Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cytokine production by synovial T cells in rheumatoid arthritis.

OBJECTIVE To investigate the production of cytokines by T cells in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), reactive arthritis (REA) and osteoarthritis (OA). METHODS The lymphokines interleukin (IL)-2, IL-4, interferon gamma (IFN-gamma) and tumour necrosis factor beta (TNF-beta), as well as the monokines IL-1, IL-6 and TNF-alpha, were measured by immunoassays in sera and synovial fluid (SF) from patients with RA, REA and OA. In addition, cytokine expression was studied by immunohistochemistry in synovial membrane tissue sections from patients with RA and OA. RESULTS Almost 60% of RA sera contained at least one of the cytokines investigated, though in low concentrations, whereas cytokines were generally not detectable in sera from REA and OA patients. In contrast, cytokines were found in virtually all SF; thus, the majority of SF from RA patients contained IFN-gamma (median level 17 pg/ml) in addition to the monokines IL-6 (4700 pg/ml) and TNF-alpha (157 pg/ml). IFN-gamma and IL-6 (but not TNF-alpha) were also frequently measured in SF from REA patients, whereas OA samples typically contained only IL-6. Immunohistochemical analysis of tissue sections from RA patients revealed lymphokine expression in 0.1-0.3% of T cells, particularly IL-2 and IFN-gamma, and to a lesser extent also IL-4. Interestingly, the expression of TNF-alpha and IL-6 by synovial T cells was also observed. The majority of cytokine-expressing T cells were CD4-positive T-helper cells typically found in perivascular areas, whereas cytokine-producing CD8-positive T cells were found distributed throughout the synovium. As expected, in specimens from OA patients, T cells were much less abundant and expression of cytokines could not be detected. CONCLUSION These data clearly demonstrate production of cytokines by T cells in RA synovial tissue, indicating that activated T cells play a role in the pathophysiological events of RA.
L'argumentation dans les débats télévisés entre candidats à la présidence américaine : l'appel aux émotions comme tactique de persuasion

Using the theory of informal logic and fallacies, this article analyses the argumentation of Bill Clinton, George Bush and Ross Perot during the three televised debates between candidates running for election in the 1992 American presidential campaign. The author examines the particular role of emotional appeals, in addition to the roles of ad populum and ad hominem arguments and other fallacies. This study sheds some light on political language and discursive strategies.
LAPS-II: 6-DoF day and night visual localisation with prior 3D structure for autonomous road vehicles

Robust and reliable visual localisation at any time of day is an essential component towards low-cost autonomy for road vehicles. We present a method to perform online 6-DoF visual localisation across a wide range of outdoor illumination conditions throughout the day and night using a 3D scene prior collected by a survey vehicle. We propose the use of a one-dimensional illumination invariant colour space which stems from modelling the spectral properties of the camera and scene illumination in conjunction. We combine our previous work on Localisation with Appearance of Prior Structure (LAPS) with this illumination invariant colour space to demonstrate a marked improvement in our ability to localise throughout the day compared to using a conventional RGB colour space. Our ultimate goal is robust and reliable any-time localisation - an attractive proposition for low-cost autonomy for road vehicles. Accordingly, we demonstrate our technique using 32km of data collected over a full 24-hour period from a road vehicle.
Do Social Control Motives Combine with Perceptions of Social Support to Predict Relationships between Interpersonal Stress and Blood Pressure in the Normal Environment

Social support is related to lower risk for cardiovascular disease development. Yet, research has failed to yield consistent evidence for psychological mechanisms of relationships between social support and health outcomes. Explanations for these failures include limitations of research design and statistical analysis, inadequate theory-building, and a failure to investigate implicit psychological processes that operate during normal everyday social interactions. The present study utilized a promising theoretical framework (i.e., social action theory) to evaluate implicit mechanisms within a naturalistic observation study design using multilevel modeling. The primary aims of this study were to evaluate the role of between-person differences in agonistic motives and perceived social support in predicting within-person processes of interpersonal stress and cardiovascular responding. Results indicated that interpersonal stress was associated with higher ambulatory SBP. The dissipated group had the highest DBP, and was also more obese compared to the other groups. Results indicated that perceived social support attenuated the effect of interpersonal stress on SBP. Results did not support the notion that motives moderate the relationships between perceived social support, interpersonal stress, and ambulatory blood pressure. These results suggest a potential new disease pathway for cardiovascular disease risk, and provide support for the role of perceived social support as an implicit regulatory mechanism which lowers cardiovascular activity in interpersonally stressful contexts.
American Polities in the Gilded Age

The period in American politics from Rutherford B. Hayes to William McKinley has been kicked and scuffed among historians until there is little left of its reputation. “No period so thoroughly ordinary has been known in American politics since Christopher Columbus first disturbed the balance of power in American society,” wrote Henry Adams. “One might search the whole list of Congress, Judiciary, and Executive during the twenty-five years from 1870 to 1895 and find little but damaged reputation. The period was poor in purpose and barren in results. ” The impulse to spring to the aid of the underdog has brought forth champions of the cultural, literary, and technological achievements of the Gilded Age, but none to defend its political record. “Even among the most powerful men of that generation,” said Adams, speaking of the politicians, there was “none who had a good word for it. ” Most historians believe that at no other time in American history was the moral and intellectual tone of political life so uniformly low nor were political contests so preoccupied with patronage.
Gerer les responsabilites sociales des entreprises envers leurs parties prenantes

> Differents groupes de parties prenantes attendent des entreprises qu’elles jouent un role plus important dans la resolution des problemes sociaux et environnementaux actuels. Gerer leurs responsabilites et leurs relations avec les groupes de parties prenantes est de plus en plus important pour les entreprises. Cependant, les etudes existantes ne donnent que des reponses limitees quant a la facon dont ces entreprises peuvent gerer leurs relations avec leurs parties prenantes. «Quelles pratiques responsables devraient etre adoptees par les entreprises et estce que ces pratiques permettent d’ameliorer leur performance sociale? » et «Y a-t-il des cultures organisationnelles permettant aux entreprises de mettre en place des pratiques responsables avec plus de succes? » sont des questions qui restent encore en suspend. Afin de repondre a ces questions, nous avons developpe une enquete et recueilli des donnees aupres de 244 entreprises basees en Suisse.
Content‐aware surface parameterization for interactive restoration of historical documents

We present an interactive method to restore severely damaged historical parchments. When damaged by heat in a fire, such manuscripts undergo a complex deformation and contain various geometric distortions such as wrinkling, buckling, and shrinking, rendering them nearly illegible. They cannot be physically flattened due to the risk of further damage. We propose a virtual restoration framework to estimate the non‐rigid deformation the parchment underwent and to revert it, making reading the text significantly easier whilst maintaining the veracity of the textual content. We estimate the deformation by combining automatically extracted constraints with user‐provided hints informed by domain knowledge. We demonstrate that our method successfully flattens and straightens the text on a variety of pages scanned from a 17th century document which fell victim to fire damage.
Temporal Dynamics of Health and Well-Being: A Crowdsourcing Approach to Momentary Assessments and Automated Generation of Personalized Feedback

Objective Recent developments in research and mobile health enable a quantitative idiographic approach in health research. The present study investigates the potential of an electronic diary crowdsourcing study in the Netherlands for (1) large-scale automated self-assessment for individual-based health promotion and (2) enabling research at both the between-persons and within-persons level. To illustrate the latter, we examined between-persons and within-persons associations between somatic symptoms and quality of life. Methods A website provided the general Dutch population access to a 30-day (3 times a day) diary study assessing 43 items related to health and well-being, which gave participants personalized feedback. Associations between somatic symptoms and quality of life were examined with a linear mixed model. Results A total of 629 participants completed 28,430 assessments, with a mean (SD) of 45 (32) assessments per participant. Most participants (n = 517 [82%]) were women and 531 (84%) had high education. Almost 40% of the participants (n = 247) completed enough assessments (t = 68) to generate personalized feedback including temporal dynamics between well-being, health behavior, and emotions. Substantial between-person variability was found in the within-person association between somatic symptoms and quality of life. Conclusions We successfully built an application for automated diary assessments and personalized feedback. The application was used by a sample of mainly highly educated women, which suggests that the potential of our intensive diary assessment method for large-scale health promotion is limited. However, a rich data set was collected that allows for group-level and idiographic analyses that can shed light on etiological processes and may contribute to the development of empirical-based health promotion solutions.
Welander Distal Myopathy Caused by an Ancient Founder Mutation in TIA1 Associated with Perturbed Splicing

Welander distal myopathy (WDM) is an adult onset autosomal dominant disorder characterized by distal limb weakness, which progresses slowly from the fifth decade. All WDM patients are of Swedish or Finnish descent and share a rare chromosome 2p13 haplotype. We restricted the WDM‐associated haplotype followed by whole exome sequencing. Within the conserved haplotype, we identified a single heterozygous mutation c.1150G>A (p.E384K) in T‐cell intracellular antigen‐1 (TIA1) in all WDM patients investigated (n = 43). The TIA1 protein regulates splicing, and translation through direct interaction with mRNA and the p.E384K mutation is located in the C‐terminal Q‐rich domain that interacts with the U1‐C splicing factor. TIA1 has been shown to prevent skipping of SMN2 exon 7, and we show that WDM patients have increased levels of spliced SMN2 in skeletal muscle cells when compared with controls. Immunostaining of WDM muscle biopsies showed accumulation of TIA1 and stress granulae proteins adjacent to intracellular inclusions, a typical finding in WDM. The combined findings strongly suggest that the TIA1 mutation causes perturbed RNA splicing and cellular stress resulting in WDM. The selection against the mutation is likely to be negligible and the age of the TIA1 founder mutation was calculated to approximately 1,050 years, which coincides with the epoch of early seafaring across the Baltic Sea.
Gender differences in performance on the Stroop Test

In this study we assessed the differences in gender performance among Kuwaiti male and women on the Stroop Test (Stroop, 1935). Participants were 504 university students, 122 men and 382 women (age M = 21:0, SD = 2.7 years). In prior studies it has been shown that females by and large display differential performance (shorter latencies) from males on the word card, color card, and color word card of the Stroop Test. Results indicate that the Kuwaiti women read faster on the color card than did the males, and especially were faster with intercepting 3 cards of tests (interaction effect). Gender differences were observed in the color card and color-word card tests but not significantly for the word card test. The results do substantiate the gender difference in Stroop color and interference.
Ropes, Poles, and Space

As business students graduate and obtain jobs in the global market, corporations are complaining that students employed in entrylevel management positions lack critical thinking or creativity skills. Creativity involves the ability to break out of established patterns and try new approaches. A truly creative individual is not lost in his or her own world, oblivious to all that goes on around them; rather, they combine broad knowledge and imagination to stimulate adventurous (and very likely unconventional) thinking versus merely generating a taxonomy of ideas leading to only one conclusion. How can a university business faculty incorporate ‘critical thinking’ and ‘creativity’ into their courseware? This article discusses an encompassing active learning matrix with examples of exercises, projects, and simulations to foster critical and creative thinking skills in business courses.
'Kana Sora Ratswa Ngaritswe': African Nationalists and Black Workers: The 1948 General Strike in Colonial Zimbabwe

For almost two weeks in April 1948 colonial Zimbabwe's two major cities, as well as smaller towns, mines and farms were convulsed by mass unrest. Although the causes of the General Strike have long been recognised as having their origins in the urban squalor and rampant inflation of the immediate post-war era, there is little agreement about either its organisation or its significance. Recent interventions in the debate have tended to strengthen existing prejudices. This paper advances four linked propositions which radically reformulate previous positions: that, while the development of secondary industry and the related growth of colonial Zimbabwe's urban areas were both relatively large by the modest standards of Sub-Saharan African, the scale was small in absolute terms; that these processes and their social consequences differed considerably between Bulawayo and Salisbury; that that the limited scale of these processes often meant that parochial concerns were more important than national issues; and that while all of this facilitated a greater degree of control over events in Bulawayo, if not in Salisbury, by an elite leadership than some writers have conceded, these events did not amount to a colony-wide General Strike.
Differential Impact of Adherence to Pegylated Interferon and Ribavirin in the Treatment of Genotype 1 High Viral Titer Chronic Hepatitis C

To clarify the impact of adherence, we treated 122 genotype 1 high viral titer chronic hepatitis C patients with pegylated interferon (peg-IFN) and ribavirin for 48 weeks at nine referral hospitals, and evaluated the prognostic factors with a focus on the adherence to the treatment. This study included 68 (55.7%) treatment-naïve patients and 54 (44.3%) patients who did not respond to the previous treatment. Multivariate analysis revealed adherence to peg-IFN and ribavirin as the only significant predictor. Sustained virological response (SVR) rate was 72.2%, 19.0%, and 27.3% in patients given ≥80%, 60%–80%, and <60% dose peg-IFN, respectively, and was 68.6%, 41.2%, and 5.3% in those given ≥80%, 60%–80%, and <60% dose ribavirin, respectively. SVR rate sharply fell when exposure to peg-IFN was below 80% whereas it decreased in a stepwise manner as for ribavirin. Therefore, ≥80% of peg-IFN and as much as possible dose of ribavirin are desired to achieve SVR in the treatment of genotype 1 high viral titer chronic hepatitis C.
Robust sliding mode tracking control for a class of uncertain switched nonlinear cascade systems

This paper considers the tracking control problem for a class of uncertain switched nonlinear cascade systems via the multiple Lyapunov functions (MLFs) method. Each subsystem under consideration is composed of two cascade-connected parts: the null space dynamics part and the range space dynamics part. The two main robust control strategies, nonlinear H∞ control (NHC) and the sliding mode control (SMC), are integrated to function in a complementary manner for tracking control tasks. Furthermore, sufficient conditions for the solvability of the tracking control problem of the switched system and design of both switching laws and controllers are presented. Finally, a simulation example is provided to demonstrate the feasibility of the developed method.
A novel algorithm for sensorless motion control, parameter identication and position estimation

This article demonstrates that an actuator can be used as a single platform for measurement, control and estimation by designing a chain of estimators and performing simple off-line experiments. Making use of the fact that rejected torque from the dynamical system consists of all the system dynamics beside all external disturbances. The rejected torque waves are estimated using the actuator parameters, and used for an off-line experiment for parameter estimation, then the estimated rejected torque is used along with the estimated parameters to estimate the positions of any multi-degree of freedom flexible dynamical system. That makes it possible to use those estimates to achieve sensorless motion and vibration control without using actual measurement. Moreover, all the estimated parameters and system dynamics can be used in order to estimate any external disturbance on the system when it starts to interact with the environment.
Complications after cardiac implantable electronic device implantations: an analysis of a complete, nationwide cohort in Denmark

Aims Complications after cardiac implantable electronic device (CIED) treatment, including permanent pacemakers (PMs), cardiac resynchronization therapy devices with defibrillators (CRT-Ds) or without (CRT-Ps), and implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs), are associated with increased patient morbidity, healthcare costs, and possibly increased mortality. Methods and results Population-based cohort study in all Danish patients who underwent a CIED procedure from May 2010 to April 2011. Data on complications were gathered on review of all patient charts while baseline data were obtained from the Danish Pacemaker and ICD Register. Adjusted risk ratios (aRRs) with 95% confidence intervals were estimated using binary regression. The study population consisted of 5918 consecutive patients. A total of 562 patients (9.5%) experienced at least one complication. The risk of any complication was higher if the patient was a female (aRR 1.3; 1.1–1.6), underweight (aRR 1.5; 1.1–2.3), implanted in a centre with an annual volume <750 procedures (0–249 procedures: aRR 1.6; 1.1–2.2, 250–499: aRR 2.0; 1.6–2.7, 500–749: aRR 1.5; 1.2–1.8), received a dual-chamber ICD (aRR 2.0; 1.4–2.7) or CRT-D (aRR 2.6; 1.9–3.4), underwent system upgrade or lead revision (aRR 1.3; 1.0–1.7), had an operator with an annual volume <50 procedures (aRR 1.9; 1.4–2.6), or underwent an emergency, out-of-hours procedure (aRR 1.5; 1.0–2.3). Conclusion CIED complications are more frequent than generally acknowledged. Both patient- and procedure-related predictors may identify patients with a particularly high risk of complications. This information should be taken into account both in individual patient treatment and in the planning of future organization of CIED treatment.
Reversed portal flow: Clinical influence on the long-term outcomes in cirrhosis.

AIM To elucidate the natural history and the longitudinal outcomes in cirrhotic patients with non-forward portal flow (NFPF). METHODS The present retrospective study consisted of 222 cirrhotic patients (120 males and 102 females; age, 61.7 ± 11.1 years). The portal hemodynamics were evaluated at baseline and during the observation period using both pulsed and color Doppler ultrasonography. The diameter (mm), flow direction, mean flow velocity (cm/s), and mean flow volume (mL/min) were assessed at the portal trunk, the splenic vein, the superior mesenteric vein, and the collateral vessels. The average values from 2 to 4 measurements were used for the data analysis. The portal flow direction was defined as follows: forward portal flow (FPF) for continuous hepatopetal flow; bidirectional flow for to-and-fro flow; and reversed flow for continuous hepatofugal flow. The bidirectional flow and the reversed flow were classified as NFPF in this study. The clinical findings and prognosis were compared between the patients with FPF and those with NFPF. The median follow-up period was 40.9 mo (range, 0.3-156.5 mo). RESULTS Twenty-four patients (10.8%) demonstrated NFPF, accompanied by lower albumin level, worse Child-Pugh scores, and model for end-stage liver disease scores. The portal hemodynamic features in the patients with NFPF were smaller diameter of the portal trunk; presence of short gastric vein, splenorenal shunt, or inferior mesenteric vein; and advanced collateral vessels (diameter > 8.7 mm, flow velocity > 10.2 cm/s, and flow volume > 310 mL/min). The cumulative incidence rates of NFPF were 6.5% at 1 year, 14.5% at 3 years, and 23.1% at 5 years. The collateral vessels characterized by flow velocity > 9.5 cm/s and those located at the splenic hilum were significant predictive factors for developing NFPF. The cumulative survival rate was significantly lower in the patients with NFPF (72.2% at 1 year, 38.5% at 3 years, 38.5% at 5 years) than in those with forward portal flow (84.0% at 1 year, 67.8% at 3 years, 54.3% at 5 years, P = 0.0123) using the Child-Pugh B and C classifications. CONCLUSION NFPF has a significant negative effect on the prognosis of patients with worse liver function reserve, suggesting the need for careful management.
Investigating Interdomain Routing Policies in the Wild

Models of Internet routing are critical for studies of Internet security, reliability and evolution, which often rely on simulations of the Internet's routing system. Accurate models are difficult to build and suffer from a dearth of ground truth data, as ISPs often treat their connectivity and routing policies as trade secrets. In this environment, researchers rely on a number of simplifying assumptions and models proposed over a decade ago, which are widely criticized for their inability to capture routing policies employed in practice. In this study we put Internet topologies and models under the microscope to understand where they fail to capture real routing behavior. We measure data plane paths from thousands of vantage points, located in eyeball networks around the globe, and find that between 14-35% of routing decisions are not explained by existing models. We then investigate these cases, and identify root causes such as selective prefix announcement, misclassification of undersea cables, and geographic constraints. Our work highlights the need for models that address such cases, and motivates the need for further investigation of evolving Internet connectivity.