Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A randomized trial of enhanced therapy for early syphilis in patients with and without human immunodeficiency virus infection. The Syphilis and HIV Study Group.

BACKGROUND Reports of neurosyphilis and invasion of cerebrospinal fluid by Treponema pallidum in patients with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection have led to doubts about the adequacy of the recommended penicillin G benzathine therapy for early syphilis. METHODS In a multicenter, randomized, double-blind trial, we assessed two treatments for early syphilis: 2.4 million units of penicillin G benzathine and that therapy enhanced with a 10-day course of amoxicillin and probenecid. The serologic and clinical responses of patients with and without HIV infection were studied during one year of follow-up. RESULTS From 1991 through 1994, 541 patients were enrolled, including 101 patients (19 percent) who had HIV infection but differed little from the uninfected patients in their clinical presentations. The rates at which chancres and rashes resolved did not differ significantly according to treatment assignment or HIV status. Serologically defined treatment failures were more common among the HIV-infected patients. The single clinically defined treatment failure was in an HIV-infected patient. Rates of serologically defined treatment failure did not differ according to treatment group (18 percent at six months with usual therapy; 17 percent with enhanced therapy). T. pallidum was found at enrollment in the cerebrospinal fluid of 32 of 131 patients (24 percent) and after therapy in 7 of 35 patients tested. None had clinically evident neurosyphilis, and the rate of detection of T. pallidum did not differ according to HIV status. CONCLUSIONS After treatment for primary or secondary syphilis, the HIV-infected patients responded less well serologically than the patients without HIV infection, but clinically defined failure was uncommon in both groups. Enhanced treatment with amoxicillin and probenecid did not improve the outcomes. Although T. pallidum was detected in cerebrospinal fluid before therapy in a quarter of the patients tested, such a finding did not predict treatment failure. The current recommendations for treating early syphilis appear adequate for most patients, whether or not they have HIV infection.
Fast, Memory Efficient Flow Rate Estimation Using Runs

Per-flow network traffic measurements are needed for effective network traffic management, network performance assessment, and detection of anomalous network events such as incipient denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. Explicit measurement of per-flow traffic statistics is difficult in backbone networks because tracking the possibly hundreds of thousands of flows needs correspondingly large high-speed memories. To reduce the measurement overhead, many previous papers have proposed the use of random sampling and this is also used in commercial routers (Cisco's NetFlow). Our goal is to develop a new scheme that has very low memory requirements and has quick convergence to within a pre-specified accuracy. We achieve this by use of a novel approach based on sampling two-runs to estimate per-flow traffic. (A flow has a two-run when two consecutive samples belong to the same flow). Sampling two-runs automatically biases the samples towards the larger flows thereby making the estimation of these sources more accurate. This biased sampling leads to significantly smaller memory requirement compared to random sampling schemes. The scheme is very simple to implement and performs extremely well.
Cross-Species Antiviral Activity of Goose Interferons against Duck Plague Virus Is Related to Its Positive Self-Feedback Regulation and Subsequent Interferon Stimulated Genes Induction

Interferons are a group of antiviral cytokines acting as the first line of defense in the antiviral immunity. Here, we describe the antiviral activity of goose type I interferon (IFNα) and type II interferon (IFNγ) against duck plague virus (DPV). Recombinant goose IFNα and IFNγ proteins of approximately 20 kDa and 18 kDa, respectively, were expressed. Following DPV-enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) infection of duck embryo fibroblast cells (DEFs) with IFNα and IFNγ pre-treatment, the number of viral gene copies decreased more than 100-fold, with viral titers dropping approximately 100-fold. Compared to the control, DPV-EGFP cell positivity was decreased by goose IFNα and IFNγ at 36 hpi (3.89%; 0.79%) and 48 hpi (17.05%; 5.58%). In accordance with interferon-stimulated genes being the “workhorse” of IFN activity, the expression of duck myxovirus resistance (Mx) and oligoadenylate synthetases-like (OASL) was significantly upregulated (p < 0.001) by IFN treatment for 24 h. Interestingly, duck cells and goose cells showed a similar trend of increased ISG expression after goose IFNα and IFNγ pretreatment. Another interesting observation is that the positive feedback regulation of type I IFN and type II IFN by goose IFNα and IFNγ was confirmed in waterfowl for the first time. These results suggest that the antiviral activities of goose IFNα and IFNγ can likely be attributed to the potency with which downstream genes are induced by interferon. These findings will contribute to our understanding of the functional significance of the interferon antiviral system in aquatic birds and to the development of interferon-based prophylactic and therapeutic approaches against viral disease.
Relations among Delay Discounting, Addictions, and Money Mismanagement: Implications and Future Directions

Background: Delay discounting is a reduction in the subjective value of a delayed outcome. Elevated delay discounting is a type of impulsivity that is associated with harmful behaviors, including substance abuse and financial mismanagement. Methods: Elevated delay discounting as related to addiction and financial mismanagement was reviewed from psychological, neurobiological, and behavioral economic perspectives. Results: Addiction and financial mismanagement frequently co-occur, and elevated delay discounting may be a common mechanism contributing to both of these problematic behaviors. Conclusions: Future research on the relationships between delay discounting, substance abuse, and financial mismanagement can provide important insights for developing improved prevention and treatment strategies.
Acute Spinal Cord Injury, Part I: Pathophysiologic Mechanisms

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a devastating and common neurologic disorder that has profound influences on modern society from physical, psychosocial, and socioeconomic perspectives. Accordingly, the present decade has been labeled the Decade of the Spine to emphasize the importance of SCI and other spinal disorders. Spinal cord injury may be divided into both primary and secondary mechanisms of injury. The primary injury, in large part, determines a given patient's neurologic grade on admission and thereby is the strongest prognostic indicator. However, secondary mechanisms of injury can exacerbate damage and limit restorative processes, and hence, contribute to overall morbidity and mortality. A burgeoning body of evidence has facilitated our understanding of these secondary mechanisms of injury that are amenable to pharmacological interventions, unlike the primary injury itself. Secondary mechanisms of injury encompass an array of perturbances and include neurogenic shock, vascular insults such as hemorrhage and ischemia–reperfusion, excitotoxicity, calcium-mediated secondary injury and fluid–electrolyte disturbances, immunologic injury, apoptosis, disturbances in mitochondrion function, and other miscellaneous processes. Comprehension of secondary mechanisms of injury serves as a basis for the development and application of targeted pharmacological strategies to confer neuroprotection and restoration while mitigating ongoing neural injury. The first article in this series will comprehensively review the pathophysiology of SCI while emphasizing those mechanisms for which pharmacologic therapy has been developed, and the second article reviews the pharmacologic interventions for SCI.
A Non-Orthogonal Resource Allocation Scheme in Spatial Group Based Random Access for Cellular M2M Communications

Cellular machine-to-machine (M2M) communication can be one of the major candidate technologies to develop an Internet of Things (IoT) platform. A massive number of machine nodes access the cellular networks and typically send/receive small-sized data. In this situation, severe random access (RA) overload and radio resource shortage problems may occur if there is no evolution in the conventional cellular system. Focusing on RA, we need a larger number of preambles, as well as a more efficient resource allocation scheme in order to accommodate a significantly large number of RA requests from machine nodes. In this paper, we propose a non-orthogonal resource allocation (NORA) scheme, combined with our spatial group based RA (SGRA) mechanism, in order to provide a sufficiently large number of preambles at the first step of the RA procedure and non-orthogonally allocate physical uplink shared channel resources at the second step of the RA procedure. As a result, the proposed SGRA-NORA scheme can significantly increase the RA success probability, compared with that of the conventional RA scheme.
I Feel Your Pain : A Selective Review of Affect-Sensitive Instructional Strategies

It is well known that students experience a range of affective states when interacting with a learning technology, be it an intelligent tutoring system (ITS), an educational game, a simulation environment, or even simpler interfaces that support foundational skills like reading comprehension and writing proficiency (see review in D'Mello, 2013). Positive affective states, such as contentment, delight, or pride may be triggered when a challenging problem is finally mastered. Negative affective states, such as the frustration, disappointment, or anger can occur when a learner is stuck at an impasse or in reaction to feedback from the learning environment. Learners’ affect can be momentary, as in the occasional eureka moment when a major insight is obtained, prolonged in the case of boredom for a particular topic, or dispositional when the learner is enthused or disillusioned by a particular subject across a range of lessons or even a lifetime. We also know that affect is more than a mere incidental outcome that arises during learning, but can also indirectly influence learning outcomes by modulating cognitive processes in significant ways. For example, positive affective states can inspire a broader attentional focus, which is essential for creative problem solving (Clore & Huntsinger, 2007; Isen, 2008), but can also make a learner lose focus on the task at hand. On the other hand, negative affective states can be beneficial by focusing attention (Fiedler, 2001), but can hinder problem solving by triggering a form of tunnel vision when taken to an extreme.
The role of blood platelets in pulmonary responses to microembolization with barium sulphate.

Intravenous administration to cats of a barium sulphate suspension caused a temporary and marked increase in the pulmonary vascular resistance. On repeated infusions there was a gradual decrease in this pulmonary response. At the same time there occurred a marked fall in the number of circulating blood platelets. Another group of cats were made thrombocytopenic beforehand by treatment with anti-platelet serum In such cats infusions of barium sulphate gave no or very weak pulmonary vascular response. The presence of a certain number of circulating blood platelets is thus necessary for barium sulphate infusions to have their marked effects on the pulmonary circulation. It appears that the essential effect of barium sulphate in this connection is to cause blood platelet alterations, with aggregation and probably a subseqent release of vasoactive materials.
The Optimal Automatic Algorithm for the Mapping of Complex Fractionated Atrial Electrograms in Patients With Atrial Fibrillation

CFAEs and the Voltage. Introduction: Catheter ablation of atrial fibrillation (AF) can be guided by the identification of complex fractionated atrial electrograms (CFAEs). We aimed to study the prediction of the CFAEs defined by an automatic algorithm in different atrial substrates (high voltage areas vs low voltage areas).
Managing and mining large graphs: systems and implementations

We are facing challenges at all levels ranging from infrastructures to programming models for managing and mining large graphs. A lot of algorithms on graphs are ad-hoc in the sense that each of them assumes that the underlying graph data can be organized in a certain way that maximizes the performance of the algorithm. In other words, there is no standard graph systems based on which graph algorithms are developed and optimized. In response to this situation, a lot of graph systems have been proposed recently. In this tutorial, we discuss several representative systems. Still, we focus on providing perspectives from a variety of standpoints on the goals and the means for developing a general purpose graph system. We highlight the challenges posed by the graph data, the constraints of architectural design, the different types of application needs, and the power of different programming models that support such needs. This tutorial is complementary to the related tutorial "Managing and Mining Large Graphs: Patterns and Algorithms".
Effects of tianeptine on spontaneous alternation, simple and concurrent spatial discrimination learning and on alcohol‐induced alternation deficits in mice

The effects of systemic administration of tianeptine, a new psychotropic agent with antidepressant properties, were investigated on spontaneous alternation behavior, and on simple and concurrent spatial discrimination, in normal mice of the BALB/c strain. Tianeptine increased rates of spontaneous T-maze alternation, facilitated retention of a T-maze left-right discrimination, and speeded up acquisition of concurrent discrimination in a radial maze. These effects were consistent across successive experiments with a dose of 10 mg/kg; lower doses (2.5 and 5.0 mg/kg) had less or no effect depending on the task. These results, together with theoretical considerations, led us to investigate the effect of tianeptine on the sequential-specific alternation deficit induced by long-term ethanol administration in the same strain of mice. Results showed that, at the dose of 10 mg/kg, the drug completely alleviated the alcohol-induced deficit. Unlike tianeptine, fluoxetine impaired discrimination performance in the radial maze. These data are discussed in light of the effects of tianeptine on serotonergic transmission and of the role of serotonin and acetylcholine in learning and memory processes.
Fast protein tertiary structure retrieval based on global surface shape similarity

Characterization and identification of similar tertiary structure of proteins provides rich information for investigating function and evolution. The importance of structure similarity searches is increasing as structure databases continue to expand, partly due to the structural genomics projects. A crucial drawback of conventional protein structure comparison methods, which compare structures by their main‐chain orientation or the spatial arrangement of secondary structure, is that a database search is too slow to be done in real‐time. Here we introduce a global surface shape representation by three‐dimensional (3D) Zernike descriptors, which represent a protein structure compactly as a series expansion of 3D functions. With this simplified representation, the search speed against a few thousand structures takes less than a minute. To investigate the agreement between surface representation defined by 3D Zernike descriptor and conventional main‐chain based representation, a benchmark was performed against a protein classification generated by the combinatorial extension algorithm. Despite the different representation, 3D Zernike descriptor retrieved proteins of the same conformation defined by combinatorial extension in 89.6% of the cases within the top five closest structures. The real‐time protein structure search by 3D Zernike descriptor will open up new possibility of large‐scale global and local protein surface shape comparison. Proteins 2008. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Multiresolution Web Link Analysis Using Generalized Link Relations

Web link analysis methods such as PageRank, HITS, and SALSA have focused on obtaining global popularity or authority of the set of Web pages in question. Although global popularity is useful for general queries, we find that global popularity is not as useful for queries in which the global population has less knowledge of. By examining the many different communities that appear within a Web page graph, we are able to compute the popularity or authority from a specific community. Multiresolution popularity lists allow us to observe the popularity of Web pages with respect to communities at different resolutions within the Web. Multiresolution popularity lists have been shown to have high potential when compared against PageRank. In this paper, we generalize the multiresolution popularity analysis to use any form of Web page link relations. We provide results for both the PageRank relations and the In-degree relations. By utilizing the multiresolution popularity lists, we achieve a 13 percent and 25 percent improvement in mean average precision over In-degree and PageRank, respectively.
Oral health behaviors in a sample of portuguese adolescents: an educational issue.

BACKGROUND The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of oral health behaviors among a sample of Portuguese adolescents and to evaluate the association with socio-demographic factors. METHODS This cross-sectional study was conducted among 447 adolescents aged 12-19 years, attending a public school in Sátão, Portugal. A self-administered questionnaire was applied for data collection. RESULTS The prevalence of tooth brushing (twice-a-day or more) was 90.6%. About 6% of adolescents reported daily flossing, which was more frequent among female gender (female, OR=2.03, 95%CI= (1.35 to 3.05)) and adolescents older than 15 years (>15years, OR=1.90, 95%CI= (1.24 to 2.92)). Sixty-seven percent had at least one dental appointment in the previous twelve months. The prevalence of dental appointments was associated with the father´s professional situation (unemployed, OR=0.33, 95% CI= (0.17 to 0.65)) and crowding index (>1, OR=0.4, 95%CI=(0.16 to 0.98)). Thirty-two point nine percent of adolescents referred having at least one episode of dental pain during their lives. CONCLUSION The results highlight the need for improvement of oral health community programs and primary preventive strategies to reduce the risk of oral diseases and develop better oral health behaviours.
The Effect of Longer Development Times on Product Pipeline Management Performance

In the pharmaceutical industry, value is being destroyed through longer product development times. Given that patent lives are (normally) fixed at 20 years, the double hit of increasing time to market is evident - higher R & D costs and less time at market before generic competitors are able to be released into the marketplace. The Policy implications are massive: A huge and permanent shift away from internal R & D towards partnerships, licensing deals and acquisitions of more innovative biotechnology companies. In this study, we build a system dynamics model of the product development pipeline for a single company operating in the pharmaceutical market. The study shows that in the presence of loss of value due to longer lead times, it is more advantageous to: (a) work faster to reduce the backlog of projects; (b) increase the number of projects started whenever it is possible reduce complexity in the pipeline; and also (c) the optimal decision on resource allocation is independent of the loss of value due to longer lead times.
Defining the excitatory neurons that drive the locomotor rhythm in a simple vertebrate: insights into the origin of reticulospinal control

Important questions remain about the origin of the excitation that drives locomotion in vertebrates and the roles played by reticulospinal neurons. In young Xenopus tadpoles, paired whole‐cell recordings reveal reticulospinal neurons that directly excite swimming circuit neurons in the brainstem and spinal cord. They form part of a column of neurons (dINs) with ipsilateral descending projections which fire reliably and rhythmically in time with swimming. We ask if, at this early stage of development, these reticulospinal neurons are themselves the primary source of rhythmic drive to spinal cord neurons on each cycle of swimming. Loose‐patch recordings in the hindbrain and spinal cord from neurons active during fictive swimming distinguished dINs from other neurons by spike shape. These recordings showed that reticulospinal dINs in the caudal hindbrain (rhombomeres 7–8) fire significantly earlier on each swimming cycle than other, ipsilateral, swimming circuit neurons. Whole‐cell recordings showed that fast EPSCs typically precede, and probably drive, spikes in most swimming circuit neurons. However, the earliest‐firing reticulospinal dINs spike too soon to be driven by underlying fast EPSCs. We propose that rebound following reciprocal inhibition can contribute to early reticulospinal dIN firing during swimming and show rebound firing in dINs following evoked, reciprocal inhibitory PSPs. Our results define reticulospinal neurons that are the source of the primary, descending, rhythmic excitation that drives spinal cord neurons to fire during swimming. These neurons are an integral part of the rhythm generating circuitry. We discuss the origin of these reticulospinal neurons as specialised members of a longitudinally distributed population of excitatory interneurons extending from the brainstem into the spinal cord.
Regenerative potentials evoked in circular smooth muscle of the antral region of guinea‐pig stomach

1 Slow waves recorded from the circular smooth muscle layer of guinea‐pig antrum consisted of two components, an initial component and a secondary regenerative component. Whereas both components persisted in the presence of nifedipine, the secondary component was abolished by a low concentration of caffeine. 2 Short segments of single bundles of circular muscle were isolated and impaled with two microelectrodes. Depolarizing currents initiated regenerative responses which resembled those initiated during normal slow waves. These responses had partial refractory periods of 20‐30 s and were initiated about 1 s after the onset of membrane depolarization. 3 The regenerative responses persisted in the presence of either nifedipine or cobalt ions but were abolished by caffeine, BAPTA or cyclopiazonic acid. 4 The observations suggest that depolarizing membrane potential changes trigger the release of Ca2+ from intracellular stores and this causes a depolarization by activating sets of unidentified ion channels in the membranes of smooth muscle cells of the circular layer of guinea‐pig antrum.