Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Role of Cellular Lipids in Positive-Sense RNA Virus Replication Complex Assembly and Function

Positive-sense RNA viruses are responsible for frequent and often devastating diseases in humans, animals, and plants. However, the development of effective vaccines and anti-viral therapies targeted towards these pathogens has been hindered by an incomplete understanding of the molecular mechanisms involved in viral replication. One common feature of all positive-sense RNA viruses is the manipulation of host intracellular membranes for the assembly of functional viral RNA replication complexes. This review will discuss the interplay between cellular membranes and positive-sense RNA virus replication, and will focus specifically on the potential structural and functional roles for cellular lipids in this process.
In vitro antimicrobial activity of aztreonam alone and in combination against bacterial isolates from pediatric patients

We examined 134 pediatric clinical isolates of Enterobacteriaceae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and gram-positive cocci for susceptibility to aztreonam alone and in combination with seven other antibiotics. All 98 gram-negative isolates were susceptible to aztreonam with similar inhibitory and bactericidal activity. Combinations of aztreonam with cefoxitin, ampicillin, or clindamycin were generally indifferent or additive. Synergism was occasionally seen against enteric organisms with aztreonam plus cefoxitin or clindamycin. Combinations of tobramycin and aztreonam were synergistic (62%) against P. aeruginosa; aztreonam plus piperacillin or ticarcillin was additive. Aztreonam did not affect the activity of nafcillin against Staphylococcus aureus, or of ampicillin against species of Streptococcus group B or D. Antagonism was seen only with aztreonam plus cefoxitin against Enterobacter species, but not at clinically significant concentrations. Several combinations of antibiotics with aztreonam should be appropriate for initial therapy of infections in children without major risks of antibacterial antagonism.
Study on Collaboration System Constructions in Medical Sites

Collaboration for communication has become a major practice in the world class healthcare industries, both small and large organizations are increasingly adopting the philosophy in all the organizations' activities to shorten required health service time while maintaining higher service quality and lower service costs. These changes have forced the organizations to consider wide improvement of their activities and to adopt the use of new spectrum in all the healthcare organizations' operations. From this motivation, this paper studies on the healthcare Collaborative communication concept and investigates approaches for the philosophy. To meet the demands, developing framework for medical collaborative communication system is suggested as a dominant philosophy in this paper.
The Challenging Evaluation of Patients with Severe Psoriasis for Latent Tuberculosis: An Important Indication for IGRA

It is well-established that tumour necrosis factor (TNF)-α-antagonist regimens are advisable for the control of moderate to severe psoriasis; however the application of these agents is associated with increased risk of TB reactivation. Screening for latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) is indispensable prior to treatment inception in order to diminish the risk of active TB. Although tuberculin skin test (TST) still represents a useful tool for LTBI detection, it is difficult to be performed and read in patients with extensive psoriatic lesions. In this paper, we report the case of a 65-year-old male with severe psoriasis, who was evaluated by an interferon-gamma release assay (IGRA) for LTBI diagnosis prior to anti-TNF-α therapy. Furthermore, the physiological aspects of interferon-gamma release assays are discussed emphasizing the value of these novel immunodiagnostic tests (IGRAs) for presumable LTBI in all patients with extensive skin disorders.
Quantitative Transporter Proteomics by Liquid Chromatography with Tandem Mass Spectrometry: Addressing Methodologic Issues of Plasma Membrane Isolation and Expression-Activity Relationship

To predict transporter-mediated drug disposition using physiologically based pharmacokinetic models, one approach is to measure transport activity and relate it to protein expression levels in cell lines (overexpressing the transporter) and then scale these to via in vitro to in vivo extrapolation (IVIVE). This approach makes two major assumptions. First, that the expression of the transporter is predominantly in the plasma membrane. Second, that there is a linear correlation between expression level and activity of the transporter protein. The present study was conducted to test these two assumptions. We evaluated two commercially available kits that claimed to separate plasma membrane from other cell membranes. The Qiagen Qproteome kit yielded very little protein in the fraction purported to be the plasma membrane. The Abcam Phase Separation kit enriched the plasma membrane but did not separate it from other intracellular membranes. For the Abcam method, the expression level of organic anion-transporting polypeptides (OATP) 1B1/2B1 and breast cancer resistance protein (BCRP) proteins in all subcellular fractions isolated from cells or human liver tissue tracked that of Na+-K+ ATPase. Assuming that Na+-K+ ATPase is predominantly located in the plasma membrane, these data suggest that the transporters measured are also primarily located in the plasma membrane. Using short hairpin RNA, we created clones of cell lines with varying degrees of OATP1B1 or BCRP expression level. In these clones, transport activity of OATP1B1 or BCRP was highly correlated with protein expression level (r2 > 0.9). These data support the use of transporter expression level data and activity data from transporter overexpressing cell lines for IVIVE of transporter-mediated disposition of drugs.
Wildcard Compression of Inter-Domain Routing Tables for OpenFlow-Based Software-Defined Networking

In this paper we consider carrier networks using only OpenFlow switches instead of IP routers. Accommodating the full forwarding information base (FIB) of IP routers in the switches is difficult because the BGP routing tables in the default-free zone currently contain about 500,000 entries and switches have only little capacity in their fast and expensive TCAM memory. The objective of this paper is the compression of the FIB in acceptable time to minimize the TCAM requirements of switches. The benchmark is simple prefix aggregation as it is common in IP networks where longest-prefix matching is applied. In contrast, OpenFlow-based switches can match general wildcard expressions with priorities. Starting from a minimum-size prefix-based FIB, we further compress that FIB by allowing general wildcard expressions utilizing the Espresso heuristic that is commonly used for logic minimization. As the computation time of Espresso is challenging for large inputs, we provide means to trade computation time against compression efficiency. Our results show that today's FIB sizes can be reduced by 17% saving up to 40,000 entries and the compression time can be limited to 1 - 2s sacrificing only 1% -- 2% compression ratio.
Language Models for Handwritten Short Message Services

Handwriting is an alternative method for entering texts composing short message services. However, a whole new language features the texts which are produced. They include for instance abbreviations and other consonantal writing which sprung up for time saving and fashion. We have collected and processed a significant number of such handwriting SMS, and used various strategies to tackle this challenging area of handwriting recognition. We proposed to study more specifically three different phenomena: consonant skeleton, rebus, and phonetic writing. For each of them, we compare the rough results produced by a standard recognition system with those obtained when using a specific language model.
Conquering aspects with Caesar

Join point interception (JPI), is considered an important cornerstone of aspect-oriented languages. However, we claim that JPI alone does not suffice for a modular structuring of aspects. We propose CAESAR, a model for aspect-oriented programming with a higher-level module concept on top of JPI, which enables reuse and componentization of aspects, allows us to use aspects polymorphically, and introduces a novel concept for dynamic aspect deployment.
Two Dimensional Stress Reproduction Using Ultrasound Tactile Display

We proposed a new tactile display which produces spatio-temporal stress patterns on a 2D plane. In this paper, the first prototype is reported. The display consists of eight ultrasound linear arrays arranged so that the PZT pieces were concentric octagons. In order to produce 2D spatio-temporal stress patterns, the focal point of ultrasound was scanned over the display surface. We measured the waveform of the sound pressure at the focal point and the spatial distribution of the radiation pressure around the focal point. The data showed that the temporal and spatial property of the display were sufficiently fine for our method for producing 2D spatio-temporal stress patterns
The MEANING Italian Corpus

The MEANING Italian Corpus (MIC) is a large size corpus of written contemporary Italian, which is being created at ITC-irst, in the framework of the EU-funded MEANING project. Its novelty consists in the fact that domain-representativeness has been chosen as the fundamental criterion for the selection of the texts to be included in the corpus. A core set of 42 basic domains, broadly representative of all the branches of knowledge, has been chosen to be represented in the corpus. The MEANING Italian corpus will be encoded using XML and taking into account, whenever possible according to the requirements of our NLP applications, the XML version of the Corpus Encoding Standard (XCES) and the new standard ISO/TC 37/SC 4 for language resources. A multi-level annotation is planned in order to encode seven different kinds of information: orthographic features, the structure of the text, morphosyntactic information, multiwords, syntactic information, named entities, and word senses.
BSR guidelines for prescribing TNF-alpha blockers in adults with ankylosing spondylitis. Report of a working party of the British Society for Rheumatology.

Two TNF-blocking drugs are now licensed for the treatment of ankylosing spondylitis (AS) and there is clear evidence of symptomatic efficacy. It is recognized that the instruments for analysing aspects of AS and the outcomes of treatment are imperfect, though they are validated and adequate for the purpose. This document provides guidance to enable consultant rheumatologists in the UK to balance the demonstrated merits of TNF blockade treatment against the known and unknown potential toxicity. Background AS is an inflammatory condition primarily affecting the spine. Onset is most common in the third decade of life, though the disease may remain symptomatic and progressive throughout life. It is part of the family of spondyloarthropathies, which also includes psoriatic arthritis, reactive arthritis and enteropathic arthritis. Undifferentiated forms of spondyloarthopathy, often presenting as mono- or oligoarthritis, are also recognized, as are juvenile forms of spondyloarthopathy, in which the spine is not affected but may become so later. Thus, many individuals with AS also suffer from involvement of the hips, peripheral joints and peripheral entheses as well as periodic eye inflammation, inflammatory bowel disease and psoriasis. The treatment of axial and peripheral elements of this disease therefore requires distinct criteria and guidance that is specific for the particular feature. Symptoms may persist throughout adult life, though some patients experience a diminution of symptoms or even remission of active disease after a period of years. The consequences of active spinal disease, including spinal stiffness or rigidity and increased risk of spinal fracture, are irreversible.
Characterization of Genetic and Phenotypic Diversity of Invasive Nontypeable Haemophilus influenzae

ABSTRACT The ability of unencapsulated (nontypeable) Haemophilus influenzae (NTHi) to cause systemic disease in healthy children has been recognized only in the past decade. To determine the extent of similarity among invasive nontypeable isolates, we compared strain R2866 with 16 additional NTHi isolates from blood and spinal fluid, 17 nasopharyngeal or throat isolates from healthy children, and 19 isolates from middle ear aspirates. The strains were evaluated for the presence of several genetic loci that affect bacterial surface structures and for biochemical reactions that are known to differ among H. influenzae strains. Eight strains, including four blood isolates, shared several properties with R2866: they were biotype V (indole and ornithine decarboxylase positive, urease negative), contained sequence from the adhesin gene hia, and lacked a genetic island flanked by the infA and ksgA genes. Multilocus sequence typing showed that most biotype V isolates belonged to the same phylogenetic cluster as strain R2866. When present, the infA-ksgA island contains lipopolysaccharide biosynthetic genes, either lic2B and lic2C or homologs of the losA and losB genes described for Haemophilus ducreyi. The island was found in most nasopharyngeal and otitis isolates but was absent from 40% of invasive isolates. Overall, the 33 hmw-negative isolates were much more likely than hmw-containing isolates to have tryptophanase, ornithine decarboxylase, or lysine decarboxylase activity or to contain the hif genes. We conclude (i) that invasive isolates are genetically and phenotypically diverse and (ii) that certain genetic loci of NTHi are frequently found in association among NTHi strains.
The Evolution of Dynamical Cores for Global Atmospheric Models(125th Anniversary Issue of the Meteorological Society of Japan)

The evolution of global atmospheric model dynamical cores from the first developments in the early 1960s to present day is reviewed. Numerical methods for atmospheric models are not straightforward because of the so-called pole problem. The early approaches include methods based on composite meshes, on quasi-homogeneous grids such as spherical geodesic and cubed sphere, on reduced grids, and on a latitude-longitude grid with short time steps near the pole, none of which were entirely successful. This resulted in the dominance of the spectral transform method after it was introduced. Semi-Lagrangian semi-implicit methods were developed which yielded significant computational savings and became dominant in Numerical Weather Prediction. The need for improved physical properties in climate modeling led to developments in shape preserving and conservative methods. Today the numerical methods development community is extremely active with emphasis placed on methods with desirable physical properties, especially conservation and shape preservation, while retaining the accuracy and efficiency gained in the past. Much of the development is based on quasi-uniform grids. Although the need for better physical properties is emphasized in this paper, another driving force is the need to develop schemes which are capable of running efficiently on computers with thousands of processors and distributed memory. Test cases for dynamical core evaluation are also briefly reviewed. These range from well defined deterministic tests to longer term statistical tests with both idealized forcing and complete parameterization packages but simple geometries. Finally some aspects of coupling dynamical cores to parameterization suites are discussed.
An Integrated System for Multichannel Neuronal Recording With Spike/LFP Separation, Integrated A/D Conversion and Threshold Detection

A mixed-signal front-end processor for multichannel neuronal recording is described. It receives 12 differential-input channels of implanted recording electrodes. A programmable cutoff High Pass Filter (HPF) blocks dc and low-frequency input drift at about 1 Hz. The signals are band-split at about 200 Hz to low-frequency Local Field Potential (LFP) and high-frequency spike data (SPK), which is band limited by a programmable-cutoff LPF, in a range of 8-13 kHz. Amplifier offsets are compensated by 5-bit calibration digital-to-analog converters (DACs). The SPK and LFP channels provide variable amplification rates of up to 5000 and 500, respectively. The analog signals are converted into 10-bit digital form, and streamed out over a serial digital bus at up to 8 Mbps. A threshold filter suppresses inactive portions of the signal and emits only spike segments of programmable length. A prototype has been fabricated on a 0.35-microm CMOS process and tested successfully, demonstrating a 3-microV noise level. Special interface system incorporating an embedded CPU core in a programmable logic device accompanied by real-time software has been developed to allow connectivity to a computer host.
General practitioners' experiences of patients' complaints

Editor—I work as a principal in general practice, with part of my list in Lambeth, and was summoned to a service hearing by Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham Health Authority before 1996. I was therefore particularly interested in Jain and Ogden’s article about general practitioners’ experiences of complaints.1 Although I appreciate the impartiality shown by the health authority, I would question whether its facilitator function is helpful. In my experience the authority’s role largely entailed gathering non-critical information; it failed to analyse the quality of the information collected. My summons to a service hearing seemed to be determined more by the acrimony of the complainant than by the case itself. The health authority seemed unable or unwilling to come to a decision itself about the merits of the allegations, and from an early stage it seemed to concentrate on assimilating both sides of the case with a view to proceeding to a service hearing. In another case, not related to my practice, the same health authority proceeded with a late complaint against a fundholding practice in which there had been an allegation of clinical mismanagement due to a delayed referral. The general practitioner was accused of putting the financial fundholding interests of the practice above clinical need. The health authority invoked a fundholding complaints procedure, although it had no remit under the NHS regulations to proceed along these lines. Over several months it persistently attempted to facilitate an informal meeting between the parties and refused to accept that there was no procedure or regulation laid down for such cases. Finally, only the threat of legal action by the practice persuaded the authority to drop the case. Facilitation by the health authority tends to delay proceedings and allow the parties to reach unchallenged conclusions that quickly become entrenched and lead to a service hearing. In-house mediation with an early exchange of views has helped to limit the number of hearings mediated by the health authority and has greatly reduced the accompanying stress to general practitioners brought on by well meaning facilitators.
Indoor Volatile Organic Compounds and Chemical Sensitivity Reactions

Studies of unexplained symptoms observed in chemically sensitive subjects have increased the awareness of the relationship between neurological and immunological diseases due to exposure to volatile organic compounds (VOCs). However, there is no direct evidence that links exposure to low doses of VOCs and neurological and immunological dysfunction. We review animal model data to clarify the role of VOCs in neuroimmune interactions and discuss our recent studies that show a relationship between chronic exposure of C3H mice to low levels of formaldehyde and the induction of neural and immune dysfunction. We also consider the possible mechanisms by which VOC exposure can induce the symptoms presenting in patients with a multiple chemical sensitivity.
Exploiting Mirrors in Interactive Reconstruction with Structured Light

This paper describes how a mirror can be integrated as another view and another source of light patterns in an interactive reconstruction system with structured light, where the object, the camera, and the mirror can move. We show how a single pass of structured light can provide 3D points to accurately estimate the pose of a mirror, while also reconstructing 3D points on the object. We develop new structured light patterns that are unaffected by the reversed order created by some mirror configurations. We also describe hardware rendering support to avoid conflicting emitted/captured light patterns, and demonstrate how all the proposed realizations extend naturally for multiple mirror configurations. We finally conclude with results, discuss limitations, and suggest further improvements.
Hypocarbia during the First 24 Postnatal Hours and White Matter Echolucencies in Newborns ≤28 Weeks Gestation

The purpose of the present study was to test the hypothesis that newborns ≤28 wk gestation who have a Pco2 measurement in the lowest gestational age-specific quartile (hypocarbia) on the first day of life are not at increased risk for ultrasonographic white matter echolucency (EL) after adjustment for confounders. The sample consisted of 799 infants ≤28 wk gestation born during 1991–1993. Forty-eight infants with EL were classified as cases and compared with 751 controls, i.e. those without EL. We performed univariable comparisons, stratified analyses, and multivariable logistic regression. In the univariable analyses, hypocarbia on the first day of life was associated with an increased EL risk. The odds ratios for the hypocarbia-EL relationship were prominently elevated in the strata of infants who did not have other major risk factors for EL (e.g. gestational age 26–28 wk, normothyroxinemia, no characteristics of antenatal infection). In the multivariable analyses, the association diminished after adjustment with a hypocarbia propensity score (odds ratio = 1.7; 95% confidence interval, 0.8–3.2) or with potential confounders.
Hybrid Nonlinear Modeling Using Adaptive Sampling

This paper proposes a direct method for the extraction of empirical-behavioral hybrid models using adaptive sampling. The empirical base is responsible for the functionality over a wide range of variables, especially in the extrapolation range. The behavioral part corrects the errors of the empirical part in the region of particular interest, thus, it improves the accuracy in the desired region. Employment of response surface methodology and adaptive sampling allows full automation of the hybrid model extraction and assures its compactness. We used this approach to build a hybrid model composed of a robust empirical model available in CAD tools and a Radial Basis Functions interpolation model with Gaussian basis function. We extracted the hybrid model from measurements of a 0.15 μm GaAs HEMT and compared it with the pure behavioral and pure empirical models. The hybrid model yields higher accuracy while maintaining extrapolation capabilities. Additionally, the extraction time of the hybrid model is relatively low. We also show that a good accuracy level can be achieved with a small number of measurements.