Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Participant Evaluation of Teleconference Support for African American Women With Breast Cancer

Background: African American women with breast cancer face obstacles such as transportation and family obligations when attending standard support groups. Teleconference support circumvents barriers such as transportation to participation, but few evaluations have been reported about teleconference support. Objective: The purpose of this article was to describe the format of a teleconference group and to provide a descriptive account of the participants’ feedback about a teleconference group intervention. Methods: A descriptive design was used. Participants completed the Overall Support Group Evaluation tool at the end of the 10th group session. Results: Teleconference group participants’ feedback indicated that they perceived they had gained knowledge about breast cancer and coping. The participants expressed that the group helped them to reach out and ask for support and improved family and work relationships. Also, participants rated the group highly for the presence of therapeutic factors. On a scale of 1 to 4, with 4 being the highest, mean scores ranged from 3.97 to 3.56. Conclusions: The participants gave high ratings of satisfaction in terms of knowledge gained, leadership style, and benefits. The participants perceived that the group increased their knowledge about cancer, improved family connections, and increased their ability to deal with their cancer. Implications for Practice: Using teleconferencing technology to deliver a support group to African American breast cancer patients is a beneficial method to reach a disadvantaged population that may be unable to attend face-to-face groups.
Implications of comorbidity and ascertainment bias for identifying disease genes.

Comorbidity, the co-occurrence of disorders, is frequently observed to occur at higher rates in clinically ascertained samples than in population-based samples. An explanation for this finding is that subjects suffering from multiple illnesses are more likely to seek medical care and receive a diagnostic evaluation. We refer to the component of the comorbidity between illnesses due to such ascertainment bias as "spurious comorbidity. " When spurious comorbidity is present, an apparent association between a candidate locus and the phenotype of interest may actually be attributable to an association between the locus and a comorbid phenotype. This phenomenon, which we call "spurious comorbidity bias," could thus produce misleading association findings. In this article, we describe this phenomenon and demonstrate that it may produce marked bias in the conclusions of family-based association studies. Because of the extremely high rates of comorbidity among psychiatric disorders in clinical samples, this problem may be particularly salient for genetic studies of neuropsychiatric disorders. We conclude that ascertainment bias may contribute to the frequent difficulty in replicating candidate gene study findings in psychiatry. Am. J. Med. Genet. (Neuropsychiatr. Genet.) 96:817-822, 2000.
ReImInfer: method purity inference for Java

Method purity inference, also known as side-effect analysis, is an important problem. It has many applications including compiler optimization, model checking, memoization of function calls, atomicity, etc. Surprisingly, despite the long history of this problem, we know of no purity inference tool that scales to large codes and analyzes both whole programs and libraries. We build a purity inference tool called ReImInfer on top of a type inference and checking framework. ReImInfer infers method purity for Java. It is modular and compositional, produces precise results and scales to large programs.
A low-complexity, high-performance fetch unit for simultaneous multithreading processors

Simultaneous multithreading (SMT) is an architectural technique that allows for the parallel execution of several threads simultaneously. Fetch performance has been identified as the most important bottleneck for SMT processors. The commonly adopted solution has been fetching from more than one thread each cycle. Recent studies have proposed a plethora of fetch policies to deal with fetch priority among threads, trying to increase fetch performance. We demonstrate that the simultaneous sharing of the fetch unit, apart from increasing the complexity of the fetch unit, can be counterproductive in terms of performance. We evaluate the use of high-performance fetch units in the context of SMT. Our new fetch architecture proposal allows us to feed an 8-way processor fetching from a single thread each cycle, reducing complexity, and increasing the usefulness of proposed fetch policies. Our results show that using new high-performance fetch units, like the FTB or the stream fetch, provides higher performance than fetching from two threads using common SMT fetch architectures. Furthermore, our results show that our design obtains better average performance for any kind of workloads (both ILP and memory bounded benchmarks), in contrast to previously proposed solutions.
Human B cell precursors proliferate and express CD23 after CD40 ligation

The CD40 surface membrane molecule plays an important role in the activation of mature human B cells, but its role in earlier stages of B lineage development is unknown. Here, we have investigated the effects of triggering the CD40 antigen on B cell precursors (BCP) by crosslinking with anti-CD40 antibody presented by Fc gamma-receptor type II-transfected murine Ltk- cells (CD40 system). CD10+ surface immunoglobulin negative (sIg-) BCP, freshly isolated from fetal bone marrow or precultured on stromal cells, proliferated in the CD40 system. This effect required the presence of IL-3, which acted as a specific cosignal among a panel of cytokines examined. The association of IL-10 and IL-7 potentiated the observed IL-3 and CD40-dependent BCP proliferation, demonstrating that IL-10 can act on early B lineage cells. CD40-dependent activation of fetal BCP did not favor maturation to sIg+ B cells, but resulted in the induction of high levels of surface membrane CD23. The emerging CD23+ BCP lacked sIg and CD10, and represented an important proportion of the cycling cells in the CD40- dependent cultures. Taken together, our data demonstrate that stimulation of the CD40 antigen induces expression of the CD23 gene, and regulates cell proliferation during normal human B cell ontogeny.
A Modular Physically Based Approach to the Sound Synthesis of Membrane Percussion Instruments

This paper presents a set of novel physical models for sound synthesis of membrane percussion instruments. First, a model for tension modulation in a struck circular membrane is discussed, which simulates the dynamic variations of partial frequencies occurring at large amplitude vibrations of the membrane. It is shown that the model, which is derived from a more general theory of nonlinear elastic plates, can be efficiently integrated into a modal synthesis engine. Novel models for two relevant sound production mechanisms in membrane percussions are then proposed, i.e., coupling between two membranes through enclosed air in two-headed percussions, and string-membrane coupling. Both are based on a lumped modeling approach and can be straightforwardly connected to the nonlinear membrane model. By virtue of this modular approach, individual elements (circular linear/nonlinear membranes, impact force, membrane coupling through air, string-membrane coupling) can be combined to form different instruments. The acoustic results of the proposed models are demonstrated by means of analysis of numerical simulations.
IL-18-Binding Protein Protects Against Lipopolysaccharide- Induced Lethality and Prevents the Development of Fas/Fas Ligand-Mediated Models of Liver Disease in Mice

IL-18-binding protein (IL-18BP) is a natural IL-18 inhibitor. Human IL-18BP isoform a was produced as fusion construct with human IgG1 Fc and assessed for binding and neutralizing IL-18. IL-18BP-Fc binds human, mouse, and rat IL-18 with high affinity (KD 0.3–5 nM) in a BIAcore-based assay. In vitro, IL-18BP-Fc blocks IL-18 (100 ng/ml)-induced IFN-γ production by KG1 cells (EC50 = 0.3 μg/ml). In mice challenged with an LD90 of LPS (15 mg/kg), IL-18BP-Fc (5 mg/kg) administered 10 min before LPS blocks IFN-γ production and protects against lethality. IL-18BP-Fc administered 10 min before LPS blocks IFN-γ production induced by LPS (5 mg/kg) with ED50 of 0.005 mg/kg. Furthermore, IL-18BP-Fc (5 mg/kg) abrogates LPS (5 mg/kg)-induced IFN-γ production even when administered 6 days before LPS but shows no effect when administered 9 or 12 days before LPS. Given 10 min before LPS challenge to mice primed 12 days in advance with heat-killed Propionibacterium acnes, IL-18BP-Fc prevents LPS-induced liver damage and IFN-γ and Fas ligand expression. Given at the moment of priming with P. acnes, IL-18BP-Fc decreases P. acnes-induced granuloma formation, macrophage-inflammatory protein-1α and macrophage-inflammatory protein-2 production and prevents sensitization to LPS. IL-18BP-Fc also prevents Con A-induced liver damage and IFN-γ and Fas ligand expression as well as liver damage induced by Pseudomonas aeruginosa exotoxin A or by anti-Fas agonistic Ab. In conclusion, IL-18BP can be engineered and produced in recombinant form to generate an IL-18 inhibitor, IL-18BP-Fc, endowed with remarkable in vitro and in vivo properties of binding and neutralizing IL-18.
Estimating Risk Tolerance: The Degree of Accuracy and the Paramorphic Representations of the Estimate

Using a sample of 386 financial advisors and 458 of their clients, the study sought to determine how effective financial advisors and clients are at estimating risk-tolerance, and to test how well items from a risk tolerance test and demographic information can represent the judgmental process used to formulate these estimates (a “paramorphic representation” of the decision). The client’s self rating and the advisor’s rating of the client produced a Pearson correlation of . 40. Moreover, the advisor’s rating correlated at about the same level (r =.41) with the client’s score on a test of risk tolerance. The data also showed that when it comes to estimating one’s own risk tolerance, clients are better than are advisors at this task. The estimates could be represented paramorphically in terms of a few variables. It was observed that advisors assign too much diagnostic value to certain demographic variables in estimating client risk tolerance.
Stimulation of Receptor-Mediated Nitric Oxide Production by Vanadate

Nitric oxide (NO) production by endothelial cells in response to bradykinin (Bk) treatment was markedly and synergistically enhanced by cotreatment with sodium orthovanadate (vanadate), a phosphotyrosine phosphatase inhibitor. This enhancement was blocked by tyrosine kinase inhibitors. Calcium ionophore– (A23187) activated production of NO was also enhanced by cotreatment with vanadate. No significant changes were found in total endothelial NO synthase (eNOS) protein or in eNOS distribution between membrane (caveolae) and cytosolic fractions in response to the various treatments. Vanadate had no direct effect on eNOS activity, and lysates prepared from cells treated with vanadate showed little change in specific activity of eNOS. Western blots of immunoprecipitated eNOS showed the presence of a major tyrosine-phosphorylated protein band at a mass corresponding to ≈125 kDa and 2 minor bands corresponding to ≈105 and 75 kDa after treatment with vanadate/Bk. No tyrosine phosphorylation of eNOS after treatment with vanadate/Bk was observed. Geldanamycin, an inhibitor of heat shock protein 90, also inhibited the enhancement of NO production by vanadate/Bk or vanadate/A23187, and there was an increase in the amount of heat shock protein 90 that coimmunoprecipitated with eNOS after treatment with vanadate/Bk. These results show that there is a clear link between tyrosine phosphorylation and stimulation of eNO production, which does not appear to involve direct modification of eNOS, changes in eNOS levels, or compartmentation, but rather appears to be due to changes in proteins associating with eNOS, thereby enhancing the state of activation of eNOS.
Does Cell Lineage in the Developing Cerebral Cortex Contribute to its Columnar Organization?

Since the pioneer work of Lorente de Nó, Ramón y Cajal, Brodmann, Mountcastle, Hubel and Wiesel and others, the cerebral cortex has been seen as a jigsaw of anatomic and functional modules involved in the processing of different sets of information. In fact, a columnar distribution of neurons displaying similar functional properties throughout the cerebral cortex has been observed by many researchers. Although it has been suggested that much of the anatomical substrate for such organization would be already specified at early developmental stages, before activity-dependent mechanisms could take place, it is still unclear whether gene expression in the ventricular zone (VZ) could play a role in the development of discrete functional units, such as minicolumns or columns. Cell lineage experiments using replication-incompetent retroviral vectors have shown that the progeny of a single neuroepithelial/radial glial cell in the dorsal telencephalon is organized into discrete radial clusters of sibling excitatory neurons, which have a higher propensity for developing chemical synapses with each other rather than with neighboring non-siblings. Here, we will discuss the possibility that the cell lineage of single neuroepithelial/radial glia cells could contribute for the columnar organization of the neocortex by generating radial columns of sibling, interconnected neurons. Borrowing some concepts from the studies on cell–cell recognition and transcription factor networks, we will also touch upon the potential molecular mechanisms involved in the establishment of sibling-neuron circuits.
Proposal for Drosophila as a Model System for Comparative Genomics

The challenge of obtaining a complete annotation of functional genes and regulatory elements in the genomes of higher organisms remains a rate-limiting step to biological discovery. Recently, impressive progress has been reported based on comparative analysis of genome sequences of related species (Boffelli et al. 2003, Kellis et al. 2003). These studies underscore the pressing need to establish a model system for developing and applying sophisticated comparative algorithms directed at problems of whole genome annotation. Many attributes of genomes are shared across species, so there is great potential in applying interspecific contrasts to identify genomic features with varying degrees of conservation. For example, the use of comparative information will accelerate the verification of gene coding regions and the discovery of regulatory regions. To date, this has mostly been accomplished by relatively simplistic application of large-scale alignments using MultiPIP or VISTA. It seems time to develop a model system for designing next-generation computational tools that will result in a far more powerful application of comparative approaches. Indeed, NHGRI’s mammalian ENCODE project requires the development of such tools. This development is best carried out in systems with smaller genomes that nonetheless share many features with mammalian systems. The central argument of this white paper is that Drosophila species provide an ideal target for inculcating and accelerating such advances in comparative genomics leading not only to a complete annotation of the D. melanogaster but also the human genome.
Time-resolved transmittance spectroscopy of breast in vivo up to 1100 nm: test on 10 volunteers

A set-up for time-resolved transmittance and reflectance spectroscopy of diffusive media was upgraded to allow measurements to be performed continuously from 600 to 1100 nm. Time-resolved diffuse optical spectroscopy of breast was carried out on 10 healthy volunteers, demonstrating the feasibility of in vivo measurements up to 1100 nm. The optical characterization of collagen was also extended revealing an absorption peak (around 1020-1030 nm), which could prove of interest for the in vivo quantification of collagen.
Early Versus Delayed Cholecystectomy for Acute Cholecystitis, Are the 72 hours Still the Rule?: A Randomized Trial

Objective: The aim of this study was to compare clinical outcomes of early versus delayed laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC) in acute cholecystitis with more than 72 hours of symptoms. Background: LC is the treatment of acute cholecystitis, with consensus recommendation that patients should be operated within 72 hours of evolution. Data however remain weak with no prospective study focusing on patients beyond 72 hours of symptoms. Methods: Patients with acute cholecystitis and more than 72 hours of symptoms were randomly assigned to early LC (ELC) or delayed LC (DLC). ELC was performed following hospital admission. DLC was planned at least 6 weeks after initial antibiotic treatment. Primary outcome was overall morbidity following initial diagnosis. Secondary outcomes were total length of stay, duration of antibiotic therapy, hospital costs, and surgical outcome. Results: Eighty-six patients were randomized (42 in ELC and 44 in DLC group). Overall morbidity was lower in ELC [6 (14%) vs 17 (39%) patients, P = 0.015]. Median total length of stay (4 vs 7 days, P < 0.001) and duration of antibiotic therapy (2 vs 10 days, P < 0.001) were shorter in the ELC group. Total hospital costs were lower in ELC (9349&OV0556; vs 12,361 &OV0556;, P = 0.018). Operative time and postoperative complications were similar (91 vs 88 min; P = 0.910) and (15% vs 17%; P = 1.000), respectively. Conclusions: ELC for acute cholecystitis even beyond 72 hours of symptoms is safe and associated with less overall morbidity, shorter total hospital stay, and duration of antibiotic therapy, as well as reduced cost compared with delayed cholecystectomy (NCT01548339).
Overview of the NTCIR-12 Short Text Conversation Task

We describe an overview of the NTCIR-12 Short Text Conversation (STC) task, which is a new pilot task of NTCIR-12. STC consists of two subtasks: a Chinese subtask using post-comment pairs crawled from Weibo 1 , and a Japanese subtask providing the IDs of such pairs from Twitter 2 . Thus, the main difference between the two subtasks lies in the sources and languages of the test collections. For the Chinese subtask, there were a total of 38 registrations, and 16 of them ﬁnally submitted 44 runs. For the Japanese subtask, there were 12 registrations in total, and 7 of them submitted 25 runs. We review in this paper the task deﬁnition, evaluation measures, test collections, and the evaluation results of all teams.
The quantification of fatigue crack initiators in aluminium alloy 7050‐T7451 using quantitative fractography

Purpose – This paper aims to present some aspects associated with the life prediction of structures with fatigue cracks growing from small natural discontinuities in aluminium alloy (AA)7050‐T7451 for a surface condition that is present in F/A‐18 A/B aircraft critical structure.Design/methodology/approach – Fatigue results are presented for thick section AA7050 plate coupons loaded with a representative fighter aircraft wing root bending moment loading spectrum. Detailed quantitative fractography (QF) was used to gain a deeper understanding of issues relevant to an improved fatigue life predictive capacity for this material by using the QF results to investigate the “effectiveness” of the fatigue initiating discontinuities.Findings – Estimates of the “effectiveness” of the fatigue initiating discontinuities as quasi pre‐existing fatigue cracks (“equivalent pre‐crack size” (EPS) here) were made with the aid of a simple crack growth model. This model, based on experience, was found to be valid for the appli.
Synthesis Of Research On Patient-Centered Medical Homes Brings Systematic Differences Into Relief.

The patient-centered medical home (PCMH) model emphasizes comprehensive, coordinated, patient-centered care, with the goals of reducing spending and improving quality. To evaluate the impact of PCMH initiatives on utilization, cost, and quality, we conducted a meta-analysis of methodologically standardized findings from evaluations of eleven major PCMH initiatives. There was significant heterogeneity across individual evaluations in many outcomes. Across evaluations, PCMH initiatives were not associated with changes in the majority of outcomes studied, including primary care, emergency department, and inpatient visits and four quality measures. The initiatives were associated with a 1.5 percent reduction in the use of specialty visits and a 1.2 percent increase in cervical cancer screening among all patients, and a 4.2 percent reduction in total spending (excluding pharmacy spending) and a 1.4 percent increase in breast cancer screening among higher-morbidity patients. These associations were significant. Identification of the components of PCMHs likely to improve outcomes is critical to decisions about investing resources in primary care.
Contribution of Food Groups to Energy and Nutrient Intakes in Five Developed Countries

Economic growth in developing countries and globalization of the food sector is leading to increasingly similar food consumption patterns worldwide. The aim of this study was to describe similarities and differences in the contributions of main food groups to energy and nutrient intakes in five developed countries across three continents. We obtained summary reports of national food consumption survey data from Australia, France, Denmark, the Netherlands, and the United States. Survey years spanned 2003–2012; sample size ranged from 1444 to 17,386. To mitigate heterogeneity of food groups across countries, we recategorized each survey’s reported food groups and subgroups into eight main food groups and, for three countries, a ninth “mixed dishes” group. We determined the percent contribution of each food group to mean daily intakes of energy, saturated fat, sodium, fiber, and ten vitamins and minerals that are commonly under-consumed. Differences in findings from surveys utilizing a foods-as-consumed versus a disaggregated or ingredients approach to food group composition and contributions from the milk and milk products group, a source of several under-consumed nutrients, were explored. Patterns of food group contributions to energy and nutrient intakes were generally similar across countries. Some differences were attributable to the analytical approach used by the surveys. For the meat/protein, milk and milk products, vegetables, and fruit groups, percent contributions to key nutrient intakes exceeded percent contributions to energy intake. The mixed dishes group provided 10%–20% of total daily energy and a similar 10%–25% of the daily intake of several nutrients. This descriptive study contributes to an understanding of food group consumption patterns in developed countries.