Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infection and Genital Ulcer Disease in South Africa: The Herpetic Connection

Background and Objectives: While genital ulcers are a risk factor in HIV infection, the association of specific agents of genital ulcer disease (GUD) with HIV infection may vary. Goal: To determine the etiology of GUD in HIV‐infected and HIV‐uninfected men attending sexually transmitted disease (STD) clinics in Durban, Johannesburg, and Cape Town, South Africa, and the association of previous and current sexually transmitted infections with HIV infection in men with ulcerative and nonulcerative STDs. Study Design: A cross‐sectional study of 558 men with genital ulcers and 602 men with urethritis. Results: Patients with GUD were more likely to be infected with HIV than patients with urethritis (39.4% versus 21.4%, P ≤ 0.001). Herpes simplex virus 2 (HSV‐2) was the most common agent identified in ulcer specimens (35.9%), and was detected in a significantly higher proportion of ulcer specimens from HIV‐infected patients than in specimens from HIV‐uninfected patients (47.4% versus 28.2%, P ≤ 0.001). Patients infected with HIV‐1 were significantly more likely to have HSV‐2 infection, as measured by the presence of the antibody to glycoprotein G‐2, than patients not infected with HIV (63.1% versus 38.5%, P ≤ 0.001). Patients infected with HIV‐1 were also significantly more likely to have initial HSV‐2 infection than HIV‐uninfected patients with GUD (50.0% versus 31.6%, P = 0.007). Haemophilus ducreyi was detected in 31.7% of ulcer specimens; prevalence did not vary by HIV‐infection status. Treponema pallidum DNA was detected significantly less frequently in ulcer specimens from patients infected with HIV than in specimens from patients not infected with HIV (10.2% versus 26%, P ≤ 0.001); no association was found between HIV‐infection status and fluorescent treponemal antibody absorption test seroreactivity, even when men with M‐PCR‐positive syphilis lesions were excluded from the analyses. Conclusion: The authors found that HSV‐2 is a more common etiology of GUD than has been suggested by previous studies conducted in South Africa; serologic evidence of HSV‐2 infection and current cases of genital herpes are strongly associated with HIV infection among men who present to STD clinics with GUD or urethritis.
Regulation of connexin‐43, GFAP, and FGF‐2 is not accompanied by changes in astroglial coupling in MPTP‐lesioned, FGF‐2‐treated Parkisonian mice

Basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF; FGF‐2) has potent trophic effects on developing and toxically impaired midbrain dopaminergic (DAergic) neurons which are crucially affected in Parkinson's disease. The trophic effects of FGF‐2 are largely indirect, both in vitro and in vivo, and possibly involve intermediate actions of astrocytes and other glial cells. To further investigate the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying the restorative actions of FGF‐2, and to analyse in more detail the changes within astroglial cells in the MPTP (1‐methyl‐4‐phenyl‐1,2,3,6‐tetrahydropyridine)‐lesioned striatum, we have studied striatal expression and regulation of connexin‐43 (cx43), the principal gap junction protein of astroglial cells, along with the expression of glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP), FGF‐2, and functional coupling. Our results show an immediate, yet transient increase in cx43 mRNA, and a sustained increase in FGF‐2 mRNA, GFAP‐positive cells, and cx43‐immunoreactive punctata following the MPTP lesion, without any induction of functional coupling between astrocytes and other glial cells as revealed by dye coupling of patched cells. Unilateral administration of FGF‐2 in a piece of gelfoam caused a further increase in cx43‐positive punctata immediately adjacent to the implant, which was more pronounced than after application of a gelfoam containing the non‐trophic control protein in cytochrome C. These changes were parallelled by a small increase in cx43 protein determined by Western blot, but not by alterations in the coupling state of cells in the vicinity of the gelfoam implant. Although our data indicate that MPTP and exogenous FGF‐2 may alter expression and protein levels of cx43, they do not support the notion that increases in cellular coupling may underly the trophic and widespread actions of FGF‐2 in the MPTP‐model of Parkinson's disease. © 1996 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Cybersex, Courtship, and Escalating Arousal: Factors in Addictive Sexual Desire

Three clinical constructs are proposed: (1) Human beings have an arousal template that is sexually dynamic and critical for understanding sexually addictive behavior; (2) Courtship disorders are a framework for making explicit arousal dynamics in compulsive behavior; and (3) Cybersex, by escalating behavior rapidly, can help us to understand the arousal template, the role of courtship distortions, and the nature of compulsive sex. This paper approaches escalating arousal from the perspective of affective content, especially rage, courtship distortions, and our increasing knowledge of neurochemistry. Each of the above constructs provides essential understandings necessary for both client and therapist. The arousal template emerges as a functional framework to understand and teach about key roles arousal plays in sexually compulsive behavior. Clinical interventions and implications are discussed.
Average modeling and simulation of series-parallel resonant converters by SPICE compatible behavioral dependent sources

A new methodology for developing average models of resonant converters is presented and verified against cycle by cycle simulation. The proposed modeling approach applies the concept of R/sub ac/(t) which represent the instantaneous effective load of the resonant network. Unlike the treatment given in previous studies, the value of R/sub ac/ is evaluated dynamically as a function of the temporal low-frequency-average of other relevant variables. Once defined, the model can be used as is to run steady state (DC), large signal (transient) and small signal (AC) simulations on any modern circuit simulators. The proposed methodology was used to develop a behavioral model of a series-parallel resonant converter. Excellent agreement was found between simulation by the proposed model and cycle by cycle simulation.
Substance Abuse amongst the Street-children in Guwahati City, Assam

Background: The nature of continuous exposure to the street and its associated life-styles make street children vulnerable to the use of psychoactive substances. Aims: The aim of the present study is to study some social factors of street children in Guwahati city and to ascertain the substance use behavior of the street children. Subjects and Methods: A population based cross-sectional study conducted during September 2008 to August 2009 among 215 street children between the ages of 5 and 18 years of Guwahati City Assam. The main outcome measures were substance use and its related risk factors prevalent among street children. The data collected were analyzed in Microsoft Office and percentages and Chi-square tests were used to analyze the variables. Results: Around 174/215 (80.9%) of study participants were substance abusers. It is noteworthy that as the age increases substance use was more common when compared to younger age group. The risk of substance abuse was 1.26 times relatively higher among those who had never been to school and 1.12 times more common in those from a joint family when compared to others. However the correlations were not found to be statistically significant. Substance abuse was 1.19 times more common in case of deaths of both parents and the association was found to be statistically significant (P = 0.02). Presence of step parents and substance use in the family was seen to be a risk factor for substance abuse and the association was highly significant (P < 0.001). The association of substance abuse with duration of street life was found to be highly significant. Majority of the substance users 152/174 (87.4%) were in the habit of sniffing glue and this was followed by smoking 147/174 (84.5%). Conclusion: Substance abuse is an important concern affecting street children. Street and its associated life-styles make street children vulnerable to the use of psychoactive substances. Non- government organizations and Government should come forward to curb this problem and save millions of vulnerable lives.
Secretome-Based Identification of ULBP2 as a Novel Serum Marker for Pancreatic Cancer Detection

Background To discover novel markers for improving the efficacy of pancreatic cancer (PC) diagnosis, the secretome of two PC cell lines (BxPC-3 and MIA PaCa-2) was profiled. UL16 binding protein 2 (ULBP2), one of the proteins identified in the PC cell secretome, was selected for evaluation as a biomarker for PC detection because its mRNA level was also found to be significantly elevated in PC tissues. Methods ULBP2 expression in PC tissues from 67 patients was studied by immunohistochemistry. ULBP2 serum levels in 154 PC patients and 142 healthy controls were measured by bead-based immunoassay, and the efficacy of serum ULBP2 for PC detection was compared with the widely used serological PC marker carbohydrate antigen 19-9 (CA 19-9). Results Immunohistochemical analyses revealed an elevated expression of ULPB2 in PC tissues compared with adjacent non-cancerous tissues. Meanwhile, the serum levels of ULBP2 among all PC patients (n = 154) and in early-stage cancer patients were significantly higher than those in healthy controls (p<0.0001). The combination of ULBP2 and CA 19-9 outperformed each marker alone in distinguishing PC patients from healthy individuals. Importantly, an analysis of the area under receiver operating characteristic curves showed that ULBP2 was superior to CA 19-9 in discriminating patients with early-stage PC from healthy controls. Conclusions Collectively, our results indicate that ULBP2 may represent a novel and useful serum biomarker for pancreatic cancer primary screening.
Problems of Parliamentary Accountability in Jamaica: Consequences for Health Administration

The effective parliamentary democracy implements the policies, programmes, procedures and processes that encourage optimal constituency service, effective departmental performance, thoroughly considered and well-formulated government policies, public responsiveness and accountability. This paper uses a case study of health administration to highlight some of the problems presented in seeking to establish parliamentary accountability in Jamaica. It argues that the ineffectiveness and lack of accountability in and of Parliament have flourished in a context of poor economic growth and deep political and social divides. Accountability requires more than ad-hoc institutional interventions; it depends on social and political change.
Learning to Rank Definitions to Generate Quizzes for Interactive Information Presentation

This paper proposes the idea of ranking definitions of a person (a set of biographical facts) to automatically generate "Who is this? " quizzes. The definitions are ordered according to how difficult they make it to name the person. Such ranking would enable users to interactively learn about a person through dialogue with a system with improved understanding and lasting motivation, which is useful for educational systems. In our approach, we train a ranker that learns from data the appropriate ranking of definitions based on features that encode the importance of keywords in a definition as well as its content. Experimental results show that our approach is significantly better in ranking definitions than baselines that use conventional information retrieval measures such as tf*idf and pointwise mutual information (PMI).
Perceived 3DTV viewing in the public: insights from a three-day field evaluation study

The adoption and deployment of 3DTV can be seen as a major step in the television history, similar to transitions from black and white to color, analogue to digital and standard to high definition TV. Although 3D is expected to emerge from the cinema to peoples' home, there is still a lack of knowledge on how people (future end users) perceive 3DTV and how this influences their viewing experience as well as their acceptance of 3DTV. Within this paper, findings from a three-day field evaluation study on peoples' 3DTV experiences, focusing on the feeling of sickness and presence, are presented. The study was conducted in a public setting of a shopping center, involving 700 participants. The study revealed insights on users' feeling of presence and sickness when watching 3D. Results show that most of the participants reported sickness symptoms after watching 3DTV with an effect of gender and age on the reported feeling of sickness. Our results further suggest that the users' previous experience with 3D has an influence on how realistic people rate the viewing experience and how involved they feel.
Functional Imaging of Dentate Granule Cells in the Adult Mouse Hippocampus

The hippocampal dentate gyrus is critically involved in learning and memory. However, methods for imaging the activity of its principal neurons, the dentate gyrus granule cells, are missing. Here we demonstrate chronic two-photon imaging of granule cell population activity in awake mice using a cortical window implant that leaves the hippocampal formation intact and does not lead to obvious alteration of animal behavior. Using virus delivery, we targeted expression of genetically encoded calcium indicators specifically to dentate gyrus granule cells. Calcium imaging of granule cell activity 600–800 μm below the hippocampal surface was facilitated by using 1040 nm excitation of the red indicator R-CaMP1.07, but was also achieved using the green indicator GCaMP6s. We found that the rate of calcium transients was increased during wakefulness relative to an extremely low rate during anesthesia; however, activity still remained sparse with, on average, approximately one event per 2–5 min per cell across the granule cell population. Comparing periods of running on a ladder wheel and periods of resting, we furthermore identified state-dependent differences in the active granule cell population, with some cells displaying highest activity level during running and others during resting. Typically, cells did not maintain a clear state preference in their activity pattern across days. Our approach opens new avenues to elucidate granule cell function, plasticity mechanisms, and network computation in the adult dentate gyrus. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT We describe a technique that allows for chronic, functional imaging of dentate gyrus granule cells in awake, behaving mice in an intact hippocampal circuitry using genetically encoded calcium indicators. This novel approach enables the analyses of individual granule cell activity over time and provides a powerful tool to elucidate the mechanisms underlying structural and functional plasticity of the adult dentate gyrus.
Semiconductor lasers with 2-D-photonic crystal mirrors based on a wet-oxidized Al2O3-mask

We have fabricated and investigated AlGaAs-InGaAs-based ridge waveguide (RWG) lasers with two-dimensional (2-D) triangular photonic crystal (PC) mirrors using a wet-oxidized Al/sub 2/O/sub 3/ mask for the dry etching of the PC at one end of the ridge. The laser structure includes a 60-nm-thick AlAs layer positioned in the upper cladding, which is converted into Al/sub 2/O/sub 3/ after the definition of the PC by electron beam lithography and shallow etching. Etching of the holes is then continued using the Al/sub 2/O/sub 3/ mask, to a final depth of 600 nm. The continuous-wave characteristics of the lasers show a clear dependence on the period of the PC including a significant decrease of the threshold current and an increase of the efficiency for properly adjusted crystal parameters.
A Two-phase S cheme for Microarray Image Restoration

Microarray imaging is considered as an important tool for large scale analysis of gene expression. The accuracy of the gene expression depends on the experiment and image post processing. It’s well known that the noises introduced during the experiment will greatly affect the accuracy of the gene expression. In this context, elimination of noise constitutes a challenging problem in microarray analysis. This paper proposes a two-phase scheme for removing impulse noise from microarray images by preserving the feature of interest. In the first phase, an adaptive median filter is used to identify pixels which are likely to be contaminated by noise. In the second phase, the image is restored using a specialized regularization method that is applied only to the noisy pixels identified during the first phase. The proposed scheme is developed as a reusable software component using the object oriented and platform independent features of JAVA. Finally, the performance of the proposed method was evaluated with microarray images collected from open source biological database. The results have shown a significant improvement compared to the conventional linear and nonlinear filters in terms of edge preservation and noise suppression.
A Study of the Causal Relationship between IT Governance Inhibitors and Its Success in Korea Enterprises

In recent years, the emergence of the term IT Governance (ITG) has pointed to the increasing importance for business of effecting an alignment between its strategic direction and IT units. Many leading organizations have turned to ITG to pursue gains in efficiency, accountability, and regulatory and other forms of compliance, without, however, being able to implement coherent IT schemes on account of a number of challenging issues. Despite the growing interest of academics and practitioners in this area (as attested in recent publications), few studies have characterized the practical inhibitors frustrating the implementation of effective ITG. This paper, therefore, aims to examine empirically how inhibiting features associated with ITG affect the success of IT activities. Through a literature review, we identify 5 factors that work to restrain ITG implementation. Further, this work presents survey data gathered from 96 leading companies in Korea reporting the status of ITG practices according to a specific instrument of its own design.
Analysis of EEG signal to investigate the influence of intoxication in perception delay

Human brains receive a variety of raw data through sense organs, and process them to generate meaningful information like an image or an alarm etc. This mapping depends on personal experiences and training. Environmental information is continuously passed to and integrated in cerebral cortex, where it is evaluated on the basis knowledge acquired from previous experiences. Most of the time, the environment around us is mundane. Occasionally, the situation is alarming warranting immediate attention or a special action to achieve a reward. We are aware of an imminent danger or possible award. Under such a situation, a strong electrical signal is generated. However, it takes time to integrate external stimuli with pre-acquired knowledge to perceive that an action is needed. So, there is a time lag between external stimuli to its perception (Tper) and perception to action (Tact)· This time lag varies with age and physical condition. For example, an old person is slower than a young one, and someone intoxicated or drowsy will be slower than one physically fit and fresh. The purpose of this work is to define the Perception Delay such that it is reliable and stable. We took frequency features of EEG signals on slotted time over several probes, and integrate them to a feature vector. By unsupervised clustering, we could find the exact time when the signal behavior changes abruptly, indicating onslaught of the powerful signal. Through experiments we ensured confidence of our definition. In addition, we also measured perception delay after getting the subjects intoxicated and compared it when the subjects are normal.
Improvement of Glucose Metabolism in Patients with Impaired Glucose Tolerance or Diabetes by Long-Term Administration of a Palatinose-Based Liquid Formula as a Part of Breakfast

A palatinose-based liquid formula (palatinose-formula), suppresses postprandial plasma glucose and insulin levels in healthy men. The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of long-term palatinose-formula ingestion on glucose metabolism in patients with impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) or type 2 diabetes. Two patients with IGT and 7 patients with type 2 diabetes participated in the palatinose-formula and dextrin-based liquid formula (dextrin-formula) loading test and long-term palatinose-formula administration study. After a 3-month control period, palatinose-formula (1046 kJ) was ingested daily by patients as a part of breakfast for 5 months. In the loading test, palatinose-formula suppressed postprandial plasma glucose and insulin levels and areas under the curve compared with those after dextrin-formula ingestion. In the long-term study, glycated hemoglobin levels (after 3 months and 5 months of treatment) and serum 8-hydroxydeoxyguanosine levels (after 5 months of treatment) were markedly decreased comparing with those at baseline. Intake of 1046 kJ palatinose-formula as a part of breakfast over a long-term period may be effective for improvement of glucose metabolism in patients with IGT or type 2 diabetes.
The transillumination technique as a method for the assessment of spermatogenesis using medicinal plants: the effect of extracts of black maca (Lepidium meyenii) and camu camu (Myrciaria dubia) on stages of the spermatogenic cycle in male rats

Abstract Transillumination technique for assessment of stages of spermatogenic cycle is a useful tool for toxicological studies. This study was designed to determine the effect of two medicinal plants on spermatogenesis in male rats using the transillumination technique. For this, the effect of the combination of a fruit with highest content of ascorbic acid (Myrciaria dubia, camu camu) and extract of black maca (Lepidium meyenii) on seminiferous tubule stages scored by transillumination on intact tubules in adult male rats was assessed. Animals were treated during seven days with vehicle, black maca, camu camu or a mixture of black maca + camu camu and assessed for daily sperm production (DSP), stages of spermatogenic cycle as well as antioxidant activity and levels of flavonoids and polyphenols. Black maca increased stages of spermiation (VII–VIII) and mitosis of germ cells (IX–XI), whereas camu camu increased stages of mitosis (IX–XI) and meiosis (XII). Mixture of maca + camu camu increased stages of spermiation, mitosis and meiosis. All treatments increased DSP (p < 0.05) and epididymal sperm count (p < 0.05). Total polyphenols, flavonoids levels and antioxidant activity were higher in camu camu (p < 0.001) than in black maca. In conclusion, M. dubia (camu camu) has potential effects improving spermatogenesis and co-administered with maca increase stages of mitosis, meiosis and spermiation of the spermatogenic cycle as assessed by the transillumination technique. This technique is becoming increasingly a useful tool for assessment spermatogenesis.