Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cost-effectiveness of Levosimendan in Patients With Acute Heart Failure

Heart failure is a major public health problem because of its high prevalence and impact on mortality, morbidity, quality of life, and social costs. The aim of this analysis was to estimate the effects of the novel inodilator levosimendan versus standard inotropic therapy (ST) of dobutamine in acute heart failure. A study population of 292 patients with acute heart failure was derived from an observational registry of patients referred to our department. Of these, 147 patients received iv levosimendan (0.05–0.1 μg·kg−1·min−1 for 24 hours), and 145 patients were treated with ST. Duration of hospitalization, survival at 1 month, and the rehospitalization rate during the year after the index hospitalization were evaluated. Cost-effectiveness analysis was performed. The mean length of hospitalization was 12.08 and 13.57 days in the levosimendan and ST groups, respectively (P < 0.05). Rehospitalization rates were lower in the levosimendan group at 6 months (1.44% vs. 2.3%; P < 0.05) and 12 months (7.6% vs. 14.3%; P < 0.05). Mortality rate at 1 month was 2.1% versus 6.9% in the levosimendan and ST groups, respectively (P < 0.05). The per-capita cost of treatment with levosimendan was &U20AC;78.86 higher than that with ST during the first hospitalization but &U20AC;280.22 lower when the rehospitalization rate was considered.
Polylactide and polyglycolide sponge used in human extraction sockets: bone formation following 3 months after its application.

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to evaluate (i) the degree of bone mineralization in the alveolar sockets 3 months following the use of a bio-absorbable graft material and (ii) the degree of resorption of the grafted material. MATERIALS Twenty patients, undergoing periodontal therapy, participated in this study. All patients were scheduled for extraction of one or more compromised monoradicular teeth and scheduled for replacement of the extracted teeth with dental implants. METHODS Following elevation of full-thickness flaps and extraction of teeth, the alveolar sockets were filled with a bioabsorbable polylactide-polyglycolide acid sponge (Fisiograft) (Test group - T) or natural healing by clot formation was allowed (Control group - C). The flaps were sutured with no attempt to achieve primary closure of the surgical wound. Re-entry for implant surgery was performed 3 months following the extractions. RESULTS Fifteen biopsies (seven T and nine C) were harvested from the sites where the implants were placed. The biopsies harvested from the T sites revealed that the alveolar sockets healed with newly trabecular bone, highly mineralized and well structured. Particles of the grafted material could not be identified in any of the T biopsies. The bone formed in the C sites was also well structured, with a slightly minor percentage of mineralized bone. In both T and C biopsies, the apical portion presented a higher degree of mineralization compared with the coronal portion. CONCLUSIONS The results of this study indicated that the use of a bio-absorbable synthetic sponge of polylactide-polyglycolide acid did not interfere with the formation of new bone in the alveolar sockets and that the characteristics of the 3-month newly formed bone seemed to be optimal for dental implants' insertion. The biocompatibility, safety and characteristics of Fisiograft suggest that the material is suitable for filling alveolar sockets following extractions, to prevent volume reduction and collapse of the overlying soft tissue flaps.
Effects of vitamin E on clinic and ambulatory blood pressure in treated hypertensive patients. Collaborative Group of the Primary Prevention Project (PPP)--Hypertension study.

A randomized controlled open trial studied the effect of vitamin E supplementation (300 mg/day) on clinic and 24-h ambulatory blood pressure (BP) in 142 treated hypertensive patients. After 12 weeks, clinic BP decreased whether or not patients were randomized to vitamin E. Ambulatory BP showed no change in systolic BP and a small decrease in diastolic BP (-1.6 mm Hg, 95% confidence intervals from -2.8 to -0.4 mm Hg), approaching statistical significance in comparison to the control group (P = .06). Vitamin E supplementation thus seems to have no clinically relevant effect on BP in hypertensive patients already under controlled treatment.
Trust Evolution Over Time in Explainable AI for Fake News Detection

The need for interpretable and accountable intelligent systems is strong as artiﬁcial intelligence (AI) becomes more prevalent in human life. We study the effects of interpretability on user’s trust in an AI assistant tool designed for fake news detection. In our study, we expose participants to different types of AI and Explainable AI (XAI) assistants, measure their perceived accuracy of algorithm, and cluster user trust changes over time into ﬁve types of trust evolution. We present quantitative results and analysis from human-subject studies and discuss our ﬁndings regarding how model explanations affect on user trust evolution over time
Modified quantile Based Online Noise Adaptation Method for a Robust Speech Recognition Interface

This paper proposes the online noise model adaptation technique using the modified quantile based noise estimation method for feature compensation of noisy speech that is based on the Gaussian mixture model for a robust speech recognition interface in real car environments. The proposed method is designed for an active online model adaptation method to cope with varying environmental noise conditions, and enhance speech recognition accuracy. This method is compensated on logarithmic filter-bank energies domain, and modified quantile based noise estimation method using beta-order harmonic mean is employed to the online noise estimation procedure. Experimental evaluation is done by using Aurora 2 speech database, and robust results were obtained than from other comparative algorithms.
Prevalence, management and control of diabetes mellitus and associated risk factors in primary health care in Portugal.

OBJECTIVE To assess the prevalence, treatment and control of diabetes mellitus (DM) in primary health care users, to characterize associated cardiovascular (CV) risk factors and effectiveness of their treatment, and to estimate the clinical impact of DM on the occurrence of coronary artery disease (CAD) and stroke. METHODS The VALSIM Study was performed in a primary care setting and involved 719 general practitioners (GPs), based on stratified distribution and proportional to the population density of each region of mainland Portugal and the islands of Madeira and the Azores. A questionnaire on sociodemographic and clinical data (previous diagnosis of DM, CAD or stroke, antidiabetic and antihypertensive medication and statins) and laboratory tests (lipids and HbA1C) was applied by participating GPs to the first two adult patients scheduled for an appointment on a given day, and blood pressure (BP) was measured. DM was defined as fasting glucose of > or = 126 mg/dl or use of antidiabetic agents. RESULTS The study included 16,856 individuals (mean age 58.1 +/- 15.1 years; 61.6% women), of whom 3215 were identified as diabetic. The prevalence of DM adjusted for gender and age in primary health care users was 14.9%, higher in men (M: 16.8%; F: 13.2%), and increased with age. Among the diabetic population, 90.2% were being treated with antidiabetic drugs and 51.7% had HbA1C lower than 7%. Around 91% had high BP (> or = 130/80 mmHg or were taking antihypertensive medication), 39.5% were overweight, 45.1% were obese, 69.3% had abdominal obesity, 71.8% had metabolic syndrome (ATP III criteria), 12% presented CAD and 5% had past history of stroke. The association between these CV risk factors and DM was stronger in women, and the impact of DM on occurrence of CAD and stroke was also higher in women. Among diabetic hypertensives, 78.4% were being treated with antihypertensive drugs, but only 9.3% had BP < 130/80 mmHg (M: 9.5%; F: 9.1%). Of diabetic patients with CAD, 94.2% were taking antihypertensive medication, but only 9.8% had controlled BP (M: 13.7%; F: 6.1%). Although 59% of the diabetic population were being treated with statins, only 6.7% had total cholesterol < 200 mg/dl, triglycerides < 150 mg/dl and HDL-cholesterol > 60 mg/dl. Of diabetic patients with CAD, 76.5% were being treated with statins, but only 29.4% had total cholesterol < 175 mg/dl (M: 34.2%; F: 24.1%). CONCLUSIONS The management of DM in a primary care setting in Portugal can and should be improved, since 9.8% of patients are not treated and 48.3% are not controlled. DM has a considerable clinical impact due to its strong association with CAD and stroke. The risk of stroke and CAD is much higher in diabetic women, due firstly to a stronger association of DM with other risk factors in women, and secondly to less aggressive treatment.
Regulation of SR protein localization during development

Ser-Arg-rich (SR) proteins play numerous roles in spliceosome assembly and the regulation of splice-site selection. Whereas considerable attention has focused on the mechanistic details of SR protein activities, little is known concerning how these splicing regulators are controlled by the cell. Here we examined the subcellular localization of precursor mRNA splicing factors during early development of the nematode Ascaris lumbricoides. In the early embryo, before major zygotic gene activation, most SR proteins, along with RNA polymerase II, are localized in the cytoplasm. As development proceeds, we observe a significant decrease in the cytoplasmic levels of these factors and a concomitant increase in nuclear localization. In contrast, trimethylguanosine-capped small nuclear ribonucleoproteins are predominantly localized in the nucleus throughout this period. We previously showed that the phosphorylation state and activity of SR proteins are regulated during A. lumbricoides embryogenesis. These changes correlate with the onset of precursor mRNA splicing and zygotic transcription. Thus, a coordinate change in the subcellular localization of SR proteins and RNA polymerase II occurs at the transition from reliance on maternally deposited factors to embryonic expression. We propose that before zygotic gene activation, SR proteins and RNA polymerase II are stockpiled in the cytoplasm of early embryos, awaiting signals that lead to their activation.
Is there an optimal parathyroid hormone level in end-stage renal failure: the lower the better?

Skeletal resistance to parathyroid hormone is well defined in patients with chronic renal failure. In recent years, with the increased frequency of development of adynamic bone disease, it has been recognized that secondary hyperparathyroidism must exist as a ‘trade off’ mechanism to maintain skeletal bone remodeling in this patient population. An optimal level of intact parathyroid hormone to maintain the normal skeletal bone turnover is believed to be between 2.0 and 2.5 times the upper limit of normal parathyroid hormone. It has very recently been argued that the optimal parathyroid hormone level for maintenance of skeletal bone remodeling may be insufficient to prevent the extraskeletal complications of coronary artery calcifications, calcific valvular heart disease, and cardiac death. To provide optimal health care for these patients several new treatments have been developed, including use of new vitamin D analogs, calcimimetic agents, and noncalcium-based phosphorus binders. It is anticipated that with lower suppression of parathyroid hormone by these vitamin D analogs, intermittent suppression of parathyroid hormone with calcimimetic agents, and the use of noncalcium phosphorus binders (Renagel™) by regulating serum calcium, the resultant phosphorus concentrations will provide an optimal parathyroid hormone activity to maintain skeletal bone remodeling, while preventing extraskeletal complications.
Hemostasis at Skin Graft Donor Sites: Evaluation of Topical Agents

Blood loss from split-thickness skin graft donor sites may be significant. Various topical agents have been used to decrease this blood loss, including thrombin and epinephrine solutions of varying concentrations. We describe a K-Y jelly/epinephrine mixture that serves both as a lubricant for the dermatome and as a hemostatic agent. This mixture, in comparison with other topical agents, produces rapid hemostasis and offers the advantages of easy use, ready availability, and low cost. The blood loss savings based on this hemostatic technique is quantifiable and significant. Netscher DT, Carlyle T, Thornby J, Bowen D, Harris S, Clamon J. Hemostasis at skin graft donor sites: evaluation of topical agents. Ann Plast Surg 1996;36:7-10
Ultradian Variation of Nerve Growth Factor Plasma Levels in Healthy and Schizophrenic Subjects

Some studies in animal models showed that several neurotrophins may be implicated in the regulation of light-dependent suprachiasmatic pacemaker and in other functions implicated in long-term memory acquisition during sleep. However, no data are known about the role played by NGF in ultradian regulation in humans. The aim of this study was to investigate whether or not there is a natural diurnal fluctuation during daytime in healthy and schizophrenic subjects with a normal light/dark cycle. In a sample of 33 subjects (10 male schizophrenics and 23 healthy subjects) an ELISA assay was used to study the ultradian NGF cycle in blood samples at 9.00, 13.00 and 20.00 hours. The study showed an ultradian rhythm of NGF in healthy subjects with a “V” trend: higher at 9:00 and 20:00 and lower at 13:00. We also show significant differences between male and female controls. No NGF ultradian rhythm among schizophrenic patients compared to healthy subjects was found. The results of this study lead to a rhythmic NGF regulation that appears altered in schizophrenics, where higher levels in the morning and lower levels in the evening were observed, compared to the controls, and support the hypothesis of a role played by NGF in schizophrenia.
Open-Set Language Identification

We present the first open-set language identification experiments using one-class classification. We first highlight the shortcomings of traditional feature extraction methods and propose a hashing-based feature vectorization approach as a solution. Using a dataset of 10 languages from different writing systems, we train a One- Class Support Vector Machine using only a monolingual corpus for each language. Each model is evaluated against a test set of data from all 10 languages and we achieve an average F-score of 0.99, highlighting the effectiveness of this approach for open-set language identification.
Partial hydatidiform mole in a phenylketonuria patient treated with sapropterin dihydrochloride

Abstract Strict control of hyperphenylalaninemia is necessary in pregnant women with phenylketonuria (PKU) in order to prevent phenylalanine embryopathy in the fetus, characterized by intrauterine growth restriction, dysmorphic facies, congenital heart disease, microcephaly and intellectual disability, collectively known as maternal PKU syndrome. Sapropterin dihydrochloride (SD), an alternative or adjunct to dietary therapy in patients with tetrahydrobiopterin (BH4)-responsive PKU, has recently been used in several cases to treat PKU during pregnancy with satisfactory results. Here, we report two pregnancies treated with SD and unrestricted diet in a patient with BH4-responsive mild PKU. The first pregnancy resulted in a partial hydatidiform mole and was terminated, whereas a healthy infant was born from the second pregnancy. Phenylalanine control was optimal in both pregnancies. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on the development of partial hydatidiform mole associated with SD treatment and the second report on molar pregnancy in PKU. While the relation between SD and molar pregnancy is unknown, further studies may be needed to investigate the possible effects of SD on fertilization.
Analysis of the practical coverage of uniform motions to approximate real camera shakes

Motion blur is usually modeled as the convolution of a latent image with a motion blur kernel, and most of current deblurring methods limit types of motion blurs to be uniform with the convolution model. However, real motion blurs are often non-uniform, and in consequence the methods may not well remove real motion blurs caused by camera shakes. To utilize the existing methods in practice, it is necessary to understand how much the uniform motions (i.e., translations) can approximate real camera shakes. In this paper, we analyze the displacement of real camera motions on image pixels and present the practical coverage of uniform motions (i.e., translations) to approximate complicated real camera shakes. We first analyze mathematically the difference of the motion displacement between the optical axis and image boundary under real camera shakes, then derive the practical coverage of uniform motion deblurring methods when used for real blurred images. The coverage can effectively guide how much one can utilize the existing uniform motion deblurring methods, and informs the need to model real camera shakes accurately rather than assuming uniform motions.
Data warehousing based architecture for the reporting of the NHS primary care prescribing

Primary Care Prescribing is one of the most complex established NHS therapeutic processes. A wide array of drugs is prescribed on a regular and irregular basis to a large cohort of the population. The prescribing budget funds the costs of drugs prescribed in primary care. Typically a primary care trust overspends its prescribing budgets on drugs with dynamic prescribing patterns and pricing. Furthermore, prescribing patterns are an accurate indicator of the quality of healthcare provided in primary care. In this paper a data warehousing approach is proposed that allows integrating prescribing data from different GP practices, equipped with an adhoc OLAP utility that allows measurement of the local prescribing activity within available resources.
An intelligent system for author attribution based on a hybrid feature set

Authorship analysis is a long explored area in the computational research. Recently, there has been growing interest in developing intelligent systems that are capable of authorship identification. Inspired by recent works, we address the problem of author attribution of Arabic text. This area, in specific, has not been targeted in the literature except for few studies. However, it is a challenging problem as there are linguistic complexities associated with the Arabic language including elongation and inflection challenges. For this purpose, we propose a novel hybrid feature set consisting of: lexical, syntactic, structural and content-specific features for 456 instances belonging to seven different Arabic authors. For validation, we run extensive experiments with different intelligent classifiers and show the strength of the proposed feature set. Our results show that the proposed feature set has proved successful with a classification performance accuracy of 88% with the hold-out test and 82% with the cross-validation test.
AES Galois Counter Mode for the Secure Shell Transport Layer Protocol

Secure shell (SSH) is a secure remote-login protocol. SSH provides for algorithms that provide authentication, key agreement, confidentiality, and data-integrity services. The purpose of this document is to show how the AES Galois Counter Mode can be used to provide both confidentiality and data integrity to the SSH Transport Layer Protocol. This memo provides information for the Internet community.
Exploring Bad Code Smells Dependencies

Code smells reveal in different ways: with code metrics, existence of particular elements in an abstract syntax tree, specific code behavior or subsequent changes in the code. One of the least explored smell indicators is the presence of other smells. In the paper we discuss and analyze different relations existing among smells and suggest how to exploit this information in order to facilitate discovering of other smells. The considerations are completed with analysis of a Large Class smell and its related odors within a popular open source project codebase.
Road traffic injuries in developing countries: a comprehensive review of epidemiological studies

Summary Motor vehicle accidents are the leading cause of death in adolescents and young adults worldwide. Nearly three‐quarters of road deaths occur in developing countries and men comprise a mean 80% of casualties. This review summarizes studies on the epidemiology of motor vehicle accidents in developing countries and examines the evidence for association with alcohol.
For Placebo Effects in Medicine, Seeing Is Believing

Noninvasive whole-brain imaging can enhance our understanding of brain-based placebo effects. The gold standard for determining the efficacy of biomedical therapies is the detection of a significant difference between the therapeutic effects of an active pharmacological agent or procedure and a matched inert placebo in a randomized controlled trial. Detecting this difference has become a challenge for medicine, especially for outcomes that are based on patient self-rated scales. Yet factors that contribute to placebo responses have received scant attention. In this issue of Science Translational Medicine, Bingel et al. report on an example of how noninvasive whole-brain imaging contributes to our understanding of brain-based placebo effects. Here we highlight ways in which neuroimaging is catalyzing a revolution in society’s perspective of placebo effects by providing a compelling visualization of how brain activities that reflect a person’s thoughts, feelings, and past experiences can enhance or antagonize his or her response to a medical treatment.
Hospitals in sub‐Saharan Africa: why we need more of what does not work as it should

This paper analyses the origins of today's crisis in the hospital sector in sub-Saharan Africa. Present trends in availability of hospital services are extrapolated to the future in order to provide a low-end estimate of the need for expansion of first referral level hospitals. This will not be possible without giving due priority to this sector, a commitment to considerable investments and reorientation of resources from tertiary to first referral level hospitals. It is to be feared that if this is not done, the backlog will increase, and, given the time lag before investments translate into operational services, there will be a major shortage of hospital services in sub-Saharan Africa within a decade.
Microsatellite polymorphism in heme oxygenase-1 gene promoter is associated with susceptibility to oxidant-induced apoptosis in lymphoblastoid cell lines.

Heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) confers cytoprotection against oxidative stress. A (GT)n dinucleotide repeat in the 5'-flanking region of human HO-1 gene shows length polymorphism, which was classified into S (< 27 GT), M (27-32 GT), and L alleles (>/= 33 GT). Polymorphism in the HO-1 gene promoter was shown to be associated with susceptibility to pulmonary emphysema and restenosis after angioplasty. However, the biologic mechanism underlying these associations is still unclear. To examine this issue, we established lymphoblastoid cell lines (LCLs) from subjects possessing S/S or L/L genotypes. HO-1 mRNA expressions and HO activities induced by oxidative stress were significantly higher in LCLs with S/S than those with L/L. Furthermore, LCLs with S/S were significantly more resistant to oxidant-induced apoptosis than those with L/L. These findings suggested that the polymorphism of the HO-1 gene is associated with the strength of antiapoptotic effects of HO-1, resulting in an association with susceptibility to oxidative stress-mediated diseases.