Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Coherence: bridging personal, social, and global health.

All nature is a continuum. The endless complexity of life is organized into patterns which repeat themselves—theme and variations—at each level of system. These similarities and differences are proper concerns for science. From the ceaseless streaming of protoplasm to the many-vectored activities of supranational systems, there are continuous flows through living systems as they maintain their highly orga nized steady states. Even more basic to this presentation than the concept of “system” are the concepts of “space,” “time,” “matter,” “energy,” and “information,” because the living systems exist in space and are made of matter and energy organized by information. — James Grier Miller, Living Systems, 1978
Distinct mechanisms of neonatal tolerance induced by dendritic cells and thymic B cells

To assess the role of different types of antigen-presenting cells (APC) in the induction of tolerance, we isolated B cells, macrophages, and dendritic cells from thymus and spleen, and injected these into neonatal BALB/c mice across an Mls-1 antigenic barrier. One week after injection of APC from Mls-1-incompatible mice or from control syngeneic mice, we measured the number of thymic, Mls-1a-reactive, V beta 6+ T cells and the capacity of thymocytes to induce a graft-vs.-host (GVH) reaction in popliteal lymph nodes of Mls-1a mice. Injection of thymic but not spleen B cells deleted thymic, Mls-1a-reactive V beta 6+ T cells and induced tolerance in the GVH assay. The thymic B cells were primarily of the CD5+ type, and fluorescence-activated cell sorter- purified CD5+ thymic B cells were active. Injection of dendritic cells from spleen or thymus also induced tolerance, but the V beta 6 cells were anergized rather than deleted. Macrophages from thymus did not induce tolerance. Dendritic cells and thymic B cells were also effective in inducing tolerance even when injected into Mls-, major histocompatibility complex-incompatible, I-E- mice, but only thymic B cells depleted V beta 6-expressing T cells. Therefore, different types of bone marrow-derived APC have different capacities for inducing tolerance, and the active cell types (dendritic cells and CD5+ thymic B cells) can act by distinct mechanisms.
The Effects of Alcohol Intoxication on Accuracy and the Confidence–Accuracy Relationship in Photographic Simultaneous Line‐ups

Summary Acute alcohol intoxication during encoding can impair subsequent identification accuracy, but results across studies have been inconsistent, with studies often finding no effect. Little is also known about how alcohol intoxication affects the identification confidence–accuracy relationship. We randomly assigned women (N = 153) to consume alcohol (dosed to achieve a 0.08% blood alcohol content) or tonic water, controlling for alcohol expectancy. Women then participated in an interactive hypothetical sexual assault scenario and, 24 hours or 7 days later, attempted to identify the assailant from a perpetrator present or a perpetrator absent simultaneous line‐up and reported their decision confidence. Overall, levels of identification accuracy were similar across the alcohol and tonic water groups. However, women who had consumed tonic water as opposed to alcohol identified the assailant with higher confidence on average. Further, calibration analyses suggested that confidence is predictive of accuracy regardless of alcohol consumption. The theoretical and applied implications of our results are discussed. © 2017 The Authors Applied Cognitive Psychology Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Pembrolizumab for the treatment of non-small-cell lung cancer.

BACKGROUND We assessed the efficacy and safety of programmed cell death 1 (PD-1) inhibition with pembrolizumab in patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer enrolled in a phase 1 study. We also sought to define and validate an expression level of the PD-1 ligand 1 (PD-L1) that is associated with the likelihood of clinical benefit. METHODS We assigned 495 patients receiving pembrolizumab (at a dose of either 2 mg or 10 mg per kilogram of body weight every 3 weeks or 10 mg per kilogram every 2 weeks) to either a training group (182 patients) or a validation group (313 patients). We assessed PD-L1 expression in tumor samples using immunohistochemical analysis, with results reported as the percentage of neoplastic cells with staining for membranous PD-L1 (proportion score). Response was assessed every 9 weeks by central review. RESULTS Common side effects that were attributed to pembrolizumab were fatigue, pruritus, and decreased appetite, with no clear difference according to dose or schedule. Among all the patients, the objective response rate was 19.4%, and the median duration of response was 12.5 months. The median duration of progression-free survival was 3.7 months, and the median duration of overall survival was 12.0 months. PD-L1 expression in at least 50% of tumor cells was selected as the cutoff from the training group. Among patients with a proportion score of at least 50% in the validation group, the response rate was 45.2%. Among all the patients with a proportion score of at least 50%, median progression-free survival was 6.3 months; median overall survival was not reached. CONCLUSIONS Pembrolizumab had an acceptable side-effect profile and showed antitumor activity in patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer. PD-L1 expression in at least 50% of tumor cells correlated with improved efficacy of pembrolizumab. (Funded by Merck; KEYNOTE-001 ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT01295827.).
Basic Characterization of Suspended-core Microstrustured Polymer Optical Fiber

Microstructured polymer optical fibers are offering alternative approach to the conventional silica photonic crystal fibers. This kind of photonic crystal looks very promising in the field of telecommunications and sensing due to possible structure shapes and dopands, which are unreachable by more conventional techniques using silica. However this area is still in the beginning of research and we can only assume which properties will be useful and which will be necessary to restrain. Small part of this area hopefully uncovers this report focused on usability of suspended-core microstructured polymer optical fiber.
Categories of Depression: Reported Life Events in a Controlled Design

In a case control study, 32 onset cases of depression, separated into PSE-CATEGO Categories N and R, were compared with individually matched symptom free general practice attenders. Combining both categories of depressives together a significantly greater number reported an Undesirable Life Event and a Threatening Life Event in the six months prior to onset, compared with their matched controls. Significantly more CATEGO R (retarded or endogenous) depressives reported an Independent Threatening event than their matched controls. These findings do not support the view that depression secondary to a major life event is more likely to be mild in character.
Paper Special Section on Parallel and Distributed Computing and Networking a Graph Rewriting Approach for Converting Asynchronous Roms into Synchronous Ones

SUMMARY Most of FPGAs have Configurable Logic Blocks (CLBs) to implement combinational and sequential circuits and block RAMs to implement Random Access Memories (RAMs) and Read Only Memories (ROMs). Circuit design that minimizes the number of clock cycles is easy if we use asynchronous read operations. However, most of FPGAs support synchronous read operations, but do not support asynchronous read operations. The main contribution of this paper is to provide one of the potent approaches to resolve this problem. We assume that a circuit using asynchronous ROMs designed by a non-expert or quickly designed by an expert is given. Our goal is to convert this circuit with asynchronous ROMs into an equivalent circuit with synchronous ones. The resulting circuit with synchronous ROMs can be embedded into FPGAs. We also discuss several techniques to decrease the latency and increase the clock frequency of the resulting circuits.
Effects of Ripening Duration and Rosemary Powder Addition on Salchichon Modified Sausage Quality

The ripening durations and ingredients for the Salchichon sausages were modified to increase pork rear leg consumption by Korean consumers. The salchichon, a ripened pork sausage, was produced to evaluate the efficacy of two different ripening durations with and without rosemary powder on salchichon sausage quality, and the treatments were: i) 45 days of ripening without rosemary, ii) 60 days of ripening without rosemary, iii) 45 days of ripening with 0.05% rosemary, and iv) 60 days of ripening with 0.05% rosemary. Significant differences were observed in both moisture and fat content for ripening durations, with the highest moisture and least fat content observed in salchichon modified sausage (SMS) ripened for 45 days. Ripening duration and rosemary addition appeared to influence water activity (aw) of salchichon sausages. The aw of SMS ripened for 45 days was 0.80, whereas the other had aw values <0.80. Lactic acid bacteria were predominant, as Korean traditional fermented red pepper paste was added to sausages; however, the Bacillus cereus population was significantly affected by rosemary powder addition. Chewiness and gumminess decreased significantly due to the addition of rosemary powder compared to SMS without rosemary powder, and both 45 days of ripening and rosemary powder addition influenced the hardness of SMS. In conclusion, ripening duration of SMS for 45 days in the presence of rosemary powder provided superior SMS quality with an economical ripening duration compared to that of ripening with rosemary powder or ripening for 60 days.
PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH AND EXPECTATIONS OF PATIENTS SEEKING COSMETIC RHINOPLASTY

Background: Cosmetic rhinoplasty is now carried out increasingly in an attempt to solve the psychological and social problems of people who are discontent with their nose. Little is known about either the psychological status of persons who seek rhinoplasty or potential psychological changes following surgery. The challenge that faces surgeons, is how to identify, before surgical intervention those patients who may have a poor outcome in terms of psychological adjustment despite a technically satisfactory result. Methods: A total of 96 patients (84 women and 12 men) who were seeking cosmetic rhinoplasty were selected and completed an adopted expectation questionnaire and SCL-90-R, a 90 item self-report symptom inventory which measures 9 primary symptom dimensions. It is designed primarily to reflect the psychological symptom patterns of psychiatric and medical patients. Results: The majority of the patients reported that their noses made them selfconscious, and thought the rhinoplasty would change their lives. Interpersonal sensitivity and anxiety were the most reported symptoms in SCL-90-R, followed by obsessive-compulsive symptoms and depression. Conclusion: The findings of this study enhance our understanding of psychological factors in seeking rhinoplasty and provide insight into the surgical-psychological management of these patients.
Utilizing Volatile External Information During Planning

There are many practical planning situations in which planners may need information from external sources during the planning process. We describe the following: • Wrappers that may be placed around conventional (isolated) planners. The wrapper replaces some of the planner's memory accesses with queries to external information sources. When appropriate, the wrapper will automatically backtrack the planner to a previous point in its operation. • Query-management strategies for wrappers. These dictate when to issue queries, and when/how to backtrack the planner. • Mathematical analysis and experimental tests. Our results show conditions under which different query management strategies are preferable, and demonstrate that certain kinds of planning paradigms are more suited than others for planning with volatile information.
An enlarged cosmic shear survey with the William Herschel Telescope

We report the results of a cosmic shear survey using the 4.2-m William Herschel Telescope on La Palma, to a depth of R = 25.8 (z ≈ 0.8), over 4 deg^2. The shear correlation functions are measured on scales from 1 to 15 arcmin, and are used to constrain cosmological parameters. We ensure that our measurements are free from instrumental systematic effects by performing a series of tests, including a decomposition of the signal into E- and B-modes. We also reanalyse the data independently, using the shear measurement pipeline developed for the COMBO-17 survey. This confirms our results and also highlights various effects introduced by different implementations of the basic ‘Kaiser—Squires—Broadhurst’ shear measurement method. We find that the normalization of the matter power spectrum on 8 h^(−1) Mpc scales is σ8 = (1.02 ± 0.15)(0.3/Ω_m)^(1/2), where the 68 per cent confidence limit error includes noise, sample variance, covariance between angular scales, systematic effects, redshift uncertainty and marginalization over other parameters. We compare these results with other cosmic shear surveys and with recent constraints from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe experiment.
Functional Analyses of Caffeic Acid O-Methyltransferase and Cinnamoyl-CoA-Reductase Genes from Perennial Ryegrass (Lolium perenne)[W]

The authors show enhanced digestibility of cinnamoyl CoA-reductase and caffeic acid O-methyltransferase-deficient perennial ryegrass plants grown under glasshouse and field conditions. This indicates that both of these lignin biosynthetic genes are promising targets for transgenic approaches aiming to enhance forage quality and improve feedstock plants for biofuel production. Cinnamoyl CoA-reductase (CCR) and caffeic acid O-methyltransferase (COMT) catalyze key steps in the biosynthesis of monolignols, which serve as building blocks in the formation of plant lignin. We identified candidate genes encoding these two enzymes in perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne) and show that the spatio-temporal expression patterns of these genes in planta correlate well with the developmental profile of lignin deposition. Downregulation of CCR1 and caffeic acid O-methyltransferase 1 (OMT1) using an RNA interference–mediated silencing strategy caused dramatic changes in lignin level and composition in transgenic perennial ryegrass plants grown under both glasshouse and field conditions. In CCR1-deficient perennial ryegrass plants, metabolic profiling indicates the redirection of intermediates both within and beyond the core phenylpropanoid pathway. The combined results strongly support a key role for the OMT1 gene product in the biosynthesis of both syringyl- and guaiacyl-lignin subunits in perennial ryegrass. Both field-grown OMT1-deficient and CCR1-deficient perennial ryegrass plants showed enhanced digestibility without obvious detrimental effects on either plant fitness or biomass production. This highlights the potential of metabolic engineering not only to enhance the forage quality of grasses but also to produce optimal feedstock plants for biofuel production.
On the Advantages of Disaggregated Data: Insights from Forecasting the U.S. Economy in a Data-Rich Environment

The good forecasting performance of factor models has been well documented in the literature. While many studies focus on a very limited set of variables (typically GDP and inflation), this study evaluates forecasting performance at disaggregated levels to examine the source of the improved forecasting accuracy, relative to a simple autoregressive model. We use the latest revision of over 100 U.S. time series over the period 1974-2009 (monthly and quarterly data). We employ restrictions derived from national accounting identities to derive jointly consistent forecasts for the different components of U.S. GDP. In line with previous studies, we find that our factor model yields vastly improved forecasts for U.S. GDP, relative to simple autoregressive benchmark models, but we also conclude that the gains in terms of forecasting accuracy differ substantially between GDP components. As a rule of thumb, the largest improvements in terms of forecasting accuracy are found for relatively more volatile series, with the greatest gains coming from improvements of the forecasts for investment and trade. Consumption forecasts, in contrast, perform only marginally better than a simple AR benchmark model. In addition, we show that for most GDP components, an unrestricted, direct forecast outperforms forecasts subject to national accounting identity restrictions. In contrast, GDP itself is best forecasted as the sum of individual forecasts for GDP components, but the improvement over a direct, unconstrained factor forecast is small.
Inhibition of Retinoic Acid-Inducible Gene I-Mediated Induction of Beta Interferon by the NS1 Protein of Influenza A Virus

ABSTRACT The retinoic acid-inducible gene I product (RIG-I) has been identified as a cellular sensor of RNA virus infection resulting in beta interferon (IFN-β) induction. However, many viruses are known to encode viral products that inhibit IFN-β production. In the case of influenza A virus, the viral nonstructural protein 1 (NS1) prevents the induction of the IFN-β promoter by inhibiting the activation of transcription factors, including IRF-3, involved in IFN-β transcriptional activation. The inhibitory properties of NS1 appear to be due at least in part to its binding to double-stranded RNA (dsRNA), resulting in the sequestration of this viral mediator of RIG-I activation. However, the precise effects of NS1 on the RIG-I-mediated induction of IFN-β have not been characterized. We now report that the NS1 of influenza A virus interacts with RIG-I and inhibits the RIG-I-mediated induction of IFN-β. This inhibition was apparent even when a mutant RIG-I that is constitutively activated (in the absence of dsRNA) was used to trigger IFN-β production. Coexpression of RIG-I, its downstream signaling partner, IPS-1, and NS1 resulted in increased levels of RIG-I and NS1 within an IPS-1-rich, solubilization-resistant fraction after cell lysis. These results suggest that RIG-I, IPS-1, and NS1 become part of the same complex. Consistent with this idea, NS1 was also found to inhibit IFN-β promoter activation by IPS-1 overexpression. Our results indicate that, in addition to sequestering dsRNA, the NS1 of influenza A virus binds to RIG-I and inhibits downstream activation of IRF-3, preventing the transcriptional induction of IFN-β.
Conformations of Islet Amyloid Polypeptide Monomers in a Membrane Environment: Implications for Fibril Formation

The amyloid fibrils formed by islet amyloid polypeptide (IAPP) are associated with type II diabetes. One of the proposed mechanisms of the toxicity of IAPP is that it causes membrane damage. The fatal mutation of S20G human IAPP was reported to lead to early onset of type II diabetes and high tendency of amyloid formation in vitro. Characterizing the structural features of the S20G mutant in its monomeric state is experimentally difficult because of its unusually fast aggregation rate. Computational work complements experimental studies. We performed a series of molecular dynamics simulations of the monomeric state of human variants in the membrane. Our simulations are validated by extensive comparisons with experimental data. We find that a helical disruption at His18 is common to both human variants. An L-shaped motif of S20G mutant is observed in one of the conformational families. This motif that bends at His18 resembles the overall topology of IAPP fibrils. The conformational preorganization into the fibril-like topology provides a possible explanation for the fast aggregation rate of S20G IAPP.
Priorities of Intuitionistic Fuzzy Preference Relation Based on Multiplicative Consistency

The intuitionistic fuzzy preference relation (IFPR), whose elements are intuitionistic fuzzy values (IFVs), is more powerful than the traditional multiplicative preference relation and the fuzzy preference relation in expressing comprehensive preference information of a decision maker. The aim of this paper is to investigate a new approach to derive the priority weights from an IFPR. To do so, we give a new definition of multiplicative consistent IFPR, which is based on the membership and nonmembership degrees of the intuitionistic fuzzy judgments. After that, a formula, which involves the underlying intuitionistic fuzzy weights of the IFPR, is proposed to construct such a multiplicative consistent IFPR. Based on the formula, some fractional programming models are built to generate the intuitionistic fuzzy priority weighting vector of the IFPR. Several numerical examples are given to illustrate the validity and applicability of the proposed method.
Repeatability and Pervasiveness of Self-Healing in Engineered Cementitious Composites

This paper investigates the intrinsic self-healing ability of engineered cementitious composites (ECCs) coupled with multiple microcrack formation under mechanical loading based on two robustness criteria: repeatability and pervasiveness. To this end, two different composites containing Class F fly ash and slag were investigated. To generate microcracks, specimens were repeatedly preloaded up to 70% of their deformation capacities under mechanical loading at the end of each specified cyclic wet/dry conditioning period. Resonant frequency (RF) and rapid chloride permeability tests (RCPT) were used to assess the extent of damage and self-healing, and final results were supported by microscope observations. RF measurements were recorded from two different parts of each specimen (the top and middle portions) to monitor whether self-healing takes place in certain regions or whether it is pervasive over the entire specimen. Results of the experimental study show that depending on the type of mineral admixture used and the duration of initial curing before deterioration, ECC specimens can recover up to 85% of their initial RF measurements, even after six repetitive preloading applications. The recovery rates observed in the middle portion are similar to those in the top portion for both ECC mixtures (to a slightly lesser extent), which implies that self-healing is quite pervasive. Furthermore, after repeated application of severe preloading, RCPT results for both mixtures satisfy low or moderate chloride ion penetrability levels in accordance with ASTM C1202. Due to the enhanced self-healing capability of specimens, maximum crack width observed over the specimen surfaces was restricted to 190 µm (0.008 in.), even after nine preloadings. These findings suggest that under certain conditions, the ECC materials produced in this study may significantly enhance the functionality of structures by reducing the need for repair and/or maintenance.
Self-initiated curriculum planning, visualization and assessment in improving meaningful learning: A comparison between mobile and ubiquitous learning

This study investigated factors that would contribute towards more effective problem-solving skills and increase meaningful learning in two different learning environments, i.e. mobile and ubiquitous learning. In order to study these factors two prototype applications were developed and tested. In the mobile learning application, the factors investigated were self-initiated curriculum planning, visualization and assessment. The second prototype was a ubiquitous learning environment, which extended the mobile learning application by integrating it with a web-based portal. As a result, the ubiquitous learning environment provided the learners with more flexibility and features. Findings from this research indicated that learners accepted self-initiated curriculum planning, visualization and correlated assessment as effective and efficient in enhancing problem solving and meaningful learning. The results also show how these factors affected the learning process in each of the learning environments, and what features are more suitable and accepted by learners for each studied learning environment.