Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Presence of Viral Genomes in Mineral Water: a Sufficient Condition To Assume Infectious Risk?

ABSTRACT Appropriate interpretation of a positive reverse transcription-PCR is an important issue for virus-related health hazard assessment because viral genomes and infectious viruses exhibit different behavior patterns in water. In this context, using Poliovirus 1 and Feline calicivirus f9 as examples of enteric viruses, first we demonstrated that the stability of infectious viruses is greatly affected by the temperature of mineral water (10, 20, and 35°C) and that, in contrast, temperature has little effect on the corresponding genomes. Second, we demonstrated that infectious particles are degraded more rapidly than viral genomes at all temperatures studied. At 35°C, Poliovirus 1 infectivity was reduced 4 logs after only 19 days, while an equivalent reduction would have taken 75 years (according to the model applied) for the viral genome. Contradictory conclusions can also be drawn concerning the sensitivity of viral serotypes depending on whether the infectious virus or the viral genome is considered. The Feline calicivirus f9 genome is more resistant than the Poliovirus 1 genome, whereas the opposite is true for the corresponding infectious viruses. Thus, we concluded that a positive test for a viral genome in mineral water must be interpreted with utmost caution because of the lack of a correlation between the presence of viral genomes and viral infectivity. Detection of viral genomes may be necessary to identify infectious risk for the human population, but it cannot be considered sufficient.
A high-density EEG study on cortical activity in response to visual motion perception: Longitudinal comparison of preterm and full-term infants

Electroencephalogram (EEG) was used to investigate brain electrical activity of full-term and preterm infants at 5 and 12 months of age as a functional response mechanism to structured forwards optic flow, structured reversed optic flow, and random visual motion. EEG data were recorded with a 128-channel sensor array and visually evoked potentials (VEPs) were analysed. VEP results showed a significant improvement in full-term infants with age in latencies to forwards and reversed optic flow, but not to random visual motion. In addition, full-term infants at 12 months significantly differentiated between the three motion conditions. They showed the shortest latency to forwards optic flow and the longest latency to random visual motion. On the other hand, preterm infants did not improve their latencies with age, nor were they capable of differentiating between the three motion conditions at 12 months. It appeared that full-term infants at 12 months with a substantial amount of self-produced locomotor experience and accompanying neural maturation, rely on the perception of structured optic flows to move around in the environment efficiently, and that they are negatively affected by the lack of structure in random visual motion. It was concluded that the preterm infants’ poorer performances are related to impairment of the dorsal visual stream which is specialized in processing visual motion. To better understand the fundamentals of early neurodevelopment and how it differs in prematurity, more research comparing data on the changes in brain activity in response to visual motion perception during infancy is suggested.
Importance of appropriate empirical antibiotic therapy for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemia.

OBJECTIVES To document the effects of appropriate and inappropriate empirical antibiotic therapy on mortality in a cohort of patients with bacteraemia due to methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and to summarize effects with previous studies. METHODS In the retrospective cohort study, episodes of clinically significant MRSA bacteraemia during a 15 year period were included. Polymicrobial episodes were excluded unless MRSA was isolated in more than one bottle and co-pathogens were given appropriate empirical antibiotic treatment. Appropriate empirical treatment was defined as matching in vitro susceptibility and started within 48 h of blood-culture taking, except for single aminoglycosides or rifampicin. We assessed univariate and multivariate associations between appropriate empirical therapy and 30 day all-cause mortality. Multivariable analysis was conducted using backward stepwise logistic regression. We reviewed all studies assessing the effects of appropriate empirical antibiotic treatment on mortality for MRSA infections and compiled adjusted odds ratios (ORs) using a random effects meta-analysis. RESULTS Five hundred and ten episodes of MRSA bacteraemia were included. There were no cases of community-acquired infection. The 30 day mortality was 43.9% (224/510) and was stable throughout the study period. Mortality was significantly higher among patients receiving inappropriate (168/342, 49.1%) compared with those receiving appropriate (56/168, 33.3%) empirical antibiotic treatment, P = 0.001. In the adjusted analysis the OR was 2.15 [95% confidence interval (CI) 1.34-3.46]. Pooling of six studies using adequate methodology for the adjusted analysis resulted in an OR of 1.98 (95% CI 1.62-2.44). CONCLUSIONS Appropriate empirical antibiotic treatment has a significant survival benefit in MRSA bacteraemia. Treatment guidelines should consider this benefit.
Spectro-temporal post-enhancement using MMSE estimation in NMF based single-channel source separation

We propose to use minimum mean squared error (MMSE) estimates to enhance the signals that are separated by nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF). In single channel source separation (SCSS), NMF is used to train a set of basis vectors for each source from their training spectrograms. Then NMF is used to decompose the mixed signal spectrogram as a weighted linear combination of the trained basis vectors from which estimates of each corresponding source can be obtained. In this work, we deal with the spectrogram of each separated signal as a 2D distorted signal that needs to be restored. A multiplicative distortion model is assumed where the logarithm of the true signal distribution is modeled with a Gaussian mixture model (GMM) and the distortion is modeled as having a log-normal distribution. The parameters of theGMMare learned from training data whereas the distortion parameters are learned online from each separated signal. The initial source estimates are improved and replaced with their MMSE estimates under this new probabilistic framework. The experimental results show that using the proposed MMSE estimation technique as a post enhancement after NMF improves the quality of the separated signal. Copyright © 2013 ISCA.
Pentatrichomonas hominis in laboratory-bred common marmosets

Trichomonadid protozoa have been found in the intestinal tracts of common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus). However, there is little information available on species identification and the pathogenicity of these trichomonads. In this study, we conducted a fecal survey of a common marmoset colony maintained as laboratory animals in Japan and identified the trichomonad species. Screening using a fecal smear examination revealed that 66% (58/88) of the marmosets had trichomonadid trophozoites in their feces. The trichomonads were found in both normal feces (31/49, 63%) and diarrhea (27/39, 69%), with no significant difference in frequency. The protozoa were identified as Pentatrichomonas hominis using morphological characters and the 100% identity of the nucleotide sequence of the partial 18S rRNA gene (297 bp). The intraspecific genetic variability between P. hominis from the marmosets in this study and P. hominis from other reported mammal hosts was ≤1% in the nucleotide sequence, including the internal transcribed spacer (ITS)-1, 5.8S rRNA gene, and ITS-2 (293 bp). P. hominis inhabits the large intestine of various mammalian hosts, including primates, and is considered nonpathogenic. These results suggest that P. hominis is transmitted among marmosets and other mammals but is not a primary cause of bowel disease in marmosets.
SLA Driven Process Security through Monitored E-contracts

In this work we look into the domain of process security from a service perspective. Most often process security has been enacted through service level agreements (SLA) and business agreements. However, in a multi-party environment such as business process outsourcing (BPO) where processes themselves are offered as a service, the qualitative nature of SLA makes their monitoring quite difficult and their implementation through various restrictions, quite costly. We present our approach wherein we provide security as a process represented using e-Contracts and enacted through workflows. We explore if security too could be offered as a service which could be enacted and monitored by the process participants themselves; thus ensuring more trust. Most of the process based systems employ either Task Based Model (TBAC) or Role Based Model (RBAC) for granting privileges that are needed for executing the individual activities of the workflow. Current approaches are either potentially weak from security perspective, as they grant even those permissions to user which are actually not needed by him for executing the tasks, or they have very high administrative overhead. In this paper, we propose to couple RBAC with TBAC and additionally enforce sequential and temporal constraints over them so that process participants get only 'Need to know information' with less administrative overhead. In this paper, we propose our extended e-contract framework for security (EC framework), and the architecture of a system which implements it. In the end we present a briefcase study presenting our process security model.
Women’s Experiences of Vaginismus and its Treatment: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis

299 Part 1: Literature review Abstract: 298 Full text (excluding tables): 6750 298 Full text (excluding tables): 6750 Part 2: Research report Abstract: 205 Full text (excluding tables): 12862 205 Full text (excluding tables): 12862 Part 3: Critical appraisal
Structural basis for recruitment of CBP/p300 by hypoxia-inducible factor-1α

Adaptation to hypoxia is mediated by transactivation of hypoxia-responsive genes by hypoxia-inducible factor-1 (HIF-1) in complex with the CBP and p300 transcriptional coactivators. We report the solution structure of the cysteine/histidine-rich 1 (CH1) domain of p300 bound to the C-terminal transactivation domain of HIF-1α. CH1 has a triangular geometry composed of four α-helices with three intervening Zn2+-coordinating centers. CH1 serves as a scaffold for folding of the HIF-1α C-terminal transactivation domain, which forms a vise-like clamp on the CH1 domain that is stabilized by extensive hydrophobic and polar interactions. The structure reveals the mechanism of specific recognition of p300 by HIF-1α, and shows how HIF-1α transactivation is regulated by asparagine hydroxylation.
Distributed Auction Algorithms for the Assignment Problem with Partial Information

Abstract : Task-asset assignment is a fundamental problem paradigm in a wide variety of applications. Typical problem setting involves a single decision maker (DM) who has complete knowledge of the weight (reward, benefit, accuracy) matrix and who can control any of the assets to execute the tasks. Motivated by planning problems arising in distributed organizations, this paper introduces a novel variation of the assignment problem, wherein there are multiple DMs and each DM knows only a part of the weight matrix and/or controls a subset of the assets. We extend the auction algorithm to such realistic settings with various partial information structures using a blackboard coordination structure. We show that by communicating the bid, the best and the second best profits among DMs and with a coordinator, the DMs can reconstruct the centralized assignment solution. The auction setup provides a nice analytical framework for formalizing how team members build internal models of other DMs and achieve team cohesiveness over time.
Teacher's Stories, Teacher's Lives

Introduction When Narratives Meet: Interactive Self-Study in Pre-Service Teacher Education Teachers' Stories Teachers' Lives: Joe's Story Shafts of Light: Recollections of My Schooling Teachers are. The Challenge to Care: A Personal Narrative of Teaching and Learning My Road to Narrative Inquiry in Teacher Preparation: One Educators Story Reflective Session (Excerpt Only) Gaining our World Without Losing our Soul "Is-when stories": Practical Repertories and Theories about the Practical Anatomy of Narrative Curricula Index.
Pressor response during normal menstrual cycle

Aims:To study the blood pressure variations during different phases of the menstrual cycle using a set of autonomic function tests,Methods:The study included30 eumenorrheic,normal,normotensive,healthy females aged 18-30 yrs and a set of autonomic function tests were done to assess the pressor response during the three phases-menstrual phase,follicular phase and luteal phase of a single normal menstrual cycle.The subjects were selected based on predetermined exclusion-inclusion criteria.No controls of any kind (males or menopausal females) were included as the aim of the study was to compare pressor response among the three phases of a single menstrual cycle.Results:Across the menstrual cycle there was varied pressor response with higher values towards the luteal phase,when compared to the follicular and the menstrual phases.The statistically significant differences in the blood pressure parameters,resting blood pressure,postural variation in blood pressure and blood pressure response to cold pressor test were found between all he phases,with higher values towards the luteal phase.The results were obtained using ANOVA and student-t-test,to study the significance of study parameters on continous scale within each phases.Conclusion:There was varied pressor response across the menstrual cycle with higher values towards the luteal phase,as observed by the increased sympathetic outflow in the luteal phase compared to the increased parasympathetic outflow in the follicular phase.The baroreflex regulation of autonomic functions induced by posture changes is also modified during the normal,regular menstrual cycle.This altered regulation of the autonomic tone during the normal,regular menstrual cycle can be attributed to the cardio-protective effects of oestrogen in healthy young females in contrast to menopausal females.
Toponym Disambiguation in an English-Lithuanian SMT System with Spatial Knowledge

This paper presents an innovative research resulting in the English-Lithuanian statistical factored phrase-based machine translation system with a spatial ontology. The system is based on the Moses toolkit and is enriched with semantic knowledge inferred from the spatial ontology. The ontology was developed on the basis of the GeoNames database (more than 15 000 toponyms), implemented in the web ontology language (OWL), and integrated into the machine translation process. Spatial knowledge was added as an additional factor in the statistical translation model and used for toponym disambiguation during machine translation. The implemented machine translation approach was evaluated against the baseline system without spatial knowledge. A multifaceted evaluation strategy including automatic metrics, human evaluation and linguistic analysis, was implemented to perform evaluation experiments. The results of the evaluation have shown a slight improvement in the output quality of machine translation with spatial knowledge.
Data-driven constructive induction in AQ17-PRE: A method and experiments

A method is presented for constructive induction, in which new attributes are constructed as various functions of original attributes. Such a method is called data-driven constructive induction, because new attributes are derived from an analysis of the data (examples) rather than the generated rules. Attribute construction and rule generation are repeated until a termination condition, such as the satisfaction of a rule quality measure, is met. The first step of this method, the generation of new attributes, has been implemented in AQ17-PRE. Initial experiments with AQ17-PRE have shown that it leads to an improvement of the learned rules in terms of both their simplicity and their accuracy on testing examples. <<ETX>>
Similar Humoral Immunity Parameters in Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia Patients Independent of VH Gene Mutation Status

Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is a clonal B-cell disorder, which has recently been divided into 2 subtypes based on the somatic hypermutation status of the immunoglobulin heavy chain (IgVH) genes. In patients with unmutated tumor cells the survival time is approximately half of that in mutated cases, but the reason for this difference is poorly understood. Since infections are the major cause of mortality in CLL, we investigated the effect of the mutation status on host immunity and proneness to infections in patients with CLL. As expected, the disease progression seemed to be faster and the disease more advanced (Binet B and C) among unmutated patients than in the mutated ones. Surprisingly, no differences in humoral immunity [immunoglobulin G (IgG), IgM, IgA, IgG subclasses, anti-ABO blood group antibodies and mannan-binding lectin (MBL)] or immune responses (Haemophilus influenzae serotype b conjugate vaccination) were detected between these 2 patient groups. Furthermore, UM-patients were not more prone to infections compared to M-patients, and therapy had no impact on the incidence and pattern of infections in either of the patient groups. The current findings within this patient cohort reveal that the worse outcome in the unmutated subgroup is not caused by more severe defects in immunity and increased susceptibility to infections when compared with the hypermutated group. It is thus conceivable that active immunization procedures such as vaccination can successfully be applied on patients with unmutated IgVH gene and advanced disease stage.
Evidence-based medicine: what does the future hold?

Evidence-based medicine as a movement has faced much recent criticism.1 This criticism has taken many forms. Perhaps most seriously, it has come under attack from practising healthcare professionals and patients. At the core of many criticisms is the feeling that evidence-based medicine has become disengaged from real-world clinical practice. There may be valid reasons for this perspective. Trials often include people with single illnesses, and yet increasingly with an aging population, people have multiple morbidities. Evidence-based medicine encourages following defined care pathways.2 However, patients might not fit well with these pathways, and might not want to follow them. Evidence-based medicine continues to produce a tidal wave of information. Yet the practising clinician wants a quick and accessible answer to an individual question—and all too often cannot get this. In addition, trials that find statistically significant outcomes can have little clinical importance or applicability. Evidence-based medicine as a movement has only been in existence for about 20 years. With all this criticism it is tempting to ask—is it already on the way out? Does it really have a future at all? Evidence-based medicine certainly does have a future, but it will have to evolve if it is going to be useful and relevant. It will have to address issues such as multiple morbidity; it will have to provide accessible answers; and it will have to deal in clinically important and patient-relevant outcomes as well as statistically significant ones. Firstly, evidence-based medicine will have to more explicitly address multiple morbidity and the individual context of decision-making.3 This is perhaps its greatest challenge. Two …
Joint Source–Channel Coding for Transmitting Correlated Sources Over Broadcast Networks

We consider a set of S independent encoders that must transmit a set of correlated sources through a network of noisy, independent, broadcast channels to T receivers, with no interference at the receivers. For the general problem of sending correlated sources through broadcast networks, it is known that the source-channel separation theorem breaks down and the achievable rate region as well as the proper method of coding are unknown. For our scenario, however, we establish the optimal rate region using a form of joint source-channel coding. When the optimal channel input distribution from transmitter i to receiver j is independent of j, our result has a max-flow/min-cut interpretation. Specifically, in this case, our result implies that if it is possible to send the sources to each receiver separately while ignoring the others, then it is possible to send to all receivers simultaneously.
Quality of Outpatient Care Provided to Diabetic Patients: A health maintenance organization experience

OBJECTIVE To document the quality of diabetes care provided to patients in a large health maintenance organization (HMO) from 1 January 1993 to 1 January 1994 and compare it to the standards of the American Diabetes Association (ADA). RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS To meet a Health Plan and Employer Data Information Set (HEDIS) requirement, a major HMO in California identified 14,539 members with diabetes and randomly selected 384 individuals for review. Charts were available on 353 of these patients, and after obtaining the information for the HEDIS review, additional information was extracted from the charts by an outside chart reviewer. This data set was used for an analysis of the quality of diabetic care provided by the participating medical groups to these HMO members during 1 year. Documentation of follow-up and measures of glycemic and lipid control was examined both for absolute values and for the frequency of measurement over the year. These results were compared to the ADA standards of care. RESULTS Although patients averaged 4.5 visits to their primary care physicians (PCPs) over the year, 21% had one or fewer visits per year. Glycated hemoglobin levels were not documented in 56% of patients (ADA recommends two to four measurements per year), and of those with a glycated hemoglobin level measured. 39% had at least one value ≥ 10%. Fasting plasma glucose concentrations were not documented in 65% of patients (four to six per year recommended). Foot exams (which should be performed at each regular visit) were not documented for 94% of patients. Urine protein measurements were not performed in 52% of patients. Additionally, many patients had elevated and untreated lipid abnormalities. CONCLUSIONS In spite of the frequency of PCP visits during the year for many of these patients, diabetes management was inadequate. This lack of adequate preventive care will lead to an increased risk of the development of the acute and chronic complications of diabetes, creating an even greater future burden on the health care system and negative consequences for patients.