Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Correlation Between Proton Pump Inhibitors and the Complications of Liver Cirrhosis: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

BACKGROUND Many studies and meta-analyses have investigated the associations among proton pump inhibitors (PPIs), spontaneous bacterial peritonitis (SBP), portosystemic encephalopathy (PSE), and other infections. However, these studies had limitations, including the omission of several relevant studies and drawing conclusions, based on the abstracts without consulting the full-text of the articles. To evaluate the association between PPIs and complications arising from cirrhosis and risks of PPI use in patients with cirrhosis. METHODS Data were extracted from the EMBASE, PubMed, Cochrane, and Google Scholar databases. The Newcastle-Ottawa scale was used to assess the quality of the selected studies. RESULTS A total of 29 studies (13 case-control and 16 cohort studies) involving 20,484 patients were included in the meta-analysis. The total relative risk (RR) for the 23 studies which investigated SBP was 1.31, and the 95% CI was 1.10-1.55 (I2 = 73.0%). The total RR for the 7 studies which examined PSE was 1.25 (95% CI 0.85-1.84, I2 = 96.1%). For the 7 studies which analyzed overall infection, the total RR was 1.37 (95% CI 1.07-1.76, I2 = 79.3%). The RR for the 2 cohort studies that assessed mortality was 1.39 (95% CI 0.85-2.27, I2 = 0.0%). CONCLUSION PPI use in cirrhosis patients increased the SBP and overall infection risk. PPIs should be considered with appropriate indications when the benefits exceed the risks in cirrhosis patients with ascites.
Classification of Trending Topics in Twitter

Twitter is an online news and network service where people can post and interact via messages, which has been proved to be the largest source of breaking news during 2016 U.S. presidential election. A novel way of real-time information filtering through text categorization of tweets is proposed to classify the trending topics, using a combination of short text aggregation and the multinomial Naïve Bayes classifier
Disruption of the c/ebp a Gene in Adult Mouse Liver

The liver-enriched transcription factor C/EBP a has been implicated in the regulation of numerous liver-speciﬁc genes. It was previously reported that mice carrying a homozygous null mutation at the c/ebp a locus died as neonates due to the absence of hepatic glycogen and the resulting hypoglycemia. However, the lethal phenotype precluded further analysis of the role of C/EBP a in hepatic gene regulation in adult mice. To circumvent this problem, we constructed a conditional knockout allele of c/ebp a by using the Cre/ loxP recombination system. Homozygous c/ebp-loxP mice, ( c/ebp a ﬂ/ﬂ ; ﬂ , ﬂanked by loxP sites) were found to be indistin-guishable from their wild-type counterparts. However, when Cre recombinase was delivered to hepatocytes of adult c/ebp a ﬂ/ﬂ mice by infusion of a recombinant adenovirus carrying the cre gene, more than 80% of the c/ebp a ﬂ/ﬂ genes were deleted speciﬁcally in liver and C/EBP a expression was reduced by 90%. This condition resulted in a reduced level of bilirubin UDP-glucuronosyltransferase expression in the liver. After several days, the knockout mice developed severe jaundice due to an increase in unconjugated serum bilirubin. The expression of genes encoding phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase, glycogen synthase, and factor IX was also strongly reduced in adult conditional-knockout animals, while the expression of transferrin, apolipoprotein B, and insulin-like growth factor I genes was not affected. These results establish C/EBP a as an essential transcriptional regulator of genes encoding enzymes involved in bilirubin detoxiﬁcation and gluconeogenesis in adult mouse liver.
The Role of Women Fish Mongers in the Commercialization of Perinwkle in Bonny Local Government Area of Rivers State, Nigeria

— This study analyzed the role of women fish mongers in the commercialization of periwinkle in Bonny local government Area of River state Nigeria. Specifically, it identified the socio-economic characteristics of women fish mongers. Examined the profitability of periwinkle marketing identified the marketing channel and of the respondent in the commercialization of periwinkle. Plus, it identified the constraints facing the women fish mongers. Multi-stage random sampling technique was used to select 100 women fish mongers from whom date were elicited using questionnaires. Data were analyzed with descriptive statistics, farm budget technique and multiple regression technique. Result showed that, 37% of the respondents were mostly within the age range of 31 – 40, entries on the married: also, a 42% advantage. meanwhile, majority of 59% had a household size of 5-8, and the mean household size stood at 8. However, 62% of the respondent registered a startup capital ranging from 2.000 4.000. the study revealed that on the average, the women fish monger in Bonny local Government Area enjoyed a net farm income (NFI) of 226,395.00 per annum (i.e. an NFI 18866.25 of per annum. The OLS multiple regression result showed that only the ages and the years of periwinkle marketing in bonny local government/non-government organization should provide founds through formal financial institution and cooperative bodies to enable the women fish mongers have access to capital or affordable credit facilities readily
PregnancyComplicated by the Antiphospholipid Syndrome: Outcomes With Intravenous Immunoglobulin Therapy

Objective : To assess maternal and fetal outcomes in 15 patients with antiphospholipid syndrome (19 pregnancies) treated with intravenous immunoglobulin (IV Ig) during pregnancy. Methods : Monthly IV Ig therapy was initiated in the ﬁrst or early second trimester of all pregnancies except two. Additional therapy consisted of low-dose aspirin and subcutaneous heparin. Six patients also received steroid therapy. Serial anticardiolipin IgG levels were measured in eight pregnancies. Results : The live-birth rate was 84% (16 of 19 live births), and there were three pregnancy losses. There were no cases of fetal growth restriction (FGR). Preeclampsia and nonreassuring fetal status were each diagnosed in 25% of the pregnancies. Seventy-ﬁve percent of the infants were delivered at 34 weeks’ gestation or later. Anticardiolipin IgG decreased throughout the course of therapy in seven pregnancies. Placental pathology was minimal.
TSDT theory for free vibration of functionally graded plates with various material properties

In this work, an implicit algorithm is used for analyzing the free dynamic behavior of Functionally Graded Material (FGM) plates. The Third order Shear Deformation Theory (TSDT) is used to develop the proposed model. In this contribution, the formulation is written without any homogenization technique as the rule of mixture. The Hamilton principle is used to establish the resulting equations of motion. For spatial discretization based on Finite Element Method (FEM), a quadratic element with four and eight nodes is adopted using seven degrees of freedom per node. An implicit algorithm is used for solving the obtained problem. To study the accuracy and the performance of the proposed approach, we present comparisons with literature and laminate composite modeling results for vibration natural frequencies. Otherwise, we examine the inﬂuence of the exponent of the volume fraction which reacts the plates “P-FGM” and “S-FGM”. In addition, we study the inﬂuence of the thickness on “E-FGM” plates. We the material properties change continuously through the thickness of the plate using the diﬀerent laws which govern the variation of materials namely: the exponential law “E-FGM”, the power-law “P-FGM”, and the “S-FGM” sigmoid law. The equations of motion obtained by applying the Hamilton principle and the fundamental frequencies calculated by solving the equations governing the eigenvalue problem. Firstly for validation, we compare the results of the “P-FGM” plate obtained with those of the literature. Afterward, we examine the inﬂuence of the exponent of the volume fraction which governs “P-FGM” and “S-FGM” plates. Then we study the inﬂuence of the thickness on the “E-FGM” plates with diﬀerent boundary conditions.
Modelling and Analysis of Spontaneous Brain Activity

In brain imaging and neuroscience in general, the scientiﬁc and application interest in spontaneous brain activity has rapidly increased in the recent years. The key role of formalised models and effective data analysis methods for further development of the ﬁeld is becoming widely accepted. In this paper we describe two applications of mathematics in the ﬁeld. The ﬁrst concerns modelling of the temporal properties of spontaneous brain activity ﬂuctuations while the second assesses the potential of nonlinear analysis methods in the study of the commonly observed synchronisation patterns. task-unrelated brain activity The ﬁrst cardinal feature characterising RSN is low-frequency ﬂuctuation (LFF, 0 . 01 − 0 . 1 Hz) of blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) fMRI signals synchronised between spatially distinct, but functionally connected brain areas. Speciﬁc patterns of this functional connectivity (FC) in terms of temporal synchronisation between re-mote neurophysiologic events are the second key feature of spontaneous brain activity.
Cognitive componets of speech at different time scales

Cognitive component analysis (COCA) is deﬁned as unsupervised grouping of data leading to a group structure well-aligned with that resulting from human cognitive activity. We focus here on speech at different time scales looking for possible hidden ‘cognitive structure’. Statistical regularities have earlier been revealed at multiple time scales corresponding to: phoneme, gender, height and speaker identity. We here show that the same simple unsupervised learning algorithm can detect these cues. Our basic features are 25-dimensional short-time Mel-frequency weighted cepstral coefﬁcients, assumed to model the basic representation of the human auditory system. The basic features are aggregated in time to obtain features at longer time scales. Simple energy based ﬁltering is used to achieve a sparse representation. Our hypothesis is now basically ecological: We hypothesize that features that are essentially independent in a reasonable ensemble can be efﬁciently coded using a sparse independent component representation. The representations are indeed shown to be very similar be-tween supervised learning (invoking cognitive activity) and un-supervised learning (statistical regularities), hence lending additional support to our cognitive component hypothesis.
REMOVAL OF FLUORIDE FROM AQUEOUS SOLUTION USING FIRED CLAY SOIL PILLARED WITH TEA LEAF ASH COMPONENTS

Pillared Soil: This study reports on the adsorption of fluoride ion from aqueous solutions by using fired clay soil, pillared with tea leave ash components. The potential of low cost material fired clay soil and fired clay soil pillared with tea leave ash components for fluoride removal from aqueous solution was evaluated by using fluoride ion selective electrode. Pillaring of clay soil with tea leave ash was done by thoroughly mixing fifteen gram of tea leave ash and three hundred gram of clay soil using distilled water and it was aged for 96 hours until it was dried. Untreated clay soil and clay soil pillared with tea leave ash components were fired in an electrical furnace at 570 oC for 3 hrs. Batch adsorption experiments were carried out and the effects of pH, contact time, initial adsorbate concentration, adsorbent dose and temperature of the solution were investigated. Adsorption of fluoride by fired clay soil and fired clay soil pillared with tea leave ash was
Ca 2+ –mitochondria axis drives cell division in hematopoietic stem cells

Most of the hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) within the bone marrow (BM) show quiescent state with a low mitochondrial membrane potential (ΔΨ m ). In contrast, upon stress hematopoiesis, HSCs actively start to divide. However, the underlying mechanism for the initiation of HSC division still remains unclear. To elucidate the mechanism underlying the transition of cell cycle state in HSCs, we analyzed the change of mitochondria in HSCs after BM suppression induced by 5-fluoruracil (5-FU). We found that HSCs initiate cell division after exhibiting enhanced ΔΨ m as a result of increased intracellular Ca 2+ level. Although further activation of Ca 2+ –mitochondria pathway led to loss of HSCs after cell division, the appropriate suppression of intracellular Ca 2+ level by exogenous adenosine or Nifedipine, a Ca 2+ channel blocker, prolonged cell division interval in HSCs, and simultaneously achieved both cell division and HSC maintenance. Collectively, our results indicate that the Ca 2+ – mitochondria pathway induces HSC division critically to determine HSC cell fate.
Enhanced Anti-Inflammatory Effects of Glucocorticoid Receptor Nitration Leads to

It has recently emerged that posttranslational modiﬁcation of proteins via nitration of tyrosine residues can alter their function. In this study, we describe that speciﬁc nitration of the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) by NCX-1015, a novel NO-donating prednisolone derivative (prednisolone 21-[4 (cid:1) -(nitrooxymethyl)benzoate), results in an enhancement of GR-mediated events. Incubation of PBMC and U937 cells with 1–10 (cid:1) M NCX-1015 caused faster activation of GR as assessed by augmented 1) binding to [ 3 H]dexamethasone, 2) dissociation from heat shock protein 90, and 3) nuclear translocation. PBMCs treated with NCX-1015 contained GR that had undergone tyrosine nitration. The chemistry facilitating the increase in steroid binding capacity observed with NCX-1015 is speciﬁc, because changing the position of the NO-donating group or ubiquitous nitration by addition of an NO donor was unable to mimic this event. In vivo treatment with NCX-1015 provoked GR nitration and faster heat shock protein 90 dissociation as assessed in peritoneal cells. Accordingly, NCX-1015, but not prednisolone or other derivatives, produced a rapid inhibition of the early neutrophil recruitment and mediator generation in a model of peritonitis. In conclusion, we report here for the ﬁrst time that posttranslational modiﬁcation of GR by this novel nitrosteroid is associated with its enhanced anti-inﬂammatory activity. The Journal of Immunology, 2003, 171: 3245–3252.
and polynomial fitting of joint tuning functions

(a) Examples of stimuli used to test face selectivity (Fig. 1a, b). (b) (top row) 8 pictures of real faces; (middle row) corresponding brightness edge maps (obtained using the Prewitt method with a threshold of 0.05); (bottom row) corresponding cartoon faces constructed using 7 elementary features: hair outline, eyes, irises, eyebrows, nose, mouth, and face outline. Note how the edges define these elementary features. These specific cartoons were used in the experiments shown in Fig. 1c, and in a psychophysical experiment to assess whether such simple cartoons can capture face identity (part c below). (c) Identification performance for cartoon faces, averaged across 8 subjects. Subjects were asked to match 16 real faces to 16 cartoon versions. Horizontal black line indicates chance performance (0.06). Each cartoon face shown in part b was correctly matched to its real counterpart by at least half of the subjects. (d) Full set of 2 partial faces constructed from a set of 7 elementary features, used to analyze neuronal mechanisms for face detection (Fig. 2).
On Improvement of Greedy Routing Protocol (GRP) for Inter-Vehicle Communications

– This article presents the Greedy Routing Protocol (GRP) for inter-vehicle communication. The protocol aims at delivering data packets to destinations even though there is no any location service available in the area. Unlike its previous version [1], the current version of GRP implements a number of efficient techniques in order to reduce protocol overhead without any performance compensation. This article also presents new performance evaluation results of the recent GRP compared to those of Ad hoc on-demand Distance Vector (AODV) protocol [2]. We found that when selecting at most one forwarding node at each hop (P=1), GRP had about 18% successful packet delivery ratio higher than that of AODV while introducing about 0.18% more overhead and 0.88 seconds longer end-to-end delivery delay.
Using Natural Language Processing to Automate the Bechdel Test

The Bechdel test asks three questions: does a movie contain two named female characters, do two female characters converse at some point during the movie and is there at least one conversation between female characters that is not about a man? If all questions can be answered positively, then the film passes the Bechdel test. This thesis defines and implements methods for automating the Bechdel test for screenplays and novels. Being able to automate this task would allow for large-scale analyses, permitting researchers to analyse trends over long time periods, for example, that would otherwise only be possible with time consuming manual methods. Previous research exists for automating the Bechdel test for screenplays, which provided the basis for the approach described in this thesis. Although the Bechdel test was originally formulated for movies, the questions are just as applicable to novels. However, as far as we could find, no previous research exists for automating the Bechdel test for novels. For screenplays we first parsed the text using a new rule-based approach that relies on the specialized text formatting required for screenplays. Then we identified all the characters who appeared in speaking roles and assigned each a gender by using a newly developed algorithm that incorporates census data about names and the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) information about the specific film. We also used a machine learning approach to predict if there is at least one conversation about something other than a man between the identified female characters. The results achieved for screenplays are comparable to the previous published work. Novels required a different approach than screenplays, due to the differences in structure between the two texts. For novels we used a Named-Entity Recognizer and a rule-based algorithm that connects the different names used for each character throughout the text, to identify all the characters in a novel. Using quote attribution, we then determined which character says which lines of dialogue, and so establish who converses with whom. The method developed for novels achieved perfect accuracy on a small dataset of five novels.
Fault diagnosis for complex systems based on reliability analysis and sensors data considering epistemic uncertainty

With the rapid development of science and technology, application of high dependability safeguard techniques have improved the performance of modern systems greatly on the one hand, but increased the complexity of these systems on the other hand, which significantly raises some challenges in fault diagnosis. These challenges are failure dependency of components and epistemic uncertainty. Usually, some methods of fault tolerance are used to improve the system reliability. The behaviours of components in this system, such as failure priority, functional dependent failures, and sequentially dependent failures should be taken into account. In addition, high reliability makes it extremely difficult to obtain complete fault data because these systems may still be in the early life cycle, which results in the epistemic uncertainty. Thus, the work of fault diagnosis has attracted more attention than before. The aim of a fault diagnosis system is to quickly detect and identify the root causes of these failures based on some information such as sensors data and operator experience by using some models and algorithms. Several efficient fault diagnosis approaches have been proposed for a variety of systems over the last few decades. Doguc et al. proposed a new fault diagnosis method based on the realtime reliability analysis [7]. Bayesian network (BN) was used to calculate the system reliability, and the real-time system reliability was monitored and compared with the previous values. If the deviations exceeded the set threshold, a heuristic efficient algorithm was used to locate the failed component which had the greatest changes between the prior probability and posterior probability. In the literature [3], a real-time fault diagnosis method for complex systems using objectoriented BN was proposed. It included an off-line BN construction phase and an on-line fault diagnosis phase. However, the construction of BN model requires a large amount of fault data. In [5], a fault diagnosis approach based on the fuzzy neural network and fault tree was proposed. Fuzzy neural network was used to train the relationDUAN R, LIN Y, ZENG Y. Fault diagnosis for complex systems based on reliability analysis and sensors data considering epistemic uncertainty. Eksploatacja i Niezawodnosc – Maintenance and Reliability 2018; 20 (4): 558–566, http://dx.doi. org/10.17531/ein.2018. 4.7.
Normal Regulatory (cid:97) / (cid:98) T Cells Effectively Eliminate Abnormally Activated T Cells Lacking the Interleukin 2 Receptor (cid:98) In Vivo

Summary Although interleukin 2 (IL-2) has been thought to be the most important cytokine for T cell growth, animals lacking IL-2 or a component of its receptor molecules have more expanded T cells with activated memory phenotype, indicating an indispensable role for the IL-2/IL-2 receptor system in regulating the size and activity of the T cell population. In this study, we investigated the possible mechanism of abnormal expansion of activated T cells in IL-2 receptor (cid:98) chain (IL-2R (cid:98) ) (cid:50) / (cid:50) mice using the systems of bone marrow transplantation and T cell transfer. Here, we show that IL-2R (cid:98) (cid:50) / (cid:50) T cells in mice reconstituted with a mixture of IL-2R (cid:98) (cid:50) / (cid:50) and IL-2R (cid:98) (cid:49) / (cid:49) bone marrow cells did not develop into an abnormally activated stage, and that already activated IL-2R (cid:98) (cid:50) / (cid:50) T cells were effectively eliminated by IL-2R (cid:98) (cid:49) / (cid:49) T cells when both cells were cotransferred to T cell–deficient host mice. This regulation and/or elimination was dependent on T cells bearing (cid:97) / (cid:98) type T cell receptor, especially on CD8 (cid:49) T cells and independent of the Fas–Fas ligand (FasL) system. IL-2R (cid:98) (cid:49) / (cid:49) T cells that eliminated activated IL-2R (cid:98) (cid:50) / (cid:50) T cells expressed FasL, perforin, granzyme B, and tumor necrosis factor (cid:97) / (cid:98) . These results indicate a novel function of IL-2R (cid:98) that is necessary for the induction of regulatory T cells acting to eliminate activated T cells.
Study of polypropylene morphology obtained from blown and cast film processes : Initial morphology requirements for making membranes

: Four different polypropylene (PP) resins are extruded using the tubular blown and cast film processes. The resin morphology is observed by SEM and the effect of extrusion processing variables on the morphology is investigated. Melt rheological experiments are also carried out to characterize the polymer melts. It has been found that the molecular weight distribution and the chain structure as well as the processing conditions have important effects on the morphology. Efforts have been focused on developing a row-nucleated morphology from PPs through the control of processing conditions. The possibility of generating a porous membrane from the initial row-nucleated morphology using a stretching technique is evaluated. It has been found that the initial lamellae arrangement of the precursor films and the stretching conditions play a significant role in obtaining a porous structure.