Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Gaining Greater Insight into HCV Emergence in HIV-Infected Men Who Have Sex with Men: The HEPAIG Study

Objectives The HEPAIG study was conducted to better understand Hepatitis C virus (HCV) transmission among human immuno-deficiency (HIV)-infected men who have sex with men (MSM) and assess incidence of HCV infection among this population in France. Methods and Results Acute HCV infection defined by anti-HCV or HCV ribonucleic acid (RNA) positivity within one year of documented anti-HCV negativity was notified among HIV-infected MSM followed up in HIV/AIDS clinics from a nationwide sampling frame. HIV and HCV infection characteristics, HCV potential exposures and sexual behaviour were collected by the physicians and via self-administered questionnaires. Phylogenetic analysis of the HCV-NS5B region was conducted. HCV incidence was 48/10 000 [95% Confidence Interval (CI):43–54] and 36/10 000 [95% CI: 30–42] in 2006 and 2007, respectively. Among the 80 men enrolled (median age: 40 years), 55% were HIV-diagnosed before 2000, 56% had at least one sexually transmitted infection in the year before HCV diagnosis; 55% were HCV-infected with genotype 4 (15 men in one 4d-cluster), 32.5% with genotype 1 (three 1a-clusters); five men were HCV re-infected; in the six-month preceding HCV diagnosis, 92% reported having casual sexual partners sought online (75.5%) and at sex venues (79%), unprotected anal sex (90%) and fisting (65%); using recreational drugs (62%) and bleeding during sex (55%). Conclusions This study emphasizes the role of multiple unprotected sexual practices and recreational drugs use during sex in the HCV emergence in HIV-infected MSM. It becomes essential to adapt prevention strategies and inform HIV-infected MSM with recent acute HCV infection on risk of re-infection and on risk-reduction strategies.
Hydration and Pasting Properties of Oat (Avena sativa) Flour

Three oat cultivars and one oat breeding line were evaluated for chemical, hydration and pasting properties. Protein, starch and β-glucan levels ranged 11.13∼14.37, 56.37∼64.86 and 3.44∼4.76%, respectively. The oat cultivars Daeyang and Seonyang contained higher β-glucan levels of 4.76 and 4.35%. The Daeyang variety had a higher water absorption index (WAI) of 2.83∼3.35 (g/g), but a lower water solubility index (WSI) of 8.67 ∼11.08%. Daeyang and Seonyang cultivars showed higher peak and trough viscosity, but lower breakdown and setback, indicating that they easily swell, and thus could possibly provide the desirable viscosity of an oat product. The β-glucan levels were correlated positively with WAI, peak and trough viscosity, and negatively to WSI, breakdown and setback viscosity.
Opposing Effects of Expectancy and Somatic Focus on Pain

High-pain expectancy increases pain and pain-related brain activity, creating a cycle of psychologically maintained pain. Though these effects are robust, little is known about how expectancy works and what psychological processes either support or mitigate its effects. To address this, we independently manipulated pain expectancy and “top-down” attention to the body, and examined their effects on both a performance-based measure of body-focus and heat-induced pain. Multi-level mediation analyses showed that high-pain expectancy substantially increased pain, replicating previous work. However, attention to the body reduced pain, partially suppressing the effects of expectancy. Furthermore, increased body-focus had larger pain-reducing effects when pain expectancy was high, suggesting that attempts to focus on external distractors are counterproductive in this situation. Overall, the results show that attention to the body cannot explain pain-enhancing expectancy effects, and that focusing on sensory/discriminative aspects of pain might be a useful pain-regulation strategy when severe pain is expected.
Strict convex regularizations, proximal points and augmented lagrangians

Proximal Point Methods (PPM) can be traced to the pioneer works of Moreau [16], Martinet [14, 15] and Rockafellar [19, 20] who used as regularization function the square of the Euclidean norm. In this work, we study PPM in the context of optimization and we derive a class of such methods which contains Rockafellar's result. We also present a less stringent criterion to the acceptance of an approximate solution to the subproblems that arise in the inner loops of PPM. Moreover, we introduce a new family of augmented Lagrangian methods for convex constrained optimization, that generalizes the P E + class presented in [2].
Dynamic Symbolic Execution with Interpolation Based Path Merging

—This paper presents a dynamic symbolic execution engine for automated bug detection in C code. It uses path merging based on interpolation with unsatisﬁable cores to mitigate the exponential path explosion problem. Code coverage can be scaled by varying the interpolation. An algorithm for error and branch coverage is described. The implementation extends Eclipse CDT. It is evaluated on buffer overﬂow test cases from the Juliet test suite in terms of speed-up through merging, reduction of the number of analyzed program paths and proportion of merged paths.
Audibility of Inharmonicity in String Instrument Sounds, and Implications to Digital Sound Synthesis

Listening tests were conducted in order to find out the audibility of inharmonicity in musical sounds produced by string instruments, such as the piano or the guitar. The threshold of the audibility of inharmonicity was measured as a function of the inharmonicity coefficient at five fundamental frequencies. It was found that the detection of inharmonicity is strongly dependent on the fundamental frequency. A simple model is presented for estimating the threshold as a function of the fundamental frequency. The need to implement inharmonicity in digital sound synthesis is discussed.
School-Located Influenza Vaccination Reduces Community Risk for Influenza and Influenza-Like Illness Emergency Care Visits

Background School-located influenza vaccination (SLIV) programs can substantially enhance the sub-optimal coverage achieved under existing delivery strategies. Randomized SLIV trials have shown these programs reduce laboratory-confirmed influenza among both vaccinated and unvaccinated children. This work explores the effectiveness of a SLIV program in reducing the community risk of influenza and influenza-like illness (ILI) associated emergency care visits. Methods For the 2011/12 and 2012/13 influenza seasons, we estimated age-group specific attack rates (AR) for ILI from routine surveillance and census data. Age-group specific SLIV program effectiveness was estimated as one minus the AR ratio for Alachua County versus two comparison regions: the 12 county region surrounding Alachua County, and all non-Alachua counties in Florida. Results Vaccination of ∼50% of 5–17 year-olds in Alachua reduced their risk of ILI-associated visits, compared to the rest of Florida, by 79% (95% confidence interval: 70, 85) in 2011/12 and 71% (63, 77) in 2012/13. The greatest indirect effectiveness was observed among 0–4 year-olds, reducing AR by 89% (84, 93) in 2011/12 and 84% (79, 88) in 2012/13. Among all non-school age residents, the estimated indirect effectiveness was 60% (54, 65) and 36% (31, 41) for 2011/12 and 2012/13. The overall effectiveness among all age-groups was 65% (61, 70) and 46% (42, 50) for 2011/12 and 2012/13. Conclusion Wider implementation of SLIV programs can significantly reduce the influenza-associated public health burden in communities.
Stable tensors and moduli space of orthogonal sheaves

Let X be a smooth projective variety over C. We find the natural notion of semistable orthogonal bundle and construct the moduli space, which we compactify by considering also orthogonal sheaves, i.e. pairs (E,\phi), where E is a torsion free sheaf on X and \phi is a symmetric nondegenerate (in the open set where E is locally free) bilinear form on E. We also consider special orthogonal sheaves, by adding a trivialization \psi of the determinant of E such that det(\phi)=\psi^2 ; and symplectic sheaves, by considering a form which is skewsymmetric. More generally, we consider semistable tensors, i.e. multilinear forms on a torsion free sheaf, and construct their projective moduli space using GIT.
Differential Response to Exogenous and Endogenous Myostatin in Myoblasts Suggests that Myostatin Acts as an Autocrine Factor in Vivo

Myostatin is a member of the TGFsuperfamily that is essential for proper regulation of skeletal muscle growth. As do other TGFsuperfamily members, myostatin signals into the cell via a receptor complex that consists of two distinct transmembrane proteins, known as the type I and type II receptors. Vertebrates have seven distinct type I receptors, each of which can mix and match with one of five type I receptors to mediate signals for all the TGFfamily ligands. Accumulating evidence indicates that myostatin shares its pair of receptors with activin, and therefore, the question arises about how specificity in signaling is achieved. Our hypothesis is that a mechanism has to exist to restrict myostatin actions to the muscle cells. To investigate this possibility, we compared the effect of endogenous myostatin (myostatin overexpressed by myoblasts) and exogenous myostatin (recombinant myostatin added to the culture medium) in cultured myoblasts. As opposed to exogenous myostatin, endogenous myostatin induced the transcription of a reporter vector in cultured myoblasts. Notably, the myostatin concentrations that failed to induce a response in myoblasts were effective in MCF-7 cells (human mammary carcinoma) and in HepG2 cells (human hepatic carcinoma). Based on our observations, we propose that a mechanism exists that differentially regulates the bioavailability of endogenous and exogenous myostatin to muscle cells. This is consistent with a model in which myostatin actions are exerted in vivo in an autocrine fashion. (Endocrinology 145: 2795–2803, 2004)
Extracting Drug-Drug Interaction from the Biomedical Literature Using a Stacked Generalization-Based Approach

Drug-drug interaction (DDI) detection is particularly important for patient safety. However, the amount of biomedical literature regarding drug interactions is increasing rapidly. Therefore, there is a need to develop an effective approach for the automatic extraction of DDI information from the biomedical literature. In this paper, we present a Stacked Generalization-based approach for automatic DDI extraction. The approach combines the feature-based, graph and tree kernels and, therefore, reduces the risk of missing important features. In addition, it introduces some domain knowledge based features (the keyword, semantic type, and DrugBank features) into the feature-based kernel, which contribute to the performance improvement. More specifically, the approach applies Stacked generalization to automatically learn the weights from the training data and assign them to three individual kernels to achieve a much better performance than each individual kernel. The experimental results show that our approach can achieve a better performance of 69.24% in F-score compared with other systems in the DDI Extraction 2011 challenge task.
The Heterogenic Final Cell Cycle of Retinal Horizontal Cells

For proper development, cells need to coordinate proliferation and cell cycle-exit. This is mediated by a cascade of proteins making sure that each phase of the cell cycle is controlled before the initiation of the next. Retinal progenitor cells divide during the process of interkinetic nuclear migration, where they undergo S-phase on the basal side, followed by mitoses on the apical side of the neuroepithelium. The final cell cycle of chicken retinal horizontal cells (HCs) is an exception to this general cell cycle behavior. Lim1 expressing (+) horizontal progenitor cells (HPCs) have a heterogenic final cell cycle, with some cells undergoing a terminal mitosis on the basal side of the retina. The results in this study show that this terminal basal mitosis of Lim1+ HPCs is not dependent on Chk1/2 for its regulation compared to retinal cells undergoing interkinetic nuclear migration. Neither activating nor blocking Chk1 had an effect on the basal mitosis of Lim1+ HPCs. Furthermore, the Lim1+ HPCs were not sensitive to cisplatin-induced DNA damage and were able to continue into mitosis in the presence of γ-H2AX without activation of caspase-3. However, Nutlin3a-induced expression of p21 did reduce the mitoses, suggesting the presence of a functional p53/p21 response in HPCs. In contrast, the apical mitoses were blocked upon activation of either Chk1/2 or p21, indicating the importance of these proteins during the process of interkinetic nuclear migration. Inhibiting Cdk1 blocked M-phase transition both for apical and basal mitoses. This confirmed that the cyclin B1-Cdk1 complex was active and functional during the basal mitosis of Lim1+ HPCs. The regulation of the final cell cycle of Lim1+ HPCs is of particular interest since it has been shown that the HCs are able to sustain persistent DNA damage, remain in the cell cycle for an extended period of time and, consequently, survive for months.
The UnofjLicial Economy in Transition

THEECONOMIES of eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union (FSU) escaped communism with a heavy burden. When central planning collapsed, they continued to suffer from widespread political control of economic activity. Such politicization had to be reduced significantly for small business formation and growth to begin. In recent years, some of these countries have succeeded much better than others in replacing political control with functioning market institutions. As this paper shows, they are also the countries that have had the healthiest public finances, the smallest unofficial economies, and the best records of growth. The politicization of economic life can usefully be thought of as the exercise by politicians of control rights over business. ' Such rights may include regulatory powers over privatized and private firms, the ability to regulate and restrict entry, control over the use of land and real estate that private businesses occupy, the determination and collection of taxes
Enterohepatic Circulation of Bile Salts in Farnesoid X Receptor-deficient Mice

The bile salt-activated farnesoid X receptor (FXR; NR1H4) controls expression of several genes considered crucial in maintenance of bile salt homeostasis. We evaluated the physiological consequences of FXR deficiency on bile formation and on the kinetics of the enterohepatic circulation of cholate, the major bile salt species in mice. The pool size, fractional turnover rate, synthesis rate, and intestinal absorption of cholate were determined by stable isotope dilution and were related to expression of relevant transporters in the livers and intestines of FXR-deficient (Fxr–/–) mice. Fxr–/– mice showed only mildly elevated plasma bile salt concentrations associated with a 2.4-fold higher biliary bile salt output, whereas hepatic mRNA levels of the bile salt export pump were decreased. Cholate pool size and total bile salt pool size were increased by 67 and 39%, respectively, in Fxr–/– mice compared with wild-type mice. The cholate synthesis rate was increased by 85% in Fxr–/– mice, coinciding with a 2.5-fold increase in cholesterol 7α-hydroxylase (Cyp7a1) and unchanged sterol 12α-hydroxylase (Cyp8b1) expression in the liver. Despite a complete absence of ileal bile acid-binding protein mRNA and protein, the fractional turnover rate and cycling time of the cholate pool were not affected. The calculated amount of cholate reabsorbed from the intestine per day was ∼2-fold higher in Fxr–/– mice than in wild-type mice. Thus, the absence of FXR in mice is associated with defective feedback inhibition of hepatic cholate synthesis, which leads to enlargement of the circulating cholate pool with an unaltered fractional turnover rate. The absence of ileal bile acid-binding protein does not negatively interfere with the enterohepatic circulation of cholate in mice.
Estimation of Euler Characteristic from Point Data

Determination of the geometry and topology of a 3-dimensional body is an important problem appearing in Computer Aided Design, medical tomography, crystallography, molecular biology, etc. The methods used to address this problem depend on the form of input data. Let S be a finite set of sample points from a 3-dimensional body K ⊂ R. In applications one may need to estimate certain integral properties of K, like Euler characteristic, surface area, volume, etc. Sometimes a reconstruction of K can be attempted and many reconstruction methods have been suggested – e.g., methods based on Fourier analysis, methods based on weighted Delaunay or Voronoi complexes, such as e.g. the α-shapes method of Edelsbrunner [Ede99], etc. However, if the number of sample points is very large, a piecewise-linear reconstruction is not always possible – for example, at present it is impossible to use any methods based on Delaunay complexes when the number of sample points is about 2 or larger. On the other hand, even if a certain reconstruction method is applicable, naturally appears the question of verification of topological properties of a reconstruction. Most reconstruction methods yield either a simplicial complex or, more generally, a semialgebraic, or even semianalytic set. How well does this new body represent the shape of the original point set S? While S itself has very simple topology, being a finite set, we may think of S as a uniform, Poisson, or lattice sampling from some 3-dimensional body with a well-defined shape, whose intrinsic topology we seek to determine.
Path Rewriting in Semistructured Data

We consider in this paper rooted labeled directed graphs as models for semistructured data. A path inclusion constraint, in such graphs, is an expression p <= q where p and q are regular expressions over the alphabet of labels. An path inclusion constraint p <= q is satisfied by a rooted labeled directed graph if the set of nodes reached, from the root, by the words of the language described by p is included in the set of nodes reached, from the root, by the words of the language described by q. We answer here to the following problem : given a set C of path inclusion constraints, given a regular expression p describing an infinite regular language, we want to compute, if it exists, a regular expression f describing a finite language, such that p <= f for every graph satisfying C.
NSA’s MORECOWBELL: Knell for DNS

On the net, close to everything starts with a request to the Domain Name System (DNS), a core Internet protocol to allow users to access Internet services by names, such as www.example. com, instead of using numeric IP addresses, like 2001:DB8:4145::4242. Developed in the “Internet good old times” the contemporary DNS is like a large network activity chart for the visually impaired. Consequently, it now attracts not only all sorts of commercially-motivated surveillance, but, as new documents of the NSA spy program MORECOWBELL confirm, also the National Security Agency. Given the design weaknesses of DNS, this begs the question if DNS be secured and saved, or if it has to be replaced — at least for some use cases. In the last two years, there has been a flurry of activity to address security and privacy in DNS at the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the body that documents the DNS standards. The Internet Architecture Board, peer body of the IETF, just called on the engineers to use encryption everywhere, possibly including DNS. [4] A recent draft [6] by the IETF on DNS privacy starts by acknowledging that the DNS
Research advancement on intellectual property strategy

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review key academic literature on the characteristics of business firms' intellectual property (IP) strategy and to examine the implications for how Chinese firms can deal with today's business environment under the globalization.Design/methodology/approach – A selection of peer‐reviewed articles from scholarly journals listed in major academic search engines is reviewed. The search results showed that ProQuest included 509 related articles and ScienceDirect included 121. The abstract of all the articles were reviewed. Finally, 26 articles were identified and comprehensively reviewed. The key characteristics of the role of internal and external contexts for IP strategy development were then analysed in terms of the challenges faced by Chinese firms.Findings – The results show that IP strategies involve IP identification/generation, valuation, utilization and enforcement. Its effectiveness depends on both internal (i.e. company size, ownership of firms, business st.
Tenth International Symposium on Wearable Computers Student Colloquium Proposals Iswc 2006 Student Colloquium Proposals Wearable Communicator Badge: Designing a New Platform for a System Architecture for the Gathering and Distribution of Wireless Sensor Design and Implementation of a Sensor Manageme

In recent years much work has been done on human activity recognition using wearable sensors. As we begin to deploy hundreds and even thousands of wearable sensors on regular workers, hospital patients, and army soldiers, the question shifts more toward a balance between what information can be gained and their broad immediate user acceptance. In this paper we compare the activity classication accuracy of four different congurations of accelerometer placement on the human body using hidden Markov models (HMMs). We nd the classication accuracy of a single accelerometer placed in three different parts of the body and evaluate whether there is a signicant improvement in recognition accuracy by adding multiple accelerometers or not. We also nd the number of hidden states that best models each activity by achieving the lowest test error using K-fold cross-validation.
A Probabilistic Approach for Process Mining in Incomplete and Noisy Logs

— Process mining techniques aim at automatically generating process models from event logs. Many existing techniques in process mining are applicable only under very restrictive conditions about the log completeness. However, due to the completion time of the tasks in the model, the generated logs in most of the real life processes do not satisfy these conditions. In many real life logs, too many log instances are needed for the mining approach to work properly. Therefore, another definitions, metrics and algorithms are required to mine event logs with not enough instances. In this paper, a probabilistic approach is proposed to mine event logs when the number of instances is limited. In order to evaluate the proposed approach, time Petri nets are used to generate more realistic event logs. In comparison with many existing approaches, based are the results of our experiments, the proposed approach is very robust in mining process logs with high degrees of parallelism, incompleteness and noise.