Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Interleukin‐17–producing CD4+ T cells increase with severity of liver damage in patients with chronic hepatitis B

Interleukin‐17 (IL‐17)‐producing CD4+ T cells (Th17)‐mediated immune response has been demonstrated to play a critical role in inflammation‐associated disease; however, its role in chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection remains unknown. Here we characterized peripheral and intrahepatic Th17 cells and analyzed their association with liver injury in a cohort of HBV‐infected patients including 66 with chronic hepatitis B (CHB), 23 with HBV‐associated acute‐on‐chronic liver failure (ACLF), and 30 healthy subjects as controls. The frequency of circulating Th17 cells increased with disease progression from CHB (mean, 4.34%) to ACLF (mean, 5.62%) patients versus healthy controls (mean, 2.42%). Th17 cells were also found to be largely accumulated in the livers of CHB patients. The increases in circulating and intrahepatic Th17 cells positively correlated with plasma viral load, serum alanine aminotransferase levels, and histological activity index. In vitro, IL‐17 can promote the activation of myeloid dendritic cells and monocytes and enhance the capacity to produce proinflammatory cytokines IL‐1β, IL‐6, tumor necrosis factor (TNF)‐α, and IL‐23 in both CHB patients and healthy subjects. In addition, the concentration of serum Th17‐associated cytokines was also increased in CHB and ACLF patients. Conclusion: Th17 cells are highly enriched in both peripheral blood and liver of CHB patients, and exhibit a potential to exacerbate liver damage during chronic HBV infection. (HEPATOLOGY 2009.)
Who should measure quality of life?

This is the fourth in a series of five articles One of the reasons behind the rapid development of quality of life measures in health care has been the growing recognition of the importance of understanding the impact of healthcare interventions on patients' lives rather than just on their bodies. This is particularly important for patients with chronic, disabling, or life threatening diseases who live without the expectation of cure and have conditions that are likely to have an impact on their physical, psychological, and social wellbeing. Health professionals frequently make quality of life judgments when making decisions about the care of disabled patients,1 and the professional's view on expected quality of life is often the key factor in determining whether effective treatment for a life threatening condition will be given or withdrawn.2 Professionals' perceptions may, however, be at odds with those held by their patients.3 It is therefore important to ask patients to assess their own quality of life using one of a growing number of reliable and valid measures. Choosing an appropriate measure and using it in clinical practice can be problematic.4 Deciding to use a measure, however, presupposes that patients are able to assess their own quality of life and complete a quality of life measure. Some patients—and in some conditions many patients—are unable to do this because of cognitive impairments, communication deficits, severe distress caused by their symptoms, or because the quality of life measure is too burdensome physically or emotionally.5 These may be precisely the patients for whom information on quality of life is most needed to inform clinical decision making. Rather than lose all information on that patient, someone else (a family member or health professional) may be asked to act as a proxy or surrogate. In this paper …
Variance Reduction Techniques for Gradient Estimates in Reinforcement Learning

Policy gradient methods for reinforcement learning avoid some of the undesirable properties of the value function approaches, such as policy degradation (Baxter and Bartlett, 2001). However, the variance of the performance gradient estimates obtained from the simulation is sometimes excessive. In this paper, we consider variance reduction methods that were developed for Monte Carlo estimates of integrals. We study two commonly used policy gradient techniques, the baseline and actor-critic methods, from this perspective. Both can be interpreted as additive control variate variance reduction methods. We consider the expected average reward performance measure, and we focus on the GPOMDP algorithm for estimating performance gradients in partially observable Markov decision processes controlled by stochastic reactive policies. We give bounds for the estimation error of the gradient estimates for both baseline and actor-critic algorithms, in terms of the sample size and mixing properties of the controlled system. For the baseline technique, we compute the optimal baseline, and show that the popular approach of using the average reward to define the baseline can be suboptimal. For actor-critic algorithms, we show that using the true value function as the critic can be suboptimal. We also discuss algorithms for estimating the optimal baseline and approximate value function.
An analysis of momentum and contrarian strategies using an optimal orthogonal portfolio approach

We use a latent factor approach to investigate if the momentum and contrarian profits, observed in the US stock market, should be considered as risk premiums or have non-riskbased explanations. The model is also employed as a benchmark to assess the explanatory power of the traditional asset pricing models in this contest. Our findings show that the profits of the long-run contrarian strategy are related to some other background risk factors, while the momentum and the short-run contrarian profits are mostly non-risk-based. The latter finding mainly supports the behavioural finance explanation of these anomalies. JEL: G11, G12.
Achieving glycemic control in elderly patients with type 2 diabetes: a critical comparison of current options

The prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is increasing in the elderly. Because of the unique characteristics of elderly people with T2DM, therapeutic strategy and focus should be tailored to suit this population. This article reviews the guidelines and studies related to older people with T2DM worldwide. A few important themes are generalized: 1) the functional and cognitive status is critical for older people with T2DM considering their life expectancy compared to younger counterparts; 2) both severe hypoglycemia and persistent hyperglycemia are deleterious to older adults with T2DM, and both conditions should be avoided when determining therapeutic goals; 3) recently developed guidelines emphasize the avoidance of hypoglycemic episodes in older people, even in the absence of symptoms. In addition, we raise the concern of glycemic variability, and discuss the rationale for the selection of current options in managing this patient population.
The worldwide epidemic of diabetic retinopathy

Diabetic retinopathy (DR), a major microvascular complication of diabetes, has a significant impact on the world's health systems. Globally, the number of people with DR will grow from 126.6 million in 2010 to 191.0 million by 2030, and we estimate that the number with vision-threatening diabetic retinopathy (VTDR) will increase from 37.3 million to 56.3 million, if prompt action is not taken. Despite growing evidence documenting the effectiveness of routine DR screening and early treatment, DR frequently leads to poor visual functioning and represents the leading cause of blindness in working-age populations. DR has been neglected in health-care research and planning in many low-income countries, where access to trained eye-care professionals and tertiary eye-care services may be inadequate. Demand for, as well as, supply of services may be a problem. Rates of compliance with diabetes medications and annual eye examinations may be low, the reasons for which are multifactorial. Innovative and comprehensive approaches are needed to reduce the risk of vision loss by prompt diagnosis and early treatment of VTDR.
Mechanisms of Action of Adjuvants

Adjuvants are used in many vaccines, but their mechanisms of action are not fully understood. Studies from the past decade on adjuvant mechanisms are slowly revealing the secrets of adjuvant activity. In this review, we have summarized the recent progress in our understanding of the mechanisms of action of adjuvants. Adjuvants may act by a combination of various mechanisms including formation of depot, induction of cytokines and chemokines, recruitment of immune cells, enhancement of antigen uptake and presentation, and promoting antigen transport to draining lymph nodes. It appears that adjuvants activate innate immune responses to create a local immuno-competent environment at the injection site. Depending on the type of innate responses activated, adjuvants can alter the quality and quantity of adaptive immune responses. Understanding the mechanisms of action of adjuvants will provide critical information on how innate immunity influences the development of adaptive immunity, help in rational design of vaccines against various diseases, and can inform on adjuvant safety.
7.4 Gb/s 6.8 mW Source Synchronous Receiver in 65 nm CMOS

A high-frequency jitter tolerant receiver in 65 nm CMOS is presented. Jitter tolerance is improved by tracking correlated jitter using a pulsed clock forwarded from the transmitter side. The clock receiver comprises two injection locked oscillators to frequency-multiply, deskew, and adjust jitter tracking bandwidth. Different data rates and latency mismatch between the clock and data paths are accommodated by a jitter tracking bandwidth that is controllable up to 300 MHz. Each receiver consumes 0.92 pJ/bit operating at 7.4 Gb/s and has a jitter tolerance of 1.5 UI at 200 MHz.
Anomaly detection and localization in UWB wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are gaining more and more interest in the research community due to their unique characteristics. Besides energy consumption considerations, security has emerged as an equally important aspect in their network design. WSNs are vulnerable to various types of attacks, and as such, they require mechanisms to defend against them. Several anomaly detection algorithms have been proposed to date as a solution to the problem. However, none of them is specifically designed for the ultra-wideband (UWB) technology. UWB is a key solution for wireless connectivity characterized by ultra low power consumption, and high precision ranging. Based on these principles, we propose a novel anomaly detection and localization algorithm for cluster-based UWB wireless sensor networks. Towards securing the cluster formation protocol, we also define a novel, trust-aware leader election metric. The performance of the proposed algorithm in identifying intrusions using a rule-based detection technique is studied via simulations.
Evolutionary Nearest Neighbour Classification Framework

Data classification attempts to assign a category or a class label to an unknown data object based on an available similar data set with class labels already assigned. K nearest neighbor (KNN) is a widely used classification technique in data mining. KNN assigns the majority class label of its closest neighbours to an unknown object, when classifying an unknown object. The computational efficiency and accuracy of KNN depends largely on the techniques used to identify its K nearest neighbours. The selection of a similarity metric to identify the neighbours and the selection of the optimum K as the number of neighbours can be considered as an optimization problem. The optimizing parameters for KNN are value for K, weight vector, voting power of neighbours, attribute selection and instance selection. Finding these values is a search problem with a large search space. Genetic Algorithms (GA) are considered to provide optimum solutions for search problems with a large search space. The search space is defined by the application domain. There are multiple real world classification applications that can utilize a parameter optimized KNN. Due to this, there is various research work carried out on using Genetic Algorithms for optimizing KNN classification. Even though multiple instances of research had been carried out on using GAs to optimize KNN there is no software framework available, which could be easily adapted to various application domains. This work is aimed towards building a framework to carry out the optimization of KNN classification with the help of a Genetic Algorithm. The developed framework provides a basic backbone for GA optimization of KNN while providing sufficient flexibility for the user, to extend it to specific application domains.
Resisting tempting foods and smoking behavior: implications from a self-control theory perspective.

OBJECTIVE Individuals may desire to diet or restrain from eating certain foods while attempting to quit smoking out of concern for weight gain. However, previous research and clinical tobacco treatment guidelines suggest that concurrent dieting may undermine attempts to quit smoking. The current study applied the self-control strength model, which posits that self-regulation relies on a limited strength that is consumed with use, to test whether resisting tempting sweets would lead to a greater likelihood of subsequent smoking. DESIGN Participants were 101 cigarette smokers randomly assigned to resist eating either from a tempting plate of sweets or from a plate of less tempting vegetables. All participants were then given a 10-min recess. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Whether participants smoked during the break, measured with a breath carbon monoxide sample, served as the primary dependent variable. RESULTS As predicted, participants who resisted sweets were more likely to smoke during the break (53.2%) than those who resisted vegetables (34.0%), chi2(1, N = 101) = 3.65 p < . 05. CONCLUSIONS The findings support the tenets of the self-control strength model and suggest the mechanism by which dietary restraint may harm efforts at quitting smoking.
Unisexual Reproduction Reverses Muller’s Ratchet

Cryptococcus neoformans is a pathogenic basidiomycetous fungus that engages in outcrossing, inbreeding, and selfing forms of unisexual reproduction as well as canonical sexual reproduction between opposite mating types. Long thought to be clonal, >99% of sampled environmental and clinical isolates of C. neoformans are MATα, limiting the frequency of opposite mating-type sexual reproduction. Sexual reproduction allows eukaryotic organisms to exchange genetic information and shuffle their genomes to avoid the irreversible accumulation of deleterious changes that occur in asexual populations, known as Muller’s ratchet. We tested whether unisexual reproduction, which dispenses with the requirement for an opposite mating-type partner, is able to purge the genome of deleterious mutations. We report that the unisexual cycle can restore mutant strains of C. neoformans to wild-type genotype and phenotype, including prototrophy and growth rate. Furthermore, the unisexual cycle allows attenuated strains to purge deleterious mutations and produce progeny that are returned to wild-type virulence. Our results show that unisexual populations of C. neoformans are able to avoid Muller’s ratchet and loss of fitness through a unisexual reproduction cycle involving α-α cell fusion, nuclear fusion, and meiosis. Similar types of unisexual reproduction may operate in other pathogenic and saprobic eukaryotic taxa.
Dynamic Programming in Datalog with Aggregates

Dynamic programming is a general technique for solving optimization problems. It is based on the division of problems into simpler subproblems that can be computed separately. In this paper, we show that Datalog with aggregates and other nonmonotonic constructs can express classical dynamic programming optimization problems in a natural fashion, and then we discuss the important classes of queries and applications that benefit from these techniques.
Molecular characterization and follow‐up of five CML patients with new BCR–ABL1 fusion transcripts

We report five chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML) patients in whom we identified and characterized undescribed BCR–ABL1 fusion transcripts. We investigated the precise features of the molecular rearrangements and the minimal residual disease follow‐up for these five patients. Three resulted from new rearrangements between the BCR and ABL1 sequences (the breakpoints being located within BCR exon 13 in two cases and within BCR exon 18 in one case). The other two cases revealed a complex e8‐[ins]‐a2 fusion transcript involving a third partner gene, PRDM12 and SPECC1L, respectively. Moreover, single nucleotide polymorphism‐array analysis performed in the latter two cases showed copy number alterations shared by the two patients, thus identifying genes that were deleted during rearrangement and suggesting their potential role in CML pathogenesis. Interestingly, we highlight that the prognosis of alterations, such as the presence of an e8a2 transcript or the deletion of various genes, which have been controversial, may be definitively erased by the introduction of tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs). © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Comments on the Recent Experiments by the Group of Michael Persinger

Michael Persinger's group reports three very interesting experimental findings related to EEG, magnetic fields, photon emissions from brain, and macroscopic quantum coherence. The findings also provide support for the proposal of Hu and Wu that nerve pulse activity could induce spin flips of spin networks assignable to cell membrane. In this article I analyze the experiments from TGD point of view. It turns out that the experiments provide support for several TGD inspired ideas about living matter - namely, magnetic flux quanta as generators of macroscopic quantum entanglement, dark matter as a hierarchy of macroscopic quantum phases with large effective Planck constant, DNA-cell membrane system as a topological quantum computer with nucleotides and lipids connected by magnetic flux tubes with ends assignable to phosphate containing molecules, and the proposal that "dark" nuclei consisting of dark proton strings could provide a representation of the genetic code. The proposal of Hu and Wu translates into the assumption that lipids of the two layers of the cell membrane are accompanied by dark protons which arrange themselves to dark protonic strings defining a dark analog of DNA double strand.
Proteomic analysis of Col11a1‐associated protein complexes

Cartilage plays an essential role during skeletal development within the growth plate and in articular joint function. Interactions between the collagen fibrils and other extracellular matrix molecules maintain structural integrity of cartilage, orchestrate complex dynamic events during embryonic development, and help to regulate fibrillogenesis. To increase our understanding of these events, affinity chromatography and liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry were used to identify proteins that interact with the collagen fibril surface via the amino terminal domain of collagen α1(XI) a protein domain that is displayed at the surface of heterotypic collagen fibrils of cartilage. Proteins extracted from fetal bovine cartilage using homogenization in high ionic strength buffer were selected based on affinity for the amino terminal noncollagenous domain of collagen α1(XI). MS was used to determine the amino acid sequence of tryptic fragments for protein identification. Extracellular matrix molecules and cellular proteins that were identified as interacting with the amino terminal domain of collagen α1(XI) directly or indirectly, included proteoglycans, collagens, and matricellular molecules, some of which also play a role in fibrillogenesis, while others are known to function in the maintenance of tissue integrity. Characterization of these molecular interactions will provide a more thorough understanding of how the extracellular matrix molecules of cartilage interact and what role collagen XI plays in the process of fibrillogenesis and maintenance of tissue integrity. Such information will aid tissue engineering and cartilage regeneration efforts to treat cartilage tissue damage and degeneration.
Hypothesis Mixture Decoding for Statistical Machine Translation

This paper presents hypothesis mixture decoding (HM decoding), a new decoding scheme that performs translation reconstruction using hypotheses generated by multiple translation systems. HM decoding involves two decoding stages: first, each component system decodes independently, with the explored search space kept for use in the next step; second, a new search space is constructed by composing existing hypotheses produced by all component systems using a set of rules provided by the HM decoder itself, and a new set of model independent features are used to seek the final best translation from this new search space. Few assumptions are made by our approach about the underlying component systems, enabling us to leverage SMT models based on arbitrary paradigms. We compare our approach with several related techniques, and demonstrate significant BLEU improvements in large-scale Chinese-to-English translation tasks.
External kinetics of the kettlebell snatch in amateur lifters

Background Kettlebell lifting has gained increased popularity as both a form of resistance training and as a sport, despite the paucity of literature validating its use as a training tool. Kettlebell sport requires participants to complete the kettlebell snatch continuously over prolonged periods of time. Kettlebell sport and weightlifting involve similar exercises, however, their traditional uses suggest they are better suited to training different fitness qualities. This study examined the three-dimensional ground reaction force (GRF) and force applied to the kettlebell over a 6 min kettlebell snatch set in 12 kettlebell-trained males. Methods During this set, VICON was used to record the kettlebell trajectory with nine infrared cameras while the GRF of each leg was recorded with a separate AMTI force plate. Over the course of the set, an average of 13.9 ± 3.3 repetitions per minute were performed with a 24 kg kettlebell. Significance was evaluated with a two-way ANOVA and paired t-tests, whilst Cohen’s F (ESF) and Cohen’s D (ESD) were used to determine the magnitude. Results The applied force at the point of maximum acceleration was 814 ± 75 N and 885 ± 86 N for the downwards and upwards phases, respectively. The absolute peak resultant bilateral GRF was 1,746 ± 217 N and 1,768 ± 242 N for the downwards and upwards phases, respectively. Bilateral GRF of the first and last 14 repetitions was found to be similar, however there was a significant difference in the peak applied force (F (1.11) = 7.42, p = 0.02, ESF = 0.45). Unilateral GRF was found have a significant difference for the absolute anterior–posterior (F (1.11) = 885.15, p < 0.0001, ESF = 7) and medio-lateral force vectors (F (1.11) = 5.31, p = 0.042, ESF = 0.67). Discussion Over the course of a single repetition there were significant differences in the GRF and applied force at multiple points of the kettlebells trajectory. The kettlebell snatch loads each leg differently throughout a repetition and performing the kettlebell snatch for 6 min will result in a reduction in peak applied force.