Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Association between Serum Uric Acid Levels and Diabetes Mellitus

Serum uric acid has been shown to be associated with cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and chronic kidney disease in previous studies. However, few studies have examined the association between serum uric acid and diabetes mellitus and their findings are not consistent. Therefore, we examined the association between serum uric acid levels and diabetes mellitus in participants from the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (n = 18, 825, 52.5% women). Serum uric acid levels were categorized into quartiles. Diabetes mellitus was defined as fasting glucose ≥126 mg/dL, nonfasting glucose ≥200 mg/dL, or use of oral hypoglycemic medication or insulin (n = 395). In multivariable logistic regression models, we found that higher serum uric acid levels were inversely associated with diabetes mellitus after adjusting for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, smoking, alcohol intake, body mass index, hypertension, and serum cholesterol. Compared to quartile 1 of serum uric acid, the odds ratio (95% confidence interval) of diabetes mellitus was 0.48 (0.35–0.66; P trend <0.0001). The results were consistent in subgroup analysis by gender and hypertension status. Higher serum uric acid levels were inversely associated with diabetes mellitus in a representative sample of US adults.
Women an children, the main victims of forced displacement

This paper aims to shows the particular manner as in Colombia, women and children are particularly vulnerable by armed groups that attack their dignity and privacy affect their family, ideological and sexual. The preparation of the article involved an extensive literature review. In Colombia and adolescent girls constitute 53% of the displaced population, of which at least 17% were mobilized as a result of harassment, assault and sexual violence. The vital risk factors and vulnerability are directly proportional to the armed conflict, therefore the war dissociates the family unit, and alters the elements of group cohesion. Often children carry their emotional state through aggressive or playful - in conflicting attitudes, and recharges in women full weight of family reconstitution, which hinders its adaptation process.
Experimental demonstration of a leadless quantum-dot cellular automata cell

We present the experimental characterization of a leadless (floating) double-dot system and a leadless quantum-dot cellular automata cell, where aluminum metal islands are connected to the environment only by capacitors. Here, single electron charge transfer can be accomplished only by the exchange of an electron between the dots. The charge state of the dots is monitored using metal islands configured as electrometers. We show improvements in the cell performance relative to leaded dots, and discuss possible implications of our leadless design to the quantum-dot cellular automata logic implementation.
A User Modeling Framework for Exploring Creative Problem-Solving Ability

This research proposes a user modeling framework which aims to assess and model users' creative problem-solving ability from their self-explained ideas for a specific scenario of problem-solving. The proposed framework, User Problem-Solving Ability Modeler (UPSAM), is mainly designed to accommodate to the needs of studying students' Creative Problem-Solving (CPS) abilities in the area of science education. The use of open-ended essay-question-type instrument and bipartite graph-based modeling technique together provides a potential solution of user model elicitation for CPS. The computational model has several potential applications in educational research and practice, including automated scoring, buggy concepts diagnosis, novel ideas detection, and supporting advanced studies of human creativity.
Dietary Restraint Violations Influence Reward Responses in Nucleus Accumbens and Amygdala

Numerous studies have demonstrated that consuming high-calorie food leads to subsequent overeating by chronic dieters. The present study investigates the neural correlates of such self-regulatory failures using fMRI. Chronic dieters (n = 50) and non-dieters (n = 50) consumed either a 15-oz glass of cold water or a 15-oz milkshake and were subsequently imaged while viewing pictures of animals, environmental scenes, people, and appetizing food items. Results revealed a functional dissociation in nucleus accumbens and amygdala activity that paralleled well-established behavioral patterns of eating observed in dieters and non-dieters. Whereas non-dieters showed the greatest nucleus accumbens activity in response to food items after water consumption, dieters showed the greatest activity after consuming the milkshake. Activity in the left amygdala demonstrated the reverse interaction. Considered together with previously reported behavioral findings, the present results offer a suggested neural substrate for diet failure.
VIPBoard: Improving Screen-Reader Keyboard for Visually Impaired People with Character-Level Auto Correction

Modern touchscreen keyboards are all powered by the word-level auto-correction ability to handle input errors. Unfortunately, visually impaired users are deprived of such benefit because a screen-reader keyboard offers only character-level input and provides no correction ability. In this paper, we present VIPBoard, a smart keyboard for visually impaired people, which aims at improving the underlying keyboard algorithm without altering the current input interaction. Upon each tap, VIPBoard predicts the probability of each key considering both touch location and language model, and reads the most likely key, which saves the calibration time when the touchdown point misses the target key. Meanwhile, the keyboard layout automatically scales according to users' touch point location, which enables them to select other keys easily. A user study shows that compared with the current keyboard technique, VIPBoard can reduce touch error rate by 63.0% and increase text entry speed by 12.6%.
SN52, a novel nuclear factor-κB inhibitor, blocks nuclear import of RelB:p52 dimer and sensitizes prostate cancer cells to ionizing radiation

The activation of nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) is thought to protect cancer cells against therapy-induced cytotoxicity. RelB, a member of the NF-κB family in the alternative pathway, is uniquely expressed at a high level in prostate cancer with high Gleason scores. Here, we show that ionizing radiation (IR) enhances nuclear import of RelB, leading to up-regulation of its target gene, manganese superoxide dismutase (MnSOD), and renders prostate cancer cells resistant to IR. To selectively block RelB nuclear import, we designed a cell-permeable SN52 peptide, a variant of the SN50 peptide that has been shown to block nuclear import of NF-κB family members in the classic pathway. Inhibition of IR-induced NF-κB activation by SN50 and SN52 was achieved by selectively interrupting the association of p50 and p52 with nuclear import factors importin-α1 and importin-β1. Importantly, SN52 seems to be more efficient for radiosensitization of prostate cancer cells at clinically relevant radiation doses and has less cytotoxicity to normal prostate epithelial cells compared with the toxicity observed with SN50. These results suggest that targeting the alternative pathway is a promising approach to selectively radiosensitize prostate cancers and that SN52 may serve as a prototype biological agent for sensitizing prostate cancers to clinically relevant doses of IR. [Mol Cancer Ther 2008;7(8):2367–76]
Bromodomain protein 7 interacts with PRMT5 and PRC2, and is involved in transcriptional repression of their target genes

Histone modification regulates gene expression, and one major regulatory step in this process is the ability of proteins that recognize epigenetic marks to recruit enzymes required to specify transcriptional outcome. Here we show that BRD7 is a component of hSWI–SNF complexes that interacts with PRMT5 and PRC2. Recruitment studies revealed that BRD7 co-localizes with PRMT5 and PRC2 on ‘suppressor of tumorigenecity 7’ (ST7) and retinoblastoma-like protein 2 (RBL2) promoters in patient-derived B cell lines, and that its association with these target genes correlates with hypermethylation of H3R8, H4R3 and H3K27. Furthermore, inhibition of BRD7 expression reduces PRMT5 and PRC2 recruitment to ST7 and RBL2 promoters; however, only ST7 becomes transcriptionally derepressed. Evaluation of the PRMT5- and PRC2-induced epigenetic marks revealed that while H3(Me2)R8, H4(Me2)R3 and H3(Me3)K27 marks are erased from the ST7 promoter, demethylation of RBL2 promoter histones is incomplete. We also show that the arginine demethylase (RDM) JMJD6, which can erase PRMT5-induced H4R3 methylation, and the H3K27-lysine-specific demethylases, KDM6A/UTX and KDM6B/JMJD3, are differentially recruited to ST7 and RBL2. These findings highlight the role played by BRD7 in PRMT5- and PRC2-induced transcriptional silencing, and indicate that recruitment of specific RDMs and KDMs is required for efficient transcriptional derepression.
Using Animal Models to Disentangle the Role of Genetic, Epigenetic, and Environmental Influences on Behavioral Outcomes Associated with Maternal Anxiety and Depression

The etiology of complex psychiatric disorders results from both genetics and the environment. No definitive environmental factor has been implicated, but studies suggest that deficits in maternal care and bonding may be an important contributing factor in the development of anxiety and depression. Perinatal mood disorders such as postpartum depression occur in approximately 10% of pregnant women and can result in detriments in infant care and bonding. The consequences of impaired maternal–infant attachment during critical early brain development may lead to adverse effects on socioemotional and neurocognitive development in infants resulting in long-term behavioral and emotional problems, including increased vulnerability for mental illness. The exact mechanisms by which environmental stressors such as poor maternal care increase the risk for psychiatric disorders are not known and studies in humans have proven challenging. Two inbred mouse strains may prove useful for studying the interaction between maternal care and mood disorders. BALB/c (BALB) mice are considered an anxious strain in comparison to C57BL/6 (B6) mice in behavioral models of anxiety. These strain differences are most often attributed to genetics but may also be due to environment and gene by environment interactions. For example, BALB mice are described as poor mothers and B6 mice as good mothers and mothering behavior in rodents has been reported to affect both anxiety and stress behaviors in offspring. Changes in gene methylation patterns in response to maternal care have also been reported, providing evidence for epigenetic mechanisms. Characterization of these two mouse inbred strains over the course of pregnancy and in the postpartum period for behavioral and neuroendocrine changes may provide useful information by which to inform human studies, leading to advances in our understanding of the etiology of anxiety and depression and the role of genetics and the environment.
A Systematic Evaluation of Multi-Gene Predictors for the Pathological Response of Breast Cancer Patients to Chemotherapy

Previous studies have reported conflicting assessments of the ability of cell line-derived multi-gene predictors (MGPs) to forecast patient clinical outcomes in cancer patients, thereby warranting an investigation into their suitability for this task. Here, 42 breast cancer cell lines were evaluated by chemoresponse tests after treatment with either TFAC or FEC, two widely used standard combination chemotherapies for breast cancer. We used two different training cell line sets and two independent prediction methods, superPC and COXEN, to develop cell line-based MGPs, which were then validated in five patient cohorts treated with these chemotherapies. This evaluation yielded high prediction performances by these MGPs, regardless of the training set, chemotherapy, or prediction method. The MGPs were also able to predict patient clinical outcomes for the subgroup of estrogen receptor (ER)-negative patients, which has proven difficult in the past. These results demonstrated a potential of using an in vitro-based chemoresponse data as a model system in creating MGPs for stratifying patients’ therapeutic responses. Clinical utility and applications of these MGPs will need to be carefully examined with relevant clinical outcome measurements and constraints in practical use.
EFFECTIVE POTENTIAL FOR D-BRANE IN CONSTANT ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELD

We discuss the one-loop effective potential and static (large d) potential for toroidal D-brane described by DBI-action in constant magnetic and in constant electric fields. Explicit calculation is done for membrane case (p=2) for both types of external fields and in case of static potential for an arbitrary p. In the case of one-loop potential it is found that the presence of magnetic background may stabilize D-brane giving the possibility for non-pointlike ground state configuration. On the same time, constant electrical field acts against stabilization and the correspondent one-loop potential is unbounded from below. The properties of static potential which also has stable minimum are described in detail. The back-reaction of quantum gauge fields to one-loop potential is also evaluated.
Perceptual Learning via Modification of Cortical Top-Down Signals

The primary visual cortex (V1) is pre-wired to facilitate the extraction of behaviorally important visual features. Collinear edge detectors in V1, for instance, mutually enhance each other to improve the perception of lines against a noisy background. The same pre-wiring that facilitates line extraction, however, is detrimental when subjects have to discriminate the brightness of different line segments. How is it possible to improve in one task by unsupervised practicing, without getting worse in the other task? The classical view of perceptual learning is that practicing modulates the feedforward input stream through synaptic modifications onto or within V1. However, any rewiring of V1 would deteriorate other perceptual abilities different from the trained one. We propose a general neuronal model showing that perceptual learning can modulate top-down input to V1 in a task-specific way while feedforward and lateral pathways remain intact. Consistent with biological data, the model explains how context-dependent brightness discrimination is improved by a top-down recruitment of recurrent inhibition and a top-down induced increase of the neuronal gain within V1. Both the top-down modulation of inhibition and of neuronal gain are suggested to be universal features of cortical microcircuits which enable perceptual learning.
Who Gains and Who Loses from Credit Card Payments? Theory and Calibrations

Merchant fees and reward programs generate an implicit monetary transfer to credit card users from non-card (or “cash”) users because merchants generally do not set differential prices for card users to recoup the costs of fees and rewards. On average, each cash-using household pays $151 to card-using households and each card-using household receives $1,482 from cash users every year. Because credit card spending and rewards are positively correlated with household income, the payment instrument transfer also induces a regressive transfer from low-income to high-income households in general. On average, and after accounting for rewards paid to households by banks, the lowest-income household ($20,000 or less annually) pays $23 and the highest-income household ($150,000 or more annually) receives $756 every year. We build and calibrate a model of consumer payment choice to compute the effects of merchant fees and card rewards on consumer welfare. Reducing merchant fees and card rewards would likely increase consumer welfare.
Dynamical analysis of sidewinding locomotion by a snake-like robot

In this paper, a dynamical analysis of sidewinding locomotion by a snake like robot is presented. Sidewinding locomotion is treated as a planar movement for simplicity, and the normal forces acting on the grounded links and the torques applied on pitch joints are calculated by solving equilibrium equations. Energy efficiency of sidewinding locomotion is compared with that of lateral undulation. Simulation results show that the sidewinding locomotion is, generally, energetically more efficient, and in the case where the viscous coefficient is small, there is a lower bound in the mean velocity of center of mass for sidewinding locomotion to be more efficient than lateral undulation.
An examination of motivational and social psychological processes related to mental well-being during physical activity behaviour change

Physical activity (PA) is a modifiable behaviour that carries implications for the mental health of the UK. Theory-driven research highlights that the reasons why we participate in PA, not just the act of participation, carry important consequences for human psychological growth, optimal functioning and well-being. Implementing cross-sectional, longitudinal, and experimental designs, this thesis, tests the application and predictive utility of Selfdetermination theory in the health domain of PA behaviour change. Results highlight that the social-environment surrounding individuals before, during and after an exercise referral programme, along with one’s motivational regulations, have important consequences for intentions to be physically active and mental well-being. A SDT-based observational instrument operationalised the environment afforded by exercise professionals during one-to-one PA interactions. This more objective measure may provide further insight into the psychological processes responsible for behavioural and psychological outcomes. Finally, this thesis commences investigations into the moderating role of motivation on the limited self-control resource and the ability to employ counteractive control strategies that help one to achieve important health goals. Knowledge of the processes responsible for psychological health and behavioural intentions before, during and after PA interventions along with the ability to employ self-control, may carry important practical implications for future PA interventions.
Functional consequences of experience‐dependent plasticity on tactile perception following perceptual learning

Continuous training enhances perceptual discrimination and promotes neural changes in areas encoding the experienced stimuli. This type of experience‐dependent plasticity has been demonstrated in several sensory and motor systems. Particularly, non‐human primates trained to detect consecutive tactile bar indentations across multiple digits showed expanded excitatory receptive fields (RFs) in somatosensory cortex. However, the perceptual implications of these anatomical changes remain undetermined. Here, we trained human participants for 9 days on a tactile task that promoted expansion of multi‐digit RFs. Participants were required to detect consecutive indentations of bar stimuli spanning multiple digits. Throughout the training regime we tracked participants’ discrimination thresholds on spatial (grating orientation) and temporal tasks on the trained and untrained hands in separate sessions. We hypothesized that training on the multi‐digit task would decrease perceptual thresholds on tasks that require stimulus processing across multiple digits, while also increasing thresholds on tasks requiring discrimination on single digits. We observed an increase in orientation thresholds on a single digit. Importantly, this effect was selective for the stimulus orientation and hand used during multi‐digit training. We also found that temporal acuity between digits improved across trained digits, suggesting that discriminating the temporal order of multi‐digit stimuli can transfer to temporal discrimination of other tactile stimuli. These results suggest that experience‐dependent plasticity following perceptual learning improves and interferes with tactile abilities in manners predictive of the task and stimulus features used during training.
Bias towards regular configuration in 2D pointing

Extending Fitts' law to more than one dimension has been recognized as having important implications for HCI. In spite of the progress made over the years, however, it is still far from a resolved issue. Our work approaches this problem from the viewpoint of a configuration space, which has served as a useful conceptual framework for understanding human preference in perception. Notably, human are found to be biased towards regular configurations. In this work, we extended the configuration space framework to the domain of motor behavior, analyzed 2D pointing, and developed five models to account for the performance. An extensive experiment was conducted to measure the fit of the derived models and that of three previous models. Consistent with our hypothesis, the model reflecting a bias towards regular configuration was found to have the most satisfactory fit with the data. The paper concludes with discussions on improving understanding of Fitts' law and the implications for HCI.
Dual mobility total hip arthroplasty in hemiplegic patients

Introduction: The rate of cerebrovascular insults is increasing, currently leaving many patients with difficulties to maintain their balance due to muscular weakness and/or poor central control. Those patients are at risk of dislocation when total hip arthroplasty (THA) is planned. Instability remains the most significant issue after primary THA especially in such groups of patients. The risk is more pronounced when other factors are added such as, older age, femoral neck fractures, avascular necrosis and/or hip osteoarthritis. Dual mobility cup (DMC) is considered as a prosthesis with higher inherent stability that may help in such situation. In this patient series, we aimed to evaluate stability, clinical and radiological results of dual mobility THA done on the weak limb of hemiplegic patients. Methods: Twenty-four consecutive hemiplegic patients have undergone DMC with a mean age of 68 years. The indication for surgery was hip osteoarthritis in one third of the patients and femoral neck fractures in the remaining patients. Those patients were capable of walking prior to hospital admission despite weakness. Those patients were observed postoperatively for at least one year. Clinical results and complications were recorded. Results: After a minimum of one year, 91.6% of the patients have satisfactory results. No cases of hip or intraprosthetic dislocation were observed. Discussion: Dual mobility THA in the hemiplegic patients provides both efficacy and stability with good functional results.
TransG : A Generative Mixture Model for Knowledge Graph Embedding

Recently, knowledge graph embedding, which projects symbolic entities and relations into continuous vector space, has become a new, hot topic in artificial intelligence. This paper addresses a new issue of multiple relation semantics that a relation may have multiple meanings revealed by the entity pairs associated with the corresponding triples, and proposes a novel Gaussian mixture model for embedding, TransG. The new model can discover latent semantics for a relation and leverage a mixture of relation component vectors for embedding a fact triple. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first generative model for knowledge graph embedding, which is able to deal with multiple relation semantics. Extensive experiments show that the proposed model achieves substantial improvements against the state-of-the-art baselines.