Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Management of Chronic Kidney Disease: What is the Evidence?

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a strong risk factor for cardiovascular events and death. Hypertension, dyslipidemia, anemia, vascular calcification, and secondary hyperparathyroidism have all been implicated in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease associated with CKD. Numerous trials have been performed assessing the effects of modifying these risk factors on cardiovascular events and on the progression to end-stage renal disease. Many guidelines have been issued. In this article we review the guidelines and the strength of evidence supporting them. Specifically, we discuss blood pressure goals for patients with CKD, the role of renin-angiotensin system blocking agents for blood pressure control and proteinuria reduction, and the evidence for treatment recommendations of dyslipidemia. We review the trials addressing risks and benefits of different hemoglobin targets for treatment of anemia with erythropoietin. The use of phosphate-binding drugs to prevent and treat secondary hyperparathyroidism is likely beneficial, but few data support the use of vitamin D compounds. Supplementation with sodium bicarbonate may be an inexpensive treatment to retard progression to end-stage renal disease. The article concludes with a discussion of the case vignette presented in the previous article.
The Adventure of Urban Tourism

Abstract Tourism is a social phenomenon of the modern world. Analysis has hitherto underutilised conceptual frameworks developed in sociology. Here an attempt is made to rectify this shortcoming through a synthesis of conceptual territory relating to adventure tourism in an urban setting. In particular the discussion draws upon socially constructed understandings of risk and adventure to set out a framework for the future investigation of urban based adventure tourism. It is suggested that, by understanding tourism as a structuring system in a world of high modernity, it becomes possible to both understand the flow of images, money, ideas and people that are constituent of tourism and thereby predict future patterns in tourist consumer behaviour.
Publishing Attributed Social Graphs with Formal Privacy Guarantees

Many data analysis tasks rely on the abstraction of a graph to represent relations between entities, with attributes on the nodes and edges. Since the relationships encoded are often sensitive, we seek effective ways to release representative graphs which nevertheless protect the privacy of the data subjects. Prior work on this topic has focused primarily on the graph structure in isolation, and has not provided ways to handle richer graphs with correlated attributes. We introduce an approach to release such graphs under the strong guarantee of differential privacy. We adapt existing graph models, and introduce a new one, and show how to augment them with meaningful privacy. This provides a complete workflow, where the input is a sensitive graph, and the output is a realistic synthetic graph. Our experimental study demonstrates that our process produces useful, accurate attributed graphs.
Novel Mechanism of Glycopeptide Resistance in the A40926 Producer Nonomuraea sp. ATCC 39727

ABSTRACT In glycopeptide-resistant enterococci and staphylococci, high-level resistance is achieved by replacing the C-terminal d-alanyl-d-alanine of lipid II with d-alanyl-d-lactate, thus reducing glycopeptide affinity for cell wall targets. Reorganization of the cell wall in these organisms is directed by the vanHAX gene cluster. Similar self-resistance mechanisms have been reported for glycopeptide-producing actinomycetes. We investigated glycopeptide resistance in Nonomuraea sp. ATCC 39727, the producer of the glycopeptide A40926, which is the precursor of the semisynthetic antibiotic dalbavancin, which is currently in phase III clinical trials. The MIC of Nonomuraea sp. ATCC 39727 toward A40926 during vegetative growth was 4 μg/ml, but this increased to ca. 20 μg/ml during A40926 production. vanHAX gene clusters were not detected in Nonomuraea sp. ATCC 39727 by Southern hybridization or by PCR with degenerate primers. However, the dbv gene cluster for A40926 production contains a gene, vanY (ORF7), potentially encoding an enzyme capable of removing the terminal d-Ala residue of pentapeptide peptidoglycan precursors. Analysis of UDP-linked peptidoglycan precursors in Nonomuraea sp. ATCC 39727 revealed the predominant presence of the tetrapeptide UDP-MurNAc-l-Ala-d-Glu-meso-Dap-d-Ala and only traces of the pentapeptide UDP-MurNAc-l-Ala-d-Glu-meso-Dap-d-Ala-d-Ala. This suggested a novel mechanism of glycopeptide resistance in Nonomuraea sp. ATCC 39727 that was based on the d,d-carboxypeptidase activity of vanY. Consistent with this, a vanY-null mutant of Nonomuraea sp. ATCC 39727 demonstrated a reduced level of glycopeptide resistance, without affecting A40926 productivity. Heterologous expression of vanY in a sensitive Streptomyces species, Streptomyces venezuelae, resulted in higher levels of glycopeptide resistance.
Hybrid neural network and C4.5 for misuse detection

Intrusion detection technology is an effective approach to dealing with the problems of network security. In this paper, we present an intrusion detection model based on hybrid neural network and C4.5. The key idea is to take advantage of different classification abilities of neural network and the C4.5 algorithm for different attacks. What is more, the model could also be updated by the C4.5 rules mined from the dataset after the event (intrusion). We employ data from the third international knowledge discovery and data mining tools competition (KDDcup '99) to train and test feasibility of our proposed model. From our experimental results with different network data, our model achieves more than 85 percent detection rate on average, and less than 19.7 percent false alarm rate for five typical types of attacks. Through the analysis after-the-event module, the average detection rate of 93.28 percent and false positive rate of 0.2 percent can respectively be obtained.
Anger Elicitation Using Affective Pictures: An Individual Differences Approach

In emotion research, affective pictures are limited in their ability to elicit discrete emotions. The current study attempted to elicit anger using pictures and a person by image-content interactional strategy. In two studies, undergraduates who varied with respect to concern for animal welfare (person factor) were shown pictures that included several of actual or impending animal harm (image content). Results from Study 1 showed that (1) the link between animal concern and combined emotion outcomes was strongest for animal harm pictures compared to other picture categories and (2) individual differences in animal concern were more strongly linked to anger than other negative emotions (e.g., anxiety, disgust, sadness) while viewing pictures of animal harm. Results from Study 2 showed that animal concern predicted variance in self-reported anger above and beyond that explained by broader constructs (empathy and nurturance) to which it relates. Overall, data suggest that the person by image-content interact.
Molecular characterization of the 5′-UTR of retinal dystrophin reveals a cryptic intron that regulates translational activity

Purpose Mutations in the dystrophin (DMD) gene cause Duchenne or Becker muscular dystrophy (DMD/BMD). DMD contains a retina-specific promoter in intron 29. The short R-dystrophin transcript from this promoter has a retina-specific exon 1 (R1) joined to exon 30 of the DMD gene. It has been claimed that this is responsible for the ophthalmological problems observed in DMD/BMD. This research characterizes the structure of the 5′-untranslated region (5′-UTR) of human R-dystrophin. Methods The 5′-UTR of the human R-dystrophin transcript was amplified from human retina and 20 other human tissue RNAs by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT–PCR). Amplified products were identified by sequencing. The translational activities of transcripts bearing differing 5′-UTRs were measured using a dual luciferase assay system. Results RT–PCR amplification of the R-dystrophin transcript from the retina using a conventional primer set revealed one product comprising exon R1 and exons 30 to 32 (R-dys α). In contrast, three amplified products were obtained when a forward primer at the far 5′-end of exon R1 was employed for RT–PCR. R-dys α, and a shorter form in which 98 bp was deleted from exon R1 (R-dys β), were the two major products. A minor, short form was also identified, in which 143 bp was deleted from exon R1 (R-dys γ). The two primary retinal products (R-dys α and β) encoded an identical open reading frame. The 98 bp deleted in R-dys β was identified as a cryptic intron that was evolutionarily acquired in higher mammals. The shorter R-dys β was expressed in several tissues with a wide range in expression level, while R-dys α was retina specific. The 5′-UTRs of R-dys α and β were examined for translational activity using a dual luciferase assay system. Unexpectedly, the 5′-UTR of R-dys β showed lower translational activity than that of R-dys α. This lower activity was presumed to be due to the removal of internal ribosome entry sites by activation of cryptic intron splicing. Conclusions An evolutionarily-acquired cryptic intron was identified in the 5′-UTR of the human R-dystrophin transcript. The two abundant R-dystrophin transcripts in the retina showed different translational activities in vitro owing to their differential splicing of the cryptic intron. This evolutionarily-acquired alternative splicing may act as a molecular switch that regulates translation of the R-dystrophin transcript.
Community involvement in the incentive to alcohol consumption among school students in Portugal

The debut in alcohol consumption among young people is becoming a reality with ascending precocity. The Portuguese society has been traditionally tolerant in this area. This study sought to understand the role of personal and social involvement in alcohol consumption, among young students of the municipality of Estremoz (Portugal) who share work and leisure spaces. A qualitative research was developed, using the direct method of data gathering. An interview guide was drafted, comprehending the personal, environmental and socio cultural dimensions. The sample consisted of fifteen student consumers from 8th, 10th and 12th grades from the secondary school. There is a practice of selling alcohol to young people under 16 years old, in various locations around the country and a first contact with the intake at the ages between 12 and 16 years old, in a nocturnal party environment in the company of friends. It is inferable a tolerant behavior of family members towards moderate intake of alcoholic beverages, providing money for parties where alcohol is present and the lack of control on incurred expenses. The influence of the group of peers, tacit or explicit, potentiates consumption. Despite the unpleasant consequences of alcohol ingestion, families condone, or tacitly approve, that their young even under 16, taste several drinks, encouraging them to drink moderate amounts on festive occasions or leisure time. The communication controlled by the community that promotes consumption prevails over the other, oriented to the choice and maintenance of healthy practices, hindering risk behavior.
chrF deconstructed: beta parameters and n-gram weights

Character n-gram F-score (CHRF) is shown to correlate very well with human rankings of different machine translation outputs, especially for morphologically rich target languages. However, only two versions have been explored so far, namely CHRF1 (standard F-score, β = 1) and CHRF3 (β = 3), both with uniform n-gram weights. In this work, we investigated CHRF in more details, namely β parameters in range from 1/6 to 6, and we found out that CHRF2 is the most promising version. Then we investigated different n-gram weights for CHRF2 and found out that the uniform weights are the best option. Apart from this, CHRF scores were systematically compared with WORDF scores, and a preliminary experiment carried out on small amount of data with direct human scores indicates that the main advantage of CHRF is that it does not penalise too hard acceptable variations in high quality translations.
Reputation and Status as Motives for War

Justifications for war often invoke reputational or social aspirations: the need to protect national honor, status, reputation for resolve, credibility, and respect. Studies of these motives struggle with a variety of challenges: their primary empirical manifestation consists of beliefs, agents have incentives to misrepresent these beliefs, their logic is context specific, and they meld intrinsic and instrumental motives. To help overcome these challenges, this review offers a general conceptual framework that integrates their strategic, cultural, and psychological logics. We summarize important findings and open questions, including (a) whether leaders care about their reputations and status, (b) how to address the tension between instrumental and intrinsic motives, (c) how observers draw inferences, (d) to whom and across what contextual breadth these inferences apply, and (e) how these relate to domestic audience costs. Many important, tractable questions remain for future studies to answer.
Hurricanes Hardly Happen: Sensemaking as a Framework for Understanding Organizational Disasters

This study makes use of Weick’s sensemaking properties to help understand the actions, activities and sensemaking processes that occurred within and between several organizations that were working collectively in response to a hurricane. Through the sensemaking framework, we show how the response efforts were initially ‘disastrous’ themselves, and how effective inter‐organizational response necessitates shared meaning and heedful interrelating (Weick & Roberts, 1993), which we maintain, can only result when there is a convergence of both inter and intra organizational sensemaking. We highlight the importance of organizational identity as a critical element in the sensemaking process and show how this affects the processes of sensegiving, sensetaking, and sensemaking.
Emotion classification of speech using modulation features

Automatic classification of a speaker's affective state is one of the major challenges in signal processing community, since it can improve Human-Computer interaction and give insights into the nature of emotions from psychology perspective. The amplitude and frequency control of sound production influences strongly the affective voice content. In this paper, we take advantage of the inherent speech modulations and propose the use of instant amplitude- and frequency-derived features for efficient emotion recognition. Our results indicate that these features can further increase the performance of the widely-used spectral-prosodic information, achieving improvements on two emotional databases, the Berlin Database of Emotional Speech and the recently collected Athens Emotional States Inventory.
Sites for Discussion, Citizenship Education and Pathbuilding: Challenging the Fear of Controversy in the Adult EAL Classroom

This paper explores an integrated approach to citizenship education through English-as-an-Additional Language (EAL) instruction for adults who are new immigrants to Canada. Teaching for citizenship and participation in Canadian democractic processes sometimes involves discussing non-consensual issues such as same-sex unions, human rights, and religious freedoms. The result is discussions that can be fraught with conflict and tension, posing challenges and feelings of unease for teachers and learners. Therefore, an integrated approach to citizenship education also requires considering theories on dialogue and communicative engagement. Following a discussion on issues of citizenship education for newcomers to Canada and the possibilities of an integrated citizenship program, this paper concludes with a brief exploration of the work of Gloria Anzaldua and Susan Bickford for inspiration on ways to engage with non-consensual issues that pose challenges for EAL learners and teachers.
The Role of RASSF1A Methylation in Cancer

Tumour suppressor gene inactivation is critical to the pathogenesis of cancers; such loss of function may be mediated by irreversible processes such as gene deletion or mutation. Alternatively tumour suppressor genes may be inactivated via epigenetic processes a reversible mechanism that promises to be more amenable to treatment by therapeutic agents. The CpG dinucleotide is under-represented in the genome, but it is found in clusters within the promoters of some genes, and methylation of these CpG islands play a critical role in the control of gene expression. Inhibitors of the DNA methyltransferases DNMT1 and DNMT3b have been used in a clinical setting, these nucleotide analogues lack specificity but the side effects of low dose treatments were minimal and in 2004 Vidaza (5-azacitidine) was licensed for use in myelodysplastic syndrome. Methylation inhibitors are also entering trials in conjunction with another class of epigenetic modifiers, the histone deacetylase inhibitors and this epigenetic double bullet offers hope of improved treatment regimes. Recently there has been a plethora of reports demonstrating epigenetic inactivation of genes that play important roles in development of cancer, including Ras-association domain family of genes. Epigenetic inactivation of RASSF1A (Ras-association domain family 1, isoform A) is one of the most common molecular changes in cancer. Hypermethylation of the RASSF1A promoter CpG island silences expression of the gene in many cancers including lung, breast, prostate, glioma, neuroblastoma and kidney cancer. Several recent studies have illustrated the diagnostic and prognostic potential of RASSF1A methylation. This presents RASSF1A methylation as an attractive biomarker for early cancer detection which, for most cancers, results in improved clinical outcome. DNA methylation analysis is applicable to a range of body fluids including serum, urine, bronchioalveolar lavage and sputum. The ease with which these body fluids can be acquired negates the need for invasive procedures to obtain biopsy material. This review will discuss the feasibility of using RASSF1A methylation as a diagnostic and prognostic marker in cancer management.
Misperceived Neighborhood Values and Informal Social Control

Social disorganization theory explains the effects of neighborhood structure and culture on crime and delinquency. Within this perspective, the role of neighborhood informal social control is argued to be an important protective factor against many social problems. While a growing body of research supports the importance of informal social control, we still have limited understanding of its development. Of the research that does exist in this area, most examines structural processes supporting informal social control, while cultural aspects of communities have only rarely been examined. We further develop this limited body of research by drawing on the prevention literature that focuses on social norms and their misperceptions. Specifically, this study examines the role of pluralistic ignorance regarding neighborhood values on the likelihood of informal social control. The results are discussed in relation to social norms theory and their relevance for crime‐prevention strategies.
Conditional Coskewness in Stock and Bond Markets: Time-Series Evidence

In the context of a three-moment intertemporal capital asset pricing model specification, we characterize conditional coskewness between stock and bond excess returns using a bivariate regime-switching model. We find that both conditional U.S. stock coskewness (the relation between stock return and bond volatility) and bond coskewness (the relation between bond return and stock volatility) command statistically and economically significant negative ex ante risk premiums. The impacts of stock and bond coskewness on the conditional stock and bond premiums are quite robust to various model specifications and various sample periods, and also hold in another major developed country (the United Kingdom). The findings also carry important implications for portfolio management.
Policy in Action: Stories on the Workplace Accommodation Process

Workplace accommodation is an important measure to ensure equal employment opportunities for people with disabilities. Substantial research has investigated workplace accommodations in the United States. This article represents a first step in exploring the complexities of workplace accommodation from a cross-national perspective. Drawing on 29 qualitative interviews with employed Americans and Norwegians with mobility disabilities, we investigated similarities and differences in experiences with accommodation provision. Two main similarities emerged: Many of the American and Norwegian interviewees made use of accommodations, and the employer played an important role in the provision process in both countries. Concerning the particular role of the employer, two main differences emerged: American interviewees’ accounts of obstacles to a smooth accommodation process were related to the redistribution agent (i.e., the employer). In Norway, employers can either provide the accommodation themselves or make use of subsidized public services. When the employer chose to make use of public services, Norwegian interviewees reported a slow process and obstacles that were related to the recognition of eligibility, which rests on medical assessment. The article reveals a common vulnerability among people with disabilities when dependent on the recognition of their needs and effective provision of workplace accommodation to be competitive employees.
The Effects of Asynchronous Computer-Mediated Group Interaction on Group Processes

This article reports a study undertaken to investigate some of the social psychological processes underlying computer-supported group discussion in natural computer-mediated contexts. Based on the concept of deindividuation, it was hypothesized that personal identifiability and group identity would be important factors that affect the perceptions and behavior of members of computer-mediated groups. The degree of personal identifiability and the strength of group identity were manipulated across groups of geographically dispersed computer users who took part in e-mail discussions during a 2-week period. The results do not support the association between deindividuation and uninhibited behavior cited in much previous research. Instead, the data provide some support for a social identity perspective of computer-mediated communication, which explains the higher levels uninhibited in identifiable computer-mediated groups. However, predictions based on social identity theory regarding group polarization and group cohesion were not supported. Possible explanations for this are discussed and further research is suggested to resolve these discrepancies.
Empathy training, sex offenders and re-offending

Abstract A common treatment focus for work with sex offenders is the development of “victim empathy”. It is asserted that by developing sex offenders’ empathy towards their victims, re-offending will be reduced. However, the clinical and empirical evidence indicates that re-offending remains a major problem among treated sex offenders. The present paper reports on the evaluation of a programme designed to increase sex offenders’ empathic ability. Overall, the programme was very successful in improving offenders’ scores on measures of empathy. However, one area that did not improve was the ability to recognize affective cues in other people. This skill deficiency may offer an important insight into the re-offending cycle of sex offenders. It is proposed that an inability to recognize affect indicators in others, including fear and distress, is a key deficiency leading to re-offending. The findings reported are exploratory, and for that reason tentative, but may provide a fruitful direction for future research of the pattern of sex-offender compliant behaviour while in custody and their subsequent sexual re-offending once released.