Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Empirically Supported Use of Psychiatric Medications in Adolescents and Adults with IBD

Background:The use of psychotropic medications, particularly antidepressants, is common in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in spite of a lack of their robust efficacy in this population. This review provides an overview of the use trends of different classes of antidepressant and anti-anxiety medication and their effects on mood, nervous system function, gastrointestinal physiology and immunity drawing from the literature available in the general population, other medical conditions, and when available, patients with IBD. It also covers the evidence base for the actions, efficacy, and potential complications of antidepressants organized by different classes. Methods:We conducted a PubMed search of articles relating the different drug classes probed to the terms above in different populations of interest. All types of articles were accepted including case reports and series, open and randomized trials, reviews, and expert opinion. We also examined the reference lists of the publications found. Results:Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs) are the most commonly prescribed agents for anxiety and depression in patients with IBD, though their efficacy for these conditions in the general population are mild to moderate at best. SSRIs are generally well tolerated, though at higher doses, they, like most antidepressant classes, can be associated with activation, serotonergic syndrome, and increased suicidal ideation. TCAs have many more serious side effects but have some shown efficacy for functional GI symptoms. A newer class, the serotonin noradrenergic reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs), can be effective for refractory depression, anxiety and chronic pain syndromes with a side effect profile similar to both SSRIs and more mild manifestations of TCAs. Mirtazapine has moderate efficacy for depression if sedation and weight gain side effects are tolerated and some small support for use in nausea and vomiting. Bupropion targets dopamine and noradrenaline reuptake and has moderate efficacy for depression, and some small support for use in fatigue and smoking cessation. Buspirone has an indication for generalized anxiety disorder though studies show only a minimal benefit. It has some growing evidence for use in functional dyspepsia. Most of these agents have physiological effects on the brain, immune system, and gastrointestinal tract (with the exception of bupropion) hence their therapeutic and side effects manifested in these systems. Conclusion:Antidepressant medications are frequently prescribed for depression, anxiety disorders, and chronic pain syndromes, but overall support for their efficacy is modest at best. Psychological interventions have growing support for having much more robust effects without the side effects of antidepressants and should be considered first-line treatment or at least an adjunct to psychotropic medications for these conditions.
Strength Tracking Using the OMNI Resistance Exercise Scale in Older Men and Women

Gearhart, RF Jr, Lagally, KM, Riechman, SE, Andrews, RD, and Robertson, RJ. Strength tracking using the OMNI resistance exercise scale in older men and women. J Strength Cond Res 23(3): 1011-1015, 2009-Strength tracking uses ratings of perceived exertion (RPE) as a reference value to determine changes in strength as a function of a resistance training program. The purpose of this investigation was to determine if the OMNI Resistance Exercise Scale (OMNI-RES) could be used to track training-induced strength changes in older adults. Twenty-two men (64.3 + 3.2 years) and 27 women (63.8 + 2.8 years) volunteered to participate. Subjects underwent a maximal lifting test, during which they estimated perceived exertion before and following 12 weeks of resistance exercise training. Leg press (LP), latissimus dorsi pull-down (LA), chest press (CP), leg extension (LE), leg curl (LC), arm extension (AE), and arm curl (AC) were performed. Paired samples t-tests were used to compare resistance lifted pre- and post-training at each criterion RPE (4, 6, and 8). One repetition maximum increased from pretraining to post-training (p < 0.05) for all exercises. The resistance lifted at each criterion RPE also increased (p < 0.05) during the 12-week training session for every exercise. Older adults lifted more weight at 3 criterion RPEs as their strength increased, providing an RPE-based procedure to track strength training changes using the OMNI-RES. As such, it seems that RPE from the OMNI-RES can be used to track strength in older adults.
CLIP: Cluster-Level Intelligent Power Coordination for Power-Bounded Systems

High performance computing systems will need to operate with certain power budgets while maximizing performance in the exascale era. Such systems are built with power aware components, whose collective peak power may exceed the specified power budget. Cluster level power bounded computing addresses this power challenge by coordinating power among components within compute nodes and further adjusting the number of participating nodes. It offers more space to increase system performance by utilizing the available power budget more efficiently within and across the nodes.In this paper, we present the design of a hierarchical multi-dimensional power aware allocation framework, CLIP, for power bounded parallel computing on multicore-based computer clusters. The framework satisfies the specified power bound by managing the power distribution among nodes at the cluster level, and among sockets, cores and NUMA memory modules at the node level. The power allocation is enforced with multiple complementary power management techniques, including memory power level setting, thread concurrency throttling, and core-thread affinity. We present an application characterization method based on applications' scalability and an associated performance model, which can accurately determine the optimal number of participating compute nodes and components, and their power distribution for given applications. Experimental results on a Haswell-based computer cluster show that the proposed scheduler outperforms compared methods by over 20% on average for various power budgets.
Wafer-fused thin film cooler semiconductor laser structures

We examine the cooling requirements and temperature stabilization needs of semiconductor lasers with emphasis on vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) arrays. Semiconductor lasers in both in-plane and vertical cavity geometries are capable of generating large heat power densities of the order of kW/cm/sup 2/ over areas as small as 100 /spl mu/m/sup 2/. When cooling of the laser is needed, the cooler should be able to provide similar amounts of heat pumping. For these large amounts of heat pumping, a thin-film cooler structure is needed, especially if individual devices of an array must have precise temperature stabilization. Integration of the laser and thin film cooler by Au-Au wafer fusion is proposed. The fusion of the two interfaces is accomplished by mass transport in the deposited Au-films, which can be achieved under pressure at elevated temperatures. The quality of the fused interface is studied and preliminary experimental results are presented.
A New Two-Dimensional Shear Wave Elastography for Noninvasive Assessment of Liver Fibrosis in Healthy Subjects and in Patients with Chronic Liver Disease

Abstract Purpose To assess the performance of two-dimensional shear wave elastography (2D-SWE) on the GE LOGIQ E9 ultrasound system in a cohort of healthy subjects and to investigate its accuracy in the staging of liver fibrosis in patients with chronic liver disease (CLD) using liver biopsy as a reference standard. Materials and Methods From October 2014 to June 2016, 54 healthy subjects and 174 patients with CLD were consecutively enrolled. Liver fibrosis stage was assessed by the METAVIR scoring system. 18 (10.3 %) and 17 (9.8 %) patients had advanced fibrosis and cirrhosis, respectively. The correlation of liver stiffness measurement (LSM) and continuous variable was assessed using the Spearman rank correlation. The accuracy of 2D-SWE was evaluated with areas under the receiver operating characteristics curves (AUROC). Results Reliable LSMs were obtained in all subjects. The interobserver agreement ICC was excellent: 0.847. In healthy subjects, gender, but not anthropometric and biochemical data, were correlated with LSM. In patients with CLD, LSM had a strong positive correlation with fibrosis stage (rho = 0.628; p > 0.001). The AUROC was 0.724 for mild fibrosis (F≥ 1), 0.857 for moderate fibrosis (F≥ 2), 0.946 for severe fibrosis (F≥ 3), and 0.935 for cirrhosis (F4). Likewise, good accuracy was observed in the HCV subgroup. The optimal cut-off value in differentiating healthy subjects from CLD patients with any fibrosis was 5.47 kPa with an AUROC of 0.875. Conclusion 2D-SWE is a reliable and reproducible method to assess LSM with good diagnostic accuracy to assess liver fibrosis in patients with CLD.
Optimization and simplification of dynamic scripting with evolution strategy and fuzzy control in a fighting game AI

We develop a combination of evolution strategy (ES) and fuzzy control (FC) to optimize and simplify an existing dynamic scripting (DS) AI called CodeMonkey for fighting game FightingICE, recently used as a platform in international game AI competitions. One of the major issues in DS is that the user has to decide a lot of parameters whose process is not simple. In addition, a complex user-defined-action-rule set for DS is required. The purpose of our work is to automate this troublesome process and improve the performance of the DS technique. We apply (1+1)-ES with the one-fifth rule for tuning parameters and FC for easing definition of additional action rules. We verify our AI's performance in FightingICE. The test results show that although the proposed AI does not require complex parameter and rule setting by the user, it defeats the original CodeMonkey.
FUNNEL: Assessing Software Changes in Web-Based Services

The detection of performance changes in software change roll-outs in Internet-based services is crucial for an operations team, because it allows timely roll-back of a software change when performance degrades unexpectedly. However, it is infeasible to manually investigate millions of performance measurements of many roll-outs. In this paper, we present an automated tool, FUNNEL, for rapid and robust impact assessment of software changes in large Internet-based services. FUNNEL automatically collects the related performance measurements for each software change. To detect significant performance behavior changes, FUNNEL adopts singular spectrum transform (SST) algorithm as the core algorithm, uses various techniques to improve its robustness and reduce its computational cost, and applies a difference-in-difference (DiD) method to differentiate the true causality from the random correlations between the performance change and the software change. Evaluation through historical data in real-word services shows that FUNNEL achieves accuracy of more than 99.7 percent. Compared with previous methods, FUNNEL’s detection delay is 38.02 to 64.99 percent shorter, and its computation speed is 4.59-7,098 times faster. In real deployment, FUNNEL achieves a 98.21 percent precision, high robustness, fast detection speed, and shows its capability in detecting unexpected behavior changes.
CoMBaT: Wearable Technology Based Training System for Novice Badminton Players

Mastery of a shot technique is one of the important skills to be developed by novice badminton players. A shot technique includes the application of effort and swing of the arm. It is desirable for a novice badminton trainee to visualize the above parameters immediately after playing a shot. There has been an inadequate utilization of wearable technology for visualizing of these aspects. Myo armband, a wireless wearable device has the ability to sense the physical characteristics of effort and swing. CoMBaT, our Myo band based training system processes, and plots the sensor data patterns of a badminton shot for reviewing the effort and swing. Additionally, in our system, we have used the Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) algorithm to compare the trainee data with a reference data to provide corrective real-time visual and haptic feedback. This paper describes the design and development of CoMBaT along with a study plan to evaluate its usability and effectiveness.
Isolation and characterization of a novel deoxynivalenol‐transforming strain Paradevosia shaoguanensis DDB001 from wheat field soil

A Strain DDB001 having an ability to remove deoxynivalenol (DON) was successfully isolated from wheat field soil. On the basis of phenotypic, genotypic and phylogenetic data, the strain DDB001 was identified as Paradevosia shaoguanensis. Strain DDB001 could grow well and thoroughly eliminate 200 mg l−1 of DON in complete growth medium, but it could not utilize DON as the sole carbon source for growth in mineral salt medium. Analysing DON transformation products by HPLC‐MS assumed that the strain could transform DON into a less toxic stereoisomer, 3‐epi‐deoxynivalenol (3‐epi‐DON). In addition, it did not require preincubation with DON for the expression of DON‐transforming activity. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report showing that a Paradevosia strain has the capability of DON‐transforming. Therefore, strain DDB001 can be considered as a useful tool in feed decontamination.
Impact of rectal gonorrhoea and chlamydia on HIV viral load in the rectum: potential significance for onward transmission

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of asymptomatic rectal bacterial sexually transmitted infections (STIs) on rectal HIV viral load (VL). A prospective cohort study of HIV-positive men who have sex with men attending a tertiary centre in London, UK, for their routine HIV care was performed. Forty-two HIV-positive men who have sex with men were recruited between January and August 2014. In participants on antiretroviral therapy (ART), there was no significant difference in rectal VL in those with and without STI (p = 0.4). All rectal HIV VLs were below the limit of detection (<100 copies/µg of total RNA) whether an STI was present or not. In those not on ART, rectal HIV VL was on average 0.6log10 lower post STI treatment. The presence of asymptomatic rectal chlamydia and gonorrhoea was not associated with increased rectal HIV VL in those fully suppressed on ART. In the context of effective ART, the presence of rectal gonorrhoea or chlamydia does not appear to increase rectal HIV VL and the risk of increased viral infectivity.
The Hopkins Rod-Lens System

Surgeons have always been ready to adapt advances in technology into their practice. The discovery by Wilhelm Roentgen of X-rays in 1885 was applied within weeks of its publication to the diagnosis of fractures and the location of foreign bodies. The development of the electric light bulb by Edison enabled Max Nitze, Professor of Urology in Berlin, to develop the electrically illuminated cystoscope, which he patented in 1877. By 1911, Hugh Young used a cystoscope with a punch device to perform transurethral prostatectomy. Rapidly other electrically lit ‘scopes’ were introduced – the gastroscope, bronchoscope, thoracoscope and so on. All had two problems: they were rigid instruments and lacked really brilliant illumination.
A study on Twitter user-follower network a network based analysis

Substantial percent of global Internet users are now actively use Twitter. In recent times, Twitter has been experiencing explosive growth, attracting celebrities consequently a growing mass of user coverage. Insights of such a social network aid researchers in understanding behavioral dynamics of the society. Though there have been attempts to study social networks, they did not scale to process social networks on the scale of Twitter user-follower network. In this paper we uncovered some of the essential properties of the complete Twitter user-follower network. The properties include degree distribution, connectivity, strength of following relationships, clustering coefficient. Our investigations showed that the Twitter user-follower network follows power-law degree distribution. We found Twitter being a connected network. The strength of the relationships among users is distributed nearly uniform on the scale of 0.0 to 1.0. Nearly 90% of the users possess `0' clustering coefficient, which refers to the least possibility to find communities in the network. In addition to the listed properties, this study found communities of users with high clustering coefficient despite many users with low clustering coefficient. A sample of the communities is validated manually for accuracy. The validation proved that the communities are representing users of similar interests. The communities found from this work yields to friend recommendations, target based advertisements, etc.
Tabu-Search-Based Metaheuristic Resource-Allocation Algorithm for SVC Multicast Over Wireless Relay Networks

Scalable video coding (SVC) is a promising technology for video multicast to users with different available transmission capacities. On the other hand, adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) schemes provide an efficient way to better utilize wireless network resources. However, the resource-allocation problem to support SVC multicast over wireless relay networks is a challenging one due to the existence of relay stations (RSs). We simplify the resource-allocation problem in this paper by assuming that the modulation and coding schemes (MCSs) assigned to lower video layers have equal or better coverage area than that assigned to higher video layers at each base station (BS)/RS. We discuss the optimal solution to the simplified problem and its relation with the orienteering problem (OP). Then, we propose a tabu search (TS)-based metaheuristic algorithm for dealing with the problem, which has been proven to be an effective and efficient algorithm for OP. The simulation results reveal that the proposed algorithm outperforms other algorithms under the assumptions of two-hop wireless relay networks or separated transmissions for the relay and access links, and it maintains a good approximation to the optimal results.
Normative Personality Trait Development in Adulthood: A 6-Year Cohort-Sequential Growth Model

The present study investigated patterns of normative change in personality traits across the adult life span (19 through 74 years of age). We examined change in extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, openness to experience and honesty-humility using data from the first 6 annual waves of the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study (N = 10,416; 61.1% female, average age = 49.46). We present a cohort-sequential latent growth model assessing patterns of mean-level change due to both aging and cohort effects. Extraversion decreased as people aged, with the most pronounced declines occurring in young adulthood, and then again in old age. Agreeableness, indexed with a measure focusing on empathy, decreased in young adulthood and remained relatively unchanged thereafter. Conscientiousness increased among young adults then leveled off and remained fairly consistent for the rest of the adult life span. Neuroticism and openness to experience decreased as people aged. However, the models suggest that these latter effects may also be partially due to cohort differences, as older people showed lower levels of neuroticism and openness to experience more generally. Honesty-humility showed a pronounced and consistent increase across the adult life span. These analyses of large-scale longitudinal national probability panel data indicate that different dimensions of personality follow distinct developmental processes throughout adulthood. Our findings also highlight the importance of young adulthood (up to about the age of 30) in personality trait development, as well as continuing change throughout the adult life span.
Ending the HIV/AIDS Pandemic

The goal of ending the HIV/AIDS pandemic is theoretically achievable and would require addressing this global health catastrophe on individual and global levels by providing optimal prevention strategies and treatment regimens for individual persons living with or at risk for HIV, as well as ending the pandemic as an epidemiologic and global health phenomenon. However, from a practical standpoint, the pathway to ending the HIV/AIDS pandemic will be difficult and will require aggressive implementation of the biomedical research advances that have been made in the areas of treatment and prevention; development of additional tools, such as a moderately effective HIV vaccine; and attention to critical behavioral and social determinants. An end to the HIV/AIDS pandemic can be achieved only with provision of sustained and additional resources at the local, regional, national, and global levels.
A low-power wideband frequency doubler in 0.18 /spl mu/m CMOS

The paper presents a new design technique for a wideband, low-power implementation of a frequency doubler in a 0.18 /spl mu/m CMOS technology. The frequency doubler consists of two identical unbalanced source-coupled pairs, whose inputs are connected in parallel and its output taken single-ended. The design is based on the quadratic square-law characteristics of a MOS transistor in saturation. The frequency doubler operates at a low supply voltage of 1 V and consumes 0.985 mW of power at a 3 dB bandwidth of 4 GHz.
Effect of Temperature on Structural and Optical Properties of Chemically Deposited Tin Sulfide Thin Films Suitable for Photovoltaic Structures

SnS (tin sulphide) is of interest for use as an absorber layer and the wider energy band gap phases e.g. SnS2, Sn2S3 and Sn/S/O alloys of interest as Cd-free buffer layers for use in thin film solar cells. Thin films of tin sulphide have been deposited using CBD at three different bath temperatures (27, 35 and 45 °C) onto microscope glass substrates. The X ray diffraction (XRD) analysis of the deposited films reveled that all films has orthorhombic SnS phase as dominant one with preferred orientations along (111) direction. The temperature influence on the crystalline nature and the presence of other phases of SnS has been observed. The average grain size in the films determined from Scherers formula as well as from Williamson-Hall-plot method agrees well with each other. Energy dispersive X-ray (EDAX) analysis used to determine the film composition suggested that films are almost stoichiometric. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) reveals that deposited films are pinhole free and consists of uniformly distributed spherical grains. The optical analysis in the 200-1200 nm range suggests that direct allowed transitions are dominant in the absorption process in the films with variation in the band gap (~1.79 to ~2.05 eV) due to variation in deposition temperature.