Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Regional dependence in the timing of onset of rapid decline in Arctic sea ice concentration

Arctic sea ice concentration from satellite passive microwave measurements is analyzed to assess the form and timing of the onset of decline of recent ice loss, and the regional dependence of the response. The timing of the onset is estimated using an objective method, and suggests differences of up to 20 years between the various subregions. A clear distinction can be drawn between the recent onset times of the Atlantic sector (beginning in 2003) and the much earlier onset times associated with the Pacific sector, where the earliest transition to rapid loss is found in 1992. Rates of decline prior to and following the transition points are calculated, and suggest that the postonset rate of loss is greatest in the Barents Sea, and weakest in the Pacific sector. Covariability between the seasons is noted in the SIC response, both at interannual and longer time scales. For two case regions, potential mechanisms for the onset time transitions are briefly analyzed. In the Barents Sea, the onset time coincides with a redistribution of the pathways of ice circulation in the region, while along the Alaskan coast, the propagation of the regional signal can be traced in the age of the sea ice. The results presented here indicate a series of spatially self-consistent regional responses, and may be useful in understanding the primary drivers of recent sea ice loss.
Skin aging and sex hormones in women – clinical perspectives for intervention by hormone replacement therapy

Abstract: The skin, the largest organ of the body, is the organ in which changes associated with aging are most visible. The skin is a target organ for various hormones, and sex steroids have a profound influence on the aging process. A decrease in sex steroids thus induces a reduction of those skin functions that are under hormonal control. Keratinocytes, Langerhans' cells, melanocytes, sebaceous glands, collagen content and the synthesis of hyaluronic acid, for example, are under hormonal influence. Topical application of estrogens has a positive effect on skin aging parameters, whilst numerous studies have also shown the positive influence of systemic hormone replacement therapy on skin aging. As an alternative treatment, phytohormones may be administered, with the structural similarity to 17β‐estradiol explaining their estrogen‐like effects. However, isoflavonoids exhibit an inferior biological potency to synthetic estrogens. Although a large number of publications have documented the effects of sex hormones on the aging process, it is obvious that hormone replacement should not be administered as an independent treatment for skin aging.
Sequencing Problems in Two-Server Systems

We analyze a service system in which two identical servers move one at a time along a linear array of N positions. Requests for service, each designating one of the N positions, join a first-in-first-out queue, where processing of the nth request does not begin until processing of the (n − 1)th requested is completed. Processing the nth request entails determining which server to move, moving this server to the requested position, and then performing the service. Several potential applications of the model are mentioned, the most notable being the design of computer storage systems with multiple access devices. Within a simple probability model we compare server-selection policies in terms of the equilibrium expected distance a server is moved in processing a request. Distance is measured under two regimes, both assigning a unit distance between adjacent positions. In the first, the positions are thought of as equally spaced along a line (interval), and in the second, equally spaced along a circle (positi.
On the Impact of Dissimilarity Measure in k-Modes Clustering Algorithm

This correspondence describes extensions to the k-modes algorithm for clustering categorical data. By modifying a simple matching dissimilarity measure for categorical objects, a heuristic approach was developed in (Z. He, et al., 2005), (O. San, et al., 2004) which allows the use of the k-modes paradigm to obtain a cluster with strong intrasimilarity and to efficiently cluster large categorical data sets. The main aim of this paper is to rigorously derive the updating formula of the k-modes clustering algorithm with the new dissimilarity measure and the convergence of the algorithm under the optimization framework
Postherniorrhaphy Urinary Retention—Effect of Local, Regional, and General Anesthesia: A Review

Background and Objectives Postherniorrhaphy urinary retention (UR) may depend on the anesthetic technique. We therefore reviewed available published studies of UR in relation to anesthetic technique. Methods A Medline-based search (1966-November 2001) revealed 70 nonrandomized and 2 randomized studies. Results The incidence of UR was lower with local anesthesia (LA) (33 in 8,991 patients, 0.37%, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.24%-0.49%) compared with regional anesthesia (RA) (150 in 6,191 patients, 2.42%, 95% CI 2.04%-2.81%) and general anesthesia (GA) (344 in 11,471 patients, 3.00%, 95% CI 2.69%-3.31%). Conclusion The low incidence of UR with LA is in accordance with the inhibitory effects of RA and GA on bladder function. Data from newer short-acting techniques of GA and RA are required to define the optimal anesthetic for inguinal herniorrhaphy.
Quantifying microbial communities with 454 pyrosequencing: does read abundance count?

Pyrosequencing technologies have revolutionized how we describe and compare complex microbial communities. In 454 pyrosequencing data sets, the abundance of reads pertaining to taxa or phylotypes is commonly interpreted as a measure of genic or taxon abundance, useful for quantitative comparisons of community similarity. Potentially systematic biases inherent in sample processing, amplification and sequencing, however, may alter read abundance and reduce the utility of quantitative metrics. Here, we examine the relationship between read abundance and biological abundance in a sample of house dust spiked with known quantities and identities of fungi along a dilution gradient. Our results show one order of magnitude differences in read abundance among species. Precision of quantification within species along the dilution gradient varied from R2 of 0.96–0.54. Read‐quality based processing stringency profoundly affected the abundance of one species containing long homopolymers in a read orientation‐biased manner. Order‐level composition of background environmental fungal communities determined from pyrosequencing data was comparable with that derived from cloning and Sanger sequencing and was not biased by read orientation. We conclude that read abundance is approximately quantitative within species, but between‐species comparisons can be biased by innate sequence structure. Our results showed a trade off between sequence quality stringency and quantification. Careful consideration of sequence processing methods and community analyses are warranted when testing hypotheses using read abundance data.
Modeling Image Patches with a Generic Dictionary of Mini-epitomes

The goal of this paper is to question the necessity of features like SIFT in categorical visual recognition tasks. As an alternative, we develop a generative model for the raw intensity of image patches and show that it can support image classification performance on par with optimized SIFT-based techniques in a bag-of-visual-words setting. Key ingredient of the proposed model is a compact dictionary of mini-epitomes, learned in an unsupervised fashion on a large collection of images. The use of epitomes allows us to explicitly account for photometric and position variability in image appearance. We show that this flexibility considerably increases the capacity of the dictionary to accurately approximate the appearance of image patches and support recognition tasks. For image classification, we develop histogram-based image encoding methods tailored to the epitomic representation, as well as an "epitomic footprint" encoding which is easy to visualize and highlights the generative nature of our model. We discuss in detail computational aspects and develop efficient algorithms to make the model scalable to large tasks. The proposed techniques are evaluated with experiments on the challenging PASCAL VOC 2007 image classification benchmark.
Personality, loneliness and mental health among undergraduates at Malaysian Universities

The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between personality and loneliness on mental health among undergraduates at Malaysian Universities. A total of 1468 respondents were recruited from five Universities using the multistage cluster sampling. Mental health was measured by 12 items in the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) designed by Goldberg, 1978. Personality and loneliness were measured using the Big Five Inventory (John, Donahue and Kentle, 1991) and the revised UCLA Loneliness Scale (Russell, Peplau and Cutrona, 1980) respectively. A cut-off point of 5/6 for the GHQ-12 was used in this study. The results of this study revealed that a total of 65.6% of Malaysian undergraduates exhibited healthy mental health and 34.4% showed indications of mental health problems. Apart from that, this study also found a significant relationship between extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, openness and loneliness on mental health. Analysis of one-way ANOVA found a significant difference in mental health between year of study, field of study, ethnicity and religion. Finally, the multiple regression analysis using the stepwise method yielded R2 of 0.103 which means that only 10.3% of variation in the mental health was explained by the predictors. Loneliness was the most significant predictor in explaining mental health followed by neuroticism and extraversion personality. Early detection for indications of mental health problems and understanding factors contributing to stress among students would promote better understanding of mental health in future.
Late anaemia in Rh haemolytic disease

As it is clearly stated in the review by Gottstein and Cooke,1 we consider it unethical to withhold or delay high dose intravenous immunglobulin (IVIG) treatment in infants with haemolytic disease of the newborn. Since the study we did in 1995,2 we have treated 129 patients with Coomb’s positive haemolytic disease of the newborn, with the same method and had to …
GABAA receptor partially mediated propofol-induced hyperalgesia at superspinal level and analgesia at spinal cord level in rats.

AIM To observe effects of propofol on nociceptive response at superspinal and spinal level in rats. METHODS Two hundreds and fifty-eight Sprague-Dawley male rats were randomized into thirty-two groups. Propofol and bicuculline were microinjected into lateral ventricle (icv), ventrolateral periaqueductal gray (vlPAG), intrathecal (ith), and intraperitoneal (ip). The noxious responses were evaluated by hot plate and formalin test. RESULTS In hot-plate test, systemic and superspinal administration of propofol (40 mg.kg(-1) ip, 100 microg in 10 microL, icv, and 4 microg in 0.4 microL vlPAG microinjection) produced hyperalgesia (P<0.01). Hyperalgesia induced by vlPAG microinjection of propofol was significantly antagonized by 69.8 %, 71.2 %, 98.8 % at 10, 20, and 30 min by microinjection of bicuculline (10 ng in 0.4 microL, vlPAG) (P<0.01). Analgesia induced by ith propofol (100 microg.10 microL(-1)) was antagonized about 81.3 %, 54.8 %, 80.8 %, and 97.4 % at 10, 20, 30 and 40 min by ith bicuculline (P<0.05). In formalin test, systemic and superspinal administration of propofol (40 mg.kg(-1) ip, 4 microg in 0.4 microL, vlPAG) also produced hyperalgesia (P<0.01). The increased formalin pain scores were antagonized about 57.1 % by bicuculline (10 ng, vlPAG) (P<0.05) at 60 min after formalin injection. The decreased formalin pain scores induced by ith propofol (100 microg in 10 microL) were antagonized about 66.7 % at 30 min by ith bicuculline (P<0.05) after formalin injection. Hyperalgesia produced by ip propofol in both hot plate and formalin test could not be antagonized by vlPAG administration of bicuculline. CONCLUSION GABAA receptor partly mediated propofol-induced hyperalgesia at superspinal and analgesia at spinal cord in rats.
Rice Kernel Dimensional Variability Trends

Rice kernel dimensions affect the performance of various post-harvest processes. This study assessed variability trends in kernel dimensional distributions of Bengal (medium-grain), Cypress, and Drew (long-grains) rice varieties. Rice was harvested at various stages of maturity from Stuttgart and Keiser, Arkansas during the autumns of 1998, 1999, and 2000. Brown rice kernel dimensions decreased with harvest moisture content [HMC (Moisture contents are expressed on a wet basis)] below 24% HMC. Kernel dimensional distributions were usually single-modal and near normal. Brown rice dimensional variability, expressed by kernel dimensional standard deviation (SD), was significantly affected by HMC and location. Kernel dimensional SD generally was linearly and directly related to HMC. Among kernel dimensions, thickness had the greatest shrinkage with decreasing HMC, followed by length and then width. Among varieties, Bengal had the greatest kernel shrinkage, followed by Drew, and then Cypress.
The role of bias in explaining the relation between social preference and depressive symptoms in middle childhood

Past research indicates that children's social preference is an important predictor of childhood depressive symptoms. Additionally, children's negative self-perceptions have been identified as a significant predictor of childhood depressive symptoms. However, few studies have examined bias in children's self-perceived social preference by comparing these self-perceptions to peer-reported social preference. This comparison yields both the degree to which a child is accurate in their self-perception, as well as the direction of these inaccuracies, which is known as perceptual bias. The current study compared self-report and peer-report of social preference to examine both positively and negatively biased self-perceptions in middle childhood. The goal was to examine the mediating role of bias in the relation between social preference and depressive symptoms in middle childhood. A series of regression analyses confirmed significant relations between social preference and negatively biased self-perceptions as predictors of children's depressive symptoms. As predicted, negatively biased self-perceptions also predicted depressive symptoms. Negatively biased self-perceptions, known as the underestimation bias, was found to mediate the relation between social preference and depressive symptoms in 5th grade for children. Implications for future research examining the role of social preference and bias in the development childhood depressive symptoms are discussed.
Interference arises at the receiver

Energy consumption in general and interference in particular being among the most critical issues in wireless networks, this paper introduces an explicit definition of interference, based on the number of other nodes by which a given network node can be disturbed. With this definition we show that there exist instances of sensor networks in which no topology control algorithm - aiming at interference reduction by having nodes restrict their transmission power levels - can construct a valid data gathering network with interference less than logarithmic in the number of network nodes n. In a second part of the paper we introduce the nearest component connector (NCC) algorithm, which asymptotically matches this lower bound, guaranteeing to build a valid topology with interference in O(log n) in any given sensor network. Finally the paper compares NCC to other previously proposed data gathering structures in average-case networks.
Role of interleukin‐4 and interleukin‐13 in synthesis of IgE and expression of CD23 by human B cells

The effector functions of antibodies, such as complement fixation, Fc-receptor binding, and traversal of basal membranes, are determined by the constant regions of the antibodies. IgE is the least abundant immunoglobulin (Ig) isotype in human serum, but it is the most important isotype mediating allergic reactions (102). IgE probably evolved because of its protective effect against parasitic infections (45,105). It is only IgE that can bind to high-affinity IgE receptors (Ec,RI) expressed on mast cells and basophils. The cross-linking of these receptors by interaction of the allergen and Ec,. RI-bound IgE leads to degranulation of the mast cells and rapid release of mediator molecules, such as histamine, prostaglandins, and leukotrienes, causing allergic symptoms in the target organs. In the absence of high-affinity IgE receptors, no anaphylactic reactions can occur (30). B-cell proliferation and differentiation into Igsecreting cells is initiated by specific recognition of antigen by cell-surface Ig. This generally occurs in the lymph nodes, leading to formation of germinal centers, where follicular dendritic cells serve as efficient antigen-presenting cells (15). The antigen recognition induces rapid B-cell proliferation, giving rise to dark zones of germinal centers. Differentiating B cells then move into the light zones, where their variable (V) region genes also undergo somatic mutations to increase the affinity of the secreted antibodies (1, 90). The first isotypes to be produced are IgM and IgD; to produce Ig of other isotypes, B cells have to undergo class switching (18, 73). The genes for the constant regions of heavy chains (CH) are clustered at the 3' end of the Ig heavy-chain locus on human chromosome 14 and on mouse chromosome 12. The human heavy-chain locus comprises nine functional genes and two pseudogenes ordered 5' |X-5-Y3-Y l-v|/8-al-\|/Y-y2-Y4-e-a2 3' . Heavy-chain class switching occurs by DNA recombination, which is mediated by repetitive segments known as switch regions (S) that are located a few kilobases 5' to each heavy chain locus (18, 32, 52, 111). This recombination, which occurs through S-S joining, brings a specific variable region adjacent to a new heavy-chain gene. B-cell differentiation and isotype switching are heavily regulated by CD4^ T helper cells, which provide costimulatory signals in both soluble and membrane-bound forms (15, 27, 78, 96). Isotype switching is directed by cytokines, possibly by regulation of the accessibility of CH genes and their S regions to a common recombinase system (32, Ul) . Cytokines are required for both B-cell proliferation and differentiation, and they also direct Ig isotype switching. Murine B cells switch to IgG2a production in response to interferon-Y ( I F N Y ) (97), and both murine and human B cells switch to IgE
Complexity in phase transforming pin-jointed auxetic lattices

We demonstrate the complexity that can exist in the modelling of auxetic lattices. By introducing pin-jointed members and large deformations to the analysis of a re-entrant structure, we create a material which has both auxetic and non-auxetic phases. Such lattices exhibit complex equilibrium behaviour during the highly nonlinear transition between these two states. The local response is seen to switch many times between stable and unstable states, exhibiting both positive and negative stiffnesses. However, there is shown to exist an underlying emergent modulus over the transitional phase, to describe the average axial stiffness of a system comprising a large number of cells.
Water‐insoluble fraction of airborne particulate matter (PM10) induces oxidative stress in human lung epithelial A549 cells

Exposure to ambient airborne particulate matter (PM) with an aerodynamic diameter less than 10 μm (PM10) links with public health hazards and increases risk for lung cancer and other diseases. Recent studies have suggested that oxidative stress is a key mechanism underlying the toxic effects of exposure to PM10. Several components of water‐soluble fraction of PM10 (sPM10) have been known to be capable of inducing oxidative stress in in vitro studies. In this study, we investigated if water‐insoluble fraction of PM10 (iPM10) could be also capable of inducing oxidative stress and oxidative damage. Human lung epithelial A549 cells were exposed to 10 μg/mL of sPM10, iPM10 or total PM10 (tPM10) preparation for 24 h. Here, we observed that all three PM10 preparations reduced cell viability and induced apoptotic cell death in A549 cells. We further found that, similar to the exposure to sPM10 and tPM10, the intracellular level of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) in the iPM10‐exposed cells was increased significantly; meanwhile the activity of catalase was decreased significantly as compared with the unexposed control cells, resulting in significant DNA damage. Our data obtained from inductively coupled plasma‐mass spectrometry (ICP‐MS) assays showed that iron is the most abundant metal in all three PM10 preparations. Thus, we have demonstrated that, similar to sPM10, iPM10 is also capable of inducing oxidative stress by probably inducing generation of H2O2 and impairing enzymatic antioxidant defense, resulting in oxidative DNA damage and even apoptotic cell death through the iron‐catalyzed Fenton reaction. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Environ Toxicol 29: 226–233, 2014.
High-Resolution 3-D Flood Information From Radar Imagery for Flood Hazard Management

This paper presents a remote-sensing-based steady-state flood inundation model to improve preventive flood-management strategies and flood disaster management. The Regression and Elevation-based Flood Information eXtraction (REFIX) model is based on regression analysis and uses a remotely sensed flood extent and a high-resolution floodplain digital elevation model to compute flood depths for a given flood event. The root mean squared error of the REFIX, compared to ground-surveyed high water marks, is 18 cm for the January 2003 flood event on the River Alzette floodplain (G.D. of Luxembourg), on which the model is developed. Applying the same methodology on a reach of the River Mosel, France, shows that for some more complex river configurations (in this case, a meandering river reach that contains a number of hydraulic structures), piecewise regression is required to yield more accurate flood water-line estimations. A comparison with a simulation from the Hydrologic Engineering Centers River Analysis System hydraulic flood model, calibrated on the same events, shows that, for both events, the REFIX model approximates the water line reliably
Staphylococcal growth and enterotoxins (A-D) and thermonuclease synthesis in the presence of dehydrated garlic.

The inhibition of Staphylococcus aureus growth and enterotoxin and thermonuclease production by various concentrations of garlic (Allium sativum) was studied in BHI broth. The growth of Staph. aureus was inhibited by dehydrated garlic at levels of 1.5% (w/v) and over. Enterotoxins A, B and C1 were only detectable in broth containing < 1% of garlic while enterotoxin D was produced at a level of 2%. Garlic also inhibited thermonuclease (TNAse) production, complete inhibition being observed at levels > or = 1.5%. TNAse was not always detected when enterotoxin was present.