Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Improved growth and cardiovascular risk after late steroid withdrawal: 2-year results of a prospective, randomised trial in paediatric renal transplantation.

BACKGROUND Long-term corticosteroid treatment impairs growth and increases cardiovascular risk factors. Hence, steroid withdrawal constitutes a major topic in paediatric renal transplantation and maintenance immunosuppression. METHODS The lack of data from randomised controlled trials caused us to conduct the first prospective, randomised, multicentre study on late steroid withdrawal among paediatric kidney allograft recipients treated with standard-dose cyclosporine microemulsion (CsA) and mycophenolate mofetil (MMF) for 2 years. Forty-two low- or regular-immunologic risk patients were randomly assigned, >or=1 year post-transplant, to continue taking or to withdraw steroids over 3 months. RESULTS Two years after steroid withdrawal, they showed a longitudinal growth superior to controls [mean height standard deviation score (SDS) gain, 0.6 +/- 0.1 SDS versus -0.2 +/- 0.1 SDS (P < 0.001)]. The prevalence of the metabolic syndrome declined significantly (P < 0.05), 2 years after steroid withdrawal, from 39% (9/23) to 6% (1/16). Steroid-free patients had less frequent arterial hypertension (50% versus 93% (P < 0.05)) and required fewer antihypertensive drugs [0.6 +/- 0.2 versus 1.5 +/- 0.3 (P < 0.05 versus control)]. Additionally, they had a significantly improved carbohydrate and lipid metabolism with fewer hypercholesterolaemia and hypertriglyceridaemia (P < 0.05 versus control). Patient and graft survival amounted to 100%. Allograft function remained stable 2 years after steroid withdrawal. The incidence of acute rejections was similar in the steroid-withdrawal group (1/23, 4%) and controls (2/19, 11%). CONCLUSION Late steroid withdrawal in selected CsA- and MMF-treated paediatric kidney transplant recipients improves growth, mitigates cardiovascular risk factors and reduces the prevalence of the metabolic syndrome, at no increased risk of acute rejection or unstable graft function.
Waveguide-based Room Acoustics through Graphics Hardware

The modelling of room acoustics remains a difficult and computationally expensive task. Two main techniques exist, one focusing on the real physical wave-oriented sound propagation, while the other approximates sound waves using rays and ray-tracing techniques. One of the most popular wave-based technique are waveguide meshes, which simulate the propagation of sound using time domain difference models. In this paper we discuss a realtime implementation of the waveguide technique using fragment shaders and computer graphics hardware. Graphics hardware is well suited for parallel implementations and thus able to speedup the computation. Additionally, we discuss optimal sampling on hexagonal grids to further increase the computational efficiency. We compare both implementations and discuss the results achieved.
All-digital RF signal generation for software defined radio

Digital generation of radio-frequency signals is a key concept of software defined radios. This paper presents a digital transmitter chain including a very high-speed delta-sigma modulator. It comprises also baseband processing, sample rate conversion, digital upconverter and output stages (switching- mode amplifier and BAW filters). About 74 dB of ACLR (adjacent channel leakage ratio) is obtained on the 7.8 GS/s output of the delta-sigma modulator for the WCDMA standard.
The hominin fossil record: taxa, grades and clades

This paper begins by reviewing the fossil evidence for human evolution. It presents summaries of each of the taxa recognized in a relatively speciose hominin taxonomy. These taxa are grouped in grades, namely possible and probable hominins, archaic hominins, megadont archaic hominins, transitional hominins, pre‐modern Homo and anatomically modern Homo. The second part of this contribution considers some of the controversies that surround hominin taxonomy and systematics. The first is the vexed question of how you tell an early hominin from an early panin, or from taxa belonging to an extinct clade closely related to the Pan‐Homo clade. Secondly, we consider how many species should be recognized within the hominin fossil record, and review the philosophies and methods used to identify taxa within the hominin fossil record. Thirdly, we examine how relationships within the hominin clade are investigated, including descriptions of the methods used to break down an integrated structure into tractable analytical units, and then how cladograms are generated and compared. We then review the internal structure of the hominin clade, including the problem of how many subclades should be recognized within the hominin clade, and we examine the reliability of hominin cladistic hypotheses. The last part of the paper reviews the concepts of a genus, including the criteria that should be used for recognizing genera within the hominin clade.
Examining the proteins of functional retinal lipofuscin using proteomic analysis as a guide for understanding its origin.

PURPOSE To elucidate the origins of biologically active retinal lipofuscin (RLF) by examining its protein composition. METHODS Total protein and total lipid were extracted and quantified. Proteins in this lipoprotein granule were identified by limited-scale proteomic analysis using both two-dimensional (2D) gel electrophoresis and SDS-PAGE coupled with MALDI-QqToF MSMS and automated LCMSMS, respectively. RESULTS RLF granules were 44% protein and 50% lipid. Proteomic analyses identified 41 constituent proteins. Hydrophobic proteins and several proteins specific to photoreceptors, including rhodopsin, that have not previously been reported, were identified. Extensive protein modification, especially oxidative damage, was observed. CONCLUSIONS Proteins identified support the model that RLF accumulates in RPE cells as a result of the buildup of undigested material from the phagocytosis of photoreceptor outer segments. Perhaps oxidative damage renders some of these proteins indigestible and thus leads to the accumulation of RLF granules.
MTHFR C677T Polymorphism is Not Associated with Placental Abruption or Preeclampsia in Finnish Women

Objective: The aim of our study was to examine genetic variability in the gene encoding methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) and individual susceptibility to the placental abruption or preeclampsia. Methods: 362 women (133 with preeclampsia, 117 with placental abruption, and 112 healthy controls) were genotyped for C677T polymorphism in the MTHFR gene. Results: Similar genotype distributions were observed in the frequencies of C/C homozygotes (58.6%, 64.1%, and 57.1% for the three groups, respectively) and mutant homozygotes T/T (9.0%, 5.1% and 5.4%). No significant differences were detected in T allele frequencies (25.2%, 20.5%, and 24.1% for the three groups, respectively). Conclusions: MTHFR C677T polymorphism does not have a major role in the development of preeclampsia or placental abruption in the Finnish population.
The Neuromuscular Junction: Aging at the Crossroad between Nerves and Muscle

Aging is associated with a progressive loss of muscle mass and strength and a decline in neurophysiological functions. Age-related neuromuscular junction (NMJ) plays a key role in musculoskeletal impairment that occurs with aging. However, whether changes in the NMJ precede or follow the decline of muscle mass and strength remains unresolved. Many factors such as mitochondrial dysfunction, oxidative stress, inflammation, changes in the innervation of muscle fibers, and mechanical properties of the motor units probably perform an important role in NMJ degeneration and muscle mass and strength decline in late life. This review addresses the primary events that might lead to NMJ dysfunction with aging, including studies on biomarkers, signaling pathways, and animal models. Interventions such as caloric restriction and exercise may positively affect the NMJ through this mechanism and attenuate the age-related progressive impairment in motor function.
Child's culture-related experiences with a social robot at diabetes camps

This paper investigates the experiences of Italian and Dutch children while interacting with a social robot that is designed to support their diabetes self-management. Observations of children's behaviors and analyses of questionnaires at diabetes camps, showed positive experiences with variation (e.g., Italian children seemed to be more open and expressive, and more close to the robot compared to the Dutch children). A culture-aware robot should be sensitive to such differences.
Incrementality and Prediction in Human Sentence Processing

We identify a number of principles with respect to prediction that, we argue, underpin adult language comprehension: (a) comprehension consists in realizing a mapping between the unfolding sentence and the event representation corresponding to the real-world event being described; (b) the realization of this mapping manifests as the ability to predict both how the language will unfold, and how the real-world event would unfold if it were being experienced directly; (c) concurrent linguistic and nonlinguistic inputs, and the prior internal states of the system, each drive the predictive process; (d) the representation of prior internal states across a representational substrate common to the linguistic and nonlinguistic domains enables the predictive process to operate over variable time frames and variable levels of representational abstraction. We review empirical data exemplifying the operation of these principles and discuss the relationship between prediction, event structure, thematic role assignment, and incrementality.
Association of In Utero Organochlorine Pesticide Exposure and Fetal Growth and Length of Gestation in an Agricultural Population

From 1940 through the 1970s, organochlorine compounds were widely used as insecticides in the United States. Thereafter, their use was severely restricted after recognition of their persistence in the environment, their toxicity in animals, and their potential for endocrine disruption. Although substantial evidence exists for the fetal toxicity of organochlorines in animals, information on human reproductive effects is conflicting. We investigated whether infants’ length of gestation, birth weight, and crown–heel length were associated with maternal serum levels of 11 different organochlorine pesticides: p,p′-dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (p,p′-DDT), p,p′-dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (p,p′-DDE), o,p′-dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (o,p′-DDT), hexachlorobenzene (HCB), β-hexachlorocyclohexane (β-HCCH), γ-hexachlorocyclohexane (γ-HCCH), dieldrin, heptachlor epoxide, oxychlordane, trans-nonachlor, and mirex. Our subjects were a birth cohort of 385 low-income Latinas living in the Salinas Valley, an agricultural community in California. We observed no adverse associations between maternal serum organochlorine levels and birth weight or crown–heel length. We found decreased length of gestation with increasing levels of lipid-adjusted HCB (adjusted β= −0.47 weeks; p = 0.05). We did not find reductions in gestational duration associated with any of the other organochlorine pesticides. Our finding of decreased length of gestation related to HCB does not seem to have had clinical implications for this population, given its relatively low rate of preterm delivery (6.5%).
Defining a core outcome set for adolescent and young adult patients with a spinal deformity

Background and purpose — Routine outcome measurement has been shown to improve performance in several fields of healthcare. National spine surgery registries have been initiated in 5 Nordic countries. However, there is no agreement on which outcomes are essential to measure for adolescent and young adult patients with a spinal deformity. The aim of this study was to develop a core outcome set (COS) that will facilitate benchmarking within and between the 5 countries of the Nordic Spinal Deformity Society (NSDS) and other registries worldwide. Material and methods — From August 2015 to September 2016, 7 representatives (panelists) of the national spinal surgery registries from each of the NSDS countries participated in a modified Delphi study. With a systematic literature review as a basis and the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health framework as guidance, 4 consensus rounds were held. Consensus was defined as agreement between at least 5 of the 7 representatives. Data were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. Results — Consensus was reached on the inclusion of 13 core outcome domains: “satisfaction with overall outcome of surgery”, “satisfaction with cosmetic result of surgery”, “pain interference”, physical functioning”, “health-related quality of life”, “recreation and leisure”, “pulmonary fatigue”, “change in deformity”, “self-image”, “pain intensity”, “physical function”, “complications”, and “re-operation”. Panelists agreed that the SRS-22r, EQ-5D, and a pulmonary fatigue questionnaire (yet to be developed) are the most appropriate set of patient-reported measurement instruments that cover these outcome domains. Interpretation — We have identified a COS for a large subgroup of spinal deformity patients for implementation and validation in the NSDS countries. This is the first study to further develop a COS in a global perspective.
Estimating Equations for a Latent Transit ion Model with Multiple Discrete Indicators

Summary. This paper proposes a two‐part model for studying transitions between health states over time when multiple, discrete health indicators are available. The includes a measurement model positing underlying latent health states and a transition model between latent health states over time. Full maximum likelihood estimation procedures are computationally complex in this latent variable framework, making only a limited class of models feasible and estimation of standard errors problematic. For this reason, an estimating equations analogue of the pseudo‐likelihood method for the parameters of interest, namely the transition model parameters, is considered. The finite sample properties of the proposed procedure are investigated through a simulation study and the importance of choosing strong indicators of the latent variable is demonstrated. The applicability of the methodology is illustrated with health survey data measuring disability in the elderly from the Longitudinal Study of Aging.
Sampling Techniques to Accelerate Pattern Matching in Network Intrusion Detection Systems

Modern network devices need to perform deep packet inspection at high speed for security and application-specific services. Instead of standard strings to represent the dataset to be matched, state-of-the-art systems adopt regular expressions, due to their high expressive power. The current trend is to use Deterministic Finite Automata (DFAs) to match regular expressions. However, while the problem of the large memory consumption of DFAs has been solved in many different ways, only a few works have focused on increasing the lookup speed. This paper introduces a novel yet simple idea to accelerate DFAs for security applications: payload sampling. Our approach allows to skip a large portion of the text, thus processing less bytes. The price to pay is a slight number of false alarms which require a confirmation stage. Therefore, we propose a double-stage matching scheme providing two new different automata. Results show a significant speed-up in regular traffic processing, thus confirming the effectiveness of the approach.
VLSI assist for a multiprocessor

Multiprocessors have long been of interest to computer community. They provide the potential for accelerating applications through parallelism and increased throughput for large multi-user system. Three factors have limited the commercial success of multiprocessor systems; entry cost, range of performance, and ease of application. Advances in very large scale integration (VLSI) and in computer aided design (CAD) have removed these limitations, making possible a new class of multiprocessor systems based on VLSI components. A set of requirements for building an efficient shared multiprocessor system are discussed, including: low-level mutual exclusion, interrupt distribution, inter-processor signaling, process dispatching, caching, and system configuration. A system that meets these requirements is described and evaluated.
Judging the quality and credibility of information in Internet discussion forums

This exploratory study contributes to research on relevance assessment by specifying criteria that are used in the judgment of information quality and credibility in Internet discussion forums. To this end, 4,739 messages posted to 160 Finnish discussion threads were analyzed. Of the messages, 20.5% contained explicit judgments of the quality of information and credibility in other messages. In the judgments, the forum participants employed both positive criteria such as validity of information and negative criteria such as dishonesty in argumentation. In the evaluation of the quality of the message's information content, the most frequently used criteria pertained to the usefulness, correctness, and specificity of information. In the judgment of information credibility, the main criteria included the reputation, expertise, and honesty of the author of the message. Since Internet discussion forums tend to emphasize the role of disputational discourse questioning rather than accepting the views presented by others, mainly negative criteria were used in the judgments. The generality of our claims is limited because we chose forums that focused on sensitive and value-laden topics; future work could explore credibility and quality judgment in other forums and forumlike venues such as question and answer sites as well as exploring how quality and credibility judgments interact with other aspects of forum use. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
The Chondrocyte Cytoskeleton in Mature Articular Cartilage: Structure and Distribution of Actin, Tubulin, and Vimentin Filaments

We investigated the structure of the chondrocyte cytoskeleton in intact tissue sections of mature bovine articular cartilage using confocal fluorescence microscopy complemented by protein extraction and immunoblotting analysis. Actin microfilaments were present inside the cell membrane as a predominantly cortical structure. Vimentin and tubulin spanned the cytoplasm from cell to nuclear membrane, the vimentin network appearing finer compared to tubulin. These cytoskeletal structures were present in chondrocytes from all depth zones of the articular cartilage. However, staining intensity varied from zone to zone, usually showing more intense staining for the filament systems at the articular surface compared to the deeper zones. These results obtained on fluorescently labeled sections were also corroborated by protein contents extracted and observed by immunoblotting. The observed cytoskeletal structures are compatible with some of the proposed cellular functions of these systems and support possible microenvironmental regulation of the cytoskeleton, including that due to physical forces from load-bearing, which are known to vary through the depth layers of articular cartilage.
Self-Efficacy and Exercise Adherence Among Adults Completing a 10-K Running/Walking Event

The purpose of this study was to examine levels of exercise self-efficacy and physical activity adherence among adults completing a 10K running race. Race participants completed a questionnaire packet immediately upon completion of a local 10K. Participants then completed the same questionnaire 3-5 week later and returned it through US mail. The study questionnaire packet included previously validated subscales designed to assess self-efficacy to overcome barriers to physical activity; task, coping, and scheduling self-efficacy; and a 7-Day Recall of Exercise Questionnaire for moderate and vigorous physical activity. Data analysis was conducted to examine changes in self-efficacy and physical activity following participation in a 10K race, and to examine whether self-efficacy immediately following participation in a race could predict rates of physical activity 3-5 weeks later. Results of the study indicate significant increases in days of moderate physical activity (p < 0.05) and task self-efficacy (p < 0.05) between the survey administrations. Self-efficacy immediately following the race significantly predicted levels of vigorous physical activity (p < 0.05) weeks later. Task self-efficacy was the only subscale to independently contribute to this prediction (p < 0.05). Completing a local 10K could provide an approach to promote physical activity adherence. Further research should examine more about the impact that local running events could have on self-efficacy and exercise adherence among adults. Self-Efficacy and Exercise Adherence 3 Self-Efficacy and Exercise Adherence Among Adults Completing a 10K.
The Rhythmic Constraint on Prosodic Boundaries in Mandarin Chinese Based on Corpora of Silent Reading and Speech Perception

This study investigated the interaction between rhythmic and syntactic constraints on prosodic phrases in Mandarin Chinese. A set of 4000 sentences was annotated twice, once based on silent reading by 130 students assigned 500 sentences each, and a second time by speech perception based on a recording by one professional speaker. In both types of annotation, the general pattern of phrasing was consistent, with short "rhythmic phrases" behaving differently from longer "intonational phrases". The probability of a rhythmic-phrase boundary between two words increased with the total length of those two words, and was also influenced by the nature of the syntactic boundary between them. The resulting rhythmic phrases were mainly 2-5 syllables long, independent of the length of the sentence. In contrast, the length of intonational phrases was not stable, and was heavily affected by sentence length. Intonational-phrase boundaries were also found to be affected by higher-level syntactic features, such as the depth of syntactic tree and the number of IP nodes. However, these syntactic influences on intonational phrases were weakened in long sentences (>20 syllable) and also in short sentences (<10 syllable), where the length effect played the main role.
Melanoma and occupation: results of a case-control study.

OBJECTIVES: Associations between occupational exposures and the occurrence of cutaneous melanoma were examined as part of a large population based case-control study of 19 cancer sites. METHODS: Cases were men aged 35 to 70 years old, resident in Montreal, Canada, with a new histologically confirmed cutaneous melanoma (n = 103). There were two control groups, a randomly selected population control group (n = 533), and a cancer control group (n = 533) randomly selected from among subjects with other types of cancer in the large study. Odds ratios for the occurrence of melanoma were calculated for each exposure circumstance for which there were more than four exposed cases (85 substances, 13 occupations, and 20 industries) adjusting for age, ethnicity, and number of years of schooling. RESULTS: Significantly increased risk of melanoma was found for exposure to four substances (fabric dust, plastic dust, trichloroethylene, and a group containing paints used on surfaces other than metal and varnishes used on surfaces other than wood), three occupations (warehouse clerks, salesmen, and miners and quarrymen), and two industries (clothing and non-metallic mineral products). CONCLUSIONS: Most of the occupational circumstances examined were not associated with melanoma, nor is there any strong evidence from previous research that any of those are risk factors. For the few occupational circumstances which were associated in our data with melanoma, the statistical evidence was weak, and there is little or no supporting evidence in the scientific literature. On the whole, there is no persuasive evidence of occupational risk factors for melanoma, but the studies have been too small or have involved too much misclassification of exposure for this conclusion to be definitive.