Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Application of Clinical Genetics Dovepress Natural Killer Cells and Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms of Specific Ion Channels and Receptor Genes in Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/ Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

the work you hereby accept the Terms. Non-commercial uses of the work are permitted without any further permission from Dove Medical Press Limited, provided the work is properly attributed. For permission for commercial use of this work, please see paragraphs 4.2 and 5 of our Terms correspondence: sonya Marshall-gradisnik national centre for neuroimmunology and emerging Diseases, Aim: The aim of this paper was to determine natural killer (NK) cytotoxic activity and if single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and genotypes in transient receptor potential (TRP) ion channels and acetylcholine receptors (AChRs) were present in isolated NK cells from previously identified myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME)/chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) patients. Subjects and methods: A total of 39 ME/CFS patients (51.69±2 years old) and 30 unfatigued controls (47.60±2.39 years old) were included in this study. Patients were defined according to the 1994 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention criteria. Flow cytometry protocols were used to examine NK cytotoxic activity. A total of 678 SNPs from isolated NK cells were examined for 21 mammalian TRP ion channel genes and for nine mammalian AChR genes via the Agena Bioscience iPlex Gold assay. SNP association and genotype was determined using analysis of variance and Plink software. Results: ME/CFS patients had a significant reduction in NK percentage lysis of target cells (17%±4.68%) compared with the unfatigued control group (31%±6.78%). Of the 678 SNPs exami ned, eleven SNPs for TRP ion channel genes (TRPC4, TRPC2, TRPM3, and TRPM8) were identified in the ME/CFS group. Five of these SNPs were associated with TRPM3, while the remainder were associated with TRPM8, TRPC2, and TRPC4 (P,0.05). Fourteen SNPs were associated with nicotinic and muscarinic AChR genes: six with CHRNA3, while the remainder were associated with CHRNA2, CHRNB4, CHRNA5, and CHRNE (P,0.05). There were sixteen genotypes identified from SNPs in TRP ion channels and AChRs for TRPM3 (n=5), Conclusion: We identified a number of SNPs and genotypes for TRP ion channels and AChRs from isolated NK cells in patients with ME/CFS, suggesting these SNPs and genotypes may be involved in changes in NK cell function and the development of ME/CFS pathology. These anomalies suggest a role for dysregulation of Ca 2+ in AChR and TRP ion channel signaling in the pathomechanism of ME/CFS.
Automatically Identifying Changes in the Semantic Orientation of Words

The meanings of words are not fixed but in fact undergo change, with new word senses arising and established senses taking on new aspects of meaning or falling out of usage. Two types of semantic change are amelioration and pejoration; in these processes a word sense changes to become more positive or negative, respectively. In this first computational study of amelioration and pejoration we adapt a web-based method for determining semantic orientation to the task of identifying ameliorations and pejorations in corpora from differing time periods. We evaluate our proposed method on a small dataset of known historical ameliorations and pejorations, and find it to perform better than a random baseline. Since this test dataset is small, we conduct a further evaluation on artificial examples of amelioration and pejoration, and again find evidence that our proposed method is able to identify changes in semantic orientation. Finally, we conduct a preliminary evaluation in which we apply our methods to the task of finding words which have recently undergone amelioration or pejoration.
Multimodal Imaging of Brain Connectivity Using the MIBCA Toolbox: Preliminary Application to Alzheimer’s Disease

The Multimodal Imaging Brain Connectivity Analysis (MIBCA) toolbox is a fully automated all-in-one connectivity analysis toolbox that offers both pre-processing, connectivity, and graph theory analysis of multimodal images such as anatomical, diffusion, and functional MRI, and PET. In this work, the MIBCA functionalities were used to study Alzheimer's Disease (AD) in a multimodal MR/PET approach. Materials and Methods: Data from 12 healthy controls, and 36 patients with EMCI, LMCI and AD (12 patients for each group) were obtained from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) database (adni.loni.usc.edu), including T1-weighted (T1-w), Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) data, and 18F-AV-45 (florbetapir) dynamic PET data from 40-60 min post injection (4x5 min). Both MR and PET data were automatically pre-processed for all subjects using MIBCA. T1-w data was parcellated into cortical and subcortical regions-of-interest (ROIs), and the corresponding thicknesses and volumes were calculated. DTI data was used to compute structural connectivity matrices based on fibers connecting pairs of ROIs. Lastly, dynamic PET images were summed, and the relative Standard Uptake Values calculated for each ROI. Results: An overall higher uptake of 18F-AV-45, consistent with an increased deposition of beta-amyloid, was observed for the AD group. Additionally, patients showed significant cortical atrophy (thickness and volume) especially in the entorhinal cortex and temporal areas, and a significant increase in Mean Diffusivity (MD) in the hippocampus, amygdala and temporal areas. Furthermore, patients showed a reduction of fiber connectivity with the progression of the disease, especially for intra-hemispherical connections. Conclusion: This work shows the potential of the MIBCA toolbox for the study of AD, as findings were shown to be in agreement with the literature. Here, only structural changes and beta-amyloid accumulation were considered. Yet, MIBCA is further able to process fMRI and different radiotracers, thus leading to integration of functional information, and supporting the research for new multimodal biomarkers for AD and other neurodegenerative diseases.
Empowerment, Asymmetrical Power Relations and Impacts of Information Technology in Rural Bangladesh

In the wider context of growing digitalisation in South Asia, this article examines the impacts of a public–private–people partnership (4Ps) information and communication technology (ICT) initiative of the Bangladesh government, administered through local governmental offices, the Union Information Service Centre (UISC). Scrutinising the operation of six UISCs in rural communities across Bangladesh, the study researches the potential of ICTs to influence existing asymmetrical power relations and empower local people. Asking to what extent ICTs enable more people to actively participate in their communities and what the implications for empowerment are, it is found that top-down ICT intervention by itself cannot bring substantial change for people at the bottom of the social pyramid. Asymmetrical power relations continue to deprive marginalised groups from receiving the claimed benefits of ICT facilities. The study suggests the need for a more critical, practice-focused understanding of relationships between ICTs and rural empowerment, while also highlighting the changing modalities of connecting states and their citizens in postmodern South Asia.
The Morning Morality Effect

Are people more moral in the morning than in the afternoon? We propose that the normal, unremarkable experiences associated with everyday living can deplete one’s capacity to resist moral temptations. In a series of four experiments, both undergraduate students and a sample of U.S. adults engaged in less unethical behavior (e.g., less lying and cheating) on tasks performed in the morning than on the same tasks performed in the afternoon. This morning morality effect was mediated by decreases in moral awareness and self-control in the afternoon. Furthermore, the effect of time of day on unethical behavior was found to be stronger for people with a lower propensity to morally disengage. These findings highlight a simple yet pervasive factor (i.e., the time of day) that has important implications for moral behavior.
HapThimble: A Wearable Haptic Device towards Usable Virtual Touch Screen

A virtual touch screen concept using an optical see-through head-mounted display has been suggested. With a virtual touch screen, the user's direct-touch interactions are allowed in much the same way as a conventional touch screen, but the absence of haptic feedback and physical constraint leads to poor user performance. To overcome this issue, we developed a wearable haptic device, called HapThimble. It provides various types of haptic feedback (tactile, pseudo-force, and vibrotactile) to the user's fingertip and mimics physical buttons based on force-penetration depth curves. We conducted three experiments with HapThimble. The first experiment confirmed that HapThimble could increase a users' performance when conducting clicking and dragging tasks. The second experiment revealed that users could differentiate between six types of haptic feedback, rendered based on different force-penetration depth curves obtained using HapThimble. Last, we conducted a test to investigate the similarity between the physical buttons and the mimicked haptic buttons and obtained a 90.3% success rate.
An efficient mapreduce algorithm for spatio-temporal analysis using Spark ( GIS Cup )

We present an efficient parallel algorithm for performing spatio-temporal analysis in a Spark cluster. It divides the spatio-temporal cube into partitions and uses these partitions as the elements of the Spark Resilient Distributed Datasets (RDDs). As a result, data presents a better locality and the overheads are smaller than the overheads observed when single cells are used as elements of the RDDs. When used to find hotspots in the NYC Yellowcab data, our algorithm is up to 52 times faster than algorithms using single cells RDDs.
Human respiration detection with commodity wifi devices: do user location and body orientation matter?

Recent research has demonstrated the feasibility of detecting human respiration rate non-intrusively leveraging commodity WiFi devices. However, is it always possible to sense human respiration no matter where the subject stays and faces? What affects human respiration sensing and what's the theory behind? In this paper, we first introduce the Fresnel model in free space, then verify the Fresnel model for WiFi radio propagation in indoor environment. Leveraging the Fresnel model and WiFi radio propagation properties derived, we investigate the impact of human respiration on the receiving RF signals and develop the theory to relate one's breathing depth, location and orientation to the detectability of respiration. With the developed theory, not only when and why human respiration is detectable using WiFi devices become clear, it also sheds lights on understanding the physical limit and foundation of WiFi-based sensing systems. Intensive evaluations validate the developed theory and case studies demonstrate how to apply the theory to the respiration monitoring system design.
The Friction Behavior of Individual Components of a Spark-Ignition Engine During Warm-Up

The research presented herein fills a void in the published literature through investigation of transient friction contributions by individual internal combustion engine components during simulated engine warm-up. Currently, engine manufacturers design internal combustion engines primarily for use at steady-state operating conditions with little design consideration for transient engine warm-up. Using the motoring torque waveform and cycle-averaged data of a spark-ignition internal combustion engine, the present work determined the friction behavior of individual engine component assemblies, including the valve train, pistons and connecting rods, oil pump, and crankshaft of a modern internal combustion engine. A common criticism of the standard motoring method is that the engine does not warm up, so lubricant temperature and viscosity does not model that of a fired engine. In the present study, the lubricant and coolant were warmed from 25 to 85°C. Observations were presented as to the effect of engine speed and the temperature of the coolant and lubricant on total engine friction. Contributions of individual engine components to total engine losses were examined, as well as their variation with engine temperature. The added knowledge of the transient effects of engine temperature can help future designers to mitigate friction and component wear, thus improving overall maintenance costs, specific fuel consumption, and emissions. Presented at the STLE Annual Meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada May 15-19, 2005 Review led by Gary Barber
Gene Knockdowns in Adult Animals: PPMOs and Vivo-Morpholinos

Antisense molecules do not readily cross cell membranes. This has limited the use of antisense to systems where techniques have been worked out to introduce the molecules into cells, such as embryos and cell cultures. Uncharged antisense bearing a group of guanidinium moieties on either a linear peptide or dendrimer scaffold can enter cells by endocytosis and subsequently escape from endosomes into the cytosol/nuclear compartment of cells. These technologies allow systemic administration of antisense, making gene knockdowns and splice modification feasible in adult animals; this review presents examples of such animal studies. Techniques developed with PPMOs, which are an arginine-rich cell-penetrating peptide linked to a Morpholino oligo, can also be performed using commercially available Vivo-Morpholinos, which are eight guanidinium groups on a dendrimeric scaffold linked to a Morpholino oligo. Antisense-based techniques such as blocking translation, modifying pre-mRNA splicing, inhibiting miRNA maturation and inhibiting viral replication can be conveniently applied in adult animals by injecting PPMOs or Vivo-Morpholinos.
Grammatical word class variation within the British National Corpus sampler

This paper examines the relationship between part-of-speech frequencies and text typology in the British National Corpus Sampler. Four pairwise comparisons of part-of-speech frequencies were made: written language vs. spoken language; informative writing vs. imaginative writing; conversational speech vs. ‘task-oriented’ speech; and imaginative writing vs. ‘task-oriented’ speech. The following variation gradient was hypothesized: conversation – task-oriented speech – imaginative writing – informative writing; however, the actual progression was: conversation – imaginative writing – task-oriented speech – informative writing. It thus seems that genre and medium interact in a more complex way than originally hypothesized. However, this conclusion has been made on the basis of broad, pre-existing text types within the BNC, and, in future, the internal structure of these text types may need to be addressed.
Comparative Analysis of Balanced Winnow and SVM in Large Scale Patent Categorization

This study investigates the effect of training different categorization algorithms on a corpus that is significantly larger than those reported in experiments in the literature. By means of machine learning techniques, a collection of 1.2 million patent applications is used to build a classifier that is able to classify documents with varyingly large feature spaces into the International Classification System (IPC) at Subclass level. The two algorithms that are compared are Balanced Winnow and Support Vector Machines (SVMs). Contrary to SVM, Balanced Winnow is frequently applied in today’s patent categorization systems. Results show that SVM outperforms Winnow considerably on all four document representations that were tested. While Winnow results on the smallest sub-corpus do not necessarily hold for the full corpus, SVM results are more robust: they show smaller fluctuations in accuracy when smaller or larger feature spaces are used. The parameter tuning that was carried out for both algorithms confirms this result. Although it is necessary to tune SVM experiments to optimize either recall or precision - whereas this can be combined when Winnow is used - effective parameter settings obtained on a small corpus can be used for training a larger corpus.
Cultural Factors, Perceived Barriers, and Asian American Career Development

Contextual factors can play an important and influential role in the career development of Asian American students. The purpose of this study was to examine how specific cultural factors, such as ethnic identity, internalization of Asian American stereotypes, Asian values, parental influences, and perceived barriers, predicted Asian American college students’ self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and interests in occupations and academic areas in which Asian Americans are highly represented. Two social cognitive career theory models were tested in this study: the first model examined how distal and proximal contextual influences predicted self-efficacy and interests in occupations with high Asian American representation and the second model examined how distal and proximal contextual variables predicted math and science self-efficacy, outcome expectations, goals, and intentions. Three hundred and eighty-one Asian American college students participated in this study. The findings from path analyses found a strong fit for the first model, suggesting that distal and proximal contextual factors predicted self-efficacy and interests in occupations with high Asian American representation. An adequate fit was found for the second model. The findings from this study provide psychologists and counselors with a more nuanced understanding of how career decisions are made for Asian American college students.
On the determination coefficient in robust regression

In simple linear regression the determination coefficient t ells us which percentage of the variance of the response variable is explained by the fitted linear map ping of the explanatory variable. In this paper we examine how to extend the notion of determination coefficient to mean absolute value and least median of squares regression. The concept behind our proposals for the extension originated in an economical context. After dealing with questions of unbiasedness and limiting behaviour for different scales of error variances we discuss a simple example with different distribution assumptions for the residuals and find that the results meet intuition. AMS SUBJECT CLASSIFICATION: 62G35; 62J05.
Brain Activity During Landmark and Line Bisection Tasks

Neglect patients bisect lines far rightward of center whereas normal subjects typically bisect lines with a slight leftward bias supporting a right hemisphere bias for attention allocation. We used fMRI to assess the brain regions related to this function in normals, using two complementary tasks. In the Landmark task subjects were required to judge whether or not a presented line was bisected correctly. During the line bisection task, subjects moved a cursor and indicated when it reached the center of the line. The conjunction of BOLD activity for both tasks showed right lateralized intra-parietal sulcus and lateral peristriate cortex activity. The results provide evidence that predominantly right hemisphere lateralized processes are engaged in normal subjects during tasks that are failed in patients with unilateral neglect and highlight the importance of a right fronto-parietal network in attention allocation.
Globalisation and mental disorders

Background Globalisation is the process by which traditional boundaries of cultures are changing. Industrialisation, urbanisation and influence of the media are influencing idioms of distress across cultures. Aims To discuss the role of globalisation, using the epidemiology, diagnosis, clinical presentation and treatment of depression across various cultures as an example. Method Recent studies focusing on transcultural aspects of depression were reviewed and summarised. Results Cultural, social and religious mores account for variations in the presentation of depression across cultures. Somatic symptoms are common presenting features throughout the world and may serve as cultural idioms of distress, but psychological symptoms can usually be found when probed. Feelings of guilt and suicide rates vary across cultures and depression may be underdiagnosed. Conclusions Training packages could enhance clinicians' cultural competency in multicultural settings. However, globalisation is likely to influence idioms of distress and pathways to care in ways that are difficult to predict.
The Effect of Conformity to Feminine Norms on Women’s Food Consumption after a Sad Mood Induction

The current study examined the relationship between women’s food intake and their conformity to feminine norms after a sad mood induction. Based on past research, we hypothesized that conformity to the feminine norm of modesty would predict reduced food intake. Female participants (N = 200) watched a sad movie clip, partook in a taste test in which they consumed potato chips and chocolate chips, and completed validated surveys designed to assess conformity to feminine norms and daily use of emotion regulation strategies. Regression analyses revealed that increased conformity to the feminine norm of modesty predicted reduced food intake. Expressive suppression moderated this effect, such that women who used expressive suppression more in their daily lives showed a weaker relationship between modesty and food intake. Conformity to feminine norms overall and cognitive reappraisal did not predict food intake. Overall, this study affirms the importance of examining how the cultural norms that dictate how women should act, feel, and think influence food consumption. THE EFFECT OF CONFORMITY TO FEMININE NORMS 3
Iterative Non-Local Shrinkage Algorithm for MR Image Reconstruction

We introduce a fast iterative non-local shrinkage algorithm to recover MRI data from undersampled Fourier measurements. This approach is enabled by the reformulation of current non-local schemes as an alternating algorithm to minimize a global criterion. The proposed algorithm alternates between a non-local shrinkage step and a quadratic subproblem. We derive analytical shrinkage rules for several penalties that are relevant in non-local regularization. The redundancy in the searches used to evaluate the shrinkage steps are exploited using filtering operations. The resulting algorithm is observed to be considerably faster than current alternating non-local algorithms. The comparisons of the proposed scheme with state-of-the-art regularization schemes show a considerable reduction in alias artifacts and preservation of edges.
Simulation of bit error performance of FSK, BPSK, and pi /4 DQPSK in flat fading indoor radio channels using a measurement-based channel model

The results of a simulation study that provides insight into the simulation methodology and bit error rate (BER) performance of frequency-shift keying (FSK), binary phase-shift keying (BPSK), and pi /4 differential phase-shift keying ( pi /4 DQPSK) in flat fading channels inside open plan buildings are presented. A detailed measurement-based propagation channel model, SIRCIM (simulation of indoor radio channel impulse response models), which generates over 1000 closely spaced baseband equivalent complex impulse responses for a mobile radio operating at 1.3 GHz and traveling over a 1-m path, is used. The small-scale channel model, the communication system models used in the analysis and the methods used to predict BER are described. The channel simulator and the systems models have been thoroughly tested, and results from average instantaneous BER simulations are shown. The BER performances of the modulation techniques are presented. It is found that BPSK offers between a 2.8-dB and 3.0-dB improvement over pi /4 DQPSK, although the latter offers a 3-dB increase in capacity for a given spectrum allocation. >