Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Music, Neuroscience, and the Psychology of Well-Being: A Précis

In Flourish, the positive psychologist Seligman (2011) identifies five commonly recognized factors that are characteristic of human flourishing or well-being: (1) “positive emotion,” (2) “relationships,” (3) “engagement,” (4) “achievement,” and (5) “meaning” (p. 24). Although there is no settled set of necessary and sufficient conditions neatly circumscribing the bounds of human flourishing (Seligman, 2011), we would mostly likely consider a person that possessed high levels of these five factors as paradigmatic or prototypical of human flourishing. Accordingly, if we wanted to go about the practical task of actually increasing our level of well-being, we ought to do so by focusing on practically increasing the levels of the five factors that are characteristic of well-being. If, for instance, an activity such as musical engagement can be shown to positively influence each or all of these five factors, this would be compelling evidence that an activity such as musical engagement can positively contribute to one’s living a flourishing life. I am of the belief that psychological research can and should be used, not only to identify and diagnose maladaptive psychological states, but identify and promote adaptive psychological states as well. In this article I advance the hypothesis and provide supporting evidence for the claim that musical engagement can positively contribute to one’s living a flourishing life. Since there has not yet been a substantive and up-to-date investigation of the possible role of music in contributing to one’s living a flourishing life, the purpose of this article is to conduct this investigation, thereby bridging the gap and stimulating discussion between the psychology of music and the psychology of well-being.
A Novel Aldehyde Dehydrogenase-3 Activator (Alda-89) Protects Submandibular Gland Function from Irradiation without Accelerating Tumor Growth

Purpose: To determine the effect of Alda-89 (an ALDH3 activitor) on (i) the function of irradiated (radiotherapy) submandibular gland (SMG) in mice, (ii) its toxicity profile, and (iii) its effect on the growth of head and neck cancer (HNC) in vitro and in vivo. Experimental Design: Adult mice were infused with Alda-89 or vehicle before, during, and after radiotherapy. Saliva secretion was monitored weekly. Hematology, metabolic profile, and postmortem evaluation for toxicity were examined at the time of sacrifice. Alda-89 or vehicle was applied to HNC cell lines in vitro, and severe combined immunodeficient (SCID) mice transplanted with HNC in vivo with or without radiation; HNC growth was monitored. The ALDH3A1 and ALDH3A2 protein expression was evaluated in 89 patients with HNC and correlated to freedom from relapse (FFR) and overall survival (OS). Results: Alda-89 infusion significantly resulted in more whole saliva production and a higher percentage of preserved acini after radiotherapy compared with vehicle control. There was no difference in the complete blood count, metabolic profile, and major organ morphology between the Alda-89 and vehicle groups. Compared with vehicle control, Alda-89 treatment neither accelerated HNC cell proliferation in vitro, nor did it affect tumor growth in vivo with or without radiotherapy. Higher expression of ALDH3A1 or ALDH3A2 was not significantly associated with worse FFR or OS in either human papillomavirus (HPV)-positive or HPV-negative group. Conclusion: Alda-89 preserves salivary function after radiotherapy without affecting HNC growth or causing measurable toxicity in mice. It is a promising candidate to mitigate radiotherapy-related xerostomia. Clin Cancer Res; 19(16); 4455–64. ©2013 AACR.
Better Alignments = Better Translations?

Automatic word alignment is a key step in training statistical machine translation systems. Despite much recent work on word alignment methods, alignment accuracy increases often produce little or no improvements in machine translation quality. In this work we analyze a recently proposed agreement-constrained EM algorithm for unsupervised alignment models. We attempt to tease apart the effects that this simple but effective modification has on alignment precision and recall trade-offs, and how rare and common words are affected across several language pairs. We propose and extensively evaluate a simple method for using alignment models to produce alignments better-suited for phrase-based MT systems, and show significant gains (as measured by BLEU score) in end-to-end translation systems for six languages pairs used in recent MT competitions.
McGill Thyroid Nodule Score (MTNS): "rating the risk," a novel predictive scheme for cancer risk determination.

OBJECTIVE There are presently a great number of publications pertaining to the clinical risk factors associated with thyroid cancer. These studies deal mostly with a single feature from either patient demographics, physical examination, laboratory values, imaging, or cytology. We sought to create a novel scoring system that integrates the diagnostic indices of each of these clinical features for carcinoma. METHODS A retrospective analysis of 1047 consecutive thyroidectomy patients was performed. Each patient was assigned a cancer risk score according to a newly devised 22-variable scoring scheme termed the McGill Thyroid Nodule Score (MTNS). The MTNS was developed by a multidisciplinary team of endocrinologists, thyroid surgeons, and pathologists using already established evidence-based risk factors for thyroid cancer. RESULTS The exact incidence of malignancy was calculated for each MTNS score based on final pathology. The incidence for scores of 1 to 3 was 27%, of 4 to 7 was 32%, of 8 was 39%, of 9 to 11 was 63%, of 12 to 13 was 88%, and of 14 to 18 was 93%. All (130 of 130) patients with a score ≥ 19 had carcinoma. A score ≤ 8 correlated with a 32% (115 of 357) risk of thyroid cancer, whereas a score > 8 implied an 86% (417 of 487) risk. CONCLUSION Our data suggest that a combined scoring system, the MTNS, can serve as an accurate predictor of the risk for thyroid cancer in a specific thyroid nodule. This will help physicians better formulate management decisions accordingly.
Emerging Role of Long Non-Coding RNA SOX2OT in SOX2 Regulation in Breast Cancer

The transcription factor SOX2 is essential for maintaining pluripotency in a variety of stem cells. It has important functions during embryonic development, is involved in cancer stem cell maintenance, and is often deregulated in cancer. The mechanism of SOX2 regulation has yet to be clarified, but the SOX2 gene lies in an intron of a long multi-exon non-coding RNA called SOX2 overlapping transcript (SOX2OT). Here, we show that the expression of SOX2 and SOX2OT is concordant in breast cancer, differentially expressed in estrogen receptor positive and negative breast cancer samples and that both are up-regulated in suspension culture conditions that favor growth of stem cell phenotypes. Importantly, ectopic expression of SOX2OT led to an almost 20-fold increase in SOX2 expression, together with a reduced proliferation and increased breast cancer cell anchorage-independent growth. We propose that SOX2OT plays a key role in the induction and/or maintenance of SOX2 expression in breast cancer.
The Politics of Compromise

A team must select among competing projects that differ in their payoff consequences for its members. Each agent chooses a project and exerts costly effort affecting its random completion time. When one or more projects are complete, agents bargain over which one to implement. A consensus requirement can (but need not) induce the efficient balance between compromise in project selection and equilibrium effort. Imposing deadlines for presenting counteroffers is beneficial, while delegating decision-making to an impartial third party leads agents to select extreme projects. Finally, hiring agents with opposed interests can foster both effort and compromise in project selection.
Online traffic classification based on sub-flows

Traffic classification by application class provides useful information for various tasks of network engineering and administration. However, offline classification of flows has limited its practical application to auditing tasks, long-term planning and other analytical issues. Therefore, research on traffic classification now moves towards the search for accurate and efficient methods of classification in order to meet online tasks such as traffic monitoring and shaping and other specific-application operations. In this work we apply the One-Against-All Approach (OAA) for two online classification strategies based on statistical features of TCP sub-flows. One uses the first N packets of the bi-directional TCP session and the other applies to sub-flows of the N packets starting at a random position in the flow. In our variant of the OAA approach, the problem of classifying an object in one of M classes is reduced to M binary classification problems with an associated decision rule, with each of them possibly using a different subset of features and sub-flow size. We investigated the effect of variation in the amount of N on the results of classification and the smaller set of variables in each of the above problems. This study used the Naïve Bayes classifier.
Gamified co-design with cooperative learning

Co-design is an ideal approach to design with mixed teams that include learners and teachers. However, in modern learning contexts, learning and engagement are both key goals, and that poses several challenges to co-design. This paper investigates such challenges after outlining co-design and situating it in current user experience design trends. Then the paper uses the challenges to derive requirements for co-design, and shows how to meet requirements, fostering engagement as well as learning, by blending co-design with gamification and cooperative learning. It ends by showcasing a study that uses the blended co-design approach, and by outlining how this led to novel challenges and work.
Sensitive Detection of Colorectal Cancer in Peripheral Blood by Septin 9 DNA Methylation Assay

Background Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the second leading cause of cancer deaths despite the fact that detection of this cancer in early stages results in over 90% survival rate. Currently less than 45% of at-risk individuals in the US are screened regularly, exposing a need for better screening tests. We performed two case-control studies to validate a blood-based test that identifies methylated DNA in plasma from all stages of CRC. Methodology/Principal Findings Using a PCR assay for analysis of Septin 9 (SEPT9) hypermethylation in DNA extracted from plasma, clinical performance was optimized on 354 samples (252 CRC, 102 controls) and validated in a blinded, independent study of 309 samples (126 CRC, 183 controls). 168 polyps and 411 additional disease controls were also evaluated. Based on the training study SEPT9-based classification detected 120/252 CRCs (48%) and 7/102 controls (7%). In the test study 73/126 CRCs (58%) and 18/183 control samples (10%) were positive for SEPT9 validating the training set results. Inclusion of an additional measurement replicate increased the sensitivity of the assay in the testing set to 72% (90/125 CRCs detected) while maintaining 90% specificity (19/183 for controls). Positive rates for plasmas from the other cancers (11/96) and non-cancerous conditions (41/315) were low. The rate of polyp detection (>1 cm) was ∼20%. Conclusions/Significance Analysis of SEPT9 DNA methylation in plasma represents a straightforward, minimally invasive method to detect all stages of CRC with potential to satisfy unmet needs for increased compliance in the screening population. Further clinical testing is warranted.
Modelling glacier topography in Antarctica using unmanned aerial survey: assessment of opportunities

ABSTRACT We discuss the application of unmanned aerial systems (UASs) and UAS-derived data to model glacier topography for detecting and analysing slow and rapid changes in glacier surfaces. The study was conducted in East Antarctica in the austral summer 2016/2017. The surveyed areas included an eastern part of the Larsemann Hills, an Airfield of the Progress Station, an initial section of a Sledge route from the Progress to Vostok Stations, and a north-western margin of the Dålk Glacier. We used a Geoscan 201 Geodesy, a professional-grade flying-wing UAS. For the photogrammetric processing, we utilized the Agisoft PhotoScan software. The direct georeferencing approach was applied. Several high-resolution, multitemporal digital elevation models (DEMs) for surveyed areas were produced. The DEM accuracy was estimated in the absence of ground control points and reference DEMs. We determined the ice flow velocity within the Airfield area and the Sledge route zone, where marked points were installed and moved together with the ice surface. We found that UAS imagery can be used for real-time monitoring of open and some snow-covered crevasses of various sizes. Wind-driven snow microforms are also well recognizable on UAS-derived aerial images. The 2017 Dålk Glacier catastrophic subsidence demonstrated that monitoring and studying such events in glaciers and ice sheets are almost impossible without UASs. Optimal meteorological conditions were empirically determined for conducting unmanned aerial survey to obtain images suitable for subsequent photogrammetric processing and DEM generation. Finally, we discuss adaptation of equipment and software to the Antarctic environment.
Sex-Specific Differences in Shoaling Affect Parasite Transmission in Guppies

Background Individuals have to trade-off the costs and benefits of group membership during shoaling behaviour. Shoaling can increase the risk of parasite transmission, but this cost has rarely been quantified experimentally. Guppies (Poecilia reticulata) are a model system for behavioural studies, and they are commonly infected by gyrodactylid parasites, notorious fish pathogens that are directly transmitted between guppy hosts. Methodology/Principal Findings Parasite transmission in single sex shoals of male and female guppies were observed using an experimental infection of Gyrodactylus turnbulli. Parasite transmission was affected by sex-specific differences in host behaviour, and significantly more parasites were transmitted when fish had more frequent and more prolonged contact with each other. Females shoaled significantly more than males and had a four times higher risk to contract an infection. Conclusions/Significance Intersexual differences in host behaviours such as shoaling are driven by differences in natural and sexual selection experienced by both sexes. Here we show that the potential benefits of an increased shoaling tendency are traded off against increased risks of contracting an infectious parasite in a group-living species.
Coping and stress in Canadian family caregivers of persons with traumatic brain injuries.

The purpose of this study was to document the stresses reported by Canadian caregivers of persons with brain injuries and to consider the factors which serve to mediate or moderate such stress. Highest stress scores on the Holroyd Questionnaire on Resources and Stress-Short Form (QRS) were associated with Lifespan Care and Personal Burden. Although overall burden as reported on the QRS by parents and spouses did not differ from other studies, it did differ somewhat for specific types of burden. Social Support and Spiritual Support, as measured by the F-COPES, fell within the medium use category, and scores for Reframing, Mobilizing and Passive Appraisal fell within the high use category. In multiple regression analyses, client competency as measured by the Patient Competency Rating Scale emerged as a major predictor of stress associated with Cognitive Impairment, Physical Limitations, Lifespan Care, Terminal Illness Stress, Limits on Family Opportunities, and Personal Burden. In contrast, other client characteristics (e.g. Time Since Injury) accounted for relatively little variance. The results also indicate that both Refraining and Seeking Spiritual Support as coping strategies can make an important contribution to stress reduction.
The Impact of Cash Budgets on Poverty Reduction in Zambia: A Case Study of the Conflict between Well-Intentioned Macroeconomic Policy and Service Delivery to the Poor

Facing runaway inflation and budget discipline problems in the early 1990s, the Zambian government introduced the so-called cash budget in which government domestic spending is limited to domestic revenue, leaving no room for excess spending. The authors review Zambia's experience during the past decade, focusing on the impact of the cash budget on poverty reduction. They conclude that after some initial success in reducing hyperinflation, the cash budget has largely failed to keep inflation at low levels, created a false sense of fiscal security, and distracted policymakers from addressing the fundamental issue of fiscal discipline. More important, it has had a deeply pernicious effect on the quality of service delivery to the poor. Features inherent to the cash budgeting system facilitated a substantial redirection of resources away from the intended targets, such as agencies and ministries that provide social and economic services. The cash budget also eliminated the predictability of cash releases, making effective planning by line ministries difficult. Going forward, Zambia must adopt measures that over time will restore the commitment to budget discipline and shelter budget execution decisions from the pressures of purely short-term exigencies.
High rates of physician services utilization at least five years before multiple sclerosis diagnosis

Background: Multiple sclerosis (MS) management has changed over time, but changes in health care utilization by MS patients remain understudied. We estimated physician services utilization in the five-year periods before and after MS diagnosis, and over the period 1984–2008. Methods: Using administrative data we identified 4092 persons with MS and a matched general population (GPOP) cohort of 21,446 persons. Using general linear models we compared physician visits between the MS and GPOPs for the period 1984–2008, the year of MS diagnosis, and for the five-year periods pre- and post-diagnosis. Results: From 1984 to 2008, 98% of the MS population averaged ≥1 physician visits/year versus 87% of the GPOP. In 2008, the MS population had 12.9 physician visits/person-year while the GPOP had 8.4 (rate ratio (RR) 1.53; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.52–1.55). Five years pre-MS diagnosis, the MS population had more physician visits than the GPOP (RR 1.15; 95% CI; 1.10–1.21). The number of visits peaked the year of MS diagnosis (19.0), decreasing thereafter, but remaining elevated versus the pre-diagnosis period. Conclusion: The MS population uses more physician services than the GPOP, starting at least five years pre-MS diagnosis. A better understanding of the reasons for these higher utilization rates may ultimately improve outcomes in MS.
High dose chemotherapy and autologous stem cell transplantation as adjuvant therapy for primary breast cancer patients with four or more lymph nodes involved: long-term results of an international randomised trial.

BACKGROUND The purpose of this study was to assess whether a short course of anthracycline containing chemotherapy followed by high dose therapy with autologous stem-cell support improves disease-free and overall survival as compared with conventional, anthracycline containing chemotherapy, in patients with primary breast cancer and four or more histologically involved lymph nodes. PATIENTS AND METHODS Two hundred and eighty one patients entered into a randomised clinical trial were allocated to receive standard, conventional treatment (5-fluorouracil, epirubicin and cyclophosphamide-FEC for six cycles) or FEC for three cycles followed by high dose therapy consisting of cyclophosphamide, thiotepa and carboplatin and stem cell rescue (HDT). To be eligible, patients had to be free of overt metastatic disease and be < or =60 years of age. Analyses were according to intention to treat. RESULTS At a median follow up of 68 months, 118 patients have experienced a relapse or death from breast cancer (62 in the FEC followed by HDT arm and 56 in the conventional FEC arm) and a total of 100 patients have died (54 in the FEC followed by HDT arm and 46 in the conventional FEC arm). No significant difference was observed in relapse-free survival [hazard ratio 1.06, 95% CI 0.74-1.52, p = 0.76] or overall survival [hazard ratio 1.18, 95% CI 0.80-1.75, p = 0.40]. Five patients died from treatment related causes, three as a consequence of HDT and two in the conventional FEC arm. CONCLUSIONS At the present time, no benefit has been observed from replacing three cycles of conventional chemotherapy with the HDT regimen described here. Patients should continue to receive conventional chemotherapy as adjuvant therapy for breast cancer.
Evaluation of periodontal status in alcoholic liver cirrhosis patients: a comparative study.

AIM Bacterial infections are common complicating findings in course of liver cirrhosis, most of them being Gram-negative. Similarly periodontal pathogens are also mostly Gram-negative bacteria hence the objective was to evaluate the periodontal status in alcoholic liver cirrhosis patients and to compare the periodontal status of alcoholic liver cirrhosis patients in: a. Smokers with periodontitis and b. Nonsmokers with periodontitis. MATERIALS AND METHODS A total of 150 patients made up the sample of this study. The sample size was divided into four groups. The first two groups comprised of 50 patients each comprising of patients with periodontitis who were nonsmokers and patients with periodontitis who were smokers respectively and the next two groups comprised of 25 patients each, which included patients diagnosed as suffering from alcoholic liver cirrhosis who are nonsmokers and patients diagnosed as suffering from alcoholic liver cirrhosis who are smokers. Screening examination included a proper medical history, dental history and Russell's periodontal index was done to evaluate and compare the periodontal status among the selected groups. RESULTS The data obtained was subjected to statistical analysis using the ANOVA Fisher's F-test. Multiple group comparisons were made using the Tukey's HSD test. CONCLUSION Conclusions that can be drawn from this study are: 1. Alcoholic liver cirrhosis patients demonstrated greater alveolar bone loss and increased periodontal destruction. 2. There is very high statistically significant difference on periodontal destruction in alcoholic liver cirrhosis patients (with or without smokers) when compared to the control group. CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE Periodontal diseases are bacterial infections associated with a bacterial load or insult to the host that elicits a strong inflammatory response cumulating to produce significant pathologic alterations in the systemic status of the host. Alcoholic liver cirrhosis patients as a consequence of liver dysfunction have elevated levels of serum cytokines. These are involved in the destructive process of periodontal disease probably through enhancement of collagenase and metalloproteinase activity. Hence, a study has been planned to evaluate periodontal status in patients with alcoholic liver cirrhosis.