Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of linagliptin on the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of warfarin in healthy volunteers.

OBJECTIVE To investigate the effect of the estimated highest therapeutic dose of linagliptin (5 mg) on the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of warfarin, a CYP2C9 substrate. SUBJECTS AND METHODS This open-label, 2-period, fixed-sequence trial enrolled 18 healthy male volunteers, 17 of whom were homozygous for CYP2C9*1/*1. Subjects received a single oral dose of warfarin (10 mg) followed by a washout period of at least 14 days. Subjects then received oral linagliptin 5 mg once daily for 12 days (i.e. steady state) with a single dose of warfarin (10 mg) on Day 6. R(+) warfarin, S(-) warfarin, prothrombin time (PT) and international normalized ratio (INR) were assayed pre-dose and up to 168 h post-dose. RESULTS The geometric mean ratios (GMRs) (90% confidence interval (CI)) of AUC0-∞ and Cmax for (linagliptin + warfarin)/warfarin were 98.5 (95.7 - 101.5) and 99.7 (94.7 - 104.9), respectively, for R-warfarin; 103.0 (99.1 - 107.0) and 100.9 (93.7 - 108.6), respectively, for S-warfarin. Concomitant administration of linagliptin and warfarin had o clinically relevant effect on the AUC0-168 for INR or PT. The GMRs (90% CI) of INR nd PT AUC0-168 for (linagliptin + warfarin)/ warfarin were 93.4 (86.2 - 101.1) and 103.2 (95.4 - 111.6), respectively. The corresponding Eax values for both INR and PT were slightly increased after co-administration of linagliptin and warfarin compared with warfarin alone, being 104.3 (85.2 - 127.6) and 15.1 (94.3 -140.6), respectively, reflecting the higher variability of these endpoints. Co-administration of linagliptin and warfarin was well tolerated. CONCLUSIONS Coadministration of linagliptin did not alter the pharmacokinetics or pharmacodynamics of R- or S-warfarin, indicating that no dosage adjustment for warfarin is necessary when co-administered with linagliptin.
A Novel Phase-Locking-Free Phase Sensitive Amplifier-Based Regenerator

We propose a scheme for phase regeneration of optical binary phase-shift keying (BPSK) data signals based on phase sensitive amplification without active phase locking. A delay interferometer is used to convert a BPSK signal impaired by noise to an amplitude modulated signal followed by cross-phase modulation in a highly nonlinear fiber (HNLF), which transfers the data modulation from the amplitude modulated signal to the phase of a locally generated carrier. By placing the HNLF in a loop, a stable phase relation is maintained relative to a set of counter propagating locally generated phase-locked pumps. As a result, active phase stabilization is avoided. A proof-of-principle experiment is carried out with a dual-pump degenerate phase sensitive amplifier, demonstrating regeneration for a 10-Gb/s non-return-to-zero differential BPSK data signal degraded by a sinusoidal phase-noise tone. Receiver sensitivity improvements of 3.5 dB are achieved at a bit error rate of 10-9. In addition, numerical simulations are performed comparing the idealized regenerator performance in the presence of sinusoidal phase modulation as well as Gaussian phase noise.
Memristor Circuits: Bifurcations without Parameters

The present manuscript relies on the companion paper entitled “Memristor Circuits: Flux–Charge Analysis Method,” which has introduced a comprehensive analysis method to study the nonlinear dynamics of memristor circuits in the flux–charge $(\varphi ,q)$ –domain. The Flux–Charge Analysis Method is based on Kirchhoff Flux and Charge Laws and constitutive relations of circuit elements in terms of incremental fluxes and incremental charges. The straightforward application of the method has previously provided a full portrait of the nonlinear dynamics and bifurcations of the simplest memristor circuit composed by a capacitor and a flux-controlled memristor. This paper aims to show that the method is effective to analyze nonlinear dynamics and bifurcations in memristor circuits with more complex dynamics including Hopf bifurcations (originating persistent oscillations) and period–doubling cascades (leading to chaotic behavior). One key feature of the method is that it makes clear how initial conditions give rise to bifurcations for an otherwise fixed set of circuit parameters. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, these represent the first results that relate such bifurcations, which are referred to in the paper as Bifurcations without Parameters, with physical circuit variables as the initial conditions of dynamic circuit elements.
Fishes of Bermuda

Here we add a recently described species of Hyporham- phus (Hemiramphidae), recognize Chromis bermudae (Pomacentridae) as valid, and remove Parasphyraenops atri- manus (Serranidae) from the list of Bermuda endemics, changing the total number of Bermuda endemic fishes to seven species, eight if Clepticus sp. (Labridae) proves to be new, excluding from consideration several land-locked species of Fundulus. First Bermuda records are docu- mented for 24 species but five others, Carcharodon car- charias, Hyporhamphus unifasciatus, Rypticus subbifrenatus Clepticus parrae and Eleotris pisonis, based on misidentifi- cations, are removed. Biological or distributional notes are included for 22 species and nomenclatural changes apply to another 12 species. Reproductions of recently discov- ered historical watercolors or pencil sketches by Colonel H. W. Drummond-Hay are provided for 14 species of Bermuda fishes.
VIEWER RESPONSES TO INTERACTIVE NARRATIVE: A COMPARISION OF INTERACTIVE VERSUS LINEAR VIEWERSHIP IN ALONE AND GROUP SETTINGS

VIEWER RESPONSES TO INTEACTIVE NARRATIVE: A COMPARISION OF INTERACTIVE VERSUS LINEAR VIEWERSHIP IN ALINE AND GROUP SETTING By Sangyeob Lee Based on researches about viewers’ emotional responses to media, the emotional responses to interactive video were studied. Because of the nature of interactive television, the involvement of people during watching the video was expected to be increased. This paper presents results from various emotional factors, which were used to measure viewers’ responses to other media forms. Also emotional factors of subjects who watched interactive video were compared to those who watched linear version.
Impact of Irrigation Water Salinity on Germination and Seedling Growth of Egyptian Barley Cultivars

: The aim of this research was to assess the influence of saline irrigation water which prepared to obtain salt stress of 0.31, 3.21, 5.74, 8.28 and 12.86 dS/m on seed germination, and early seedling growth of 10 cultivars (Giza 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 129, 130, 134, 135 and 2000) of Egyptian barley grown in clay loam soil. Germination was tested in germination cups filled with clay loam soil moistened with different concentrations of saline water, in the growth chambers condition. Results indicated that, the highest values of germinated seeds were recorded mainly at fresh water (0.31 dS/m) at all germination periods. Also, the maximum values were recorded at investigated barley cultivars Giza 126, 127 and 2000 for three studied periods (3, 5 and 7 d), while Giza 129, 130 and 135 got the same trend where the highest values for germinated seeds attained at the 5 d, 7 d and at 3 d were 9.5 seeds, respectively. Barley cultivar Giza 126 had significantly higher root length (4.07 cm), shoot length (11.75 cm), root fresh weight (48.2 mg), shoot fresh weight (101.1 mg), root dry weight (7.1 mg), shoot dry weight (6.6 mg) and seedling vigor index (13.44). The 6 kDa protein bands had the same increasing after salt stress in cultivars Giza 123, 127, 129, 134 and 135. Barley cultivars in clay soil can be classified into barley cultivars Giza 126, 127 and 2000 as highly tolerance and barley cultivar Giza 129, 123 and 127 as moderately tolerance and the rest is less.
Anti-VEGF Therapy and the Retina: An Update

Ocular angiogenesis and macular oedema are major causes of sight loss across the world. Aberrant neovascularisation, which may arise secondary to numerous disease processes, can result in reduced vision as a result of oedema, haemorrhage, and scarring. The development of antivascular endothelial growth factor (anti-VEGF) agents has revolutionised the treatment of retinal vasogenic conditions. These drugs are now commonly employed for the treatment of a plethora of ocular pathologies including choroidal neovascularisation, diabetic macular oedema, and retinal vein occlusion to name a few. In this paper, we will explore the current use of anti-VEGF in a variety of retinal diseases and the impact that these medications have had on visual outcome for patients.
Comprehensive assessment of chronic pain management in primary care: a first phase of a quality improvement initiative at a multisite Community Health Center.

BACKGROUND The objective of this study was to conduct a comprehensive formative assessment of chronic pain management in a large, multisite community health centre and use the results to design a quality improvement initiative based on an evidence-based practice model developed by the Veterans Health Administration. Improving quality and safety by incorporating evidence-based practices (EBP) is challenging, particularly in busy clinical practices such as Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs). FQHCs grapple with financial constraints, lack of resources and complex patient populations. METHODS The Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services (PARIHS) Framework served as a basis for the comprehensive assessment. We used a range of measures and tools to examine pain care from a variety of perspectives. Patients with chronic pain were identified using self-reported pain scores and opioid prescription records. We employed multiple data collection strategies, including querying our electronic health records system, manual chart reviews and staff surveys. RESULTS We found that patients with chronic pain had extremely high primary care utilisation rates while referral rates to pain-related specialties were low for these patients. Large gaps existed in primary care provider adherence to standards for pain care documentation and practice. There was wide provider variability in the prescription of opioids to treat pain. Staff surveys found substantial variation in both pain care knowledge and readiness to change, as well as low confidence in providers' ability to manage pain, and dissatisfaction with the resources available to support chronic pain care. CONCLUSIONS Improving chronic pain management at this Community Health Center requires a multifaceted intervention aimed at addressing many of the problems identified during the assessment phase. During the intervention we will put a greater emphasis on increasing options for behavioural health and complementary medicine support, increasing access to specialty consultation, providing pain-specific CME for providers, and improving documentation of pain care in the electronic health records.
Quantifying the Intragenic Distribution of Human Disease Mutations

A wide variety of functional domains exist within human genes. Since different domains vary in their roles regarding overall gene function, the ability for a mutation in a gene region to produce disease varies among domains. We tested two hypotheses regarding distributions of mutations among functional domains by using (1) sets of single nucleotide disease mutations for six genes (CFTR, TSC2, G6PD, PAX6, RS1, and PAH) and (2) sets of polymorphic replacement and silent mutations found in two genes (CFTR and TSC2). First, we tested the null hypothesis that sets of mutations are uniformly distributed among functional domains within genes. Second, we tested the null hypothesis that disease mutations are distributed among gene regions according to expectations derived from the distribution of evolutionary conserved and variable amino acid sites throughout each gene. In contrast to the mainly uniform distribution of sets of silent and polymorphic mutations, sets of disease mutations generally rejected the null hypotheses of both uniform and evolutionary‐influenced distributions. Although the disease mutation data showed a better agreement with the evolutionary‐derived expectations, disease mutations were found to be statistically overabundant in conserved domains, and under‐represented in variable regions, even after accounting for amino acid site variability of domains over long‐term evolutionary history. This finding suggests that there is a non‐additive influence of amino acid site conservation on the observed intragenic distribution of disease mutations, and underscores the importance of understanding the patterns of neutral amino acid substitutions permitted in a gene over long‐term evolutionary history.
Is Europe ready to reach tuberculosis elimination? An outbreak report from Southern Italy

In July 2014, in Rome, the European Respiratory Society and the World Health Organization (WHO) developed a global framework for tuberculosis (TB) elimination in low TB incidence countries, focussed on the concept of TB elimination (fewer than one TB case per million population) [1–5]. Recent studies demonstrated that several “areas” relevant for TB elimination are not fully covered in Europe and in Italy [6, 7]. Managing tuberculosis outbreaks in Southern Italy is difficult, hampering elimination efforts http://ow.ly/JE7dy
Explicitation de la sémantique dans lesbases de données : Base de données à base ontologique et le modèle OntoDB

Une ontologie de domaine est une representation de la semantique des concepts d'un domaine en termes de classes et de proprietes, ainsi que des relations qui les lient. Avec le developpement de modeles d'ontologies stables dans differents domaines, OWL dans le domaine duWeb semantique, PLIB dans le domaine technique, de plus en plus de donnees (ou de metadonnees) sont decrites par reference a ces ontologies. La taille croissante de telles donnees rend necessaire de les gerer au sein de bases de donnees originales, que nous appelons bases de donnees a base ontologique (BDBO), et qui possedent la particularite de representer, outre les donnees, les ontologies qui en definissent le sens. Plusieurs architectures de BDBO ont ainsi ete proposees au cours des dernieres annees. Les chemas qu'elles utilisent pour la representation des donnees sont soit constitues d'une unique table de triplets de type (sujet, predicat, objet), soit eclates en des tables unaires et binaires respectivement pour chaque classe et pour chaque propriete. Si de telles representations permettent une grande flexibilite dans la structure des donnees representees, elles ne sont ni susceptibles de passer a grande echelle lorsque chaque instance est decrite par un nombre significatif de proprietes, ni adaptee a la structure des bases de donnees usuelles, fondee sur les relations n-aires. C'est ce double inconvenient que vise a resoudre le modele OntoDB. En introduisant des hypotheses de typages qui semblent acceptables dans beaucoup de domaine d'application, nous proposons une architecture de BDBO constituee de quatre parties : les deux premieres parties correspondent a la structure usuelle des bases de donnees : donnees reposant sur un schema logique de donnees, et meta-base decrivant l'ensemble de la structure de tables. Les deux autres parties, originales, representent respectivement les ontologies, et le meta-modele d'ontologie au sein d'un meta-schema reflexif. Des mecanismes d'abstraction et de nomination permettent respectivement d'associer a chaque donnee le concept ontologique qui en definit le sens, et d'acceder aux donnees a partir des concepts, sans se preoccuper de la representation des donnees. Cette architecture permet a la fois de gerer de facon efficace des donnees de grande taille definies par reference a des ontologies (donnees a base ontologique), mais aussi d'indexer des bases de donnees usuelles au niveau connaissance en leur adjoignant les deux parties : ontologie et meta-schema. Le modele d'architecture que nous proposons a ete valide par le developpement d'un prototype operationnel implante sur le systeme PostgreSQL avec le modele d'ontologie PLIB. Nous presentons egalement une evaluation comparative de nos propositions aux modeles presentes anterieurement.
Clinical governance in primary care groups: the feasibility of deriving evidence-based performance indicators

Objectives—To test the feasibility of deriving comparative indicators in all the practices within a primary care group. Design—A retrospective audit using practice computer systems and random note review. Setting—A primary care group in southern England. Subjects—All 18 general practices in a primary care group. Main outcome measures—Twenty six evidence-based process indicators including aspirin therapy in high risk patients, detection and control of hypertension, smoking cessation advice, treatment of heart failure, raised cholesterol levels in those with established cardiovascular disease, and the treatment of atrial fibrillation. Feasibility was tested by examining whether it was possible to derive these indicators in all the practices; the problems and constraints incurred when collecting data; the variations in indicator values between practices in both their identification of diseases and in the uptake of various interventions; the possible reasons for these variations; and the cost of generating such indicators. Results—It was possible to derive eight indicators in all practices and in three practices all 26 indicators. The median number of indicators derived was 12 with two practices able to generate eight. There was considerable variation in the use of computers between practices and in the ability and ease of various practice computer systems to generate indicators. Practices varied greatly in the identification of diseases and in the uptake of effective interventions. Variation in identification of ischaemic heart disease could not be explained by a higher prevalence in practices with a more deprived population. The cost of generating these indicators was £5300. Conclusion—Comparative evidence-based indicators, used as part of clinical governance in primary care groups, could have the potential to turn evidence into everyday practice, to improve the quality of patient care, and to have an impact on the population's health. However, to derive such indicators and to be able to make meaningful comparisons primary care groups need greater conformity and compatibility of computer systems, improved computer skills for practice staff, and appropriate funding. (Quality in Health Care 2000;9:90–97)
Relative affective blindsight for fearful bodily expressions

Nonconscious affective perception has repeatedly been shown for facial expressions but not for bodily expressions while being highly salient and known to influence our behavior towards others. Lau & Passingham[7] found a case of relative blindsight using a parametric masking design. We used a comparable approach to find this relative case of blindsight for affective information in which the affective information can be processed independently of visual awareness. Participants had to detect masked fearful bodily expressions among masked neutral bodily actions as distractors and subsequently the participants had to indicate their confidence. The onset between target and mask (Stimulus Onset Asynchrony, SOA) varied from -50 to +133 milliseconds. D-prime as well as the confidence ratings showed that the bodies could be detected reliably in all SOA conditions. Importantly, a phenomenon which we coined relative affective blindsight was found, defined as two SOA conditions showing same d-prime values, while the confidence ratings differed.
Simulating interactions of avatars in high dimensional state space

Efficient computation of strategic movements is essential to control virtual avatars intelligently in computer games and 3D virtual environments. Such a module is needed to control non-player characters (NPCs) to fight, play team sports or move through a mass crowd. Reinforcement learning is an approach to achieve real-time optimal control. However, the huge state space of human interactions makes it difficult to apply existing learning methods to control avatars when they have dense interactions with other characters. In this research, we propose a new methodology to efficiently plan the movements of an avatar interacting with another. We make use of the fact that the subspace of meaningful interactions is much smaller than the whole state space of two avatars. We efficiently collect samples by exploring the subspace where dense interactions between the avatars occur and favor samples that have high connectivity with the other samples. Using the collected samples, a finite state machine (FSM) called Interaction Graph is composed. At run-time, we compute the optimal action of each avatar by minmax search or dynamic programming on the Interaction Graph. The methodology is applicable to control NPCs in fighting and ball-sports games.
Will avilamycin convert ziracine into zerocine?

488 Emerging Infectious Diseases Vol. 7, No. 3, May–June 2001 sequencing, was also used to confirm the base calls of these 100 SNPs. The visual inspection of the electropherograms and the sequencing independent method were in good agreement and indicated that 80 (91%) of 88 successful assays of the nucleotide differences were genuine. Since our initial report, we have improved our methods for overlaying the annotation of open reading frame coordinates onto our analysis of the coordinates of nucleotide substitutions. Approximately 7% of the genome is noncoding, and approximately 15% of the substitutions are in these regions. Dr. Musser is correct in pointing out that the substitution frequency expressed in Fraser et al. (5), based on our preliminary annotation of our M. tuberculosis sequence data, is not an equivalent comparison to the synonymous substitution frequency derived by his method of sequencing a select set of genes over a wide range of M. tuberculosis strains. He uses the methods of Li et al. (6), among the most widely accepted, for the calculation of nucleotide substitution frequencies and derives a Ds value of <0.01 synonymous substitutions per 100 synonymous sites. Our preliminary data presented the frequency of total nucleotide substitutions at all positions (coding [synonymous and nonsynonymous] and noncoding) of the two recently sequenced strains, H37Rv and CDC1551. Our manuscript in preparation comparing the two M. tuberculosis strains will contain an analysis of synonymous substitutions. However, while Dr. Musser compared a select group of genes over perhaps several hundred strains, our frequency will be based on a genome-wide comparison between two strains.
Augmenting short-term cepstral features with long-term discriminative features for speaker verification of telephone data

Short-term cepstral features have long been chosen as standard features for speaker recognition thanks to their relevance and effectiveness. In contrast, discriminative features, calculated by a multi-layer perceptron (MLP) from much longer stretches of time, have been gradually adopted in automatic speech recognition (ASR). It has been shown that augmenting short-term cepstral features with long-term MLP (multi-layer perceptron) features makes it possible to improve significantly the performance of ASR. In this work, we investigate the possibility of augmenting short-term cepstral features with MLP features in order to improve the performance of text-independent speaker verification. We show, that, even though augmenting cepstral features with MLP features does not directly improve speaker verification performance, reducing the dimension of the augmented features, using principal component analysis (PCA), makes it possible to reduce, relatively, around 12% of the equal error rate (EER). Experiments are performed on telephone data of the 2008 NIST SRE (speaker recognition evaluation) database. Index Terms: Speaker verification, multi-layer perceptron (MLP), principal component analysis (PCA), NIST SRE 2008, GMM-UBM