Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The What ’ s Next Computing Architecture

Energy-harvesting devices operate under extremely tight energy constraints. Ensuring forward progress under frequent power outages is paramount. Applications running on these devices are typically amenable to approximation. We proposeWhat’s Next, two anytime approximation techniques for energy harvesting systems: subword pipelining and skim points. By providing an approximate result sooner and moving to the next input upon returning from a power outage, we see up to 1.6× speedup with less than 3% error for an image processing kernel.
Associations of plant food, dairy product, and meat intakes with 15-y incidence of elevated blood pressure in young black and white adults: the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) Study.

BACKGROUND Consumption of plant foods and dairy and meat products may moderate increases in blood pressure. OBJECTIVE The objective was to evaluate associations of dietary intake with the 15-y incidence of elevated blood pressure (EBP; ie, incident systolic BP >or= 130 mm Hg, diastolic BP >or= 85 mm Hg, or use of antihypertensive medication). DESIGN Proportional hazards regression was used to evaluate relations of dietary intake at years 0 and 7 with the 15-y incidence of EBP in the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) Study of 4304 participants aged 18-30 y at baseline. RESULTS EBP incidence varied from 12% in white women to 33% in black men. Plant food intake (whole grains, refined grains, fruit, vegetables, nuts, or legumes) was inversely related to EBP after adjustment for age, sex, race, center, energy intake, cardiovascular disease risk factors, and other potential confounding factors. Compared with quintile 1, the relative hazards of EBP for quintiles 2-5 of plant food intake were 0.83 (95% CI: 0.68, 1.01), 0.83 (0.67, 1.02), 0.82 (0.65, 1.03), and 0.64 (0.53, 0.90), respectively; P for trend = 0.01. Dairy intake was not related to EBP (P for trend = 0.06), and positive dose-response relations for EBP were observed across increasing quintiles of meat intake (P for trend = 0.004). In subgroup analyses, risk of EBP was positively associated with red and processed meat intake, whereas it was inversely associated with intakes of whole grain, fruit, nuts, and milk. Adjustment for intermediary factors in the causal pathway attenuated these relations. CONCLUSION These findings are consistent with a beneficial effect of plant food intake and an adverse effect of meat intake on blood pressure.
Absorption and Peak Blood Alcohol Concentration After Drinking Beer, Wine, or Spirits

Background Both the amount and the rate of absorption of ethanol (EtOH) from alcoholic beverages are key determinants of the peak blood alcohol concentration (BAC) and exposure of organs other than gut and liver. Previous studies suggest EtOH is absorbed more rapidly in the fasting than in the postprandial state. The concentration of EtOH and the type of beverage may determine gastric emptying/absorption of EtOH. Methods The pharmacokinetics of EtOH were measured in 15 healthy men after consumption of 0.5 g of EtOH/kg body weight. During this 3‐session crossover study, subjects consumed in separate sessions, beer (5.1% v/v), white wine (12.5% v/v), or vodka/tonic (20% v/v) over 20 minutes following an overnight fast. BAC was measured by gas chromatography at multiple points after consumption. Results Peak BAC (Cmax) was significantly higher (p < 0.001) after vodka/tonic (77.4 ± 17.0 mg/dl) than after wine (61.7 ± 10.8 mg/dl) or beer (50.3 ± 9.8 mg/dl) and was significantly higher (p < 0.001) after wine than beer. The time to Cmax occurred significantly earlier (p < 0.01) after vodka/tonic (36 ± 10 minutes) compared to wine (54 ± 14 minutes) or beer (62 ± 23 minutes). Six subjects exceeded a Cmax of 80 mg/dl after vodka/tonic, but none exceeded this limit after beer or wine. The area under the concentration–time curve (AUC) was significantly greater after drinking vodka/tonic (p < 0.001) than after wine or beer. Comparison of AUCs indicated the relative bioavailability of EtOH was lower after drinking beer. Conclusions Findings indicate that BAC is higher after drinking vodka/tonic than beer or wine after fasting. A binge pattern is significantly more likely to result in BAC above 80 mg/dl after drinking vodka/tonic than beer or wine. Men drinking on an empty stomach should know BAC will vary depending on beverage type and the rate and amount of EtOH.
Thirty-Day Readmission Among Patients With Non-Variceal Upper Gastrointestinal Hemorrhage and Effects on Outcomes.

BACKGROUND & AIMS We aimed to determine the rate of hospital readmission within 30 days of non-variceal upper gastrointestinal hemorrhage and its impact on mortality, morbidity, and health care use in the United States. METHODS We performed a retrospective study using the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project Nationwide Readmission Database for the year 2014 (data on 14.9 million hospital stays at 2048 hospitals in 22 states). We collected data on hospital readmissions of 203,220 adults who were hospitalized for urgent non-variceal upper gastrointestinal hemorrhage and discharged. The primary outcome was rate of all-cause readmission within 30 days of discharge. Secondary outcomes were reasons for readmission, readmission mortality rate, morbidity (shock and prolonged mechanical ventilation) and resource use (length of stay and total hospitalization costs and charges). Independent risk factors for readmission were identified using Cox regression analysis. RESULTS The 30-day rate of readmission was 13%. Only 18% of readmissions were due to recurrent non-variceal upper gastrointestinal bleeding. The rate of death among patients readmitted to the hospital (4.7%) was higher than that for index admissions (1.9%) (P < .01). A higher proportion of readmitted patients had morbidities requiring prolonged mechanical ventilation (1.5%) compared with index admissions (0.8%) (P < .01). A total of 133,368 hospital days was associated with readmission, and the total health care in-hospital economic burden was $30.3 million (in costs) and $108 million (in charges). Independent predictors of readmission were Medicaid insurance, higher Charlson comorbidity score, lower income, residence in a metropolitan area, hemorrhagic shock, and longer stays in the hospital. Older age, private or no insurance, upper endoscopy, and prolonged mechanical ventilation were associated with lower odds for readmission. CONCLUSIONS In a retrospective study of patients hospitalized for non-variceal upper gastrointestinal hemorrhage, 13% are readmitted to the hospital within 30 days of discharge. Readmission is associated with higher mortality, morbidity, and resource use. Most readmissions are not for recurrent gastrointestinal bleeding.
A Computation Offloading Framework to Optimize Energy Utilisation in Mobile Cloud Computing Environment

ABSTRACT Newly emerged computing concept Mobile cloud computing, is a combination of mobile computing and cloud computing. Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) enables mobile applications to get built, powered and hosted using cloud resources. As few years back mobile devices were merely used for making calls but nowadays enormous applications can be run on top of the mobile devices. Mobile systems, such as smart phones, have become primary computing platform for users. Still there are some challenges like battery life, computation time etc that resists from implementing applications that are computation intensive. Several approaches have been proposed for addressing these problems. In this paper, we focused on augmented execution of mobile applications on cloud resources, more often known as offloading and formulate the partitioning of elastic mobile datastream applications as on optimization problem by minimizing the cost function which is combination of Communication energy and computation energy. We further investigated the offloading problem by considering the Service Level agreement (SLA) negotiated maximum waiting time. Genetic algorithm is used to find the optimum offloading solution and the results are evaluated by simulating our approach and comparing it with the all mobile-side execution and all cloud-side execution.
Markers of dietary fat quality and fatty acid desaturation as predictors of total and cardiovascular mortality: a population-based prospective study.

BACKGROUND Desaturase indexes, as markers of endogenous fatty acid desaturation, and a characteristic serum fatty acid (FA) composition are related to cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, but the relation to mortality is poorly investigated. OBJECTIVE The objective was to evaluate the relation between dietary fat biomarkers, desaturase indexes, and mortality. DESIGN In this community-based prospective sample, 50-y-old men were followed for a maximum of 33.7 y. Cox proportional hazard analysis was conducted to investigate desaturase indexes (stearoyl-CoA-desaturase and Delta(6)- and Delta(5)-desaturase) and the relation of individual serum esterified fatty acids (FAs) in relation to total and cardiovascular mortality in the total study sample (n = 2009) and in a healthy subsample (n = 1885). Desaturase indexes were estimated as product-to-precursor FA ratios. RESULTS During follow-up, 1012 men in the total sample died and 931 men in the healthy subsample died. Desaturase indexes predicted both total and cardiovascular mortality. The relations were independent of smoking status, physical activity, BMI, total cholesterol, and hypertension. The adjusted and standardized (per SD) hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% CIs for cardiovascular mortality were 1.15 (1.04, 1.27) for stearoyl-CoA-desaturase, 1.12 (1.0, 1.24) for Delta(6)-desaturase, and 0.88 (0.80, 0.98) for Delta(5)-desaturase, respectively. The proportion of serum linoleic acid was inversely related, whereas serum FAs associated with saturated fat intake (palmitic, palmitoleic, and dihomo-gamma-linolenic acids) were directly related to total and cardiovascular mortality. CONCLUSIONS Altered endogenous FA desaturation might contribute to mortality risk because we observed independent associations between desaturase activity indexes and mortality. The proportion of linoleic acid was inversely related, and FAs reflecting saturated fat intake were directly related to mortality.
Cross-sectional assessment of nutritional and immune status in renal patients undergoing continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis.

Malnutrition prevalence and immunocompetence were assessed in uremic patients undergoing continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD). Forty-two males and twenty-four females with kidney disease treated with CAPD were distributed into three groups according to the length of time they had been undergoing dialysis. Group 0 included patients beginning dialysis; group 1, patients undergoing CAPD for < 30 mo; and group 2, patients undergoing CAPD for > 30 mo. Body weight and body mass index were greater in patients who had been undergoing CAPD for longer periods of time (approximately 11% in males and 14% in females), which was accompanied by higher fat stores and muscle mass when assessed through triceps skinfold thickness and arm muscle measurements. These differences were more apparent in females than in males. Immunoglobulin M values were lower in patients in groups 1 and 2 than in group 0, whereas retinol binding protein, fibronectin, and C4 were higher. Estimated protein intake was higher in predialysis patients (1.31 g.d-1.kg-1) than in the other groups (approximately 0.95 g.d-1.kg-1). The percentage of B cells decreased with time on dialysis. Although no changes in total or helper T cells were found, a significant rise was noted for the T cell subpopulation with assumed suppressor and cytotoxic activities and for natural killer cells in those patients undergoing longer periods of CAPD treatment. Alterations in immune cell numbers in immunoglobulins and complement proteins might be responsible for immunologic disturbances and infectious processes occurring in patients with chronic renal failure and undergoing CAPD.
Nitrogen in Agriculture: Balancing the Cost of an Essential Resource

Nitrogen (N) is central to living systems, and its addition to agricultural cropping systems is an essential facet of modern crop management and one of the major reasons that crop production has kept pace with human population growth. The benefits of N added to cropping systems come, however, at well-documented environmental costs: Increased coastal hypoxia, atmospheric nitrous oxide (N2O), reactive N gases in the troposphere, and N deposition onto forests and other natural areas are some of the consequences of our inability to keep fertilizer N from leaving cropped ecosystems via unmanaged pathways. The N cycle is complex, and solutions require a thorough understanding of both the biogeochemical pathways of N in agricultural systems and the consequences of different management practices. Despite the complexity of this challenge, however, a number of technologies are available today to reduce N loss. These include adding rotational complexity to cropping systems to improve N capture by crops, providing farmers with decision support tools for better predicting crop fertilizer N requirements, improving methods for optimizing fertilizer timing and placement, and developing watershed-level strategies to recapture N lost from fields. Solutions to the problem of agricultural N loss will require a portfolio approach in which different technologies are used in different combinations to address site-specific challenges. Solutions will also require incentives that promote their adoption.
Hookworms, malaria and vitamin A deficiency contribute to anemia and iron deficiency among pregnant women in the plains of Nepal.

Anemia and iron deficiency during pregnancy are prevalent in developing countries, but their causes are not always known. We assessed the prevalence and severity of anemia and iron deficiency and their association with helminths, malaria and vitamin A deficiency in a community-based sample of 336 pregnant women in the plains of Nepal. Hemoglobin, erythrocyte protoporphyrin (EP) and serum ferritin were assessed in venous blood samples. Overall, 72.6% of women were anemic (hemoglobin < 110 g/L), 19.9% had moderate to severe anemia (hemoglobin < 90 g/L) and 80.6% had iron deficiency (EP > 70 micromol/mol heme or serum ferritin < 10 microg/L). Eighty-eight percent of cases of anemia were associated with iron deficiency. More than half of the women (54.2%) had a low serum retinol concentration (<1.05 micromol/L), 74.2% were infected with hookworms and 19.8% had Plasmodium vivax malaria parasitemia. Hemoglobin, EP and serum ferritin concentrations were significantly worse and the prevalence of anemia, elevated EP and low serum ferritin was increased with increasing intensity of hookworm infection. Hookworm infection intensity was the strongest predictor of iron status, especially of depleted iron stores. Low serum retinol was most strongly associated with mild anemia, whereas P. vivax malaria and hookworm infection intensity were stronger predictors of moderate to severe anemia. These findings reinforce the need for programs to consider reducing the prevalence of hookworm, malaria infection and vitamin A deficiency where indicated, in addition to providing iron supplements to effectively control anemia.
Food Supplementation Fails to Reveal a Trade-Off between Incubation and Self-Maintenance in Female House Wrens

Incubating birds must allocate their time and energy between maintaining egg temperature and obtaining enough food to meet their own metabolic demands. We tested the hypothesis that female house wrens (Troglodytes aedon) face a trade-off between incubation and self-maintenance by providing females with supplemental food during incubation. We predicted that food supplementation would increase the amount of time females devoted to incubating their eggs, lower their baseline plasma corticosterone levels (a measure of chronic stress), and increase their body mass, haematocrit (a measure of anaemia), and reproductive success relative to control females. As predicted, food-supplemented females spent a greater proportion of time incubating their eggs than control females. Contrary to expectation, however, there was no evidence that food supplementation significantly influenced female baseline plasma corticosterone levels, body mass, haematocrit, or reproductive success. However, females with high levels of corticosterone at the beginning of incubation were more likely to abandon their nesting attempt after capture than females with low levels. Corticosterone significantly increased between the early incubation and early nestling stages of the breeding cycle in all females. These results suggest that although food supplementation results in a modest increase in incubation effort, it does not lead to significantly lower levels of chronic stress as reflected in lower baseline corticosterone levels. We conclude that female house wrens that begin the incubation period with low levels of plasma corticosterone can easily meet their own nutritional needs while incubating their eggs, and that any trade-off between incubation and self-feeding does not influence female reproductive success under the conditions at the time of our study.
Targeting tumor vasculature through oncolytic virotherapy: recent advances

The oncolytic virotherapy field has made significant advances in the last decade, with a rapidly increasing number of early- and late-stage clinical trials, some of them showing safety and promising therapeutic efficacy. Targeting tumor vasculature by oncolytic viruses (OVs) is an attractive strategy that offers several advantages over nontargeted viruses, including improved tumor viral entry, direct antivascular effects, and enhanced antitumor efficacy. Current understanding of the biological mechanisms of tumor neovascularization, novel vascular targets, and mechanisms of resistance has allowed the development of oncolytic viral vectors designed to target tumor neovessels. While some OVs (such as vaccinia and vesicular stomatitis virus) can intrinsically target tumor vasculature and induce vascular disruption, the majority of reported vascular-targeted viruses are the result of genetic manipulation of their viral genomes. Such strategies include transcriptional or transductional endothelial targeting, “armed” viruses able to downregulate angiogenic factors, or to express antiangiogenic molecules. The above strategies have shown preclinical safety and improved antitumor efficacy, either alone, or in combination with standard or targeted agents. This review focuses on the recent efforts toward the development of vascular-targeted OVs for cancer treatment and provides a translational/clinical perspective into the future development of new generation biological agents for human cancers.
Bilateral control with vertical contracts

When a manufacturer contracts secretly with competing retailers he is subject to opportunism, and linear or non-linear tariffs may not allow the manufacturer to maintain monopoly prices. To analyse the effects of RPM, O'Brien-Shaffer (1992) use a concept of contract equilibrium which concentrates on pairwise deviations thereby questioning the robustness of the analysis. This paper emphasises the distinction between the contract equilibrium and standard non-cooperative concepts. We advocate for some caution in the use of the former concept, as if overlooks an inexistence problem. We then confirm the intuition that RPM can help solve the manufacturer's commitment problem. This confirms that O'Brien-Shaffer's insight is robust and validates the courts' reluctance against RPM.
Baseline fragmented QRS increases the risk of major arrhythmic events in Brugada syndrome: Systematic review and meta‐analysis

Fragmented QRS reflects disturbances in the myocardium predisposing the heart to ventricular tachyarrhythmias. Recent studies suggest that fragmented QRS (fQRS) is associated with major arrhythmic events in Brugada syndrome. However, a systematic review and meta‐analysis of the literature has not been done. We assessed the association between fQRS and major arrhythmic events in Brugada syndrome by a systematic review of the literature and a meta‐analysis.
Conjugated linoleic acid supplementation, insulin sensitivity, and lipoprotein metabolism in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus.

BACKGROUND Some animal studies have suggested that conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) supplementation may have therapeutic potential with respect to insulin sensitivity and lipid metabolism, which are important cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors associated with type 2 diabetes mellitus. OBJECTIVE We investigated the effect of CLA supplementation on markers of glucose and insulin metabolism, lipoprotein metabolism, and inflammatory markers of CVD in subjects with type 2 diabetes. DESIGN The study was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. Thirty-two subjects with stable, diet-controlled type 2 diabetes received CLA (3.0 g/d; 50:50 blend of cis-9,trans-11 CLA and trans-10,cis-12 CLA) or control for 8 wk. A 3-h 75-g oral-glucose-tolerance test was performed, and fasting plasma lipid concentrations and inflammatory markers were measured before and after the intervention. RESULTS CLA supplementation significantly increased fasting glucose concentrations (6.3%; P < 0.05) and reduced insulin sensitivity as measured by homeostasis model assessment, oral glucose insulin sensitivity, and the insulin sensitivity index (composite) (P = 0.05). Total HDL-cholesterol concentrations increased by 8% (P < 0.05), which was due to a significant increase in HDL(2)-cholesterol concentrations (P < 0.05). The ratio of LDL to HDL cholesterol was significantly reduced (P < 0.01). CLA supplementation reduced fibrinogen concentrations (P < 0.01) but had no effect on the inflammatory markers of CVD (C-reactive protein and interleukin 6). CONCLUSIONS CLA supplementation had an adverse effect on insulin and glucose metabolism. Whereas CLA had positive effects on HDL metabolism and fibrinogen, a therapeutic nutrient should not be associated with potentially adverse effects on other clinical markers of type 2 diabetes.
An estimation of saturation current influenced by source and drain resistances for sub-20nm MOSFETs

In this work, we investigate the influence of source and drain resistances to saturation currents for sub-20nm MOSFETs. New device structures such as Multi-gate and FinFET have been researched in sub-20nm regime. In design of the structures, it is necessary to consider the influence of source and drain resistances. In the ITRS report, saturation current has been estimated by using an analytical program: MASTAR. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate an accuracy of MASTAR. The saturation currents calculated by MASTAR are compared with results of circuit simulations considering the source and drain resistances. The difference between MASTAR and circuit simulations increases from 4.23% to 5.97% as the gate lengths are scaled down to 18nm. Our results indicate that MASTAR overestimates the reduction of drain saturation currents due to the source and drain resistances.