Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Trends in Bacteremia in the Pre- and Post-Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy Era Among HIV-Infected Children in the US Perinatal AIDS Collaborative Transmission Study (1986–2004)

OBJECTIVE. HIV-infected children are at high risk for bacteremia. Highly active antiretroviral therapy has reduced rates of opportunistic infections; less is known about its effect on pediatric bacteremia rates. Thus, we sought to determine its impact on bacteremia incidence in HIV-infected children. METHODS. Children born during 1986–1998 were followed until 2004 in the Perinatal AIDS Collaborative Transmission Study. We determined the pre–and post–highly active antiretroviral therapy (before and after January 1, 1997) incidence of bacteremia among HIV-infected children and characterized the CD4% temporal declines and mortality among patients with and those without incident bacteremias. RESULTS. Among 364 children, 68 had 118 documented bacteremias, 97 before and 21 after January 1, 1997. Streptococcus pneumoniae constituted 56 (58%) pre–and 13 (62%) post–highly active antiretroviral therapy cases. The incidence rate ratio of bacteremias comparing post–versus pre–highly active antiretroviral therapy was 0.3 overall and 0.2, 0.2, and 0.4 among children aged 0 to 24, 25 to 48, and 49 to 72 months, respectively. Kaplan-Meier analysis for time to first bacteremia in children born during the pre–highly active antiretroviral therapy compared with the post–highly active antiretroviral therapy era revealed that 69% and 94%, respectively, remained bacteremia free at a median follow-up of 6 years. The Cox proportional hazards model also showed a significant reduction of bacteremias in the post–highly active antiretroviral therapy era, even after controlling for gender and race. Among children <6 years of age, those who experienced bacteremia had faster temporal CD4% decline than those who never had bacteremia. Survival analysis revealed that HIV-infected children with bacteremia experienced higher overall mortality when controlling for gender, race, and clinic site. CONCLUSIONS. A significant decrease in bacteremia incidence and a prolongation in the time to first bacteremia incident were seen in the post–highly active antiretroviral therapy era. Children with a steeper decline of CD4 T cells were more likely to develop bacteremia. Children who experienced bacteremia had an associated higher mortality than their bacteremia-free counterparts.
SUPERPOSED DEFORMATION IN THE NORTHERN SUEZ RIFT, EGYPT: RELEVANCE TO HYDROCARBONS EXPLORATION

Detailed subsurface studies of the northern part of the Suez Rift and adjacent areas indicate the superposition of two different episodes of deformation. During the earlier (Late Cretaceous) phase of deformation, folds with NE-SW oriented axes were formed in northern Egypt as a result of convergence between Africa and Eurasia and the closure of the Neotethys. During the later (early Miocene) deformation, NW-oriented normal faults were formed as a result of the opening of the Suez Rift.
Event-Based Computation of Motion Flow on a Neuromorphic Analog Neural Platform

Estimating the speed and direction of moving objects is a crucial component of agents behaving in a dynamic world. Biological organisms perform this task by means of the neural connections originating from their retinal ganglion cells. In artificial systems the optic flow is usually extracted by comparing activity of two or more frames captured with a vision sensor. Designing artificial motion flow detectors which are as fast, robust, and efficient as the ones found in biological systems is however a challenging task. Inspired by the architecture proposed by Barlow and Levick in 1965 to explain the spiking activity of the direction-selective ganglion cells in the rabbit's retina, we introduce an architecture for robust optical flow extraction with an analog neuromorphic multi-chip system. The task is performed by a feed-forward network of analog integrate-and-fire neurons whose inputs are provided by contrast-sensitive photoreceptors. Computation is supported by the precise time of spike emission, and the extraction of the optical flow is based on time lag in the activation of nearby retinal neurons. Mimicking ganglion cells our neuromorphic detectors encode the amplitude and the direction of the apparent visual motion in their output spiking pattern. Hereby we describe the architectural aspects, discuss its latency, scalability, and robustness properties and demonstrate that a network of mismatched delicate analog elements can reliably extract the optical flow from a simple visual scene. This work shows how precise time of spike emission used as a computational basis, biological inspiration, and neuromorphic systems can be used together for solving specific tasks.
SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS OF THE WEPP HILLSLOPE PROFILE EROSION MODEL

ABSTRACT Sensitivity analysis was performed on the hillslope profile erosion model developed by the USDA-Water Erosion Prediction Project. The erosion model calculates soil loss and sediment yield caused by rill and interrill erosion on complex shaped hillslope profiles. Sensitivity analysis of a physically based simulation model is used for assessing the rationality of the model, to provide insight into the overall physical system which the simulation model represents, and to help identify research needs. Changes in predicted soil erosion and sediment yield as a function of changes in soil, plant residue and canopy, hillslope topography, and hydrologic input variables were assessed. Dominant factors related to model response were precipitation, rill erodibility, rill residue cover, and rill hydraulic friction factors. Saturated hydraulic conductivity and interrill erodibility were moderately sensitive parameters. Other factors which had less influence on output were canopy height, interrill cover, soil bulk density, antecedent moisture, peak rainfall intensity, time to pe^ rainfall intensity, rill width and spacing, and sediment characteristics. Slope length, gradient, and slope shape effects on soil loss and sediment delivery were also discussed.
Pathology of Alcoholic Liver Diseases

The pathology of alcoholic liver disease has been reviewed in several recent papers [26,37,95] which present in balanced fashion the lesions seen commonly in man. The reasons to review the pathologic observations here again are (a) to supplement the presentations in this issue with the accepted m r phologic features, (b) to point out the few areas in the pathology where arguments prevail, some due to the sparsity of serial biopsy studies in man, (c) to describe in detail morphologic features not frequently emphasized, (d) to review cellular and biochemical aspects of fibrosis as a crucial factor in prognosis, progression and treatment, and (e) to refer to the association of alcoholic liver disease with other hepatic disorders. I t is accepted that human alcoholic liver disease has three major stages-steatosis, hepatitis, cirrhosis. To these have to be added (a) hepatomegaly without steatosis. (b) massive pernicious steatosis, (c) cholestasis, (d) the effects of pancreatitis, (e) iron overload disease, (f) features of chronic active hepatitis, and (g) hepatocellular carcinoma. Reference is also made to lesions in experimental animals, as well as, for differential-diagnostic purposes, to human conditions showing the features of alcoholic liver disease in the absence of established ethanol abuse. In several series of alcoholics in whom liver biopsies were performed, for instance on admission for delirium tremens [13,80], significant histologic changes, including steatosis, were absent, although hepatomegaly was noted. Several explanations for the hepatomegaly can be considered. One is hyperemia, since blood flow is raised in the acute alcoholic state although the vascular compartment may not be enlarged 11121. Another is increased smooth endoplasmic reticulum from induction of the microsoma1 biotransformation system by ethanol. This has been demonstrated in human volunteers [78, 1481. In analogy to hepatomegaly produced by inducing agents, e.g., phenobarbital, in experimental animals. the enlargement of the liver in alcoholics may represent a "working hypertrophy. " This concept is supported by increased activities of microsoma1 enzymes in the liver, also reflected in altered hepatic pharmacologic activity. This includes the still argued reduced half-life of administered drugs, as well as the increased urinary excretion of Dglucaric acid [6.63,64,110]. Finally. increased water content of hepatocytes, together with delicate perisinusoidal fibrosis, unrecognizable by light microscopy, may explain hepatomegaly. Portal hypertension of mild degree may thus be related to hepatocellular enlargement [82]. This has also been observed in rats on excess ethanol, in which perisinusoidal fibrosis is absent [ I l l ] .
An Integrated Approach to Contextual Face Detection

Face detection is, in general, based on content-based detectors. Nevertheless, the face is a non-rigid object with well defined relations with respect to the human body parts. In this paper, we propose to take benefit of the context information in order to improve contentbased face detections. We propose a novel framework for integrating multiple contentand context-based detectors in a discriminative way. Moreover, we develop an integrated scoring procedure that measures the ’faceness’ of each hypothesis and is used to discriminate the detection results. Our approach detects a higher rate of faces while minimizing the number of false detections, giving an average increase of more than 10% in average precision when comparing it to state-of-the art face detectors.
Bacteriocin production by spray‐dried lactic acid bacteria

Aims: Cell survival and antagonistic activity against Listeria innocua, Listeria monocytogenes and Staphylococcus aureus were investigated after spray‐drying three bacteriocin‐producing strains of lactic acid bacteria: Carnobacterium divergens, Lactobacillus salivarius and Lactobacillus sakei.
Dll4-Fc, an Inhibitor of Dll4-Notch Signaling, Suppresses Liver Metastasis of Small Cell Lung Cancer Cells through the Downregulation of the NF-κB Activity

Notch signaling regulates cell-fate decisions during development and postnatal life. Little is known, however, about the role of Delta-like-4 (Dll4)-Notch signaling between cancer cells, or how this signaling affects cancer metastasis. We, therefore, assessed the role of Dll4-Notch signaling in cancer metastasis. We generated a soluble Dll4 fused to the IgG1 constant region (Dll4-Fc) that acts as a blocker of Dll4-Notch signaling and introduced it into human small cell lung cancer (SCLC) cell lines expressing either high levels (SBC-3 and H1048) or low levels (SBC-5) of Dll4. The effects of Dll4-Fc on metastasis of SCLC were evaluated using a mouse model. Although Dll4-Fc had no effect on the liver metastasis of SBC-5, the number of liver metastasis inoculated with SBC-3 and H1048 cells expressing Dll4-Fc was significantly lower than that injected with control cells. To study the molecular mechanisms of the effects of Dll4-Fc on liver metastasis, a PCR array analysis was conducted. Because the expression of NF-κB target genes was affected by Dll4-Fc, we conducted an electrophoretic mobility shift assay and observed that NF-κB activities, both with and without stimulation by TNF-α, were downregulated in Dll4-Fc–overexpressing SBC-3 and H1048 cells compared with control cells. Moreover, Dll4-Fc attenuates, at least in part, the classical and alternative NF-κB activation pathway by reducing Notch1 signaling. These results suggest that Dll4-Notch signaling in cancer cells plays a critical role in liver metastasis of SCLC by regulating NF-κB signaling. Mol Cancer Ther; 11(12); 2578–87. ©2012 AACR.
In Vitro Susceptibilities of Rhodococcus equi and Other Common Equine Pathogens to Azithromycin, Clarithromycin, and 20 Other Antimicrobials

ABSTRACT The objective of this study was to determine in vitro activities of azithromycin (AZM), clarithromycin (CLR), and 20 other antimicrobial agents against Rhodococcus equi and other common equine bacterial pathogens. A total of 201 bacterial isolates from various equine clinical samples were examined. CLR was more active than AZM against R. equi, with MICs at which 90% of the isolates were inhibited of 0.12 and 1.0 μg/ml, respectively. Other antimicrobial agents highly active against at least 90% of R. equi isolates in vitro included rifampin, gentamicin, and imipenem. Both AZM and CLR showed good activity against beta-hemolytic streptococci and Staphylococcus spp. AZM was more active than other macrolides against Pasteurella spp. and Salmonella enterica.
Endogenous Life Cycle of Eimeria melanomytis (Apicomplexa: Eimeriidae) from the Dusky Rice Rat, Melanomys caliginosus (Rodentia: Cricetidae: Sigmodontinae) in Costa Rica

Abstract Endogenous stages of the life cycle of Eimeria melanomytis, infecting the peripheral epithelial cells of villi of the small intestine of experimentally infected young dusky rice rats, Melanomys caliginosus, were studied. Giemsa-stained mucosal scrapings and histological sections were examined for all the stages. Eimeria melanomytis has 3 generations of meronts (M), different in size, shape, and number of merozoites (m); and in size, shape, and location of the nuclei within the cytoplasm of the meronts. The 3 meront types, M1–M3, respectively, had 11–14 (m1), 7–10 (m2), and 20–30 (m3) merozoites. Macrogametocytes and microgametocytes, as well as macrogametes and microgametes, complete the sexual cycle forming the unsporulated oocysts. This parasite's endogenous development produced severe intestinal lesions in experimentally infected dusky rice rats.
Chapter 6. Sickness absence due to back and neck disorders

The scientific evidence on the causes for sick leave attributed to back and neck disorders was reviewed. Categories were established for acute, recurring, and chronic problems based on the duration of the sick leave period. Forty-eight articles were found to be relevant, whereof two were of high quality and 26 were of medium or low quality. Quality was assessed exclusively in relation to the aim of this systematic review. The results reveal limited published research on causes for sick leave from back and neck disorders. The generalisability of the findings is also limited since most of the subjects were men and employees in manufacturing industries. Women, white-collar workers, employees in the public sector (care, social services, schools, etc) were underrepresented in the studies. Hence, these groups and areas should be studied further to verify conclusions and enhance knowledge about the causes for sick leave from back and neck disorders. The following factors were found to have consistent, but limited, support as regards their influence on the risk for sick leave due to back and neck disorders: (a) heavy physical workload, bent or twisted working position, and low work satisfaction increases the risk for short-term and long-term sick leave; (b) specific back diagnoses and previous sick leave due to back disorders increases the risk for short-term and long-term sick leave; (c) female gender, smoking, exposure to vibration, and deficient social support were not found to significantly increase the risk for short-term and long-term sick leave; (d) self-reported pain and functional impairments were associated with a high risk for long-term sick leave; (e) longer employment periods reduced the risk for short-term sick leave; (f) perceived demands at work did not influence short-term sick leave; (g) female gender and higher age increases the risk for disability pension.
Application of the Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) Model to simulate streamflow in a PNW forest watershed

Assessment of water yields from watersheds into streams and rivers is critical to managing water supply and supporting aquatic life. Surface runoff typically contributes the most to peak discharge of a hydrograph while subsurface flow dominates the falling limb of hydrograph and baseflow contributes to streamflow from shallow unconfined aquifers primarily during the non-rainy season. The Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) model is a physically-based, distributed-parameter, continuous-simulation model. Recent improvements to WEPP include enhanced computation of evapotranspiration (ET) by incorporating the Penman-Monteith method into the model, and improved calculation of subsurface lateral flow by properly setting a restrictive layer and soil anisotropic ratios. These modifications have substantially improved the performance of the WEPP model for forested watersheds. In order to further enhance the model applicability, a baseflow component needs to be incorporated to adequately represent hydrologic conditions where significant quantities of ground water flow to streams.
Coal, climate and terrestrial productivity: the present and early Cretaceous compared

Abstract At the present time, rainfall sufficient and consistent enough for swamp formation and peat preservation occurs in the equatorial and temperate belts. Evaporite deposits and aeolian sandstones occur in the consistently dry areas, while the intermediate areas of seasonal rainfall tend not to have any of these climatically significant sediments. In the Cretaceous, the temperate belts are well represented by coals as today, but the tropical belt is not, and the same can be said of other Mesozoic and early Cenozoic periods. Instead, the tropics are represented by low diversity floras and sediments, like the Nubian Sandstone, which can be interpreted as representative of climates in which precipitation was markedly seasonal. The inference is that the Intertropical Convergence Zone was less latitudinally confined during the warmer ‘greenhouse’ periods, and that this might have been due to weaker polar fronts.
Design, Realization, and Experimental Characterization of an Admittance Cell for Low-Frequency Dielectric Permittivity Measurements on Liquids

In this paper, the design, the realization, and the experimental characterization of a parallel-plate admittance cell with no guard ring, to be used for low-frequency dielectric permittivity measurements of liquids, are presented. In contrast to guarded-terminal cells, the proposed admittance cell can easily be connected to any LCR meter (even a two-terminal one) employing traditional test fixtures for axial/radial devices. In addition, the fringing effect is compensated for through a correction factor (α) obtained from electromagnetic simulations of the structure, rather than through time-consuming experiments on a number of reference liquids or adopting approximated theoretical formulations. Finally, to verify the suitability of the fabricated admittance cell for low-frequency dielectric spectroscopy and to assess its metrological performance, a set of measurements was carried out on six reference nonionic liquid materials. The results show that the accuracy is comparable with the typical measurement accuracy achievable, at much higher costs, when using commercial solutions.
The uptake and costs of guidelines for stroke in a district of southern England.

STUDY OBJECTIVE: To assess the impact of guidelines for stroke management on the utilisation of services by patients and the cost consequences of implementation. DESIGN: Prospective audit. SETTING: District health authority in southern England. PATIENTS: A total of 468 live non-comatose stroke patients registered between November 1991 and May 1993. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: A comparison between the three, six month periods for investigations performed and rehabilitation received and their associated costs. RESULTS: The appropriateness of the use of investigations improved over time to between 88 and 92% except for computed tomography (CT) (24%). Younger, more severely impaired patients in a medical bed were more likely to have CT. Overall levels of rehabilitation were low. There was no change in use of physiotherapy (61% to 63%), a significant increase in occupational therapy (26% to 39%) and a non significant change in speech therapy (34% to 25%) over time. Guideline introduction caused a modest 23 Pounds increase in costs per patient in the 2nd six months and 41 Pounds in the 3rd six months but this sum could rise to 430 Pounds per patient if full implementation of the guidelines occurred which is still only around 13% of the costs of nursing care while in hospital. CONCLUSIONS: This 18 month aduit shows only modest changes in practice compared with guidelines, and overall levels of rehabilitation were low. The costs of full implementation seem considerable, but in fact constitute only a small proportion of nursing care costs.
All-time Releases of Mercury to the Atmosphere from Human Activities ' Data and Methods

b S Supporting Information ' INTRODUCTION Mercury (Hg) is a natural element found everywhere in the Earth's lithosphere. It is emitted naturally from the lithosphere to the atmosphere as gaseous elemental Hg 0 through processes of erosion and volcanism. The atmospheric lifetime of Hg 0 against deposition is ∼1 year, allowing transport on global scale. 1À4 Deposited Hg cycles through the surface environment in oceans and soils, can be re-emitted to the atmosphere, and is eventually buried in ocean sediments or stable terrestrial reservoirs. Human activity, including fossil-fuel combustion, mining, and industrial production, has greatly augmented the natural flux of Hg from the lithosphere to the atmosphere and from there to the surface environment. Present-day anthropogenic emissions are estimated to be about 2000 Mg yr À1 , as compared to 500 Mg yr À1 for the natural geogenic emissions. 5À9 The resulting accumulation of Hg in the environment has been documented from analysis of deposits in snow, 4,10 ice cores, 11 lake sediments, 12À15 and peat cores. Humans have disrupted the natural Hg cycle throughout their history in pursuit of riches, useful metals, and energy. It was 5000 years ago when humans first began digging into the Earth's crust to extract gold, silver, copper, coal, and other materials, all of which came laced with Hg. Since those ancient days, ever-increasing amounts of ever-varying materials have been extracted and refined, and large quantities of Hg have been liberated in the process. The time scale for return of anthropogenic Hg to sediments has been estimated to be ∼2000 years. 18,19 The accumulation of Hg in the global environment thus represents the legacy of historical emissions , with continuous augmentation from present-day human activities. Balancing the sources, sinks, and fluxes of Hg in different parts of the world at different times remains a modeling challenge, however, 18À25 and lack of knowledge of historical man-made contributions has inhibited progress. The purpose of this present work is to develop an estimate of the total amount of Hg released to the atmosphere due to human activities from the dawn of civilization until 2008, the most recent year for which activity data are available. For the period 1850À2008, we present detailed decadal trends for each major source type and each region of the world. Fourteen source types are included: copper, zinc, and lead smelting; artisanal and large-scale gold production; iron and steel manufacturing (separately); silver production ; …
Automatic Generation of Personal Virtual Museum

We have developed a Virtual Museum with realtime 3DCG capable of exhibiting arbitrary planar artifacts such as paintings which have been specified by a user. The pictures are collected from the Internet sites such as Wikimedia Commons by giving bookmarks by the user. The artifact images are displayed in its life size automatically aligned on the wall of the museum with picture frames and generated captions. This process is done based on metadata extracted using a technique called Web scraping to extract necessary information from the target Web sites. The museum space is realistically modeled with high resolution and sophisticated illumination where the user can walk through in the space. The system enables the users to create their own personalized museums with their favorite pictures exhibited in the realistic way.