Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Discontinuation of immunosuppression in proliferative lupus nephritis: is it possible?

The search for an optimal therapy for proliferative lupus nephritis (LN) is still ongoing [1,2]. Maintenance treatment most often consists of low-dose prednisone, generally combined with either azathioprine, hydroxychloroquine or mycophenolate mofetil. Since the prognosis of proliferative LN has improved considerably and the morbidity of therapy is substantial, the aim of treatment has changed from preventing mortality to diminishing morbidity. Because of the cumulative side effects of long-term immunosuppression, there is a constant effort to keep drug therapy at a minimum and, wherever possible, to discontinue it altogether. Compared with other manifestations of systemic lupus erythematosus however, physicians may be more reluctant to discontinue therapy in patients with LN, especially since each flare is considered a risk factor for a worse renal outcome. So far, no randomized controlled studies have been carried out in which maintenance treatment after reaching remission was withdrawn prospectively.
Model Based Population Tracking and Automatic Detection of Distribution Changes

Probabilistic mixture models are used for a broad range of data analysis tasks such as clustering, classification, predictive modeling, etc. Due to their inherent probabilistic nature, mixture models can easily be combined with other probabilistic or non-probabilistic techniques thus forming more complex data analysis systems. In the case of online data (where there is a stream of data available) models can be constantly updated to reflect the most current distribution of the incoming data. However, in many business applications the models themselves represent a parsimonious summary of the data and therefore it is not desirable to change models frequently, much less with every new data point. In such a framework it becomes crucial to track the applicability of the mixture model and detect the point in time when the model fails to adequately represent the data. In this paper we formulate the problem of change detection and propose a principled solution. Empirical results over both synthetic and real-life data sets are presented.
Constraint-Based Multidimensional Data Mining

Although many data-mining methodologies and systems have been developed in recent years, the authors contend that by and large, present mining models lack human involvement, particularly in the form of guidance and user control. They believe that data mining is most effective when the computer does what it does best-like searching large databases or counting-and users do what they do best, like specifying the current mining session's focus. This division of labor is best achieved through constraint-based mining, in which the user provides restraints that guide a search. Mining can also be improved by employing a multidimensional, hierarchical view of the data. Current data warehouse systems have provided a fertile ground for systematic development of this multidimensional mining. Together, constraint-based and multidimensional techniques can provide a more ad hoc, query-driven process that effectively exploits the semantics of data than those supported by current standalone data-mining systems.
Characterization of the mechanical properties of freestanding platinum thin films

Many MEMS devices utilize nanocrystalline thin metallic films as mechanical structures, in particular, micro switching devices where these films are used as Ohmic contacts. But the elastic and plastic properties of these thin films (thickness < 1μm) are significantly different from those of the bulk material. At these scales the volume fraction of material defects such as: grain boundaries, dislocations and interstitials become quite significant and become a chief contributor to the physical and mechanical material properties. In order to effectively design MEMS devices it is important that these material properties are explored and mechanical behavior of the structure they form be characterized. Popular thin film materials used in MEMS devices are Aluminum (Al), Copper (Cu), Nickel (Ni) and Gold (Au). Platinum has traditionally gained acceptance into the MEMS industry because of its chemical inertness and high temperature stability. However the mechanical properties of platinum remains the least exploited. Platinum has a high Young’s Modulus (164 GPa, for bulk) and high melting temperature (1768 C) and therefore can be used as a ‘thin film’ structure
The puzzling neglect of Hispanic Americans in research on police–citizen relations

Most studies of police–minority relations in America focus on blacks, usually in comparison with whites. This pattern is particularly puzzling in light of the growing population of Hispanic Americans throughout the US, now outnumbering blacks and consisting of the majority in some major cities. Aside from the need for more empirical research on the policing of Hispanics per se, comparing Hispanics’ relations with the police to other racial and ethnic groups offers some important insights into both the dimensions that are shared across groups and those that are distinctive to Hispanics. This article critically evaluates the small body of empirical research literature on this topic – highlighting both deficiencies in this literature as well as suggestive findings – and concludes by identifying a set of issues that should be addressed in future studies. The available evidence largely supports a racial-hierarchy perspective with regard to the policing of different racial and ethnic groups in the US.
Muscle relaxants suitable for day case surgery

&NA; Neuromuscular blocking agents are used as adjuvants in day case anaesthesia to facilitate tracheal intubation and/or surgery. Although the majority of day case procedures are performed without the use of neuromuscular blocking agents, there are procedures, such as laparoscopic surgery, microsurgery, open eye surgery, some ear, nose and throat procedures and some paediatric procedures, which may require neuromuscular blockade. The characteristics of an ideal neuromuscular blocking agent for day case surgery are a short onset, a short clinical duration and a short recovery time, with or without reversal. It should also lack histamine release, provide haemodynamic stability, and be competitively priced. This paper reviews the neuromuscular blocking agents currently available and used, such as succinylcholine and mivacurium, low doses of an intermediate‐acting neuromuscular block, such as rocuronium and the recently introduced rapacuronium. Their advantages and disadvantages are described and discussed, with special reference to the needs of day case surgery. Rapacuronium offers certain benefits compared with the currently available neuromuscular blocking agents for day care anaesthesia.
The Consequences of Response Nonlinearities for Interpretation of Spectrotemporal Receptive Fields

Neurons in the central auditory system are often described by the spectrotemporal receptive field (STRF), conventionally defined as the best linear fit between the spectrogram of a sound and the spike rate it evokes. An STRF is often assumed to provide an estimate of the receptive field of a neuron, i.e., the spectral and temporal range of stimuli that affect the response. However, when the true stimulus–response function is nonlinear, the STRF will be stimulus dependent, and changes in the stimulus properties can alter estimates of the sign and spectrotemporal extent of receptive field components. We demonstrate analytically and in simulations that, even when uncorrelated stimuli are used, interactions between simple neuronal nonlinearities and higher-order structure in the stimulus can produce STRFs that show contributions from time–frequency combinations to which the neuron is actually insensitive. Only when spectrotemporally independent stimuli are used does the STRF reliably indicate features of the underlying receptive field, and even then it provides only a conservative estimate. One consequence of these observations, illustrated using natural stimuli, is that a stimulus-induced change in an STRF could arise from a consistent but nonlinear neuronal response to stimulus ensembles with differing higher-order dependencies. Thus, although the responses of higher auditory neurons may well involve adaptation to the statistics of different stimulus ensembles, stimulus dependence of STRFs alone, or indeed of any overly constrained stimulus–response mapping, cannot demonstrate the nature or magnitude of such effects.
Social Sentiment Detection of Event via Microblog

Sentimental analyses of the public have been attracting increasing attentions from researchers. This paper focuses on the research problem of social sentiment detection, which aims to identify the sentiments of the public evoked by online microblogs. A general social sentiment model is proposed for this task. The general social sentiment model combining society and phycology knowledge are employed to measure social sentiment state. Then, we detail computation of sentiment vector to extract sentiment distribution of blogger on event. Besides, social state for events are computed based on the general social sentiment model and sentiment vectors. Furthermore, we certify that social sentiment are not independent but are correlated with each other heterogeneously in different events. The dependencies between sentiments can provide guidance in decision-making for government or organization. At last experiments on two real-world collections of events microblogs are conducted to prove the performance of our method.
Electrokinetic separation of charged macromolecules in nanochannels within the continuum regime: Effects of wall interactions and hydrodynamic confinements

In this paper, a detailed continuum‐based theoretical model is proposed to investigate the effects of near‐wall potentials and hydrodynamic confinement on separation of charged macromolecules in channels of nanoscale dimensions. These wall effects are primarily confined within a few nanometers from the channel wall, and hence have negligible influences in the conventional electrokinetic separation methods that are routinely performed in microchannels. However, in nanochannels, their zone of influence becomes significant in comparison to the channel height, thereby inducing certain nontrivial effects on the resultant separation characteristics. By executing a regular perturbation analysis, it is established that depending on the macromolecular size relative to the channel height and the extent of electrical double layer (EDL) interactions, the wall forces decide the speed of traverse and the extent of spreading (dispersion) of the macromolecular bands. These factors combine together to finally decide the separation characteristics (quantified by the resolution of separation) of the charged macromolecules in nanochannels. It is demonstrated that because of the near‐wall effects, macromolecular pairs with less disparities in sizes give rise to higher values of resolution. Moreover, the wall‐induced influences are shown to magnify the resolution for any given pair of macromolecules in the nanofluidic systems, thereby signifying greater separation efficiency.
Upper bounds on the capacity of binary intermittent communication

This paper focuses on obtaining upper bounds on the capacity of a special case of intermittent communication, introduced in [1], in which the channel is binary-input binary-output noiseless with i.i. d. number of zeros inserted in between the binary codeword symbols. Upper bounds are obtained by providing the encoder and the decoder with various amounts of side-information, and calculating or upper bounding the capacity of this genie-aided system. The results suggest that the linear scaling of the receive window with respect to the codeword length considered in the system model is relevant since the upper bounds imply a tradeoff between the capacity of the channel and the intermittency rate.
Terraced spreading of simple liquids on solid surfaces.

We have studied the spreading of liquid drops on a solid surface by molecular-dynamics simulations of coexisting three-phase Lennard-Jones systems of liquid, vapor, and solid. We consider both spherically symmetric atoms and diatomic molecules, and a range of interaction strengths. As the attraction between liquid and solid increases we observe a smooth transition in spreading regimes, from partial to complete to terraced wetting. In the terraced case, where distinct monomolecular layers spread with different velocities, the layers are ordered but not solid, with substantial molecular diffusion both within and between layers. The qualitative behavior resembles recent experimental findings, but the detailed dynamics differ. In particular, the layers exhibit an unusual spreading law, where their radii vary in time as ${\mathit{R}}^{2}$\ensuremath{\sim}${\mathrm{log}}_{10}$t, which disagrees with experiments on polymeric liquids as well as recent calculations.
Association of six SNPs in SLC 7 A 7 with glioma risk in a Chinese population

Glioma is the most common type of tumors in the central nervous system. We performed a case-control study in a Chinese population, and investigated the contributions of six SNPs (rs12433985, rs12888930, rs7151065, rs12436190, rs12884337 and rs2065134) of SLC7A7 to the susceptibility to glioma. We selected 159 patients with histological confirmed glioma and 319 healthy control subjects between March 2013 and March 2015. Genotyping of SLC7A7 rs12433985, rs12888930, rs7151065, rs12436190, rs12884337 and rs2065134 was carried out in a 384-well plate format on the sequenom MassARRAY platform. We observed that the AG and AA genotypes of rs12433985 were associated with a higher risk of developing glioma in comparison to those harboring the GG genotype, and the adjusted ORs (95% CI) was 1.59 (1.02-2.48) and 1.98 (1.12-3.50), respectively. The CC genotypes of rs12888930 had 2.29 fold risk of developing glioma when compared with the TT genotype (adjusted OR=2.29, 95% CI=1.33-3.94). The SLC7A7 rs12888930 polymorphism had correlation with radiation exposure (Trend of χ2=4.84, P=0.03). The T-G-G-G-T-C and T-A-G-G-T-T haplotypes showed an increased risk in glioma risk, and the ORs (95% CI) were 6.74 (2.63-17.25) and 5.37 (1.89-15.30), respectively; while the T-G-G-G-T-T haplotype was associated with a reduced risk in glioma (OR=0.41; 95% CI=0.25-0.67; P < 0.001). In summary, we observed that the SLC7A7 rs12433985 and rs12888930 genetic mutations ere significantly correlated with an elevated risk of developing glioma, and the development of glioma risk could be affected by the SLC7A7 haplotype differences.
p53 mutations in urinary bladder cancer

We have screened for mutations in exons 5–8 of the p53 gene in a series consisting of 189 patients with urinary bladder neoplasms. 82 (44%) neoplasms were lowly malignant (Ta, G1–G2a) and 106 (56%) were highly malignant (G2b–G4 or ≥T1). Only one mutation was in a lowly malignant urinary bladder neoplasm, in total we found p53 mutations in 26 (14%) of the 189 patients. 30% of the samples had loss of heterozygosity (LOH) for one or both of the p53 exogenic (CA)n repeat and the p53 intragenic (AAAAT)n repeat markers. 31 samples (21%) showed LOH but were not mutated, suggesting other mechanisms inactivating p53 than mutations. 4 mutations were found at codon 280 and 2 mutations were found at codon 285, 2 previously reported hot spots for urinary bladder cancer. The study indicate a boundary between G2a and G2b tumours concerning the occurrence of genetic events affecting p53 function; moderately differentiated (G2) urinary bladder neoplasms probably are genetically heterogeneous which supports the suggestion that they should not be grouped together but instead, for example, be categorized as either lowly or highly malignant. © 2001 Cancer Research Campaign http://www.bjcancer. com
Information-Theoretic Detection of Masquerade Mimicry Attacks

In a masquerade attack, an adversary who has stolen a legitimate user's credentials attempts to impersonate him to carry out malicious actions. Automatic detection of such attacks is often undertaken constructing models of normal behaviour of each user and then measuring significant departures from them. One potential vulnerability of this approach is that anomaly detection algorithms are generally susceptible of being deceived. In this paper, we first investigate how a resourceful masquerader can successfully evade detection while still accomplishing his goals. We then propose an algorithm based on the Kullback-Leibler divergence which attempts to identify if a sufficiently anomalous attack is present within an apparently normal request. Our experimental results indicate that the proposed scheme achieves considerably better detection quality than adversarial-unaware approaches.
Fundamentals of Operative Dentistry: A Contemporary Approach

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Electronic Government as a combination of human and technological agency: Testing the principle of symmetry

It is argued here that Electronic Government (E-Gov) research to date has misconceived humans and technology, tending to give primacy to one or the other, but failing to grapple with their interaction. The present paper tries to remedy this by introducing an Actor-Network Theory (ANT) inspired approach in which the principle of symmetry is applied to an empirical case. This perspective emphasizes agency as a combination of actions of humans and technology, both separately and in conjunction (a "hybrid"). The research context is a computerized decision support (DSS) for portfolio management in the premium pension system in Sweden. The study shows that a system incorporating humans in conjunction with the DSS (a "hybrid") is able to make advanced economic decisions in line with pension policy by incorporating the preferences and characteristics of humans as well as the capabilities of technology. From a more general perspective, E-Gov is discussed today as a way of extending the hybridization of society, which is becoming an increasingly important component of the state's relationship with its citizens. The paper also discusses methodological implications, most importantly how to represent technology in a symmetrical analysis and how to avoid excessive detail in reporting.
Reverse engineering goal models from legacy code

A reverse engineering process aims at reconstructing high-level abstractions from source code. This paper presents a novel reverse engineering methodology for recovering stakeholder goal models from both structured and unstructured legacy code. The methodology consists of the following major steps: 1) Refactoring source code by extracting methods based on comments; 2) Converting the refactored code into an abstract structured program through statechart refactoring and hammock graph construction; 3) Extracting a goal model from the structured program's abstract syntax tree; 4) Identifying nonfunctional requirements and derive soft goals based on the traceability between the code and the goal model. To illustrate this requirements recovery process, we refactor stakeholder goal models from two legacy software code bases: an unstructured Web-based email in PHP (SquirrelMail) and a structured email client system in Java (Columba).
Disassembly scheduling of complex products using parallel heuristic approaches

A Greedy Randomized Adaptive Search Procedure (GRASP) algorithm for Disassembly Sequence Planning has recently been proposed. For this problem, feasibility-checking is rather time consuming due to the large number of constraints. The same happens to the local search used within GRASP to improve solutions. In this paper two parallel implementations of the algorithm are proposed for effectively solving larger problems. Both parallel algorithms use cooperative-search plus Path-Relinking and have been tested on a set of 48 benchmark problems. The results show that the parallel algorithms outperform the sequential GRASP algorithm and that migration-based cooperative search may be more effective in this problem than a shared global pool. Average efficiency is around 0.4.
Spatial Heterogeneity and Irreversible Vegetation Change in Semiarid Grazing Systems

Recent theoretical studies have shown that spatial redistribution of surface water may explain the occurrence of patterns of alternating vegetated and degraded patches in semiarid grasslands. These results implied, however, that spatial redistribution processes cannot explain the collapse of production on coarser scales observed in these systems. We present a spatially explicit vegetation model to investigate possible mechanisms explaining irreversible vegetation collapse on coarse spatial scales. The model results indicate that the dynamics of vegetation on coarse scales are determined by the interaction of two spatial feedback processes. Loss of plant cover in a certain area results in increased availability of water in remaining vegetated patches through run‐on of surface water, promoting within‐patch plant production. Hence, spatial redistribution of surface water creates negative feedback between reduced plant cover and increased plant growth in remaining vegetation. Reduced plant cover, however, results in focusing of herbivore grazing in the remaining vegetation. Hence, redistribution of herbivores creates positive feedback between reduced plant cover and increased losses due to grazing in remaining vegetated patches, leading to collapse of the entire vegetation. This may explain irreversible vegetation shifts in semiarid grasslands on coarse spatial scales.
Performance of serum lipocalin 2 as a diagnostic marker for colorectal cancer.

BACKGROUND Lipocalin 2 has been implicated in colorectal tumorigenesis but its usefulness as a diagnostic marker for the disease has previously never been determined. METHODS We have used ELISA immunoassay to measure the level of serum lipocalin 2 in a cohort consisting of colorectal cancer patients (n=196) and age/gender matched controls (n=99). RESULTS The median concentration of lipocalin 2 was found to be significantly higher (p< 0.0001) in the patient group (105.9 ng/mL, range 10.8-444.7 ng/mL) when compared to the control subjects (86.4 ng/mL, range 17.1-190.0 ng/mL). Additionally, no significant difference was observed between disease stage (Dukes' or T stage) in the patient cohort. Receiver operating characteristic analysis was performed to determine its performance as a diagnostic marker. The area under the curve was found to be 0.641 (95% confidence interval 0.576-0.706). Furthermore, the sensitivity of lipocalin 2 was found to be 24% at 90% specificity. CONCLUSIONS Our study indicates that lipocalin 2 is not a suitable serum biomarker for the diagnosis of CRC.