Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Re-labeling Differential Evolution for combinatorial optimization

In this paper, the authors propose a new differential evolution (DE) technique called Re-labeling Differential Evolution for combinatorial optimization. DE was proposed in 1995 by Stone and Price. DE is one of the techniques of evolutionary computation (EC), and efficiently solves optimization problems using difference vectors between individuals in continuous space. DE can efficiently solve problems using information about the landscape of objective functions obtained by difference vectors between individuals. However, in problems whose solution candidates (individuals in EC terminology) are sets of integer values which are used to identify several different things, the information about the landscape of objective functions can not be obtained by difference vectors. For example, in a route selection problem where routes are distinguished by integer valued indices, such as route 1, route 2 and so on, although route 1 and route 2 have indices numerically close to each other, length of these routes are not necessarily similar to each other. In order to apply the DE to such problems, Re-labeling DE re-labels indices so that difference vectors are small between two individuals whose fitness values are close to each other. The proposed Re-labeling DE is compared with genetic algorithms (GA) and normal DE in the performance when applied to example route selection problems which are simple combinatorial optimization problems, and usefulness of Re-labeling DE is confirmed.
Prenatal nicotine exposure increases apnoea and reduces nicotinic potentiation of hypoglossal inspiratory output in mice

We examined the effects of in utero nicotine exposure on postnatal development of breathing pattern and ventilatory responses to hypoxia (7.4 % O2) using whole‐body plethysmography in mice at postnatal day 0 (P0), P3, P9, P19 and P42. Nicotine delayed early postnatal changes in breathing pattern. During normoxia, control and nicotine‐exposed P0 mice exhibited a high frequency of apnoea (fA) which declined by P3 in control animals (from 6.7 ± 0.7 to 2.2 ± 0.7 min−1) but persisted in P3 nicotine‐exposed animals (5.4 ± 1.3 min−1). Hypoxia induced a rapid and sustained reduction in fA except in P0 nicotine‐exposed animals where it fell initially and then increased throughout the hypoxic period. During recovery, fA increased above control levels in both groups at P0. By P3 this increase was reduced in control but persisted in nicotine‐exposed animals. To examine the origin of differences in respiratory behaviour, we compared the activity of hypoglossal (XII) nerves and motoneurons in medullary slice preparations. The frequency and variability of the respiratory rhythm and the envelope of inspiratory activity in XII nerves and motoneurons were indistinguishable between control and nicotine‐exposed animals. Activation of postsynaptic nicotine receptors caused an inward current in XII motoneurons that potentiated XII nerve burst amplitude by 25 ± 5 % in control but only 14 ± 3 % in nicotine‐exposed animals. Increased apnoea following nicotine exposure does not appear to reflect changes in basal activity of rhythm or pattern‐generating networks, but may result, in part, from reduced nicotinic modulation of XII motoneurons.
In silico prediction and in vitro and in vivo validation of acaricide fluazuron as a potential inhibitor of FGFR3 and a candidate anticancer drug for bladder carcinoma

Bladder carcinoma (BC) is the ninth most common cause of cancer worldwide. Surgical resection and conventional chemotherapy and radiotherapy will ultimately fail due to tumor recurrence and resistance. Thus, the development of novel treatment is urgently needed. Fibroblast growth factor receptor 3 (FGFR3) is an important and well‐established target for BC treatment. In this study, we utilized the free and open‐source protein–ligand docking software idock to prospectively identify potential inhibitors of FGFR3 from 3,167 worldwide approved small‐molecule drugs using a repositioning strategy. Six high‐scoring compounds were purchased and tested in vitro. Among them, the acaricide drug fluazuron exhibited the highest antiproliferative effect in human BC cell lines RT112 and RT4. We further demonstrated that fluazuron treatment significantly increased the percentage of apoptosis cells, and decreased the phosphorylation level of FGFR3 and its downstream proteins FRS2‐α, AKT, and ERK. We also investigated the anticancer effect of fluazuron in vivo in BALB/C nude mice subcutaneously xenografted with RT112 cells. Our results showed that oral treatment with fluazuron (80 mg/kg) significantly inhibited tumor growth. These results suggested for the first time that fluazuron is a potential inhibitor of FGFR3 and a candidate anticancer drug for the treatment of BC.
Ehrlichiosis in a golf-oriented retirement community.

BACKGROUND Ehrlichiosis due to Ehrlichia chaffeensis usually occurs sporadically or in small clusters, with an annual incidence estimated at 3 to 5 cases per 100,000 population in areas of endemic disease. The putative principal vector is the Lone Star tick (Amblyomma americanum). We investigated an outbreak of ehrlichiosis that occurred in June 1993 among members of a golf-oriented retirement community (community A) in Tennessee. The community is densely wooded and borders a wildlife-management area where deer are numerous. METHODS We conducted a case-control study, using medical-history reviews, serologic testing, and testing with the polymerase chain reaction for E. chaffeensis infection. We also surveyed a sample of 10 percent of the households in community A and in another golf-oriented community (community B) more than 20 miles (32 km) from the wildlife-management area. Survey participants completed a questionnaire and provided specimens for serologic testing. In both communities, searches for ticks were undertaken. RESULTS Eleven cases of symptomatic ehrlichiosis were identified in the case-control study, 10 of which were in community A (attack rate, 330 per 100,000). Of 311 surveyed residents of community A, 12.5 percent had serologic evidence of past E. chaffeensis infection, as compared with 3.3 percent of 92 in community B (relative risk in community A as compared with community B, 3.9; 95 percent confidence interval, 1.2 to 12.2). The risk of infection was associated with tick bites, exposure to wildlife, golfing, and among golfers, retrieving lost golf balls from the rough. Persons who never used insect repellent were more likely to have had infection than persons who did. In community A, thousands of Lone Star ticks were found; in community B, only three ticks were found. CONCLUSIONS The high rate of E. chaffeensis infection in community A resulted from its proximity to a wildlife reserve. When outdoor recreational activities are common and concentrations of ticks are high, outbreaks of arthropod-borne zoonoses can be anticipated.
In vitro modulation of cytokine, cytokine inhibitor, and prostaglandin E release from blood mononuclear cells and synovial fibroblasts by antirheumatic drugs.

OBJECTIVE To assess the effect of various antirheumatic drugs on cytokine, cytokine inhibitor, and prostaglandin E (PGE) production by normal blood mononuclear cells (MNC) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) synovial fibroblasts in vitro. METHODS MNC from healthy donors and RA synovial fibroblasts were preincubated with or without prostaglandin E2 (PGE2), indomethacin, dexamethasone, gold sodium thiomalate (GSTM), methotrexate (MTX), and cyclosporin A (CyA), and then cultured in the absence or presence of interleukin-1 beta (IL-1 beta) or tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) for 48 h. We characterized cytokines such as IL-1 beta, IL-8, monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1), and cytokine inhibitors such as IL-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1ra) and soluble TNF receptors (sTNFR p55 + p75) as well as PGE in the cell-free culture supernatants. RESULTS In MNC and synovial fibroblast cultures dexamethasone, GSTM, and PGE2 most markedly downregulated spontaneous and/or cytokine stimulated production of IL-1 beta, IL-14a, IL-8, and MCP-1, whereas sTNFR shedding was not affected. In contrast, MTX and CyA had only marginal or no effects on mediator release, whereas indomethacin inhibited only PGE production. CONCLUSION Among several antirheumatic drugs examined, dexamethasone and GSTM exhibited the most potent inhibitory effects on inflammatory cytokine and cytokine inhibitor production by blood mononuclear cells and synovial fibroblasts. These drugs may exert their antiinflammatory actions by unspecific suppression of monocyte and fibroblast secretory function.
Antiepileptic Drug Therapy: When Is Epilepsy Truly Intractable?

Summary: We define intractable in the first 5 years of epilepsy treatment as an average of at least one seizure every 2 months. For the longer term, we define intractable as at least one seizure per year. Population studies from Chicago, IL, U.S.A. , Finland, and Nova Scotia, Canada indicate that with long follow‐up, many children with intractable epilepsy eventually have remission of their seizure disorder. Epilepsy is no longer intractable when the seizures stop completely. How often does a new antiepileptic drug (AED) render a child seizure‐free when one or more AEDs have failed? Literature on adults with epilepsy suggests that few with chronic epilepsy who have not achieved seizure control with several AEDs will achieve complete seizure control with additional AEDs. The Nova Scotia study suggests that if a child's seizure fails to be controlled with a first AED, there is an increased risk of intractable epilepsy. Nonetheless, the chance of eventual, complete remission of epilepsy (seizure‐free without AED treatment) is approximately 40%. We conclude that intractability should not be considered until there has been failure of at least three first‐line AEDs. Intractable epilepsy is rare. Careful definition of the characteristics of children with intractable epilepsy who do respond completely to new AEDs will likely provide the only rational approach to treatment of children with three drug failures. Collaboration by multiple epilepsy centers will be required to gain this information.
Neuropsychological and Behavioral Disturbance Correlates of Unawareness of Memory Impairment in Dementia

Introduction: This study investigated in a community sample associations of 2 different measures of unawareness of memory impairment in dementia with cognitive variables and behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia. Method: Design—cross-sectional, population-based survey. Settings—community samples (n = 15 022) from 3 world regions (Latin America, China, and India). Participants—829 people with dementia identified from standardized interviews and diagnostic algorithms. Measurements—unawareness of memory deficits was measured in 2 ways: comparison of participant subjective report with either objective performance on memory tests or informant report (IR). Associations were investigated using prevalence ratios and Poisson regressions. Differences in frequency of unawareness were explored with McNemar tests for each region and agreement between variables calculated with Cohen κ. Results: The unawareness variable based on comparison with performance was associated with cognitive variables, such as fluency (in China) and visuospatial impairments (Latin America and India), and behavioral symptoms, such as mania (Latin America) and hallucinations (China). The unawareness variable based on IR was associated only with behavioral symptoms, such as anxiety (in China and India) and hallucinations and mania (Latin America). Frequency of unawareness was significantly higher in the unawareness variable based on performance in India. Agreement between the 2 unawareness variables was moderate in Latin America and China but only slight in India. Conclusion: Different ways of measuring unawareness are differentially associated with influencing factors. Informant-based unawareness measures may be more subjective and less sensitive than variables taking into account actual performance on cognitive tests.
Reasoning about Inheritance and Cloning Behaviors of Software Agents

Agents being a kind of restricted intelligent objects, it is a natuml way to research the inheritance feature of software agents and integmte inheritance mechanisms into AOP. Based on BDI model of agents, this paper addresses the semantics of static inheritance and dynamic inheritance of agents. For static inheritance, the semantics are discussed from two angles: single inheritance and multiple inheritance. For dynamic inheritance, we identify and formally classify dynamic cloning behaviors of agent instances into four types: function split, logic split, preference split and retrogress split.
Evaluation of a commercial immunodiagnostic kit incorporating lipoarabinomannan in the serodiagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis in Ghana

We evaluated ‘Mycodot’, a commercially maiketed immunodiagnostic test for tuberculosis which detects antibodies to lipoarabinomannan antigen. Serum was tested from 52 pitients with newly diagnosed smear‐positive pulmonary tuberculosis, of whom 20 were HIV‐positive and 32 HIV‐negative. Control sera were taken from 40 patients of whom 20 had acute non‐tuberculous lobar pneumonia and 20 patients had no respiratory disease. The test was found to have a very high specificity of 97.5% (95%Cl:92.5–100%). However, the sensitivity in HIV‐negative patients was 56% (95%Cl:39–73%), and was substantially lower at 25% (95%Cl:6–44%) in HIV‐positive patients. In conclusion: ‘Mycodot’ was found to be a highly specific and easily performed assay. However, the poor sensitivity, especially in HIV‐infected patients, renders it unlikely to be useful either as a primary or adjunctive diagnostic test for tuberculosis, particularly in countries with a high prevalence of HIV. A larger trial of this assay in Ghana was not deemed necessary.
Continuous Improvement: Strengthening Georgia's Targeted Social Assistance Program

At the end of 2013, the government of Georgia (GoG) began a technical review of its main social assistance program, Targeted Social Assistance (TSA). The government was concerned that too many poor people would not be covered by the TSA and, conversely, that too many others would benefit from it, and therefore drain resources.This report assesses the policies taken concerning the TSA in 2015 and provides an initial and basic set of recommendations for building a comprehensive and efficient social protection and labor system. The various policy actions were supported by sound technical work that is presented and evaluated in this report. The study comprises the estimation of the formula to determine eligibility to the program, the analysis of the expected distributional impact of the policies undertaken, and a brief discussion on the pretesting of the implementation of the changes and the compensation measures adopted soon after initiating implementation. The report does not delve into the revision of the administrative and business processes of the program. It includes only a brief description of them in order to provide a context for the technical work and recommendations about how to continue improving them. In this way, the report also aims to set the agenda for future policy actions and to build institutional memory. The latter is of particular importance given the high turnover of officials (technical staff and decision makers) working with the TSA since 2013. In addition, the report provides guidance about next steps in light of its findings and the political actions taken by the government.
Market Size and Substitutability in Imperfect Competition

Competition is often associated with the idea that there are many traders in the market or that each price maker is small as compared to the market. This paper introduces this notion of market size in a model of price competition with imperfect substitutes by constructing a model which creates a bridge between the Chamberlin and Bertrand-Edgeworth lines of work on price competition. We investigate the role of two fundamental parameters in the existence of an equilibrium: the market size, given by the number n of competitors, and the degree of substitutability. We prove that: (a) For a given number of n ? 2 of competitors, a sufficiently large but finite degree of substitutability entails nonexistence. This thus generalizes the BertrandEdgeworth nonexistence result, which applies only to perfect substitutes. (b) Conversely for a given upper bound on the degree of substitutability, a sufficiently large number of competitors ensures existence, which thus introduces a significant role for market size in models of imperfect competition. We finally investigate the proximity of an equilibrium (when it exists) to a "competitive outcome", and we find that both high substitutability and large market size are a condition for competitiveness. Though competition is often associated with the ideas that there are many traders in the market or that each price maker is small as compared to overall market size, there has been surprisingly little work formalizing these ideas in a true model of price competition. The two main approaches to this problem were indeed that of the core with a large
Understanding the development of psychopathy: progress and challenges

Psychopathy is an adult condition that incurs substantial societal and individual costs. Here we review neurocognitive and genetically informative studies that shed light on how and why this condition emerges. Children cannot present with psychopathy. However, the presence of callous–unemotional (CU) traits can distinguish a group of children who are at elevated risk of psychopathy in adulthood. These children display diminished empathy and guilt and show attenuated brain activation to distress cues in others. Genetically informative studies indicate that individual differences in CU traits show moderate-to-strong heritability, but that protective environmental factors can counter heritable risk. On the basis of the extant research findings, we speculate on what might represent the priorities for research over the next decade. We also consider the clinical implications of these research findings. In particular, we consider the importance of delineating what precisely works for children with CU traits (and their parents) and the ways in which intervention and prevention programs may be optimized to improve engagement as well as clinical outcomes.
Regional dynamism between social and commercial ventures: An empirical study based on Swedish data

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study the interaction between social and commercial ventures in a region. It achieves this objective through investigating the influence of social ventures’ entry, exit and density on the entry rate of commercial ventures. Design/methodology/approach Organizational ecology is applied for theoretical analysis and the feasible generalized least square method for empirical analysis. Findings The study, in overall, finds a diffuse competition between the populations of social and commercial ventures. The results have revealed a negative influence of social ventures’ entry and density on the entry rate of commercial ventures and a positive influence of the social ventures’ exit on commercial ventures’ entry rate in a region. Originality/value The study is one of the few in its filed that empirically studies the interaction between social and commercial ventures and the first study, which investigates it in the context of Sweden. The previous two studies, however, have only examined either the influence of social ventures entry or social venture density on the entry rate of commercial ventures. This study, however, examines the influence of both of those factors plus the influence of social venture exit on commercial venture entry. The study is also unique regarding the large-scale database it uses including all the 290 municipalities all over Sweden 1990-2014.
Multiple Augmentation with Partial Missing Regressors

In large cohort studies, it is common that a subset of the regressors may be missing for some study subjects by design or happenstance. In this article, we apply the multiple data augmentation techniques to semiparametric models for epidemiologic data when a subset of the regressors are missing for some subjects, under the assumption that the data are missing at random in the sense of Rubin (2004) and that the missingness probabilities depend jointly on the observable subset of regressors, on a set of observable extraneous variables and on the outcome. Computational algorithms for the Poor Man's and the Asymptotic Normal data augmentations are investigated. Simulation studies show that the data augmentation approach generates satisfactory estimates and is computationally affordable. Under certain simulation scenarios, the proposed approach can achieve asymptotic efficiency similar to the maximum likelihood approach. We apply the proposed technique to the Multi‐Ethic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) data and the South Wales Nickel Worker Study data. (© 2006 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)
Urea Synthesis After Protein Feeding Reflects Hepatic Mass in Rats

Urea synthesis is an exclusive biosynthetic function of the liver. Since the exact relationship between urea synthesis in vivo and functional liver mass remains unclear, we established an animal model using oral protein loading and measurement of resultant urea synthesis in rats. We studied rats subjected to sham operation, 40% hepatectomy, 66% hepatectomy, portacaval shunt and CC14‐induced cirrhosis. Urea synthesis was calculated as the sum of urinary urea excretion and accumulation of urea in body water during the 6‐hr period after oral administration of a casein protein load equivalent to 20 gm per kg body weight.
Comparison of the lysis-centrifugation and agitated biphasic blood culture systems for detection of fungemia

Although the detection of fungemia has been improved by the use of vented or biphasic blood culture bottles, the best recovery and earliest detection have been reported in the Isolator lysis-centrifugation system. It was recently demonstrated that improved detection of both bacteria and fungi was accomplished by mechanically agitating blood culture bottles for the first 24 h of incubation. In this study the detection of fungemia by use of the Isolator system was compared with that of an agitated biphasic system. A total of 182 fungi were isolated from blood specimens inoculated into both culture systems. No difference in the overall recovery of fungi or individual species of yeasts was observed between the two systems. However, all seven isolates of Histoplasma capsulatum were recovered in the Isolator system only. The time required to detect fungemia with each of the two systems was also compared. No statistically significant difference was observed. From the data collected during this 18-month study, it can be concluded that the overall recovery and time of detection of yeasts are equivalent in the lysis-centrifugation system and the agitated biphasic blood culture system. The lysis-centrifugation system is still superior for the detection of filamentous fungi such as H. capsulatum.