ocean and may play an important role as host reservoirs and spreaders of arthropod-borne pathogens such as flaviviruses. We report the results of a serological investigation based on blood samples collected from nine seabird species from seven islands in the Indian Ocean. Using a commercial competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay directed against the prototypic West Nile flavivirus, antibodies against flaviviruses were detected in the serum of 47 of the 855 seabirds tested. They were detected in bird samples from three islands and from four bird species. Seroneutralization tests on adults and chicks suggested that great frigatebirds (Fregata minor) from Europa were infected by West Nile virus during their non-breeding period, and that Usutu virus probably circulated within bird colonies on Tromelin and on Juan de Nova. Real-time polymerase chain reactions performed on bird blood samples did not yield positive results precluding the genetic characterization of flavivirus using RNA sequencing. Our findings stress the need to further investigate flavivirus infections in arthropod vectors present in seabird colonies.
Evaluating Influential Nodes in Social Networks by Local Centrality with a Coefficient

Influential nodes are rare in social networks, but their influence can quickly spread to most nodes in the network. Identifying influential nodes allows us to better control epidemic outbreaks, accelerate information propagation, conduct successful e-commerce advertisements, and so on. Classic methods for ranking influential nodes have limitations because they ignore the impact of the topology of neighbor nodes on a node. To solve this problem, we propose a novel measure based on local centrality with a coefficient. The proposed algorithm considers both the topological connections among neighbors and the number of neighbor nodes. First, we compute the number of neighbor nodes to identify nodes in cluster centers and those that exhibit the “bridge” property. Then, we construct a decreasing function for the local clustering coefficient of nodes, called the coefficient of local centrality, which ranks nodes that have the same number of four-layer neighbors. We perform experiments to measure node influence on both real and computer-generated networks using six measures: Degree Centrality, Betweenness Centrality, Closeness Centrality, K-Shell, Semi-local Centrality and our measure. The results show that the rankings obtained by the proposed measure are most similar to those of the benchmark Susceptible-Infected-Recovered model, thus verifying that our measure more accurately reflects the influence of nodes than do the other measures. Further, among the six tested measures, our method distinguishes node influence most effectively.
Parameter Free Bursty Events Detection in Text Streams

Text classiﬁcation is a major data mining task. An advanced text classiﬁcation technique is known as partially supervised text classiﬁcation, which can build a text classiﬁer using a small set of positive examples only. This leads to our curiosity whether it is possible to ﬁnd a set of features that can be used to describe the positive examples. Therefore, users do not even need to specify a set of positive examples. As the ﬁrst step, in this paper, we formalize it as a new problem, called hot bursty events detection, to detect bursty events from a text stream which is a sequence of chrono-logically ordered documents. Here, a bursty event is a set of bursty features, and is considered as a potential category to build a text classiﬁer. It is important to know that the hot bursty events detection problem, we study in this paper, is diﬀerent from TDT (topic detection and tracking) which attempts to cluster documents as events using clustering techniques. In other words, our focus is on detecting a set of bursty features for a bursty event. In this paper, we propose a new novel parameter free probabilistic approach, called feature-pivot clustering. Our main technique is to fully utilize the time information to determine a set of bursty features which may occur in diﬀerent time windows. We detect bursty events based on the feature distributions. There is no need to tune or estimate any parameters. We conduct experiments us-ing real life data, a major English newspaper
Simplified Antenna Group Determination of RS Overhead Reduced Massive MIMO for Wireless Sensor Networks

Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems can be applied to support numerous internet of things (IoT) devices using its excessive amount of transmitter (TX) antennas. However, one of the big obstacles for the realization of the massive MIMO system is the overhead of reference signal (RS), because the number of RS is proportional to the number of TX antennas and/or related user equipments (UEs). It has been already reported that antenna group-based RS overhead reduction can be very effective to the efficient operation of massive MIMO, but the method of deciding the number of antennas needed in each group is at question. In this paper, we propose a simplified determination scheme of the number of antennas needed in each group for RS overhead reduced massive MIMO to support many IoT devices. Supporting many distributed IoT devices is a framework to configure wireless sensor networks. Our contribution can be divided into two parts. First, we derive simple closed-form approximations of the achievable spectral efficiency (SE) by using zero-forcing (ZF) and matched filtering (MF) precoding for the RS overhead reduced massive MIMO systems with channel estimation error. The closed-form approximations include a channel error factor that can be adjusted according to the method of the channel estimation. Second, based on the closed-form approximation, we present an efficient algorithm determining the number of antennas needed in each group for the group-based RS overhead reduction scheme. The algorithm depends on the exact inverse functions of the derived closed-form approximations of SE. It is verified with theoretical analysis and simulation that the proposed algorithm works well, and thus can be used as an important tool for massive MIMO systems to support many distributed IoT devices.
Identification of the sex-determining locus in grass puffer (Takifugu niphobles) provides evidence for sex-chromosome turnover in a subset of Takifugu species

There is increasing evidence for frequent turnover in sex chromosomes in vertebrates. Yet experimental systems suitable for tracing the detailed process of turnover are rare. In theory, homologous turnover is possible if the new sex-determining locus is established on the existing sex-chromosome. However, there is no empirical evidence for such an event. The genus Takifugu includes fugu (Takifugu rubripes) and its two closely-related species whose sex is most likely determined by a SNP at the Amhr2 locus. In these species, males are heterozygous, with G and C alleles at the SNP site, while females are homozygous for the C allele. To determine if a shift in the sex-determining locus occurred in another member of this genus, we used genetic mapping to characterize the sex-chromosome systems of Takifugu niphobles. We found that the G allele of Amhr2 is absent in T. niphobles. Nevertheless, our initial mapping suggests a linkage between the phenotypic sex and the chromosome 19, which harbors the Amhr2 locus. Subsequent high-resolution analysis using a sex-reversed fish demonstrated that the sex-determining locus maps to the proximal end of chromosome 19, far from the Amhr2 locus. Thus, it is likely that homologous turnover involving these species has occurred. The data also showed that there is a male-specific reduction of recombination around the sex-determining locus. Nevertheless, no evidence for sex-chromosome differentiation was detected: the reduced recombination depended on phenotypic sex rather than genotypic sex; no X- or Y-specific maker was obtained; the YY individual was viable. Furthermore, fine-scale mapping narrowed down the new sex-determining locus to the interval corresponding to approximately 300-kb of sequence in the fugu genome. Thus, T. niphobles is determined to have a young and small sex-determining region that is suitable for studying an early phase of sex-chromosome evolution and the mechanisms underlying turnover of sex chromosome.