Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Eligibility and Safety of Triple Therapy for Hepatitis C: Lessons Learned from the First Experience in a Real World Setting

Background HCV protease inhibitors (PIs) boceprevir and telaprevir in combination with PEG-Interferon alfa and Ribavirin (P/R) is the new standard of care in the treatment of chronic HCV genotype 1 (GT1) infection. However, not every HCV GT1 infected patient is eligible for P/R/PI therapy. Furthermore phase III studies did not necessarily reflect real world as patients with advanced liver disease or comorbidities were underrepresented. The aim of our study was to analyze the eligibility and safety of P/R/PI treatment in a real world setting of a tertiary referral center. Methods All consecutive HCV GT1 infected patients who were referred to our hepatitis treatment unit between June and November 2011 were included. Patients were evaluated for P/R/PI according to their individual risk/benefit ratio based on 4 factors: Treatment-associated safety concerns, chance for SVR, treatment urgency and nonmedical patient related reasons. On treatment data were analyzed until week 12. Results 208 patients were included (F3/F4 64%, mean platelet count 169/nl, 40% treatment-naïve). Treatment was not initiated in 103 patients most frequently due to safety concerns. 19 patients were treated in phase II/III trials or by local centers and a triple therapy concept was initiated at our unit in 86 patients. Hospitalization was required in 16 patients; one patient died due to a gastrointestinal infection possibly related to treatment. A platelet count of <110/nl was associated with hospitalization as well as treatment failure. Overall, 128 patients were either not eligible for therapy or experienced a treatment failure at week 12. Conclusions P/R/PI therapies are complex, time-consuming and sometimes dangerous in a real world setting, especially in patients with advanced liver disease. A careful patient selection plays a crucial role to improve safety of PI based therapies. A significant number of patients are not eligible for P/R/PI, emphasizing the need for alternative therapeutic options.
AN EMPIRICAL COMPARISON OF METHODS FOR FORECASTING USING MANY PREDICTORS

This paper provides a simple shrinkage representation that describes the operational characteristics of various forecasting methods that are applicable when there are a large number of orthogonal predictors (such as principal components). These methods include pretest methods, Bayesian model averaging, empirical Bayes, and bagging. We then compare these and other many-predictor forecasting methods in the context of macroeconomic forecasting (real activity and inflation) using 131 monthly predictors with monthly U.S. economic time series data, 1959:1 - 2003:12. The theoretical shrinkage representations serve to inform our empirical comparison of these forecasting methods.
Resolution of ventilator-associated pneumonia: Prospective evaluation of the clinical pulmonary infection score as an early clinical predictor of outcome*

ObjectivesTo prospectively evaluate the performance of the Clinical Pulmonary Infection Score (CPIS) and its components to identify early in the hospital course of ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) which patients are responding to therapy. DesignProspective, multicenter, in a cohort of mechanically ventilated patients. SettingThe intensive care unit of six hospitals located in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires, Argentina. PatientsSixty-three patients, from a cohort of 472 mechanically ventilated patients hospitalized for >72 hrs, had clinical evidence of VAP and bacteriologic confirmation by bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) or blood cultures. InterventionsBronchoscopy with BAL fluid culture and blood cultures after establishing a clinical diagnosis of VAP. All patients received antibiotics, 46 before bronchoscopy and 17 immediately after bronchoscopy. Measurements and ResultsCPIS was measured at 3 days before VAP (VAP-3); at the onset of VAP (VAP); and at 3 (VAP+3), 5 (VAP+5), and 7 (VAP+7) days after onset. CPIS rose from VAP-3 to VAP and then fell progressively in the population as a whole (p < .001), and the fall in CPIS was significant in 31 survivors, but not in 32 nonsurvivors. From the individual components of the CPIS, only the Pao2/Fio2 ratio distinguished survivors from nonsurvivors, beginning at VAP+3. When CPIS was <6 at 3 or 5 days after VAP onset, mortality was lower than in the remaining patients (p = .018). These differences also related to the finding that those receiving adequate therapy had a slight fall in CPIS and a significant increase of Pao2/Fio2 at VAP+3, whereas those getting inadequate therapy did not. ConclusionsSerial measurements of CPIS can define the clinical course of VAP resolution, identifying those with good outcome as early as day 3, and could possibly be of help to define strategies to shorten the duration of therapy.
Analyzing The Effects Of Product Label Messages On Consumers' Attitudes And Intentions

Customer attitudes toward products are affected by both cognitive and emotional constructs to different degrees. The purpose of this study is to investigate how customers’ perception of the content of product labels affects the attitudes toward the product and the labels’ intentions. In particular, this study considers how the cognitive and emotional aspects of awareness levels of message contents impact overall attitudes toward sugar-free beverages. This study explores how such impacts are balanced by the consideration of double-edged health-related concerns. By divining customers’ perceptions of the products, the study examines i) the effects of cognitive and emotional constructs to the overall attitudes and; ii) the effects of cognitive and emotional constructs to the conative factor. Surveys were conducted and statistical analyses, such as factor, regression, and ANOVA, were applied to investigate the findings. Furthermore, this study examines the implications of managerial and theoretical applications and offers suggestions for businesses.
The Effects of Remedial Mathematics on the Learning of Economics: A Natural Experiment

This paper examines the effects of remedial mathematics on performance in university-level economics courses using a natural experiment. We study exam results prior and subsequent to the implementation of a remedial mathematics course that was compulsory for a sub-set of students and unavailable for the others, controlling for background variables. We find that, consistent with previous studies, the level of and performance in secondary-school mathematics has strong predictive power on students’ performance at university-level economics. However, the evidence for a positive effect of remedial mathematics on student performance is relatively weak and is limited to a few sub-groups of students.
Special features of phangorn (Version 2.0.4)

This document illustrates some of the phangorn [4] specialised features which are useful but maybe not as well-known or just not (yet) described elsewhere. This is mainly interesting for someone who wants to explore different models or set up some simulation studies. We show how to construct data objects for different character states other than nucleotides or amino acids or how to set up different models to estimate transition rate. The vignette Trees describes in detail how to estimate phylogenies from nucleotide or amino acids.
40-Gb/s all-optical wavelength conversion based on a nonlinear optical loop mirror

All-optical wavelength conversion based on a nonlinear optical loop mirror (NOLM) at 40 Gb/s is demonstrated for the first time. The effect of walkoff time between control beam and signal beams is investigated when the NOLM is used as an all-optical wavelength converter or an all-optical demultiplexer.
Single-molecule detection and spectroscopy in point-like geometries ( a ) Point-like excitation and detection

Cite this article: Michalet X, Colyer RA, Scalia G, Ingargiola A, Lin R, Millaud JE, Weiss S, Siegmund OHW, Tremsin AS, Vallerga JV, Cheng A, Levi M, Aharoni D, Arisaka K, Villa F, Guerrieri F, Panzeri F, Rech I, Gulinatti A, Zappa F, Ghioni M, Cova S. 2013 Development of new photon-counting detectors for single-molecule fluorescence microscopy. Phil Trans R Soc B 368: 20120035. http://dx.doi. org/10.1098/rstb.2012. 0035
Classification of audio events in broadcast news

This paper describes an approach to discriminate news report from others such as commercials and music in broadcast news programs based on audio information. The reported work is part of the effort at AT&T to hierarchically segment broadcast news programs into semantically meaningful units at different levels of abstraction. At the coarse level, using the described approach we preprocess the audio data to pass only the news segments as input to a speaker identification system. To develop a lightweight preprocessing scheme for efficiency, we adopted a set of audio features that are simple to compute yet, based on our observation, statistically capture the intrinsic properties of the audio events to be classified. To improve the performance of the classifier, fuzzy membership functions associated with the features are introduced. Preliminary experimental results are reported which demonstrate the usefulness of the approach.
Brain-derived neurotrophic factor and its clinical implications

Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) plays an important role in neuronal survival and growth, serves as a neurotransmitter modulator, and participates in neuronal plasticity, which is essential for learning and memory. It is widely expressed in the CNS, gut and other tissues. BDNF binds to its high affinity receptor TrkB (tyrosine kinase B) and activates signal transduction cascades (IRS1/2, PI3K, Akt), crucial for CREB and CBP production, that encode proteins involved in β cell survival. BDNF and insulin-like growth factor-1 have similar downstream signaling mechanisms incorporating both p-CAMK and MAPK that increase the expression of pro-survival genes. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor regulates glucose and energy metabolism and prevents exhaustion of β cells. Decreased levels of BDNF are associated with neurodegenerative diseases with neuronal loss, such as Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, multiple sclerosis and Huntington's disease. Thus, BDNF may be useful in the prevention and management of several diseases including diabetes mellitus.
Pratiques réflexives en didactique générale : description d'un dispositif mis en place par la DGIE dans le cadre de la formation des enseignants du supérieur

Les competences indispensables pour mener a bien les missions que la societe assigne aux enseignants de la Communaute francaise de Belgique ont ete clairement definies dans le Decretmissions de 2001 et largement diffusees dans le systeme educatif. Au nombre de treize, ces competences, toutes d’une egale importance, ont ete inserees dans les contenus des differentes formations qui donnent acces au metier d’enseignant. La treizieme competence a maitriser concerne la promotion d’une posture reflexive : « Porter un regard reflexif sur sa pratique et organiser sa formation continuee » (AGERS, 2002, p. 14). Le large consensus qui existe sur l’importance a accorder a la pratique reflexive dans les activites de formation est a mettre en relation avec l’idee que le metier d’enseignant est aujourd’hui considere comme une veritable profession qui exige non seulement une expertise et des competences specifiques, mais aussi une autonomie professionnelle et une responsabilite individuelle et collective. Des lors, la formation des enseignants doit comporter une large part d’aide a la construction de l’autonomie et du jugement professionnels dans des situations ou, face a un large eventail de possibilites didactiques, les futurs enseignants seront amenes a effectuer des choix dans la conception et la mise en œuvre de leurs sequences Pratiques reflexives en didactique generale : descriPtion d’un disPositif mis en Place Par la dgie dans le cadre de la formation des enseignants du secondaire suPerieur Jean-luc gilles et Jean renson Universite de Liege Didactique generale et intervention educative
Wireless self‐gated multiple‐mouse cardiac cine MRI

Despite the excellent image‐contrast capability of MRI and the ability to synchronize MRI with the murine cardiac cycle, this technique is underused for assessing mouse models of cardiovascular disease because of its perceived cost and complexity. This perception stems, in part, from complications associated with the placement and adjustment of electrocardiographic leads that may interact with gradient pulses and the relatively long acquisition times required with traditional gating schemes. To improve the efficiency and reduce the cost and complexity of using cardiac MRI in mice, we combined wireless self‐gating techniques (with which we derived cardiac synchronization signals from acquired data) with an imaging technique that acquires multislice cardiac cine images from four mice simultaneously. As a result, the wireless self‐gated acquisitions minimized animal preparation time and improved image quality. The simultaneous acquisition of cardiac cine data from multiple animals greatly increased throughput and reduced costs associated with instrument access. Magn Reson Med 59:1203–1206, 2008. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
On‐street smart parking networks at a fraction of their cost: performance analysis of a sampling approach

Parking spot monitoring can be used for various smart parking applications. One particular use is detecting the city wide occupancy level of the parking spaces and redirecting cars accordingly to reduce congestion. The practice of monitoring parking spots is already widespread in modern off‐street parking lots. However, a large fraction of a city's parking capacity still stems from on‐street parking spots. These aren't yet monitored as commonly. This can be explained by higher deployment costs for on‐street implementations.
A Touching Character Database from Chinese Handwriting for Assessing Segmentation Algorithms

For assessing touching character segmentation algorithms, we present a database of touching characters collected from the Chinese handwriting database CASIA-HWDB, called CASIA-HWDB-T. It includes 56,469 two-character or multiple-character touching strings, among which 1,818 strings have multiple-touching characters. We also partition the touching strings into 50,157 all-Chinese strings, 2,788 all-digit ones, 328 all-letter ones, and 3,196 mixed-character ones. All the strings are annotated with the character classes, locations of touching points, and auxiliary values like string height and average stroke width. And last, we measure the segmentation performance of three existing algorithms on this database for reference.
Geographic intention and modification in web search

Web searchers signal their geographic intent by using place‐names in search queries. They also indicate their flexibility about geographic specificity by reformulating their queries. By examining this data we can learn to understand web searcher flexibility with respect to geographic intent. We examine aggregated data of queries with locations, and locations identified from IP addresses, to identify overall distance preferences, as well as distance preferences by search topic. We also examine query rewriting: both deliberate query rewriting, conducted in web search sessions, and automated query rewriting, with manual relevance judgments of geo‐modified queries. We find geo‐specification in 12.7% of user query rewrites in search sessions, and show the breakdown into sub‐classes such as same‐city, same‐state, same‐country and different‐country. We also measure the dependence between US‐state‐name and distance‐of‐modified‐location‐from‐original‐location, finding that Vermont web searchers modify their locations greater distances than California web searchers. We find that automatically‐modified queries are perceived as much more relevant when the geographic component is unchanged. We look at the relationship between the non‐location part of a query and the distance from the user. We see that people search for child day‐care near their locations and maps far from where they are located. We also give distance profiles for the top topics which cooccur with place‐names in queries, which could be used to set document priors based on document proximity and query topic.
Weight reduction in the cardiac rehabilitation setting.

BACKGROUND Most patients with coronary heart disease are overweight. However, only minimal weight loss occurs with participation in a standard cardiac rehabilitation (CR) program. METHODS The study investigated 82 patients with coronary heart disease who entered an outpatient CR program and completed 36 sessions of exercise over a 12-week period. The effects of a structured, nurse-coordinated, weight loss intervention during phase 2 CR were compared with those observed in a CR control group receiving usual care. RESULTS The intervention group lost an average of 4.3 +/- 2.8 kg (P <.0001), as compared with a weight loss of 1.7 +/- 2.6 kg (P <.001) in the control group (P <.005 between groups). The effect of the weight loss intervention on total cholesterol (172 +/- 34 to 166 +/- 29 mg/dL) differed from the response in a control group receiving usual care (180 +/- 30 to 187 +/- 28 mg/dL) (P <.05 between groups). The weight loss group experienced a significantly greater improvement (P <.05) than the control group in the physical function score on the Medical Outcomes Study SF-36 questionnaire. A significant correlation was found between the number of weight loss sessions an individual attended and the amount of weight loss experienced (R = 0.39; P <.05). CONCLUSIONS The current study demonstrated that a behavioral weight loss intervention is effective in reducing body weight in a CR setting. Participants in the intervention group experienced significantly greater improvements in body weight, body mass index, and total cholesterol than a control group. Additionally, participants in the weight loss program reported greater improvements in their physical function score than the control patients.
Supporting Online Material Materials and Methods Som Text Fig. S1 References Deep Ultraviolet Light–emitting Hexagonal Boron Nitride Synthesized at Atmospheric Pressure

the population relaxation rate. However , this remains under investigation. The AT splitting and gain without inversion in the Mollow absorption spectrum imply that the absorption and gain inside a single QD are tunable. In the AT configuration, the absorption of the probe beam can be switched on and off by applying a strong optical field. In contrast, in the MAS experiment, the absorption of the frequency fixed probe beam can be tuned to be positive or negative (gain) by adjusting the pump field strength. Our results are the first step toward the realization of electromagnetically induced transparency and lasing without inversion in the spin-based lambda system and suggest that QDs offer the potential to be used as elements in opto-electronics and quantum logic devices (4, 27). Note added in proof: Since the submission of this paper, two papers have appeared on http://arxiv.org that report studies of the resonant excitation of quantum dots in the strong excitation regime. The first (31) reports a measurement of the fluorescence correlation function that Mollow first calculated, and the second (32) reports Rabi oscillations. Materials emitting light in the deep ultraviolet region around 200 nanometers are essential in a wide-range of applications, such as information storage technology, environmental protection, and medical treatment. Hexagonal boron nitride (hBN), which was recently found to be a promising deep ultraviolet light emitter, has traditionally been synthesized under high pressure and at high temperature. We successfully synthesized high-purity hBN crystals at atmospheric pressure by using a nickel-molybdenum solvent. The obtained hBN crystals emitted intense 215-nanometer luminescence at room temperature. This study demonstrates an easier way to grow high-quality hBN crystals, through their liquid-phase deposition on a substrate at atmospheric pressure. H exagonal boron nitride (hBN) and cubic boron nitride (cBN) are known as the representative crystal structures of BN. hBN is chemically and thermally stable and has been widely used as an electrical insulator and heat-resistant material for several decades; cBN, which is a high-density phase, is almost as hard as diamond (1). Promising semiconductor characteristics due to a direct band gap of 5.97 eV were recently discovered in high-purity hBN crystals obtained by a high-pressure flux method, paving the way for a material that efficiently emits deep ultraviolet (DUV) light (2, 3). Similar to aluminum nitride (AlN) (4) and gallium nitride (GaN) (5), hBN may have attractive potential as a wide–band gap material. The layered structure of hBN …
Comparison of Walking and Traveling-Wave Piezoelectric Motors as Actuators in Kinesthetic Haptic Devices

Piezoelectric motors offer an attractive alternative to electromagnetic actuators in portable haptic interfaces: they are compact, have a high force-to-volume ratio, and can operate with limited or no gearing. However, the choice of a piezoelectric motor type is not obvious due to differences in performance characteristics. We present our evaluation of two commercial, operationally different, piezoelectric motors acting as actuators in two kinesthetic haptic grippers, a walking quasi-static motor and a traveling wave ultrasonic motor. We evaluate each gripper's ability to display common virtual objects including springs, dampers, and rigid walls, and conclude that the walking quasi-static motor is superior at low velocities. However, for applications where high velocity is required, traveling wave ultrasonic motors are a better option.
Ethnic Diversity and Attitudes Towards Redistribution: A Review of the Literature

We review the empirical literature that studies the effect of ethnic diversity on the welfare state and on individual attitudes. The outcome variables that we cover in the survey are on the one hand public spending, and on the other hand individual attitudes and behaviour, including charity spending. We also review the fast-growing literature that uses experiments to study the effects of ethnic diversity. Many of these studies have appeared since the pioneering survey by Alesina and La Ferrara (2005a), and have not been covered by a survey before.
Measures of heart rate variability in women following a meditation technique

Certain time domain, frequency domain and a nonlinear measure of heart rate variability are studied in women following a meditative practice called cyclic meditation. The nonlinear measure studied is the sampling entropy. We show that there is an increase in the sampling entropy in the meditative group as compared to the control group. The time domain measure called pNNx is shown to be useful in distinguishing between the meditative state and a normal resting state.