Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Polymorphisms of COX-1 and GP VI associate with the antiplatelet effect of aspirin in coronary artery disease patients

Summary The antiplatelet effect of aspirin varies individually. This study evaluated whether the antiplatelet effect of aspirin associates with polymorphisms in the genes coding for cyclo-oxygenase-1 (COX-1) and several platelet glycoprotein (GP) receptors in patients with stable coronary artery disease (CAD). Blood samples were collected from 101 aspirin-treated (mean 100 mg/d) patients. Compliance to treatment was assessed by plasma salicylate measurement. Platelet functions were assessed by two methods: 1) Response to arachidonic acid (AA, 1.5 mmol/L in aggregometry, and 2) PFA-100, evaluating platelet activation under high shear stress in the presence of collagen and epinephrine (CEPI). Aspirin non-response was defined as: 1) slope steeper than 12%/min in AA-aggregations,and 2) by closure time shorter than 170 s in PFA-100. The methods used detected different individuals as being aspirin non-responders. Five and 21 patients, respectively, were non-responders according to AA-induced aggregation and PFA-100. Increased plasma thromboxane B2 levels correlated with poor aspirin-response measured with both AA-induced aggregations and PFA-100 (P=0.02 and P=0.003, respectively). Of the non-responders detected by AA, 3 of5 (60%) carried the rareG allele for the -A842G polymorphism of COX-1 in contrast to 16 of 96 (17%) responders (P=0.016). Diabetes was associated with poor response. Aspirin non-response detected by PFA-100 associated with C13254T polymorphism of GP VI and female gender (P=0.012 and P=0.019, respectively). Although two patients were possibly non-compliant, this did not effect present conclusions. Evaluation of aspirin efficacy by AA-induced aggregation and PFA-100 detected different individuals, with different genotypic profiles, as being aspirin non-responders.
Photo-real lips synthesis with trajectory-guided sample selection

In this paper, we propose an HMM trajectory-guided, real image sample concatenation approach to photo-real talking head synthesis. It renders a smooth and natural video of articulators in sync with given speech signals. An audio-visual database is used to train a statistical Hidden Markov Model (HMM) of lips movement first and the trained model is then used to generate a visual parameter trajectory of lips movement for given speech signals, all in the maximum likelihood sense. The HMM generated trajectory is then used as a guide to select, in the original training database, an optimal sequence of mouth images which are then stitched back to a background head video. The whole procedure is fully automatic and data driven. With an audio/video footage as short as 20 minutes from a speaker, the proposed system can synthesize a highly photo-real video in sync with the given speech signals. This system won the FIRST place in the Audio-Visual match contest in LIPS2009 Challenge, which was perceptually evaluated by recruited human subjects. http://www.lips2008. org/
RNA transcripts of hepatitis B virus in hepatocellular carcinoma

The states of hepatitis B virus DNA, RNA transcripts and antigens (HBsAg and HBcAg) were studied in the liver with hepatocellular carcinoma by blot hybridization and immunohistological methods. We used whole hepatitis B virus DNA and gene specific probes (S, C and X genes) for hybridization. Integrated viral DNA was found in all five tumors, but episomal DNA was not detected in the neoplastic tissue. In the nonneoplastic cirrhotic liver, episomal DNA was found in four cases and integrated viral DNA in four cases. A large amount of hepatitis B virus‐specific RNA transcripts was demonstrated in nonneoplastic liver of all five cases. Two major transcripts, 2.4 and 3.4 kb in length, were identified. The former hybridized with the S gene probe and the latter with the C gene probe, suggesting that they were messenger RNAs for HBsAg and HBcAg, respectively. In contrast to nonneoplastic liver, RNA transcripts were found in the neoplastic portion in only two cases, small in quantity; they primarily hybridized with S and X, but not with C genes. Novel species of 4.0 and 3.9 kb transcripts were found in the neoplastic and the nonneoplastic portions, respectively, in one case. They may represent fusion transcripts of integrated viral DNA and cellular flanking sequences.
The Supervenience Challenge to Non-Naturalism

It is impossible that one action is morally impermissible and another permissible unless they dier also in some other respect; perhaps one involves stealing but the other doesn’t. One person cannot be morally better or more virtuous than another without there being some other dierence between them, such as that one is more reliably disposed to help others or to keep her promises. It cannot be that you have a reason to run for the bus on one occasion but no reason to do so on another if the situations dier in no other qualitative respect, such as how ecient each action will be for achieving your aims or for doing something good. If two persons are qualitatively exactly alike (or “indiscernible”) in all other ways, they cannot but be morally alike as well.
DUSP1 Is Controlled by p53 during the Cellular Response to Oxidative Stress

p53 controls the cellular response to genotoxic stress through multiple mechanisms. We report here that p53 regulates DUSP1, a dual-specific threonine and tyrosine phosphatase with stringent substrate specificity for mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK). DUSP1 is a potent inhibitor of MAPK activity through dephosphorylation of MAPK. In a colon cancer cell line containing inducible ectopic p53, DUSP1 protein level is significantly increased upon activation of p53, leading to cell death in response to nutritional stress. In mouse embryo fibroblast cells, DUSP1 protein abundance is greatly increased after oxidative stress in a p53-dependent manner and also when apoptosis is triggered. We show that p53 induces the activity of a human DUSP1 regulatory region. Furthermore, p53 can physically interact with the DUSP1 regulatory region in vivo, and p53 binds to a 10-bp perfect palindromic site in this DUSP1 regulatory region. We show that overexpression of DUSP1 or inhibition of MAPK activity significantly increases cellular susceptibility to oxidative damage. These findings indicate that p53 is a transcriptional regulator of DUSP1 in stress responses. Our results reveal a mechanism whereby p53 selectively regulates target genes and suggest a way in which subgroups of those target genes might be controlled independently. (Mol Cancer Res 2008;6(4):624–33)
Systematic review of the effect of telmisartan on insulin sensitivity in hypertensive patients with insulin resistance or diabetes

What is known and Objective: Telmisartan is an angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB) originally developed for the treatment of hypertension. It can also partially activate peroxisome proliferator‐activated receptor (PPAR)‐γ, which may improve insulin sensitivity. This effect may prove useful in hypertensive patients with insulin resistance or diabetes mellitus. Such activity is more marked than that observed with other ARBs. This systematic review and meta‐analysis evaluated the benefit of telmisartan on insulin sensitivity compared with that of other ARBs in hypertensive patients who had either insulin resistance or diabetic states.
Approaches to topic identification on the switchboard corpus

Topic identification (TID) is the automatic classification of speech messages into one of a known set of possible topics. The TID task can be view as having three principal components: 1) event generation, 2) keyword event selection, and 3) topic modeling. Using data from the Switchboard corpus, the authors present experimental results for various approaches to the TID problem and compare the relative effectiveness of each. In addition, they examine the effect of keyword set size on identification accuracy and gauge the loss in performance when mismatched topic modeling and keyword selection schemes are used. <<ETX>>
Fast decoding in large vocabulary name dialing

The fast decoding problem is a key challenge virtually in all practical real-time speech recognition systems since model decoding is still by far the most time-consuming operation in automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems. In current speech recognizers, there is typically a trade-off between the desired vocabulary size, the processing power available for speech recognition, and the recognition accuracy. Fast decoding methods are often needed in order to meet the real-time requirements set for a system. The use of these methods may of course not degrade the recognition accuracy. In this paper, we investigate the performance of efficient decoding methods in large vocabulary name dialing. Tree-structured lexicon, fast observation probability evaluation, and adaptive Viterbi beam search are developed and integrated in a name dialing system. The system is tested with lexicons ranging from 100 to 3000 entries. With the lexicon of 1000 words the utilization of the fast decoding methods speeds up the system by 282%. The speed-up degrades the recognition accuracy as little as 0.95%.
Validez y fiabilidad de diferentes protocolos de evaluación de la fuerza isométrica en la musculatura abductora de cadera con el uso de un dinamómetro electromecánico funcional usando diferentes métodos de normalización

La musculatura abductora de cadera es de vital importancia para la estabilidad de la pelvis. Los deficits de fuerza son comunes y repercuten en la funcionalidad de los sujetos. Para evaluar la fuerza se utilizan diferenes tipos de dinamometros y tres posiciones de medicion, decubito lateral, de pie y decubito supino. Los resultados generalmente se expresan de diferentes maneras, algunas de los cuales consideran formas de normalizacion para obtener resultados mas objetivos y comparables. El proposito de este estudio fue determinar la validez de constructo y la fiabilidad en tres protocolos de evaluacion de la fuerza isometrica de la musculatura abductora de cadera, utilizando un nuevo dinamometro electromecanico funcional y secundariamente comparar tres metodos de normalizacion de la fuerza. Veintinueve sujetos fueron evaluados en 2 sesiones identicas, ejecutaron tres protocolos en las posiciones decubito lateral, de pie y decubito supino, registrandose el peak de fuerza en terminos absolutos y normalizados por la masa corporal, masa libre de grasa y tecnica allometrica. Los mayores peak de fuerza se encontraron en la posicion decubito lateral siendo un 30% mayores que en posicion de pie y 27% mayores que en decubito supino, esto independiente de la forma de normalizacion de los datos. Los protocolos presentaron altas correlaciones entre si (r: 0,72 a 0,98 p: ≤ 0,001). La mejor fiabilidad test-retest se encontro en decubito supino y con los datos normalizados por el metodo allometrico (coeficientes de correlacion intraclase de 0,94 y coeficiente de variacion de 5,64%). Por otro lado la normalizacion por masa corporal en la posicion decubito lateral fue la que mostro coeficentes de correlacion intraclase mas bajos (O,66) y coeficentes de variacion mas altos (9,8%). Como conclusion, el dinamometro electromecanico funcional es un dispositivo valido para medir la fuerza isometrica de la musculatura abductora de cadera. Las 3 posiciones son fiables, siendo decubito supino la mejor y expresando los datos por la tecnica allometrica.
What matters for learning in East Africa ?

East African education systems have undergone rapid transformation over recent decades. Nonetheless, little is known about what matters for learning across the region. Based on a unique micro-dataset incorporating test scores for almost 350,000 school-aged children in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda (enrolled and not enrolled), this paper provides reducedform estimates of educational production functions at the regional, country and sub-group levels. The possibility of parameter heterogeneity is admitted at the outset and motivates development of a sample-weighted mean-group estimator that ensures consistent estimation of average marginal effects across heterogeneous groups, such as geographical units. The findings confirm that parameter heterogeneity is substantial. For instance, the average child in Uganda acquires basic skills much later than in Kenya and Tanzania, holding all other inputs constant. However, there are also regularities. The contribution of family background factors to learning is most crucial. School inputs are statistically significant but play a moderate role on average. Amongst these, teacher-pupil ratios and the size of schools are both associated with the largest positive gains in learning.
Influenza A Virus Hemagglutinin and Neuraminidase Mutually Accelerate Their Apical Targeting through Clustering of Lipid Rafts

ABSTRACT In polarized epithelial cells, influenza A virus hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA) are intrinsically associated with lipid rafts and target the apical plasma membrane for viral assembly and budding. Previous studies have indicated that the transmembrane domain (TMD) and cytoplasmic tail (CT) of HA and NA are required for association with lipid rafts, but the raft dependencies of their apical targeting are controversial. Here, we show that coexpression of HA with NA accelerated their apical targeting through accumulation in lipid rafts. HA was targeted to the apical plasma membrane even when expressed alone, but the kinetics was much slower than that of HA in infected cells. Coexpression experiments revealed that apical targeting of HA and NA was accelerated by their coexpression. The apical targeting of HA was also accelerated by coexpression with M1 but not M2. The mutations in the outer leaflet of the TMD and the deletion of the CT in HA and NA that reduced their association with lipid rafts abolished the acceleration of their apical transport, indicating that the lipid raft association is essential for efficient apical trafficking of HA and NA. An in situ proximity ligation assay (PLA) revealed that HA and NA were accumulated and clustered in the cytoplasmic compartments only when both were associated with lipid rafts. Analysis with mutant viruses containing nonraft HA/NA confirmed these findings. We further analyzed lipid raft markers by in situ PLA and suggest a possible mechanism of the accelerated apical transport of HA and NA via clustering of lipid rafts. IMPORTANCE Lipid rafts serve as sites for viral entry, particle assembly, and budding, leading to efficient viral replication. The influenza A virus utilizes lipid rafts for apical plasma membrane targeting and particle budding. The hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA) of influenza virus, key players for particle assembly, contain determinants for apical sorting and lipid raft association. However, it remains to be elucidated how lipid rafts contribute to the apical trafficking and budding. We investigated the relation of lipid raft association of HA and NA to the efficiency of apical trafficking. We show that coexpression of HA and NA induces their accumulation in lipid rafts and accelerates their apical targeting, and we suggest that the accelerated apical transport likely occurs by clustering of lipid rafts at the TGN. This finding provides the first evidence that two different raft-associated viral proteins induce lipid raft clustering, thereby accelerating apical trafficking of the viral proteins.
Changes in encoding of path of motion after acquisition of a second language

Languages vary typologically in their lexicalization of PATH of motion (Talmy 1991). Furthermore, lexicalization patterns are argued to a¤ect syntactic packaging at the level of the clause (e.g., Slobin 1996b) and tend to transfer from a ﬁrst (L1) to a second language (L2) in second language acquisition (e.g., Cadierno and Ruiz 2006). Crosslinguistic and developmental evidence suggests, then, that typological preferences for PATH expression are highly robust features of a ﬁrst language. The current study examines the robustness of preferences for PATH encoding by investigating (1) whether Japanese follows patterns identiﬁed for other verb-framed languages like Spanish, and (2) whether patterns established in an L1 can change after acquisition of an L2. L1 performance of native speakers of Japanese with intermediate-level knowledge of English was compared to that of monolingual speakers of Japanese and English. Results showed that monolingual Japanese speakers followed basic lexicali-zation patterns typical of other verb-framed languages, but with di¤erent realizations of PATH packaging within the clause. Moreover, native Japanese speakers with knowledge of English displayed mixed patterns for lex-icalization and expressed signiﬁcantly more PATH information per clause than either group of monolinguals. Implications for typology and second language acquisition are discussed.
Enhanced bag-of-words model for phrase-level sentiment analysis

We propose a novel rule-based model to incorporate contextual information and effect of negation that enhances the performance of sentiment classification performed using bag-of-words models. We employed morphological analysis in feature extraction to ensure feature vector contains only opinionated words in a textual review. Also it reduces the dimensionality of feature vector and, eventually improves the efficiency of the classification algorithm. Further, we consider grammatical relationships to incorporate the context of adjectives and scope of negations within a phrase, to the feature vector. This enables our model to capture contextual polarity of adjectives and impact of negation words. For the morphological analysis we mainly employ Part Of Speech taggers (POS taggers) and grammatical relationships which are obtained using typed dependency parsers. By using dependency-based rules, we relax the conditional independent assumption of bag-of-words models by way of combining adjectives and negations to identified target words and, hence obtain a sentiment classification accuracy that significantly better than baseline performance.
Clinical manifestation of hypercalcemia caused by adrenal insufficiency in hemodialysis patients: a case-series study.

OBJECTIVE The goal of this study was to clarify the clinical manifestation of hypercalcemia due to hypoadrenalism in hemodialysis (HD) patients. METHODS We retrospectively analyzed the clinical characteristics of five HD patients who had presented with hypercalcemia due to adrenal insufficiency (age: 69 ± 7 [58-75] years old, time on HD: 13 ± 11 [2-32] years). We conducted corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) and adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) stimulation tests. We also examined serum bone turnover markers before and after glucocorticoid replacement. RESULTS All patients had critical illnesses at the onset of hypercalcemia. They had at least one symptom, such as eosinophilia, hypoglycemia, or fever. The prevalence of hypercalcemia due to adrenal insufficiency was 1.3% in maintenance HD patients on admission. The causes of adrenal insufficiency were isolated ACTH deficiency, pituitary apoplexy, pituitary atrophy, glucocorticoid withdrawal syndrome, and unilateral adrenalectomy. Serum calcium (Ca) levels corrected by serum albumin were maximally increased to 12.9 to 14.3 mg/dL in four anuric HD patients and mildly elevated to 10.4 mg/dL in a patient with residual diuresis. Their basal serum cortisol levels ranged from <1.0 to 15.4 μg/dL. Single CRH injections failed to increase serum cortisol in any of the patients. Glucocorticoid replacement acutely normalized serum Ca and decreased levels of carboxy-terminal telopeptide of type I collagen, a marker of bone resorption. CONCLUSION Adrenal insufficiency could therefore be an occult cause of hypercalcemia in anuric HD patients who are critically ill.
Future Perspectives: The Need for Large Clinical Trials

Fragility fractures represent a growing problem with large economic and patient burdens that are likely to increase as the population ages. The elderly patient with osteopenic bone presents a unique surgical challenge with appreciable risks associated with each surgical treatment option. As demonstrated in this supplement, the current evidence suggests that the best surgical treatment options for patients with fragility fractures remains largely unknown. Additional evidence, from large clinical trials, is required before definitive treatment recommendations can be made in many cases. In this article, we review the example of the femoral neck fracture to illustrate this point.
Fever and associated changes in glomerular filtration rate erase anticipated diurnal variations in aminoglycoside pharmacokinetics

Netilmicin (4.5 mg/kg of lean body weight) was administered intravenously once every 24 h at 10 a.m. to 23 patients (group I) and at 10 p.m. to 20 patients (group II) with severe infection. No significant differences (P > 0.05) in peak and trough concentrations in serum were found between groups I and II (peak, 12.9 +/- 3.7 versus 12.8 +/- 4.4 mg/liter, respectively; trough, 0.7 +/- 0.6 versus 0.8 +/- 0.6 mg/liter, respectively [mean +/- standard deviation]). Pharmacokinetic parameters (half-life [5.0 +/- 2.2 versus 4.9 +/- 1.8 h], volume of distribution [0.32 +/- 0.04 versus 0.35 +/- 0.06 liter/kg], and total clearance [0.920 +/- 0.417 versus 1.015 +/- 0.546 ml/min/kg]) were similar in the two groups and not influenced by the time of administration. These data suggest that, in the once-daily schedule, 10 a.m. or 10 p.m. administration had no influence on netilmicin levels in serum and pharmacokinetic parameters in these ill febrile patients.
A preliminary experience with the HyperCHiDAM Verona intensive chemotherapy regimen in heavily pretreated refractory Hodgkin's lymphoma

Hodgkin’s lymphoma (HL) is mainly cured by chemotherapy. The most commonly employed regimen is ABVD (Adriamycin, Bleomycin, Vinblastine, Dacarbazine) and more intensive treatments have been successfully proposed for high-risk patients [1]. Nevertheless, about 20–25% of HL patients are refractory to treatment or relapse [2]. In these patients conventional dose treatments have a minimal effect [3] and, at present, stem cell transplantation (SCT) is the main option available to them. Patients relapsing after autologous SCT or refractory to multiple treatments have a dismal outcome, only a small minority of them eventually being cured [4]. In a recent review by Crump of HL in relapse after autologous SCT, the results are very discouraging [5]. Radiotherapy alone, either involvedor extended-field, achieves some success only in stages I–II without B symptoms, which is a rare circumstance in such a context. The reports on chemotherapy usually include few patients, and therapies are often individualized. Even the combination of radioand chemotherapy achieves only limited success. A similar outcome is reported with the use of a second autologous SCT. Recently, reduced-intensity-conditioning (RIC) allogeneic SCT has been proposed; in a retrospective series of 285 patients, the 3-year progression-free survival rate was 25% [6]. Several novel compounds have been tested in refractory/relapsed HL patients [7,8] and at least one of these, SGN-35, seems to be promising in a phase I/II study but at present these agents are not available outside the clinical trial context [9,10]. There is agreement that—regardless of reinduction treatment—achievement of complete remission (CR) prior to transplant is a factor facilitating a favourable outcome. Even in patients treated with RIC allogeneic SCT, however, those with chemorefractory disease have a dismal outcome [6]. Bearing in mind these poor results, we employed the HyperCHiDAM Verona (HyperCHiDAM) intensive chemotherapy regimen in a small group of young HL patients with advanced refractory or relapsed disease after multiple lines of treatment, including autologous SCT. The rationale for this treatment in such an extremely difficult context was that HyperCHiDAM relies on drugs not usually employed in previous treatments of HL patients and that this protocol has shown good activity in the setting of refractory/ relapsed non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), in both monocentric and multicentric experiences [11,12].