Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Symptom burden and quality of life in end-stage renal disease: a study of 179 patients on dialysis and palliative care

Palliative care for end-stage renal disease (ESRD) is developing in Hong Kong. This is the first local study to explore the symptom burden and quality of life (QOL) of ESRD patients on chronic dialysis and palliative care. This was a prospective cross-sectional study conducted on ESRD patients in a hospital in Hong Kong from January 2006 to April 2007. Data collected included demographics, socioeconomic status, modified Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI), prevalence and intensity of 23 ESRD-related symptoms as rated by numerical rating scale (0–10), Brief Pain Inventory and QOL by MOS SF-36. A total of 179 ESRD patients completed the study; 45 patients (25.1%) were in the palliative care group and 134 patients (74.9%) in the dialysis group. The palliative care group were older (73.1 ± 7.1 vs 58.2 ± 11.4 years, P < 0.001), had marginally higher modified CCI (8.5 ± 1.9 vs 6.1 ± 2.4, P = 0.05), had more diabetics (62.2 vs 35.8%, P < 0.001) and were of poorer socioeconomic status than the dialysis group. The mean number of symptoms was 8.2 ± 3.9 and 9.3 ± 4.7 in the palliative care and the dialysis group, respectively (P = NS). Fatigue, cold aversion, pruritus, lower torso weakness and difficulty sleeping were the five most prevalent symptoms in both groups, and were also among the most intense symptoms. QOL was significantly impaired in both groups. Scores of all QOL domains correlated negatively with the number of symptoms (P < 0.001). Our ESRD patients under palliative care and dialysis had overlapping symptom prevalence and intensity, significant symptom burden and impaired QOL.
Cognitive reserve moderates the impact of subcortical gray matter atrophy on neuropsychological status in multiple sclerosis

Background: Cognitive decline is characterized in multiple sclerosis (MS), but the rate and severity vary. The reserve hypothesis proposes that baseline neurological differences impact cognitive outcome in neurodegenerative disease. Objective: To elucidate how brain reserve and cognitive reserve influence subcortical gray matter (SCGM) atrophy and cognitive decline in MS over 3 years. Methods: Seventy-one MS patients and 23 normal controls underwent magnetic resonance imaging and cognitive assessment at baseline and 3-year follow-up. The influence of reserve on cognitive processing speed (CPS) and memory was examined. Results: SCGM volume and cognitive scores were lower in MS than normal controls (P⩽0.001). Accounting for baseline, comparison of follow-up means yielded a difference between groups in SCGM volume (P<0.001) but not cognition (NS). Cognitive reserve (P=0.005), but not brain reserve, contributed to CPS, with only low cognitive reserve MS subjects showing decline in CPS (P=0.029). SCGM change predicted CPS outcome in MS with low cognitive reserve (P=0.002) but not high cognitive reserve. There were no effects in the domain of memory. Conclusions: SCGM atrophy occurs in normal controls, but significantly more so in MS. While CPS did not change in normal controls, low cognitive reserve was associated with CPS decline in MS. High cognitive reserve protect MS patients from cognitive decline related to SCGM atrophy.
Coordinated road-network search route planning by a team of UAVs

This paper presents a road-network search route planning algorithm by which multiple autonomous vehicles are able to efficiently visit every road identified in the map in the context of the Chinese postman problem. Since the typical Chinese postman algorithm can be applied solely to a connected road-network in which ground vehicles are involved, it is modified to be used for a general type of road map including unconnected roads as well as the operational and physical constraints of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). For this, a multi-choice multi-dimensional knapsack problem is formulated to find an optimal solution minimising flight time and then solved via mixed integer linear programming. To deal with the dynamic constraints of the UAVs, the Dubins theory is used for path generation. In particular, a circular–circular–circular type of the Dubins path is exploited based on a differential geometry to guarantee that the vehicles follow the road precisely in a densely distributed road environment. Moreover, to overcome the computational burden of the multi-choice multi-dimensional knapsack algorithm, a nearest insertion and auction-based approximation algorithm is newly introduced. The properties and performance of the proposed algorithm are evaluated via numerical simulations operating on a real village map and randomly generated maps with different parameters.
Stabilization for stochastic one-sided Lipschitz nonlinear differential inclusion system

This paper considers the stabilization problem for one-sided Lipschitz nonlinear differential inclusion system with stochastic disturbance. Firstly, the stability theory of stochastic differential equation is extended to stochastic differential inclusion. Then, the feedback law is constructed to make the closed-loop system exponentially stable in mean square. Finally, two numerical examples are simulated to show the effectiveness of the proposed method.
On Detecting Delay Faults Using Time-to-Digital Converter Embedded in Boundary Scan

SUMMARY This paper proposes a method for testing delay faults us-ing a boundary scan circuit in which a time-to-digital converter (TDC) is embedded. The incoming transitions from the other cores or chips are captured at the boundary scan circuit. The TDC circuit is modiﬁed to set the initial value for a delay line through which the transition is propagated. The condition for measuring timing slacks of two or more paths is also investigated since the overlap of the signals may occur in the delay line of the TDC in our boundary scan circuit. An experimental IC with the TDC and boundary scan is fabricated and is measured to estimate the delay of some paths measured by the TDC embedded in boundary scan cells. The simulation results for a benchmark circuit with the boundary scan circuit are also shown for the case that timing slacks of multiple paths can be observed even if the signals overlap in the TDC.
Fast method for psychophysical tuning curve measurement in school-age children

The ‘fast’ method for measuring psychophysical tuning curves (PTC) uses a masker that sweeps across frequency and a Békésy threshold tracking procedure. The fast-PTC procedure has been recommended as a technique for diagnosing cochlear dead regions in adults. The aim of this study was to evaluate the fast-PTC procedure in children. Twelve normal-hearing children (7–10 years old) and five adults were tested. The fast-PTCs were measured for 1000 and 4000 Hz signals using ascending and descending masker sweeps. Measurements were repeated on a separate day to assess test-retest variability. All children were able to perform the task; however it was possible to define the tip in only 87% of the fast-PTCs. Although the variability in tip frequency was higher for children, the mean difference between children and adults was not statistically significant. As expected, the difference on retest was higher for children. Studies investigating the use of the fast-PTC procedure with hearing-impaired children are warranted.
Ecotype diversification of an abundant Roseobacter lineage

The Roseobacter DC5-80-3 cluster (also known as the RCA clade) is among the most abundant bacterial lineages in temperate and polar oceans. Previous studies revealed two phylotypes within this cluster that are distinctly distributed in the Antarctic and other ocean provinces. Here, we report a nearly complete genome co-assembly of three closely related single cells co-occurring in the Antarctic, and compare it to the available genomes of the other phylotype from ocean regions where iron is more accessible but phosphorus and nitrogen are less. The Antarctic phylotype exclusively contains an operon structure consisting of a dicitrate transporter fecBCDE and an upstream regulator likely for iron uptake, whereas the other phylotype consistently carry a high-affinity phosphate pst transporter and the phoB-phoR regulatory system, a high-affinity ammonium amtB transporter, urea and taurine utilization systems. Moreover, the Antarctic phylotype uses proteorhodopsin to acquire light, whereas the other uses bacteriochlorophyll-a and the sulfur-oxidizing sox cluster for energy acquisition. This is potentially an iron-saving strategy for the Antarctic phylotype because only the latter two pathways have iron-requiring cytochromes. Therefore, the two DC5-80-3 phylotypes, while diverging by only 1.1% in their 16S rRNA genes, have evolved systematic differences in metabolism to support their distinct ecologies.
Learning from failure

In the canonical Robot Learning from Demonstration scenario a robot observes performances of a task and then develops an autonomous controller. Current work acknowledges that humans may be suboptimal demonstrators and refines the controller for improved performance. However, there is still an assumption that the demonstrations are successful examples of the task. We here consider the possibility that the human has failed, and propose a model to minimize the possibility of the robot making the same mistakes.
Retroviral proteomics and interactomes: intricate balances of cell survival and viral replication

Overall changes in the host cellular proteome upon retroviral infection intensify from the initial entry of the virus to the incorporation of viral DNA into the host genome, and finally to the consistent latent state of infection. The host cell reacts to both the entry of viral elements and the manipulation of host cellular machinery, resulting in a cascade of signaling events and pathway activation. Cell type- and tissue-specific responses are also characteristic of infection and can be classified based on the differential expression of genes and proteins between normal and disease states. The characterization of differentially expressed proteins upon infection is also critical in identifying potential biomarkers within infected bodily fluids. Biomarkers can be used to monitor the progression of infection, track the effectiveness of specific treatments and characterize the mechanisms of disease pathogenesis. Standard proteomic approaches have been applied to monitor the changes in global protein expression and localization in infected cells, tissues and fluids. Here we report on recent investigations into the characterization of proteomes in response to retroviral infection.
CHANGES IN MALONDIALDEHYDE LEVEL AND CATALASE ACTIVITY AND EFFECT OF TOLTRAZURIL ON THESE PARAMETERS IN CHICKS INFECTED WITH EIMERIA TENELLA

Ninety six 3-day-old Bowans White strain chicks were divided into a control and 7 experimental groups. Group 1 (control) received normal drinking water for 7 d. Chicks from groups 2, 3 and 4 received 50 ppm of toltrazuril at the begining and on days 3 and 6 of the experiment. Groups 5, 6, 7 and 8 were infected with a single dose of Eimeria tenella oocysts and then groups 6, 7 and 8 received additionally 50 ppm of toltrazuril on days 0, 3 and 6 after the infection. At the end of the 7 th d, all the animals were sacrified, their blood were collected into heparinised tubes and the plasma malondialdehyde (MDA) level and the erythrocyte catalase (CAT) activity were examined. The obtained results revealed that E. tenella oocysts caused lipid peroxidation in chicks and the administration of toltrazuril relieved the oxidative damage. Therefore, in case of infection, the detected level of plasma MDA and the activity of erythrocyte catalase may be taken into consideration as references with other parameters, in order to determine the severity of infection and the effectiveness of treatment.
Distribution of Free Methylarginines in Rat Tissues and in the Bovine Brain

Abstract: A sensitive and specific method for determining three forms of methylarginine, i.e., NG‐monomethylarginine, NG,NG‐dimethylarginine, and NG,NG‐dimethylarginine, in mammalian tissues was developed. After partial purification by ion‐exchange chromatography, the methyl‐arginines were derivatized to phenylthiocarbamyl compounds and quantitatively determined using HPLC with a reverse‐phase C18 column. In rat organs, the highest concentrations of methylarginines were observed in the spleen. In rat brain, cerebellum and olfactory bulb contained large amounts of NG‐monomethylarginine and NG,NG‐dimethylarginine. A detailed study of the distribution of methylarginines in the bovine brain was also made, and the concentration of NG,NG‐dimethylarginine was almost the same in all regions. The cerebellar gray matter, hippocampus, and hypothalamus contained large amounts of methylarginines. The distribution of methylarginines seems to parallel the distribution of nitric oxide synthase, which is known to be inhibited by NG‐monomethylarginine. This may indicate that methylarginines play some role in controlling nitric oxide synthase activity.
Note on Modular Reduction in Extended Finite Fields and Polynomial Rings for Simple Hardware

Abstract Modular reduction in extended finite fields and polynomial rings is presented, which once implemented works for any random reduction polynomial without changes of the hardware. It is possible to reduce polynomials of whatever degree. Based on the principal defined, two example RTL architectures are designed, and some useful features are noted furthermore. The first architecture is sequential and reduce whatever degree polynomials, taking 2 cycles per term. The second one is Parallel and designed for reduction of polynomials of 2(t −1) degree at most, taking 1 cycle for the whole reduction.
Internal auditory artery infarction

Objective: To study the pathophysiology of labyrinthine infarction. Background: The syndrome of sudden onset vertigo or hearing loss is commonly attributed to inner ear vascular disease, yet histologic studies of isolated labyrinthine infarction in humans have been rare and have not included a complete examination of the vertebrobasilar vascular system. Methods: Temporal bones, brainstem, cerebellum, and the supplying blood vessels were subjected to gross and microscopic postmortem examinations in a 92-year-old woman who had a sudden onset of vertigo and hearing loss in the right ear 7 years before death. Results: There were prominent atherosclerotic changes at the vertebrobasilar junction, but the internal auditory artery and its branches were patent on both sides. Histologic studies showed degenerative changes in the cochlea and vestibular labyrinth on the right. The posterior canal ampulla and saccular macule were relatively preserved showing partial areas of intact sensory epithelium with underlying nerve fibers. The right vestibulocochlear nerve showed a fibrotic scar and multiple patchy areas of degeneration. These findings are most consistent with a transient period of reduced perfusion of the internal auditory artery. Conclusion: The partial sparing of the inferior vestibular labyrinth may indicate a decreased vulnerability to ischemia because of its better collateral blood supply.
Maximum power point tracking method for small scale wind generator experimental validation

This paper presents a direct maximum power point tracking (MPPT) for small scale wind generator based on permanent magnet synchronous machine (PMSM). The PMSM is connected to the load through three-phase diode bridge and DC-DC converter. The proposed MPPT algorithm avoids the effect of sluggish mechanical dynamic characteristic of wind turbine. A test bench based on wind turbine emulator is used to experimentally validate the implementation of this MPPT method. The obtained results are satisfactory even if the method is slightly limited in terms of efficiency and accuracy.
ALU-array based reconfigurable accelerator for energy efficient executions

This paper introduces an energy efficient acceleration technique for embedded microprocessors. By means of supporting an ALU-array based coarse-grain reconfigurable functional unit, well customized special instructions are identified and executed for each application program. Since the reconfigurable functional unit can execute several dependent instructions (a sequence of instructions), simultaneously, the performance of the base microprocessor can dramatically be improved. In addition, this kind of direct execution is very energy efficient because it reduces activation counts of hardware components such as instruction cache, branch predictor, register-file accesses, and so on.
SiteQ: Engineering High Performance QA System Using Lexico-Semantic Pattern Matching and Shallow NLP

In TREC-10, we participated in the web track (only ad-hoc task) and the QA track (only main task). In the QA track, our QA system (SiteQ) has general architecture with three processing steps: question processing, passage selection and answer processing. The key technique is LSP's (Lexico-Semantic Patterns) that are composed of linguistic entries and semantic types. LSP grammars constructed from various resources are used for answer type determination and answer matching. We also adapt AAD (Abbreviafion-Appositive-Definition) processing for the queries that answer type cannot be determined or expected, encyclopedia search for increasing the matching coverage between query terms and passages, and pivot detection for the distance calculation with answer candidates. We used two-level answer types consisted of 18 upper-level types and 47 lower-level types. Semantic category dictionary, WordNet, POS combined with lexicography and a stemmer were all applied to construct the LSP knowledge base. CSMT (Category Sense-code Mapping Table) fried to find answer types using the matching between semantic categories and sense-codes from WordNet. Evaluation shows that MRR for 492 questions is 0.320 (strict), which is considerably higher than the average MRR of other 67 runs. - In the Web track, we focused on the effectiveness of both noun phrase extraction and our new PRF (Pseudo Relevance Feedback). We confirmed that our query expansion using PRF with TSV function adapting TF factor contributed to better performance, but noun phrases did not contribute much. It needs more observations for us to make elaborate rules of tag patterns for the construction of better noun phrases.
Driving forces for drug loading in drug carriers

Abstract The loading capacity of a drug carrier is determined essentially by intermolecular interactions between drugs and carrier materials. In this review, the process of drug loading is described in detail based on the differences in the driving force for drug incorporation, including hydrophobic interaction, electrostatic interaction, hydrogen bonding, Pi–Pi stacking and van der Waals force. Modifying drug-loading sites of carrier materials with interacting groups aiming at tailoring drug–carrier interactions is reviewed by highlighting its importance for improving in vitro properties such as the loading capacity, release behaviour and stability. Other factors affecting drug loading, methods employed to predict the encapsulation capacity and the techniques to verify intermolecular interactions are also discussed to inform the readers of all-sided information on drug-loading processes and theories. The drug carriers can be designed more reasonably with the better understanding of the nature and interacting mechanism of intermolecular interactions.
Concurrent Heat Activation and Suppression of Bacillus megaterium Spore Germination

FIG. 2. D-Glucose-induiced germiination of heated basal (0) and glucose-grown (0) spores of Bacillus megaterium. Heat activation for 10 min at the indicated temperatures. Germination determined after 2 hr of incubation at 30 C with 0.01 M D-glUcose. Nature 192:1211, 1961; Levinson and Hyatt, J. Bacteriol. 87:876, 1964). Changes in the sporulation medium can change the heat-activation requirements of B. miegaterium spores for germination on glucose and on L-alanine (Levinson and Hyatt, J. Bacteriol. 87:876, 1964). We have now produced spores whose germination on L-alanine is suppressed by "activation" temperatures which accelerate their germination on glucose. Spores of B. megateritam QiM B1551 were produced on 0.5% Wilson's Liver Fraction "B" buffeled at pH 7.0 with 0.11 Mi potassium phos-
Cytomegalovirus-induced immune suppression. I. Humoral immunity.

Murinecytomegalovirus (CMV) infects cells of the lymphoreticular system and causes alteration in immune function. Four to 6 days after infection, histological changes are observed in the spleen, consisting of intranuclear inclusions around germinal centres and destruction of germinal centres at higher virus inocula. Gradual healing takes place after this period. CMV also causes suppression of immune function, the maximal suppression also occurring in the 1st week after infection. Both the primary and secondary immune responses to sheep red blood cells are suppressed. The degree of immune suppression is directly related to virus inocula. When mice are first vaccinated with attenuated CMV, infection with virulent CMV results in an immune response greater than that observed in control mice.
Systemic Thrombin Generation and Activity Resistant to Low Molecular Weight Heparin Administered Prior to Streptokinase in Patients with Acute Myocardial Infarction

Summary One hundred patients were included in a randomized open trial to assess the systemic factor Xa (FXa) and thrombin inhibitory effect as well as the safety profile of low molecular weight heparin (LMWH) given subcutaneously in conjunction with streptokinase (SK) in patients with acute myocardial infarction (MI). The treatment was initiated prior to SK, followed by repeated injections every 12 h for 7 days, using a dose of 150 anti-Xa units per kg body weight. The control group received unfractionated heparin (UFH) 12,500 IU subcutaneously every 12 h for 7 days, initiated 4 h after start of SK infusion. All patients received acetylsalicylic acid (ASA) initiated prior to SK. Serial blood samples were collected prior to and during the first 24 h after initiation of SK infusion for determination of prothrombin fragment 1+2 (Fl+2), thrombin-antithrombin III (TAT) complexes, fibrinopeptide A (FPA) and cardiac enzymes. Bleeding complications and adverse events were carefully accounted for. Infarct characteristics, as judged by creatine kinase MB isoenzyme (CK-MB) and cardiac troponin T (cTnT), were similar in both groups of patients. A comparable transient increase in Fl+2, TAT and FPA was noted irrespective of heparin regimen. Increased anti-Xa activity in patients given LMWH prior to thrombolytic treatment had no impact on indices of systemic thrombin activation. The incidence of major bleedings was significantly higher in patients receiving LMWH as compared to patients receiving UFH. However, the occurrence of bleedings was modified after reduction of the initial LMWH dose to 100 anti-Xa units per kg body weight. In conclusion, systemic FXa- and thrombin activity following SK-infusion in patients with acute MI was uninfluenced by conjunctive LMWH treatment.