Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Patient Characteristics, Safety, and Tolerability with Telaprevir Treatment for HCV in the Clinic: a Retrospective, Multicenter Study

Background and Aims There is a paucity of information regarding similarities and differences between patients from the phase 3 studies of telaprevir and those receiving telaprevir in clinical practice. Methods This retrospective chart review evaluated baseline characteristics and follow-up safety and tolerability data for patients with hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection treated with telaprevir and peginterferon alfa and ribavirin (PR) in clinical practice. Results In total, 338 charts from patients at four academic and three community US treatment centers who received telaprevir and PR and had at least 12 weeks of follow-up data were included; 62% were from academic centers and 38% were from community centers. Of the 338 patients, 269 completed 12 weeks of telaprevir and PR; 32 discontinued due to adverse events. Mean age was 55 years; patients were predominantly white (79.3%) males (58.9%) with genotype 1a HCV infection (61.8%); 35.5% were reported to have cirrhosis at baseline; and 55.3% previously received PR. Hypertension and depression were the most common comorbidities. Patient characteristics outside the per-protocol minimum criteria used in the phase 3 studies of telaprevir were, e.g., hemoglobin, 9.2%; albumin, 5.3%; platelets, 11.5%; and neutrophil count, 5.6%. Adverse events occurred in 329/338 (97.3%) patients, with anemia, fatigue, nausea, and rash being the most common. Of 38 hospitalizations, 26 were deemed related to telaprevir and PR. Three patients died due to pneumonia, septic shock, and hepatorenal syndrome (n=1 each). Conclusions These findings complement those reported from rigorous, randomized controlled studies with telaprevir-based treatment and provide a general assessment of similarities and/or differences between patients from the phase 3 studies of telaprevir and those treated with telaprevir in clinical practice.
Binary codes for tagging x-ray images via deep de-noising autoencoders

A Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) system which identifies similar medical images based on a query image can assist clinicians for more accurate diagnosis. The recent CBIR research trend favors the construction and use of binary codes to represent images. Deep architectures could learn the non-linear relationship among image pixels adaptively, allowing the automatic learning of high-level features from raw pixels. However, most of them require class labels, which are expensive to obtain, particularly for medical images. The methods which do not need class labels utilize a deep autoencoder for binary hashing, but the code construction involves a specific training algorithm and an ad-hoc regularization technique. In this study, we explored using a deep de-noising autoencoder (DDA), with a new unsupervised training scheme using only backpropagation and dropout, to hash images into binary codes. We conducted experiments on more than 14,000 x-ray images. By using class labels only for evaluating the retrieval results, we constructed a 16-bit DDA and a 512-bit DDA independently. Comparing to other unsupervised methods, we succeeded to obtain the lowest total error by using the 512-bit codes for retrieval via exhaustive search, and speed up 9.27 times with the use of the 16-bit codes while keeping a comparable total error. We found that our new training scheme could reduce the total retrieval error significantly by 21.9%. To further boost the image retrieval performance, we developed Radon Autoencoder Barcode (RABC) which are learned from the Radon projections of images using a de-noising autoencoder. Experimental results demonstrated its superior performance in retrieval when it was combined with DDA binary codes.
On Proprioception in Action: Multimodality versus Deafferentation

Recent research on proprioception reveals that it relies on a systematically distorted model of bodily dimensions. This generates a puzzle about proprioception in action control: action requires accurate bodily parameters. Proprioception is crucial for ordinary action, but if it relies on a systematically distorted body model, then proprioception should contain systematic errors. But we cannot respond by discarding proprioception from motor control, since we know from the severe problems deafferented agents face in acting that ordinary action requires proprioception. The solution is that the possibility of bodily action is provided for by multimodal body representations for action (the ‘body schema’).
Journal Quality in Mathematics Education

We present the results of 2 studies, a citation-based study and an opinion-based study, that ranked the relative quality of 20 English-language journals that exclusively or extensively publish mathematics education research. We further disaggregate the opinion-based data to provide insights into variations in judgment of journal quality based on geographic location, journal affiliations and publishing records, and experience in the field. We also report factors that survey respondents indicated were important indicators of journal quality. Finally, we compare our results to previous related rankings and conclude by discussing how our results might inform authors, editors, and evaluators in their efforts to publish and recognize quality research in mathematics education.
Construction of Socio-culturally Situated Identities and Relationships within the Context of Widowhood and Bereavement Rituals

Abstract This paper examined the socio-culturally situated identity and relationship building within the context of widowhood and bereavement rituals. Participants were Tshivenda-speaking widows located in the Vhembe District of the Limpopo province, South Africa. Six focus groups interviews were conducted with widows to gain their constructions of socio-culturally situated identities and relationships within the context of widowhood and bereavement. Discourse analysis was adopted in order to analyse the collected data. Participants used language that identified themselves as widows in relation to others, including the husband when he was still alive and when he was dead, through the use of “I”, “they” and “him” or “my”. They also used language that justified belonging to a collectivist culture. The paper concluded that the way in which participants constructed their socio-culturally situated identities and relationships represented their identities as widows in relation to others in the role of sympathisers within their experiences. The paper recommended that people have to understand the identity that widows construct for themselves and the relationship they have with people around them respect the association widows have with others.
Correlations between Poor Micronutrition in Family Members and Potential Risk Factors for Poor Diet in Children and Adolescents Using Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey Data

Based on data from the 2010–2011 Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, we investigated correlations between micronutrients in the diet of family members and the possible risk factors for children and adolescents consuming an inadequate diet. We examined two-generation households with children aged 2–18 years. The quality of the family diet with regard to the following nine nutrients (protein, calcium, phosphorous, iron, vitamin A, vitamin B1, vitamin B2, niacin, and vitamin C) was assessed based on the Index of Nutritional Quality. Correlations between quality of diet and selected variables were analyzed using the Statistical Analysis for Genetic Epidemiology software, and those between diet quality and potential risk factors for poor diet in offspring were analyzed using multinomial logistic regression. Overall, calcium was the most commonly under-consumed micronutrient. More than half of sons and daughters showed insufficient vitamin A, vitamin C, and iron intake, and both mothers and fathers showed insufficiency with respect to vitamin A, vitamin B2, and vitamin C. The correlation between a poor diet in parents and that in offspring was 0.17 (p < 0.0001), and this correlation coefficient was higher between mothers and offspring than between fathers and offspring. Additionally, eating breakfast provided a significant protective effect against the risk of poor nutrition in offspring, even after adjusting for covariates. Our results add to evidence indicating that children should be encouraged to eat breakfast to improve the quality of their diet.
Link Adaptation of LDPC Codes Based on Exponential Effective-SNR Mapping Link Quality Model

To improve the flexibility and accuracy of link adaptation (LA) of LDPC coded OFDM system, the classical exponential effective-SNR mapping (EESM) link quality model is extended to LDPC codes. Theoretical analysis and simulation results indicate that by selecting proper modulation and coding adjusting factors, the EESM model is precise for LDPC codes, both in terms of complexity and accuracy for various modulation and coding schemes (MCS), sub- channel states and coding block lengths. Therefore it can be treated as an accurate link to system (L2S) interface for LDPC coded multi-carrier system. To verify it, a new LA scheme based on LDPC codes specified in IEEE802.16e standard is presented. Based on the EESM model, the link-level performance of BPSK over additional white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel is used to predict the throughput performances of the LA scheme, which match the simulation results very well.
Clustering of the K+ channel GORK of Arabidopsis parallels its gating by extracellular K+

GORK is the only outward-rectifying Kv-like K+ channel expressed in guard cells. Its activity is tightly regulated to facilitate K+ efflux for stomatal closure and is elevated in ABA in parallel with suppression of the activity of the inward-rectifying K+ channel KAT1. Whereas the population of KAT1 is subject to regulated traffic to and from the plasma membrane, nothing is known about GORK, its distribution and traffic in vivo. We have used transformations with fluorescently-tagged GORK to explore its characteristics in tobacco epidermis and Arabidopsis guard cells. These studies showed that GORK assembles in puncta that reversibly dissociated as a function of the external K+ concentration. Puncta dissociation parallelled the gating dependence of GORK, the speed of response consistent with the rapidity of channel gating response to changes in the external ionic conditions. Dissociation was also suppressed by the K+ channel blocker Ba2+. By contrast, confocal and protein biochemical analysis failed to uncover substantial exo- and endocytotic traffic of the channel. Gating of GORK is displaced to more positive voltages with external K+, a characteristic that ensures the channel facilitates only K+ efflux regardless of the external cation concentration. GORK conductance is also enhanced by external K+ above 1 mm. We suggest that GORK clustering in puncta is related to its gating and conductance, and reflects associated conformational changes and (de)stabilisation of the channel protein, possibly as a platform for transmission and coordination of channel gating in response to external K+.
Persistent Workflow on the Grid

The huge data requirements of large nowadays applications, in science, engineering, and commerce, make efficient data placement an essential need. For this purpose, we propose a framework which can be considered as a grid workflow system with advanced data placement capabilities. Computational jobs and data placement are handled concurrently. This framework also includes a specialised scheduling for data placement, and presents a multi-level architecture which allows support for a range of grid systems and middleware. We present results of improving application performance through data placement optimisations. A basic data mining application and an astronomy application are used as the basis of this study.
An Automated Clinical Alert System for Newly-Diagnosed Atrial Fibrillation

Objective Clinical decision support systems that notify providers of abnormal test results have produced mixed results. We sought to develop, implement, and evaluate the impact of a computer-based clinical alert system intended to improve atrial fibrillation stroke prophylaxis, and identify reasons providers do not implement a guideline-concordant response. Materials and Methods We conducted a cohort study with historical controls among patients at a tertiary care hospital. We developed a decision rule to identify newly-diagnosed atrial fibrillation, automatically notify providers, and direct them to online evidence-based management guidelines. We tracked all notifications from December 2009 to February 2010 (notification period) and applied the same decision rule to all patients from December 2008 to February 2009 (control period). Primary outcomes were accuracy of notification (confirmed through chart review) and prescription of warfarin within 30 days. Results During the notification period 604 notifications were triggered, of which 268 (44%) were confirmed as newly-diagnosed atrial fibrillation. The notifications not confirmed as newly-diagnosed involved patients with no recent electrocardiogram at our institution. Thirty-four of 125 high-risk patients (27%) received warfarin in the notification period, compared with 34 of 94 (36%) in the control period (odds ratio, 0.66 [95% CI, 0.37–1.17]; p = 0.16). Common reasons to not prescribe warfarin (identified from chart review of 151 patients) included upcoming surgical procedure, choice to use aspirin, and discrepancy between clinical notes and the medication record. Conclusions An automated system to identify newly-diagnosed atrial fibrillation, notify providers, and encourage access to management guidelines did not change provider behaviors.
Which Came First, the Telecommuting or the Residential Relocation? An Empirical Analysis of Causality

Researchers have questioned whether the ability to telecommute is encouraging workers to relocate to more desirable residences farther from work, and in doing so, exacerbate sprawl and increase their net vehicle-miles traveled. The research presented here directly asks, is telecommuting a "friend or foe" of travel-reducing policies? Given that telecommuters tend to have longer commutes than non-telecommuters, is the ability to telecommute prompting workers to move farther away from work? Or rather, does the ability to telecommute allow those who for other reasons have already chosen, or would in any case choose, to live in more distant locations to commute less frequently? These questions are addressed using data collected from more than 200 State of California workers, including current, former, and non-telecommuters. The survey inquired retrospectively about their residential relocations, as well as their telecommuting engagements, over a 10-year period. The results indicate that, as expected, residential moves that are temporally associated with telecommuting episodes tend to increase commute time and length compared to other moves—although the differences are not statistically significant. Analyzing the temporal order of telecommuting engagement and residential relocation, the data show that those who are telecommuting and then move actually tend to relocate closer to their workplace, whereas those who begin telecommuting following a residential relocation tended to have moved much farther from their workplace. Analysis of the stated importance of telecommuting to specific residential relocations did not show a convincing effect toward more distant moves. Thus, the evidence more strongly supports the positive view of telecommuting, that it is ameliorating the negative transportation impacts of moves that occur for other reasons.
Dynamic sliding of frictionally held bimaterial interfaces subjected to impact shear loading

The fast frictional sliding along an incoherent interface of a bimaterial system composed of a Homalite and a steel plate is studied experimentally in a microsecond time-scale. The plates are held together by a static uniform compressive pre-stress while dynamic sliding is initiated by asymmetric impact. The full-field technique of dynamic photoelasticity is simultaneously used with a local technique of velocimetry based on laser interferometry. In the case where the impact loading is applied to the Homalite plate, a shear Mach line originates from a disturbance propagating along the interface supersonically with respect to the dilatational wave speed of Homalite and it crosses the P-wave front. The sliding starts well behind the P-wave front in Homalite and it propagates with a supershear speed with respect to Homalite. A fast interface wave and a wrinkle-like opening pulse (detachment wave) travelling along the interface are observed. When the impact loading is applied to the steel plate, the local sliding velocity measurement reveals that sliding initiates with the arrival of the P-wave front in the steel plate.
Using behaviour to assess animal welfare

Rather than construct lists of many different welfare indicators and give each of them the same weight, I argue that the assessment of animal welfare should be directed at answering two key questions: I) Are the animals healthy? 2) Do they have what they want? Behaviour has a major role in answering both. Behaviour is currently used to help answer the first question through its use in the clinical and pre-clinical assessment of pain, injury and disease, and potentially could have an even greater role, particularly if used in conjunction with new technology. Behaviour is also of crucial importance in gauging what animals want, most obviously in the use of choice and preference tests, but also through other methods that are particularly suitable for on-farm welfare assessment. These include quantitative observations of the spatial distribution of animals and of behavioural ‘indicators’ of what animals want, such as vocalisations.
Designing a Smart City Internet of Things Platform with Microservice Architecture

The Internet of Things (IoT) is being adopted in different application domains and is recognized as one of the key enablers of the Smart City vision. Despite the standardization efforts and wide adoption of Web standards and cloud computing technologies, however, building large-scale Smart City IoT platforms in practice remains challenging. The dynamically changing IoT environment requires these systems to be able to scale and evolve over time adopting new technologies and requirements. In response to the similar challenges in building large-scale distributed applications and platforms on the Web, micro service architecture style has emerged and gained a lot of popularity in the industry in recent years. In this work, we share our early experience of applying the micro service architecture style to design a Smart City IoT platform. Our experience suggests significant benefits provided by this architectural style compared to the more generic Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) approaches, as well as highlights some of the challenges it introduces.
Stein Variational Gradient Descent: Theory and Applications

Although optimization can be done very efficiently using gradient-based optimization these days, Bayesian inference or probabilistic sampling has been considered to be much more difficult. Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD) is a new particle-based inference method derived using a functional gradient descent for minimizing KL divergence without explicit parametric assumptions. SVGD can be viewed a natural counterpart of gradient descent for optimization, and in fact exactly reduces to the typical gradient ascent for MAP using only a single particle. This short paper gives a brief introduction to SVGD, and discusses its theoretical foundation and applications.
Single-user and multiple access channels with energy harvesting transmitters and receivers

We consider the effects of decoding costs in energy harvesting communication systems. In our setting, receivers, in addition to transmitters, rely solely on energy harvested from nature, and need to spend some energy in order to decode their intended packets. We model the decoding energy as an increasing convex function of the rate of the incoming data. In this setting, in addition to the traditional energy causality constraints at the transmitters, we have the decoding causality constraints, where energy spent by the receiver for decoding cannot exceed its harvested energy. We first consider the point-to-point single-user problem where the goal is to maximize the total throughput by a given deadline subject to both energy and decoding causality constraints. We then consider the multiple access channel (MAC) where the transmitters and the receiver harvest energy from nature, and characterize the maximum departure region.
PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENT OF K-MEANS CLUSTERING ALGORITHM

Data clustering is one of the important unsupervised learning methods of data miming for grouping the data. In data clustering a set of objects are classified so that one member is similar to the other one. Data clustering techniques used in many fields like pattern recognition, machine learning, image analysis, information retrieval and in many more fields. The main important factors of clustering are to create good quality cluster and doing efficient task. K-means clustering is simple and most commonly used clustering method and produce clusters for many practical applications. But k-means clustering algorithm works efficiently only for small amount of data and becomes computationally complex for large amount of data. One more disadvantage of k-means clustering is that there is no mechanism for selecting initial cluster center which is selected randomly and result is depended on initial center points. It can contain dead unit problem. In this thesis, with the help of proposed method the problems of finding initial center points and assigning data items to appropriate clusters are solved. The proposed algorithm improves and enhances the execution speed of clustering the data set and also solves the dead unit problem. With the help of mathematical calculations the proposed algorithm decreases the complexity which we face in k-means clustering algorithm.
New Therapeutic Concept of NAD Redox Balance for Cisplatin Nephrotoxicity

Cisplatin is a widely used chemotherapeutic agent for the treatment of various tumors. In addition to its antitumor activity, cisplatin affects normal cells and may induce adverse effects such as ototoxicity, nephrotoxicity, and peripheral neuropathy. Various mechanisms such as DNA adduct formation, mitochondrial dysfunction, oxidative stress, and inflammatory responses are closely associated with cisplatin-induced nephrotoxicity; however, the precise mechanism remains unclear. The cofactor nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) has emerged as a key regulator of cellular energy metabolism and homeostasis. Recent studies have demonstrated associations between disturbance in intracellular NAD+ levels and clinical progression of various diseases through the production of reactive oxygen species and inflammation. Furthermore, we demonstrated that reduction of the intracellular NAD+/NADH ratio is critically involved in cisplatin-induced kidney damage through inflammation and oxidative stress and that increase of the cellular NAD+/NADH ratio suppresses cisplatin-induced kidney damage by modulation of potential damage mediators such as oxidative stress and inflammatory responses. In this review, we describe the role of NAD+ metabolism in cisplatin-induced nephrotoxicity and discuss a potential strategy for the prevention or treatment of cisplatin-induced adverse effects with a particular focus on NAD+-dependent cellular pathways.