Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Subjective Stress, Salivary Cortisol, and Electrophysiological Responses to Psychological Stress

The present study aimed to investigate the subjective stress, salivary cortisol, and electrophysiological responses to psychological stress induced by a modified version of a mental arithmetic task. Fifteen participants were asked to estimate whether the multiplication product of two-decimal numbers was above 10 or not either with a time limit (the stress condition) or without a time limit (the control condition). The results showed that participants reported higher levels of stress, anxiety, and negative affect in the stress condition than they did in the control condition. Moreover, the salivary cortisol level continued to increase after the stress condition but exhibited a sharp decrease after the control condition. In addition, the electrophysiological data showed that the amplitude of the frontal-central N1 component was larger for the stress condition than it was for the control condition, while the amplitude of the frontal-central P2 component was larger for the control condition than it was for the stress condition. Our study suggests that the psychological stress characteristics of time pressure and social-evaluative threat caused dissociable effects on perception and on the subsequent attentional resource allocation of visual information.
The radial structure of protostellar accretion disks : influence of jets

Context. The radial structure of accretion disks is a fundamental issue regarding star and planet formation. Many theoretical studies, focussing on different aspects such as e.g. disk emissivity or ionisation, have been conducted in the context of the standard accretion disk (SAD) model, where no jet is present. Aims. We wish to calculate the structure of young stellar object (YSO) accretion disks in an approach that takes into account the presence of the protostellar jets. The radial structure of these jet emitting disks (JED) should then be compared to that of SADs. Methods. The analytical treatment used in this work is similar to standard modelling of accretion disks but uses the parameter space of magnetised accretion-ejection structures that include the jet torque on the underlying disk. In this framework, the analytical expressions of key quantities are derived, such as mid-plane temperatures, surface densities or disk aspect ratios. Results. We find that JEDs present a structure different from the SADs, which can be observationally tested. The implications on planet formation in the inner regions of accretion disks are briefly discussed. We also supply sets of analytical formulae, valid in different opacity regimes, for the disk quantities. These expressions can be readily used for any work where the disk structure is needed as an input for the model.
Diagnostic yield of computed tomography-guided bone biopsy and clinical outcomes of tuberculous and pyogenic spondylitis

Background/Aims: This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of computed tomography (CT)-guided bone biopsy for the diagnosis of spinal infection and compared the clinical outcomes between tuberculous and pyogenic spinal infections. Methods: The retrospective cohort study included patients who received CT-guided bone biopsy at a tertiary hospital over the 13 years. Results: Among 100 patients, 67 had pyogenic spondylitis and 33 had tuberculous spondylitis. Pathogens were isolated from bone specimens obtained by CT-guided biopsy in 42 cases, with diagnostic yields of 61% (20/33) for tuberculous spondylitis and 33% (22/67) for pyogenic spondylitis. For 36 culture-proven pyogenic cases, Staphylococcus aureus was the most commonly isolated organism. Patients with pyogenic spondylitis more frequently presented with fever accompanied by an increase in inflammatory markers than did those with tuberculosis. Among all patients who underwent surgery, the incidence of late surgery performed one month after diagnosis was higher in patients with tuberculous infection (56.3%) than in those with pyogenic disease (23.3%, p = 0.026). Conclusions: Results obtained by CT-guided bone biopsy contributed to prompt diagnoses of spinal infections, especially those caused by tuberculosis. Despite administration of anti-tuberculous agents, patients with tuberculous spondylitis showed an increased tendency to undergo late surgery.
In Vitro Evidence That Cytokine Receptor Signals Are Required for Differentiation of Double Positive Thymocytes into Functionally Mature CD8+ T Cells

CD4+8+ double positive (DP) thymocytes differentiate into CD4+ and CD8+ mature T cells in response to TCR signals. However, TCR signals that are initiated in DP thymocytes are unlikely to persist throughout all subsequent differentiation steps, suggesting that other signals must sustain thymocyte differentiation after TCR signaling has ceased. Using an in vitro experimental system, we now demonstrate that cytokine receptor signals, such as those transduced by IL-7 receptors, are required for differentiation of signaled DP thymocytes into functionally mature CD8+ T cells as they: (a) up-regulate Bcl-2 expression to maintain thymocyte viability; (b) enhance CD4 gene silencing; (c) promote functional maturation;and (d) up-regulate surface expression of glucose transporter molecules, which improve nutrient uptake and increase metabolic activity. IL-7Rs appear to be unique among cytokine receptors in maintaining the viability of newly generated CD4−8+ thymocytes, whereas several different cytokine receptors can provide the trophic/differentiative signals for subsequent CD8+ thymocyte differentiation and maturation. Thus, cytokine receptors provide both survival and trophic/differentiative signals with varying degrees of redundancy that are required for differentiation of signaled DP thymocytes into functionally mature CD8+ T cells.
Interaction design for large displays

W We think that large displays will become commonplace for home and office computers before the turn of the century. And interface design for large displays will require new ways of thinking about human-computer interaction. At Andersen Consulting's Center for Strategic Technology Research, we recently built a demonstration prototype called Prairie that works with a display size of almost 6 feet by 3 feet and a resolution of 2400 by 1200 pixels (see Figure 1). In this paper, we use the Prairie system to illustrate many of the design issues that arise when designing for a large display.
Endocytosis of an HIV‐derived lipopeptide into human dendritic cells followed by class I‐restricted CD8+ T lymphocyte activation

CD8+ T lymphocytes, which are major immune effectors, require primary stimulation by dendritic cells (DC) presenting MHC class I molecule‐bound epitopes. Sensitization to exogenous protein epitopes that are not synthesized in DC, such as cross‐priming, is obtained through pathways leading to their association with MHC class I. To follow class I‐restricted pathways in human DC, we have tracked a lipopeptide derived from the conserved HLA‐A*0201‐restricted HIV‐1 reverse transcriptase 476‐484 epitope, by N‐terminal addition of an Nϵ‐palmytoyl‐lysine. Indeed, lipopeptides elicit cytotoxic responses from CD8+ T lymphocytes, whereas peptides without a lipid moiety do not. The lipopeptide and its parent peptide were labeled unequivocally by rhodamine to study their entry into immature monocyte‐derived human DC by confocal microscopy. The lipid moiety induced endocytosis of the lipopeptide, assessed by rapid entry into vesicles, colocalization with Dextran‐FITC and dependence on energy. Internalization occurred even when actin filaments were depolymerized by Cytochalasin B. This internalization induced functional stimulation of specific CD8+ T lymphocytes in IFN‐γ ELISPOT assays. The peptide alone was not visualized inside the DC and was presented through direct surface association to HLA‐A*0201. Therefore, lipopeptides are a unique opportunity to define precisely the pathways that lead exogenous proteins to associate with MHC class I molecules in DC. The results will also be useful to design lipopeptide vaccines.
Effects of Total Sleep Deprivation on Cardiovascular Parameters: An Absence of Biologically Significant Findings?

Abstract The present study analyzes the variations of heart rate (HR) and systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP and DBP) during 60 h of total sleep deprivation (TSD). All variables were evaluated every 2 h in a resting condition, during the performance of a vigilance task. Thirty healthy volunteers (15 men and 15 women) from 18 to 24 years old participated in the experiment. The analyses of variance (ANOVAS) with repeated measures showed some modifications of HR and SBP mean values mainly marked by circadian oscillations. The circadian oscillations had a smaller amplitude for SBP than for HR. HR showed a slight decrease on the second night of TSD and a slight increase on the third day of TSD. SBP decreased during the first 24 h of TSD and after that maintained its values without significant changes. DBP did not show any significant variations during TSD. In addition, there were no differences in function of gender for the TSD effect on the studied variables. All these statistically significant findin.
Partial Discharge Location in Transformers and Reactors by Waveshape Recognition

A technique for the location of partial discharges in transformers and reactors is described. The unique nature of the terminal voltage waveform resulting from a discharge occurring at a particular position along the winding is exploited to give the required location information. This waverorm is compared with waveform sets obtained by calibration, using cross-correlation techniques. The results of preliminary experiments are presented and areas of further development are outlined.
Cognitive efficiency in alcoholics and polysubstance abusers: Family history revisited.

The primary aim of this study was to evaluate the role of family history (FH) on cognitive efficiency by means of 4 different FH classificatio n schemes. Sixty alcoholics, 64 polysubstance abusers, and 67 controls participated. No effects of FH were found for any of the 4 FH classification strategies. However, main effects of group were found, providing evidence that the clinical samples were representative of those from previous studies. These data support those of other investigators and suggest that having an FH of alcoholism cannot account for cognitive impairment among chronic alcoholics. It has been well established that chronic alcoholics perform poorly relative to nonalcoholic controls on tests of neuropsycholo gical performance. Whereas some studies have found neuropsychological impairment among alcoholics with a family history of alcoholism (FH+;
DIDACache

Key-value caching is crucial to today’s low-latency Internet services. Conventional key-value cache systems, such as Memcached, heavily rely on expensive DRAM memory. To lower Total Cost of Ownership, the industry recently is moving toward more cost-efficient flash-based solutions, such as Facebook’s McDipper [14] and Twitter’s Fatcache [56]. These cache systems typically take commercial SSDs and adopt a Memcached-like scheme to store and manage key-value cache data in flash. Such a practice, though simple, is inefficient due to the huge semantic gap between the key-value cache manager and the underlying flash devices. In this article, we advocate to reconsider the cache system design and directly open device-level details of the underlying flash storage for key-value caching. We propose an enhanced flash-aware key-value cache manager, which consists of a novel unified address mapping module, an integrated garbage collection policy, a dynamic over-provisioning space management, and a customized wear-leveling policy, to directly drive the flash management. A thin intermediate library layer provides a slab-based abstraction of low-level flash memory space and an API interface for directly and easily operating flash devices. A special flash memory SSD hardware that exposes flash physical details is adopted to store key-value items. This co-design approach bridges the semantic gap and well connects the two layers together, which allows us to leverage both the domain knowledge of key-value caches and the unique device properties. In this way, we can maximize the efficiency of key-value caching on flash devices while minimizing its weakness. We implemented a prototype, called DIDACache, based on the Open-Channel SSD platform. Our experiments on real hardware show that we can significantly increase the throughput by 35.5%, reduce the latency by 23.6%, and remove unnecessary erase operations by 28%.
The Relationship Between Citizen Participation and Organizational Processes and Outcomes and the Benefits of Citizen Participation in Neighborhood Organizations

ABSTRACT A major resource of neighborhood organizations is the voluntary participation of residents who give their time and energy to improve their communities. In recent years, there has been a revitalization of strategies to engage residents to volunteer for neighborhood-based organizations. Guided by organizational empowerment theory and the ecological perspective, the current study examined the relationship between citizen participation and organizational characteristics and effectiveness and the benefits received by residents participating in neighborhood organizations in poor communities. The data were gathered through a survey of resident volunteers in four neighborhood organizations in Pennsylvania and were analyzed using hierarchical multiple regression analyses. The results showed that volunteers' level of involvement in their neighborhood organization influenced their self-efficacy. However, volunteers' perceptions of their neighborhood organizations' characteristics and effectiveness were the most strongly related to the benefits of citizen participation, contributing to residents' self efficacy, collective efficacy, and sense of community. Implications for social work research and practice are discussed.
Un ejemplo de dinámica de role playing en una asignatura de libre configuración en Derecho

Las exigencias del actual mundo laboral y profesional requieren una mayor creacion de espacios de formacion universitaria para la solucion de problemas reales. El role playing, como tecnica didactica disenada para asignaturas de libre configuracion cursadas por estudiantes de diferente perfil formativo, facilita el proceso de ensenanza aprendizaje de contenidos complejos del Derecho. Este articulo trata de describir y evaluar la experiencia docente en una dinamica basada en la simulacion para la asignatura “Convencion sobre la eliminacion de todas las formas de discriminacion contra la mujer”.
Therapist attitudes and patient outcomes: II. Therapist attitudes influence change during treatment

Abstract Psychotherapists’ beliefs and attitudes in therapeutic matters, according to the Therapist Attitudes Scales (TASC-2) (Sandell et al., 2004), were related to symptom distress, as measured by the Symptom Checklist-90, in 2 groups of patients: one in ongoing psychoanalytical psychotherapy and the other posttreatment. In the posttreatment group, the zero-order correlations with symptom distress were significant for the therapist's attitudes toward kindness and insight as curative factors and supportiveness as a therapeutic style and his or her views on the nature of psychotherapy as a form of artistry; however, they were all near zero and nonsignificant in the in-treatment group. To account for correlations among the attitude variables, multiple regression analyses were compared between the groups. The multiple correlation was essentially zero in the latter group, whereas there was a significant multiple correlation of . 51 in the former group. Thus Posttreatment outcome was significantly related to the therapist's position on the TASC-2 scales. Kindness and Artistry had particularly strong relations with the posttreatment results, with Neutrality acting like a suppressor. The pattern of relations suggested that therapist attitudes functioned as moderators rather than as mediators.
Comparative effectiveness of echinocandins versus fluconazole therapy for the treatment of adult candidaemia due to Candida parapsilosis: a retrospective observational cohort study of the Mycoses Study Group (MSG-12).

OBJECTIVES A polymorphism in the gene encoding β-1,3-glucan synthase, the target of the echinocandin class of antifungals, results in increased in vitro MICs of the echinocandins. This has resulted in controversy surrounding use of the echinocandins for treatment of Candida parapsilosis candidaemia. We aimed to compare 30 day mortality in adults with C. parapsilosis candidaemia treated with echinocandins versus fluconazole. METHODS This is a retrospective observational cohort study. We used the Premier Perspective Database to identify adult patients with C. parapsilosis candidaemia treated with only fluconazole or only an echinocandin as definitive therapy. The primary outcome was 30 day mortality. Propensity scores were derived to estimate the probability the patient would have received either an echinocandin or fluconazole. Inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW) was used in a weighted logistic regression to calculate odds of 30 day mortality. RESULTS There were 307 unique patients with C. parapsilosis candidaemia. One hundred and twenty-six (41%) received fluconazole and 181 (59%) received an echinocandin. Age, gender, race, year of admission, need for ICU resources in the week prior to candidaemia onset, and receipt of vasopressors on the day of candidaemia onset were included in the propensity score model used to calculate inverse probability of treatment weights. Weighted logistic regression demonstrated no difference in 30 day mortality between patients receiving an echinocandin as compared with fluconazole (OR 0.82, 95% CI 0.33-2.07). CONCLUSIONS Our result supports the 2016 IDSA invasive candidiasis guidelines, which no longer clearly favour treatment with fluconazole over an echinocandin for C. parapsilosis candidaemia.
Three copies of a single protein II-encoding sequence in the genome of Neisseria gonorrhoeae JS3: evidence for gene conversion and gene duplication.

Gonococci express a family of related outer membrane proteins designated protein II (P.II). These surface proteins are subject to both phase variation and antigenic variation. The P.II gene repertoire of Neisseria gonorrhoeae strain JS3 was found to consist of at least ten genes, eight of which were cloned. Sequence analysis and DNA hybridization studies revealed that one particular P.II-encoding sequence is present in three distinct, but almost identical, copies in the JS3 genome. These genes encode the P.II protein that was previously identified as P.IIc. Comparison of their sequences shows that the multiple copies of this P.IIc-encoding gene might have been generated by both gene conversion and gene duplication.
Slow-release L-Cysteine (Acetium®) Lozenge Is an Effective New Method in Smoking Cessation. A Randomized, Double-blind, Placebo-controlled Intervention.

BACKGROUND/AIM Because of the major health problems and annual economic burden caused by cigarette smoking, effective new tools for smoking intervention are urgently needed. Our previous randomized controlled trial (RCT) provided promising results on the efficacy of slow-release L-cysteine lozenge in smoking intervention, but the study was not adequately powered. To confirm in an adequately-powered study the results of the previous RCT implicating that effective elimination of acetaldehyde in saliva by slow-release L-cysteine (Acetium® lozenge, Biohit Oyj, Helsinki), would assist in smoking cessation by reducing acetaldehyde-enhanced nicotine addiction. On this matter, we undertook a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial comparing Acetium® lozenge and placebo in smoking intervention. MATERIALS AND METHODS A cohort of 1,998 cigarette smokers were randomly allocated to intervention (n=996) and placebo arms (n=1,002). At baseline, smoking history was recorded by a questionnaire, with nicotine dependence testing according to the Fagerström scale (FTND). The subjects used smoking diary recording the daily numbers of cigarettes, lozenges and subjective sensations of smoking. The data were analysed separately for point prevalence of abstinence (PPA) and prolonged abstinence (PA) endpoints. RESULTS Altogether, 753 study subjects completed the trial per protocol (PP), 944 with violations (mITT), and the rest (n=301) were lost to follow-up (LTF). During the 6-month intervention, 331 subjects stopped smoking; 181 (18.2%) in the intervention arm and 150 (15.0%) in the placebo arm (OR=1.43; 95%CI=1.09-1.88); p=0.010). In the PP group, 170 (45.3%) quitted smoking in the intervention arm compared to 134 (35.4%) in the placebo arm (OR=1.51, 95%CI=1.12-2.02; p=0.006). In multivariate (Poisson regression) model, decreased level of smoking pleasure (p=0.010) and "smoking sensations changed" were powerful independent predictors of quit events (IRR=12.01; 95%CI=1.5-95.6). CONCLUSION Acetium® lozenge, herein confirmed in an adequately powered study to be an effective means to aid smoking quit, represents a major breakthrough in the development of smoking intervention methods, because slow-release L-cysteine is non-toxic, with no side-effects or limitations of use.
Sex steroid hormones in pairs of tumor and serum from breast cancer patients and pathobiological role of androstene‐3β, 17β‐diol

Estrogens play an important role in the pathobiology of breast cancer. In postmenopausal women, peripheral synthesis of estrogens from adrenal/ovarian androgens, dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) or androstenedione (Adione), by estrogen‐metabolizing enzymes is important. Besides estrone (E1) and estradiol (E2), androgen metabolites, such as androstene‐3β, 17β‐diol (Aenediol) or 5α‐androstane‐3β, 17β‐diol (Aanediol), are known to have estrogenic functions, although they have been studied much less in breast cancer. To precisely elucidate steroid metabolism in breast cancer patients and to identify the pathobiological role of estrogenic androgen metabolites, concentrations of DHEA, Adione, Aenediol, Aanediol, E1, and E2 in pairs of serum and tumor tissue from patients with primary breast cancer were measured by liquid chromatography‐tandem mass spectrometry. Cell proliferation assays using Aenediol were performed for four breast cancer cell lines. Serous E2 concentration was extremely low in postmenopausal women; however, a marked increase in tumor tissue was observed in hormone receptor‐positive cases. E1 concentration, in contrast, was sustained at a higher level, even in postmenopausal serum, and did not increase in tumor tissue irrespective of the hormone receptor status. Dehydroepiandrosterone was most abundant in all samples, and exhibited a similar pattern as Adione and Aenediol. 5α‐Androstane‐3β, 17β‐diol was undetectable in most samples. Androstene‐3β, 17β‐diol proliferated estrogen receptor‐α‐positive breast cancer cells in the absence of E2. The intratumoral increase of E2, but not E1, in hormone receptor‐positive postmenopausal breast cancer tissue, as well as the proliferative role of Aenediol, was elucidated. (Cancer Sci 2011; 102: 1848–1854)