Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Status of clinical research in academic health centers: views from the research leadership.

CONTEXT The changing state of the health care system in the United States may be adversely affecting clinical research conducted in academic health centers (AHCs). Few formal data have been gathered about the nature and extent of the problems facing clinical research or the effects of remedies undertaken by AHCs. OBJECTIVES To assess the perceived quality and health of the clinical research enterprise and to determine challenges and adaptations to current environmental pressures. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS Mailed survey conducted between December 1998 and March 1999 of a subsample of department chairs and senior research administrators (SRAs) in all US medical schools. Of the 712 potential respondents, 478 completed a questionnaire, yielding an overall response rate of 67.1% (64.8% for SRAs and 67.8% for department chairs). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Ratings of overall health/robustness of clinical research, quality of research in 5 domains, extent of challenges to performing research, and sense of urgency in responding to research challenges; formal strategies for research-related tasks and their effects. RESULTS Slightly more than half (52%) of all respondents rated the health of the clinical research enterprise as good or excellent compared with 63% for nonclinical research (P<.001). Respondents were most likely to rate nonclinical research as high in quality (79%) compared with 70% for phase 3 clinical trials, 67% for translational research, 65% for phase 1 and 2 trials, and 57% for health services research (for all comparisons with nonclinical research, P<.001). Pressure on clinical faculty to see patients was perceived as a moderate-to-large problem for clinical research by the largest percentage of respondents (93%), followed by insufficient clinical revenues (89%), recruiting trained researchers (75%), lack of external support for clinical research (72%), competition from contract research organizations (48%), problems introduced by the institutional review board process (38%), and finding research participants (37%). In total, 81% of respondents considered the challenges facing clinical research in AHCs to be urgent or extremely urgent. CONCLUSIONS Academic leaders perceive clinical research activities in AHCs to be less healthy, of poorer quality, and facing greater challenges than nonclinical research activities. Many AHCs do not have policies or mechanisms to address challenges facing the clinical research mission. Even among those with such policies, more than half do not believe these policies have had large positive effects. Our findings support the view that the clinical research workforce and infrastructure may need to be expanded and strengthened to keep pace with advances in basic research.
On the role of localizations in buckling of axially compressed cylinders

The collapse of axially compressed cylinders by buckling instability is a classic problem in engineering mechanics. We revisit the problem by considering fully localized post-buckling states in the form of one or multiple dimples. Using nonlinear finite-element methods and numerical continuation algorithms, we trace the evolution of odd and even dimples into one axially localized ring of circumferentially periodic diamond-shaped waves. The growth of the post-buckling pattern with varying compression is driven by homoclinic snaking with even- and odd-dimple solutions intertwined. When the axially localized ring of diamond-shaped buckles destabilizes, additional circumferential snaking sequences ensue that lead to the Yoshimura buckling pattern. The unstable single-dimple state is a mountain-pass point in the energy landscape and therefore forms the smallest energy barrier between the pre-buckling and post-buckling regimes. The small energy barrier associated with the mountain-pass point means that the compressed, pre-buckled cylinder is exceedingly sensitive to perturbations once the mountain-pass point exists. We parameterize the compressive onset of the single-dimple mountain-pass point with a single non-dimensional parameter, and compare the lower-bound buckling load suggested by this parameter with over 100 experimental data points from the literature. Good correlation suggests that the derived knockdown factor provides a less conservative design load than NASA's SP-8007 guideline.
Age Related Changes in NAD+ Metabolism Oxidative Stress and Sirt1 Activity in Wistar Rats

The cofactor nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) has emerged as a key regulator of metabolism, stress resistance and longevity. Apart from its role as an important redox carrier, NAD+ also serves as the sole substrate for NAD-dependent enzymes, including poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP), an important DNA nick sensor, and NAD-dependent histone deacetylases, Sirtuins which play an important role in a wide variety of processes, including senescence, apoptosis, differentiation, and aging. We examined the effect of aging on intracellular NAD+ metabolism in the whole heart, lung, liver and kidney of female wistar rats. Our results are the first to show a significant decline in intracellular NAD+ levels and NAD∶NADH ratio in all organs by middle age (i.e.12 months) compared to young (i.e. 3 month old) rats. These changes in [NAD(H)] occurred in parallel with an increase in lipid peroxidation and protein carbonyls (o- and m- tyrosine) formation and decline in total antioxidant capacity in these organs. An age dependent increase in DNA damage (phosphorylated H2AX) was also observed in these same organs. Decreased Sirt1 activity and increased acetylated p53 were observed in organ tissues in parallel with the drop in NAD+ and moderate over-expression of Sirt1 protein. Reduced mitochondrial activity of complex I–IV was also observed in aging animals, impacting both redox status and ATP production. The strong positive correlation observed between DNA damage associated NAD+ depletion and Sirt1 activity suggests that adequate NAD+ concentrations may be an important longevity assurance factor.
Comparative studies on the interaction of cefixime with bovine serum albumin by fluorescence quenching spectroscopy and synchronous fluorescence spectroscopy.

Under simulated physiological conditions, the reaction mechanism between cefixime and bovine serum albumin at different temperatures (293, 303 and 310 K) was investigated using a fluorescence quenching method and synchronous fluorescence method, respectively. The results indicated that the fluorescence intensity and synchronous fluorescence intensity of bovine serum albumin decreased regularly on the addition of cefixime. In addition, the quenching mechanism, binding constants, number of binding sites, type of interaction force and energy-transfer parameters of cefixime with bovine serum albumin obtained from two methods using the same equation were consistent. The results indicated that the synchronous fluorescence spectrometry could be used to study the binding mechanism between drug and protein, and was a useful supplement to the conventional method.
Writing in research education. Working with discourse and identity challenges faced by doctoral students

This paper analyses a postgraduate writing seminar designed to help doctoral students deal with some of the challenges experienced when trying to join an academic community. In addition to acquire the academic knowledge required to become a researcher (the current disciplinary discussions, the methodological tools to contribute to them, and the writing practices inherent to scientific genres), there are emotional and identity capacities that need to be fostered if graduate students are to enter in the collective conversations that disciplines entail. These are mostly neglected by graduate programs. Students who survive have developed them on their own and sometimes with great suffering, as many studies show. On the contrary, the question I address in this action research is how writing or ´text work´ can be explicitly linked to ´identity work´ (Kamler & Thomson, 2004). With this purpose, I examine a 30 hour writing seminar developed through 20 months with 3 cohorts of part-time Education doctoral students (N=18) in which I accompanied them through the process of writing, group and peer reviewing, and rewriting two scientific texts. During the first year of candidature, when they had not even defended their thesis proposal, they were asked to write a dissertation abstract as if their dissertation were finished. The purpose of this task was to encourage writing as an epistemic tool to plan their theses work as a whole and to think of the coherence among purposes, research questions, methods, intended results, and relevance of their prospective study. A year later, they had to write a paper with work in progress regarding their dissertation and find an appropriate conference to submit it and present it. Additionally, they wrote two non academic but ´subjective´ texts: an initial autobiographical account of themselves as writers and a final portfolio in which they documented and reflected on their work in the seminar. The analysis of these reflective writings, together with the course assessment students carried out, reveal some of the discourse and identity tensions doctoral graduates face when trying to take part in the disciplinary community they aspire to enter. Their reflective texts also show subtle ways in which the writing seminar gave them the chance to learn technical knowledge and participate in new scholarly genres, as well as develop social and emotional tools to dare to do it. Making their feelings of incompetence explicit and receiving support to overcome them through writing, feedback, and rewriting was experienced as an opportunity for a long-term reflection on who they were and who they wanted to become. https://sites.google. com/site/giceolem2010/posgrado
Teaching hospital status and operative mortality in the United States: tipping point in the volume-outcome relationship following colon resections?

OBJECTIVE To compare risk- and volume-adjusted outcomes of colon resections performed at teaching hospitals (THs) vs non-THs to assess whether benign disease may influence the volume-outcome effect. DESIGN Retrospective data analysis examining colon resections determined by International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification classification performed in the United States from 2001 through 2005 using the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) and the Area Resource File (2004). Patient covariates used in adjustment included age, sex, race, Charlson Index comorbidity score, and insurance status. Hospital covariates included TH status, presence of a colorectal surgery fellowship approved by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, geographical region, institutional volume, and urban vs rural location. County-specific surgeon characteristics used in adjustment included average age of surgeons and proportion of colorectal board-certified surgeons within each county. Environmental or county covariates included median income and percentage of county residents living below the federal poverty level. SETTING A total of 1045 hospitals located in 38 states in the United States that were included in the NIS. PATIENTS All patients older than 18 years who had colon resection and were discharged from a hospital included in the NIS. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Operative mortality, length of stay (LOS), and total charges. RESULTS A total of 115 250 patients were identified, of whom 4371 died (3.8%). The mean LOS was 10 days. Fewer patients underwent surgical resection in THs than in non-THs (46 656 vs 68 589). Teaching hospitals were associated with increased odds of death (odds ratio, 1.14) (P = .03), increased LOS (P = .003), and a nonsignificant trend toward an increase in total charges (P = .36). CONCLUSIONS With the inclusion of benign disease, colon surgery displays a volume-outcome relationship in favor of non-THs. Inclusion of benign disease may represent a tipping point.
Speeding Up Processing with Approximation Circuits

Current microprocessors employ a global timing reference to synchronize data transfer. A synchronous system must know the maximum time needed to compute a function, but a circuit usually finishes computation earlier than the worst-case delay. The system nevertheless waits for the maximum time bound to guarantee a correct result. As a first step in achieving variable pipeline delays based on data values, approximation circuits can increase clock frequency by reducing the number of cycles a function requires. Instead of implementing the complete logic function, a simplified circuit mimics it using rough calculations to predict results. The results are correct most of the time, and simulations show improvements in overall performance in spite of the overhead needed to recover from mistakes.
Hermes -- A Context-Aware Application Development Framework and Toolkit for the Mobile Environment

The modern mobile ubiquitous computing environment, with reasonable connectivity, processing power and sensing capabilities on portable devices, present applications and services with the opportunity to be truly context-aware. But building context-aware applications has large development overheads due to complexities of sensing, aggregating and inferencing context information. To reduce the developers' burden, over the last decade, many context-aware application development frameworks and toolkits have been created. Yet none of these existing solutions address the specific challenges, opportunities and constraints presented by the modern mobile computing environment. This paper describes a next generation software toolkit which provides a framework, including context inferencing, communication, storage, power management, security and intelligibility support, for developing more powerful context-aware applications for the modern mobile environment. The Hermes toolkit and framework are designed around a loosely coupled component-based architecture that facilitates the decomposition of context-aware applications into multiple smaller components, each of which captures, transforms or aggregates pieces of context information to produce the high-level context used by applications. In this paper we present the overall architecture of Hermes, a sample application design and our implementation details.
Acetazolamide-responsive exercise-induced episodic ataxia associated with a novel homozygous DARS2 mutation

Background Leukoencephalopathy with brain stem and spinal cord involvement and brain lactate elevation (LBSL) was recently shown to be caused by mutations in the DARS2 gene, encoding a mitochondrial aspartyl-tRNA synthetase. So far, affected individuals were invariably compound heterozygous for two mutations in DARS2, and drug treatments have remained elusive. Methods Prospective 2-year follow-up of the natural history of the main presenting symptoms in a homozygous DARS2 mutation carrier, followed by a 60 day treatment with acetazolamide in two different doses and with two random treatment interruptions. Results The patient presented with exercise-induced paroxysmal gait ataxia and areflexia as an atypical phenotype associated with a novel homozygous DARS2 mutation. These features showed an excellent dose-dependent, sustained treatment response to a carbonic anhydrase inhibitor. Pathogenic mutations in episodic ataxia genes were excluded, thus making it highly unlikely that this phenotype was because of episodic ataxia as a second disorder besides LBSL. Conclusions This case demonstrates that DARS2 mutation homozygosity is not lethal, as suggested earlier, but compatible with a rather benign disease course. More importantly, it extends the phenotypic spectrum of LBSL and reveals that at least some DARS2-associated phenotypic features might be readily treatable. However, future observations of paroxsymal ataxia and, possibly, areflexia in other DARS2-mutated patients are warranted to further corroborate our finding that DARS2 mutations can lead to a paroxsymal ataxia phenotype.
Cancer Cachexia and Tumor Growth Reduction in Walker 256 Tumor-Bearing Rats Supplemented With N-3 Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids for One Generation

In this study we investigated the effect of lifelong supplementation of the diet with coconut oil (CO, rich in saturated fatty acids) or fish oil (FO, rich in n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, PUFAs) on tumor growth, animal survival, and metabolic indicators of cachexia in adult rats. Female Wistar rats were supplemented with CO or FO prior to mating and then throughout pregnancy and gestation, and then the male offspring were supplemented from weaning until 90 days of age. Then they were inoculated subcutaneously with Walker 256 tumor cells. Tumor weight at 14 days in control rats (those fed standard chow) was approximately 20 g. These animals displayed cancer cachexia, which was characterized by loss of weight, hypoglycemia, hyperlacticidemia, hypertriacylglycerolemia, and depletion of glycogen stores. Supplementation of the diet with CO did not change these parameters, except that there was a smaller decrease in serum triacylglycerol concentration. Supplementation of the diet with FO significantly decreased tumor growth (by approximately 60%), increased survival (50% at 30 days postinoculation vs. 30% in the controls and 13.5% in the CO group), and prevented the fall in body weight. Furthermore, FO supplementation partly abolished the fall in serum glucose, totally prevented the elevation in serum lactate concentrations, partly prevented the hypertriacylgylcerolemia, and preserved tissue glycogen stores. Lifelong consumption of FO, rich in n-3 PUFAs, protects against tumor growth and cancer cachexia and improves survival.
Mononuclear-macrophages but not neutrophils act as major infiltrating anti-leptospiral phagocytes during leptospirosis

Objective To identify the major infiltrating phagocytes during leptospirosis and examine the killing mechanism used by the host to eliminate Leptospira interrogans. Methods Major infiltrating phagocytes in Leptospira-infected C3H/HeJ mice were detected by immunohistochemistry. Chemokines and vascular endothelial cell adhesion molecules (VECAMs) of Leptospira-infected mice and leptospirosis patients were detected by microarray and immunohistochemistry. Leptospira-phagocytosing and -killing abilities of human or mouse macrophages and neutrophils, and the roles of intracellular ROS, NO and [Ca2+]i in Leptospira-killing process were evaluated by confocal microscopy and spectrofluorimetry. Results Peripheral blood mononuclear-macrophages rather than neutrophils were the main infiltrating phagocytes in the lungs, liver and kidneys of infected mice. Levels of macrophage- but not neutrophil-specific chemokines and VECAMs were significantly increased in the samples from infected mice and patients. All macrophages tested had a higher ability than neutrophils to phagocytose and kill leptospires. Higher ROS and NO levels and [Ca2+]i in the macrophages were involved in killing leptospires. Human macrophages displayed more phagolysosome formation and a stronger leptospire-killing ability to than mouse macrophages. Conclusions Mononuclear-macrophages but not neutrophils represent the main infiltrating and anti-leptospiral phagocytes during leptospirosis. A lower level of phagosome-lysosome fusion may be responsible for the lower Leptospira-killing ability of human macrophages.
Minimum Wages and Employment

The invention discloses a process for manufacturing yarns from wheat straws. More specifically, the present invention relates to a process for manufacturing yarns from wheat straws, in which wheat straws that are capable of protecting human bodies from harmful spectra such as ultra-violet rays are finely cleaved to prepare yarns in a simple process for making hats, gowns, gloves and the like, so that workers working in the field can be protected from harmful spectra such as ultra-violet rays. The process for manufacturing yarns from wheat straws according to the present invention includes: a cutting step 10 for cutting off the nodes of the opposite ends wheat straws after flaying the skins and arranging them neatly; a cleaving step 20 for cleaving the cut pieces of the wheat straws so as for them to become rectangular forms; an adhesive spreading step 30 for spreading an adhesive on the edges of the rectangular pieces of wheat straw; a rolling step 40 for performing a rolling to firmly join the adhesive spread edges of the rectangular pieces of wheat straw; a finely cleaving step 50 for finely cleaving the joined pieces of wheat straw into a plurality of yarns; and a winding step 60 for winding the yarns on a spool.
On the Verification Complexity of Group Decision-Making Tasks

A popular use of crowdsourcing is to collect and aggregate individual worker responses to problems to reach a correct answer. This paper studies the relationship between the computation complexity class of problems, and the ability of a group to agree on a correct solution. We hypothesized that for NP-Complete (NPC) problems, groups would be able to reach a majority-based correct solution once it was suggested by a group member and presented to the other members, due to the "easy to verify" (i.e., verification in polynomial time) characteristic of this complexity class. In contrast, when posed with PSPACE-Complete (PSC) "hard to verify" problems (i.e., verification in exponential time), groups will not necessarily be able to choose a correct solution even if such a solution has been presented. Consequently, increasing the size of the group is expected to facilitate the ability of the group to converge on a correct solution when solving NPC problems, but not when solving PSC problems. To test this hypothesis we conducted preliminary experiments in which we evaluated people's ability to solve an analytical problem and their ability to recognize a correct solution. In our experiments, participants were significantly more likely to recognize correct and incorrect solutions for NPC problems than for PSC problems, even for problems of similar difficulties (as measured by the percentage of participants who solved the problem). This is a first step towards formalizing a relationship between the computationally complexity of a problem and the crowd's ability to converge to a correct solution to the problem.