Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Methods of ex vivo expansion of human cord blood cells: challenges, successes and clinical implications

ABSTRACT More than 40,000 unrelated cord blood transplantations (UCBT) have been performed worldwide as treatment for patients with malignant or non-malignant life threatening hematologic disorders. However, low absolute numbers of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) within a single cord blood unit has remained a limiting factor for this transplantation modality, particularly in adult recipients. Further, because UCB contains low numbers of mostly naïve T cells, immune recovery after UCBT is slow, predisposing patients to severe infections. Other causes of UCBT failure has included graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) and relapse of the underlying disease. In this article, we first review the current landscape of cord blood engineering aimed at improving engraftment. This includes approaches of UCB-HSPCs expansion and methods aimed at improving UCB-HSCPs homing. We then discuss recent approaches of cord blood engineering developed to prevent infection [generation of multivirus-specific cytotoxic T cells (VSTs) from UCB], relapse [transduction of UCB-T cells with tumor-specific chimeric receptor antigens (CARs)] and GVHD (expansion of regulatory T cells from UCB). Although many of these techniques of UCB engineering remain currently technically challenging and expensive, they are likely to revolutionize the field of UCBT in the next decades.
Acute myeloid leukemia: advancing clinical trials and promising therapeutics

ABSTRACT Recent progress in understanding the biology of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and the identification of targetable driver mutations, leukemia specific antigens and signal transduction pathways has ushered in a new era of therapy. In many circumstances the response rates with such targeted or antibody-based therapies are superior to those achieved with standard therapy and with decreased toxicity. In this review we discuss novel therapies in AML with a focus on two major areas of unmet need: (1) single agent and combination strategies to improve frontline therapy in elderly patients with AML and (2) molecularly targeted therapies in the frontline and salvage setting in all patients with AML.
A framework for benchmarking entity-annotation systems

In this paper we design and implement a benchmarking framework for fair and exhaustive comparison of entity-annotation systems. The framework is based upon the definition of a set of problems related to the entity-annotation task, a set of measures to evaluate systems performance, and a systematic comparative evaluation involving all publicly available datasets, containing texts of various types such as news, tweets and Web pages. Our framework is easily-extensible with novel entity annotators, datasets and evaluation measures for comparing systems, and it has been released to the public as open source. We use this framework to perform the first extensive comparison among all available entity annotators over all available datasets, and draw many interesting conclusions upon their efficiency and effectiveness. We also draw conclusions between academic versus commercial annotators.
A survey of therapy areas in which nurses prescribe and CPD needs

Approximately 39 000 nurses across the UK are qualified to prescribe medicines, and around 14 000 are able to prescribe any licensed medicine (including some controlled drugs) within their area of competence. In order that these nurses are able to maintain and develop their professional knowledge and competence, it is important that appropriate support and education is available. This study aims to provide an overview of the therapy areas in which nurses prescribe medicines and their continuing professional development needs. An online questionnaire was sent to 878 nurses, 546 (62%) of which were completed. This article reports on the findings of these 546 nurses. The high number of nurses who reported that pharmacological educational needs, and that e-learning is their preferred method of learning, should be considered by those involved in the development and delivery of continuing professional development for nurse prescribers. In addition, the large numbers of nurses prescribing for respiratory conditions and pain, and the high percentage of these nurses reporting continuing professional development needs, should be borne in mind by those involved in undergraduate training.
Time-frequency analysis of systolic murmurs

Many pathological conditions produce heart murmurs which may or may not be audible during auscultation. The significance of murmur during auscultation generally alerts the examiner for further medical investigations such as Doppler test, ultrasonic imaging or cardiac catheterisation. This approach, however, has not proved efficient. There are many cases in which auscultation fails to discriminate benign from pathological murmurs. On the other hand the presence of other cardiac sounds may mask pathological murmurs, resulting in exempting potential cardiac patients from further examination. Due to these possibilities, an intermediate objective method capable of estimating the severity of heart murmurs has been always desirable. This paper addresses the characteristics of heart murmurs from signal theory point of view and suggests an appropriate signal analysis method which is capable of describing the dynamics of heart murmurs. The result of a pilot study using the proposed method indicates a distinctive pattern for time-frequency distribution of heart murmurs which is expected to provide information of diagnostic importance.
Mobile fog: a programming model for large-scale applications on the internet of things

The ubiquitous deployment of mobile and sensor devices is creating a new environment, namely the Internet of Things(IoT), that enables a wide range of future Internet applications. In this work, we present Mobile Fog, a high level programming model for the future Internet applications that are geospatially distributed, large-scale, and latency-sensitive. We analyze use cases for the programming model with camera network and connected vehicle applications to show the efficacy of Mobile Fog. We also evaluate application performance through simulation.
Jalangi: a tool framework for concolic testing, selective record-replay, and dynamic analysis of JavaScript

We describe a tool framework, called Jalangi, for dynamic analysis and concolic testing of JavaScript programs. The framework is written in JavaScript and allows implementation of various heavy-weight dynamic analyses for JavaScript. Jalangi incorporates two key techniques: 1) selective record-replay, a technique which enables to record and to faithfully replay a user-selected part of the program, and 2) shadow values and shadow execution, which enables easy implementation of heavy-weight dynamic analyses such as concolic testing and taint tracking. Jalangi works through source-code instrumentation which makes it portable across platforms. Jalangi is available at https://github.com/SRA-SiliconValley/jalangi under Apache 2.0 license. Our evaluation of Jalangi on the SunSpider benchmark suite and on five web applications shows that Jalangi has an average slowdown of 26X during recording and 30X slowdown during replay and analysis. The slowdowns are comparable with slowdowns reported for similar tools, such as PIN and Valgrind for x86 binaries.
Socioeconomic Factors Associated with Underweight and Stunting among Adolescents of Jimma Zone, South West Ethiopia: A Cross-Sectional Study

Background. Nutrition during adolescence plays an important role in the individual’s life. Socioeconomic status, age, sex, and mothers’ educational level are among the important determinant factors of nutritional status of adolescents. In this study, we test the competing hypotheses about the correlates of nutritional status among Ethiopian adolescents. Methods. We report a total of 2084 adolescents and univariate and multivariable linear regression were used to assess socioeconomic factors associated with underweight and stunting among adolescents. Results. Age, highest grade completed, job, and last attended in community school were positively associated with BMI for Age z-score and highest grade completed, household income, and job were positively associated with Height for Age z-score. However, male gender was negatively associated with BMI for Age z-score and male gender, last attended in community school, abdominal pain, and household size were negatively associated with Height for Age z-score. Conclusion. Age of the adolescents, gender, educational status, employment status, and type of last school attended are associated with underweight; gender, place of residence, household size, household income, educational status, employment status, type of last school attended, and abdominal pain are associated with stunting. The findings reflect socio-economic characteristics are associated with underweight and stunting.
Biomarkers for early diagnosis of pancreatic cancer

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma is an aggressive malignancy with a 5-year survival rate of approximately 5%. The lack of established strategies for early detection contributes to this poor prognosis. Although several novel candidate biomarkers have been proposed for earlier diagnosis, none have been adopted into routine clinical use. In this review, the authors examine the challenges associated with finding new pancreatic cancer diagnostic biomarkers and explore why translation of biomarker research for patient benefit has thus far failed. The authors also review recent progress and highlight advances in the understanding of the biology of pancreatic cancer that may lead to improvements in biomarker detection and implementation.
Organize, socialize, benefit: how social media applications impact enterprise success and performance

In recent years, social web applications like Twitter, Facebook and Instant Messaging services have gained in importance, not only for private persons, but also for business. Using these applications enables users amongst others to communicate and share information with other people. Numerous studies have investigated how social media contributes to enterprise success or performance. Based on a systematic literature review, this paper presents and critically reflects the state of the art of scientific studies analyzing these effects, especially in business context. In the paper the attempt is made to answer the following questions: - which constructs, models or views are used to measure the success and can we see a convergence? - Are the theories and research methods that were used sound, and in accordance to the state of the art within this research field? Based upon the findings, a classification schema will be suggested that allows categorizing, comparing and integrating partial or isolated findings in a general business context.
Regroupement par locuteur de messages vocaux

R esum e: Cet article traite du regroupement de messages vocaux par locuteur. Dans notre contexte, un message vocal signi e un segment de parole prononc e par un unique locuteur, avec un fond sonore eventuel et d'une dur ee quelconque. Ayant a disposition une collection de messages emanant de di erents locuteurs, il s'agit alors de classi er ceux-ci par locuteurs. La technique de classi cation mise en uvre est un regroupement hi erarchique. Elle utilise le rapport de vraisemblance comme crit ere de regroupement entre deux classes de messages vocaux et le crit ere d'information Bayesien comme crit ere d'arrêt global. Les r esultats pr esent es dans cet article montrent l'e acit e d'une telle technique.
Dual therapy of grazoprevir and elbasvir for the treatment of hepatitis C infection

ABSTRACT The impact of chronic hepatitis C (HCV) worldwide is expected to increase as the population infected with HCV ages and more undiagnosed individuals are identified and linked to care through nation-wide initiatives. The development of interferon-free regimens involving the use of direct-acting antiviral agents, which disrupt key steps in viral replication, has revolutionized the treatment of chronic HCV infection. However, there remains a great medical need for HCV therapy that is of shorter duration, all-oral, with a high barrier to resistance, and highly effective for all patient populations including those with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) and cirrhosis. Grazoprevir, an HCV NS3/4A protease inhibitor and elbasvir, an NS5A inhibitor, have broad in vitro activity against most HCV genotypes and retain in vitro activity against many clinically relevant resistance-associated variants. The once daily regimen is well-tolerated and highly efficacious across wide-ranging patient populations including those with ESRD on hemodialysis.
Coming together: liver fibrosis, collagen mRNAs and the RNA binding protein

Liver fibrosis is characterized by the excessive and uncontrolled production of type I collagen by activated hepatic stellate cells (HSCs). Major complications of liver fibrosis are caused by the deposition of type I collagen; however, most current research in liver fibrosis is directed towards understanding the activation of HSCs rather than the mechanism of collagen synthesis. Current models of the synthesis of type I collagen postulate that the procollagen α1(I) and α2(I) polypeptides are synthesized separately, and independently post-translationally modified within the lumen of the endoplasmic reticulum. Two α1(I) peptides and one α2(I) peptide then find each other and fold into a triple helix. However, two facts contradict this simplified model. First, more than 99% of naturally synthesized type I collagen is comprised of heterotrimers of two α1(I) chains and one α2(I) chain; homotrimers of α1(I) chains almost never form [1]. However, collagen α1(I) homotrimers readily form triple helices in humans who have a complete absence of the α2(I) chain [2] and in knockout mice where the gene coding for α2(I) has been inactivated [3]. Therefore, α1(I) chains have the propensity for folding into a functional triple helix, and a certain fraction of homotrimers would form if the interactions between the α1(I) and α2(I) polypeptides are not strictly coordinated. Second, the rate of post-translational modifi cations and the rate of folding into triple helices are coupled, since the mutations that delay folding result in hypermodifications of the chains and severe forms of osteogenesis imperfecta [4,5]. Therefore, some coordination of synthesis of the procollagen α1(I) and α2(I) polypeptides must take place. It’s a competitive world In mammalian cells, there is an excess of mRNAs, beyond the capacity of the translational machinery. This means that multiple mRNAs compete for a limited number of ribosomes. Features at the 5 ́ untranslated region determine the competitiveness of an mRNA; secondary structures are inhibitory and the translation start codon must be in the optimal sequence context for efficient initiation [6]. In the 5 ́ untranslated regions of mRNAs encoding the collagen α1(I) and α2(I) polypeptides, there is a stemloop structure encompassing the translation start codon [7,8]. There has been an evolutionary pressure to maintain the 5 ́ stem loop and the sequence around the start codon was sacrificed to maintain the stem loop. Thus, it seems that mRNAs coding for type I collagen are designed to be ineffi ciently translated, containing a secondary structure and a bad start codon. How then, can activated HSCs synthesize large amounts of type I collagen protein from the mRNAs that are poor messages?
CASE REPORTS Chronic Cholangitis Caused by Bordetella hinzii in a Liver Transplant Recipient

Bordetella hinzii was isolated in four biliary specimens collected over 6 months from a liver transplant recipient with cholangitis. The isolates were resistant to most (cid:1) -lactam antibiotics and ﬂuoroquinolones. Molecular typing was performed by pulsed-ﬁeld gel electrophoresis. These data add cholangitis to the spectrum of disease manifestations caused by B. hinzii
Expert Evidence and the Courts: 1. The History of Expert Evidence

Recommendations by Lord Woolf for the reform of the civil justice system in England and Wales include proposals which are already beginning to influence the provision of expert evidence to the courts. Lord Woolf has himself been instrumental in the establishment of an Expert Witness Institute which has caused some controversy in medical circles. It is no coincidence that all of this is happening at a time when the courts are delivering judgments which are particularly critical of some expert witnesses.
Supercomputing with commodity CPUs: Are mobile SoCs ready for HPC?

In the late 1990s, powerful economic forces led to the adoption of commodity desktop processors in high-performance computing. This transformation has been so effective that the June 2013 TOP500 list is still dominated by x86. In 2013, the largest commodity market in computing is not PCs or servers, but mobile computing, comprising smartphones and tablets, most of which are built with ARM-based SoCs. This leads to the suggestion that once mobile SoCs deliver sufficient performance, mobile SoCs can help reduce the cost of HPC. This paper addresses this question in detail. We analyze the trend in mobile SoC performance, comparing it with the similar trend in the 1990s. We also present our experience evaluating performance and efficiency of mobile SoCs, deploying a cluster and evaluating the network and scalability of production applications. In summary, we give a first answer as to whether mobile SoCs are ready for HPC.
Prevalence of depressive symptoms among Nigerian medical undergraduates

This study assessed the epidemiology of depressive symptoms in Nigerian medical students. A cross-sectional study of 262 medical students from University of Nigeria, Enugu campus, one of the foremost medical schools in Nigeria was studied. Data were collected using structured self-administered questionnaires and the Zung self-rating depression scale developed by Zung as an instrument, which measures the subjective experience of depression. The age range of students was 16–30 years. The prevalence of depression among the students was 23.3%. Students aged 16–20, females, and those who had a professional examination during the period of the study had higher levels of depression, although these findings were not significant. However, students who smoked regularly had significantly higher levels of depression than those who did not smoke. Medical educators in Nigeria need to be aware of the vulnerability of medical students to depression.
Identification of 5,7,3',4'-tetramethoxyflavone metabolites in rat urine by the isotope-labeling method and ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry.

5,7,3',4'-Tetramethoxyflavone (TMF), one of the major polymethoxyflavones (PMFs) isolated from Kaempferia parviflor , has been reported possessing various bioactivities, including antifungal, antimalarial, antimycobacterial, and anti-inflammatory activities. Although several studies on the TMF have been reported, the information about the metabolism of TMF and the structures of TMF metabolites is still not yet clear. In this study, an isotope-labeling method was developed for the identification of TMF metabolites. Three isotope-labeled TMFs (5,7,3',4'-tetramethoxy[3'-D(3)]flavone, 5,7,3',4'-tetramethoxy[4'-D(3)]flavone, and 5,7,3',4'-tetramethoxy[5,4'-D(6)]flavone) were synthesized and administered to rats. The urine samples were collected, and the main metabolites were monitored by ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry. Five TMF metabolites were unambiguously identified as 3'-hydroxy-5,7,4'-trimethoxyflavone, 7-hydroxy-5,3',4'-trimethoxyflavone sulfate, 7-hydroxy-5,3',4'-trimethoxyflavone, 4'-hydroxy-5,7,3'-trimethoxyflavone, and 5-hydroxy-7,3',4'-trimethoxyflavone.
Scalable persistent storage for Erlang: theory and practice

The many core revolution makes scalability a key property. The RELEASE project aims to improve the scalability of Erlang on emergent commodity architectures with 100,000 cores. Such architectures require scalable and available persistent storage on up to 100 hosts. We enumerate the requirements for scalable and available persistent storage, and evaluate four popular Erlang DBMSs against these requirements. This analysis shows that Mnesia and CouchDB are not suitable persistent storage at our target scale, but Dynamo-like NoSQL DataBase Management Systems (DBMSs) such as Cassandra and Riak potentially are. We investigate the current scalability limits of the Riak 1.1. 1 NoSQL DBMS in practice on a 100-node cluster. We establish for the first time scientifically the scalability limit of Riak as 60 nodes on the Kalkyl cluster, thereby confirming developer folklore. We show that resources like memory, disk, and network do not limit the scalability of Riak. By instrumenting Erlang/OTP and Riak libraries we identify a specific Riak functionality that limits scalability. We outline how later releases of Riak are refactored to eliminate the scalability bottlenecks. We conclude that Dynamo-style NoSQL DBMSs provide scalable and available persistent storage for Erlang in general, and for our RELEASE target architecture in particular.
A functional approach to automatic melody harmonisation

Melody harmonisation is a centuries-old problem of long tradition, and a core aspect of composition in Western tonal music. In this work we describe FHarm, an automated system for melody harmonisation based on a functional model of harmony. Our system first generates multiple harmonically well-formed chord sequences for a given melody. From the generated sequences, the best one is chosen, by picking the one with the smallest deviation from the harmony model. Unlike all existing systems, FHarm guarantees that the generated chord sequences follow the basic rules of tonal harmony. We carry out two experiments to evaluate the quality of our harmonisations. In one experiment, a panel of harmony experts is asked to give its professional opinion and rate the generated chord sequences for selected melodies. In another experiment, we generate a chord sequence for a selected melody, and compare the result to the original harmonisation given by a harmony scholar. Our experiments confirm that FHarm generates realistic chords for each melody note. However, we also conclude that harmonising a melody with individually well-formed chord sequences from a harmony model does not guarantee a well-sounding coherence between the chords and the melody. We reflect on the experience gained with our experiment, and propose future improvements to refine the quality of the harmonisation.
Inhaled liposomal amikacin

Arikace™ is a novel formulation of inhaled liposomal amikacin that can penetrate deep within airway secretions and within Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilms, making it an attractive therapeutic option for the treatment of cystic fibrosis (CF) pulmonary infections. Initial Phase I and Phase II studies in CF patients with chronic P. aeruginosa infection demonstrated that Arikace™ was a safe drug that resulted in significant improvements in lung function after 14–28 days of treatment. Phase III studies of inhaled liposomal amikacin compared to tobramycin inhalation solution in CF patients with P. aeruginosa infection revealed a comparable increase in forced expiratory volume in 1 second at the end of three cycles. In addition, inhaled liposomal amikacin has other potential applications in the management of difficult-to-treat pulmonary infections. A Phase II trial is currently underway to study the use of Arikace™ for the treatment of recalcitrant nontuberculous mycobacterial lung disease.