Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Low-temperature orientation dependence of step stiffness on {111} surfaces

For hexagonal nets, descriptive of {111} fcc surfaces, we derive from combinatoric arguments a simple, low-temperature formula for the orientation dependence of the surface step line tension and stiffness, as well as the leading correction, based on the Ising model with nearest-neighbor (NN) interactions. Our formula agrees well with experimental data for both Ag and Cu{111} surfaces, indicating that NN interactions alone can account for the data in these cases (in contrast to results for Cu{001}). Experimentally significant corollaries of the low-temperature derivation show that the step line tension cannot be extracted from the stiffness and that with plausible assumptions the low-temperature stiffness should have six-fold symmetry, in contrast to the three fold symmetry of the crystal shape. We examine Zia's exact implicit solution in detail, using numerical methods for general orientations and deriving many analytic results including explicit solutions in the two high-symmetry directions. From these exact results we rederive our simple result and explore subtle behavior near close-packed directions. To account for the three-fold symmetry in a lattice gas model, we invoke an orientation-dependent trio interaction and examine its consequences.
Mechanisms of L-Triiodothyronine-Induced Inhibition of Synaptosomal Na+-K+-ATPase Activity in Young Adult Rat Brain Cerebral Cortex

The role of thyroid hormones (TH) in the normal functioning of adult mammalian brain is unclear. Our studies have identified synaptosomal Na+-K+-ATPase as a TH-responsive physiological parameter in adult rat cerebral cortex. L-triiodothyronine (T3) and L-thyroxine (T4) both inhibited Na+-K+-ATPase activity (but not Mg2+-ATPase activity) in similar dose-dependent fashions, while other metabolites of TH were less effective. Although both T3 and the β-adrenergic agonist isoproterenol inhibited Na+-K+-ATPase activity in cerebrocortical synaptosomes in similar ways, the β-adrenergic receptor blocker propranolol did not counteract the effect of T3. Instead, propranolol further inhibited Na+-K+-ATPase activity in a dose-dependent manner, suggesting that the effect of T3 on synaptosomal Na+-K+-ATPase activity was independent of β-adrenergic receptor activation. The effect of T3 on synaptosomal Na+-K+-ATPase activity was inhibited by the α2-adrenergic agonist clonidine and by glutamate. Notably, both clonidine and glutamate activate Gi-proteins of the membrane second messenger system, suggesting a potential mechanism for the inhibition of the effects of TH. In this paper, we provide support for a nongenomic mechanism of action of TH in a neuronal membrane-related energy-linked process for signal transduction in the adult condition.
Profile of intrauterine contraceptive device acceptors at the University of Uyo Teaching Hospital, Uyo, Nigeria.

BACKGROUND Use of modern contraceptive methods has been shown to reduce unwanted pregnancy, high parity and maternal mortality. Intrauterine contraceptive devices which are among the safest and most effective reversible contraceptives available, are particularly suitable for women in developing countries as they are affordable, convenient to use, do not require re -supply visits and are very cost-effective. The aim of this study is to determine the socio-demographic characteristics of intrauterine contraceptive device acceptors, the pattern of insertions and complications at the University of Uyo Teaching hospital, Uyo. METHOD The record cards of all clients who had intrauterine contraceptive device inserted at the family planning clinic over a six-year period were reviewed. RESULTS During the study period, there were 852 new contraceptive acceptors out of which 39.7% accepted the intrauterine contraceptive device. The modal age group of the clients was 25-29 years (32.5%). Acceptance of intrauterine contraceptive device was most common among multiparous clients (65.1%). Majority of the acceptors were married (90.0%), Christians (98.8%) and 72.8% had at least secondary school education. Clinic personnel (65.7%) and friends/relatives (21.3%) were the most common sources of information on contraception. Most (93.5%) of the clients had their intrauterine contraceptive devices inserted within 7 days of menstruation. Lower abdominal pain (5.5%) and vulval/vaginal itching (5.3%) were the most common complications. CONCLUSION The acceptors of intrauterine contraceptive devices in our center were young, multiparous and educated women. Increasing mass media involvement in the dissemination of accurate information about intrauterine contraceptive devices to the general populace, the introduction of postpartum and post-abortal intrauterine contraceptive device insertions and the encouragement of our grandmultiparous women to accept intrauterine contraceptive device would lead to an increase in its acceptance and use.
Asymptotics of an optimal compliance-network problem

We consider the problem of the optimal location of a Dirichlet region in a $d$-dimensional domain $\Omega$ subjected to a given force $f$ in order to minimize the $p$-compliance of the configuration. We look for the optimal region among the class of all closed connected sets of assigned length $l. $ Then we let the length $l$ tend to infinity and we look at the $\Gamma$-limit of a suitable rescaled functional, from which we get information of the asymptotic distribution of the optimal region. We also study the case where the Dirichlet region is a discrete set of finite cardinality.
Transcriptomic Profiling of the Development of the Inflammatory Response in Human Monocytes In Vitro

Monocytes/macrophages are key players in all phases of physiological and pathological inflammation. To understanding the regulation of macrophage functional differentiation during inflammation, we designed an in vitro model that recapitulates the different phases of the reaction (recruitment, initiation, development, and resolution), based on human primary blood monocytes exposed to sequential changes in microenvironmental conditions. All reaction phases were profiled by transcriptomic microarray analysis. Distinct clusters of genes were identified that are differentially regulated through the different phases of inflammation. The gene sets defined by GSEA analysis revealed that the inflammatory phase was enriched in inflammatory pathways, while the resolution phase comprised pathways related to metabolism and gene rearrangement. By comparing gene clusters differentially expressed in monocytes vs. M1 and vs. M2 macrophages extracted from an in-house created meta-database, it was shown that cells in the model resemble M1 during the inflammatory phase and M2 during resolution. The validation of inflammatory and transcriptional factors by qPCR and ELISA confirmed the transcriptomic profiles in the different phases of inflammation. The accurate description of the development of the human inflammatory reaction provided by this in vitro kinetic model can help in identifying regulatory mechanisms in physiological conditions and during pathological derangements.
Filling an Empty Self: The Impact of Social Exclusion on Consumer Preference for Visual Density

This research examines the effect of social exclusion on consumers’ preferences for visual density. Based on seven experimental studies, we reveal that consumers who perceive themselves as socially excluded evaluate products with dense visual patterns more positively than their nonexcluded peers. This effect occurs because social exclusion triggers a feeling of psychological emptiness and dense patterns can provide a sense of being “filled,” which helps to alleviate this feeling of emptiness. This effect is attenuated when consumers physically fill something or experience a feeling of “temporal density” (i.e., imagining a busy schedule with many tasks packed into a short time). These results shed light on consumers’ socially grounded product aesthetic preferences and offer practical implications for marketers, designers, and policy makers.
Angiotensin II indirectly vasoconstricts the ovine uterine circulation.

The uterine vasculature of women and sheep predominantly expresses type 2 ANG II receptors that do not mediate vasoconstriction. Although systemic ANG II infusions increase uterine vascular resistance (UVR), this could reflect indirect mechanisms. Thus we compared systemic and local intra-arterial ANG II infusions in six near-term pregnant and five ovariectomized nonpregnant ewes to determine how ANG II increases UVR. Systemic ANG II dose-dependently (P > 0.001) increased arterial pressure (MAP) and UVR and decreased uterine blood flow (UBF) in pregnant and nonpregnant ewes; however, nonpregnant responses exceeded pregnant (P < 0.001). In contrast, local ANG II infusions at rates designed to achieve concentrations in the uterine circulation comparable to those seen during systemic infusions did not significantly decrease UBF in either group, and changes in MAP and UVR were absent or markedly attenuated. When MAP rose during local ANG II, which only occurred with doses > or =2 ng/ml, increases in MAP were delayed more than twofold compared with responses during systemic ANG II infusions and always preceded decreases in UBF, resembling that observed during systemic ANG II infusions. These observations demonstrate attenuated uterine vascular responses to systemic ANG II during pregnancy and suggest that systemic ANG II may increase UVR through release of another potent vasoconstrictor(s) into the systemic circulation.
An Active Learning Algorithm for Control of Epidural Electrostimulation

Epidural electrostimulation has shown promise for spinal cord injury therapy. However, finding effective stimuli on the multi-electrode stimulating arrays employed requires a laborious manual search of a vast space for each patient. Widespread clinical application of these techniques would be greatly facilitated by an autonomous, algorithmic system which choses stimuli to simultaneously deliver effective therapy and explore this space. We propose a method based on GP-BUCB, a Gaussian process bandit algorithm. In n = 4 spinally transected rats, we implant epidural electrode arrays and examine the algorithm's performance in selecting bipolar stimuli to elicit specified muscle responses. These responses are compared with temporally interleaved intra-animal stimulus selections by a human expert. GP-BUCB successfully controlled the spinal electrostimulation preparation in 37 testing sessions, selecting 670 stimuli. These sessions included sustained autonomous operations (ten-session duration). Delivered performance with respect to the specified metric was as good as or better than that of the human expert. Despite receiving no information as to anatomically likely locations of effective stimuli, GP-BUCB also consistently discovered such a pattern. Further, GP-BUCB was able to extrapolate from previous sessions' results to make predictions about performance in new testing sessions, while remaining sufficiently flexible to capture temporal variability. These results provide validation for applying automated stimulus selection methods to the problem of spinal cord injury therapy.
The impact of frequency-flat fading on the spectral efficiency of CDMA

The capacity of the randomly spread synchronous code-division multiple-access (CDMA) channel subject to frequency-flat fading is studied in the wide-band limit of large number of users. We find the spectral efficiency as a function of the number of users per chip, the distribution of the flat fading, and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), for the optimum receiver as well as linear receivers (single-user matched filter, decorrelator, and minimum mean-square error (MMSE)). The potential improvements due to both decentralized transmitter power control and multi-antenna receivers are also analyzed.
Acquisition of Elementary Robot Skills from Human Demonstration

Similarly to human voluntary movements, a robot's elementary skills can coarsely be divided into two main categories: rapid transfer movements that are executed in an open loop with no opportunity for correction and slower controlled movements guided by sensorial feedback [6]. In this paper we consider two particular problems which arise when acquiring open-loop and closed-loop elementary skills: the segmentation of the trajectory into time intervals corresponding to di(cid:11)erent classes of the operator's motion and the preprocessing of the possibly bad examples that were recorded during a demonstration in order to make them suitable for skill learning. The proposed methods are based on the fuzzy set theory, statistics, and Shannon's information theory.
Level of knowledge, practices and attitudes of dairy farmers regarding food safety in Turkey.

This study was aimed to reveal the knowledge levels, attitude and mentality re garding food safety of dairy farmers located in the Province of Izmir . 103 surveys were carried out; five counties and 20 villages in these five counties were involved in the surveys. In measuring the knowledge levels and in determining the current practices of farmers, a Five-Point Likert Scale was applied by setting «one» as «very low» and «five» as «very high». According to the obtained results, the knowledge level of farmers in the studied facilities was assessed to be quite poor. In consideration of the poor knowledge of farmers, the prior short-term objective should be the education of farmers on food safety issues. The extension activities should be started up for the sake of a continuous education and knowledge traffic. The current farming practices should be inspected by the raw milk buyers; fur thermore, as prescribed by law, all stakeholders working in the sector must be sys tematically inspected by the Ministry of Agriculture. The survey was carried out on commercial facilities supplying raw material to the dairy industry that were chosen on the basis of their suitability to the purpose of the study. The paper adds to the body of knowledge on dairy farmers and their attitudes to food safety and suggests the implementation of various practices which could improve results.
Impact of Glutathione-S-Transferases (GST) Polymorphisms and Hypermethylation of Relevant Genes on Risk of Prostate Cancer Biochemical Recurrence: A Meta-Analysis

Introduction Accurate prediction of the biochemical recurrence (BCR) is critical for patients after intended curative therapy like radical prostatectomy (RP) or definitive radiotherapy for prostate cancer. Glutathione-S-transferases polymorphisms as well as hypermethylation of GSTP1 and functional genes in carcinogenesis, including tumor suppression gene (APC), hormone receptor that regulates cell growth and differentiation gene (RARbeta) were reported to be associated with BCR. Nevertheless, the reported results are inconsistent. To evaluate the relationship between glutathione-S-transferases polymorphisms and hypermethylation of these genes and the risk of prostate cancer BCR, we carried out a meta-analysis of the published studies. Methods and Materials We performed a search in Medline, Embase and CNKI database with GST, APC, RARbeta in combination with single nucleotide polymorphism, hypermethylation, prostate cancer and recurrence. Languages were restricted to English and Chinese. Results Our study included 4 case-control studies and 7 cohort studies including 12 data sets and 3,037 prostate cancer patients. We confirmed that APC hypermethylation is associated with a modest hazard for biochemical recurrence after RP (HR = 1.85, 95%CI = 1.12–3.06). We also suggest GSTP1 polymorphism and CpG hypermethylation tested in serum are associated with BCR (HR = 1.94, 95%CI = 1.13–3.34). We also identified a possible association between GSTM1 null polymorphism and prostate cancer biochemical recurrence risk with borderline significance (HR = 1.29, 95%CI = 0.97–1.71). Conclusion To our knowledge, this is the first meta-analysis evaluating the relationship of polymorphisms and hypermethylation in GSTs and biochemical recurrence. GSTM1, GSTP1 polymorphisms and hypermethylation of GSTP1, APC may be potential biomarkers for the evaluation of the probability of BCR. Further studies are warranted to validate these findings in larger cohorts with longer follow-up.
Inter-destination synchronization quality in an integrated wired and wireless network with handover

This paper presents experimental results of inter-destination synchronization control in an integrated wired and wireless network. The experimental system consists of interconnected wired and wireless networks; the former is a router-based IP network, and the latter is a wireless LAN with two base stations. A server in the wired network multicasts a pair of audio and video streams to a terminal in the same wired network and a wireless terminal, which performs handover from one base station to the other. We exert inter-destination synchronization control between the two terminals using the synchronization maestro scheme, which the authors previously proposed. In the experiment, we measured the synchronization quality of inter-destination as well as intra-stream and inter-stream when handover occurred, and we confirmed the effectiveness of the control.
Towards rich mobile phone datasets: Lausanne data collection campaign

Mobile phones have recently been used to collect large-scale continuous data about human behavior. In a paradigm known as people centric sensing, users are not only the carriers of sensing devices, but also the sources and consumers of sensed events. This paper describes a data collection campaign wherein Nokia N95 phones are allocated to a heterogeneous sample of nearly 170 participants from Lausanne, a mid-tier city in Switzerland, to be used over a period of one year. The data collection software runs on the background of the phones in a non-intrusive manner, yielding data on modalities such as social interaction and spatial behavior. The main motivations for organizing a new campaign on top of the ones that have been successfully conducted in the past are the following: First, in comparison to the Reality Mining data, generated in 2004-2005, the present data set is expected to provide a richer means to study location attributes, in particular, because today’s mobile phones are more powerful and equipped with more sensors. Second, we aim to recruit a heterogeneous set of participants, comprising family and leisure related social networks in addition to organizationally driven ones. This paper provides a methodological description of the project and shows the potential of the resulting data set in terms of illuminating multiple aspects of human behavior.
Variability of Sagittarius A*: Flares at 1 Millimeter

We report the results from recent observations of Sgr A* at short-/submillimeter wavelengths made with the partially finished Submillimeter Array (SMA) on Mauna Kea. A total of 25 epochs of observations were carried out over the past 15 months from 2001 March to 2002 May. Noticeable variations in flux density at 1.3 mm were observed showing three "flares. " The SMA observations suggest that Sgr A* highly increases toward submillimeter wavelengths during a flare, suggesting the presence of a break wavelength in spectral index around 3 mm. A cross-correlation of the SMA data at 1 mm with the Very Large Array data at 1 cm shows a global delay of tdelay > 3 days, suggesting that submillimeter wavelengths tend to peak first. Only marginal day-to-day variations in flux density (2-3 σ) have been detected at 1.3 mm. No significant flares on a short timescale (~1 hr) have been observed at 1.3 mm. We also failed to detect significant periodic signals at a level of 5% (3 σ) from Sgr A* in a periodic searching window ranging from 10 minutes to 2.5 hr. The flares observed at the wavelengths between short-centimeter and submillimeter might be a result of collective mass ejections associated with X-ray flares that originate from the inner region of the accretion disk near the supermassive black hole.
Value Judgements and Continuing Education

This article examines the perceived value of continuing education courses and discusses how value is related to satisfaction, value for money judgements and willingness to pay for education. Data was collected through an online survey at four universities in two nations. A four-factor value structure was identified with the following dimensions: institutional image, career value, learning value, and social value. Differences between Austrian and New Zealand based respondents in the relative importance of the four dimensions were observed and the possible origins of these differences are explored. We propose a theoretically informed model that is consistent with our observations.
Prevalence and factors associated with convulsive status epilepticus in Africans with epilepsy

Objective: We conducted a community survey to estimate the prevalence and describe the features, risk factors, and consequences of convulsive status epilepticus (CSE) among people with active convulsive epilepsy (ACE) identified in a multisite survey in Africa. Methods: We obtained clinical histories of CSE and neurologic examination data among 1,196 people with ACE identified from a population of 379,166 people in 3 sites: Agincourt, South Africa; Iganga-Mayuge, Uganda; and Kilifi, Kenya. We performed serologic assessment for the presence of antibodies to parasitic infections and HIV and determined adherence to antiepileptic drugs. Consequences of CSE were assessed using a questionnaire. Logistic regression was used to identify risk factors. Results: The adjusted prevalence of CSE in ACE among the general population across the 3 sites was 2.3 per 1,000, and differed with site (p < 0.0001). Over half (55%) of CSE occurred in febrile illnesses and focal seizures were present in 61%. Risk factors for CSE in ACE were neurologic impairments, acute encephalopathy, previous hospitalization, and presence of antibody titers to falciparum malaria and HIV; these differed across sites. Burns (15%), lack of education (49%), being single (77%), and unemployment (78%) were common in CSE; these differed across the 3 sites. Nine percent with and 10% without CSE died. Conclusions: CSE is common in people with ACE in Africa; most occurs with febrile illnesses, is untreated, and has focal features suggesting preventable risk factors. Effective prevention and the management of infections and neurologic impairments may reduce the burden of CSE in ACE.
On Graduation from Default, Inflation, and Banking Crises: Elusive or Illusion?

This paper uses a data set of over two hundred years of sovereign debt, banking and inflation crises to explore the question of how long it takes a country to "graduate" from the typical pattern of serial crisis that most emerging markets experience. We find that for default and inflation crises, twenty years is a significant market, but the distribution of recidivism has extremely fat tails. In the case of banking crises, it is unclear whether countries ever graduate. We also examine the more recent phenomenon of IMF programs, which sometimes result in "near misses" but sometimes end in default even after a program is instituted. The paper raises the important theoretical question of why countries experience serial default, and how they might graduate.