Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Biophysical evaluation of cells on nanotubular surfaces: the effects of atomic ordering and chemistry

After the implantation of a biomaterial in the body, the first interaction occurs between the cells in contact with the biomaterial surface. Therefore, evaluating the cell–substrate interface is crucial for designing a successful implant. In this study, the interaction of MC3T3 osteoblasts was studied on commercially pure and alloy (Ti6Al4V) Ti surfaces treated with amorphous and crystalline titanium dioxide nanotubes. The results indicated that the presence of nanotubes increased the density of osteoblast cells in comparison to bare surfaces (no nanotubes). More importantly, our finding shows that the chemistry of the substrate affects the cell density rather than the morphology of the cells. A novel approach based on the focused ion beam technique was used to investigate the biophysical cell–substrate interaction. The analysis revealed that portions of the cells migrated inside the crystalline nanotubes. This observation was correlated with the super hydrophilic properties of the crystalline nanotubes.
EXAMINING GROUP AND INDIVIDUAL APPROACHES TO STRATEGY USE IN FREQUENCY JUDGMENTS

Title of dissertation: EXAMINING GROUP AND INDIVIDUAL APPROACHES TO STRATEGY USE IN FREQUENCY JUDGMENTS Ana Maria Franco-Watkins, Doctor of Philosophy, 2004 Dissertation directed by: Assistant Professor Michael R. Dougherty, Department of Psychology How do people make frequency judgments? One account describes how the strategy used during the memory retrieval process influences frequency judgments. The strategy that is evoked depends on the to-be judged event (Brown, 1995; 1997). Specifically, enumeration strategies were used when multiple exemplars were paired with a category. Non-enumeration strategies occurred when a single exemplar was paired with a category. Two experiments investigated the consistency with which different strategies were employed based on the characteristics of the to-be judged event. Group-level and individual-level analyses were used to examine the degree that a given strategy occurred. Analyses at the individual-level allowed for the investigation of whether the strategies observed at the group-level were consistent across individuals in the group. Exemplar typicality (typical or atypical) was manipulated within the to-be judged events to determine whether typicality played a role in strategy use and frequency judgments. Group-level analyses revealed evidence of enumeration in multiple-exemplar conditions. However, individual-level analyses revealed that few participants engaged in enumeration indicating that the group results were driven by a small number of participants. Exemplar typicality did not reliably affect strategy use or frequency judgments. Implications of using group-level and individual-level analyses are discussed.
Persistence of Symptoms in Primary Somatoform Vertigo and Dizziness: A Disorder “Lost” in Health Care?

Abstract The aim of this study was to perform a 3-year follow-up of primary somatoform vertigo and dizziness (SVD) regarding health care use and treatment. Ninety-two patients with dizziness underwent detailed vestibular neurophysiological testing and a Structured Clinical Interview for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition. Psychometric assessments comprised the Vertigo Symptom Scale, the Vertigo Handicap Questionnaire, the SCL-90-R, and the Short-Form–36 Health Survey. At the 3-year follow-up, 65 patients with primary SVD (anxiety, n = 29; depression, n = 14; somatoform disorders, n = 22) were reassessed (70.7% response). The patients improved in symptom severity (p < 0.05), handicap (p < 0.01), and physical quality of life (QoL; p < 0.05) but showed no change in emotional distress. A total of 63.1% (of n = 65) had ongoing SVD. A total of 69.2% (of n = 65) received different forms of treatments. A total of 46.1% (of n = 65) searched redundant medical diagnostic procedures. The patients with decreased coping capacity over time obtained the best prognosis. Primary SVD is an ineffectively treated disorder. Recommendations for specific complaint-oriented psychotherapy programs were given.
On measuring selection in experimental evolution

Distributions of mutation fitness effects from evolution experiments are available in an increasing number of species, opening the way for a vast array of applications in evolutionary biology. However, comparison of estimated distributions among studies is hampered by inconsistencies in the definitions of fitness effects and selection coefficients. In particular, the use of ratios of Malthusian growth rates as ‘relative fitnesses’ leads to wrong inference of the strength of selection. Scaling Malthusian fitness by the generation time may help overcome this shortcoming, and allow accurate comparison of selection coefficients across species. For species reproducing by binary fission (neglecting cellular death), ln2 can be used as a correction factor, but in general, the growth rate and generation time of the wild-type should be provided in studies reporting distribution of mutation fitness effects. I also discuss how density and frequency dependence of population growth affect selection and its measurement in evolution experiments.
Finger vein recognition with superpixel-based features

Finger veins based biometrics, as a new approach to personal identification, has received much attention in recent years. The methods based on low level feature, for instance the gray, texture of finger vein, are the mainstream, but they are usually faced with many challenges, such as sensitivity to noise and low local consistency. In fact, finger vein recognition based on high level feature representation has been proved to be a promising way to effectively overcome the above limitations and improve the system performance. Thus, in this paper, we present a novel identification framework, which utilizes superpixel-based features (SPFs) of finger vein for high level feature representation. When comparing two finger veins, the features of each pixel are firstly extracted as base attributes by traditional way. Then, after superpixel over-segmentation, the SPF of each finger vein can be obtained based on its base attributes by some statistical techniques. Lastly, a weighted spatial pyramid matching (WSPM) scheme is utilized to implement matching. Our experiments have yielded some very good results evidenced by an EER of 0.0147 on the benchmark database PolyU.
A charge change in an evolutionarily-conserved region of the myosin globular head prevents myosin and thick filament accumulation in Drosophila.

We have determined the molecular lesion in Mhc9, a homozygous-viable mutant of the Drosophila muscle myosin heavy chain gene. This mutation is in an adult-specific alternative exon (exon 9a) which encodes a portion of the myosin head that is highly conserved among both cytoplasmic and muscle myosins of all organisms. The mutation results in a charge change in the evolutionarily invariant amino acid residue 482. The phenotype of the homozygous mutant is identical to that of an organism having a stop codon within alternative exon 9a, i.e. lack of thick filaments in the indirect flight muscles and a greatly reduced number of thick filaments in the small cells of the jump muscles. This phenotype correlates with the known expression pattern of exon 9a. Genetic, biochemical and ultrastructural analyses show that the failure to accumulate thick filaments in the mutant is not a result of aberrant interactions with thin filaments and that the mutant myosin heavy chain does not poison assembly of wild-type thick filaments. Our results, in conjunction with recent structural and mutant studies by others, indicate that residue 482 is important for generating ATPase activity and for myosin stability in muscle.
The effects of family stress and negative parenting on externalizing behavior problems in children

The relations among family stress, negative parenting, and externalizing behavior problems were examined in a cross-sectional sample of 357 ten year-olds. To assess family stress, a composite of mother-reported strain from parenting, romantic partnership, and chaos within the home was created. To assess negative parenting behavior, a mother-reported composite of poor parental monitoring and inconsistent discipline was created. Externalizing behavior was assessed by teacher and mother-reported scores on the Behavior Assessment System for Children (BASC-2). As hypothesized, findings indicated family stress predicted change in both mother and teacher-reported externalizing behavior problems from five years of age to 10 years of age over and above other covariates such as socioeconomic status. As hypothesized, this relation was partially mediated by mother-reported negative parenting for mother-reported externalizing behavior problems. Contrary to the hypotheses, negative parenting did not fully or partially mediate this relation for teacher-reported externalizing behavior problems. Implications, future directions, and strengths and limitations of the current study were examined.
Highly efficient multiuser detector of M-PSK signals using coordinate-descent phase estimation

Joint detection of a large number of M-PSK symbols is important for many applications in communications, in particular, for multiuser detection in CDMA systems. In the past, there was much effort to find a technically simple solution to this problem and yet providing near optimal detection performance. We propose to use a novel iterative technique, the phase descent search (PDS) algorithm, for solving this problem. This technique constrains the solution to have a unit magnitude and it is based on coordinate descent iterations where coordinates are the unknown symbol phases. The PDS algorithm, together with a descent local search (also implemented as a version of the PDS algorithm), is used multiple times with different initializations in a proposed multiple phase detector; the solution with the minimum cost is then chosen as the final solution. Simulation results show that for highly loaded multiuser scenarios the proposed technique has a detection performance that is close to the single-user bound. The results also show that the multiple phase detector allows detection in highly overloaded scenarios and it exhibits near-far resistance. In particular, the detector has a performance that is significantly better, and complexity that is significantly lower, than that of the detector based on semi-definite relaxation.
Cleft Patient-Reported Postoperative Donor Site Pain Following Alveolar Autologous Iliac Crest Bone Grafting: Comparing Two Minimally Invasive Harvesting Techniques

Background:Autologous bone grafting is still considered the standard method for alveolar cleft repair. However, donor site morbidities remain a relevant problem in cleft care. Thus, the authors assessed postoperative donor site pain in cleft patients who underwent alveolar cleft repair by iliac crest bone graft transferring through a prospective randomized study comparing 2 minimally invasive harvesting techniques. Methods:Fifty-six consecutive patients with cleft lip and palate who underwent iliac crest bone grafting for alveolar cleft repair were randomly divided into 2 groups: bone graft harvested by minimally invasive techniques without (group 1) and with (group 2) periosteum elevation. Postoperative donor site pain was evaluated using a unidimensional numerical pain intensity rating scale (0, “no pain;” 10, “worst pain imaginable”) at 1, 3, 6, 9, and 12 hours after the procedures and on the 3rd, 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th days after surgeries. Intergroup comparisons were performed. Results:The mean measurements of donor site pain revealed no significant differences (all P > 0.05) in any of the evaluated postoperative period comparisons between groups 1 and 2. There was a greater number (P < 0.05) of group 1 patients who reported “no pain” in the donor site compared with group 2, suggesting that periosteum elevation may play a role in pain intensity measurement. Conclusions:This prospective randomized study showed no difference in pain intensity among cleft patients who had postoperative pain. However, a greater number of patients in group 1 reported “no pain” in comparison to patients in group 2.
Improving Contrast Set Mining Mondelle

A fundamental task in exploratory data analysis is discerning the differences between contrasting groups. Contrast set mining has been developed as a data mining task, which aims to identify the differences between these groups. This paper examines the algorithms, heuristics, and open issues of contrast set mining, and seeks to improve contrast set mining by addressing several of the open issues. It proposes four interestingness measures for ranking contrast sets: coverage, overall support, growth rate, and unusualness. It introduces a new method to discretize quantitative attributes. A new type of contrast set, called the jumping contrast set, is defined, and the contrast set mining process is modified, to include mining both types of contrast sets, on datasets containing both quantitative and categorical attributes. Finally, a simple visualization method is introduced, to describe contrast sets to the end-user.
Aerial Gas Exchange in Australian Freshwater/Land Crabs of the Genus Holthuisana

Holthuisana valentula Riek and H. agassizi (Rathbun) both ventilate their lungs by lateral oscillations of the thoracic walls within the branchial chambers. Air enters and leaves the lungs via the prebranchial apertures and the Milne-Edwards apertures. At rest, active ventilation in H. transversa was low (0.95 ml g −1 h −1 ) and a high diffusional component was evident. After disturbance, V A rose to 45.4ml g −1 and % extraction was low (1.1%). Ventilation increased during moderate hypercapnia and marked hypoxia. MO 2 was high after disturbance (2.95μmol g −1 h −1 ) but declined to very low levels at rest (0.45μmol g −1 h −1 ). The haemocyanin had a relatively low affinity for oxygen during air-breathing (P 50 = 13 Torr) but it was saturated with oxygen at normal P a O 2 (56.1 Torr). CCO 2 in the haemolymph (13 mmol l −7 ) was characteristic of air-breathing crabs. The respiratory performances of H. transversa in air and water are compared.
TgSUB2 is a Toxoplasma gondii rhoptry organelle processing proteinase

All parasites in the phylum Apicomplexa, including Toxoplasma gondii and Plasmodium falciparum, contain rhoptries, specialized secretory organelles whose contents are thought to be essential for successful invasion of host cells. Serine proteinase inhibitors have been reported to block host cell invasion by both T. gondii and P. falciparum. We describe the cloning and characterization of TgSUB2, a subtilisin‐like serine proteinase, from T. gondii. Like its closest homologue P. falciparum PfSUB‐2, TgSUB2 is predicted to be a type I transmembrane protein. Disruption of TgSUB2 was unsuccessful implying that TgSUB2 is an essential gene. TgSUB2 undergoes autocatalytic processing as it traffics through the secretory pathway. TgSUB2 localizes to rhoptries and associates with rhoptry protein ROP1, a potential substrate. A sequence within TgSUB2 with homology to the ROP1 cleavage site (after Glu) was identified and mutated by site‐directed mutagenesis. This mutation abolished TgSUB2 autoprocessing suggesting that TgSUB2 is a rhoptry protein maturase with similar specificity to the ROP1 maturase. Processing of secretory organelle contents appears to be ubiquitous among the Apicomplexa. As subtilases are present in genomes of all the Apicomplexa sequenced to date, subtilases may represent a novel chemotherapeutic target.
Feedback encoding for efficient symbolic control of dynamical systems

The problem of efficiently steering dynamical systems by generating input plans is considered. Plans are considered which consist of finite-length words constructed on an alphabet of input symbols, which could be, e.g., transmitted through a limited capacity channel to a remote system, where they can be decoded in suitable control actions. Efficiency is considered in terms of the computational complexity of plans, and in terms of their description length (in number of bits). We show that, by suitable choice of the control encoding, finite plans can be efficiently built for a wide class of dynamical systems, computing arbitrarily close approximations of a desired equilibrium in polynomial time. The paper also investigates how the efficiency of planning is affected by the choice of inputs, and provides some results as to optimal performance in terms of accuracy and range.
Generalizing Inflection Tables into Paradigms with Finite State Operations

Extracting and performing an alignment of the longest common subsequence in inflection tables has been shown to be a fruitful approach to supervised learning of morphological paradigms. However, finding the longest subsequence common to multiple strings is well known to be an intractable problem. Additional constraints on the solution sought complicate the problem further—such as requiring that the particular subsequence extracted, if there is ambiguity, be one that is best alignable in an inflection table. In this paper we present and discuss the design of a tool that performs the extraction through some advanced techniques in finite state calculus and does so efficiently enough for the practical purposes of inflection table generalization.
Analysis of Radar Sounder Signals for the Automatic Detection and Characterization of Subsurface Features

Radar sounders operating on satellite platforms (e.g., radar sounding missions at Mars) provide a huge amount of data that currently are mostly analyzed by means of manual investigations. This calls for the development of novel techniques for the automatic extraction of information from sounder signals that could greatly support the scientific community. Such a topic has not been addressed sufficiently in the literature. This paper provides a contribution to fill this gap by presenting both 1) a study of the theoretical statistical properties of radar sounder signals, and 2) two novel techniques for the automatic analysis of sounder radargrams. The main goal of the study is the identification of statistical distributions that can accurately model the amplitude fluctuations of different subsurface targets. This is fundamental for the understanding of signal properties and for the definition of automatic data analysis techniques. The results of such a study drive the development of two novel techniques for 1) the generation of subsurface feature maps, and 2) the automatic detection of the deepest scattering areas visible in the radargrams. The former produces for each radargram a map showing which areas have high probability to contain relevant subsurface features. The latter exploits a region-growing approach properly defined for the analysis of radargrams to identify and compose the basal scattering areas. Experimental results obtained on Shallow Radar data acquired on Mars confirm the effectiveness of the proposed techniques.
Incentives, Targeting and Firm Performance: An Analysis of Non-Executive Stock Options

We examine whether options granted to non-executive employees affect firm performance. Using new data on option programs, we explore the link between broad-based option programs, option portfolio implied incentives, and firm operating performance, utilizing an instrumental variables approach to identify causal effects. Firms whose employee option portfolios have higher implied incentives exhibit higher subsequent operating performance. Intuitively, the implied incentive-performance relation is concentrated in firms with fewer employees and in firms with higher growth opportunities. Additionally, the effect is concentrated in firms that grant options broadly to non-executive employees, consistent with theories of cooperation and mutual monitoring among co-workers. The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org. , Oxford University Press.
Person (cid:2) environment interactions on adolescent delinquency: Sensation seeking, peer deviance and parental monitoring Personality and Individual Differences

Sensation seeking is a personality trait that is robustly correlated with delinquent behavior in adolescence. The current study tested speciﬁc contextual factors hypothesized to facilitate, exacerbate or attenuate this risk factor for adolescent delinquency. Individual differences in sensation seeking, peer deviance, parental monitoring and self-reported delinquent behavior were assessed in a sample of 470 adolescents. Peer deviance partially mediated the effects of sensation seeking and parental monitoring on adolescent delinquency. We also found evidence for a three-way interaction between sensation seeking, peer deviance and parental monitoring, such that the highest rates of delinquency occurred from the concurrence of high sensation seeking, high peer deviance, and low levels of parental monitoring. Results highlight the importance of considering peer- and family-level processes when evaluating personality risk and problematic adolescent behavior.
On the use of logarithmic scales for analysis of diffraction data

Conventional and free R factors and their difference, as well as the ratio of the number of measured reflections to the number of atoms in the crystal, were studied as functions of the resolution at which the structures were reported. When the resolution was taken uniformly on a logarithmic scale, the most frequent values of these functions were quasi-linear over a large resolution range.
Vena cava vascular reconstruction during orthotopic liver transplantation: a comparative study.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of preserving the recipient's inferior vena cava during orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT) on hemodynamic alterations, blood component requirements, postoperative liver and renal function, as well as vascular-related complications. A total of 122 OLTs was studied. In 35 OLTs, venovenous bypass (BP) was used; in 35 OLTs, bypass was not used (NBP); and in 52 OLTs, the recipient's inferior vena cava was preserved (PC). Preservation of the inferior vena cava means that venous return is not compromised at any time during transplantation. The time of hepatectomy was not different among the three groups (208 +/- 11, 188 +/- 13, and 194 +/- 6 minutes for BP, NBP, and PC, respectively); however, the total operating time was significantly lower in PC patients (492 +/- 24, 459 +/- 18, and 419 +/- 10 minutes for BP, NBP, and PC, respectively; P = .004, ANOVA). Blood component requirements were significantly lower in patients with PC. For red blood cells, these were 15.2 +/- 2.6, 16 +/- 3.4, and 7.1 +/- 1.5 units for BP, NBP, and PC, respectively (P = .009, ANOVA), and for fresh-frozen plasma, these were 5.4 +/- . 7, 5.8 +/- . 9, and 3 +/- . 4 L for BP, NBP, and PC, respectively (P = .005, ANOVA). Postoperative liver and renal function did not differ among the three groups. The incidence of surgical complications (bleeding and vascular) was similar. Preservation of the inferior vena cava of the recipient significantly reduces the magnitude of OLT.