Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An improved GMP based localization algorithm for unknown target population environments

In order to improve the identification performance under unknown target population conditions, a new greedy matching pursuit algorithm (GMP) based localization algorithm is proposed. First of all, based on the possible target position estimations by traditional GMP algorithm, a redefined threshold is proposed to choose more possible target positions from the remaining grids. So the missing probability can be improved. Afterwards, the least square (LS) method is utilized to remove several outliers of the target position estimations and then the false alarm probability can be reduced. Simulation results illustrate that the proposed algorithm has better target identification ability than traditional GMP approach in unknown target population scenarios.
Selecting related terms in query-logs using two-stage SimRank

It is commonly believed that query logs from Web search are a gold mine for search business, because they reflect users' preference over Web pages presented by search engines, so a lot of studies based on query logs have been carried out in the last few years. In this study, we assume that two queries are relevant to each other when they have same clicked page in their result lists, and we also consider the queries' topics of user's need. Thus, we propose a Two-Stage SimRank (called TSS in this paper) algorithm based on SimRank and some clustering algorithms to compute the similarity among queries, and then use it to discover relevant terms for query expansion, considering the information of topics and the global relationships of queries concurrently, with a query log collected by a practical search engine. Experimental results on two TREC test collections show that our approach can discover qualified terms effectively and improve retrieval performance.
Is a Stop Consonant Released when Followed by Another Stop Consonant?

Abstract Many phonetics textbooks state that, in sequences of two stop consonants in English, the first stop is commonly unreleased. For nonhomorganic stop consonant sequences, this statement may be taken to imply that the (necessary) articulatory release of the first stop has no observable acoustic consequences. To examine this claim, we recorded sentences, produced by several native speakers of American English at a conversational rate, containing word-internal sequences of two nonhomorganic stops, either across a syllable boundary (e.g., cactus, pigpen), or in word-final position (e.g., act, sobbed). Oscillograms of the critical words revealed that release bursts of the first stop occurred in the majority of tokens, except in those where the second stop was bilabial. The bursts were acoustically rather weak and difficult to detect by ear, which may account for their having been neglected in the literature. Instead of a simple ‘released’-‘unreleased’ distinction, we propose five classification categories which make use of articulatory, acoustic, perceptua and contrastive phonetic criteria.
Epidemiology and mechanisms of gastroesophageal reflux disease in the elderly: a perspective

Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) seems to be more common in older individuals. Disturbed esophageal motility; anatomical disorders, such as hiatal hernia, increased obesity, defective mucosal integrity, and alteration in salivary secretion; and concomitant medications all attribute to the higher rate of GERD in the elderly. In this review, we discuss the underlying mechanisms that could explain this higher rate of GERD in the elderly.
Comparison of the metabolic effects of ritonavir-boosted darunavir or atazanavir versus raltegravir, and the impact of ritonavir plasma exposure: ACTG 5257.

BACKGROUND Metabolic effects following combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) vary by regimen type. Changes in metabolic effects were assessed following cART in the AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG) A5257 study, and correlated with plasma ritonavir trough concentrations (C24). METHODS Treatment-naive adult subjects were randomized to ritonavir-boosted atazanavir or darunavir, or raltegravir-based cART. Changes in lipids and other metabolic outcomes over time were estimated. Differences between arms were estimated with 97.5% confidence intervals and compared using pairwise Student t tests. Associations between ritonavir C24 and lipid changes at week 48 were evaluated via linear regression. RESULTS Analyses included 1797 subjects with baseline fasting data. Baseline lipid profiles and metabolic syndrome rates (approximately 21%) were similar across arms. Comparable increases occurred in total cholesterol, triglycerides, and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol with the boosted protease inhibitors (PIs); each PI had greater increases relative to raltegravir (all P ≤ .001 at week 96). Metabolic syndrome incident rates by week 96 (approximately 22%) were not different across arms. Ritonavir C24 was not different by arm (P = .89) (median, 69 ng/mL and 74 ng/mL in the atazanavir and darunavir arms, respectively) and were not associated with changes in lipid measures (all P > .1). CONCLUSIONS Raltegravir produced the most favorable lipid profile. Metabolic syndrome rates were high at baseline and increased to the same degree in all arms. Ritonavir C24 was not different in the PI arms and had no relationship with the modest but comparable increases in lipids observed with either atazanavir or darunavir. The long-term clinical significance of the lipid changes noted with the PIs relative to raltegravir deserves further evaluation. CLINICAL TRIALS REGISTRATION NCT 00811954.
EFFECT OF RANIBIZUMAB ON HIGH-SPEED INDOCYANINE GREEN ANGIOGRAPHY AND MINIMUM INTENSITY PROJECTION OPTICAL COHERENCE TOMOGRAPHY FINDINGS IN NEOVASCULAR AGE-RELATED MACULAR DEGENERATION

Purpose: The purpose of this 1-year prospective study was to investigate how induction/pro re nata ranibizumab intravitreal treatment of eyes with neovascular age-related macular degeneration affects the anatomy of choroidal neovascularization (CNV) and the overlying outer retinal tissue. Methods: High-speed indocyanine green (HS-ICG) angiography measurements provided quantification of the CNV size in 60 patients followed for 1 year. Minimum intensity projection optical coherence tomography (MinIP OCT), a novel algorithm assessing minimum optical intensity between the internal limiting membrane and retinal pigment epithelium, measured the area of outer retinal disruption overlying the CNV. Fluorescein angiography was also assessed to evaluate late retinal leakage. Results: After 1 year, the mean area of CNV measured with indocyanine green angiography decreased by 5.8%. The mean area of MinIP OCT of outer retinal disruption overlying the CNV decreased by 4.2%. Mean area of fluorescein angiography leakage decreased by 6.3%. Both the area of outer retinal disruption measured with MinIP OCT and the area of leakage on fluorescein angiography typically exceeded the area of CNV on indocyanine green angiography at baseline and 1 year. Conclusion: Choroidal neovascularization treated with induction/pro re nata intravitreal ranibizumab for 1 year essentially remained static. Minimum intensity projection optical coherence tomography suggests that the area of outer retinal disruption overlying the CNV may be greater than the CNV itself and often correlates with the leakage area on fluorescein angiography. Additionally, there was minimal change in the area of outer retinal disruption on MinIP OCT even when fluid resolved. Measurements of the extent of CNV lesions based on indocyanine green angiography and MinIP OCT may provide useful outcome variables to help assess the CNV complex longitudinally and warrant further validation.
Visual Functioning and Health-related Quality-of-Life are Compromised in Patients with Uveitis

ABSTRACT Purpose: To assess the vision-related (VR) and health-related (HR) quality-of-life (QoL) of patients with uveitis. Methods: In total, 60 patients with uveitis, 81 patients with diabetic retinopathy (DR), and 70 healthy subjects completed the National Eye Institute Visual Functioning Questionnaire and the Medical Outcome Study 36-Item Short Form. Results: Patients with uveitis reported lower HR- and VR-QoL than healthy subjects (p<0.05) and lower VR-QoL (p<0.001) than patients with DR. For patients with uveitis, multiple linear regression analyses indicated that lower HR-QoL scores were predicted by younger age (p<0.01), while lower VR-QoL scores were predicted by poorer visual acuity (p<0.001), ocular comorbidities (p<0.05), and female sex (p<0.05). Conclusions: Patients with uveitis have significantly poorer VR- and HR-QoL than healthy control subjects. Uveitis has a more debilitating impact on VR-QoL than DR.
Response to Letters Regarding Article, "Prognostic Value of Late Gadolinium Enhancement Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance in Cardiac Amyloidosis".

We thank Aquaro, Cohen, and colleagues for their interest in our article.1 Cardiac involvement is a chief driver of prognosis in systemic amyloidosis, and the stratification of patients is essential for prognosis and choosing management strategies. Cardiovascular magnetic resonance with late gadolinium enhancement has good diagnostic accuracy for cardiac amyloidosis, but its prognostic impact was uncertain.2–6 This study confirms incremental prognostic information after adjusting for known prognosis factors. We note the comments of Aquaro and colleagues regarding cardiac biopsy, but point out that microscopic histological analyses of these tiny samples is not only open to sampling error, but, crucially, the presence of amyloid in heart muscle is not actually proof of cardiac amyloidosis. It is essential to make the distinction between the presence of amyloid deposits and the clinical syndromes of amyloidosis. Amyloid deposits occur widely throughout the tissues in patients with systemic amyloidosis, often without any clinical consequences, providing the basis for rectal, salivary gland, skin, and fat biopsies to support diagnosis. It is likely …
Alteration of thiol-disulphide homeostasis in acute tonsillopharyngitis

Objective: Thiol-disulphide homeostasis (TDH) has a critical role in various clinical disorders. We aimed to assess the association of TDH with acute tonsillopharyngitis (AT) in children. Methods: This study included 94 (73 viral and 21 bacterial) tonsillopharyngitis patients and 88 control children. Their native thiol, total thiol, and disulphide levels were measured. Results: Viral and bacterial tonsillopharyngitis patients had lower native thiol levels compared with healthy children (P < 0.001 and P = 0.008, respectively). Both groups had lower total thiol levels compared with control children (P = 0.002 for viral, P = 0.011 for bacterial). The disulphide levels were lower in bacterial than in viral tonsillopharyngitis patients (P = 0.04), and there was a significant difference between viral tonsillopharyngitis patients and the control group (P < 0.001). The native/total thiol ratio in each patient group was lower than in the control group (P < 0.001 for viral, P = 0.017 for bacterial). The disulphide/native thiol and disulphide/total thiol ratios were significantly higher in viral (P < 0.001 for both) and bacterial tonsillopharyngitis patients (P = 0.017 for both) than in healthy children. In all patients, a correlation was found between the levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) and native thiol (r = −0.211, P = 0.04), CRP and total thiol (r = −0.217, P = 0.036), white blood cell (WBC) and native thiol (r = −0.228, P = 0.002), WBC and total thiol (r = −0.191, P = 0.01), and WBC and disulphide (r = 0.160, P = 0.03). Discussion: TDH is altered in AT in children. The alteration is more prominent in viral than in bacterial tonsillopharyngitis.
Socioeconomic Status and Hepatocellular Carcinoma in the United States

Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has a poor prognosis and, unlike most cancers, HCC incidence and mortality rates are increasing in the United States. While risk is known to vary among different racial and ethnic groups, less is known about the variability of risk within these groups by neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES). Methods: HCC cases diagnosed in the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) 11 cancer registries between 1996 and 2007, and the population of the SEER 11 catchment areas was studied. Analyses were conducted to compare census tract area family poverty, educational attainment, and unemployment by race and ethnicity. A multiple linear regression model, weighted by the number of cases and the number of individuals in each census tract, with adjustment for registry, was used to calculate mean differences in area-level attributes between HCC cases and the population. Results: HCC cases in most racial/ethnic groups had lower mean neighborhood-level measures of SES than their referent population. An exception was seen among Hispanics. Comparing white cases with cases of other racial groups and to Hispanics, white cases lived in neighborhoods with less family poverty, fewer high-school dropouts, and lower unemployment. Compared with white cases, Asian and Pacific Islander and Hispanic cases lived in neighborhoods with a higher percentage of foreign-born population. Conclusions: Low neighborhood-level SES and immigrant status may be associated with greater risk of HCC within specific racial and ethnic groups. Impact: These findings could help to focus control resources for HCC toward the most affected communities.Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 21(8); 1330–5. ©2012 AACR.
Genetic Engineering of Murine CD8+ and CD4+ T Cells for Preclinical Adoptive Immunotherapy Studies

T-cell receptor (TCR) gene therapy enables for the rapid creation of antigen-specific T cells from mice of any strain and represents a valuable tool for preclinical immunotherapy studies. Here, we describe the superiority of &ggr;-retroviral vectors compared with lentiviral vectors for transduction of murine T cells and surprisingly illustrate robust gene-transfer into phenotypically naive/memory-stem cell like (TN/TSCM; CD62Lhi/CD44low) and central memory (TCM; CD62Lhi/CD44hi) CD8+ T cells using murine stem cell-based &ggr;-retroviral vectors (MSGV1). We created MSGV1 vectors for a major histocompatibility complex-class I-restricted TCR specific for the melanocyte-differentiation antigen, glycoprotein 100 (MSGV1-pmel-1), and a major histocompatibility complex-class II-restricted TCR specific for tyrosinase-related protein-1 (MSGV1-TRP-1), and found that robust gene expression required codon optimization of TCR sequences for the pmel-1 TCR. To test for functionality, we adoptively transferred TCR-engineered T cells into mice bearing B16 melanomas and observed delayed growth of established tumors with pmel-1 TCR engineered CD8+ T cells and significant tumor regression with TRP-1 TCR transduced CD4+ T cells. We simultaneously created lentiviral vectors encoding the pmel-1 TCR, but found that these vectors mediated low TCR expression in murine T cells, but robust gene expression in other murine and human cell lines. These results indicate that preclinical murine models of adoptive immunotherapies are more practical using &ggr;-retroviral rather than lentiviral vectors.
Calcium supplements and fracture prevention.

Copyright © 2013 Massachusetts Medical Society. A 62-year-old healthy woman presents for routine care. She has no history of fracture, but she is worried about osteoporosis because her mother had a hip fracture at 72 years of age. She exercises regularly and has taken over-the-counter calcium carbonate at a dose of 1000 mg three times a day since her menopause at 54 years of age. This regimen provides 1200 mg of elemental calcium per day. She eats a healthy diet with multiple servings of fruits and vegetables and consumes one 8-oz serving of low-fat yogurt and one glass of low-fat milk almost every day. She recently heard that calcium supplements could increase her risk of cardiovascular disease and wants your opinion about whether or not she should receive them. What would you advise?
The Molecular Biology Database Collection: 2008 update

The Nucleic Acids Research online Molecular Biology Database Collection is a public repository that lists more than 1000 databases described in this and previous Nucleic Acids Research annual database issues, as well as a selection of molecular biology databases described in other journals. All databases included in this Collection are freely available to the public. The 2008 update includes 1078 databases, 110 more than the previous one. The links to more than 80 databases have been updated and 25 obsolete databases have been removed from the list. The complete database list and summaries are available online at the Nucleic Acids Research web site, http://nar.oxfordjournals. org/.
Liberating Alternatives to Imprisoning Stories: The Deconstruction and Reconstruction of the Discourse of Disorder A review of Neimeyer, R.A., & Raskin, J.D. (2000) Constructions of Disorder: Meaning-Making Frameworks for Psychotherapy. Washington DC: American Psychological Association.

There comes a point in every discipline at which the community of researchers, theorists or practitioners needs to reflect on the ontological status of the phenomena that constitute their discursive practices. Not posing this question explicitly leads only to the hidden assumption of an implicit answer. As far as psychology is concerned, the key question concerns the “level of existence” of the phenomena to which psychological knowledge is applied.
Ankylosing spondylitis M-CSF-derived macrophages are undergoing unfolded protein response (UPR) and express higher levels of interleukin-23

Abstract Objective: Interleukin (IL)-23/IL-17 pathway involves in the pathogenesis of ankylosing spondylitis (AS). The exact mechanism implicated in overexpression of IL-23 and activation of the IL-23/IL-17 axis is not clear. The aim of the study was to clarify whether macrophages of AS patients undergo unfolded protein response (UPR) and secret increased IL-23. Methods: Peripheral blood monocyte isolated from 10 HLA-B27+ patients and five HLA-B27+ normal subjects were differentiated to macrophages by macrophage-colony stimulating factor (M-CSF) for seven days. Flow cytometry was used to detect monocyte purity and expression of macrophage markers. Analysis of mRNA expression for HLA-B and B27, UPR-associated proteins (BiP, CHOP, MDG1, and XBP1) and IL-23 was performed by RT-qPCR. Results: RT-qPCR data showed a significant overexpression of HLA-B27, UPR genes (BiP, CHOP, and XBP1), and IL-23 in M-CSF-derived macrophages from AS patients compared to healthy controls. Increased expression of MDG1 was not significant. Conclusions: Our data suggest that UPR activation occurs in M-CSF-derived macrophages of AS patients and is accompanied by overexpression of HLA-B27. UPR appears to be associated with overproduction of IL-23 in AS macrophages.
Competency‐based medical education: the discourse of infallibility

Over the last two decades, competency‐based frameworks have been internationally adopted as the primary educational approach in medicine. Yet competency‐based medical education (CBME) remains contested in the academic literature. We look broadly at the nature of this debate to explore how it may shape scholars’ understanding of CBME, and its implications for medical education research and practice. In doing so, we deconstruct unarticulated discourses and assumptions embedded in the CBME literature.
cAMP-Mediated Stabilization of Fusion Pores in Cultured Rat Pituitary Lactotrophs

Regulated exocytosis mediates the release of hormones and transmitters. The last step of this process is represented by the merger between the vesicle and the plasma membranes, and the formation of a fusion pore. Once formed, the initially stable and narrow fusion pore may reversibly widen (transient exocytosis) or fully open (full-fusion exocytosis). Exocytosis is typically triggered by an elevation in cytosolic calcium activity. However, other second messengers, such as cAMP, have been reported to modulate secretion. The way in which cAMP influences the transitions between different fusion pore states remains unclear. Here, hormone release studies show that prolactin release from isolated rat lactotrophs stimulated by forskolin, an activator of adenylyl cyclases, and by membrane-permeable cAMP analog (dbcAMP), exhibit a biphasic concentration dependency. Although at lower concentrations (2–10 μm forskolin and 2.5–5 mm dbcAMP) these agents stimulate prolactin release, an inhibition is measured at higher concentrations (50 μm forskolin and 10–15 mm dbcAMP). By using high-resolution capacitance (Cm) measurements, we recorded discrete increases in Cm, which represent elementary exocytic events. An elevation of cAMP leaves the frequency of full-fusion events unchanged while increasing the frequency of transient events. These exhibited a wider fusion pore as measured by increased fusion pore conductance and a prolonged fusion pore dwell time. The probability of observing rhythmic reopening of transient fusion pores was elevated by dbcAMP. In conclusion, cAMP-mediated stabilization of wide fusion pores prevents vesicles from proceeding to the full-fusion stage of exocytosis, which hinders vesicle content discharge at high cAMP concentrations.
Additional functional variation at the SLC6A4 gene

), primarily on the role of this polymorphismin susceptibility to major depression and anxiety disorders, and treatment response to SSRIdrugs [Serretti et al., 2006]. Although association to complex behavioral phenotypes has beeninconsistent and meta-analyses reveal modest effects, imaging genetic studies have foundstronger effects of
Insights on efficacious doses of PAMORAs for patients on chronic opioid therapy or opioid‐naïve patients

Opioid‐induced constipation (OIC) is a major side effect of opioid use. Centrally acting antagonists result in opioid withdrawal or worsening of pain and lead to use of peripherally acting mu‐opioid receptor antagonists (PAMORAs). The required doses of the PAMORAs, methylnaltrexone and naloxegol, in the treatment of OIC are well established in chronic opioid users. OIC may occur after short duration of opioid treatment; the required doses of naloxone, naltrexone, and PAMORAs in opioid‐naïve subjects (with no opioid use for at least 3 months) are unclear. The aim of this review was to evaluate the PAMORA dose required for opioid‐naïve subjects to achieve similar beneficial effects on symptoms or valid surrogates to those observed in chronic opioid users.