Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Quality of life, depression and fatigue among persons co-infected with HIV and hepatitis C: Outcomes from a population-based cohort

The objective of the study was to describe the additional burden generated by hepatitis C (HCV) infection among HIV-infected individuals as measured by self-reported quality of life, depression and fatigue. The provincial HIV/AIDS Drug Treatment Program (DTP) distributes all antiretroviral medication in the province of British Columbia. Eligibility for accessing antiretrovirals is based on published guidelines commensurate with the International AIDS Society. Each participant is asked to complete a self-administered mailed questionnaire that includes patient sociodemographic information, quality of life measures (Medical Outcomes Study-Short Form (MOS-SF), mental health issues (Centre for Epidemiological Studies Depression scale (CESD) and fatigue information. HIV-HCV co-infected individuals were compared to HIV mono-infected individuals using parametric and nonparametric methods. Multivariate logistic regression was used to examine the impact of hepatitis C on quality of life, depression and fatigue, after controlling for sociodemographics and HIV-specific clinical characteristics. Of the 4,134 individuals who were sent a HIV/AIDS DTP survey in 1999, 2000 or 2001, 484 participants both returned one and had an HCV-antibody test result on file. Of the 484 participants eligible for this analysis, 105 (22%) were HCV-positive. In comparison to the 379 (78%) patients testing negative for HCV, a larger proportion of co-infected patients were female (18% versus 3%, p<0.001), aboriginal (20% versus 3%, p<0.001), had ever injected drugs (79% versus 5%, p<0.001), were unemployed (91% versus 49%, p<0.001) and lived in unstable housing (19% versus 1%, p<0.001) at the time they completed the survey. Co-infected patients reported more symptoms consistent with depression, increased fatigue and poorer quality of life. However, using multivariate modeling, it was determined that the impact of HCV on quality of life, depression and fatigue was better explained by the sociodemographic factors related to poverty and injection drug use, than by HCV itself. In conclusion, individuals co-infected with HIV and HCV represent a patient population with significant physical and mental health challenges. Although these patients experience poorer quality of life, increased depression and fatigue, this experience appears to be primarily related to socio-economic issues rather than HCV infection.
Coexistence of Cognitive Small Cell and WiFi System: A Traffic Balancing Dual-Access Resource Allocation Scheme

We consider a holistic approach for dual-access cognitive small cell (DACS) networks, which uses the LTE air interface in both licensed and unlicensed bands. In the licensed band, we consider a sensing-based power allocation scheme to maximize the sum data rate of DACSs by jointly optimizing the cell selection, the sensing operation, and the power allocation under the interference constraint to macrocell users. Due to intercell interference and the integer nature of the cell selection, the resulting optimization problems lead to a nonconvex integer programming. We reformulate the problem to a nonconvex power allocation game and find the relaxed equilibria, quasi-Nash equilibrium. Furthermore, in order to guarantee the fairness of the whole system, we propose a dynamic satisfaction-based dual-band traffic balancing (SDTB) algorithm over licensed and unlicensed bands for DACSs which aims at maximizing the overall satisfaction of the system. We obtain the optimal transmission time in the unlicensed band to ensure the proportional fair coexistence with WiFi while guaranteeing the traffic balancing of DACSs. Simulation results demonstrate that the SDTB algorithm could achieve a considerable performance improvement relative to the schemes in literature, while providing a tradeoff between maximizing the total data rate and achieving better fairness among networks.
CpG oligodeoxynucleotides accelerate reovirus type 2‐triggered insulitis in DBA/1 suckling mice

We reported previously that reovirus type‐2 (Reo‐2) triggers T‐helper (Th) 1‐mediated autoimmune insulitis resulting in temporal impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) approximately 10 days post infection (d.p.i) in suckling DBA/1 mice. We hypothesized that CpG motifs in bacteria may enhance virus‐induced insulitis through its content of unmethylated CpG motifs. In the infected mice, the intraperitoneal treatment of synthetic 20‐base oligodeoxynucleotides with CpG motifs (CpG ODN) caused increase in cumulative incidence of insulitis with IGT, increased serum interferon (IFN)‐γ concentration, and high frequency of autoantibody against pancreatic islet cells, compared to the infected mice without CpG ODN at 17 d.p.i. Also CD4+ and CD8+ lymphocytes infiltrated in and/or around pancreatic islets in the CpG ODN‐treated mice. This evidence suggests that CpG ODN may contribute to accelerate Reo‐2‐induced autoimmune reaction against pancreatic islet cells via additional effects of Th1 cytokines especially IFN‐γ.
A statistical rescoring scheme for protein–ligand docking: Consideration of entropic effect

Computational prediction of protein–ligand binding modes provides useful information on the relationship between structure and activity needed for drug design. A statistical rescoring method that incorporates entropic effect is proposed to improve the accuracy of binding mode prediction. A probability function for two sampled conformations to belong to the same broad basin in the potential energy surface is introduced to estimate the contribution of the state represented by a sampled conformation to the configurational integral. The rescoring function is reduced to the colony energy introduced by Xiang et al. (Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 2002;99:7432–7437) when a particular functional form for the probability function is used. The scheme is applied to rescore protein–ligand complex conformations generated by AutoDock. It is demonstrated that this simple rescoring improves prediction accuracy substantially when tested on 163 protein–ligand complexes with known experimental structures. For example, the percentage of complexes for which predicted ligand conformations are within 1 Å root‐mean‐square deviation from the native conformations is doubled from about 20% to more than 40%. Rescoring with 11 different scoring functions including AutoDock scoring functions were also tested using the ensemble of conformations generated by Wang et al. (J Med Chem 2003;46:2287–2303). Comparison with other methods that use clustering and estimation of conformational entropy is provided. Examination of the docked poses reveals that the rescoring corrects the predictions in which ligands are tightly fit into the binding pockets and have low energies, but have too little room for conformational freedom and thus have low entropy. Proteins 2008. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Gentrification and Toronto’s Changing Household Characteristics and Income Distribution

This study compares the changes in the household characteristics and income distributions of men and women in the Toronto census tracts that gentrified in the 1970s with the changes taking place across the metropolitan area. Higher-income women were gentrifiers from the beginning and lower-income men were more likely to be displaced. The factors driving gentrification are also transforming the rest of the metropolitan area, making the continuation of gentrification appear inevitable unless aggressive social housing programs are implemented to secure tenure for lower-income households and help mitigate the loss of lower priced housing in the inner city.
Prospects of the farming sector and rural development in view of food security: the case of the Russian Federation

As the recent situation on world food markets has been increasingly volatile and has been associated with relatively higher food prices, contributing to demonstrations and riots across the world, Russia's agriculture has attracted much attention from economists, experts and policy-makers because they believe that the country could become the world's largest and most reliable grain producer and exporter. In that context, the aim of this report is to evaluate the role of the Russian Federation towards fulfilling domestic food security and more importantly global food security in the short and medium run. In particular, the study aims at examining if Russian farms could substantially increase further their respective output and export levels. The methodology followed in this report is a bottom-up approach, i.e. going from the farm (i.e. microeconomic level) to the food market (i.e. macroeconomic level), that explicitly considers the analysis of food security at the farm level and therefore complements well other works which study the agri-food sector in Russia at a more aggregated level. The perspective of the report is made possible by the use of a wide range of farm-level databases that are, for most, only available to Russian researchers and allow going into a more disaggregated and detailed level of analysis.
Outsourcing of Secure k-Nearest Neighbours Interpolation Method

Cloud computing becomes essential in these days for the enterprises. Most of the large companies are moving their services and data to the cloud servers which offer flexibility and efficiency. Data owner (DO) hires a cloud service provider (CSP) to store its data and carry out the related computation. The query owner (QO) sends a request which is crucial for its future plans to the CSP. The CSP computes all necessary calculations and returns the result back to the QO. Neither the data nor query owners want to reveal their private data to anyone. k-Nearest Neighbour (k-NN) interpolation is one of the essential algorithms to produce a prediction value for an unmeasured location. Simply, it finds k number of nearest neighbours around the query point to produce an output. Oblivious RAM (ORAM) has been used to protect the privacy in cloud computing. In our work, we will perform the k-NN method using the kd-tree and ORAM without revealing both the data-owner’s and query owner’s confidential data to each other or to third parties. The proposed solution will be analysed to ensure that it provides accurate and reliable predictions while preserving the privacy of all parties.
Low‐level laser (light) therapy (LLLT) for treatment of hair loss

Alopecia is a common disorder affecting more than half of the population worldwide. Androgenetic alopecia, the most common type, affects 50% of males over the age of 40 and 75% of females over 65. Only two drugs have been approved so far (minoxidil and finasteride) and hair transplant is the other treatment alternative. This review surveys the evidence for low‐level laser therapy (LLLT) applied to the scalp as a treatment for hair loss and discusses possible mechanisms of actions.
Executive stock options and firm valuation: a literature review and research framework

The wave of globalisation and its impact on business excellence is real. The importance of motivational compensation packages at achieving improved corporate performance/business excellence cannot be overemphasised. Executive stock options have been widely used to remunerate top executives of companies in this regard. The purposes of this study are to summarise and review the compensation literature on executive stock options plan relating it to firm valuation, with special emphasis on accounting numbers; synthesise and develop a framework that explains existing relationships in the extant literature connecting executive stock options and firm value and suggesting future research directions in this area of research. This study examined these in the context of compensation theories, corporate governance, earnings management as well as potential for corporate volatility and corporate failure.
Autoantibody recognition of distinctly modified forms of the U1-70-kd antigen is associated with different clinical disease manifestations.

OBJECTIVE To examine whether autoantibody recognition of modified forms of the U1-70-kd RNP antigen correlates with manifestations of rheumatic disease. METHODS Blinded to clinical disease manifestations, sera from 27 rheumatic disease patients with U1-70-kd antibodies were used to immunoblot control, apoptotic, and oxidatively modified HeLa cell lysates. Using densitometry, recognition of antigen fragments was quantitated. The presence or absence of 1) lupus skin disease and 2) Raynaud's phenomenon (RP) was determined for each patient by chart review. The ability of patient sera to recognize the different fragments was compared for patients with and without skin disease and with and without RP. RESULTS Patients with lupus skin disease had higher recognition of apoptotic U1-70 kd than did patients without skin disease (mean +/- SD fragment recognition index [FRI] 1.35 +/- 0.57 versus 0.95 +/- 0.25; P < 0.024, by Student's t-test). Patients with RP had higher recognition of oxidatively modified U1-70 kd than did patients without RP (mean +/- SD FRI 0.95 +/- 0.80 versus 0.24 +/- 0.22; P < 0.048). CONCLUSION Recognition of apoptotically and oxidatively modified forms of the U1-70-kd autoantigen are associated with distinct clinical rheumatic disease manifestations. This finding provides in vivo evidence for the hypothesis that immune recognition of modified forms of self antigens may be relevant to the pathogenesis of systemic rheumatic diseases. Understanding the antigenic modifications to which patients react may help predict the expression of rheumatic syndromes.
Cherry Picking, Disclosure Quality, and Comprehensive Income Reporting Choices: The Case of Property-Liability Insurers

Financial Accounting Standard No. 130 Reporting Comprehensive Income encourages enterprises to report comprehensive income on a performance statement rather than on a statement of equity. We investigate the reporting decisions of 82 publicly traded property-liability insurers, which are fairly evenly split in their choice. Our results demonstrate that insurers with a tendency to manage earnings through realized securities' gains and losses (i.e., cherry pickers), as well as insurers with a reputation for poor disclosure quality, are more likely to report comprehensive income in a statement of equity. Apparently, these insurers face the highest cost of transparency. We do not find a relation between the reporting decision and the volatility of comprehensive income relative to the volatility of net income. Our findings that insurers' comprehensive income reporting choices are a reflection of their proclivity toward cherry picking as well as their level of disclosure quality should be of interest to standard setters because of the controversy over standard setters' preference for mandating all firms to report comprehensive income in a performance statement.
The Perverse Effect of Debt Tax Benefits on Firm Investment Decisions

In this paper we question the idea that the deduction of debt interest is always an effective policy instrument to spur firm investment. We analyse the investment decision in presence of a borrowing constraint on the amount of debt that the firm can raise. We show that if the debt interest rate is decreasing in the firm's capital accumulation and another financial resource more expensive than debt is available (at least for levels of debt lower than the upper bound), then the deduction of the debt interest from taxes on capital income may reduce firm investment. This theoretical result is relevant for economic policy decisions when financial intermediaries are not willing to finance beyond a certain threshold but firms have access to other sources of finance.
Increased Immunogenicity and Protective Efficacy of a P. aeruginosa Vaccine in Mice Using an Alum and De-O-Acylated Lipooligosaccharide Adjuvant System.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa (P. aeruginosa) is an opportunistic pathogen that commonly causes fatal infections in cystic fibrosis and burn patients as well as in patients who are hospitalized or have impaired immune systems. P. aeruginosa infections are difficult to treat owing to the high resistance of the pathogen to conventional antibiotics. Despite several efforts, no effective prophylactic vaccines against P. aeruginosa are currently available. In this study, we investigated the activity of the CIA06 adjuvant system, which is composed of alum and de-O-acylated lipooligosaccharide, on a P. aeruginosa outer membrane protein (OMP) antigen vaccine in mice. The results indicated that CIA06 significantly increased the antigen-specific IgG titers and opsonophagocytic activity of immune sera against P. aeruginosa. In addition, the antibodies induced by the CIA06-adjuvanted vaccine exhibited higher cross-reactivity with heterologous P. aeruginosa strains. Finally, mice immunized with the CIA06-adjuvanted vaccine were effectively protected from lethal P. aeruginosa challenge. Based on these data, we suggest that the CIA06 adjuvant system might be used to promote the immunogenicity and protective efficacy of the P. aeruginosa OMP vaccine.
BETWEEN BERLUSCONI AND MONTI: TRADE UNIONS AND ECONOMIC CRISIS IN ITALY

The recent labor reforms implemented in Italy by the so-called "technocratic" Monti Government have challenged the traditional role of trade unions. On one side, the reforms in the pension and labor market have been approved without real consultation or bargaining with social parties, under the pressures from the financial and economic crisis and the austerity demanded by the EU central authorities. On the other side, the Government is urging trade unions to contribute to stimulating labor productivity in order to produce more growth and escape from such a long period of recession. The main aim of this article is to analyze the changing role of trade unions and then the real opportunities to open a new phase of social concertation, also taking into account the historical background of Italian industrial relations.
Trabectedin is a promising antitumour agent for synovial sarcoma

Synovial sarcoma (SS) is an aggressive soft tissue tumour with poor prognosis. Using five human SS cell lines, we examined the cytotoxic effects of trabectedin (ET-743; Yondelis®), a novel marine natural product, which was approved in Europe for the treatment of soft tissue sarcomas (STS). The significant growth inhibitory effects were observed in all SS cell lines below nanomolar concentration of trabectedin. Furthermore, trabectedin significantly suppressed the tumour growth in xenograft models. Flow cytometer analysis in vitro and immunohistochemical analysis in vivo revealed its effect of cell cycle inhibition and apoptosis induction. We also examined the expression of ERCC1, 5 and BRCA1 in SS cell lines and clinical samples, and majority of them showed highly trabectedin-sensitive pattern as previously reported in other cancers. Our preclinical data indicated that trabectedin could be a promising therapeutic option for patients with SS.
Aboriginal youth’s perceptions of traditional and commercial tobacco in Canada

Although tobacco has played an important role in Aboriginal culture for millennia, its more recent recreational use has resulted in serious health concerns among Aboriginal users. In Canada, First Nations youth have higher smoking rates than non-Aboriginal youth. The goals of this study were to examine Aboriginal youth's perceptions of traditional and commercial tobacco and to evaluate perception changes following workshops on traditional uses of tobacco by Elders and other community members, native plants used in ceremony and health impacts of cigarette smoking. The twenty-five Aboriginal youth participants ranged in age from 9 to 14 years old. Results show that workshops did not alter participants' knowledge about tobacco and ceremonies but those studied were more effective at articulating their knowledge through open-ended questionnaires after the workshops. These participants were able to identify more traditional tobacco uses and plants that could be used in ceremonies instead of commercial tobacco. Culturally appropriate education about traditional and commercial tobacco use may be effective in limiting its misuse by Aboriginal youth.
Analysis of the Gate Capacitance–Voltage Characteristics in p-GaN/AlGaN/GaN Heterostructures

In this letter, we analyzed the gate capacitance characteristics in p-GaN gate/AlGaN/GaN heterostructures by using a two-junction capacitor model. First, we have observed that the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${C}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>–<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${V}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> behavior depends on the different processing conditions of the p-GaN gate. Second, a two-junction capacitor model considering a series connection of the Schottky metal/p-GaN junction capacitor and the AlGaN barrier capacitor is proposed to explain this <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${C}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>–<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${V}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> behavior. Based on this model, the junction capacitance has an influence on the total capacitance value under a high gate bias due to the Schottky metal/p-GaN junction. Furthermore, the Mg-concentration and hole density can be extracted. The extracted hole density is consistent with the results obtained by Hall measurements.
Learning discriminative features from electroencephalography recordings by encoding similarity constraints

This paper introduces a pre-training technique for learning discriminative features from electroencephalography (EEG) recordings using deep neural networks. EEG data are generally only available in small quantities, they are high-dimensional with a poor signal-to-noise ratio, and there is considerable variability between individual subjects and recording sessions. Similarity-constraint encoders as introduced in this paper specifically address these challenges for feature learning. They learn features that allow to distinguish between classes by demanding that encodings of two trials from the same class are more similar to each other than to encoded trials from other classes. This tuple-based training approach is especially suitable for small datasets. The proposed technique is evaluated using the publicly available OpenMIIR dataset of EEG recordings taken while participants listened to and imagined music. For this dataset, a simple convolutional filter can be learned that significantly improves the signal-to-noise ratio while aggregating the 64 EEG channels into a single waveform.
High mobility strained p-channel germanium quantum well field effect transistor for low power (Vcc = 0.5 V) III–V CMOS applications

In this talk, we review recent research results[1] investigating the germanium quantum well field effect transistor (QWFET) for use as the p-channel device option for future low power (Vcc = 0.5V) III–V CMOS architecture. We demonstrate a high mobility Ge p-channel QWFET, with scaled TOXE = 14. 5Å and mobility of 770 cm<sup>2</sup>/V*s at n<inf>s</inf> =5×10<sup>12</sup> cm<sup>−2</sup>. For TOXE &#60; 40 Å, this represents the highest hole mobility reported for any Ge device and is 4x higher than state-of-the-art strained silicon [2]. Furthermore, at Vcc = 0.5V, the Ge QWFET exhibits 2x higher drive current at fixed Ioff than the best III–V [3] and germanium devices [4] reported to date. These results suggest the Ge QWFET is a viable p-channel option for non-silicon CMOS.