Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Similar outcomes with hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis in patients with end-stage renal disease.

BACKGROUND The annual payer costs for patients treated with peritoneal dialysis (PD) are lower than with hemodialysis (HD), but in 2007, only 7% of dialysis patients in the United States were treated with PD. Since 1996, there has been no change in the first-year mortality of HD patients, but both short- and long-term outcomes of PD patients have improved. METHODS Data from the US Renal Data System were examined for secular trends in survival among patients treated with HD and PD on day 90 of end-stage renal disease (HD, 620 020 patients; PD, 64 406 patients) in three 3-year cohorts (1996-1998, 1999-2001, and 2002-2004) for up to 5 years of follow-up using a nonproportional hazards marginal structural model with inverse probability of treatment and censoring weighting. RESULTS There was a progressive attenuation in the higher risk for death seen in patients treated with PD in earlier cohorts; for the 2002-2004 cohort, there was no significant difference in the risk of death for HD and PD patients through 5 years of follow-up. The median life expectancy of HD and PD patients was 38.4 and 36.6 months, respectively. Analyses in 8 subgroups based on age (<65 and ≥65 years), diabetic status, and baseline comorbidity (none and ≥1) showed greater improvement in survival among patients treated with PD relative to HD at all follow-up periods. CONCLUSION In the most recent cohorts, patients who began treatment with HD or PD have similar outcomes.
Cultural Policy in Northern Ireland: making cultural policy for a divided society

Northern Ireland (NI) is a small region of the United Kingdom with a history of violent conflict associated with the national and religious identities of its inhabitants. Post-conflict societies face complex challenges in the development of cultural policy, particularly where some cultural markers have become associated with antagonism or political affiliation. This chapter will focus on how the social, spatial, educational, religious and political divisions in NI – coupled with deep socio-economic deprivation and a lack of political consensus – mean that many issues relating to cultural policy are neglected. We chart how the history of NI has left significant barriers to shared culture within NI, leading to inertia on policy in relation to community relations and social cohesion. That being the case, we show how the government Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure (DCAL), and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI), the main arm’s length body for funding, have clear policies relating to how the arts and culture can alleviate socio-economic problems.
A comparison of the morphological and biochemical characteristics of Chlorella sorokiniana and Chlorella zofingiensis cultured under photoautotrophic and mixotrophic conditions

The responses of two species of microalgae, Chlorella sorokiniana and Chlorella zofingiensis, were compared regarding their morphological and biochemical properties under photoautotrophic and mixotrophic conditions. These microalgae were cultured under both conditions, and their crude ethanolic extracts were examined for their pigment and total phenolic contents. In addition, the microalgae’s antioxidant activities were determined using a DPPH radical scavenging assay and a ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP) assay. Both strains showed increases in cell size due to the accumulation of lipid bodies and other cell contents, especially carotenoids, under the mixotrophic condition. Notably, reductions in phenolic and chlorophyll contents were observed to be associated with lower antioxidant activity. C. zofingiensis compared with C. sorokiniana, demonstrated higher antioxidant activity and carotenoid content. This study showed that different species of microalgae responded differently to varying conditions by producing different types of metabolites, as evidenced by the production of higher levels of phenolic compounds under the photoautotrophic condition and the production of the same levels of carotenoids under both photoautotrophic and mixotrophic conditions.
Belief Extraction in Mechanism Design

In many settings, the designer of an institution is less informed about the economy than are the agents who will ultimately participate in that institution. This dissertation explores how such an uninformed designer can learn features of the economy that are common knowledge among the agents and use the extracted information to design better institutions. Chapters 1 and 2 study how an uninformed seller can induce potential buyers to reveal the revenue maximizing reservation price for an auction. Chapter 1 explores mechanisms in which a seller runs a sealed-bid second-price auction and simultaneously surveys the buyers’ beliefs about others’ valuations. The seller offers bets that incentivize truthful reporting of beliefs, and for a general class of environments, truth-telling is the unique equilibrium. Losing bidders’ reports are used to set an interim optimal reserve price for the winner. As a result, these mechanisms guarantee the seller an optimal worst-case revenue-share of the efficient surplus. Chapter 2 considers sealed-bid second-price auctions in which instead of reporting beliefs, each bidder recommends a reservation price to be used when they lose the auction. If the recommendation is used, the bidder is rewarded with a small share of revenue. Revenue sharing aligns the incentives of the seller and losing buyers, but creates an incentive to “throw” the auction when a buyer expects to win at a price close to his valuation. When the distribution of valuations satisfies a monotone hazard rate assumption, the mechanism has a symmetric and monotonic equilibrium. As the bidders’ revenue shares go to zero, bid shading disappears and the equilibrium results in optimal reserve prices.
A classification and algorithm for treatment of breast ptosis.

BACKGROUND The Regnault classification of breast ptosis is insufficient for determining surgical strategies for different stages of ptosis. OBJECTIVE A new clinical classification of breast ptosis is proposed that allows greater precision in the development of an appropriate surgical plan. METHODS Breast ptosis is classified in 1-cm stages, beginning with stage A at 2 cm above the inframammary crease and continuing through stage E at 2 cm below the inframammary crease, with any level of ptosis beyond stage E defined as stage F. Increments of 1 cm were chosen because each level predicts a different amount of skin excision necessary to elevate the nipple-areolar complex to an ideal aesthetic level. An algorithm is provided for defining options for surgical management of the ptotic breast with and without augmentation and for the previously augmented breast. RESULTS Seventy-three cases of breast ptosis were treated with augmentation mammaplasty, simultaneous areolar mastopexy breast augmentation, Wise mastopexy breast augmentation, and other procedures following the proposed classification system and treatment algorithm. CONCLUSIONS The new system for staging of breast ptosis is simple and easy to remember and can assist in the planning and evaluation of surgery. (Aesthetic Surg J 2002;22:355-363.).
The Novel Transcription Factor SgrR Coordinates the Response to Glucose-Phosphate Stress

ABSTRACT SgrR is the first characterized member of a family of bacterial transcription factors containing an N-terminal DNA binding domain and a C-terminal solute binding domain. Previously, we reported genetic evidence that SgrR activates the divergently transcribed gene sgrS, which encodes a small RNA required for recovery from glucose-phosphate stress. In this study, we examined the regulation of sgrR expression and found that SgrR negatively autoregulates its own transcription in the presence and absence of stress. An SgrR binding site in the sgrR-sgrS intergenic region is required in vivo for both SgrR-dependent activation of sgrS and autorepression of sgrR. Purified SgrR binds specifically to sgrS promoter DNA in vitro; a mutation in the site required for in vivo activation and autorepression abrogates in vitro SgrR binding. A plasmid library screen identified clones that alter expression of a P sgrS -lacZ fusion; some act by titrating endogenous SgrR. The yfdZ gene, encoding a putative aminotransferase, was identified in this screen; the yfdZ promoter contains an SgrR binding site, and transcriptional fusions indicate that yfdZ is activated by SgrR. Clones containing mlc, which encodes a glucose-specific repressor protein, also downregulate P sgrS -lacZ. The mlc clones do not appear to titrate the SgrR protein, indicating that Mlc affects sgrS expression by an alternative mechanism.
Semi-Supervised Palmprint Recognition Based on Similarity Projection Analysis

Similarity is one of the most widely used measures in the field of pattern recognition like Euclidean and Mahalanobis distances. Semi-supervised learning is an effective technique for feature extraction, which can make full use of the unlabeled samples for training. In this paper, we incorporate similarity into semi-supervised learning and propose a novel feature extraction approach, named semi-supervised similarity projection analysis (SSP), for palmprint recognition. SSP projects original samples from a high-dimensional space to a low-dimensional subspace in a semi-supervised manner. It can preserve the similarity between intra-class samples and the dissimilarity between inter-class samples, and simultaneously maintain the global dissimilarity among both labeled and unlabeled samples. Experimental results on the HK PolyU palmprint image database demonstrate that the proposed approach outperforms several representative unsupervised, supervised and semi-supervised subspace learning methods.
Review of direct-acting antiviral agents for the treatment of chronic hepatitis C

Introduction: Rapid breakthroughs in the treatment of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection have dramatically altered the treatment landscape for this chronic disease. In 2011, the protease inhibitors (PIs) boceprevir and telaprevir in combination with peginterferon (peg-IFN) and ribavirin (RBV) were the first direct-acting antivirals (DAAs) approved in the United States for treatment of genotype (GT) 1 HCV. Several DAAs currently in late-stage clinical trials, including NS3/NS4A serine PIs, NS5A inhibitors, NS5B polymerase inhibitors (both nucleoside and non-nucleoside) and cyclophilin inhibitors, both with and without peg-IFN and RBV, are promising for the treatment of HCV. DAA regimens offer several advantages including that they specifically target HCV viral replication and thus appear to be less dependent on host characteristics, very high SVR rates accompanied by fewer side effects (SE) and lower pill burdens. A review on the treatment of HCV is important and timely as the development on DAAs is progressing rapidly and the health-care providers need to be aware about this as these regimens are anticipated to become clinically available soon. Areas covered: The literature was searched and reviewed using PubMed as well as data gathered from those presented at the international liver meetings, AASLD and EASL as well as CROI. Expert opinion: With the potential of eliminating IFN and RBV, several DAAs under clinical development appear to be promising using novel approaches with good antiviral effects, shorter duration and lower SE profile.
Energy efficient clustering hierarchy protocol for wireless sensor network

This paper presents a clustering hierarchy protocol based on Energy Efficient Cluster Head Selection (EECHS), which aims to reduce energy consumption within the wireless sensor network and prolong the lifetime of the network. Simulation result shows that the proposed protocol (EECHS) has better performance than Based Energy Clustering (BEC) protocol in reducing energy consumption and prolonging lifetime of the wireless sensor network.
Human capital, public debt and long-term economic growth

Economic growth and its driving forces have been the maintopic preoccupying economic researchers since long time in macroeconomic branch. Public investment in human capital through educational system plays an ultimate role in boosting economic growth and development, this role has taken a place since the innovative dawn of endogenous growth theory. The focus and efforts of investing in human capital could be destabilized by the global and recent return of sovereign debt crisis in several countries, which continues its rise since theearly 2007, and the after-crisis necessary adjusting policies. Getting back wise policies should be composed of mixture of growth fostering activities, including the investment in human capital, austerity and forbearance.The main purpose of this thesis is to provide new empirical inferences on debt-growth relationship and its interaction with human capital formation. Estimates are carried on a recent and complete data set that spans over 22 years and involves 76 countries worldwide. The range of invested variables encompasses many macroeconomic aggregates such as : GDP annual growthrates, public debt to GDP ratio, and public education expenditure to GDP ratio, average schooling years, inflation rate, and others. Using a superior estimation semi-parametric technic which accounts for some data issues, the empirical results suggest a heterogeneous impact of public debt and education expenditures levels on GDP growth rates. Henceforth, the use of education expenditure in the whole sample is inefficient,where policy makers should adjust and well manage the function of these expenditure in line with the public efforts to reduce debt high levels and rise economic growth. We also show that the use of textual analysis tools in economic studies, such in growth literature, offers a rapid and total lecture of the hidden research trends embodied in the huge empirical and theoretical literature of economic growth.
Clonal expansion and cell dispersion in the developing mouse retina

The present study has used two different approaches for labelling progenitor cells at the optic vesicle stage in order to examine patterns of clonal expansion and cellular dispersion within the developing retina. X‐inactivation transgenic mice and chimeric mice expressing the lacZ reporter transgene were examined during development and in adulthood to study the radial and tangential dispersion of proliferating neuroepithelial cells and postmitotic retinal cells of known identities. Chimeric retinas were used to measure tangential dispersion distances, while transgenic retinas were used to assess the frequency of tangential dispersion for individual populations of retinal neurons. Tangential dispersion is shown to be a universal feature of particular retinal cell types, being contrasted with the strictly radial dispersion of other cells. Tangential dispersion is a relatively short‐distance phenomenon, with distinct dispersion distances characteristic for cone, horizontal, amacrine and ganglion cells. Embryonic and postnatal retinas show that tangential dispersion occurs at different times for these distinct cell types, associated with their times of differentiation rather than their neurogenetic periods. These developmental results rule out the possibility that tangential dispersion is due to a passive displacement produced by the proliferation of later‐born cells, or to the lateral dispersion of a dividing sibling; rather, they are consistent with the hypothesis that tangential dispersion plays a role in the establishment of the orderly spatial distribution of retinal mosaics.
Superfolder GFP reporters validate diverse new mRNA targets of the classic porin regulator, MicF RNA

MicF is a textbook example of a small regulatory RNA (sRNA) that acts on a trans‐encoded target mRNA through imperfect base pairing. Discovery of MicF as a post‐transcriptional repressor of the major Escherichia coli porin OmpF established the paradigm for a meanwhile common mechanism of translational inhibition, through antisense sequestration of a ribosome binding site. However, whether MicF regulates additional genes has remained unknown for almost three decades. Here, we have harnessed the new superfolder variant of GFP for reporter–gene fusions to validate newly predicted targets of MicF in Salmonella. We show that the conserved 5′ end of MicF acts by seed pairing to repress the mRNAs of global transcriptional regulator Lrp, and periplasmic protein YahO, while a second targeting region is also required to regulate the mRNA of the lipid A‐modifying enzyme LpxR. Interestingly, MicF targets lpxR at both the ribosome binding site and deep within the coding sequence. MicF binding in the coding sequence of lpxR decreases mRNA stability through exacerbating the use of a native RNase E site proximal to the short MicF‐lpxR duplex. Altogether, this study assigns the classic MicF sRNA to the growing class of Hfq‐associated regulators that use diverse mechanisms to impact multiple loci.
Nonablative 1450‐nm Diode Laser in the Treatment of Facial Atrophic Acne Scars in Type IV to V Asian Skin: A Prospective Clinical Study

BACKGROUND There is presently little published data on the clinical effectiveness of nonablative lasers in the treatment of atrophic acne scars and the safety of their use in patients with darker skin types. OBJECTIVE This study aims to determine the clinical effectiveness and safety of the nonablative 1450 nm diode laser with cryogen cooling spray in the treatment of facial atrophic acne scars in Type IV-V Asian skin. METHODS This is a prospective non-comparative open study. 4 to 6 laser treatment sessions were performed on patients with atrophic acne scars. Final clinical assessment was performed 6 months after the last treatment. RESULTS 57 patients were evaluated. Patient's self-assessment of scar improvement as compared with doctor's assessment was as follows: patients who completed 4 treatments (15.7% vs 6.6%), patients who completed 5 treatments (20% vs 7.9%) and patients those who completed 6 treatments (17.3% vs 5.0%). Main side effects were mild to moderate pain during the procedure, transient erythema, and hyperpigmentation which occurred in 39% of treated patients. CONCLUSION The nonablative 1450 nm diode laser may be effective in achieving mild to moderate gradual clinical improvement in the treatment of facial atrophic acne scars. The procedure is associated with minimal downtime and is safe for use in darker skin types IV and V.
A novel peptidoglycan D,L‐endopeptidase induced by Salmonella inside eukaryotic cells contributes to virulence

Bacteria remodel peptidoglycan structure in response to environmental changes. Many enzymes are involved in peptidoglycan metabolism; however, little is known about their responsiveness in a defined environment or the modes they assist bacteria to adapt to new niches. Here, we focused in peptidoglycan enzymes that intracellular bacterial pathogens use inside eukaryotic cells. We identified a peptidoglycan enzyme induced by Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium in fibroblasts and epithelial cells. This enzyme, which shows γ‐D‐glutamyl‐meso‐diaminopimelic acid D,L‐endopeptidase activity, is also produced by the pathogen in media with limited nutrients and in resting conditions. The enzyme, termed EcgA for endopeptidase responding to cessation of growth’, is encoded in a S. Typhimurium genomic island absent in Escherichia coli. EcgA production is strictly dependent on the virulence regulator PhoP in extra‐ and intracellular environments. Consistent to this regulation, a mutant lacking EcgA is attenuated in the mouse typhoid model. These findings suggest that specialised peptidoglycan enzymes, such as EcgA, might facilitate Salmonella adaptation to the intracellular lifestyle. Moreover, they indicate that readjustment of peptidoglycan metabolism inside the eukaryotic cell is essential for host colonisation.
Resistance to Stem Borers (Lepidoptera: Crambidae) Among Texas Rice Cultivars

Abstract A 4-yr field study was conducted to assess the resistance of rice, Oryza sativa L. , cultivars to injury from the sugarcane borer, Diatraea saccharalis (F.), and the Mexican rice borer, Eoreuma loftini (Dyar) (both Lepidoptera: Crambidae). Several cultivars showed reduced levels of injury (‘CLXL8’, ‘XL8’, ‘Wells’, ‘Cheniere’, and ‘XP710’ in 2003; CLXL8, XP723, Cheniere, and ‘CL161’ in 2004) and lower stem borer yield loss (CLXL8 in 2004) than the more susceptible ‘Priscilla’. The resistant CLXL8 also had less injury and yield loss in 2004 and higher yield in 2003 than ‘Cocodrie’, currently the most popular rice cultivar in Texas and Louisiana. Linear regression analyses between whiteheads and main crop rice yield showed steeper negative slopes for the more resistant cultivars than the more susceptible cultivars, indicating a greater yield loss per whitehead on the resistant cultivars. Compensation from insect injury likely explains the positive associations established in our study between main crop yield and whiteheads for some cultivars. Cultivar resistance is anticipated to become a major control tactic in reducing infestations of E. loftini and D. saccharalis in the Texas and Louisiana rice industries.
A Study of the Worries of Master Students (M.Ed.) Towards Researches in Private Sector Universities, KPK, Pakistan

This study was an attempt to assess the attitudes of 100 randomly selected postgraduate students of teacher education programs from private universities in Pakistan. Students often rate courses in research methods negatively and regard them as difficult. Data were collected from the sample respondents through a questionnaire. Results indicated that very few students having positive attitudes towards research. Research is said to be the significant factor for technological advancement, social development and institutional fame. For quality research positive attitude towards research is a prerequisite which itself is influenced by different factors including the cost of research, institutional research facilities and time. The presents study is an effort to determine whether or not the institutional fees have any effect upon the students' attitude towards research. The study sought to determine the university graduate students' attitudes towards the learning of the research methods course, since attitudes influence students' performance at a discipline. The research findings indicated that very few students had positive attitudes towards the learning of research methods and seemed more interested to study the discipline. The methods of instruction used seemed to influence the attitudes of the students. Researchers have to cope with the available resources as no help or guidance is provided to them. No researcher is born with fundamental research skills but they learn those skills from others usually from their supervisors or seniors who have gone through the same procedures while they conducted their own research study but what happens is that no one readily guides them. The study recommends that the instructional process should be managed in appropriate ways, for example which provoke critical thinking in students, so as to create positive attitudes towards the quantitative research course to teach them research writing and research publications.