Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Interpreting clinical trial results for moderate‐to‐severe rheumatoid arthritis: Practical applications for rheumatology healthcare providers

Purpose: To provide a general overview of clinical trials and more specifically define measurements common to rheumatoid arthritis clinical trials for the purpose of providing a foundation for rheumatology healthcare providers to translate clinical trial findings into their clinical practice and enhance their patient education discussions. Data sources: English‐language publications cited in the MEDLINE database were used to develop the content of this review article. Conclusions: The role of rheumatology healthcare providers has evolved to include numerous vital functions, such as expanding communication between specialists and primary care providers, patient education and counseling, assistance with coping strategies, monitoring response to therapy, and administration of therapy. Education regarding clinical trial design, rationale, and discussion of endpoints has not been strongly emphasized for rheumatology healthcare providers who are increasingly introduced to novel agents and need to assimilate findings from clinical trials into daily practice. Implications for practice: Familiarity with the basics of clinical trial design and efficacy endpoints of new rheumatoid arthritis therapeutics, translation and application of that knowledge into daily practice, and the ability to explain this information with patients will further enhance the ability of the rheumatology healthcare provider to optimize care for their patients with rheumatoid arthritis.
Preparation and In-Vitro Pharmacokinetic Evaluation of Compressed KollidonÂ® SR Based Salbutamol Sulphate Microcapsules: Effect of Pigments

Microcapsules of salbutamol sulphate were prepared with kollidon® SR by W/O emulsification solvent evaporation technique using iron oxide yellow, iron oxide red and TiO2 as pigments and light liquid paraffin oil was used as oil phase and 1% (w/w of the continuum) of span 60 as emulsifier. Salbutamol sulphate, a bronchodilator drug for asthma is suitable for designing as microcapsules to prolong its therapeutic duration. For the prepared microcapsules scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was performed to study the size and surface morphology of prepared microcapsules. UV-spectrophotometric method was applied to calculate the drug loading efficiency and the performance of the prepared dosage form was evaluated in terms of in-vitro dissolution studies according to USP XXX paddle method (type 2) in 400 ml distilled water (pH 7.4) for 8 hours at 370 ± 50 C temperature at 50 rpm. Release of salbutamol sulphate from the compressed microcapsules was found to follow Higuchi mechanism (R2=0.99 and 0.99) when iron oxide yellow and iron oxide red were used in F-1 and F-2 respectively while F-3 followed both first order and Higuchi kinetic model (R2=0.99) when TiO2 was used. Korsmeyer equation was used to calculate the release exponent value (n) which indicates the drug release behavior and the mean dissolution time (MDT) for release rate where F-2 containing iron oxide red gave the highest value (4.12 h).
The National Trajectory Project of Individuals Found Not Criminally Responsible on Account of Mental Disorder in Canada. Part 2: The People behind the Label

Objective: To examine the psychosocio-criminological characteristics of not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder (NCRMD)–accused people and compare them across the 3 most populous provinces. In Canada, the number of people found NCRMD has risen during the past 20 years. The Criminal Code is federally legislated but provincially administered, and mental health services are provincially governed. Our study offers a rare opportunity to observe the characteristics and trajectories of NCRMD–accused people. Method: The National Trajectory Project examined 1800 men and women found NCRMD in British Columbia (n = 222), Quebec (n = 1094), and Ontario (n = 484) between May 2000 to April 2005, followed until December 2008. Results: The most common primary diagnosis was a psychotic spectrum disorder. One-third of NCRMD–accused people had a severe mental illness and a concomitant substance use disorder, with British Columbia having the highest rate of dually diagnosed NCRMD–accused people. Most accused people (72.4%) had at least 1 prior psychiatric hospitalization. Two-thirds of index NCRMD offences were against the person, with a wide range of severity. Family members, followed by professionals, such as police and mental health care workers, were the most frequent victims. Quebec had the highest proportion of people with a mood disorder and the lowest median offence severity. There were both interprovincial differences and similarities in the characteristics of NCRMD-accused people. Conclusions: Contrary to public perception, severe violent offenses such as murder, attempted murder or sexual offences represent a small proportion of all NCRMD verdict offences. The results reveal a heterogeneous population regarding mental health and criminological characteristics in need of hierarchically organized forensic mental health services and levels of security. NCRMD—accused people were well known to civil psychiatric services prior to being found NCRMD. Risk assessment training and interventions to reduce violence and criminality should be a priority in civil mental health services.
The Conceptualization and Measurement of Cognitive Health Sophistication

This article develops a conceptualization and measure of cognitive health sophistication—the complexity of an individual's conceptual knowledge about health. Study 1 provides initial validity evidence for the measure—the Healthy-Unhealthy Other Instrument—by showing its association with other cognitive health constructs indicative of higher health sophistication. Study 2 presents data from a sample of low-income adults to provide evidence that the measure does not depend heavily on health-related vocabulary or ethnicity. Results from both studies suggest that the Healthy-Unhealthy Other Instrument can be used to capture variability in the sophistication or complexity of an individual's health-related schematic structures on the basis of responses to two simple open-ended questions. Methodological advantages of the Healthy-Unhealthy Other Instrument and suggestions for future research are highlighted in the discussion.
Identifying Interesting Knowledge Factors from Big Data for Effective E-Market Prediction

Knowledge management plays an important role in disseminating valuable information. Knowledge creation involves analyzing data and transforming information into knowledge. Knowledge management plays an important role in improving organizational decision-making. It is evident that data mining and predictive analytics contribute a major part in the creation of knowledge and forecast the future outcomes. The ability to predict the performance of the advertising campaigns can become an asset to the advertisers. Tools like Google analytics were able to capture user logs. Large amounts of information ranging from visitor location, visitor flow throughout the website to various actions the visitor performs after clicking an ad resides in those logs. This research approach is an effort to identify key knowledge factors in the marketing sector that can further be optimized for effective e-market prediction.
Conditional Regularized Zero-Forcing Precoding for Multi-Cell Massive MIMO Network

Conditional regularized zero-forcing (CRZF) precoding for multi-cell Massive MIMO network is investigated in this paper. An effective method to calculate the tight deterministic approximations of inter-cell interference for multi-cell Massive MIMO network is proposed, and the Massive MIMO here means that the number of transmit antennas and single- antenna users in each cell tends to infinity while their ratio remains bounded. With this method and the previous work by Sebastian Wagner for single- cell Massive MIMO network, explicit solutions for the tight deterministic approximations of empirical signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) at each receiver of CRZF precoding are obtained, and it is also concluded that the deterministic approximations have nothing to do with generalized precoding parameter. Then the sum rate can be derived with the SINR result.
INFORMATION-GEOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF ITERATIVE RECEIVER STRUCTURES

This thesis gives an introduction to basic concepts of information geometry, a theory that uses notions of differential geometry to describe information and probabilities. These concepts are applied to the analytic description of an iterative receiver for bit interleaved coded modulation (BICM). The operation of the receiver’s subblocks are recognized as implicit projections of input probability distributions on certain sub-manifolds, which for example represent the code. Furthermore, the effects of log-likelihood ratio (LLR) clipping onto the receiver performance are studied using information geometry. Again, clipping has an interpretation as a projection. Finally numerical simulations of a BICM system show the performance improvements due to iterative decoding and the effects of LLR clipping.
A comparison of twice‐weekly MPD‐PUVA and three times‐weekly skin typing‐PUVA regimens for the treatment of psoriasis

The most frequent PUVA treatment regimen in current use is three times weekly, using skin typing to estimate the starting dose. Recently, it was suggested that twice‐weekly treatment, using the minimal phototoxic dose (MPD) to calculate suberythemal starting doses of UVA, achieved similar clearance rates with fewer treatments and a lower cumulative UVA dose. We have carried out a trial on 83 patients, comparing twice‐weekly MPD‐PUVA with three times‐weekly skin typing‐PUVA, in order to test this hypothesis. Although clearance rates were comparable between the two regimens, there was no overall significant difference in the number of treatments or in the cumulative UVA doses at clearance. However, for patients with skin types I and II the cumulative UVA dose was significantly higher using the twice‐weekly MPD regimen (70–0 J/cm2 vs. 55–8 J/cm2; P < 005). Our results do not confirm that there is a reduction in cumulative UVA dosage with twice‐weekly MPD‐PUVA.
Direct Interaction of Subunits a and b of the F0 Complex of Escherichia coli ATP Synthase by Forming an ab2 Subcomplex*

The addition of a His6 tag to the N terminus of subunit a of the F0 complex of the Escherichia coli ATP synthase allowed the purification of an ab2 subcomplex after solubilization of membranes with n-dodecyl-β-d-maltoside and subsequent nickel-nitrilotriacetic acid affinity chromatography. After co-reconstitution of the ab2 subcomplex with purified subunit c, passive proton translocation rates as well as coupled ATPase activities after binding of F1 were measured that were comparable with those of wild type F0. The interaction between subunits a and b, which has been shown to be stoichiometric and functional, is not triggered by any cross-linking reagent and therefore reflects subunit interactions occurring within the F0 complex in vivo.
Efficient Computation of Many-to-Many Shortest Paths

Considering large road networks, we are interested in finding all quickest connections between given source and target locations. The computation of such a distance table is what we call the many-to-many shortest path problem. For several problems in the field of logistics this is an important subtask. For example it is required as an input for vehicle routing problems. Also, distance tables are used as an auxiliary tool for several tasks concerning exact and heuristic shortest path computations. To solve the many-to-many shortest path problem one can simply run Dijkstra’s shortest path algorithm for every source node. Considering huge graphs, this approach affords a lot of time: In the road network of Europe instances with 1 000 locations need about three hours, computing distance tables for 10 000 locations takes more than one day. Hence, there is considerable interest to speed up this task. We consider two general situations in this thesis: The first one does not allow any preprocessing to get along with flexible edge weights. The second setting considers the graph to be static and allows a preprocessing step. We drove extensive experiments to measure the performance of our approaches. Without preprocessing, two techniques can be used to accelerate point-to-point shortest path queries: goal-directed search and bidirectional search. We show that both approaches can be also used to compute many-to-many shortest paths efficiently. One of our goaldirected many-to-many techniques uses geographical information to search towards the targets. Depending on the input this method is two times faster than Dijkstra’s Algorithm. An elaborated variant of goal-directed search uses implicit landmarks to improve the sense of goal direction. This is useful in particular for larger problem instances. Also, bidirectional search can be turned to a method that accelerates the computation of distance tables. For this we also can measure speedups of about two. Highway hierarchies is a concept that explores the hierarchical structure of a road network in a preprocessing step and uses this information to accelerate all further queries. This efficient technique for point-to-point queries can be used to obtain a very efficient many-to-many algorithm. In the road graph of Europe we see speedups of more than 1 000. As an impressive example, notice that our highway hierarchy based many-to-many technique can solve the problem with 10 000 locations in less than one minute—Dijkstra’s Algorithm would take far more than one day.
Cubic metric reduction in OFDM systems by using convex optimization

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) has been adopted by several communication standards. A major disadvantage of OFDM is the large envelope fluctuations which cause the degradation of system performance. Peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) is a well-known measure for the envelope fluctuations. However, recently, another metric, known as cubic metric (CM), has been attracting increasing attention since it can predict the power de-rating of power amplifier more accurately. In this paper, our analysis shows that minimizing CM, subject to the in-band distortion and out-of-band radiation, can be formulated as a convex optimization problem. By solving this convex problem, the minimum CM satisfying the given requirements can be obtained. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.
The Effects of Overfeeding on Body Composition: The Role of Macronutrient Composition – A Narrative Review

Compared to investigations on hypocaloric diets, the effects of chronic overfeeding have been less studied. It has been posited that consuming calories in excess of daily caloric requirements will result in a gain in body weight and in particular fat mass regardless of which macronutrient(s) are consumed. However, recent evidence suggests that there is a quantitative difference in protein versus carbohydrate and/or fat overfeeding as it relates to body composition. Protein overfeeding or the consumption of a high protein diet may not result in a gain in body weight or fat mass despite consuming calories that exceed one’s normal or habitual intake. Therefore, this review will provide an up-to-date narrative on the current scientific literature on various combinations of macronutrient overfeeding and its effects on body composition.
Human carcinoembryonic antigen and biliary glycoprotein can serve as mouse hepatitis virus receptors

Receptors for murine coronavirus mouse hepatitis virus (MHV) are members of the murine carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) gene family. Since MHV can also infect primates and cause central nervous system lesions (G. F. Cabirac et al., Microb. Pathog. 16:349-357, 1994; R. S. Murray et al., Virology 188:274-284, 1992), we examined whether human CEA-related molecules can be used by MHV as potential receptors. Transfection of plasmids expressing human carcinoembryonic antigen (hCEA) and human biliary glycoprotein into COS-7 cells, which lack a functional MHV receptor, conferred susceptibility to two MHV strains, A59 and MHV-2. Domain exchange experiments between human and murine CEA-related molecules identified the immunoglobulin-like loop I of hCEA as the region conferring the virus-binding specificity. This finding expands the potential MHV receptors to primate species.
Direct object recognition using no higher than second order statistics of the image

Novel algorithms for object recognition are described that directly recover the transformations relating the image to its model. Unlike methods fitting the conventional framework, these new methods do not require exhaustive search for each feature correspondence in order to solve for the transformation. Yet they allow simultaneous object identification and recovery of the transformation. Given hypothesized corresponding regions in the model and data (2D views)-which are from planar surfaces of the 3D objects-these methods allow direct computation of the parameters of the transformation by which the data may be generated from the model. We propose two algorithms: one based on invariants derived from no higher than second order moments of the image, the other via a combination of the affine properties of geometrical and differential attributes of the image. Empirical results on natural images demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms. We demonstrate in particular that the differential method is quite stable against perturbations-although not without some error-when compared with conventional methods.
Norovirus Triggered Microbiota-driven Mucosal Inflammation in Interleukin 10-deficient Mice

Background:Infection may trigger clinically overt mucosal inflammation in patients with predisposition for inflammatory bowel disease. However, the impact of particular enteropathogenic microorganisms is ill-defined. In this study, the influence of murine norovirus (MNV) infection on clinical, histopathological, and immunological features of mucosal inflammation in the IL10-deficient (Il10−/−) mouse model of inflammatory bowel disease was examined. Methods:C57BL/6J and C3H/HeJBir wild-type and Il10−/− mice kept under special pathogen-free conditions and devoid of clinical and histopathological signs of mucosal inflammation were monitored after MNV infection for structural and functional intestinal barrier changes by in situ MNV reverse transcription PCR, transgene reporter gene technology, histology, flux measurements, quantitative real-time PCR, immunohistology, and terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP nick end-labeling assay. In addition, the influence of the enteric microbiota was analyzed in MNV-infected germfree Il10−/− mice. Results:Although MNV-infected wild-type mice remained asymptomatic, mucosal inflammation was noted in previously healthy Il10−/− mice 2 to 4 weeks after infection. MNV-induced changes in Il10−/− mice included increased paracellular permeability indicated by increased mucosal mannitol flux, reduced gene expression of tight junction molecules, and an enhanced rate of epithelial apoptosis. MNV-induced reduction of tight junction protein expression and inflammatory lesions were absent in germfree Il10−/− mice, whereas epithelial apoptosis was still observed. Conclusions:Despite its subclinical course in wild-type animals, MNV causes epithelial barrier disruption in Il10−/− animals representing a potent colitogenic stimulus that largely depends on the presence of the enteric microbiota. MNV might thus trigger overt clinical disease in individuals with a nonsymptomatic predisposition for inflammatory bowel disease by impairment of the intestinal mucosa.
Trade and the Spatial Distribution of Transport Infrastructure

The distribution of transport infrastructure across space is the outcome of deliberate government planning that reflects a desire to unlock the welfare gains from regional economic integration. Yet, despite being one of the oldest government activities, the economic forces shaping the endogenous emergence of infrastructure have not been rigorously studied. This paper provides a stylized analytical framework of open economies in which planners decide non-cooperatively on transport infrastructure investments across continuous space. Allowing for intra- and international trade, the resulting equilibrium investment schedule features underinvestment that turns out particularly severe in border regions and that is amplified by the presence of discrete border costs. In European data, the mechanism explains about a fifth of the border effect identified in a conventionally specified gravity regression. The framework sheds light on the welfare costs of second best investment schedules, on the effects of intercontinental trade or of privatized infrastructure provision.
A Comparison of Models for Shadowing Functions for Random Rough Surfaces

The paper compares three analytical models of the shadowing function for random rough surfaces. The comparison is based on a simulation model. When the terrain is more correlated over broader regions, all the shadow functions tend to coincide, but for rougher surfaces, we find that Smith's function is in closer agreement with the simulation model while Wagner's function is the least accurate
MCMC based multi-body tracking using full 3D model of both target and environment

In this paper, we present a new approach for the stable tracking of variable interacting targets under severe occlusion in 3D space. We formulate the state of multiple targets as a union state space of each target, and recursively estimate the multi-body configuration and the position of each target in 3D space by using the framework of Trans-dimensional Markov Chain Monte Carlo(MCMC). The 3D environmental model, which replicates the real-world 3D structure, is used for handling occlusions created by fixed objects in the environment, and reliably estimating the number of targets in the monitoring area. Experiments show that our system can stably track multiple humans that are interacting with each other and entering and leaving the monitored area.
Modeling of dynamic procurement auction of long term supply contracts to Colombia's electricity market

Descendent Clock Auction is a dynamic procurement auction implemented at several energy markets. Some authors have approached to model this kind of auction, but their models have not included the bidder adaptation along the auction. This paper presents an algorithm based on decision theory and microeconomic theory to simulate the bidders behavior along the auction. The bidders model use portfolio concepts and historical information about their preferences in Energy Market. The model was applied to evaluate the Colombia's Organized Market (MOR). MOR is a Descending Clock Auction to trade long term energy contracts. Specifically, demand curve and round size were varied to evaluate the auction sensibility. The main conclusion of this work was that this model is helpful to understand the bidders' adaptation process in this kind of auction.
Hereditary isolated metatarsophalangeal arthritis

Objective: To describe a family with 13 members in four generations affected by early-onset isolated painful arthritis limited to the first metatarsophalangeal (MTP) joint but without evidence of generalized joint disease at follow-up. Methods: A complete family pedigree was constructed and radiographs from the affected family members and their offspring were taken. Laboratory tests including serum measurements of C-reactive protein (CRP), urate, and rheumatoid factor (RF) were performed to exclude gout and rheumatoid arthritis from the diagnosis. Results: The age at onset of first MTP joint symptoms varied from 12 to 51 years. Both females and males were affected in the four successive generations, including male-to-male transmission as well as maternal inheritance. The affected patients were often treated surgically with good pain-relieving results. Conclusion: To our knowledge, this is the first report of early-onset isolated foot metatarsal arthritis with apparent autosomal dominant inheritance.