Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cardiovascular mortality following short-term androgen deprivation in clinically localized prostate cancer: An analysis of RTOG 94-08.

18 Background: Androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) is associated with greater risk of diabetes and coronary heart disease in men with prostate cancer but there is significant controversy surrounding its potential impact on cardiovascular mortality especially among men with lower rates of cancer-specific death. We assessed the relationship between ADT and mortality in a large randomized trial of men treated with or without short-course ADT and radiation therapy (RT) for clinically-localized prostate cancer. METHODS Between 1994-2001, 1979 eligible men (median age 71) with clinically-localized (T1-2, PSA<20) prostate cancer were enrolled on a phase III trial (RTOG 94-08) and randomized to RT and 4 months of neoadjuvant/concurrent ADT or RT alone. Fine-Gray proportional hazards model was used to evaluate the relationship between treatment arm and mortality (disease-specific and cardiovascular). Covariates included PSA, Gleason score, T-stage, age, race, weight, prevalent cardiovascular disease (CVD), diabetes (DM), and hypertension. RESULTS After a median follow-up of 8.2 years, use of ADT improved overall and disease-specific survival but there was no ADT-related increase in cardiovascular mortality or non-prostate cancer death. There were a total of 191 cardiovascular-related deaths. At 10-years, cardiovascular mortality for men treated with RT+ADT was 9.8% vs 10.7% for men treated with RT alone. In multivariate analyses, treatment arm was not significantly associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular mortality [adjusted hazard ratio (HR)=0.93, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.69-1.26, p=0.64]. Traditional cardiac risk factors, including prevalent CVD and DM, were significantly associated with greater cardiovascular mortality. Results were similar when limiting analyses to patient subsets at high risk for cardiovascular mortality and at low risk for disease-specific mortality. CONCLUSIONS Use of short-course ADT improves overall and disease-specific survival but does not appear to increase cardiovascular mortality in men with clinically-localized prostate cancer. Supported by RTOG grant U10 CA21661 and CCOP grant U10 CA37422 from NCI.
Efficient classification of portscan attacks using Support Vector Machine

Support Vector Machine, a powerful data mining technique is used for the classification of attacks. SVM is implemented using WEKA tool in which the Radial Basis Function proves to be an efficient Kernel for the classification of portscan attacks. KDD'99 dataset consisting of portscan and normal traces termed as mixed traffic is given as input to SVM in two phases, i.e., without feature reduction and with feature reduction using Consistency Subset Evaluation algorithm and Best First search method. In the first phase, the mixed traffic as a whole is given as input to SVM. In the second phase, feature reduction algorithm is applied over the mixed traffic and then fed to SVM. Finally the performance is compared in accordance with classification between the two phases. The performance of the proposed method is measured using false positive rate and computation time.
Monoclonal Antibodies against Nucleophosmin Mutants: Potentials for the Detection of Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Nucleophosmin (NPM1) gene mutations resulting in cytoplasmic delocalization of Nucleophosmin (NPMc+) are the most common genetic alteration in acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Here, we attempted to prepare monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) against NPM1 mutation A (NPM-mA) and investigated the mAbs' clinical utility in immunohistochemical detection of NPMc+AML. The pET-32a-NPM-mA vector with the whole open reading frame of the NPM-mA gene was constructed. E.coli BL21 transformed with the vector were induced to express the NPM-mA recombinant protein. BALB/c mice were immunized with the recombinant NPM-mA. Positive clones were selected by indirect ELISA and the mAbs were obtained. Immunohistochemistry was performed to detect the NPMc+ in bone marrow smears from 10 AML patients with NPM-mA. The results showed that the pET-32a-NPM-mA vector was successfully constructed and the NPM-mA recombinant protein was used to immunize the mice. Two positive clones (2G3 and 3F9) were selected. The mAbs against NPM-mA were raised, but did cross-react with wild type NPM1. The mAbs can be used to detect the cytoplasmic dislocation of NPM1 in all AMLs carrying NPM-mA. Our results show that anti-NPM-mA mAbs were produced. Though they would cross-react with wild type NPM1, the mAbs may still have potential in the detection of NPMc+AMLs.
Lines and circles, West and East

Nothing in the world is absolute. Everything is relative, cultural difference being no exception. Culture, as the total pattern of human behavior and its products, oversteps geographical limits and historical conditions in many ways, and it is characterized by its strong penetrativeness and fusibility. The advancement of the globalized economy and the rapidity and ease of modern communication, transportation and mass media have resulted in an ever-increasing exchange between cultures, unprecedented in scale, scope and speed. Consequently, an increase in universality and reduction in difference between cultures is an inevitable trend. It is no surprise to see phenomena characteristic of one culture existing considerably in another. As a result, some people even fear that the world will become a dull place when all the different nationalities behave exactly alike. The exploration of cultural difference conducted under the condition of tremendous exchange between cultures might be misled into the pitfall of generalization or absolutization. Nevertheless, the “cultural sediment” formed through long-range accumulation is not to be easily removed and the cultural tradition handed down from generation to generation shows great consistency and continuity.
‘Connected’ Presence: The Emergence of a New Repertoire for Managing Social Relationships in a Changing Communication Technoscape

The aim of this research is to understand how the transformation of the communication technoscape allows for the development of particular patterns in the construction of social bonds. It provides evidence for the development of a ‘connected’ management of relationships, in which the (physically) absent party gains presence through the multiplication of mediated communication gestures on both sides, up to the point where copresent interactions and mediated distant exchanges seem woven into a single, seamless web. After reviewing some of the current social-science research, I rely on empirical studies of the uses of the home telephone, the mobile phone, and mobile text messaging in France to discuss how this particular repertoire of ‘connected’ relationships has gradually crystallized as these technologies have become widespread and as each additional communication resource has been made available to users. I also describe how such a ‘connected’ mode coexists with a previous way of managing ‘mediated’ relationships, in which communication technologies were thought to substitute or compensate for the rarity of face-to-face interactions.
Treatment of Colorectal Cancer with and without Bevacizumab: A Phase III Study

Objective: The objective of this phase III trial was to compare chemotherapy combined with bevacizumab versus chemotherapy alone in the treatment of patients with advanced colorectal cancer. Methods: From September 2004 till September 2008, 222 treatment-naive patients were enrolled and divided into 2 arms: 114 arm A patients were treated with leucovorin, 5-fluorouracil plus irinotecan in combination with bevacizumab, and 108 arm B patients were treated as above without bevacizumab. All patients were stage IV with histologically confirmed adenocarcinoma. Results: The median overall survival of arm A patients was 22.0 months (95% CI: 18.1–25.9) and 25.0 months (CI: 18.1–31.9) for arm B patients. There was no statistically significant difference between the 2 arms (p = 0.1391). No statistically significant difference between the 2 arms regarding the response ratewas observed: partial response, 42 patients (36.8%) and 38 patients (35.2%) for arms A and B, respectively. Hematologic toxicity did not differ in the comparison of the 2 arms. Nonhematologic toxicity in arm A involved hypertension in 23 (20.2%) of the patients and proteinuria in 7 (6.1%); 3 patients experienced hemorrhage and 1 patient intestinal perforation. None of these side effects was observed in arm B patients. Conclusion: No statistically significant difference in median overall survival in patients with advanced colorectal cancer treated with bevacizumab plus a combination therapy (arm A) and those treated with the combination only, without bevacizumab (arm B), was observed.
Rethinking Self-organized Public-key Management for Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks

In this paper, the self-organized public-key management scheme proposed for MANETs is considered in order to guarantee that all nodes play identical roles in the network. Our approach involves that the responsibility for creating, storing, distributing and revoking nodes’ public-keys is on the nodes themselves. In particular, the methods here described and evaluated are aimed at improving the process of building the local certificate repositories associated to each node in the self-organised model. In order to do it, we face the problem by combining known authentication elements such as the web-of-trust concept, together with common ideas of routing protocols, such as the MultiPoint Relay technique used in the Optimized Link State Routing protocol. Our proposal leads to a significant improvement in the efficiency of the whole model and implies a good trade-off among security, overhead and flexibility. Results of experiments show an important reduction in resource consumption while undertaking the certificate verification process associated to the authentication.
Job Adequacy and Work-Family Balance: Looking at Jobs as a Whole

Using an ecological person—process—context model and recent conceptualization of the “employment continuum,” this study examines differences in components of work—family balance among individuals in diverse types of jobs ranging from “inadequate” to “optimal. ” Cross-sectional data from the 1997 National Study of the Changing Workforce (n = 2,877) were used to test differences in work-to-family conflict and enrichment among individuals whose jobs have different constellations of favorable structural and psychosocial attributes. Results suggest jobs enriched with both structural and psychosocial attributes contribute to better work—family balance by reducing conflict and promoting enrichment. Similar patterns occurred regardless of family employment arrangement, but dual earner men reported higher levels of conflict compared with women when holding inadequate jobs. The pattern of results suggests that viewing jobs holistically is important for understanding the work—family interface.
MRI of the left atrium: predicting clinical outcomes in patients with atrial fibrillation

Atrial fibrillation is a significant public health burden, with clinically, epidemiologically and economically significant repercussions. In the last decade, catheter ablation has provided an improvement in morbidity and quality of life, significantly reducing long-term healthcare costs and avoiding recurrences compared with drug therapy. Despite recent progress in techniques, current catheter ablation success rates fall short of expectations. Late gadolinium-enhancement cardiovascular MRI is a well-established tool to image the myocardium and, most specifically, the left atrium. Unique imaging protocols allow for left atrial structural remodeling and fibrosis assessment, which has been demonstrated to correlate with clinical outcomes after catheter ablation, assessment of the individual’s risks of thromboembolic events, and effective imaging of patients with left atrial appendage thrombus. Late gadolinium-enhancement MRI aids in the individualized treatment of atrial fibrillation, stratifying recurrence risk and guiding specific ablation strategies. Real-time MRI offers significant safety and effectiveness profiles that would optimize the invasive treatment of atrial fibrillation.
Commit Sociology

This article elaborates how C. Wright Mills’ “sociological imagination” invites us to “commit sociology. ” We argue critical thinking is the foundation of a liberal arts education, and its purpose is to have students recognize that the social world is constantly being constructed and reconstructed—how exactly depends upon the power dynamics embedded in the social, economic, and political institutions of any given time and place. Yet it is very challenging to achieve an awareness of the larger social processes in which our everyday actions are embedded or to recognize the role our everyday practices have in the maintenance or erosion of existing social injustices and inequalities. Moreover, political leaders feel threatened when their agendas, policies, and actions are questioned by the masses. Committing sociology—ipso facto being a successful liberal arts graduate engaged in public debates—threatens political leaders because it calls them to account for their ideologies and the impacts of their policies: a “crime” indeed.
Replication of Plasmodium in reticulocytes can occur without hemozoin formation, resulting in chloroquine resistance

Lin et al. generate Plasmodium berghei mutants lacking enzymes critical to hemoglobin digestion. A double gene deletion mutant lacking enzymes involved in the initial steps of hemoglobin proteolysis is able to replicate inside reticulocytes of infected mice with limited hemoglobin degradation and no hemozoin formation, and moreover, is resistant to the antimalarial drug chloroquine.
A Relevance-Theoretic Account of the Development and Deficits of Theory of Mind in Normally Developing Children and Individuals with Autism

This paper argues that positing a Theory of Mind and mindreading abilities in particular is necessary in order to be able to account for the development and possible impairments of communication in normally developing children and individuals with autism. To account for the different impairments that people diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) exhibit, what is needed is a refinement of the levels or degrees of mind-reading abilities that are usually posited in the literature. Instead of the two-tiered system of first-and second-order mind-reading abilities, there is a need to propose several other layers of meta-representation to account for the comprehension of different communicative events, such as metaphors, under-and overstatements, direct and indirect speech acts, lies, deceits, humour, jokes, irony and sarcasm. This paper assumes a relevancetheoretic perspective to explain deficits in communicative abilities in individuals with ASD. It suggests that the pragmatic impairments specific to autism can be accounted for by the role of context retrieval in the comprehension and production process, especially those related to knowledge about the speaker.
Discriminative training for concatenative speech synthesis

In this letter, we propose an approach to train the cost functions used for unit selection in concatenative speech synthesis. We first view the unit selection as a classification problem, and we apply the discriminative training technique, which is found to be an efficient way to perform parameter estimation in speech recognition. Instead of defining an objective function that accounts for the subjective speech quality, we take the classification error as the objective function to be optimized. The classification error is approximated by a smooth function, and the relevant parameters are updated by means of the gradient descent technique.
Population Pharmacokinetics of Micafungin in Neonates and Young Infants

ABSTRACT Micafungin is an echinocandin with potent activity against Candida spp. Hematogenous Candida meningoencephalitis (HCME) is a frequent complication of disseminated Candida infection in premature infants. A preclinical model of HCME suggests that micafungin may be an effective agent for this syndrome, but relatively high weight-based dosages are required. This prompted the further study of the safety and pharmacokinetics (PK) of micafungin in infants. Here, we describe the population pharmacokinetics of micafungin in 47 infants with a proven or presumptive diagnosis of disseminated candidiasis, who received 0.75, 1.5, 3, 7, 10, and 15 mg/kg of micafungin. The drug was infused daily, and samples were taken in the first dosing interval and at steady state. Serum concentrations were measured using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Data were modeled using an allometric pharmacokinetic model using a three-fourths scaling exponent for clearance and parameters normalized to a 70-kg adult. Drug exposures were estimated using Monte Carlo simulation. Optimal sampling times were determined using D-optimal design theory. The fit of the allometric model to the data was highly acceptable. The pharmacokinetics of micafungin were linear. The weight-normalized estimates of clearance and volume of distribution approximated those previously described for adults. The original population parameter values could be recapitulated in the Monte Carlo simulations. A dosage of 10 mg/kg/day resulted in 82.6% of patients with areas under the concentration-time curve (AUCs) that are associated with near-maximal decline in fungal burden within the central nervous system (CNS).
Theoretische und empirische Untersuchungen der Benutzeroberfläche von zwei CAD-Systemen

Die Benutzerschnittstellen zweier komplexer Anwendungsprogramme, die für denselben Verwendungszweck entwickelt wurden, die allerdings stark unterschiedliche Benutzeroberflächen aufweisen, wurden sowohl mit Hilfe theoretischer Modelle als auch mittels eines empirischen Versuchs miteinander verglichen. Für die theoretische Untersuchung wurde ein aus der Literatur bekanntes formales Verfahren adaptiert und erweitert. Ziel des Projekts war einerseits der Vergleich zweier unterschiedlicher Bernutzerschnittstellen und andrerseits die Validierung theoretischer Modelle zur Feststellung der Benutzerfreundlichkeit einer Programmoberfläche durch empirische Untersuchungen.
Antisocial Personality, Psychopathy, and Violence in Persons with Dual Disorders

Few studies have explored correlates of antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) and psychopathy among individuals with severe mental illness and co-occurring substance use disorder. This study examined the reliability and validity of measures of ASPD and psychopathy among 203 clients with dual disorders and their prospective relationship to criminality and violence over 3 years. Except for the interpersonal/affective factor, the total Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (SRP-II) and antisocial lifestyle factor displayed good reliability and convergent validity with other measures of antisociality. SRP-II scores had limited associations with criminality and violence, whereas ASPD, thought disturbance, negative affect, and earlier age at psychiatric hospitalization were predictive of aggressive behavior. Further research on community violence should examine other measures of psychopathy as well as ASPD and symptoms.
Robust formant tracking in noise

While many algorithms exist for accurate extraction of formant frequencies from a speech waveform, these algorithms are not typically shown to be robust in the presence of highly-transient background noise such as competing speech waveforms. Preliminary results are presented from an algorithm using time-varying adaptive filters that appears to be robust in the presence of white, Gaussian noise or a single competing speaker over a large range of signal-to-noise ratios (quiet to −6 dB). Use of a synthesized sentence, for which the actual formant frequencies are known, permits quantitative assessment of the algorithm's accuracy as a function of signal-to-noise ratio.
Providing Effective Literacy Instruction to Students with down Syndrome

Rhonda and Jane are middle-school students with Down syndrome who joined 2 first-grade students with Down syndrome, Carl and Laura, and 14 additional students with reading difficulties in an after-school University Reading Clinic. The parents of the students with Down syndrome wanted their children to learn to read for enjoyment, for safety, and for employment but were concerned that their children were receiving as little as 1 hour of reading instruction per week at school. Moreover, the parents reported that their children’s individualized education programs (IEPs) reflected no clearly articulated reading goals and contained no plan to monitor the children’s progress in reading. Students like Rhonda have little instructional time to waste. Commonly, children with disabilities begin their school careers with less than half the exposure to print than children without disabilities (Fitzgerald, Roberts, Pierce, & Schuele, 1995); receive fewer opportunities to engage in literacy activities than peers in early childhood programs (Koppenhaver, 1993; Marvin & Mirenda, 1994); and may be less likely to benefit from generally effective reading interventions (Al Otaiba & Fuchs, 2002). Their teachers are not to blame. Current standards for the preparation and certification of special education teachers do not provide guidelines about instructional strategies for teaching reading to students with mental retardation (Katims, 1999). As a result, many special education teachers report that they feel unprepared to teach reading to these students (Moats & Lyon, 1996). Further, little is known about what level of reading achievement is attainable for students with mental retardation in general and for students with Down syndrome in particular (Carr, 1988; Oelwein, 1995). The problem, therefore, is that a limited research base is available to teachers on effective reading instruction strategies for student with mental retardation.
Changing Preservice Teachers' Beliefs about Motivating Students.

We examined the effects of an educational psychology course on students’ beliefs about motivating students. After providing opportunities to engage in systematic intentional inquiry of their beliefs about teaching and learning, we expected that students’ beliefs would become more soundly based in theory and research. Following several classes on motivation, students increased their endorsement of theory-based motivational strategies such as promoting cooperation; giving choice; offering stimulating tasks; showing interest and giving responsibility; and making attributions to students’ thought and effort. However, they also increased their endorsement of strategies that emphasized performance goals. Results are discussed within the context of motivation theory, teaching educational psychology, and methodological considerations.
Characterizing the complexity of enzymes on the basis of their mechanisms and structures with a bio-computational analysis

Enzymes are basically composed of 20 naturally occurring amino acids, yet they catalyse a dizzying array of chemical reactions, with regiospecificity and stereospecificity and under physiological conditions. In this review, we attempt to gain some understanding of these complex proteins, from the chemical versatility of the catalytic toolkit, including the use of cofactors (both metal ions and organic molecules), to the complex mapping of reactions to proteins (which is rarely one‐to‐one), and finally the structural complexity of enzymes and their active sites, often involving multidomain or multisubunit assemblies. This work highlights how the enzymes that we see today reflect millions of years of evolution, involving de novo design followed by exquisite regulation and modulation to create optimal fitness for life.