Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Increased Short-Term Variability of Repolarization Predicts d-Sotalol–Induced Torsades de Pointes in Dogs

Background—Identification of patients at risk for drug-induced torsades de pointes arrhythmia (TdP) is difficult. Increased temporal lability of repolarization has been suggested as being valuable to predict proarrhythmia. The predictive value of different repolarization parameters, including beat-to-beat variability of repolarization (BVR), was compared in this serial investigation in dogs with chronic AV block. Methods and Results—In anesthetized dogs with electrically remodeled hearts, the dose-dependent difference in drug-induced TdP (d-sotalol, 2 and 4 mg/kg IV over 5 minutes, 25% and 75% TdP, respectively) could not be accounted for by prolongation of QTc (410±37 to 475±60 versus 415±47 to 484±52 ms, respectively). BVR was quantified by Poincaré plots at baseline and immediately before onset of d-sotalol–induced extrasystolic activity. TdP occurrence was associated with an increase in short-term variability (STV) of the left ventricular monophasic action potential duration (3.5±1.5 to 5.5±1.6 versus 3.0±0.7 to 8.6±3.8 ms, respectively), which was reversible when TdP was abolished by IK,ATP activation. The absence of TdP despite QTc prolongation after chronic amiodarone treatment could also be explained by an unchanged STV. In experiments with isolated ventricular myocytes, STV increased after IKr block and was highest in cells that subsequently showed early afterdepolarizations. Conclusions—Proarrhythmia is not related to differences in prolongation of repolarization but corresponds to BVR, here quantified as STV of the left ventricle. STV could be a new parameter to predict drug-induced TdP in patients.
Infection and Co-infection with Helminths and Plasmodium among School Children in Côte d’Ivoire: Results from a National Cross-Sectional Survey

Background Helminth infection and malaria remain major causes of ill-health in the tropics and subtropics. There are several shared risk factors (e.g., poverty), and hence, helminth infection and malaria overlap geographically and temporally. However, the extent and consequences of helminth-Plasmodium co-infection at different spatial scales are poorly understood. Methodology This study was conducted in 92 schools across Côte d’Ivoire during the dry season, from November 2011 to February 2012. School children provided blood samples for detection of Plasmodium infection, stool samples for diagnosis of soil-transmitted helminth (STH) and Schistosoma mansoni infections, and urine samples for appraisal of Schistosoma haematobium infection. A questionnaire was administered to obtain demographic, socioeconomic, and behavioral data. Multinomial regression models were utilized to determine risk factors for STH-Plasmodium and Schistosoma-Plasmodium co-infection. Principal Findings Complete parasitological and questionnaire data were available for 5,104 children aged 5-16 years. 26.2% of the children were infected with any helminth species, whilst the prevalence of Plasmodium infection was 63.3%. STH-Plasmodium co-infection was detected in 13.5% and Schistosoma-Plasmodium in 5.6% of the children. Multinomial regression analysis revealed that boys, children aged 10 years and above, and activities involving close contact to water were significantly and positively associated with STH-Plasmodium co-infection. Boys, wells as source of drinking water, and water contact were significantly and positively associated with Schistosoma-Plasmodium co-infection. Access to latrines, deworming, higher socioeconomic status, and living in urban settings were negatively associated with STH-Plasmodium co-infection; whilst use of deworming drugs and access to modern latrines were negatively associated with Schistosoma-Plasmodium co-infection. Conclusions/Significance More than 60% of the school children surveyed were infected with Plasmodium across Côte d’Ivoire, and about one out of six had a helminth-Plasmodium co-infection. Our findings provide a rationale to combine control interventions that simultaneously aim at helminthiases and malaria.
Two eras of civic information and the evolving relationship between civil society organizations and young citizens

This article explores the communicative relationship between civic organizations and young citizens as a clue to understanding the potential for youth re-engagement through digital communication. It develops a framework of two ‘civic information styles’ that contrasts the expectations of information in the mass media era with those emerging today, and proposes that one source of contemporary disconnect may be that many civic groups remain entrenched in a mass media information paradigm—and so fail to communicate in ways that resonate with young people. Existing literature suggests that recently created, online organizations will be most likely to embrace a newer, more youth-friendly communication style; those organizations working within the formal political realm may be most reticent. A study of 60 organizations’ communications through Facebook mainly confirms these expectations, but low levels of youth-friendly communications across the sample raise doubts about the likelihood of a civil society resurgence through social media.
ASAP: Automatic Semantic Alignment for Phrases

In this paper we describe the ASAP system (Automatic Semantic Alignment for Phrases)1 which participated on the Task 1 at the SemEval-2014 contest (Marelli et al., 2014a). Our assumption is that STS (Semantic Text Similarity) follows a function considering lexical, syntactic, semantic and distributional features. We demonstrate the learning process of this function without any deep preprocessing achieving an acceptable correlation.
Managing NPD: Cost and Schedule Performance in Design and Manufacturing

In this field study, conducted at a leading avionics guidance systems manufacturer, we gathered primary data on time and cost performance of both the design and manufacturing phases of new product development (NPD). We modeled the impact of the management levers relating to oversight, the intensity of design specialization, and the level of interaction with the customer. The study highlights the necessity of leveraging the interdependencies between the design and manufacturing phases in NPD.
An opinion mining approach for Romanian language

The paper proposes a solution for document and aspect levels sentiment analysis for unstructured documents written in the Romanian language. The opinion extraction relies on two different approaches for polarity identification. At the aspect level we propose a rule-based approach. For the document level we consider supervised learning techniques, based on features extracted and filtered in different layers, based on their polarity discriminative power.
Study on the Characteristics of Air Spring

Due to of nonlinear performance and variable rigidity characteristic vehicle equipped with air suspension has more progress in the driving smoothness and handling stability. In the analysis based on the characteristics of air spring and the principle of gas flow, the paper aims at obtaining the relation curve between stiffness of air spring and on/off time, therefore, the calculation of a example has been done, which provides the valuable basis for the bench tests of air spring and vehicle control test.
A unification framework for tree and block wavelet encoders

Wavelet transform coefficient encoders are broadly categorized as depending on correlations: across sub-bands through a zerotree, or within sub-bands through a block quad-tree. This paper proposes a unification framework that allows a suitable algorithm to be crafted according to need. An example block-tree algorithm is described in detail, and results show that the performance closely approaches a state-of-the-art encoder, without needing the complexity of arithmetic coding.
Sonosensitive nanoparticles for controlled instigation of cavitation and drug delivery by ultrasound

Reliable instigation of cavitation in-vivo during ultrasound therapy is notoriously difficult. Lowering the peak rarefractional pressure required to initiate cavitation (the cavitation threshold) has been previously addressed using ultrasound contrast agents in the form of encapsulated stabilized micron scale bubbles. These agents lack stability and are generally too large to extravasate into tumours and other target tissues. Solid nanoparticles are proposed as novel cavitation nucleation agents, which overcome these limitations. Such agents are manufactured to achieve high surface roughness and hydrophobicity, facilitating air entrapment upon drying, thus harboring an abundance of cavitation nucleation sites. These nanoparticulate nucleating agents have been found to lower the cavitation threshold significantly in aqueous biological media, enabling reproducible cavitation activity during repeated exposure to therapeutic ultrasound. This paper investigates the engineering of core-shell nanoparticles and e.
Multiobjective Optimization of Pharmacophore Hypotheses: Bias Toward Low-Energy Conformations

Two methods are described for biasing conformational search during pharmacophore elucidation using a multiobjective genetic algorithm (MOGA). The MOGA explores conformation on-the-fly while simultaneously aligning a set of molecules such that their pharmacophoric features are maximally overlaid. By using a clique detection method to generate overlays of precomputed conformations to initialize the population (rather than starting from random), the speed of the algorithm has been increased by 2 orders of magnitude. This increase in speed has enabled the program to be applied to greater numbers of molecules than was previously possible. Furthermore, it was found that biasing the conformations explored during search time to those found in the Cambridge Structural Database could also improve the quality of the results.
Assessment of the Impact of Skeletonization on Pleuropulmonary Changes after Bilateral Internal Thoracic Artery Harvest for Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting

Background and Aims: Skeletonization has been proposed as a technique to minimize the risk of sternal devascularization during bilateral internal thoracic artery harvest for coronary artery bypass grafting. The impact of this strategy on late radiologic pleuropulmonary changes has not been addressed. Material and Methods: Post-operative chest radiographs from patients (n = 253 per group) undergoing bilateral internal thoracic artery harvest using skeletonized and non-skeletonized techniques were reviewed by blinded radiologists. The primary outcome was the incidence of atelectasis and pleural effusion. Multivariable linear regression models were derived to assess the relationship of radiologic pleuropulmonary outcomes to patients and operative variables. Results and Conclusion: Patients in the skeletonized group were older (p < 0.0001), had a lower preoperative hematocrit (p = 0.014), had higher prevalence of peripheral vascular disease (p = 0.001), were of female gender (p = 0.015), underwent off-pump surgery (p < 0.001), had urgent/emergent status (p = 0.024), and had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (p = 0.019). There was no difference in the incidence of post-operative complications, ventilation time, or intensive care unit stay. There was no difference in the severity of post-operative atelectasis in both groups. More patients in the non-skeletonized group had a grade 2/3 left pleural effusion on the late post-operative chest X-ray (p = 0.007). The independent effect of skeletonization on the development of a late left pleural effusion was significant (odds ratio = 0.558, 95% confidence interval = 0.359–0.866, p = 0.009). Skeletonization results in a decreased incidence of late post-operative left pleural effusion with no difference in early or late atelectasis. Further studies are warranted to assess the mechanism of these pleuropulmonary changes and the impact of other factors such as pleural violation during surgery.
Formation and properties of polypropylene/stearic acid composite fibers

This paper refers to the formation and properties of polypropylene/stearic acid (PP/SA) composite fibers. For the investigation, commercial metallocene-catalyzed PP polymer and SA were used. The fibers were produced in laboratory conditions using the single screw spin draw device. The textile-mechanical properties, surface composition, morphology and supermolecular structure of as-spun fibers were studied. Moreover, the nonisothermal crystallization of the PP/SA blend and melting behavior of fibers were analyzed. In the investigation Fourier transform infrared–attenuated total reflectance, scanning electron microscopy, differential scanning calorimetry and wide-angle X-ray analytical methods were used. The research showed that the PP/SA blend has lower viscosity compared to the pure polymer and that during the PP crystallization phase, separation is induced. SA delays crystallization of PP, and interaction between SA and PP is observed. The as-spun PP/SA fibers have higher linear density, higher elongation at break and slightly lower tenacity compared to fibers produced from pure PP. The fibers contain a structure with high content of mesophase. During fiber formation, SA migrates towards the fiber surface and forms droplets located beneath the surface of the fiber or crystallizes outside in the form of flake-like crystals.
Guest Editorial: Introduction to the Special Issue on Modeling and Implementation of Service Enterprise Systems

Ç 1 INTRODUCTION T HE services industry is one of the most important and fast-growing fields in computing. Businesses are rapidly becoming aware of the ubiquitous presence and significant advantages of service-oriented computing and supply chains. However, the heterogeneity of online businesses and their applications makes interoperability, an essential requirement for business globalization, a huge challenge. Many businesses, such as Amazon.com, United Airlines, and Motorola, have implemented or transformed their online business applications into Web Services using a variety of service infrastructures provided by vendors including IBM, SAP, Microsoft, Oracle, and BEA. As a result, the Internet is shifting from a repository of data to a repository of services. Gartner predicts that the worldwide Software as a Service (SaaS) market will grow from $6.3 billion in 2006 to $19.3 billion by the end of 2011. Services Computing is a rapidly emerging discipline that aims to enable efficient and effective interaction and collaboration among heterogeneous, distributed business services. Web Services promote abstraction, loose coupling, and interoperability among services. By allowing components to be decoupled using specified interfaces, service-oriented computing enables platform-independent integration. These new integration possibilities are valuable for constructing today's interoperable, large-scale, complex software-intensive systems that help make businesses more agile. With Web Services as an effective enabling technology and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) as the central architectural model, Services Computing leverages computing , service standards, and information technology to model, create, operate, and manage critical business transactions as defined and managed flows of services. Web Services are increasingly implemented and deployed as an effective means to create and streamline processes and collaborations among governments, businesses, and individuals. With such ubiquitous and powerful capabilities found in Services Computing, businesses are posed to move many of their enterprise-critical systems to SOA environments. However, many remain hesitant due to important open questions on security, performance, provenance, govern-ance, reliability, sustainability, and stakeholder acceptance issues. Thus, the need for more research, education, and training on Services Computing is vital before business adoption and the full impacts of Services Computing can be achieved. The papers published in this special issue fill a critical research gap by investigating models and techniques for the design and implementation of service-oriented systems for the business enterprise. This special issue focuses on the modeling and implementation issues of enterprise service systems. Out of 25 submissions , five papers were eventually accepted after an initial screening and then two to three rounds …
Aging, Physical Activity, and Disease Prevention

Although no amount of physical activity can stop the biological aging process, regular exercise can counteract some of the adverse physiological, psychological, and cognitive consequences of aging [1]. Age and physical inactivity are primary and secondary (indirect) risk factors for a long list of adverse chronic conditions [2, 3], whereas increasing physical activity from midlife to old age results in reduced rates of chronic disease and death [3, 4]. Our Call for Papers was driven by a growing body of evidence showing strong associations between physical inactivity and age-related chronic disease, as well as reductions in risks or incidence of chronic disease with exercise training [1]. Despite the overwhelming evidence for the role of physical activity in reducing the incidence of mortality, morbidity, and quality of life in chronic disease, a relatively small portion of the population are physically active worldwide [5] and even fewer older adults exercise regularly with sufficient intensity, duration, and frequency to receive optimal benefits for disease prevention [1]. Physical inactivity is especially prevalent in highly developed countries [5]. For this reason, more research is needed to understand and overcome barriers for habitual exercise and sport participation (see 3rd paper in this issue). A recent study ordered reasons for participating in exercise programs and found that social aspects followed by the intent to improve physical fitness and/or prevent chronic diseases ranked among the highest reasons in older adults. With the increasing number of elderly, especially in the highly developed countries, it is important, yet challenging, to offer attractive and accessible physical activity programs to elderly. Qualified supervision, medical evaluations, and evidence-based individualized exercise prescriptions are also important for older sedentary adults, particularly those with underlying cardiovascular disease [6]. Besides cardiovascular and metabolic disease prevention, physical activity might also help reduce the risk of dementia [7, 8] and maintain cognitive function [9]. Since the risk of dementia is strongly associated with age and the number of adults surviving to advanced age will increase markedly in the near future, preventive measures become increasingly important. In this context, there is even some evidence that biological aging of the brain might be slowed down and that brain areas most affected by the aging process might benefit most from regular exercise [10]. This special issue covers a wide array of topics on the aging and physical activity and their relationship to disease and disability prevention. The papers show how aging and …
On the Role of Dendritic Cells in Peripheral T Cell Tolerance and Modulation of Autoimmunity

Recently, it has become clear that dendritic cells (DCs) are essential for the priming of T cell responses. However, their role in the maintenance of peripheral T cell tolerance remains largely undefined. Herein, an antigen-presenting cell (APC) transfer system was devised and applied to experimental allergic encephalomyelitis (EAE), to evaluate the contribution that DCs play in peripheral T cell tolerance. The CD8α−CD4+ subset, a minor population among splenic DCs, was found to mediate both tolerance and bystander suppression against diverse T cell specificities. Aggregated (agg) Ig-myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein (MOG), an Ig chimera carrying the MOG 35–55 peptide, binds and cross-links FcγR on APC leading to efficient peptide presentation and interleukin (IL)-10 production. Furthermore, administration of agg Ig-MOG into diseased mice induces relief from clinical EAE involving multiple epitopes. Such recovery could not occur in FcγR-deficient mice where both uptake of Ig-MOG and IL-10 production are compromised. However, reconstitution of these mice with DC populations incorporating the CD8α−CD4+ subset restored Ig-MOG–mediated reversal of EAE. Transfer of CD8α+ or even CD8α−CD4− DCs had no effect on the disease. These findings strongly implicate DCs in peripheral tolerance and emphasize their functional potency, as a small population of DCs was able to support effective suppression of autoimmunity.
New algorithms for parking demand management and a city-scale deployment

On-street parking, just as any publicly owned utility, is used inefficiently if access is free or priced very far from market rates. This paper introduces a novel demand management solution: using data from dedicated occupancy sensors an iteration scheme updates parking rates to better match demand. The new rates encourage parkers to avoid peak hours and peak locations and reduce congestion and underuse. The solution is deliberately simple so that it is easy to understand, easily seen to be fair and leads to parking policies that are easy to remember and act upon. We study the convergence properties of the iteration scheme and prove that it converges to a reasonable distribution for a very large class of models. The algorithm is in use to change parking rates in over 6000 spaces in downtown Los Angeles since June 2012 as part of the LA Express Park project. Initial results are encouraging with a reduction of congestion and underuse, while in more locations rates were decreased than increased.
The Impact (or Non-impact) of User Studies in Music Information Retrieval

Most Music Information Retrieval (MIR) researchers will agree that understanding users' needs and behaviors is critical for developing a good MIR system. The number of user studies in the MIR domain has been gradually increasing since the early 2000s reflecting the need for empirical studies of users. However, despite the growing number of user studies and the wide recognition of their importance, it is unclear how large their impact has been in the field; on how systems are developed, evaluation tasks are created, and how we understand critical concepts such as music similarity or music mood. In this paper, we present our analysis on the growth, publication and citation patterns, and design of 155 user studies. This is followed by a discussion of a number of issues/challenges in conducting MIR user studies and distributing the research results. We conclude by making recommendations to increase the visibility and impact of user studies in the field.