Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Defining the palliative care patient: A systematic review

Background: The lack of a clear definition of the palliative care patient hampers the comparison of results across different studies and impedes implementation of research findings in everyday practice. Aim: The aim of this article is to propose minimum characteristics that define a palliative care patient. Design: The design involved a systematic review of medical literature searching randomised controlled trials (RCTs) in palliative care for clear descriptions of their palliative care patients. We systematically describe relevant characteristics of the study populations of 60 eligible RCTs. Data sources: The data sources used were MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, and PSYCHINFO, including all non-cancer RCTs (1 January 1995–4 March 2010) and an equivalent number of the most recent cancer RCTs (1 January 2003–4 March 2010). Results: Half of the non-cancer studies were excluded because they did not relate to palliative care. We conclude that published RCTs have no clear definitions of their palliative care patients and illustrate the diversity of this patient, the lack of consensus concerning the attributes of illnesses needing palliation and the ambiguous use of the adjective ‘palliative’. Conclusions: We propose elements of the patients’ health status (e.g. a progressive, life-threatening disease with no possibility of obtaining remission or stabilisation, or modifying the course of the illness) and the care delivered to them (e.g. a holistic interdisciplinary approach that focuses on supporting the quality of the end of life) to be included in the definition of a palliative care patient. We also suggest considering the patients’ readiness to accept palliative care and a vision of palliative care shared by the patient and all caregivers involved as potentially important elements in this definition.
Innate Cellular Response to Virus Particle Entry Requires IRF3 but Not Virus Replication

ABSTRACT Mammalian cells respond to virus infections by eliciting both innate and adaptive immune responses. One of the most effective innate antiviral responses is the production of alpha/beta interferon and the subsequent induction of interferon-stimulated genes (ISGs), whose products collectively limit virus replication and spread. Following viral infection, interferon is produced in a biphasic fashion that involves a number of transcription factors, including the interferon regulatory factors (IRFs) 1, 3, 7, and 9. In addition, virus infection has been shown to directly induce ISGs in the absence of prior interferon production through the activation of IRF3. This process is believed to require virus replication and results in IRF3 hyperphosphorylation, nuclear localization, and proteasome-mediated degradation. Previously, we and others demonstrated that herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) induces ISGs and an antiviral response in fibroblasts in the absence of both interferon production and virus replication. In this report, we show that the entry of enveloped virus particles from diverse virus families elicits a similar innate response. This process requires IRF3, but not IRF1, IRF7, or IRF9. Following virus replication, the large DNA viruses HSV-1 and vaccinia virus effectively inhibit ISG mRNA accumulation, whereas the small RNA viruses Newcastle disease virus, Sendai virus, and vesicular stomatitis virus do not. In addition, we found that IRF3 hyperphosphorylation and degradation do not correlate with ISG and antiviral state induction but instead serve as a hallmark of productive virus replication, particularly following a high-multiplicity infection. Collectively, these data suggest that virus entry triggers an innate antiviral response mediated by IRF3 and that subsequent virus replication results in posttranslational modification of IRF3, such as hyperphosphorylation, depending on the nature of the incoming virus.
The different functions of Stat 5 and chromatin alteration through Stat 5 proteins

1 Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Cancer Research, Vienna, Austria, Max F. Perutz Laboratories, Department of Medical Biochemistry, Division of Molecular Biology, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria, Institute of Molecular Pathology, Vienna Biocenter (VBC), Vienna, Austria, Department of Pharmacology, Medical University of Vienna, Institute of Animal Breeding and Genetics, Veterinary University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria, Institute of Clinical Pathology, Medical University of Vienna, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (EMI 351), Amiens, France, Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria
Myeloid progenitors from the bone marrow of patients with vitamin D resistant rickets (type II) fail to respond to 1,25(OH)2D3

The active metabolite of vitamin D, 1,25‐dihyd‐roxyvitamin D3 (1,25(OH)2D3), has been shown to enhance the growth of human granulocyte/macrophage haemopoietic progenitors in vitro and to induce these cells to differentiate along the monocyte/macrophage pathway. In order to evaluate the relationship between specific receptors for 1,25(OH)2D3 and the role of 1,25(OH)2D3 in the regulation of haemopoietic cell differentiation, we examined the effect of 1,25(OH)2Di on the in vitro growth and differentiation patterns of marrow myeloid progenitor cells from two patients with 1,25(OH)2D3 resistant rickets, resulting from defective receptors to vitamin D. A significant rise in the frequency of myeloid colonies in control marrow cell cultures was induced by 2×10−9 to 2×10−7 M 1,25(OH)2D3. This rise reached a plateau at 2×10−9–2×10−8 M 1,25(OH)2D3, resulting in a maximal 54±9% increase in colony numbers. In contrast, no stimulatory effect could be detected when 1,25(OH)2D3 was added to cultured marrow cells from the patients with 1,25(OH)2D5 resistance. Analysis of colony composition revealed that 2×10−8 and 2×10−7 M, 1,25(OH)2D3 induced a 50±26% increase in the frequency of colonies composed only of monocytes/macrophages in control, but not in the patients’marrow cell cultures. The effect of 2×10−8 and 2×10−7 M 1,25(OH)2D3 on progenitor cell differentiation towards monocytes/macrophages was also observed in marrow cell suspension cultures. Whereas 1,25(OH)2D3 induced a 81–136% increase in the frequency of monocytes in control marrow cells, no effect could be detected on the generation of mature monocytes in marrow cells of the 1,25(OH)2D3 resistant patients. Our results show that marrow granulocyte/macrophage progenitor cells from patients with 1,25(OH)2D3 resistance fail to respond to 1,25(OH)2D3. We thus demonstrate that the effect of 1,25(OH)2D3 on the proliferation and differentiation of haemopoietic progenitor cells is mediated through its binding to specific cytoplasmic receptors.
Predictors and outcomes of scleroderma renal crisis: the high-dose versus low-dose D-penicillamine in early diffuse systemic sclerosis trial.

OBJECTIVE The reported frequency of scleroderma M01-R renal crisis (SRC) in diffuse systemic sclerosis (SSc; scleroderma) is 15-20%. Early use of angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors has markedly improved outcome. The present analysis reexamines the prognostic factors for and outcome of SRC in a prospective cohort of patients with early diffuse SSc. METHODS We retrospectively evaluated the cohort of SSc patients who participated in the High-Dose Versus Low-Dose D-Penicillamine in Early Diffuse SSc trial. Patients with diffuse cutaneous scleroderma were enrolled if their disease duration was <18 months. Because the trial failed to show a difference between treatment groups, the data were pooled. RESULTS One hundred thirty-four SSc patients entered the observation period a mean +/- SD of 0.8 +/- 0.3 years after onset of SSc. SRC occurred in 18 patients a mean +/- SD of 0.9 +/- 1.1 years after entry. During a mean +/- SD 4.0 +/- 1.1 years of followup after entry, 9 of the 18 patients died (mean +/- SD 0.6 +/- 0.9 years after SRC onset). Baseline characteristics that predicted SRC included a modified Rodnan skin thickness score of >or=20 (P < 0.01), enlarged cardiac silhouette on radiograph (P = 0.04), large joint contractures (wrist, elbow, knee) (P = 0.008), and prednisone use at entry (P = 0.01). Baseline characteristics that did not predict SRC included age, sex, race, Health Assessment Questionnaire score, fist closure, handspread, lung involvement, muscle weakness, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, and platelet count. In 5 of 10 subjects for whom at least 2 sequential skin scores were available, skin scores increased significantly (P = 0.012) in the 6 months before onset of SRC. CONCLUSION SRC occurred in 13% of patients soon (mean 11 months) after entry into the cohort. Predictors of SRC identified in this study included higher than average skin score, prednisone use at study entry, large joint contractures, and heart enlargement. Our data suggest, however, that low-dose prednisone alone was not associated with the onset of SRC, except in the appropriate clinical setting. Although ACE inhibitors and dialysis are now readily available, SRC continues to be associated with poor survival (in this study, 50% of patients with SRC died).
A Monte-Carlo Policy Rollout Planner for Pathfinding in Real-Time Strategy ( RTS ) Games

In this paper, we present a novel Monte-Carlo policy rollout algorithm (called MCRT-GAP) that uses a hybrid of focussed exploration of new actions and exploitation of promising actions to expand the lookahead search from the current state in a Monte-Carlo simulation model. The initial estimates of the action values are computed using a combination of the distance heuristic and a collision estimate. To balance the exploration of new actions and the exploitation of already explored promising actions, MCRT-GAP uses a greedy action selection approach to exploit the best action and a random selection approach to explore new actions within a small set of useful actions (i.e. smaller than the size of the action set in a domain world). This small set is called a corridor. In this paper, we describe the motivation and the algorithmic details of MCRTGAP. The paper also presents the theoretical properties
Self-calibration of the intrinsic parameters of cameras for active vision systems

A new technique for the calibration of the intrinsic parameters of cameras for active vision systems is presented. By making deliberate camera motions, the intrinsics of the cameras can be calibrated based either on the positional difference of optical flow field (PDOFF) or the trajectories of features (TOF) on the image plane. A way to detect the distortion of a camera lens is also presented. The calibration method is simple, fast, reliable, and very easy to combine with task performing processes. The performance of the technique is illustrated. The method can be used for general calibration of camera intrinsics. <<ETX>>
Psychophysiological Relations in Habituation to Gravitational Stress

Prolonged exposures to positive acceleration give rise to disturbances in physiological functions, such as circulatory hypotension in the upper parts of the body (for reviews see Wood, Lambert, Baldes, & Code, 1946; Gauer, 1950), increased heart rate (cf. Bjurstedt, Hansson, & Stroem, 1959), as well as deficient oxygenation of the arterial blood (Barr, 1962). Similarly, psychological studies have demonstrated impairments in mental functions (e.g., (Zuidema, Cohen, & Silverman, 1956; Brown & Collins, 1958; Frankenhaeuser, 1958; White, 1958; Frankenhaeuser, 1960). As to the interrelationship of psychological and physiological functions during gravitational stress it has been demonstrated that high G-tolerance levels are associated with aggressive emotional reactions and high levels of urinary noradrenaline, whereas low G-rolerance levels are associated with anxious reactions and high adrenaline levels (Cohen & Silverman, 1959; Silverman & Cohen, 1960). With regard to habituation to the stresses encountered during centrifugation no systematic studies seem to have been reported. However, rhe general impression gained from observation indicates that most Ss regard their first centrifuge ride, even at a low G-level, as a rather stressful event and that this feeling tends to decrease when the experience is repeated. For these reasons the human centrifuge ought to provide a suitable tool for investigating habiruation to stress, and more specifically the relation between changes in psychological and physiological functions. Quantitative measures of subjective reactions were obtained by having Ss estimate their own stress reactions at successive trials by a simple method of ratio estimation. The main physiological variable was excretion, of carechol
Brain and skeletal muscle bioenergetic failure in familial hypobetalipoproteinaemia.

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether a multisystemic bioenergetic deficit is an underlying feature of familial hypobetalipoproteinaemia. METHODS: Brain and skeletal muscle bioenergetics were studied by in vivo phosphorus MR spectroscopy (31P-MRS) in two neurologically affected members (mother and son) and in one asymptomatic member (daughter) of a kindred with familial hypobetalipoproteinaemia. Plasma concentrations of vitamin E and coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) were also assessed. RESULTS: Brain 31P-MRS disclosed in all patients a reduced phosphocreatine (PCr) concentration whereas the calculated ADP concentration was increased. Brain phosphorylation potential was reduced in the members by about 40%. Skeletal muscle was studied at rest in the three members and during aerobic exercise and recovery in the son and daughter. Only the mother showed an impaired mitochondrial function at rest. Both son and daughter showed an increased end exercise ADP concentration whereas the rates of postexercise recovery of PCr and ADP were slow in the daughter. The rate of inorganic phosphate recovery was reduced in both cases. Plasma concentration of vitamin E and CoQ10 was below the normal range in all members. CONCLUSIONS: Structural changes in mitochondrial membranes and deficit of vitamin E together with reduced availability of CoQ10 can be responsible for the multisystemic bioenergetic deficit. Present findings suggest that CoQ10 supplementation may be important in familial hypobetalipoproteinaemia.
GisViewer: a Web-based geo-spatial digital library

Geo-spatial digital libraries provide users with access to geospatial data. Access to this data is sometimes hindered through the lack of freely available viewing tools. Furthermore such digital libraries generally do not provide any method of remote update, thereby preventing the insertion of new data into the digital library over the Internet. We introduce GisViewer, a system for the decentralized management of a spatially enabled digital library. GisViewer supplies its users with a freely available tool for viewing and querying spatial data. In addition GisViewer also facilitates remote updates for authorized users. In an effort to ensure interoperability the GisViewer digital library complies with OpenGIS standards for geo-spatial features.
Persian-Spanish Low-Resource Statistical Machine Translation Through English as Pivot Language

This paper is an attempt to exclusively focus on investigating the pivot language technique in which a bridging language is utilized to increase the quality of the Persian-Spanish low-resource Statistical Machine Translation (SMT). In this case, English is used as the bridging language, and the Persian-English SMT is combined with the English-Spanish one, where the relatively large corpora of each may be used in support of the Persian-Spanish pairing. Our results indicate that the pivot language technique outperforms the direct SMT processes currently in use between Persian and Spanish. Furthermore, we investigate the sentence translation pivot strategy and the phrase translation in turn, and demonstrate that, in the context of the Persian-Spanish SMT system, the phrase-level pivoting outperforms the sentence-level pivoting. Finally we suggest a method called combination model in which the standard direct model and the best triangulation pivoting model are blended in order to reach a high-quality translation.
Ancient differentiation in the single‐island avian radiation of endemic Hispaniolan chat‐tanagers (Aves: Calyptophilus)

The simple geographic structure of island systems often makes them tractable for studies of the patterns and processes of biological diversification. The Calyptophilus chat‐tanagers of Hispaniola are of general evolutionary interest because their multiple lineages might have arisen on a single island, of conservation concern because several isolated populations are nearly extinct, and taxonomically ambiguous because they have been variously lumped or split into one to four species. To explore the context of diversification of the seven extant Calyptophilus populations, we conducted a multilocus coalescent analysis based on sequences of mitochondrial ND2 and three nuclear intron loci. We then compared patterns of phylogeographic genetic variation with the morphological differences that distinguish these populations. Mitochondrial haplotypes formed two reciprocally monophyletic groups separated by a large magnitude of nucleotide divergence. Intron structure largely paralleled the geographic grouping pattern of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), but these groups were only reciprocally monophyletic at one of the three introns. Also, the magnitude of between‐group divergence was much lower in the introns than mtDNA genealogies. Multilocus coalescent analyses inferred a nonzero divergence time between these two major geographic groups, but suggested that they have experienced a low level of gene flow. All four markers showed substantial allele sharing within each of the two groups, demonstrating that many now separated montane populations do not have long histories of isolation. Considered in concert, our multilocus phylogeographic reconstructions support the recognition of two species within the Calyptophilus complex, and raise the possibility that these taxa differentiated prior to the fusion of the two palaeo‐islands that form present‐day Hispaniola.
Maternal Attachment and Children ' s Emotional and Cognitive Competences

The goal of the study was to examine the relation between dimensions which lie in the basis of maternal attachment (anxiety and avoidance) and the development of children's competences in the emotional domain (reflective functioning, mixed emotions understanding, sequential emotion understanding) and cognitive development (verbal comprehension, logic, graphomotor skills and understanding quantities). For this purpose, 60 children and their mothers were tested. Revised Adult Attachment Scale (RAAS; Collins, 1996), was used to assess the two attachment dimensions. The Affect Task (Steele, Steele, & Fonagy, 1994) contains several subscales, including those intended to assess children's reflective functioning, mixed emotions understanding and sequential emotion understanding. Children's cognitive competences were assessed through their success on the Readiness for Elementary School Test (POŠ; Tolčić, 1986). Results indicate significant negative correlations between dimensions of maternal attachment and emotional competences. Also, avoidance is a significant predictor of mixed emotions understanding and sequential emotion understanding. Furthermore, anxiety negatively correlates with the success of children in logic, and avoidance is in a negative correlation, and is also a significant predictor of children's verbal comprehension from the cognitive domain. Also, better emotional competences of the child, especially reflective functioning, predict better cognitive competences. Our results emphasize the role of the father figure, more precisely the education of the father, in prediction of children's success in verbal comprehension and logic. It is justified to conclude that the obtained results indicate that the phenomena of attachment, emotional, and cognitive competences are essentially interrelated aspects of psychological life.
RSC en las Empresas de Servicios Energéticos: De los informes al compromiso con los profesionales

A pesar de que las companias electricas alcanzan una mayor puntuacion en la publicacion de informes de Responsabilidad Social Corporativa (RSC), a menudo son acusados de "lavado verde" debido a su mala reputacion ambiental. En suma, los informes RSC son el instrumento mas generalizado para transmitir el comportamiento social de la empresa. Sin embargo, detectamos que es necesario investigar el compromiso real de los profesionales de las empresas hacia los informes de RSC. Las ESEs prestan atencion y recursos al desarrollo y comunicacion de los valores sobre responsabilidad social corporativa con los profesionales. Los directivos de las ESEs y sus profesionales son quienes desarrollan la RSC en los proyectos de eficiencia energetica. No se trata simplemente de realizar informes, sino de un enfoque de comportamiento estrategico de todos los agentes que interaccionan de la empresa. La comunicacion a traves de valores de los directivos y profesionales con todos los agentes es clave para el exito de las nuevas soluciones energeticas. Las practicas de Recursos Humanos, relacionados con el comportamiento ciudadano organizativo, permiten que todos los empleados se comprometan con los valores de la RSC, generando una cultura en la empresa que permite integrar estas buenas practicas en la operativa cotidiana.
Robust cross-layer routing protocol for Mobile Ad hoc NETworks

In a Mobile Ad-hoc NETwork (MANET) where Mobile Nodes (MNs) self-organize in order to ensure the communication over radio links, routing protocols clearly play a significant role. In future MANETs, protocols should provide routing under full mobility, power constraints, fast time-varying channels and nodes subject to a high loading. In this paper a robust routing protocol, named DXFP (Distributed X-layer Fastest Path), is proposed. The protocol is based on a cross-layer metric which is robust against the time-variations of the network as far as topology (mobility), congestion of the nodes and channel quality (fading, power constraints) are concerned. All these features are integrated in a single physical cost, i.e., the network crossing time, which has to be minimized. Furthermore, several routes from source to destination are stored for a given data flow in order to efficiently face the disconnections which frequently occur in MANETs. It is shown that the DXFP protocol, though locally operating in a fully distributed way within the MNs, provides, for each data flow, the globally optimum routes according to the considered metric. The DXFP protocol has been compared with the two currently most used routing protocols for MANET, i.e. DSR (Dynamic Source Routing) and AODV (Ad hoc On-demand Distance Vector), showing significant improvements in performance and robustness.
Evidence for the Conformation of the Pathologic Isoform of the Prion Protein Enciphering and Propagating Prion Diversity

The fundamental event in prion diseases seems to be a conformational change in cellular prion protein (PrPC) whereby it is converted into the pathologic isoform PrPSc. In fatal familial insomnia (FFI), the protease-resistant fragment of PrPSc after deglycosylation has a size of 19 kilodaltons, whereas that from other inherited and sporadic prion diseases is 21 kilodaltons. Extracts from the brains of FFI patients transmitted disease to transgenic mice expressing a chimeric human-mouse PrP gene about 200 days after inoculation and induced formation of the 19-kilodalton PrPSc fragment, whereas extracts from the brains of familial and sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease patients produced the 21-kilodalton PrPSc fragment in these mice. The results presented indicate that the conformation of PrPSc functions as a template in directing the formation of nascent PrPSc and suggest a mechanism to explain strains of prions where diversity is encrypted in the conformation of PrPSc.