Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Socioeconomic status and risk of rheumatoid arthritis: a Danish case-control study.

OBJECTIVE To examine whether markers of socioeconomic status (SES) are associated with risk of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and if so, whether selected lifestyle-related factors could explain this association. METHODS We conducted a frequency matched case-control study; subjects comprised 515 patients (participation rate 83%) attending rheumatology and internal medicine departments in Denmark, with recently diagnosed RA according to the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) 1987 classification criteria for RA (mean disease duration 2.3 yrs), and 769 frequency-matched population controls (participation rate 64%). Information about SES and environmental exposure was obtained by structured telephone interview. Logistic regression analyses evaluated the role of markers of SES. RESULTS Level of education was significantly inversely associated with risk of RA, with a 2-fold lower risk of RA among those with the longest formal education compared with those having the lowest level of education (multivariate odds ratio = 0.43, 95% confidence interval 0.24-0.76, p trend = 0.001). None of a series of studied lifestyle factors could explain this finding in multivariate logistic regression analyses. When dividing the RA cases into clinical subgroups, the inverse association with level of education was found to apply predominantly to rheumatoid factor (RF)-positive RA. CONCLUSION The inverse association between level of education and risk of RF-positive RA was not explained by any of the examined lifestyle factors. RF-positive and RF-negative RA may be 2 distinct diseases with different etiologies, with unmeasured factors related to educational level predominantly associated with the risk of RF-positive RA. However, because mechanisms underlying referral to a hospital might be linked to educational level, our observation based on hospital-referred RA patients should be evaluated cautiously. The study stresses the importance of taking SES measures into account in studies that aim at identifying environmental risk factors for RA.
An Empirical Study of the Relationship between Islamic Modes of Finance and Financial Intermediation

Islamic modes of finance become new phenomenon in financial system. Islamic modes of finance are designed to facilitate financing by the principles in Islamic Sharia, such as mudarabah, musharaka and sukuk. In addition financial intermediation is an important indicator of economic development as well as economic growth.The objective of this study is to determine the relationship between Islamic modes of finance and Islamic financial intermediation by using case study of Malaysia, Indonesia and Jordan. This study employed fixed effect and random effect through time series data from 2001-2010 for both Malaysia and Indonesia. Liquid liabilities, private sector credit and Islamic modes of finance such as mudarabah, musharakah, murabaha, istisna,ijarah used as independent variables that expected to be influence Islamic financial intermediation as well as economic growth. Findings show that Islamic mode of finance which include murabaha, musharakah, mudarabah, istisna, ijarah. While, private sector credit as well as liquid liabilities are not affect Islamic financial intermediation.
Nonpolymorphic Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Protease and Reverse Transcriptase Treatment-Selected Mutations

ABSTRACT The spectrum of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) protease and reverse transcriptase (RT) mutations selected by antiretroviral (ARV) drugs requires ongoing reassessment as ARV treatment patterns evolve and increasing numbers of protease and RT sequences of different viral subtypes are published. Accordingly, we compared the prevalences of protease and RT mutations in HIV-1 group M sequences from individuals with and without a history of previous treatment with protease inhibitors (PIs) or RT inhibitors (RTIs). Mutations in protease sequences from 26,888 individuals and in RT sequences from 25,695 individuals were classified according to whether they were nonpolymorphic in untreated individuals and whether their prevalence increased fivefold with ARV therapy. This analysis showed that 88 PI-selected and 122 RTI-selected nonpolymorphic mutations had a prevalence that was fivefold higher in individuals receiving ARVs than in ARV-naïve individuals. This was an increase of 47% and 77%, respectively, compared with the 60 PI- and 69 RTI-selected mutations identified in a similar analysis that we published in 2005 using subtype B sequences obtained from one-fourth as many individuals. In conclusion, many nonpolymorphic mutations in protease and RT are under ARV selection pressure. The spectrum of treatment-selected mutations is changing as data for more individuals are collected, treatment exposures change, and the number of available sequences from non-subtype B viruses increases.
DISEASE RECENT LIFE EVENTS AND ACUTE SCHIZOPHRENIC PSYCHOSIS: A CONTROLLED STUDY

In this case control study, first admission schizophrenic patients were found to report more recent life events overall and more events categorized as undesirable, familial, relocation, and legal than controls. Interpretation of the observations should be ventured cautiously given the small difference schizophrenics and controls, the small number of subjects, the retrospective strategy, and the failure of events “independent of one's control” or events characterized as “threatening” to confirm the positive relationship of recent life events to the occurrence of illness. The present work is part of considerable recent research documenting a relationship between the amount and/or significance of recent life events and the occurrence of psychological symptomatology and major psychiatric syndromes. The overall difference between schizophrenics and normals in reporting events appears to be smaller in magnitude than the difference found between depressives and normals. Further, the significance of events for schizophrenics and for depressives is different. The number, type, severity, and pattern of recent life events reported by schizophrenics suggest a precipitating role of events rather than a formative one. These results are consistent with one other controlled study on schizophrenia and recent life experience.
Female Urology DETRUSOR PRESSURE UROFLOWMETRY STUDIES IN WOMEN : EFFECT OF A 7 FR TRANSURETHRAL CATHETER

Purpose: We evaluated whether a 7Fr transurethral catheter affects urinary flow in women undergoing pressure flow studies for voiding symptoms. Materials and Methods: We reviewed a urodynamic database of 600 consecutive women referred for the evaluation of voiding symptoms. Before urodynamics all patients voided privately using a standard toilet and free flow was recorded. Urodynamics were performed using a 7Fr double lumen transurethral catheter. At functional bladder capacity patients were asked to void in the sitting position and pressure flow studies were performed. All uroflowmetry tracings were inspected and analyzed manually. Only patients who voided similar volumes varying by less than 20% on the free and pressure flow studies were assessed. Free and pressure flow parameters were compared according to voided volume category, main urodynamic diagnosis, uroflowmetry pattern and pre-void bladder volume. Results: A similar volume was voided on the free and pressure flow studies of 100 women. In each voided volume category and urodynamic diagnosis pressure flow parameters were significantly different from the equivalent free flow parameters in all but 4 cases. Specifically the maximum flow rate was significantly less and flow time was significantly longer on pressure versus free flow studies (each p ,0.01). An intermittent flow pattern was more common on pressure than in free flow measurements (43% versus 9%). Conclusions: A 7Fr transurethral catheter may adversely affect uroflowmetry parameters in women undergoing pressure flow studies for lower urinary tract symptoms. This finding may have further clinical implications regarding the interpretation of these parameters as well as establishment of an accurate diagnosis.
Neutrophil Gelatinase-associated Lipocalin in the Prediction of Contrast-induced Nephropathy: A Systemic Review and Meta-analysis

Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the predictive value of neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL) in the early diagnosis of contrast-induced nephropathy (CIN). Methods: We searched MEDLINE and Embase until December 2014 for articles evaluating the diagnostic accuracy of plasma/serum and urinary NGAL levels to predict CIN. The primary analysis was based on a hierarchical, bivariate, generalized, linear, mixed model. Diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) and sample size–weighted area under the curve for the receiver operating characteristic (AUROC) were calculated. Results: Ten studies involving 1310 patients were analyzed. Overall, the DOR/AUROC for NGAL level to predict CIN was 20.56 [95% confidence interval (CI), 9.67–43.74]/0.87 (95% CI, 0.84–0.90), with sensitivity and specificity of 0.80 (95% CI, 0.74–0.85) and 0.83 (95% CI, 0.73–0.90), respectively. Subgroup analysis showed that the diagnostic performance of the DOR/AUROC of urinary NGAL [29.48 (95% CI, 12.19–71.27)/0.87 (95% CI, 0.84–0.90)] was better than that of plasma/serum NGAL [14.63 (95% CI, 4.51–47.38)/0.85 (95% CI, 0.82–0.88)] (DOR, P = 0.005, and AUROC, P = 0.04, respectively). Conclusions: Plasma/serum and urinary NGAL levels seem to be useful biomarkers in the early prediction of CIN. Moreover, urinary NGAL levels perform better than plasma/serum NGAL.
Some Results on Basic Parallel Processes

Basic Parallel Processes (BPP) are a very natural subclass of the class of CCS processes. They are a simple model for the description of infinite state concurrent systems. BPPs are closely related to communication-free Petri nets, a special class of labeled Petri nets, where every transition has exactly one place in its preset. Unlike for general Petri nets, it is decidable if a BPP and a finite state labeled transition system are weakly bisimulation equivalent. This is the first time that weak bisimulation equivalence to a finite state labeled transition system is proved decidable for a non-trivial model of infinite state concurrent systems. While language equivalence is undecidable for communication-free nets and so far only non-primitive recursive algorithms exist for deciding strong bisimulation equivalence, in the subcase of one-to-one labeled communication-free nets the strong bisimulation/language equivalence problem is decidable in polynomial time. For communication-free nets a model checking problem for a weak branching time temporal logic is shown to be PSPACE-complete. Moreover, subproblems of this model checking problem for communication-free nets are complete for the n-th order of the polynomial time hierarchy.
UP-link: An ultra-low power implantable wireless system for long-term ambulatory urodynamics

Monitoring of bladder pressure, known as cystometry, is a key diagnostic tool in urodynamic studies of patients that exhibit lower urinary tract symptoms. Over the past few years, there has been an increased interest in ambulatory urodynamics due to the increased convenience and more realistic monitoring environment. This paper presents an ultra-low power implantable wireless platform, UP-Link, for long-term ambulatory bladder pressure monitoring. The proposed platform, which is built using off-the-shelf components and uses the MICS (Medical Implant Communication Service) radio frequency band for communication, enables more cost-effective and rapid development compared to existing ASIC-based solutions. The UP-Link platform is powered by two coin cell batteries with a total capacity of 560mAh and has an estimated battery life of several months to years. Results obtained through in vitro experiments demonstrate that the pressure data measured using UP-Link shows excellent agreement (0.995 using the intraclass correlation coefficient method) with measurements obtained using a commercial pressure gauge. An accelerated battery-life test was also performed, the results of which validate our lifetime estimates. The longevity of the UP-Link platform enables ambulatory urodynamic studies at much longer time scales than current practice.
Fog Assisted Cloud Models for Smart Grid Architectures- Comparison Study and Optimal Deployment

Cloud Computing (CC) serves to be a key driver for fulfilling the store and compute requirements of a modern Smart Grid (SG). However, since the datacenters are deployed in concentrated and far remote areas, it fails to guarantee the quality of experience (QoE) attributes for the SG services, viz. latency, bandwidth, energy consumption, and network cost. Fog Computing (FC) extends the processing capabilities into the edge of the network, offering location-awareness, low latency, and latency-sensitive analytics for mission critical requirements of SG. In this work, we first examine the current state of cloud based SG architectures and highlight the motivation(s) for adopting FC as technology enabler for sustainable and real-time SG analytics. Then we present a hierarchical FC architecture for supporting integration of massive number of IoT devices into future SG. Following this architecture we proposed a cost optimization framework that jointly investigates data consumer association, workload distribution, virtual machine placement and QoS constraints towards viable deployment of FC model over SG networks. The formulated MINLP problem is then solved using Modified Differential Evolution (MDE) algorithm. Comprehensive evaluation of proposed framework on real world parameters shows that for an infrastructure with nearly 50% applications requesting real-time services, the overall service latency for fog computing get reduced to almost half of that of generic cloud paradigm. It is also observed that the fog assisted cloud framework lowers the aggregated electricity consumption of the pure cloud computing paradigm by more than 40%.
OPTIMAL BREAST LESION SEGMENTATION FROM DCE-MRI USING DEEP SEMANTIC SEGMENTATION AS SHAPE PRIOR

We introduce a new fully automated breast mass segmentation method from dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI). The method is based on globally optimal inference in a continuous space (GOCS) using a shape prior computed from a semantic segmentation produced by a deep learning (DL) model. We propose this approach because the limited amount of annotated training samples does not allow the implementation of a robust DL model that could produce accurate segmentation results on its own. Furthermore, GOCS does not need precise initialisation compared to locally optimal methods on a continuous space (e.g., Mumford-Shah based level set methods); also, GOCS has smaller memory complexity compared to globally optimal inference on a discrete space (e.g., graph cuts). Experimental results show that the proposed method produces the current state-of-the-art mass segmentation (from DCEMRI), achieving a mean Dice coefficient of 0.77.
Non-Geometric Information Visualization in BIM: An Approach to Improve Project Team Communication

Building design and construction processes use geometrical models as well as other documentation for com- municating information during all phases of a project. Currently, an important amount of information included into the documentation is not linked to the 3D model, such as emails or decision-making updates. A huge challenge is an accurate and effective management of this non-geometrical information to improve team communication. This paper proposes the uses of Information Visualization techniques for managing these data visually, enhancing human understanding and inter- pretation. This research area is situated in the intersection of three areas of computing: Design Computing, Information Visualization (InfoVis), and Human Computer Interaction (HCI).
Public Expenditure on Education and Skill Formation: Is There a Simple Rule to Maximize Skills?

Abstract The ratio of skilled-to-unskilled labour stocks in the economy is widely acknowledged to have an important role for development. Can education policy affect the evolution of this ratio? This paper shows that it can: it also shows that the effect of education policy, for a given budget size, depends on the allocation rule across educational levels, particularly in the presence of systemic inefficiency. Using a stylized hierarchical education model, the theoretical conditions under which the allocation rule would favour the accumulation of skills are determined. The analysis has implication for policymakers in developing countries, where skill formation is much needed, because it shows that their allocation rules usually violate the maximization condition by assigning higher-than-optimal resources to higher education.
The Vector Heat Method

This article describes a method for efficiently computing parallel transport of tangent vectors on curved surfaces, or more generally, any vector-valued data on a curved manifold. More precisely, it extends a vector field defined over any region to the rest of the domain via parallel transport along shortest geodesics. This basic operation enables fast, robust algorithms for extrapolating level set velocities, inverting the exponential map, computing geometric medians and Karcher/Fréchet means of arbitrary distributions, constructing centroidal Voronoi diagrams, and finding consistently ordered landmarks. Rather than evaluate parallel transport by explicitly tracing geodesics, we show that it can be computed via a short-time heat flow involving the connection Laplacian. As a result, transport can be achieved by solving three prefactored linear systems, each akin to a standard Poisson problem. To implement the method, we need only a discrete connection Laplacian, which we describe for a variety of geometric data structures (point clouds, polygon meshes, etc.). We also study the numerical behavior of our method, showing empirically that it converges under refinement, and augment the construction of intrinsic Delaunay triangulations so that they can be used in the context of tangent vector field processing.
IsMCI really just early dementia ? A systematic reviewof conversion studies

Objectives: Older people commonly present with memory loss although on assessment are not found to have a full dementia complex. Previous studies have suggested however that people with subjective and objective cognitive loss are at higher risk of dementia. We aimed to determine from the literature the rate of conversion from mild cognitive impairment to dementia. Methods: Systematic review of MedLine, PsychLit and EmBase. Results: We identified 19 longitudinal studies published between 1991 and 2001 that addressed conversion of mild cognitive impairment to dementia. Overall the rate of conversion was 10% but with large differences between studies. The single biggest variable accounting for between study heterogeneity was source of subjects, with self-selected clinic attenders having the highest conversion rate. The most important factor accounting for heterogeneity within studies was cognitive testing, with poor performance predicting conversion with a high
Monitoring Extracellular Vesicle Cargo Active Uptake by Imaging Flow Cytometry

Extracellular vesicles are essential for long distance cell–cell communication. They function as carriers of different compounds, including proteins, lipids and nucleic acids. Pathogens, like malaria parasites (Plasmodium falciparum, Pf), excel in employing vesicle release to mediate cell communication in diverse processes, particularly in manipulating the host response. Establishing research tools to study the interface between pathogen-derived vesicles and their host recipient cells will greatly benefit the scientific community. Here, we present an imaging flow cytometry (IFC) method for monitoring the uptake of malaria-derived vesicles by host immune cells. By staining different cargo components, we were able to directly track the cargo’s internalization over time and measure the kinetics of its delivery. Impressively, we demonstrate that this method can be used to specifically monitor the translocation of a specific protein within the cellular milieu upon internalization of parasitic cargo; namely, we were able to visually observe how uptaken parasitic Pf-DNA cargo leads to translocation of transcription factor IRF3 from the cytosol to the nucleus within the recipient immune cell. Our findings demonstrate that our method can be used to study cellular dynamics upon vesicle uptake in different host–pathogen and pathogen–pathogen systems.
The potential utility of rodents and other small mammals as indicators of ecosystem 'integrity' of South African grasslands

Context The expansive grassland biome is one of the most extensively transformed in South Africa, yet no strategy for monitoring its integrity is in place. A grassland health program, incorporating different ecosystem levels, was recently initiated. The suitability of three taxonomic groups as indicators has been tested so far: vegetation (by calculating an ecological index value, El), insects (using the South African grassland scoring system, SAGraSS) and small mammals (this study). All of these methods aim to be rapid and easy to perform. Whereas SAGraSS still needs further refinement, several factors already indicate the importance of including small mammal community parameters in integrity assessments. Aims This contribution reports on more than 12 years of results from various studies on small mammals in the Free State Grasslands, with the aim of exploring the utility of small mammal survey for assessment of ecosystem integrity. Methods The hypothesis was based on the outcomes of several short-term studies conducted in the grassland biome. Combining all previous results, this paper re-evaluates the parameters of trap success, species richness, diversity, evenness and individual species as bio-indicators. Key results By combining data from many sites and years, the effect of seasonal and inter-annual variations in habitat and population parameters was diminished, and a more general picture of small mammal community structure revealed. New insights were gleaned into the status of several indicator species. By providing a summary of small mammal community parameter scores and indices, the study establishes a benchmark for future small mammal assessments and monitoring. To be effective, small mammal surveys in the grassland biome of southern Africa should be carried out in autumn and early winter. Conclusions This study suggests that small mammal species richness and diversity decline with habitat degradation; that the generalist rodent Mastomys coucha dominates community numbers at low ecological integrity; that the number of specialist species increases towards ecological climax; and that specific species act as indicators during the successional process. Implications This study should benefit the monitoring, conservation and management of grassland ecosystems, make environmental impact assessments more effective, and identify new topics for ecological research.