Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluation of the Activated Partial Thromboplastin Time (aPTT) Sensitivity to Unfractionated Heparin Using Three Commercial Reagents: Implication for Therapeutic Range

At present, we are using the proposed therapeutic range for monitoring unfractionated heparin therapy which is the aPTT ratio of 1.5-2.5. However, the aPTT value is influenced by reagents and methods of detection. The College of American Pathologists and the American College of Chest Physicians recommended that site-specific validation of heparin therapeutic range should be established. The aim of this study was to determine the appropriate therapeutic range of unfractionated heparin therapy of our aPTT system by ex vivo study. For comparison, two other commercial reagents were also determined to observe the differences. Blood samples were drawn from 21 healthy blood donors who were not taking any medication and from other 24 patients suffering from either arterial or venous thrombosis, receiving continuous intravenous infusion of unfractionated heparin without concomitant oral anticoagulant therapy. Correlation coefficients between aPTT ratios and plasma heparin concentration varied between 0.722 (Actin FSL) to 0.817 (Actin FS). Calculated therapeutic ranges of aPTT ratios corresponding to the heparin level of 0.29 - 0.47 U/ml were 1.8 - 2.5, 1.9 - 2.5 and 2.7 - 4.6 for Actin FS, Actin FSL and Pathromtin SL, respectively. Therefore, the appropriate therapeutic range of our system obtained from this study might be aPTT ratio between 1.8 and 2.5 which is very closed to the ratio that we are using now.
Distribución y autoecología de Prunus lusitanica L. en la Península Ibérica

En este trabajo se ha estudiado la distribucion, el medio fisico y las agrupaciones vegetales de esta especie (que presenta un notable interes botanico) en la Peninsula Iberica. Se ha realizado una prospeccion gracias a la cual se han descrito 133 localidades para la especie en la Peninsula, de las cuales 25 han sido descubiertas durante los trabajos de campo. Se ha elaborado una cartografia de esta especie, y tambien se han recogido datos del medio fisico (litologicos y fisiograficos fundamentalmente) y de la vegetacion. En una fase posterior de gabinete se han recogido nuevos datos del medio fisico (edafologicos y climatologicos fundamentalmente). Todos los datos recogidos en las dos fases anteriores han sido analizados para obtener, por un lado las caracteristicas comunes de todas las localidades, y por otro lado las particularidades para cada area geografica peninsular habitada por esta especie.
Compressive Sensing Multi-Layer Residual Coefficients for Image Coding

Compressive sensing (CS)-based image coding scheme has been enthusiastically studied, but it still has a poor rate-distortion performance compared with the traditional image coding techniques. In this paper, we propose a CS multi-layer residual coding scheme to rectify this problem to a certain extent. By dividing CS measurements into multi-layers and predicting a particular layer’s measurements with all its preceding layers’ measurements, we can transform CS measurements into multi-layer residual coefficients, which are easier to compress. By calculating the residual between the quantized ground-truth CS measurements and their corresponding quantized inference measurements and using Huffman coding to associate each residual quantization index with a binary code, we can reduce the redundancies among CS measurements efficiently. Besides, the prediction and quantization process is designed to be layer-independent, which can save much of the encoding time. The proposed approach introduces a novel framework for using CS in the compression domain. The experimental results show that the proposed scheme can significantly outperform JPEG2000 and approach or reach the performance of HEVC-Intra on some test images.
Cuban Sugar Cane Wax Acid and Policosanol Showed Similar Atheroprotective Effects with Inhibition of LDL Oxidation and Cholesteryl Ester Transfer via Enhancement of High-Density Lipoproteins Functionality

Background Cuban sugarcane wax acids (SCWA) and policosanol (PCO) are mixtures of higher aliphatic acids and alcohols, respectively, purified from sugarcane wax with different chief components. Although it has been known that they have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities, physiological properties on molecular mechanism of SCWA have been less studied than PCO. Methods In this study, we compared antiatherogenic activities of SCWA and PCO via encapsulation with reconstituted high-density lipoproteins (rHDL). Results After reconstitution, SCWA-rHDL showed smaller particle size than PCO-rHDL with increase of content. PCO-rHDL or SCWA-rHDL showed distinct inhibition of glycation with similar extent in the presence of fructose. PCO-rHDL or SCWA-rHDL showed strong antioxidant activity against cupric ion-mediated oxidation of low-density lipoproteins (LDL), and inhibition of oxLDL uptake into macrophages. Although PCO-rHDL showed 1.2-fold stronger inhibition against cholesteryl ester transfer protein (CETP) activity than SCWA-rHDL, SCWA-rHDL enhanced 15% more brain cell (BV-2) growth and 23% more regeneration of tail fin in zebrafish. Conclusion PCO and SCWA both enhance the beneficial functions of HDL to maximize its antioxidant, antiglycation, and antiatherosclerotic activities and the inhibition of CETP. These enhancements of HDL functionality by PCO and SCWA could exert antiaging and rejuvenation activity.
In Vitro Effect of Pomalidomide on Bone Marrow Mononuclear Cells From Multiple Myeloma Patients

Background Many features of anticancer drugs, including cytotoxicity and/or cytokine induction, are studied using cell lines or human blood leukocytes. However, in a disease such as multiple myeloma, most cancerous cells are resided within bone marrow mononuclear cells. In the present study, we investigated the effect of pomalidomide on apoptosis and IL-2 production of bone marrow mononuclear cells in patients with multiple myeloma and controls.Materials and Methods The Bone Marrow Mononuclear Cells from 10 multiple myeloma patients and 10 controls were cultured using pomalidomide for 48-hour. Apoptosis induction rate, viability, cytotoxicity, and IL-2 production were evaluated. Results The results showed that apoptosis and cytotoxicity significantly increased in bone marrow mononuclear cells of multiple myeloma patients cultured in the presence of pomalidomide (PConclusion The results of the current study confirmed the toxic effect of pomalidomide on bone marrow mononuclear cells of patients, with no toxic effect on controls. On the other hand, pomalidomide has the potential to increase IL2 production within bone marrow mononuclear cells and consequently make changes in the immune response, which requires further studies for more clarifications.
Commercial fisheries in the northwestern Gulf of Mexico: possible implications for conservation management at the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary

Marine resource managers designate marine protected areas (MPAs) to conserve, protect, and enhance fragile marine resources. A form of MPAs sometimes used by resource managers in the United States is a national marine sanctuary (NMS), and for all MPAs, managers need to use updated information during sanctuary management plan reviews (MPRs). In 2006, the Flower Garden Banks NMS (FGBNMS) began its first MPR by conducting public hearings and soliciting comments. Some 66% of comments were about the potential impacts fisheries posed to the sanctuary, so a description of commercial fishery activity in the NW Gulf of Mexico can help guide resource managers make sound, informed decisions. Despite limitations on data and knowledge of fishing effort spatially for the FGBNMS, commercial landings vary by Gulf state, area, and fishing gear, with most landings from the Louisiana and Texas coasts taken with trawls and nets. The main species landed from the NW Gulf of Mexico are shrimp, yellowfin tuna, and red snapper. Some conservation measures proposed for the FGBNMS will likely impact some commercial fisheries (hook and line, bottom longline), but not others (otter trawl, pelagic longline).
Development of a PC12 cell cultivation and monitoring system for neuronal-like study

A variety of cell lines are often used to simulate the studies associated with the cell products, genetics, cell–cell interaction, environmental interaction, intracellular flux and intracellular activity. Among these cell lines, the pheochromocytoma (PC12 for short) cell line is the one that is widely applied in in vitro study for investigating the neuronal apoptosis, neurochemistry, and neuronal differentiation. The development of an appropriate cell cultivation platform as well as the real-time image acquisition and analysis system becomes an important issue. The purpose of this paper is to develop a long-term and low-cost incubation system, including microscopic image analysis system for morphological analysis. The proposed incubation system can acquire cell image for analysis during cell cultivation. From the experimental results, the temperature of incubation system is found to be in the range of 37.3 ± 1.3°C, and the lower levels of the relative humidity vary within 89.7 ± 1.8%. The CO2 concentratio.
A multidisciplinary clinic for pediatric patients with problematic severe asthma: Impact on clinical outcomes and healthcare utilization

Abstract BACKGROUND: The Intensive Management of Asthma Clinic (IMAC) is a novel multidisciplinary clinic for children with problematic severe asthma. Whether consolidating resources in this clinic is effective in improving clinical outcomes and reducing unscheduled healthcare visits has not been studied. METHODS: This retrospective, observational cohort study compared the IMAC and regular asthma clinic at a pediatric quaternary care hospital over a 4-year period. Clinical outcomes (forced expiratory volume in 1 second [FEV1], number of oral steroid days, and short-acting beta-agonist [SABA] refills), and healthcare utilization and its costs (number of clinic visits, emergency department [ED] visits, hospitalizations) were collected. Linear mixed effects modeling was used to account for repeated measurements grouped into 3-month time intervals. RESULTS: Mean FEV1 was higher for IMAC patients by 4.6 (CI 1.1 to 8.1, p = 0.01) throughout the study period. Scheduled clinic visits were higher by 0.2 (CI 0.1 to 0.3, p < 0.01) on average in any 3-month time interval, while ED visits decreased by 0.1 (CI −0.2 to −0.1, p < 0.01) over time for the IMAC group. Hospitalizations decreased over time by 0.03 (CI −0.05 to −0.02, p < 0.01) for both groups. The increased cost of the IMAC was greater than total costs saved by subsequent decreased healthcare utilization. CONCLUSION: The increase in planned clinic visits for the IMAC group was associated with fewer unplanned ED visits. A multidisciplinary clinic for children with severe asthma can lead to decreased acute care utilization; however, these benefits may come at extra cost. Studies such as this enable decision-makers to judge whether the benefits of multidisciplinary clinics are worth the additional resources required.
MEDIA CONSUMPTION IS REVOLUTIONIZED? CROSS-MEDIA USAGE IN EUROPEAN HOUSEHOLDS

Media consumption patterns are steadily changing. Content, IPTV, mobile and telecommunication providers are confronted with the customers’ demand to enable media consumption on various devices including TV, mobile phone, in-car entertainment or PC. To understand the needs of consumers, a set of extensive ethnographic studies has been performed in several European countries including France and Austria. The results show that today’s offers on the market follow the needs of the consumers to some extend. To overcome this gap between consumers’ needs and commercial offers, the studies were focusing on the current usage of media, devices, and interaction techniques in peoples’ living rooms. One of the primary goals of the studies was to investigate media usage in terms of used devices and the context of consumption (location, time, social influences). The media consumption was defined broadly in usage of any form of entertainment ranging from watching TV, using IPTV services, entertainment devices like game consoles and mobile phones. Results show that media consumption is changing and that people spend more of their time consuming media in parallel as well as consuming the same media content across different devices. Based on five basic usage principles that can be identified (e.g. “Watching TV stays watching TV”) we discuss the next steps to allow the development of user-centered and user-desired cross-media and crossdevice IPTV solutions.
Organic particles in a shallow sediment trap: Substantial loss to the dissolved phase

We used multivariate statistics to divide the solubilized organic matter in a shallow time‐series trap into fractions derived from swimmers and from the passive flux. Most of the dissolved organic matter in the traps originated from swimmers, but the contribution from passively trapped material was also substantial. Accounting for this fraction attributable to the passively trapped material yields a vertical organic carbon flux 2.7 times larger than the conventional estimate, which is based on recovered particles only. For organic nitrogen, this correction is even greater (six times). Solubilization is a fast process that is significant within a few days.
GNN-based Graph Anomaly Detection with Graph Anomaly Loss

Graph neural networks (GNNs) have been widely used to learn node representations from graph data in an unsupervised way for downstream tasks. However, when applied to detect anomalies (e.g., outliers, unexpected density), they deliver unsatisfactory performance as existing loss functions fail. For example, any loss based on random walk (RW) algorithms would no longer work because the assumption that anomalous nodes were close with each other could not hold. Moreover, the nature of class imbalance in anomaly detection tasks brings great challenges to reduce the prediction error. In this work, we propose a novel loss function to train GNNs for anomaly-detectable node representations. It evaluates node similarity using global grouping patterns discovered from graph mining algorithms. It can automatically adjust margins for minority classes based on data distribution. Theoretically, we prove that the prediction error is bounded given the proposed loss function. We empirically investigate the GNN effectiveness of different loss variants based on different algorithms. Experiments on two real-world datasets show that they perform significantly better than RW-based loss for graph anomaly detection.
General Game Playing with Incomplete Information using Zero-Suppressed Decision Diagrams

The field of General Game Playing is concerned with creating AI agents capable of playing any game given only its rules. Traditionally General Game Playing has been mostly concerned with complete-information games. Recently work has been done to extend the field to games with incomplete information, but playing these games is much more challenging because the amount of information to keep track of can grow quickly. We describe and implement a new technique for representing the information set of incomplete information games using Zero Suppressed Decision diagrams to reduce the amount of memory needed, as well as a technique for reasoning directly on these data structures. The results are promising, but require further refinement to become practical for playing most games.
5G Technologies: A New Network Architectures and Design

To date, though promising, an existing cellular technologies deem to evolve, in the presence of great demands over the upcoming years. 5G and related technologies can address some of key objectives such as better data rate, improved capacity, reduced latency, and higher service quality. This paper introduces a novel decentralized RAN’s architecture with largely dependence on LTE-A technology. The proposed design supports some prominent networking features that jointly improve the performance of both the LTE and RAN’s central network. This architecture compared to that of the classic PTP backhaul design improves signaling overhead, handoff capability, overall network throughput and latency, quality of service support and data rate for users’ prospect needs.
Plasticity of moult and breeding schedules in migratory European Stonechats Saxicola rubicola

Timing is crucial in seasonal environments. Passerine birds typically use a combination of physiological mechanisms and environmental cues to ensure that breeding, moult and migration occur without major temporal overlap and under the most favourable conditions. However, late in the breeding season some individuals initiate additional clutches , whereas others initiate moult. Such alternative strategies are thought to reflect trade-offs between reproductive benefits and timely investment in maintenance and survival. The degree of seasonal plasticity differs between species, depending on the mechanisms that govern their annual routine. Migrants are generally under pressure to complete breeding and moult before the autumn departure and often show little plasticity. We studied seasonal plasticity of breeding and moult schedules in the European Stonechat Saxicola rubicola. This species, an obligate short-distance migrant in Central Europe, sometimes initiates late clutches after typically at least two earlier breeding attempts. Based on life-history theory and on observations in captivity, which revealed photoperiodic regulation of breeding and moult, we predicted relatively little seasonal plasticity in Stonechats. We further predicted that reproductive gains of late breeders should be offset by reduced survival. These predictions were tested on long-term field data, using Underhill-Zucchini models to estimate moult. Late breeding occurred in c. 40% of pairs and increased their reproductive success by a third. Both sexes modified moult timing but in different ways. Late breeding females postponed moult approximately until chick independence without compensating for delay by faster moult. Males started moult on time and overlapped it with breeding, associated with markedly slowed plumage change. Sex differences in moult score increased with lay date, but due to their respective modifications, both sexes delayed moult completion. Nonetheless, we could not detect any evidence for survival costs of late breeding. Breeding and moult of European Stonechats appear relatively flexible, despite migratory schedules and photoperiodic programs for seasonal timing. Individuals can modify seasonal behaviour in late summer, presumably depending on their condition, and may profit considerably from extended breeding.
Amphibian Declines: Judging Stability, Persistence, and Susceptibility of Populations to Local and Global Extinctions

Extinctions are normal biological phenomena Both mass extinctions in geological time and local extinc- tions in ecological time are well documented, but rates of extinction have increased in recentyears-especially in ver- tebrates, including amphibians-as illustrated by recent re- ports of their population declines and range reductions. We suggest that long-term population data are necessary for rig- orously evaluating the significance of the amphibian de- clines. Due to the physiological constraints, relatively low mobility, and site fidelity of amphibians, we suggest that many amphibian populations may be unable to recolonize areas after local extinction.
Pyrrolopyridine-2-carboxylic acid amide inhibitors of glycogen phosphorylase

The present invention of formula (I): In compounds represented, or to provide a pharmaceutically acceptable salt thereof. This thing is a inhibitor of glycogen phosphorylase, and diabetes, hyperglycemia, hypercholesterolemia, hyperinsulinemia, hyperlipidemia, hypertension, atherosclerosis or tissue ischemia (e.g., myocardial ischemia in prophylactic or therapeutic treatment of), and it is useful as cardioprotective agents.
Replicability of Machine Learning Models in the Social Sciences: A Case Study in Variable Selection

Machine learning tools are increasingly used in social sciences and policy fields due to their increase in predictive accuracy. However, little research has been done on how well the models of machine learning methods replicate across samples. We compare machine learning methods with regression on the replicability of variable selection, along with predictive accuracy, using an empirical dataset as well as simulated data with additive, interaction, and non-linear squared terms added as predictors. Methods analyzed include support vector machines (SVM), random forests (RF), multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS), and the regularized regression variants, least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO), and elastic net. In simulations with additive and linear interactions, machine learning methods performed similarly to regression in replicating predictors; they also performed mostly equal or below regression on measures of predictive accuracy. In simulations with square terms, machine learning methods SVM, RF, and MARS improved predictive accuracy and replicated predictors better than regression. Thus, in simulated datasets, the gap between machine learning methods and regression on predictive measures foreshadowed the gap in variable selection. In replications on the empirical dataset, however, improved prediction by machine learning methods was not accompanied by a visible improvement in replicability in variable selection. This disparity is explained by the overall explanatory power of the models. When predictors have small effects and noise predominates, improved global measures of prediction in a sample by machine learning methods may not lead to the robust selection of predictors; thus, in the presence of weak predictors and noise, regression remains a useful tool for model building and replication.