Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Urolithiasis, Urinary Cancer, and Home Drinking Water Source in the United States Territory of Guam, 2006–2010

We reviewed patient records with a first-listed diagnosis of urolithiasis—also known as urinary tract or kidney stone disease, nephrolithiasis—upon discharge from Guam’s sole civilian hospital during 2006 to 2010 and urinary cancer mortality records from the Guam Cancer Registry for 1970 to 2009 to determine the source of municipal water supplied to the patients’ residence. The objective was to investigate a possible relationship between the sources of municipal water supplied to Guam villages and the incidence of urolithiasis and urinary cancer. We analyzed hospital discharge diagnoses of urolithiasis or renal calculi by calculating the incidence of first-mentioned discharge for urolithiasis or renal calculi and comparing rates across demographic or geographic categories while adjusting by age, sex, and ethnicity/race. We reviewed cancer registry records of urinary cancer deaths by patient residence. The annual incidence of hospitalization for urolithiasis was 5.22 per 10,000. Rates adjusted for sex or age exhibited almost no change. The rate of 9.83 per 10,000 among Chamorros was significantly higher (p < 0.05) than the rates among any other ethnic group or race. When villages were grouped by water source, rates of patients discharged with a first-listed diagnosis of urolithiasis, adjusted for ethnicity/race, were similar for villages using either well water (5.44 per 10,000) or mixed source water (5.39 per 10,000), and significantly greater than the rate for villages using exclusively reservoir water (1.35 per 10,000). No statistically significant differences were found between the water source or village of residence and urinary cancer mortality. Some Guam residents living in villages served completely or partly by deep well water high in calcium carbonate may be at increased risk for urolithiasis compared with residents living in villages served by surface waters. Although the risk appears to be highest in villagers of Chamorro ethnicity, residents should be aware of other contributing risk factors and steps to take to avoid developing this health problem.
Gender, socio-economic status, migration origin and neighbourhood of residence are barriers to HIV testing in the Paris metropolitan area

In France, numerous HIV patients still discover their HIV status as a result of AIDS-related symptoms. We investigated factors related to the absence of any HIV testing in men and women separately, using the data from the SIRS cohort, which includes 3023 households representative of the Paris metropolitan area in 2005. The failure to use HIV testing services was studied in relation to individual socio-economic and demographic factors as well as some psychosocial characteristics. The effect of the characteristics of the residential neighbourhood was also analysed using multilevel models. In multivariate analysis, the factors associated with no history of HIV testing in women were an age >44 years, the absence of any pregnancy during the previous 15 years, a low education level, unemployment, to have had no or only one steady relationship in one's lifetime, to have a religious affiliation and to live in a poor neighbourhood. In men, factors were age <30 or >44 years, to have had no or only one steady relationship during one's lifetime, to have a religious affiliation and to perceive oneself as being at low risk of HIV infection. An association according to the “migration origin” was observed among men: foreigners and French men born to (at least) one foreign parent were more likely not to have been tested than French men born to two French parents. We conclude that gender, social and territorial differences exist in HIV testing among people living in the Paris area. More systematic proposals of HIV test in primary care would be an effective policy to overcome these persistent social stratifications.
Road Vehicle Positioning at the Lane Level Based on GNSS Integration with Enhanced Maps

The determination of the vehicle position at the lane level is an important challenge in road navigation that can bring new possibilities for collision avoidance or advanced driver assistance systems. An interesting approach of this problem is the combination of global navigation satellite system (GNSS) with enhanced maps that include precise lane information. This paper presents a novel method for map-matching and positioning at the lane level based on the integration of GNSS and dead-reckoning measurements with a novel highly accurate road description. Experimental results in complex scenarios with multiple lanes show the suitability of the proposed method.
Quantifying the mechanical and hydrologic effects of riparian vegetation on streambank stability

Riparian vegetation strips are widely used by river managers to increase streambank stability, among other purposes. However, though the effects of vegetation on bank stability are widely discussed they are rarely quantified, and generally underemphasize the importance of hydrologic processes, some of which may be detrimental. This paper presents results from an experiment in which the hydrologic and mechanical effects of four riparian tree species and two erosion‐control grasses were quantified in relation to bank stability. Geotechnical and pore‐water pressure data from streambank plots under three riparian covers (mature trees, clump grasses and bare/cropped turf grass) were used to drive the ARS bank stability model, and the resulting factor of safety (Fs) was broken down into its constituent parts to assess the contribution (beneficial or detrimental) of individual hydrologic and mechanical effects (soil moisture modification, root reinforcement and surcharge). Tree roots were found to increase soil strength by 2–8 kPa depending on species, while grass roots contributed 6–18 kPa. Slope stability analysis based on data collected during bank failures in spring 2000 (following a very dry antecedent period) shows that the mechanical effects of the tree cover increased Fs by 32 per cent, while the hydrologic effects increased Fs by 71 per cent. For grasses the figures were 70 per cent for mechanical effects and a reduction of Fs by 10 per cent for the hydrologic effects. However, analysis based on bank failures in spring 2001 (following a wetter than average antecedent period) showed the mechanical effects of the tree cover to increase Fs by 46 per cent, while hydrologic effects added 29 per cent. For grasses the figures were 49 per cent and −15 per cent respectively. During several periods in spring 2001 the hydrologic effects of the tree cover reduced bank stability, though this was always offset by the stabilizing mechanical effects. The results demonstrate the importance of hydrologic processes in controlling streambank stability, and highlight the need to select riparian vegetation based on hydrologic as well as mechanical and ecological criteria. Published in 2002 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Leveraging Collection Structure in Information Retrieval With Applications to Search in Conversational Social Media

Social media collections are becoming increasingly important in the everyday life of Internet users. Recent statistics show that sites hosting social media and community-generated content account for five of the top ten most visited websites in the United States [4], are visited regularly by a broad cross-section of Internet users [61, 67, 115] and host an enormous quantity of information [119, 48, 9]. The increasing importance and size of these collections requires that information retrieval systems pay special attention to these collections, and in particular pay attention to those aspects of social media collections that set them apart from the general web. Social media collections are interesting and challenging from the perspective of information retrieval systems. These collections are dynamic, with content being constantly added, removed and modified. These collections are time-sensitive, with the most recently added content often viewed as the most significant. These collections are richly structured, with authorship information, often threading structure and higher-level topical classifications. Although this type of collection structure is frequently critical for comprehension, it is rarely exploited in retrieval algorithms. This thesis investigates the hypothesis that we can improve retrieval performance in these collections by leveraging this type of structure. To evaluate this hypothesis, we present an exploration of search in several social media collections: blogs and online forums. We demonstrate the utility of leveraging collection structure in three different retrieval tasks: blog post search, blog feed search, and forum thread search. The techniques explored throughout these experiments include evaluating the representation granularity of collections of documents, and methods to incorporate content an author has written throughout the collection. Our results show that, although the retrieval tasks and techniques to leverage this type of collection structure are varied, in many cases substantial and significant retrieval quality improvements can be realized by leveraging this collection structure.
Operational Transformation for Real-Time Synchronization of Cloud Storage

This paper presents an Operational Transformation (OT) technique, named CSOT (Cloud Storage OT), that supports real-time file synchronization in cloud storage and achieve well-defined consistent combined-effects of concurrent file manipulation operations. We have developed and used a comprehensive suite of concurrency testing cases to derive and compare the results produced by CSOT and three industrial cloud storage systems and made interesting discoveries.
The Role of Ethylene in Plant Responses to K+ Deficiency

Potassium is an essential macronutrient that is involved in regulating turgor, in driving plant growth, and in modulating enzyme activation. The changes in root morphology, root function, as well as cellular and molecular responses to low potassium conditions have been studied in the model plant Arabidopsis and in other plant species. In Arabidopsis ethylene plays a key role in roots in the transduction of the low potassium signal, which results in altered root function and growth. The first clues regarding the role of ethylene were detected through transcriptional profiling experiments showing changes in the expression of genes related to ethylene biosynthesis. Later it was shown that ethylene plays a foundational early role in the many responses observed in Arabidopsis. One of the most striking findings is the link between ethylene and reactive oxygen species (ROS) production, which is part of the signal transduction pathway in K+ deprived plants. This mini-review will summarize what is known about the role ethylene plays in response to low potassium in Arabidopsis and other plant species.
The addicted brain: understanding the neurophysiological mechanisms of addictive disorders

Citation: Herman MA and Roberto M (2015) The addicted brain: understanding the neurophysiological mechanisms of addictive disorders. The consumption of chemical substances that produce transient feelings of euphoria or pleasure and the development of dependence on those substances by a subset of individuals is as old as the human race itself. Currently, the cost of addiction to illicit drugs in the United States is more than 600 billion dollars a year (National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2015), with profound social and economic impacts. Despite the prevalence and long history of addiction, it is still not clear what neurophysiological processes are involved in the development and progression of addic-tive disorders. The challenge of current and future studies is to understand how alcohol and drugs alter specific brain systems to influence tolerance and/or lead to the addicted state with the overarching goal of identifying vulnerable populations and improving on current treatment strategies. Drug addiction is defined as a chronic relapsing disorder that is comprised of three stages: pre-occupation/anticipation, binge/intoxication, and withdrawal/negative affect. These three stages are conceptualized as feeding into one other, becoming more intense over time, and ultimately leading to the pathological state known as addiction. Different drugs produce distinct patterns of addiction that engage different components of the addiction cycle, depending on dose and length of use. As an individual moves from being a " user " to " abuser " and then to " addicted " a shift occurs from positive reinforcement driving the motivated behavior to negative reinforcement driving the motivated behavior. Importantly, the progression of drug addiction involves alterations in normal brain circuitry that result in long-lasting drug-induced neuroplastic changes (Koob and Volkow, 2010). ) underlie the pathological changes at each of these stages (Figure 1). A better understanding of the main cellular mechanisms and circuits affected by chronic drug use and the influence of environmental stressors, developmental trajectories, and genetic factors on these mechanisms will lead to a better understanding of the addictive process and to more effective therapeutic strategies for the prevention and treatment of substance-use disorders. In the special topic Frontiers journal " the neurobiology of addictive disorders, " we provide important breakthroughs on the actions of commonly abused addictive substances (i.e., alcohol, cocaine, nicotine, cannabinoids) on the function of neuronal circuits. Alcohol and drugs of abuse represent unique experimental challenges as they often engage multiple molecular and intracellular systems in distinct brain regions. Current …
Exploring the effect of ICT solutions on GHG emissions in 2030

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are expected to have a great potential to reduce the GHG emissions across society, however limited data on actual reductions have been published so far. Based on available data on real GHG emission reductions realized by different ICT solutions, this paper explores the possible reductions globally within a 2030 timeframe. An average of the future scenarios for 2030 made by United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been modified by applying GHG reduction potentials for different ICT solutions in sectors like energy, buildings, travel and transport. In addition, a comparison with the SMARer2020 forecast is included. The results indicates a total GHG emission reduction potential due to the studied ICT solutions of about 8 Gtonnes CO2e or 12% of the global GHG emissions in 2030 in a high reduction potential scenario, and 4 Gtonnes CO2e in 2030 or 6% in a medium reduction potential scenario. If also estimated potentials related to agriculture are added based on the SMARTer 2020 study the potentials increase to 10 Gtonnes CO2e (15%) and 5 Gtonnes CO2e (8%) respectively. This corresponds to reduction potentials for the different ICT solution categories of 1 to 4%. Keywords—ICT, ICT solution, networked society, enabling potential, macro-level, GHG emissions reductions
Stress-aware design methodology

Sub-90 nm CMOS circuits contain a significant amount of mechanical stress in active silicon. This stress is generated by a variety of intentional and unintentional stress sources. Shallow trench isolation is an example of an unintentional stress source, whereas embedded SiGe in the source and drain is an example of an intentional stress source. The amount of stress in each transistor in the circuit depends on the shape of its diffusion area as well as the density of the adjacent layout. The resulting non-uniform stress distribution alters individual transistor performance and, ultimately, the behavior of the circuit. In this paper, several examples are used to illustrate this effect based on design rules for the 45 nm technology node. A number of alternative approaches are suggested for partially suppressing or completely eliminating the stress-induced performance variations
Leveraging Task Contexts for Managing Developers ’ Coordination

We introduce a new method for determining work dependencies that are antecedents to coordination requirements among members of a software development organization. Our method leverages records of individual activity associated with development tasks, sometimes called task context, which can be collected by monitoring the actions carried out by a developer during work sessions within her development environment. We describe an algorithm that measures similarity between task contexts and produces a measure of closeness between the corresponding developers. By means of a field study on an open source project that routinely records task context data, we show how the closeness relationship accurately determines the same coordination requirements detected using traditional methods. Our method also provides a temporal advantage, since it uses “live” instead of historical data. We explain how these findings make coordination requirements actionable for management-, designand team-related decisions as the development work is underway. This moves research in this area from post-mortem analysis to proactive detection of coordination requirements.
Face recognition in video using Dempster-Shafer theory

We propose a new approach based on the Dempster-Shafer theory to increase identification performance of character faces in real films. We use a frame-based approach where faces are detected and identified independently in each frame without taking into account any temporal information. Statistical evidence about character faces is accumulated within the shot. Tests on documentary films show promising results both in terms of high detection and low false alarm rates.
The role of lysosomes in the degradation of myofibrillar and non-myofibrillar proteins in heart.

Lysosomes are presumed to be involved in protein degradation in heart, but their exact role is poorly understood. Several interventions that are known to alter cardiac proteolysis (e.g., insulin) also produce lysosomal changes that might account for the observed changes in protein degradation; but many other interventions appear not to do so. Agents that interfere with lysosomal function (e.g., sucrose, chloroquine, methyladenine, leupeptin) cause a 25% reduction in the rate of degradation of total protein in fetal mouse hearts in organ culture; however, in the same hearts the rate of degradation of myosin and other myofibrillar proteins remains unchanged. Thus, it appears that lysosomes are involved in cardiac proteolysis, but may not play a rate-limiting or regulatory role in many circumstances. The regulation of proteolysis by insulin appears to involve non-lysosomal pathways in addition to any lysosomal alterations it may cause. Furthermore, the initial cleavage of myofibrillar proteins appears no to be dependent on normal lysosomal function.
Relación entre plasticidad y ejecución cognitiva: el potencial de aprendizaje en ancianos con deterioro cognitivo

Old age is an extended period of life characterized by major inter-individual differences and different life trajectories which have been synthesized in three modalities of ageing: usual, pathological and successful (Rowe and Khan, 1997). Analysis of the variables associated with these patterns and with cognitive evolution in old age has generated a large number of studies, many of which involve the analysis of learning potential or cognitive plasticity as an assessment tool which enables us to establish differences between old adults with greater precision than static assessments (Schreiber and Schneider, 2006). The present study analysed the performance of an initial sample of 312 old adults with different cognitive profiles in the AVLT-PA learning potential assessment task, with the objective of determining which components of the task may be used to classify participants most correctly, and which may be used to predict the long-term cognitive evolution of old adults. Results indicate that the most appropriate marker of the AVLT-PA task for classifying old adults and determining their cognitive evolution is the Delayed Recall measure.
Periprocedural Bleeding and Thromboembolic Events With Dabigatran Compared With Warfarin: Results From the Randomized Evaluation of Long-Term Anticoagulation Therapy (RE-LY) Randomized Trial

Background— Dabigatran reduces ischemic stroke in comparison with warfarin; however, given the lack of antidote, there is concern that it might increase bleeding when surgery or invasive procedures are required. Methods and Results— The current analysis was undertaken to compare the periprocedural bleeding risk of patients in the Randomized Evaluation of Long-Term Anticoagulation Therapy (RE-LY) trial treated with dabigatran and warfarin. Bleeding rates were evaluated from 7 days before until 30 days after invasive procedures, considering only the first procedure for each patient. A total of 4591 patients underwent at least 1 invasive procedure: 24.7% of patients received dabigatran 110 mg, 25.4% received dabigatran 150 mg, and 25.9% received warfarin, P=0.34. Procedures included: pacemaker/defibrillator insertion (10.3%), dental procedures (10.0%), diagnostic procedures (10.0%), cataract removal (9.3%), colonoscopy (8.6%), and joint replacement (6.2%). Among patients assigned to either dabigatran dose, the last dose of study drug was given 49 (35–85) hours before the procedure on comparison with 114 (87–144) hours in patients receiving warfarin, P<0.001. There was no significant difference in the rates of periprocedural major bleeding between patients receiving dabigatran 110 mg (3.8%) or dabigatran 150 mg (5.1%) or warfarin (4.6%); dabigatran 110 mg versus warfarin: relative risk, 0.83; 95% CI, 0.59 to 1.17; P=0.28; dabigatran 150 mg versus warfarin: relative risk, 1.09; 95% CI, 0.80 to 1.49; P=0.58. Among patients having urgent surgery, major bleeding occurred in 17.8% with dabigatran 110 mg, 17.7% with dabigatran 150 mg, and 21.6% with warfarin: dabigatran 110 mg; relative risk, 0.82; 95% CI, 0.48 to 1.41; P=0.47; dabigatran 150 mg: relative risk, 0.82; 95% CI, 0.50 to 1.35; P=0.44. Conclusions— Dabigatran and warfarin were associated with similar rates of periprocedural bleeding, including patients having urgent surgery. Dabigatran facilitated a shorter interruption of oral anticoagulation. Clinical Trial Registration— URL: http://www.clinicaltrials. gov. Unique identifier: NCT00262600.