Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The safety profile of monoclonal antibodies for chronic lymphocytic leukemia

ABSTRACT Introduction: Monoclonal antibodies (MoAbs), non-chemotherapeutic agents targeting the antigens present on chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) lymphocytes, are being implemented increasingly more often as treatment options. Areas covered: This article reviews the similarities and differences in the structure, mechanism of action, efficacy and safety profile of commercially-available MoAbs and prevents new agents potentially useful for CLL treatment. Publications in English before June 2016 were surveyed on the MEDLINE database for articles. Proceedings of the American Society of Hematology held during the last five years were also included. Expert opinion: MoAbs, especially those targeting CD20, are highly effective biological options for first-line and salvage treatment of CLL, particularly in chemoimmunotherapy, and possibly also as maintenance therapy. Treatment with MoAbs is associated with reduced risk of such adverse events as cytopenias, infections and secondary neoplasias and is generally well tolerated. Depending on antibody type, the most common adverse events are usually transient and limited to grade 1 and 2 infusion-related reactions. In addition to commercially available MoAbs, several other antibodies exist which are targeted against different antigens studied in the clinical trials.
Is long-term prediction in membranous nephropathy (MGN) better than the weatherman's forecast capacity?

The natural history of membranous nephropathy (MGN) was first described in the late 1960s by Pollock et al. ([1][1]). This paper clearly identified that only 40%–50% of patients will progress over time and up to 30% will have a spontaneous remission. This natural history has both vexed and
Social media in business strategy: the learning and development implications

Purpose – This article aims to consider why it is becoming so important for businesses to use social media, and to explore the transformational impacts on organizations and the implications for learning and development. Social media is changing the nature of business and introducing new learning and development needs. These are not confined to the specific skills required to design and implement social media strategies: in many companies, more extensive transformations of culture and organizational systems are necessary to support the new ways of working that are being driven by social media usage. Design/methodology/approach – The findings are based on a combination of literature review and our own research and experience across hundreds of projects. Findings – An organizational change readiness assessment exercise can be used to determine whether a company has the right types of skills and expertise and an appropriate organizational environment to maximize the benefits of social media participation, and.
Benefit Segmentation of Gutkha Market: A Study in the State of Gujarat

Purpose: The Research Question examined in this paper is why people consume gutkha? Is there any specific perceived benefit from consumption? If yes, could this help identify various segments of gutkha consumers for evolving some more focused social marketing strategy to wean people away from gutkha addiction. Design, Methodology and Approach: As gutkha addiction is a social problem severely affecting the health and well-being of the society, a comprehensive study, involving 1400 respondents was conducted in the state of Gujarat. A two stage cluster sampling procedure was adopted for data collection. Findings: The cluster analysis procedure using SPSS package helped identifying three distinct segments of gutkha consumers. The first cluster comprising about 43 percent respondent was named as ‘Compulsives’ because they were found to be strong addicts, unable to live without gutkha. The second segment comprising about 30 percent respondents included mostly young greenhorn ‘Imitators’ chewing gutkha for fun, excitement or just for time pass. The third group was labeled as ‘Socialisers’ because they considered gutkha consumption as status symbol and a means of socialisation. As consumption motives are different, it was concluded that different de-marketing strategies are needed for the three aforesaid segments.
Super-resolution sprite with foreground removal

Sprite is an image constructed from video clips and is also a medium for multimedia applications. An automatic sprite generation with foreground removal and super-resolution is proposed in this paper. To remove the foreground objects, each pixel-value on the sprite is iteratively updated by the value with maximum appearance probability on temporal and spatial distribution. By storing the half-pixel, superresolution sprite has less blurring-defect from source video. In the result, the generated sprite preserves the complete scenes of background and has higher image quality, and it can used to increase the visual quality in current sprite applications and also employed to facilitate video segmentation.
An attitudinal model of technology-based self-service: Moderating effects of consumer traits and situational factors

The accelerating growth in technology-based self-service today is giving rise to questions about the acceptance of such forms of service delivery by all kinds of consumers and under different situational contexts. This study investigates the moderating effects of consumer traits and situational factors on the relationships within a core attitudinal model for technology-based self-service. An experimental design is used with perceived waiting time and social anxiety (through perceived crowding) as the situational treatments. Relevant consumer traits for technology-based self-service are examined and include inherent novelty seeking, self-efficacy with respect to technology self-consciousness, and the need for interaction with an employee. The results lend support to the hypothesized moderating effects. Implications for service practitioners as well as directions for future research are discussed.
Plasma pharmacokinetics and CYP3A12-dependent metabolism of c-kit inhibitor imatinib in dogs

Imatinib is a highly selective tyrosine kinase inhibitor, and is used for the treatment of chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML) and gastrointestinal stromal tumours (GISTs) in humans. The aim of this study is to determine the in vitro and in vivo pharmacokinetics of imatinib in dogs and which cytochrome P450 (CYPs) contribute to its metabolism. Imatinib was administered orally or intravenously to dogs and the time of the peak concentration (Tmax) of imatinib was 4–9 h. The mean half-life was 622 ± 368 min, and the AUC was 1256 ± 809 µM * min after oral administration. The range of C0 of intravenously injected dogs was 12–24 µM. The half-life and AUC after intravenous injection were 206 ± 112 min and 1026 ± 371 µM * min, respectively. Recombinant system of dog CYP3A12 and CYP2C21 showed that CYP3A12 contributed to the metabolism of imatinib. The inhibition of CYP3A-dependent activity using a rat anti-CYP3A antibody or ketoconazole revealed that CYP3A12 plays a major role in the metabolism of imatinib in dog liver microsomes.
Machine Learning for Knowledge Extraction from PHR Big Data

Cloud computing, Internet of things (IOT) and NoSQL database technologies can support a new generation of cloud-based PHR services that contain heterogeneous (unstructured, semi-structured and structured) patient data (health, social and lifestyle) from various sources, including automatically transmitted data from Internet connected devices of patient living space (e.g. medical devices connected to patients at home care). The patient data stored in such PHR systems constitute big data whose analysis with the use of appropriate machine learning algorithms is expected to improve diagnosis and treatment accuracy, to cut healthcare costs and, hence, to improve the overall quality and efficiency of healthcare provided. This paper describes a health data analytics engine which uses machine learning algorithms for analyzing cloud based PHR big health data towards knowledge extraction to support better healthcare delivery as regards disease diagnosis and prognosis. This engine comprises of the data preparation, the model generation and the data analysis modules and runs on the cloud taking advantage from the map/reduce paradigm provided by Apache Hadoop.
Replication-defective mutants of herpes simplex virus (HSV) induce cellular immunity and protect against lethal HSV infection

Live viruses and live virus vaccines induce cellular immunity more readily than do inactivated viruses or purified proteins, but the mechanism by which this process occurs is unknown. A trivial explanation would relate to the ability of live viruses to spread and infect more cells than can inactivated virus. We have used live but replication-defective mutants to investigate this question. Our studies indicate that the immune responses of mice to live virus differ greatly from the responses to inactivated virus even when the virus does not complete a replicative cycle. Further, these studies indicate that herpes simplex virus-specific T-cell responses can be generated by infection with replication-defective mutant viruses. These data indicate that the magnitude of the cellular immunity to herpes simplex virus may be proportional to the number or quantity of different viral gene products expressed by an immunizing virus.
Image, politique et communication sous la Cinquième République

La television a substantiellement modifie les termes de la communication politique en operant une personnalisation des campagnes. La candidature de Jean Lecanuet, de ce point de vue, represente une rupture, tant en raison du score obtenu (sa candidature etait initialement creditee de 3 % des suffrages) que par le role attribue par le centriste au conseil en communication. Le primat accorde a l’image a en revanche eu tendance a affadir le debat politique, en faisant passer le contenu au second plan. Il fallait seduire et non plus convaincre. Faut-il des lors deplorer cet affadissement et denoncer l’Etat spectacle ? La question se pose en termes plus complexes. Les grands debats televises ont en effet contribue a animer la vie politique jusqu’aux annees 1980. Mais les hommes politiques ont surtout appris a se servir de la communication televisuelle, preferant aux emissions contradictoires les passages au JT, s’entourant de conseillers en communication, organisant avec un soin meticuleux les grandes confrontations aux elections presidentielles. Avec des resultats inegaux. Les politiciens se font plus rarement pieger. Mais le cout des campagnes s’eleve, pour un gain limite : rien ne dit, en effet, que la television ait influence le vote des Francais.
The effect of aminoguanidine against cholestatic liver injury in rats

We investigated the protective role of aminoguanidine (AG) in rat liver injury induced by chronic biliary obstruction. Secondary biliary cirrhosis was induced by bile duct ligation for 14 days. Swiss albino rats were divided into three groups: Common bile duct ligated (CBDL) rats; Group A, CBDL rats treated with AG as Group B and simple laparotomy group known as the Sham group; Group C. Group B received 200 mg/kg of AG intraperitoneally daily throughout 14 days. The present data showed decreased gama glutamyl transferase (GGT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), bilirubin and alanine aminotransferase (ALT) levels in the AG treated rats, when compared with CBDL rats (p < 0.05). In the AG treated rats, tissue levels of malondialdehyde (MDA) were significantly lower than that in CBDL rats (p < 0.001). Although the levels of glutathione (GSH) in AG treated rats were higher and myeloperoxidase (MPO) were lower than that in CBDL rats, the difference was not statistically significant (p > 0.05). The levels of interleukin‐1α (IL‐1α) and tumor necrosis factor‐α (TNF‐α) were significantly lower and although the levels of interleukin‐6 (IL‐6) were lower in AG treated rats than that in CBDL rats, the difference was not statistically significant. Administration of AG in the rats with biliary obstruction resulted in inhibition of ductular proliferation and portal inflammation. The present study demonstrates that intraperitoneal administration of AG in CBDL rats maintains antioxidant defenses, reduces liver oxidative and cytokine damage and ductular proliferation and portal inflammation. This effect of AG may be useful in the preservation of liver injury in cholestasis. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Invasive pneumococcal disease in Phramongkutklao Hospital 2004-2008: clinical data, serotype distribution and antimicrobial resistance patterns.

OBJECTIVE To describe the clinical course, serotype distribution and antimicrobial resistance patterns of invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD) cases in a public hospital. MATERIAL AND METHOD Retrospective review of IPD cases occurring from January 2004 through December 2008 was performed. Antibiotic susceptibility testing and serotyping were performed for available isolates. RESULTS Fifty one IPD cases occurred during the study period, of which 47 had medical records available for review. The majority of cases occurred among children under 5 years of age (23.4%) and adults over 60 years of age (36.1%). Underlying diseases were identified in 72.3% of patients. Fifty-three percent of cases were associated with pneumonia, while 17% had meningitis, and 15% had isolated bacteremia. Serotype could be determined for 15 (31.9%) isolates, and 6B was most common. Based on current antibiotic susceptibility breakpoints for meningitis, 4 of the 7 available isolates from meningitis cases were penicillin resistant and one had reduced susceptibility to cefotaxime. Among non-meningitis isolates, 96.7% were penicillin susceptible and 3.3% had intermediate susceptibility to penicillin. Overall case fatality proportion was 19%. CONCLUSION At this tertiary care hospital in Bangkok, IPD has disproportionately affected young children and the elderly. High rates of penicillin resistance among meningitis cases, the most severe form of IPD, underscore the need of appropriate treatment strategies and vaccine usage.
Sentiment analysis of Chinese micro-blog using semantic sentiment space model

Recently public, government, company and other forms of communities are extremely vocal about their opinions and perceptions on their appeals, policies and products on the micro-blog. Sentiment analysis on micro-blog data has attracted much attention for its application on opinion polarity, classification, summarization and query. However, the related state-of-the-art approaches for sentiment analysis are mainly focused on Twitter data. They don't work well with Chinese micro-blog for word segmentation, feature word combination and feature extraction problems. In this paper, we propose to improve Chinese micro-blog sentiment analysis performance by 1) use sliding window feature combination detection and sentiment phrase dictionary combined method to address semantic recognition problems on metaphor, adversative, multiple negation and irony; 2)propose ten Chinese micro-blog features for sentiment analysis; 3)find most impactful feature combination for the sentiment classifier. Experimental results show that our semantic sentiment space model is helpful to Chinese micro-blog sentiment classification and our basic feature combination outperforms the traditional classification algorithm TD-IDF and KNN on standard measurement.
The Palestinians in Israel: The Challenge of the Indigenous Group Politics in the ‘Jewish State'

The Palestinians in Israel are those Palestinians who remained on their land during the Nakba in 1948, and later became Israeli citizens. The political discourse of Palestinians in Israel has moved during the last two decades, since the Oslo agreement, from the individual achievements level to the politics of rights on the collective level, and to the politics of identity. This discourse is considered of utmost importance in the politics of indigenous marginalized groups within colonial entities. Similarly, it represents a change in the evolution of the political discourse of Palestinians in Israel throughout the last two decades. In the following article we will analyze the main political changes that occurred among the Palestinian minority in Israel since 1948 and the main challenges that they raise for the Palestinians in facing the “Jewish state”.
Continuous Time Cascade Sigma Delta Modulator without digital cancellation filters

This work presents a design procedure for Continuous Time (CT) Cascade Sigma Delta Modulators (SDMs) using the Sturdy approach for Discrete Time Modulators [1], where the usual Digital Cancellation Filters are removed. The error cancellation mechanism is affected by excess loop delay in the CT approach. Special design considerations are derived and a specific design methodology is proposed. A 10-MHz bandwidth and 80-dB peak SNR example is designed and simulated using a 2–1 topology.
Prolonged antibiotics for purulent bronchiectasis.

BACKGROUND The vicious cycle hypothesis for bronchiectasis predicts that bacterial colonisation of the respiratory tract perpetuates inflammatory change. This damages the mucociliary escalator preventing bacterial clearance and allowing the persistence of pro-inflammatory mediators. Conventional treatment with physiotherapy and intermittent antibiotics are felt to improve the condition of bronchiectasis patients although there are no conclusive data showing that these interventions influence the natural history of the condition. Various strategies have been tried to interrupt this cycle of infection and inflammation and one of these is to prolong antibiotic treatment in the hope of allowing the airway mucosa to heal. OBJECTIVES This systematic review brings together the evidence and where possible presents a meta-analysis of the data available to answer the question 'Does treatment with prolonged courses of antibiotics influence the outcome in purulent bronchiectasis? ' SEARCH STRATEGY The Cochrane Airways Group trials register and reference lists of identified articles were searched. SELECTION CRITERIA Randomised trials looking at the use of prolonged antibiotic therapy in the treatment of bronchiectasis. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS Trial quality was assessed and data extraction was carried out by the reviewers independently. Study authors were contacted for missing information. MAIN RESULTS 447 abstracts were found and reviewed for suitability. Six trials were included and 302 patients were randomised amongst these trials. 40% of the patients were contributed by one trial. Antibiotics were given for between 4 weeks and one year. There were 40 withdrawals due to treatment failure and intolerable side effects. Only limited meta-analysis was possible due to the diversity of the trials. Response rates showed significant effects in favour of prolonged antibiotic treatment (Peto OR (95% CI), 3.37 (1.60 to 7.09)). Conversely for exacerbation rates there was no significant difference between prolonged antibiotics and placebo (Peto OR (95% CI), 0.96 (0.27 to 3.46)). For withdrawals there was no significant difference between treatment and placebo management (Peto OR (95% CI), 1.06 (0.42 to 2.65)). Data for lung function showed no significant benefit in favour of antibiotic treatment (% predicted FEV1, WMD (95% CI) -1.05 (-6.93 to 4.83)). REVIEWER'S CONCLUSIONS The evidence available shows a small benefit for the use of prolonged antibiotics in the treatment of bronchiectasis. This review is limited by the diversity of the trials. Further randomised controlled trials with adequate power and standardised end points are required.
Effect of Pt Doping on B2-Phase Ordering Temperature of Co-Based Heusler Alloy: An Ab Initio Study

In this paper, we propose a Pt-doping method to effectively decrease the phase transformation temperature of Co2FeAl0.5Si0. 5 (CFAS) from A2 phase to B2 phase based on first-principle calculations. It has been demonstrated that the Pt atom tends to reside in the Si site to lower the system free energy. Meanwhile, the spin polarization can be reserved as 100% after Pt doping in a proper concentration less than 3.125%. Transition state search shows that the atomic diffusion barrier of Pt-doped CFAS is lower than that of the CFAS. Therefore, Pt doping in CFAS is a possible method to obtain ordered B2 phase at low annealing temperature.
The influence of computational assumptions on analysing abdominal aortic aneurysm haemodynamics

The variation in computational assumptions for analysing abdominal aortic aneurysm haemodynamics can influence the desired output results and computational cost. Such assumptions for abdominal aortic aneurysm modelling include static/transient pressures, steady/transient flows and rigid/compliant walls. Six computational methods and these various assumptions were simulated and compared within a realistic abdominal aortic aneurysm model with and without intraluminal thrombus. A full transient fluid–structure interaction was required to analyse the flow patterns within the compliant abdominal aortic aneurysms models. Rigid wall computational fluid dynamics overestimates the velocity magnitude by as much as 40%−65% and the wall shear stress by 30%−50%. These differences were attributed to the deforming walls which reduced the outlet volumetric flow rate for the transient fluid–structure interaction during the majority of the systolic phase. Static finite element analysis accurately approximates the deformations and von Mises stresses when compared with transient fluid–structure interaction. Simplifying the modelling complexity reduces the computational cost significantly. In conclusion, the deformation and von Mises stress can be approximately found by static finite element analysis, while for compliant models a full transient fluid–structure interaction analysis is required for acquiring the fluid flow phenomenon.
Prognostic value and agreement of achieving lactate clearance or central venous oxygen saturation goals during early sepsis resuscitation.

OBJECTIVES Lactate clearance (LC) and central venous oxygen saturation (ScvO(2)) have been proposed as goals of early sepsis resuscitation. The authors sought to determine the agreement and prognostic value of achieving ScvO(2) or LC goals in septic shock patients undergoing emergency department (ED)-based early resuscitation. METHODS This was a preplanned analysis of a multicenter ED randomized controlled trial of early sepsis resuscitation targeting three variables: central venous pressure, mean arterial pressure, and either ScvO(2) or LC. Inclusion criteria included suspected infection, two or more systemic inflammation criteria, and either systolic blood pressure of <90 mm Hg after intravenous fluid bolus or lactate level of >4 mmol/L. Both ScvO(2) and LC were measured simultaneously. The ScvO(2) goal was defined as ≥70%. Lactate was measured at enrollment and every 2 hours until the goal was reached or up to 6 hours. LC goal was defined as a decrease of ≥10% from initial measurement. The primary outcome was in-hospital mortality. RESULTS A total of 203 subjects were included, with an overall mortality of 19.7%. Achievement of the ScvO(2) goal only was associated with a mortality rate of 41% (9/22), while achievement of the LC goal only was associated with a mortality rate of 8% (2/25; proportion difference = 33%; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 9% to 55%). No agreement was found between goal achievement (κ = -0.02), and exact test for matched pairs demonstrated no significant difference between discordant pairs (p = 0.78). CONCLUSIONS No agreement was found between LC and ScvO(2) goal achievement in early sepsis resuscitation. Achievement of a ScvO(2) ≥ 70% without LC ≥ 10% was more strongly associated with mortality than achievement of LC ≥ 10% with failure to achieve ScvO(2) ≥ 70%.