Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Horn Upper Bounds and Renaming

We consider the problem of computing tractable approximations to CNF formulas, extending the approach of Selman and Kautz to compute the Horn-LUB to involve renaming of variables. Negative results are given for the quality of approximation in this extended version. On the other hand, experiments for random 3-CNF show that the new algorithms improve both running time and approximation quality. The output sizes and approximation errors exhibit a 'Horn bump' phenomenon: unimodal patterns are observed with maxima in some intermediate range of densities. We also present the results of experiments generating pseudo-random satisfying assignments for Horn formulas.
Renormalization, Freezing Phase Transitions and Fibonacci Quasicrystals

We examine the renormalization operator determined by the Fibonacci substitution. We exhibit a fixed point and determine its stable leaf (under iteration of the operator). Then, we study the thermodynamic formalism for po- tentials in this stable leaf, and prove they have a freezing phase transition, with ground state supported on the attracting quasi-crystal associated to the Fibonacci substitution
Progesterone does not affect cocaine-induced conditioned place preference or locomotor activity in male rats.

INTRODUCTION The present study aimed to determine if, as occurs in female rats, progesterone attenuates cocaine-induced reward and psychomotor responses in male rats. METHODS The role of progesterone in the acquisition and/or expression of cocaine-induced conditioned place preference (CPP) and locomotor responses of intact male rats was studied. For chronic progesterone treatment, rats received Silastic capsules with either progesterone (100%) or vehicle 1 week prior to conditioning. For acute progesterone treatment, rats received subcutaneous injections of progesterone (500 microg) or vehicle (sesame oil) 4 hours before intraperitoneal injections of saline or cocaine administration (20 mg/kg) on conditioning days (acquisition phase-formation of reward associations) or before testing (expression phase-recall of reward associations). RESULTS Both progesterone-treatment paradigms produced equivalent progesterone serum levels. Progesterone administered chronically or acutely during the acquisition and expression phases of cocaine conditioning did not block cocaine-induced CPP. Nor did progesterone affect ambulatory or rearing behaviors after cocaine administration. CONCLUSION These results suggest that, unlike the findings with female rats (in which similar treatment paradigms inhibited the formation and recall of cocaine-induced CPP), progesterone plays a limited role in the cocaine-induced reward or psychomotor responses of male rats.
Urban Water Conservation Policies in the United States

Urban water supply systems in the United States are increasingly stressed as economic and population growth confront limited water resources. Demand management, through conservation and improved efficiency, has long been promoted as a practical alternative to building Promethean energy‐intensive water supply infrastructure. Some cities are making great progress at managing their demand, but study of conservation policies has been limited and often regionally focused. We present a hierarchical Bayesian analysis of a new measure of urban water conservation policy, the Vanderbilt Water Conservation Index, for 195 cities in 45 states in the contiguous United States. This study does not attempt to establish causal relationships but does observe that cities in states with arid climates tend to adopt more conservation measures. Within a state, cities with more Democratic‐leaning voting preferences and large and rapidly growing populations tend to adopt more conservation measures. Economic factors and climatic differences between cities do not correlate with the number of measures adopted, but they do correlate with the character of the measures, with arid cities favoring mandatory conservation actions and cities in states with lower real personal income favoring rebates for voluntary actions. Understanding relationships between environmental and societal factors and cities' support for water conservation measures can help planners and policy makers identify obstacles and opportunities to increase the role of conservation and efficiency in making urban water supply systems sustainable.
Genetic and Acquired Inflammatory Conditions Are Synergistically Associated With Early Carotid Atherosclerosis

Background and Purpose— If chronic inflammation plays a causal role in atherogenesis, individuals with proinflammatory gene variants would be expected to develop more atherosclerosis. We recently found a synergistic association between 3 functional proinflammatory gene polymorphisms/haplotypes and smoking on carotid intima-media thickness (IMT). We replicated this finding in a second large population and extended the analysis by inclusion of other inflammatory conditions (chronic infection and obesity/abnormal glucose tolerance). Methods— Common carotid and femoral artery IMT was determined in the Bruneck Study population (n=810). Proinflammatory variants were determined in 3 genes (IL-6 [−174C, −572G, −597A haplotype], IL-1–receptor antagonist [VNTR *2], and endotoxin receptor CD-14 [−159C]). Results— There was a significant relationship between gene-variant score and carotid IMT: age- and sex-adjusted mean IMT in subjects with 0, 1, and ≥2 gene variants was 936, 987 and 1047 &mgr;m, respectively (P=0.001), and synergistic effects of gene-variant score and smoking on IMT measurements (P=0.040). Analogous findings were obtained for obesity/abnormal glucose tolerance and chronic infection. Interactive effects of gene-variant score and a risk factor score composed of the acquired inflammatory conditions were highly significant (P<0.001 each). Results were similar for femoral artery IMT. Conclusions— These results provide support for a causal role of inflammation in carotid atherosclerosis, and emphasize the importance of gene-gene and gene-environment interactions in this pathogenic pathway. This may help to explain the substantial variability of disease expression in subjects with proinflammatory risk factors such as smoking, diabetes and chronic infection.
Treatment Programs for Students With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: A Meta-Analysis Study

Context: The aim of this study was to determine the experimental evidence of treatment/intervention programs for deficits in social skills, attention, and behavioral disorder in children and adolescents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Evidence Acquisition: Meta-analysis procedures were employed to investigate whether children and adolescents with ADHD exhibit deficits in attention and social skills. A total of 17 empirical research studies published between 2000 and 2013 met our inclusion criteria. Attention and social skills measures were categorized according to both modality and type of processing required. Results: Children with ADHD exhibited deficits in multiple components of attention and social skills that were not related to language-learning disorders and weaknesses in general intellectual abilities. The overall percentage effect for attention and social skills in students with ADHD was calculated (effect size = 0. 79, confidence interval = 0.57 - 1.08). This meta-analysis study showed that treatment programs reduced attention deficit and social skills in ADHD children and adolescents. Conclusions: The evidence of attention and social skills deficits in children with ADHD supports recent studies in ADHD deficits. Further research is required to explain in detail the nature, severity, and specificity of the deficits in individuals with ADHD.
Semi-supervised analysis of gene expression profiles for lineage-specific development in the Caenorhabditis elegans embryo

MOTIVATION Gene expression profiling is a powerful approach to identify genes that may be involved in a specific biological process on a global scale. For example, gene expression profiling of mutant animals that lack or contain an excess of certain cell types is a common way to identify genes that are important for the development and maintenance of given cell types. However, it is difficult for traditional computational methods, including unsupervised and supervised learning methods, to detect relevant genes from a large collection of expression profiles with high sensitivity and specificity. Unsupervised methods group similar gene expressions together while ignoring important prior biological knowledge. Supervised methods utilize training data from prior biological knowledge to classify gene expression. However, for many biological problems, little prior knowledge is available, which limits the prediction performance of most supervised methods. RESULTS We present a Bayesian semi-supervised learning method, called BGEN, that improves upon supervised and unsupervised methods by both capturing relevant expression profiles and using prior biological knowledge from literature and experimental validation. Unlike currently available semi-supervised learning methods, this new method trains a kernel classifier based on labeled and unlabeled gene expression examples. The semi-supervised trained classifier can then be used to efficiently classify the remaining genes in the dataset. Moreover, we model the confidence of microarray probes and probabilistically combine multiple probe predictions into gene predictions. We apply BGEN to identify genes involved in the development of a specific cell lineage in the C. elegans embryo, and to further identify the tissues in which these genes are enriched. Compared to K-means clustering and SVM classification, BGEN achieves higher sensitivity and specificity. We confirm certain predictions by biological experiments. AVAILABILITY The results are available at http://www.csail. mit.edu/~alanqi/projects/BGEN.html.
Perceptual Training of Vowel Length Contrast of Japanese by L2 Listeners: Effects of an Isolated Word versus a Word Embedded in Sentences

In an attempt to improve the perception of vowel length contrasts in Japanese by L2 learners (L1 Korean), we compared two different training methods. The first one involved training L2 learners with sets of isolated words contrasting the vowels (Word training), whereas the other training involved presenting same words within sentences (Sentence training). Word training and sentence training both led to significant improvement in the learners’ ability to identify vowel length contrasts in Japanese, and, both types of training improved the listeners’ ability to perceive consonant length contrasts in Japanese, which listeners were not trained to identify. Although the amount of overall improvement was not significantly different between training methods, sentence training showed improvement in a wider range of conditions than word training. These results indicate that word training and sentence training are both effective at improving perception of length contrasts in Japanese, but that sentence training may have some advantage over word training.
Examining distinct working memory processes in children and adolescents using fMRI: Results and validation of a modified Brown-Peterson paradigm

Verbal working memory (WM) comprises different processes (encoding, maintenance, retrieval) that are often compromised in brain diseases, but their neural correlates have not yet been examined in childhood and adolescence. To probe WM processes and associated neural correlates in developmental samples, and obtain comparable effects across different ages and populations, we designed an adapted Brown-Peterson task (verbal encoding and retrieval combined with verbal and visual concurrent tasks during maintenance) to implement during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In a sample of typically developing children and adolescents (n = 16), aged 8 to 16 years, our paradigm successfully identified distinct patterns of activation for encoding, maintenance, and retrieval. While encoding activated perceptual systems in posterior and ventral visual regions, retrieval activated fronto-parietal regions associated with executive control and attention. We found a different impact of verbal versus visual concurrent processing during WM maintenance: at retrieval, the former condition evoked greater activations in visual cortex, as opposed to selective involvement of language-related areas in left temporal cortex in the latter condition. These results are in accord with WM models, suggesting greater competition for processing resources when retrieval follows within-domain compared with cross-domain interference. This pattern was found regardless of age. Our study provides a novel paradigm to investigate distinct WM brain systems with reliable results across a wide age range in developmental populations, and suitable for participants with different WM capacities.
Removal or Immobilization of Radionuclides and Trace-metals in Water, Soil and Poultry Litter Using Stabilized Nanoparticles

ii Acknowledgments. iv List of Tables . ix List of Figures . x List of Abbreviations . xiii Chapter 1. General Introduction . 1 1.1 Se and U contamination in soil and groundwater . 1 1.2 P and As leaching from poultry litter . 4 1.3 Synthesis of polysaccharide bridged or stabilized nanoparticles . 8 1.4 Objectives . 10 1.5 Organization . 11 Chapter 2. Immobilization of Selenite in Soil and Groundwater using Stabilized Fe-Mn Binary Oxide Nanoparticles. 13 2.
Platelet Concentrates Preconditioning of Mesenchymal Stem Cells and Combined Therapies: Integrating Regenerative Strategies for Enhanced Clinical Applications

This article presents a comprehensive review of the factors influencing the efficacy of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) transplantation and its association with platelet concentrates (PCs). It focuses on investigating the impact of PCs’ composition, the age and health status of platelet donors, application methods, and environmental factors on the outcomes of relevant treatments. In addition, it delves into the strategies and mechanisms for optimizing MSCs transplantation with PCs, encompassing preconditioning and combined therapies. Furthermore, it provides an in-depth exploration of the signaling pathways and proteomic characteristics associated with preconditioning and emphasizes the efficacy and specific effects of combined therapy. The article also introduces the latest advancements in the application of biomaterials for optimizing regenerative medical strategies, stimulating scholarly discourse on this subject. Through this comprehensive review, the primary goal is to facilitate a more profound comprehension of the factors influencing treatment outcomes, as well as the strategies and mechanisms for optimizing MSCs transplantation and the application of biomaterials in regenerative medicine, offering theoretical guidance and practical references for related research and clinical practice.
Cranial kinesis in geckoes: functional implications.

Although it is generally assumed that cranial kinesis is a plesiomorphic characteristic in squamates, experimental data tend to contradict this hypothesis. In particular, coupled kinesis (i.e. streptostyly and mesokinesis) presumably arose independently in only a limited number of highly specialised groups. In this study, we investigated cranial kinesis in one of the most specialised of these groups: geckoes. On the basis of cineradiographic and electromyographic data, the fast opening and the slow closing/power stroke phases were modelled to elucidate possible functions of the observed kinesis. The results of these analyses show that the retraction of the muzzle unit during crushing is a self-reinforcing system that increases bite force and reduces the joint forces; the active protraction of the kinetic system during jaw opening, in contrast, enhances opening speed through the coupling of the intracranial units. It can be argued that cranial kinesis in geckoes is probably not an adaptive trait as such but, instead, a consequence of the 'Bauplan' of the cranial system in these animals. Presumably as a result of constructional constraints on the size of the jaw musculature and eyes, the supratemporal and postorbital bars were lost, which resulted in enormous mobility in the skull. To counteract the potential negative factors associated with this (decrease in bite force, skull damage), the kinetic system may have become coupled, and thus functional.
A Systematic Review of Nutritional Supplementation in HIV-Infected Children in Resource-Limited Settings

Background: In resource-limited settings, malnutrition is the major cause of death in young children, but the precise benefits of nutritional supplementation for HIV-infected children are not well understood. Methods: Two researchers reviewed studies conducted in low- or middle-income countries that involved macro- and micronutrient supplementation in HIV-infected individuals ≤18 years. Results: Fifteen studies focused on micronutrients, including vitamin A, zinc, multivitamins, and multiple-micronutrient supplementation. The 8 macronutrient studies focused on ready-to-use foods (4 studies), spirulina, whey protein, general food rations, and F75 and F100 starter formulas. Vitamin A was associated with improved mortality rates, ranging from 28% to 63%. Multiple-micronutrient supplementations were not associated with improvement of measured health outcomes. Ready-to-use foods were associated with improvement in certain anthropometrics. Conclusion: Periodic vitamin A supplementation is associated with reduced mortality. Macronutrient supplementation is linked to improved anthropometrics. More research is needed to determine how nutritional supplementation benefits this particularly vulnerable population.
“Better at home”: Mixed methods report of intricacies in pediatric febrile neutropenia management

Abstract Introduction Many febrile neutropenia (FN) episodes are low risk (LR) for severe outcomes and can safely receive less aggressive management and early hospital discharge. Validated risk tools are recommended by the Children's Oncology Group to identify LR FN episodes. However, the complex dynamics of early hospital discharge and burdens faced by caregivers associated with the FN episode have been inadequately described. Methods An adapted quality‐of‐life (QoL) survey instrument was administered by a convergent mixed methods design; qualitative and quantitative data from two sources, the medical record and the mixed methods survey instrument, were independently analyzed prior to linkage and integration. Code book was informed by conceptual framework; open coding was used. Mixed methods analysis used joint display of results to determine meta‐inferences. Results Twenty‐eight patient–caregiver dyads participated with a response rate of 87%. Of the 27 FN episodes, 51.8% (14/27) were LR and 40.7% (11/27) had an early hospital discharge. The LR and early hospital discharge groups had higher mean QoL scores comparatively. Meta‐inferences are reciprocal influencers and expand the complex situation; FN negatively affects the entire family, and the benefits of hospital management were outweighed by risks and worsened symptoms, so an individualized approach to management and care at home was preferred. Conclusion Early discharge of LR FN episodes positively impacts QoL, yet risk‐stratified management for FN is intricately complex. Optimal FN management should prioritize the patient's overall health; shared decision‐making is recommended and can improve care delivery. These results should be confirmed in a larger, more heterogeneous population.
A differential diagnosis method for systemic CAEBV and the prospect of EBV-related immune cell markers via flow cytometry

Abstract Chronic active Epstein-Barr virus (CAEBV) infection of the T-cell or Natural killer (NK)-cell type, systemic form (systemic CAEBV or sCAEBV) was defined by the WHO in 2017 as an EBV-related lymphoproliferative disorder and is listed as an EBV-positive T-cell and NK-cell proliferation. The clinical manifestations and prognoses are heterogeneous. This makes systemic CAEBV indistinguishable from other EBV-positive T-cell and NK-cell proliferations. Early diagnosis of systemic CAEBV and early hematopoietic stem cell transplantation can improve patient prognosis. At present, the diagnosis of systemic CAEBV relies mainly on age, clinical manifestations, and cell lineage, incurring missed diagnosis, misdiagnosis, long diagnosis time, and inability to identify high-risk systemic CAEBV early. The diagnostic methods for systemic CAEBV are complicated and lack systematic description. The recent development of diagnostic procedures, including molecular biological and immunological techniques such as flow cytometry, has provided us with the ability to better understand the proliferation of other EBV-positive T cells and NK cells, but there is no definitive review of their value in diagnosing systemic CAEBV. This article summarizes the recent progress in systemic CAEBV differential diagnosis and the prospects of flow cytometry.
Physical Conditions in Orion’s Veil

Orion's veil consists of several layers of largely neutral gas lying between us and the main ionizing stars of the Orion Nebula. It is visible in 21 cm H I absorption and in optical and UV absorption lines of H I and other species. Toward θ1 Ori C, the veil has two remarkable properties, a high magnetic field (≈100 μG) and a surprising lack of H2, given its total column density. Here we compute photoionization models of the veil to establish its gas density and its distance from θ1 Ori C. We use a greatly improved model of the H2 molecule that determines level populations in 105 rotational/vibrational levels and provides improved estimates of H2 destruction via the Lyman-Werner bands. Our best-fit photoionization models place the veil 1-3 pc in front of the star at a density of 103-104 cm-3. Magnetic energy dominates the energy of nonthermal motions in at least one of the 21 cm H I velocity components. Therefore, the veil is the first interstellar environment in which magnetic dominance appears to exist. We find that the low ratio of H2/H0 (<10-4) is a consequence of high UV flux incident on the veil due to its proximity to the Trapezium stars and the absence of small grains in the region.
Gender, sex and complex PTSD clinical presentation: a systematic review

ABSTRACT Background: Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) prevalence and clinical presentation reportedly vary with gender and/or sex. Equivalent complex PTSD (CPTSD) research is in its relative infancy and to date no systematic review has been conducted on this topic. Objective: To systematically review the literature and provide a narrative addressing the question of whether gender and/or sex differences exist in CPTSD prevalence and clinical presentation. Method: Embase, PsycINFO, PTSDpubs, PubMed, Web of Science, EThOS and Google Scholar were searched. Twelve papers were eligible for inclusion. Data were extracted and synthesised narratively. Results: Four themes were identified: (i) the reporting of gender and/or sex; (ii) index trauma; (iii) CPTSD prevalence rates; and (iv) CPTSD clinical presentation. Findings were mixed. Nine papers reported prevalence rates: eight found no gender and/or sex differences; one found higher diagnostic rates among women and/or females. Four papers reported clinical presentation: one reported higher cluster-level scores among women and/or females; two used single gender and/or sex samples; and one found higher scores in two clusters in men and/or males. Most papers failed to report in gender- and/or sex-sensitive ways. Conclusions: Gender- and sex-sensitive research and clinical practice is needed. Awareness in research and clinical practice is recommended regarding the intersect between identity and the experience and expression of complex trauma.