Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Personal attitudes, perceived social norms, and health-risk behavior among female adolescents with chronic medical conditions

To examine whether perceived peer/parent norms or personal beliefs about adolescent substance use influence substance use among female adolescents with chronic medical conditions. Sixty-eight females reported on substance use, personal beliefs, and perceived peer/parent norms. Personal beliefs and perceived peer/parent norms were associated with adolescent’s current and future substance use. Although perceived peer norms accounted for variance in current substance use, only personal beliefs accounted for variance in future alcohol use. Targeting perceived peer norms may be effective for intervention efforts among adolescents endorsing current substance use, whereas alcohol use prevention efforts should target personal beliefs.
Cost-Conscious Scheduling for Large Graph Processing in the Cloud

In recent years large graph processing has emerged to be a popular application for companies because of the increasing large Web graph and social networks. The ever growing scale of graphs and recent emergence of cloud computing poses challenges to their efficient and cost-conscious scheduling approach for processing tasks. In this paper, we focus on the use of cloud resources for dispatching large graph processing tasks. We design a novel framework EComer that can be easily integrated into existing cloud infrastructure. The key component of this framework is a cost-conscious scheduling heuristic, called CCSH, which is an extension of Heterogeneous Earliest Finish Time (HEFT). Our algorithm CCSH first constructs a priority list of tasks and then assigns the task with the highest priority value to the cost-efficient virtual machine in a cloud setting. The comparison study, based on randomly generated large graphs and a real-life astronomy application model, demonstrates that our algorithm outperforms HEFT by exhibiting significant monetary cost savings at a reasonable increase in overall execution time.
Statistical Features-Based Real-Time Detection of Drifted Twitter Spam

Twitter spam has become a critical problem nowadays. Recent works focus on applying machine learning techniques for Twitter spam detection, which make use of the statistical features of tweets. In our labeled tweets data set, however, we observe that the statistical properties of spam tweets vary over time, and thus, the performance of existing machine learning-based classifiers decreases. This issue is referred to as “Twitter Spam Drift”. In order to tackle this problem, we first carry out a deep analysis on the statistical features of one million spam tweets and one million non-spam tweets, and then propose a novel Lfun scheme. The proposed scheme can discover “changed” spam tweets from unlabeled tweets and incorporate them into classifier’s training process. A number of experiments are performed to evaluate the proposed scheme. The results show that our proposed Lfun scheme can significantly improve the spam detection accuracy in real-world scenarios.
Secondary traumatization and self-rated health among wives of former prisoners of war: The moderating role of marital adjustment

We investigated the relationships between secondary traumatization, marital adjustment, and self-rated health among wives of former prisoners of war. Participants were Israeli wives of former prisoners of war (N = 116) and a matched control group of wives of combat veterans (N = 56). Wives of former prisoners of war reported worse self-rated health compared to the control group of wives of combat veterans. Wives of former prisoners of war also reported higher levels of secondary traumatization, and marital adjustment moderated the relationship between wives’ secondary traumatization and their general health. The experience of living with former prisoners of war who might also suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder is associated with wives’ own psychological and self-rated health outcomes.
Pharmacodynamic Evaluation of Fosfomycin against Escherichia coli and Klebsiella spp. from Urinary Tract Infections and the Influence of pH on Fosfomycin Activities

ABSTRACT Fosfomycin is widely used for the treatment of uncomplicated urinary tract infection (UTI), and it has recently been recommended that fosfomycin be used to treat infections caused by multidrug-resistant (MDR) Gram-negative bacilli. Whether urine acidification can improve bacterial susceptibility to fosfomycin oral dosing regimens has not been analyzed. The MIC of fosfomycin for 245 Gram-negative bacterial isolates, consisting of 158 Escherichia coli isolates and 87 Klebsiella isolates which were collected from patients with urinary tract infections, were determined at pH 6.0 and 7.0 using the agar dilution method. Monte Carlo simulation of the urinary fosfomycin area under the concentration-time curve (AUC) after a single oral dose of 3,000 mg fosfomycin and the MIC distribution were used to determine the probability of target attainment (PTA). Fosfomycin was effective against E. coli (MIC90 ≤ 16 μg/ml) but not against Klebsiella spp. (MIC90 > 512 μg/ml). Acidification of the environment increased the susceptibility of 71% of the bacterial isolates and resulted in a statistically significant decrease in bacterial survival. The use of a regimen consisting of a single oral dose of fosfomycin against an E. coli isolate with an MIC of ≤64 mg/liter was able to achieve a PTA of ≥90% for a target pharmacodynamic index (AUC/MIC) of 23 in urine; PTA was not achieved when the MIC was higher than 64 mg/liter. The cumulative fractions of the bacterial responses (CFR) were 99% and 55% against E. coli and Klebsiella spp. , respectively, based on simulated drug exposure in urine with an acidic pH of 6.0. A decrease of the pH from 7.0 to 6.0 improved the PTA and CFR of the target pharmacodynamic index in both E. coli and Klebsiella isolates.
D7-04: Carbon ion radiotherapy for peripheral stage I non small-cell lung cancer

The National Institute of Radiological Sciences in Chiba, Japan (NIRS) has the highest number of patients with lung cancer treated with carbon ion beams in the world. This report describes the techniques and clinical trials that have been undertaken at NIRS and preliminary results of a current study on single-fraction irradiation. The data are compared to recent results for the treatment of peripheral stage I lung cancer from the literature.
WCK 5107 (Zidebactam) and WCK 5153 Are Novel Inhibitors of PBP2 Showing Potent “β-Lactam Enhancer” Activity against Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Including Multidrug-Resistant Metallo-β-Lactamase-Producing High-Risk Clones

ABSTRACT Zidebactam and WCK 5153 are novel β-lactam enhancers that are bicyclo-acyl hydrazides (BCH), derivatives of the diazabicyclooctane (DBO) scaffold, targeted for the treatment of serious infections caused by highly drug-resistant Gram-negative pathogens. In this study, we determined the penicillin-binding protein (PBP) inhibition profiles and the antimicrobial activities of zidebactam and WCK 5153 against Pseudomonas aeruginosa, including multidrug-resistant (MDR) metallo-β-lactamase (MBL)-producing high-risk clones. MIC determinations and time-kill assays were conducted for zidebactam, WCK 5153, and antipseudomonal β-lactams using wild-type PAO1, MexAB-OprM-hyperproducing (mexR), porin-deficient (oprD), and AmpC-hyperproducing (dacB) derivatives of PAO1, and MBL-expressing clinical strains ST175 (blaVIM-2) and ST111 (blaVIM-1). Furthermore, steady-state kinetics was used to assess the inhibitory potential of these compounds against the purified VIM-2 MBL. Zidebactam and WCK 5153 showed specific PBP2 inhibition and did not inhibit VIM-2 (apparent Ki [Kiapp] > 100 μM). MICs for zidebactam and WCK 5153 ranged from 2 to 32 μg/ml (amdinocillin MICs > 32 μg/ml). Time-kill assays revealed bactericidal activity of zidebactam and WCK 5153. LIVE-DEAD staining further supported the bactericidal activity of both compounds, showing spheroplast formation. Fixed concentrations (4 or 8 μg/ml) of zidebactam and WCK 5153 restored susceptibility to all of the tested β-lactams for each of the P. aeruginosa mutant strains. Likewise, antipseudomonal β-lactams (CLSI breakpoints), in combination with 4 or 8 μg/ml of zidebactam or WCK 5153, resulted in enhanced killing. Certain combinations determined full bacterial eradication, even with MDR MBL-producing high-risk clones. β-Lactam–WCK enhancer combinations represent a promising β-lactam “enhancer-based” approach to treat MDR P. aeruginosa infections, bypassing the need for MBL inhibition.
Pharmacokinetic-Pharmacodynamic Analysis for Efficacy of Ceftaroline Fosamil in Patients with Acute Bacterial Skin and Skin Structure Infections

ABSTRACT Ceftaroline is a cephalosporin with broad-spectrum in vitro activity against pathogens commonly associated with acute bacterial skin and skin structure infections (ABSSSI), including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Ceftaroline fosamil, the prodrug of ceftaroline, is approved for the treatment of patients with ABSSSI. Using data from the microbiologically evaluable population from two phase 2 and two phase 3 randomized, multicenter, double-blind studies of patients with ABSSSI, an analysis examining the relationship between drug exposure, as measured by the percentage of time during the dosing interval that free-drug steady-state concentrations remain above the MIC (f%T>MIC), and clinical and microbiological responses was undertaken. The analysis population included 526 patients, of whom 423 had infections associated with S. aureus. Clinical and microbiological success percentages were 94.7 and 94.5%, respectively, among all of the patients and 95.3 and 95.7%, respectively, among those with S. aureus infections. Univariable analysis based on data from all of the patients and those with S. aureus infections demonstrated significant relationships between f%T>MIC and microbiological response (P < 0.001 and P = 0.026, respectively). Multivariable logistic regression analyses demonstrated other patient factors in addition to f%T>MIC to be significant predictors of microbiological response, including age and infection type for all of the patients evaluated and age, infection type, and the presence of diabetes mellitus for patients with S. aureus infections. Results of these analyses confirm that a ceftaroline fosamil dosing regimen of 600 mg every 12 h provides exposures associated with the upper plateau of the pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic relationship for efficacy.
Hardware Discrete Channel Emulator

In this paper, the emulation environment named Hardware Discrete Channel Emulator (HDCE) has been developed as a coherent framework to emulate on a hardware device (FPGA as the implementation platform in the verification) and simulate on a computer the effect of an Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) in a base band channel. The HDCE is able to generate more than 180 M samples per second for a very low hardware cost, which has been achieved in an efficient architecture. Using the HDCE, the performance evaluation of a coding scheme for a BER of 10−9 requires only one minute of emulation time.
SOPJ: A Scalable Online Provenance Join for Data Integration

Data integration is a technique used to combine different sources of data together to provide an unified view among them. MOMIS[1] is an open-source data integration framework developed by the DBGroup1. The goal of our work is to make MOMIS be able to scale-out as the input data sources increase without introducing noticeable performance penalty. In particular, we present a full outer join method capable to efficiently integrate multiple sources at the same time by using data streams and provenance information. To evaluate the scalability of this innovative approach, we developed a join engine employing a distributed data processing framework. Our solution is able to process input data sources in the form of continuous stream, execute the join operation on-the-fly and produce outputs as soon as they are generated. In this way, the join can return partial results before the input streams have been completely received or processed optimizing the entire execution. Encouraging results of adopting the proposed approach on real datasets closes the paper.
Microbiological and Clinical Effects of Sitafloxacin and Azithromycin in Periodontitis Patients Receiving Supportive Periodontal Therapy

ABSTRACT Sitafloxacin (STFX) is a newly developed quinolone that has robust antimicrobial activity against periodontopathic bacteria. We previously reported that oral administration of STFX during supportive periodontal therapy was as effective as conventional mechanical debridement under local anesthesia microbiologically and clinically for 3 months. The aim of the present study was to examine the short-term and long-term microbiological and clinical effects of systemic STFX and azithromycin (AZM) on active periodontal pockets during supportive periodontal therapy. Fifty-one patients receiving supportive periodontal therapy were randomly allocated to the STFX group (200 mg/day of STFX for 5 days) or the AZM group (500 mg/day of AZM for 3 days). The microbiological and clinical parameters were examined until 12 months after the systemic administration of each drug. The concentration of each drug in periodontal pockets and the antimicrobial susceptibility of clinical isolates were also analyzed. The proportions of red complex bacteria, i.e., Porphyromonas gingivalis, Treponema denticola, and Tannerella forsythia, which are the representative periodontopathic bacteria, were significantly reduced at 1 month and remained lower at 12 months than those at baseline in both the STFX and AZM groups. Clinical parameters were significantly improved over the 12-month period in both groups. An increase in the MIC of AZM against clinical isolates was observed in the AZM group. These results indicate that monotherapy with systemic STFX and AZM might be an alternative treatment during supportive periodontal therapy in patients for whom invasive mechanical treatment is inappropriate. (This study has been registered with the University Hospital Medical Information Network-Clinical Trials Registry [UMIN-CTR] under registration number UMIN000007834.)
Praziquantel for Schistosomiasis: Single-Drug Metabolism Revisited, Mode of Action, and Resistance

ABSTRACT Schistosomiasis, a major neglected tropical disease, affects more than 250 million people worldwide. Treatment of schistosomiasis has relied on the anthelmintic drug praziquantel (PZQ) for more than a generation. PZQ is the drug of choice for the treatment of schistosomiasis; it is effective against all major forms of schistosomiasis, although it is less active against juvenile than mature parasites. A pyrazino-isoquinoline derivative, PZQ is not considered to be toxic and generally causes few or transient, mild side effects. Increasingly, mass drug administration targeting populations in sub-Saharan Africa where schistosomiasis is endemic has led to the appearance of reduced efficacy of PZQ, which portends the selection of drug-resistant forms of these pathogens. The synthesis of improved derivatives of PZQ is attracting attention, e.g., in the (i) synthesis of drug analogues, (ii) rational design of pharmacophores, and (iii) discovery of new compounds from large-scale screening programs. This article reviews reports from the 1970s to the present on the metabolism and mechanism of action of PZQ and its derivatives against schistosomes.
Structural Insights into TMB-1 and the Role of Residues 119 and 228 in Substrate and Inhibitor Binding

ABSTRACT Metallo-β-lactamases (MBLs) threaten the effectiveness of β-lactam antibiotics, including carbapenems, and are a concern for global public health. β-Lactam/β-lactamase inhibitor combinations active against class A and class D carbapenemases are used, but no clinically useful MBL inhibitor is currently available. Tripoli metallo-β-lactamase-1 (TMB-1) and TMB-2 are members of MBL subclass B1a, where TMB-2 is an S228P variant of TMB-1. The role of S228P was studied by comparisons of TMB-1 and TMB-2, and E119 was investigated through the construction of site-directed mutants of TMB-1, E119Q, E119S, and E119A (E119Q/S/A). All TMB variants were characterized through enzyme kinetic studies. Thermostability and crystallization analyses of TMB-1 were performed. Thiol-based inhibitors were investigated by determining the 50% inhibitory concentrations (IC50) and binding using surface plasmon resonance (SPR) for analysis of TMB-1. Thermostability measurements found TMB-1 to be stabilized by high NaCl concentrations. Steady-state enzyme kinetics analyses found substitutions of E119, in particular, substitutions associated with the penicillins, to affect hydrolysis to some extent. TMB-2 with S228P showed slightly reduced catalytic efficiency compared to TMB-1. The IC50 levels of the new thiol-based inhibitors were 0.66 μM (inhibitor 2a) and 0.62 μM (inhibitor 2b), and the equilibrium dissociation constant (KD) of inhibitor 2a was 1.6 μM; thus, both were more potent inhibitors than l-captopril (IC50 = 47 μM; KD = 25 μM). The crystal structure of TMB-1 was resolved to 1.75 Å. Modeling of inhibitor 2b in the TMB-1 active site suggested that the presence of the W64 residue results in T-shaped π-π stacking and R224 cation-π interactions with the phenyl ring of the inhibitor. In sum, the results suggest that residues 119 and 228 affect the catalytic efficiency of TMB-1 and that inhibitors 2a and 2b are more potent inhibitors for TMB-1 than l-captopril.
The physical sacrifice of thinking: Investigating the relationship between thinking and physical activity in everyday life

Physical activity level is an important contributor to overall human health and obesity. Research has shown that humans possess a number of traits that influence their physical activity level including social cognition. We examined whether the trait of “need for cognition” was associated with daily physical activity levels. We recruited individuals who were high or low in need for cognition and measured their physical activity level in 30-second epochs over a 1-week period. The overall findings showed that low-need-for-cognition individuals were more physically active, but this difference was most pronounced during the 5-day work week and lessened during the weekend.
Using Pharmacokinetic and Viral Kinetic Modeling To Estimate the Antiviral Effectiveness of Telaprevir, Boceprevir, and Pegylated Interferon during Triple Therapy in Treatment-Experienced Hepatitis C Virus-Infected Cirrhotic Patients

ABSTRACT Triple therapy combining a protease inhibitor (PI) (telaprevir or boceprevir), pegylated interferon (PEG-IFN), and ribavirin (RBV) has dramatically increased the chance of eradicating hepatitis C virus (HCV). However, the efficacy of this treatment remains suboptimal in cirrhotic treatment-experienced patients. Here, we aimed to better understand the origin of this impaired response by estimating the antiviral effectiveness of each drug. Fifteen HCV genotype 1-infected patients with compensated cirrhosis, who were nonresponders to prior PEG-IFN/RBV therapy, were enrolled in a nonrandomized study. HCV RNA and concentrations of PIs, PEG-IFN, and RBV were frequently assessed in the first 12 weeks of treatment and were analyzed using a pharmacokinetic/viral kinetic model. The two PIs achieved similar levels of molar concentrations (P = 0.5), but there was a significant difference in the 50% effective concentrations (EC50) (P = 0.008), leading to greater effectiveness for telaprevir than for boceprevir in blocking viral production (99.8% versus 99.0%, respectively, P = 0.002). In all patients, the antiviral effectiveness of PEG-IFN was modest (43.4%), and there was no significant contribution of RBV exposure to the total antiviral effectiveness. The second phase of viral decline, which is attributed to the loss rate of infected cells, was slow (0.19 day−1) and was higher in patients who subsequently eradicated HCV (P = 0.03). The two PIs achieved high levels of antiviral effectiveness. However, the suboptimal antiviral effectiveness of PEG-IFN/RBV and the low loss of infected cells suggest that a longer treatment duration might be needed in cirrhotic treatment-experienced patients and that a future IFN-free regimen may be particularly beneficial in these patients.
Efficient Retrieval Over Documents Encrypted by Attributes in Cloud Computing

Secure document storage and retrieval is one of the hottest research directions in cloud computing. Though many searchable encryption schemes have been proposed, few of them support efficient retrieval over the documents which are encrypted based on their attributes. In this paper, a hierarchical attribute-based encryption scheme is first designed for a document collection. A set of documents can be encrypted together if they share an integrated access structure. Compared with the ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption schemes, both the ciphertext storage space and time costs of encryption/decryption are saved. Then, an index structure named attribute-based retrieval features (ARF) tree is constructed for the document collection based on the TF-IDF model and the documents’ attributes. A depth-first search algorithm for the ARF tree is designed to improve the search efficiency which can be further improved by parallel computing. Except for the document collections, our scheme can be also applied to other datasets by modifying the ARF tree slightly. A thorough analysis and a series of experiments are performed to illustrate the security and efficiency of the proposed scheme.
Redefining the Role of the β-Lactamase Locus in Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus: β-Lactamase Regulators Disrupt the MecI-Mediated Strong Repression on mecA and Optimize the Phenotypic Expression of Resistance in Strains with Constitutive mecA Expression

ABSTRACT In response to β-lactam chemotherapy, Staphylococcus aureus has acquired two resistance determinants: blaZ, coding for β-lactamase, which confers resistance to penicillins only, and mecA, coding for an extra cell wall cross-linking enzyme with reduced affinity for virtually all other β-lactams. The transcriptional control of both resistance determinants is regulated by homologous repressors (BlaI and MecI, respectively) and sensor inducers (BlaR1 and MecR1, respectively). There is a cross-talk between the two regulatory systems, and it has been demonstrated that bla regulators stabilize the mecA acquisition. In a recent study, we have unexpectedly observed that in most MRSA strains, there was no significant change in the resistance phenotype upon the overexpression in trans of a MecI repressor, whereas in those few strains negative for the bla locus, there was a massive decrease of resistance (D. C. Oliveira and H. de Lencastre, PLoS One 6:e23287, 2011). Here, we demonstrate that, contrary to what is currently accepted, the bla regulatory system efficiently disrupts the strong MecI-mediated repression on mecA, enabling the optimal expression of resistance. This effect appears to be due to the formation of MecI::BlaI heterodimers that might bind less efficiently to the mecA promoter and become nonfunctional due to the proteolytic inactivation of the BlaI monomer. In addition, we have also observed that the presence of bla regulators may enhance dramatically the expression of β-lactam resistance in MRSA strains with constitutive mecA expression, compensating for the fitness cost imposed by the large β-lactamase plasmid. These observations point to important unrecognized roles of the bla locus for the expression of the methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) phenotype.
Detection of the mcr-1 Gene in a Multidrug-Resistant Escherichia coli Isolate from an Austrian Patient

ABSTRACT Since colistin resistance based on the plasmid-encoded mcr-1 gene was first described, this resistance gene in Enterobacteriaceae has been found worldwide. These organisms are typically of heterogeneous genetic background and show exceptional clonal diversity. We describe the first confirmation of mcr-1 in a human Escherichia coli strain cultured from a surveillance stool sample of an Austrian oncology patient.