Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Probable Controversy of Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy on the Adaptive Energy Metabolism of Hypertrophied and Insufficient Heart in Democratic Republic of Congo

Background: It is reported that 20 to 30% of patients are not responders to this treatment (Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy). The reasoning in this merely theoretical paper shows the plausible danger that can be brought by measurements apparatus, in the occurrence the CRT especially when it is sophisticated. Objective: In Physical Cardiochemistry field our overall purpose is to bring a contribution to heart health. It is needful to draw attention for caregivers and manufacturers, especially with respect to the magnetism these apparatuses may exhibit. Methods: The Observation and documentary research are used. It is recalled hereby successively energy metabolism in healthy cardiomyocyte, adaptive energy metabolism of a hypertrophied and insufficient heart, cardiac resynchronization therapy and energy metabolism of the cardiomyocyte with its potential effects on both glucose oxidation and fatty acids oxidation. Results: It is shown a plausible interaction between oxygen magnetic field, paramagnetic by nature, and pacemaker and/or defibrillator electromagnetic field according to the sacral principle of “like dissolves like” with all evil consequences on patients. Conclusion: It will be necessary to evaluate later not only the behavior of the various energetic substrates of a hypertrophied heart as a function of the variation of the magnetic field strength but also the content of the probable substances produced in the presence of a magnetic field and with a potentially harmful effect on cardiac function. Convinced technology has its setbacks, the pacemakers and/or defibrillators manufacturers are invited to a greater rigor, greater caution and sustained care in building these devices. In next publication study of a case (CRT-D), where the diabetes has been observed, will be outlined.
Negative selection imparts peptide specificity to the mature T cell repertoire

The T cell αβ receptor (TCR) recognizes foreign peptide antigens bound to proteins encoded in the MHC. The MHC portion of this complex contributes much to the footprint of the TCR on the ligand, yet T cells are usually very specific for individual foreign peptides. Here, we show that the development of peptide-specific T cells is not intrinsic to thymocytes that undergo thymic-positive selection but is an outcome of eliminating, through negative selection, thymocytes bearing TCRs with extensive peptide cross-reactivity. Hence, thymic-negative selection imposes peptide specificity on the mature T cell repertoire.
Case Study of Fake Web Reviews

Online customer reviews of both products and merchants can greatly affect the readers’ purchase decision making. Opinion spamming refers to the writing of fake reviews that try to deliberately mislead the reader by giving undeserved positive opinions or unjust or false negative opinions to promote or demote the target product. This paper focuses on analyzing spammer behaviors on a well-known Taiwan web forum, Mobile01. We explore the characteristics of the spam and the spammers operating within such a web forum to obtain some insights for future study.
Transforming growth factor-beta: A target for cancer therapy

Transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-β) is a pleiotropic growth factor that regulates cell growth and differentiation, apoptosis, cell motility, extracellular matrix production, angiogenesis, and cellular immune responses. TGF-β demonstrates paradoxical action whereby it can function to suppress early tumorigenesis; however, it can also facilitate malignant transformation and stimulate tumor growth by manipulating a more hospitable environment for tumor invasion and the development of metastases. Given the integral role of TGF-β in transformation and cancer progression, various components of the TGF-β signaling pathway offer potentially attractive therapeutic targets for cancer treatment. This review focuses on the role of TGF-β in cancer and discusses both small and large molecule drugs currently in development that target TGF-β, its receptor and important down stream steps along its signaling pathway.
Characteristics of nurse leaders in hospitals in the U.S.A. from 1992 to 2008.

AIM Describe the nurse leader workforce in hospitals in the USA over time by exploring three research questions: (1) What are the characteristics of the nurse leader workforce in U.S. hospitals? (2) How does the nurse leader workforce change over time? (3) How do nurses in executive positions (administrators) differ from nurses in first-line supervisory positions (supervisors)? BACKGROUND Effective nurse leaders use management skills to ensure safe patient care in hospitals in the USA. Changes in the nurse leader workforce have an impact on patient care. METHOD non-experimental design was used to explore the characteristics of 10,150 nurse leaders using the 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2008 National Sample Surveys of Registered Nurses. RESULTS Number of masters and doctorally prepared nurse leaders increased from 14.5% to 23.2% along with an increase in mean age. A 30% decrease in the number of nurses in leadership positions was found. Male nurses reported significantly higher salaries P < 0.000. CONCLUSIONS Nurse leaders are older and have achieved higher educational degrees. Salary disparities based on gender still prevail. Implications for nursing management Identifying and developing future leaders with necessary skills and competencies is critical for organizational success.
Pricing in Dynamic Vehicle Routing Problems

The principal focus of this paper is to study carrier pricing decisions for a type of vehicle routing problems defined in a competitive and dynamic environment. This paper introduces the vehicle routing problem in a competitive environment (VRPCE) as an extension of the traveling-salesman problem with profits (TSPP) to a dynamic competitive auction environment. In the VRPCE, the carrier must estimate the incremental cost of servicing new service requests as they arrive dynamically. The paper presents a rigorous and precise treatment of the sequential pricing and costing problem that a carrier faces in such an environment. The sequential pricing problem presented here is an intrinsic feature of a sequential auction problem. In addition to introducing the formulation of this class of problems and discussing the main sources of difficulty in devising a solution, a simple example is constructed to show that carriers' prices under first-price auction payment rules do not necessarily reflect the cost of servicing transportation requests. An approximate solution approach with a finite rolling horizon is presented and illustrated through numerical experiments, in competition with a static approach with no look-ahead.
Guided Bone Regeneration for the Reconstruction of Alveolar Bone Defects

Background: Guided bone regeneration (GBR) is the most common technique for localized bone augmentation. Purpose: The purpose of this review was to categorize and assess various GBR approaches for the reconstruction of human alveolar bone defects. Materials and Methods: Electronic search of four databases including PubMed/Medline, EMBASE, Web of Science, and Cochrane and hand searching were performed to identify human trials attempting GBR for the reconstruction of alveolar bony defects for at least 10 patients from January 2000 to August 2015. To meet the inclusion criteria, studies had to report preoperative defect dimensions in addition to outcomes of bone formation and/or resorption. Results: Twenty-five human clinical trials were included of which 17 used conventional technique that is the use of space maintaining membrane with bone grafting particles (GBR I). Application of block bone graft with overlying membrane and particulate fillers was reported in seven studies (GBR II), and utilizing cortical bone block tented over a defect preserving particulate fillers was reported by one study (GBR III). A wide range of initial defects' sizes and treatment results were reported. Conclusions: This review introduces a therapeutically oriented classification system of GBR for treating alveolar bone defects. High heterogeneity among studies hindered drawing definite conclusions in regard to superiority of one to the other GBR technique.
In Vitro Assessment of Nano-Cerium Oxide (nCeO2) and Nano-Ferric Oxide (nFe2O3) on Fibrogenic and Carcinogenic Potential

The present study investigated the specific cellular responses to nCeO2 and nFe2O3 in primary human lung cells and developed an in vitro sub-chronic exposure model to predict the potential fibrogenic and carcinogenic effects. Primary human lung fibroblasts were treated with nCeO2, which induced a dose-dependent increase in collagen production (a hallmark of fibrosis). In separate experiments, primary human small airway epithelial cells were exposed to a sub-lethal concentration of nCeO2 and nFe2O3 for 6 weeks to evaluate their effects on cell transformation and invasion. Our results showed that nCeO2 induced proliferation of lung epithelial cells and nFe2O3 induced neoplastic-like transformation of epithelial cells, suggesting their potential carcinogenicity. The in vitro model and new data described in this study, demonstrate the impact and significance of a simple highthroughput platform to screen nanomaterial fibrogenicity and/or carcinogenicity, and address the critical need for evaluating nanomaterials for risk assessment.
Sale of individual cigarettes: a new development.

To the Editor. — Each year, more people die as a result of cigarette smoking than from acquired immunodeficiency syndrome or crack/cocaine. As such, use and abuse of tobacco remains a serious health concern in our society. The fact that a recent study concluded that young children were as adept at recognizing Old Joe, the cartoon camel that promotes Camel cigarettes, as they were at identifying Mickey Mouse, vividly demonstrates the influence of one tobacco company on our children.
Selectivity, Cooperativity, and Reciprocity in the Interactions between the δ-Opioid Receptor, Its Ligands, and G-proteins*

A better understanding of signal transduction mechanisms is of critical importance. Methodologies that allow studies to be done while receptors are incorporated into lipid bilayers are advantageous. One such technique is plasmon-waveguide resonance (PWR) spectroscopy, which can follow changes in conformation accompanying protein-ligand, protein-protein, and protein-lipid interactions occurring in G-protein-coupled receptors in real time with high sensitivity and without the need for molecular labeling. Here we investigated several aspects of human δ-opioid receptor (hDOR)-G-protein interactions: 1) the effect of different types of agonists on the interaction with individual G-protein subtypes; 2) the affinities of the separate G-protein α and βγ subunits to different ligand-occupied states of the receptor; and 3) the effect of the presence of the G-protein on the interactions of the ligand with the receptor. To accomplish this we have incorporated the receptor into a solid supported lipid bilayer in the presence of ligand or G-protein and monitored the PWR spectral changes induced by the reciprocal G-protein or ligand interactions. We found a high degree of selectivity in the interactions of different agonist-bound states of the receptor with the different G-protein subtypes. This has important implications for agonist-directed trafficking and selective drug design. Studies with the separated α and βγ subunits show that cooperativity exists in these interactions. The high affinities of the separated subunits to the receptor point to the possibility of independent promotion of specific signaling events. The presence of G-proteins increased the affinity of agonists to the hDOR, and caused faster binding kinetics and different ligand-induced conformational changes. Because ligand also influences G-protein binding, reciprocity exists between these two binding processes.
Music and Cognitive Abilities

Does music make you smarter? Music listening and music lessons have been claimed to confer intellectual advantages. Any association between music and intellectual functioning would be notable only if the benefits apply reliably to nonmusical abilities and if music is unique in producing the effects. The available evidence indicates that music listening leads to enhanced performance on a variety of cognitive tests, but that such effects are short-term and stem from the impact of music on arousal level and mood, which, in turn, affect cognitive performance; experiences other than music listening have similar effects. Music lessons in childhood tell a different story. They are associated with small but general and long-lasting intellectual benefits that cannot be attributed to obvious confounding variables such as family income and parents' education. The mechanisms underlying this association have yet to be determined.
Compact, High-$Q$, and Low-Current Dissipation CMOS Differential Active Inductor

This letter presents an improved, compact, and tunable high-Q differential active inductor implemented in Silterra's industry standard 0.18 mum CMOS process. The improved differential active inductor demonstrates a Q ap 1000 at high frequency region. Low-current dissipation is achieved by reusing the current from the differential gyrator for stabilizer and negative impedance circuit. A replica bias circuit has been introduced to allow current-controlled inductance of the improved differential active inductor. Sensitivity of the improved differential active inductor to process variation is also included in this letter.
Quadratic Objective Functions for Dichromatic Model Parameters Estimation

In this paper, we present a novel method to estimate dichromatic model parameters from a single color image. Estimation of reflectance, shading and specularity has many applications such as shape recovery, specularity removal and facilitates classical image processing and computer vision tasks such as segmentation or classification. Our method is based on two successive and independent constrained quadratic programming steps to recover the parameters of the model. Compared to recent methods, our approach has the advantage to transform a complex inverse problem into two parralelizable optimization steps that are much easier to solve. We have compared our method with recent works in the field to assess its robustness and accuracy on accessible datasets. The advantages of our method are shown by analyzing qualitatively and quantitatively the resulting image decompositions.
Power Laws and Similarity of Rayleigh-Taylor and Richtmyer-Meshkov Mixing Fronts at All Density Ratios.

The nonlinear evolution of large structure in Rayleigh-Taylor and Richtmyer-Meshkov bubble and spike fronts is studied numerically and explained theoretically on the basis of single-mode and two-bubble interaction physics at Atwood numbers ([ital A]). Multimode Rayleigh-Taylor bubble (spike) fronts are found as [ital h][sub [ital B]]=[alpha][sub [ital B]][ital Agt][sup 2] [[ital h][sub [ital s]]=[alpha][sub [ital s]]([ital A])[ital gt][sup 2]] with [alpha][sub [ital B]]=0.05, while Richtmyer-Meshkov bubble (spike) fronts are found as [ital h][sub [ital B]]=[ital a][sub [ital B]][ital t][sup [theta][sub [ital B]]] ([ital h][sub [ital s]]=[ital a][sub [ital s]][ital t][sup [theta][sub [ital s]]([ital A])]) with [theta][sub [ital B]]=0.4 at all [ital A]'s. The dependence of these scaling laws and parameters on [ital A] and on initial conditions is explained.
Temporal trends in the proportion cured among adults diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia in Sweden 1973–2001, a population‐based study

Large age‐dependant differences in temporal trends in 1‐ and 5‐year relative survival have been observed in patients with acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) in Sweden. This investigation used an alternative approach to studying patient survival that simultaneously estimated the proportion of patients cured from their cancer and the survival of the ‘uncured’. We conducted a population‐based study including 6439 AML patients aged 19–80 years in Sweden between 1973 and 2001. Mixture cure models were estimated, with age at diagnosis categorised (19–40, 41–60, 61–70 and 71–80) and year of diagnosis modelled using splines. In 1975 the cure proportion was ≤6% in all age groups and the median survival time for ‘uncured’ patients was <0·5 years. In 2000 the cure proportion was 68% (95% confidence interval 56–77%) in the youngest group, and 32% (25–39%), 8% (3–21%), and 4% (2–8%) in the other groups, respectively. The median survival times for ‘uncured’ were 0·74 (0·43–1·26), 0·71 (0·53–0·97), 0·69 (0·51–0·95) and 0·37 (0·31–0·44) years, respectively. A dramatic improvement in the cure proportion was seen in younger patients, whereas improvement in older ages was mainly within the survival of the ‘uncured’. This novel approach of analysing survival data could be a valuable tool for physicians, patients, health care planners and health economists.
Self-esteem and illness self-concept in emerging adults with Type 1 diabetes: Long-term associations with problem areas in diabetes

This long-term prospective study examined whether illness self-concept (or the degree to which chronic illness becomes integrated in the self) mediated the pathway from self-esteem to problem areas in diabetes in emerging adults with Type 1 diabetes. Having a central illness self-concept (i.e. feeling overwhelmed by diabetes) was found to relate to lower self-esteem, and more treatment, food, emotional, and social support problems. Furthermore, path analyses indicated that self-esteem was negatively related to both levels and relative changes in these problem areas in diabetes over a period of 5 years. Illness self-concept fully mediated these associations.
An Examination of IT Initiative Portfolio Characteristics and Investment Allocation: A Computational Modeling and Simulation Approach

We advance the theory pertaining to IT governance and portfolio management. We specifically examine how the portfolio characteristics can influence IT investment allocation. We propose two portfolio characteristics – flexibility and diversity. We define the flexibility as the number of IT investment choice, and the diversity as the dissimilarity of IT investment choice. Using the Monte Carlo simulation and real-world data, we find that 1) if a firm invests in a set of IT initiatives with higher flexibility, it will have greater potentiality to capture a superior IT investment allocation; 2) when a firm invests in a set of IT initiatives with lower flexibility, it will have greater potentiality to capture a superior IT investment allocation, if the set of IT initiatives involves higher diversity. Our findings implicate that a firm can exercise IT initiative flexibility and diversify IT initiative choice to improve portfolio investment allocation.
Hospital Centralization Impacts High-Risk Lung and Bladder Cancer Surgical Patients

ABSTRACT We investigated the effects of hospital centralization on the distribution of the individual surgical patient risk in higher versus lower volume hospitals. Lung (n = 28,471) and bladder (n = 8,160) cancer surgical patients were selected from the New York Statewide Planning and Research Cooperative System database, 1997–2011. Estimated patient risk was consistently lower in the highest compared to the lowest hospital volume-quartiles for lung and bladder cancer mortality, complications, and long length of stay. Although centralization has improved outcomes, lower volume hospitals continue to perform surgery on higher surgical risk patients compared to higher volume hospitals.
Digitalis administration: an underappreciated but common cause of short QT interval.

To the Editor: I read with interest the recent report by Gaita et al1 of short-QT syndrome as a familial cause of sudden death. The authors enumerated other factors that shorten QT interval, such as increased heart rate, hyperthermia, hypercalcemia, hyperkalemia, acidosis, and altered autonomic tone.1 I would like to add another important and common, but underappreciated, cause of short QT interval, that is, administration of digitalis preparations. Because digitalis administration is such a common everyday occurrence in the management of patients with congestive heart failure and in those with atrial fibrillation or paroxysmal atrial tachycardia, its effect on the QT interval should be kept in mind when …
Introducing the Berkeley Method of Entrepreneurship - a game-based teaching approach

Entrepreneurship matters. In modern open economies, entrepreneurship is one of the key aspects for economic growth and is often thought of as the act of commercializing on an innovation. Teaching and learning entrepreneurship is therefore of importance and schools, colleges and universities can play an important role by including entrepreneurship and innovation in their curricula. Governments and universities worldwide are pushing for education programs that produce more “entrepreneurial engineers” who are “bilingual” in the sense that they possess dual managerial and technical competencies. The Berkeley Method of Entrepreneurship (BMoE) is a holistic teaching and learning approach that enables engineers to be more entrepreneurial. It encompasses three main elements: infrastructure, mindset and tactics. Infrastructure and tactics are covered in most entrepreneurial curricula, whereas only few curricula explicitly include the mindset perspective. The Berkeley Method of Entrepreneurship is based on the hypothesis that the mindset of an entrepreneur can be characterized by a set of behavioral patterns and that an inductive game-based teaching approach is a successful vehicle for introducing and re-enforcing these. The game-based teaching approach lets the students explore his/her current mindset and compare it with that of successful entrepreneurs. The paper presents the Berkeley Method of Entrepreneurship, the pedagogical and psychological theories on which it is based, the set of behavioral patterns and the game-based teaching approach that is used. The method is still under development and further research (e.g. longitudinal studies) is planned. (Less)