Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Relationship of physical function and quality of life among persons aging with HIV infection

Objective:Physical function impairments are seen among aging, HIV-infected persons on effective antiretroviral therapy (ART). The impact of physical function impairments on health-related quality of life (QoL) during ART is unknown. Design:This was a cross-sectional study including 359 HIV-infected patients, aged 45–65 years, on ART for more than 6 months. Methods:Patients completed the SF-36 QoL questionnaire, 400-m walk, 5-time chair rise, and grip strength. HIV-associated mortality risk was calculated using the Veterans Aging Cohort Study (VACS) Index. Physical function, physical activity (>500 versus ⩽500 kcal/week), and VACS scores were used to estimate QoL in multivariable linear regression. Results:For every 1 m/s increase in gait speed, we saw an estimated 11.8 [95% confidence interval (CI) 8.4, 15.2] point increase in the physical function scale with smaller differences across all subscales. For every 1 rise/s faster chair rise pace, we saw an estimated 16.0 (95% CI 9.1, 22.9) point increase in the physical function scale with smaller differences across all subscales. SF-36 scores were between 2.8 and 5.7 points higher among more physically active compared to less active patients. A 1 kg increase in grip strength was associated with a 0.2 (95% CI 0.01, 0.3) higher mental health score, but there were no differences in other subscales. VACS scores did not improve the model. Conclusions:Faster gait speed and chair rise time, and greater physical activity were associated with greater QoL, independent of HIV-related mortality risk. Targeted exercise programs to increase physical activity and improve speed and power should be evaluated as interventions to improve QoL during ART.
Christianity, environmentalism, and the theoretical problem of fundamentalism

Previous studies of the relationship between religion and environmentalism have suffered the lack of measures of religious beliefs or of environmental attitudes and behaviors, or samples that were not clearly representative or sufficiently large. We address these problems using data from the 1993 General Social Survey, which has over 40 measures of environmental attitudes and actions, as well as a large number of measures of religious membership, belief, and participation and other background measures. We focus on 10 indexes of environmentalism and 3 indexes of religiosity. Our findings give some support to the thesis of Lynn White that Christian theology has, an antienvironmental effect, and they do not support the contention that it has a stewardship effect. There are, however, complications. We do find evidence of a proenvironmental effect of religious participation. Further, the negative effect of Christian theology seems to be largely an effect of fundamentalism or sectarianism. While this could be theologically oriented, it might also be an offshoot of conflict between religious conservatives and liberals.
Interdependence and Its Problems

Interdependence among the nations is so evident a reality in the late twentieth century that the continuing stubborn resistance on all sides to its implications would be thought extraordinary if our minds were not conditioned to accept the notion of undiluted sovereignty. Consider if you will the view that large portions of the oceans 'belong' in some literal sense to people who happen to live alongside them or sail ships on them. This ultimate resource on which the life of the race depends can be, in principle and in fact, polluted and poisoned, its fisheries destroyed, its mineral wealth plundered and with 'precious' little the community at large has been prepared to do about it. There are large and frightening ideas here what, for example, is to be made of the spread of nuclear technology that may put atomic weaponry within reach of private persons as well as of governments with causes to prosecute? It is not my intention, however, to pursue the desperate and perhaps final questions of interdependence. Rather it is to examine a quite narrow point: what can be done to make economic interdependence more tolerable? This is an area in which the world has done somewhat better than in others but clearly not all that well either, for the problems that are on us are at least as formidable as any that have been successfully managed, more or less, in the past. The situation of the United States and Canada provides a limited but illustrative case in point.
THE FORMATION OF CD GALAXIES

We present N-body simulations of groups of galax- ies with a number of very different initial conditions. These include spherical isotropic, nonspherical anisotropic collapses and virialised spherical systems. In all cases but one the merg- ing instability leads to the formation of a giant central galaxy in the center of the group. The initial conditions of the excep- tion are such that no galaxies are present in the central part of the group. Thus some central seed of material is necessary to trigger the formation of a giant central galaxy. We concen- trate on the properties of these giant central galaxies. Spherical virialised systems give rise to relatively round and isotropic systems, while aspherical initial conditions give rise to triaxial objects with anisotropic velocity dispersion tensors. In the lat- ter cases the orientation of the resulting central galaxy is well correlated with that of the initial cluster. We compare the pro- jected properties of the objects formed with the properties of real brightest cluster member galaxies. The surface density pro- lesareingoodagreementwiththeobservedsurfacebrightness proles. In the case of extended virialised groups the projected properties of the giant central galaxy are the same as the prop- erties of cD galaxies. These include a halo of luminous material and a nearly flat velocity dispersion prole. The rst theory is related to the presence of cooling flows in clusters of galaxies (Cowie & Binney 1977; Fabian & Nulsen 1977). If the central cluster density is high enough, intracluster gas can gradually condense and form stars at the bottom of the potential well. Andreon et al. (1992), however, show that colour gradients are small or absent, while McNamara & O'Connell (1992)ndcolouranomaliesonlyintheinner5-10%ofthecool- ing radii estimated by X-ray observations. Furthermore, they nd that the amplitudes of these colour anomalies imply star formation rates that account for at most a few percent of the material that is cooling and accreting on the central galaxy, if the initial mass function is the same as that of the solar neigh- bourhood.
Loaded Dice: Exploring the Design Space of Connected Devices with Blind and Visually Impaired People

This paper proposes Loaded Dice, two wireless connected Arduino based, 3D-printed cubes consisting of various sensors in one cube and various actuators in the other. It is an interactive tool intended to support co-design activities with blind and visually impaired people within the design space of smart connected devices. The design rationale and design process that led to the implementation of the interactive co-design tool are described as well as the interactive tool itself and an analysis of how co-designers utilized it within a co-design workshop to explore the technology of smart and connected devices. Findings from this workshop are presented. The proposed interactive tool and supporting co-design activities proved to be empowering and engaging to imagine and ideate future technologies based around the IoT.
Armed-conflict risks enhanced by climate-related disasters in ethnically fractionalized countries

Significance Ethnic divides play a major role in many armed conflicts around the world and might serve as predetermined conflict lines following rapidly emerging societal tensions arising from disruptive events like natural disasters. We find evidence in global datasets that risk of armed-conflict outbreak is enhanced by climate-related disaster occurrence in ethnically fractionalized countries. Although we find no indications that environmental disasters directly trigger armed conflicts, our results imply that disasters might act as a threat multiplier in several of the world’s most conflict-prone regions. Social and political tensions keep on fueling armed conflicts around the world. Although each conflict is the result of an individual context-specific mixture of interconnected factors, ethnicity appears to play a prominent and almost ubiquitous role in many of them. This overall state of affairs is likely to be exacerbated by anthropogenic climate change and in particular climate-related natural disasters. Ethnic divides might serve as predetermined conflict lines in case of rapidly emerging societal tensions arising from disruptive events like natural disasters. Here, we hypothesize that climate-related disaster occurrence enhances armed-conflict outbreak risk in ethnically fractionalized countries. Using event coincidence analysis, we test this hypothesis based on data on armed-conflict outbreaks and climate-related natural disasters for the period 1980–2010. Globally, we find a coincidence rate of 9% regarding armed-conflict outbreak and disaster occurrence such as heat waves or droughts. Our analysis also reveals that, during the period in question, about 23% of conflict outbreaks in ethnically highly fractionalized countries robustly coincide with climatic calamities. Although we do not report evidence that climate-related disasters act as direct triggers of armed conflicts, the disruptive nature of these events seems to play out in ethnically fractionalized societies in a particularly tragic way. This observation has important implications for future security policies as several of the world’s most conflict-prone regions, including North and Central Africa as well as Central Asia, are both exceptionally vulnerable to anthropogenic climate change and characterized by deep ethnic divides.
Cerebral Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Monitoring and Neurologic Outcomes in Adult Cardiac Surgery Patients: A Systematic Review

BACKGROUND:Near-infrared spectroscopy is used during cardiac surgery to monitor the adequacy of cerebral perfusion. In this systematic review, we evaluated available data for adult patients to determine (1) whether decrements in cerebral oximetry during cardiac surgery are associated with stroke, postoperative cognitive dysfunction (POCD), or delirium; and (2) whether interventions aimed at correcting cerebral oximetry decrements improve neurologic outcomes. METHODS:We searched PubMed, Cochrane, and Embase databases from inception until January 31, 2012, without restriction on languages. Each article was examined for additional references. A publication was excluded if it did not include original data (e.g., review, commentary) or if it was not published as a full-length article in a peer-reviewed journal (e.g., abstract only). The identified abstracts were screened first, and full texts of eligible articles were reviewed independently by 2 investigators. For eligible publications, we recorded the number of subjects, type of surgery, and criteria for diagnosis of neurologic end points. RESULTS:We identified 13 case reports, 27 observational studies, and 2 prospectively randomized intervention trials that met our inclusion criteria. Case reports and 2 observational studies contained anecdotal evidence suggesting that regional cerebral O2 saturation (rScO2) monitoring could be used to identify cardiopulmonary bypass cannula malposition. Six of 9 observational studies reported an association between acute rScO2 desaturation and POCD based on the Mini-Mental State Examination (n = 3 studies) or more detailed cognitive testing (n = 6 studies). Two retrospective studies reported a relationship between rScO2 desaturation and stroke or type I and II neurologic injury after surgery. The observational studies had many limitations, including small sample size, assessments only during the immediate postoperative period, and failure to perform risk adjustments. Two randomized studies evaluated the efficacy of interventions for treating rScO2 desaturation during surgery, but adherence to the protocol was poor in one. In the other study, interventions for rScO2 desaturation were associated with less major organ injury and shorter intensive care unit hospitalization compared with nonintervention. CONCLUSIONS:Reductions in rScO2 during cardiac surgery may identify cardiopulmonary bypass cannula malposition, particularly during aortic surgery. Only low-level evidence links low rScO2 during cardiac surgery to postoperative neurologic complications, and data are insufficient to conclude that interventions to improve rScO2 desaturation prevent stroke or POCD.
Tunable THz Angular/Frequency Filters in the Modified Kretschmann–Raether Configuration With the Insertion of Single Layer Graphene

Tunable terahertz (THz) angular/frequency filters in the modified Kretschmann-Raether configuration with the insertion of single-layer graphene have been numerically demonstrated. Due to the excitation of the transverse magnetic (TM) polarized surface plasmons at the interface of two dielectrics with the insertion of the graphene sheet, the transmission resonance occurs at some range incident angles and frequencies in the THz frequency range, which can be adopted for designing the angular/frequency filters. It is shown that the resonant angle and the resonant wavelength can be tuned by varying the Fermi energy of the graphene sheets via electrostatic biasing. Moreover, we show that the resonant behaviors can be engineered by changing the gap thickness or the incident angle.
Information Retrieval based on Paraphrase

Text Retrieval systems based on ranking use similarity as an approximation to relevance. Most of these systems ignore word meaning. We assume that some measure of paraphrase would be a better similarity measure. We develop a concept of paraphrase based on Meaning-Text Theory and implement an approximation to the ideal using the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDOCE). The performance of the new system is assessed using recall and precision averages on two standard collections. We discuss the results and conclude that we could improve performance if only the restricted vocabulary of the dictionary entries had a particular property. We then propose a technique for modifying the entries using statistical methods recently used in information retrieval.
Primary HIV infection in a Crohn's disease patient receiving infliximab maintenance therapy.

Tumor necrosis factor a (TNFa) plays a complex and even paradoxical role in the natural history of HIV infection. Serum levels of this cytokine are elevated prematurely after the acquisition of the virus and can exert a protective function, as it was shown to inhibit HIV-1 entry into primary macrophages in vitro [1]. Conversely, TNFa itself and HIV-1 proteins, which mimic TNFa signaling, have been reported to activate nuclear factor kappa B, thus stimulating viral replication and persistence [2,3]. Furthermore, TNFa-blocking agents are associated with an increased susceptibility to infectious complications, underlying the intimate involvement of this cytokine in the response to intracellular pathogens [4]. Hence, concerns arose regarding the use of those drugs in already immunocompromised patients, such as HIV-infected ones. Primary HIV infection during anti-TNFa therapy, which could influence therapeutic decisions and constitute a challenge in the management of such patient, was not addressed before in the literature.
A Run-Time Re on gurable 2D Dis rete Wavelet Transform Using JBits

With the growth in high performance multimedia application s, specialized hardware for certain tasks is desirable. Whi le ASICs provide a solution addressing performance, they are unable to provide an optimal solution for a given problem instance. FPGAs can be used with run-time reconfiguration to dynamically cus tomize a circuit. Optimizations leading to faster circuits and reduced logic can result. The paper discusses the implement atio of a run-time parameterizable 2D Discrete Wavelet Tra nsform core using the JBits tool suite. The motivation for such a cor e is discussed, as well the benefits afforded by dynamic circu it specialization.
Ubiquitous Personalization : a Smart Card Based Approach

This paper presents a innovative approach to build an application personalization framework. The use of a smart card to host the personal profile engine answers both privacy and ubiquity requirements. The proposed framework includes a generic part, applicable for many applications in many contexts (e.g., browsing the web on PC, shopping on mobile phone, or buying movies on TV), and a set domain specific services. For illustration purpose, we present how this framework can be implemented in the context of interactive television.
Diversity of presynaptic calcium channels displaying different synaptic properties

Abstract Why mediate P-/Q-type and not N-type Ca2+ channels in cerebellar inhibitory interneurons? Neurotransmitter release relies most on P-/Q- and N-type Ca2+ channels in the vast majority of neurons, although all types of voltage-gated Ca2+ channels are competent in initiating exocytosis. Up to date, it remains unclear why a particular Ca2+ channel type mediates neurotransmission in certain axon terminals and another type of Ca2+ channel evokes neurotransmission in axon terminals of another region. Therefore, the present review analyzes the diversity of presynaptic Ca2+ channels displaying different synaptic properties and focuses on an analysis of distribution and function of presynaptic voltage-gated Ca2+ channels, as well as on developmental changes.
An imbalance between matrix metalloproteinase-2 and tissue inhibitor of matrix metalloproteinase-2 contributes to the development of early diabetic nephropathy.

BACKGROUND High glucose and angiotensin-II (Ang-II) levels are the known important mediators of diabetic nephropathy. However, the effects of these mediators on matrix metalloproteinase-2 (MMP-2) and on tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase-2 (TIMP-2) in proximal tubule cells have yet to be fully examined within the context of early stage diabetic nephropathy. METHODS In this study, we attempted to characterize changes in MMP-2 and TIMP-2 in streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats. To further examine the molecular mechanisms involved, we evaluated the effects of high glucose (30 mM) or Ang-II on MMP-2, TIMP-2 and collagen synthesis in proximal tubule cells, and investigated whether MMP-2 and TIMP-2 are regulated via the TGF-beta1 pathway. RESULTS In streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats, TIMP-2 mRNA and protein levels were significantly higher than in controls. Urinary protein excretion also showed a significant positive correlation with glomerular and tubular TIMP-2 protein expressions, and a negative correlation with MMP-2 expression. In cultured cells, both high glucose and Ang-II induced significant increases in TGF-beta1, TIMP-2, and in collagen synthesis, and significant decreases in MMP-2 gene expression and activity, and thus disrupted the balance between MMP-2 and TIMP-2. Moreover, treatment with a selective angiotensin type 1 (AT1) receptor antagonist significantly inhibited Ang-II mediated changes in TGF-beta1, MMP-2, TIMP-2, and in collagen production, suggesting the role of the AT1 receptor. The addition of exogenous TGF-beta1 produced an effect similar to those of high glucose and Ang-II. Furthermore, the inhibition of TGF-beta1 protein prevented Ang-II-induced MMP-2 and TIMP-2 alterations, suggesting the involvement of a TGF-beta1 pathway. CONCLUSIONS High glucose or Ang-II treatment induce alterations in MMP-2 and TIMP-2 balance, which favour TIMP-2 over-activity. Moreover, Ang-II-mediated changes in the productions of MMP-2 and TIMP-2 occur via AT1 receptors and a TGF-beta1-dependent mechanism. These results suggest that an imbalance between the MMP-2 and TIMP-2, caused primarily by an increase in TIMP-2 activity, contributes to the pathogenesis of diabetic nephropathy.
Effects of Information Disclosure Under First- and Second-Price Auctions in a Supply Chain Setting

We study a supply chain where an upstream supplier auctions his inventory or capacity as a bundle. The importance of this setting is twofold: From a practical point of view, there are several examples, both in manufacturing (e.g., auctioning the capacity of a wafer fabrication facility) and service industries (e.g., auctioning the sponsorship of a website), where a supplier's capacity is sold as a single piece; from a theoretical side, it highlights the information asymmetry introduced on the downstream supply chain parties when the auction result is disclosed. We formulate the problem as a two-stage supply chain comprising a single supplier and two resellers. Each reseller receives a signal of the consumer demand and bids for the capacity of the supplier. The supplier announces the winner as well as the auction price. Both resellers can get additional units in a procurement market and then engage in Cournot competition in the consumer market. We analyze the impact of the information elicited by the supplier in the early stage of the game. We characterize sufficient conditions for the existence of equilibrium behavior, derive the equilibrium bidding functions under both first-and second-price auctions, and show that the bidding functions are lower than the corresponding ones for a single-shot auction without resale. Our computational experiments indicate that both the supplier and resellers are better off running a second-price auction and that consumers benefit if the resellers have very different signals on the total demand. Overall, our results suggest that traditional auctions may have a profound impact in the context of a supply chain because of the information disclosure in the upstream stages.
Relationship influences on students’ academic achievement, psychological health and well-being at school

A generally accepted indicator of the quality of a student’s experience of school is academic performance but other indicators that include psychological health and social/emotional adjustment have also been shown to have an impact. For this study, data were collected from both students and teachers about students’ social/emotional adjustment and academic achievement and motivation. Data were obtained for 888 students across Years 5 to 9 from 58 classes in 21 South Australia schools. Students reported through a questionnaire on the extent to which they perceived relationships with family, peers and teachers as sources of stress or support at school; their psychological health; feelings about and sense of belonging to school; and their academic performance. Teachers reported on randomly selected students in each of their classes regarding their Academic Achievement and Motivation, and their Social/Emotional Adjustment to school. The significant associations revealed from correlation analysis between the Relationship, Psychological Health, and Social Adjustment variables, and Academic Performance were further investigated using path analysis. This analysis confirmed the strength of the connection between the student’s social/emotional and academic experience of school, and highlighted that both academic and social/emotional outcomes are unambiguously influenced by the quality of the relationships between teachers and students which, when compared with that of family and peers, exert the strongest influence, on well-being and achievement outcomes for students.