Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Coancestry in apparently sporadic primary pulmonary hypertension.

OBJECTIVE To examine sporadic cases of primary pulmonary hypertension of coancestry. DESIGN An epidemiologic study of families of patients with primary pulmonary hypertension. SETTING A university-affiliated referral population. PARTICIPANTS Family members of 13 patients with primary pulmonary hypertension. MEASUREMENTS Family pedigrees involving grandparents, parents, siblings, and children were supplemented by genealogic records. Coefficients of kinship (Ck) were calculated for the patients with primary pulmonary hypertension who demonstrated coancestry and compared with 500 sets of controls drawn at random from genealogic records. RESULTS Two patients with sporadic primary pulmonary hypertension demonstrated coancestry. The great-great grandfather and great-great grandmother of one patient were the great-grandfather and great-grandmother of the other patient. No other cases of primary pulmonary hypertension were identified in these two families. The CK of the affected individuals (CK = 10.02 x 10(-5)) suggests strongly that the observed relationship did not occur by chance alone. Among 500 random sets of matched controls, only two sets yielded CK of 10.02 x 10(-5) or greater (p = 0.004). Coancestry could not be identified for the other five families of patients with sporadic primary pulmonary hypertension for whom genealogic records were available. CONCLUSIONS The finding of coancestry in patients with sporadic primary pulmonary hypertension suggests that a genetic basis exists for some patients with apparently sporadic primary pulmonary hypertension. Familial primary pulmonary hypertension may be more common than previously recognized.
Small‐diameter human vessel wall engineered from bone marrow‐derived mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs)

Using biodegradable scaffold and a biomimetic perfusion system, our lab has successfully engineered small‐diameter vessel grafts using endothelial cells (ECs) and smooth muscle cells (SMCs) obtained from vessels in various species. However, translating this technique into humans has presented tremendous obstacles due to species and age differences. SMCs from elderly persons have limited proliferative capacity and a reduction in collagen production, which impair the mechanical strength of engineered vessels. As an alternative cell source, adult human bone marrow‐derived mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) were studied for their ability to differentiate into SMCs in culture plates as well as in a bioreactor system. In the former setting, immunofluorescence staining showed that MSCs, after induction for 14 days, expressed smooth muscle α‐actin (SMA) and calponin, early and mid‐SMC phenotypic markers, respectively. In the latter setting, vessel walls were constructed with MSC‐derived SMCs. Various factors (i.e., matrix proteins, soluble factors, and cyclic strain) in the engineering system were further investigated for their effects on hMSC cell proliferation and differentiation into SMCs. Based on a screening of multiple factors, the engineering system was optimized by dividing the vessel culture into proliferation and differentiation phases. The vessel walls engineered under the optimized conditions were examined histologically and molecularly, and found to be substantially similar to native vessels. In conclusion, bone marrow‐derived hMSCs can serve as a new cell source of SMCs in vessel engineering. Optimization of the culture conditions to drive SMC differentiation and matrix production significantly improved the quality of the hMSC‐derived engineered vessel wall. — Gong Z. , Niklason L. E. Small‐diameter human vessel wall engineered from bone marrow‐derived mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs). FASEB J. 22, 1635–1648 (2008)
Sediment delivery processes at basin scale

Abstract Since eroded sediments are produced from different sources distributed throughout a basin, sediment delivery processes at basin scale have to be modelled by a spatially distributed approach. In this paper a new theoretically based relationship is proposed for evaluating the sediment delivery ratio, SDRi, of each morphological unit, i, into which a basin is divided. Then, using the sediment balance equation written for the basin outlet, a relationship between the basin sediment delivery ratio, SDRW and the SDRi is deduced. This relationship is shown to be independent of the soil erosion model used. Finally, a morphological criterion for estimating a coefficient, β, is proposed.
Constrain Propagation for Ghost Removal in High Dynamic Range Images

Creating high dynamic range images of non-static scenes is currently a challenging task. Carefully preventing strong camera shakes during shooting and performing image-registration before combining the exposures cannot ensure that the resulting hdr image is consistent. This is eventually due to the presence of moving objects in the scene that causes the so called ghosting artifacts. Different approaches have been developed so far in order to reduce the visible effects of ghosts in hdr images. Our iterative method propagates the influences of pixels that have low chances to belong to the static part of the scene through an image-guided energy minimization approach. Results produced with our technique show a significant reduction or total removal of ghosting artifacts.
Entertainment as a Creature Comfort: Self-Control and Selection of Challenging Media

ABSTRACT A between-subjects experiment examined selective exposure to films in an imagined self-control scenario, and if exposure would be systematically related to perceptions of the film content as challenging, enjoyable, and a should versus a want choice. Across 3 measures of selective exposure—using open-ended choice, closed-ended choice, and prospective ratings—participants in the depletion condition were less likely to select films that were cognitively challenging, affectively challenging, or a should choice. In contrast to nondepleted participants, depleted participants were more likely to select films they expected being fun, suspenseful, and less appreciated. These results provide support for the proposition that users’ momentary self-control capacity and their perception of challenge provided by content predict media choice.
Particle Acceleration in Multiple Dissipation Regions

The sharp magnetic discontinuities that naturally appear in solar magnetic flux tubes driven by turbulent photospheric motions are associated with intense currents. Parker proposed that these currents can become unstable to a variety of microscopic processes, with the net result of dramatically enhanced resistivity and heating (nano-flares). The electric fields associated with such "hot spots" are also expected to enhance particle acceleration. We test this hypothesis by exact relativistic orbit simulations in strong random phase magnetohydrodynamic turbulence that is forming localized super-Dreicer Ohm electric fields (102 ≤ EΩ/ED ≤ 105) occurring in 2%-15% of the volume. It is found that these fields indeed yield a large amplification of acceleration of electrons and ions and can effectively overcome the injection problem. We suggest in this article that nanoflare heating will be associated with sporadic particle acceleration.
Incidental Second and Third Primary Cancers Asynchronously Detected by FDG-PET in a Patient with Breast Cancer

The frequency of double primary cancers synchronously found in an individual has been increasing. However, synchronous or asynchronous triple primary cancers have rarely been reported. A 69-year-old female received an operation for right breast cancer and subsequent chemotherapy in 2001. During the 5-year follow-up period, second and third primary cancers were asynchronously detected by FDG-PET. Lung cancer was identified and surgery was performed in May and June 2003, respectively. Follow-up FDG-PET performed in March 2006 revealed a biologically active (viable) residual tumor in the perihilar region of the right lung. Surprisingly, an additional focal area with increased FDG uptake in the ascending colon was noted. The patient was symptom-free and had a normal serum CEA level. The lesion was proved to be colon cancer, a third primary cancer asynchronously found in this patient. Whole-body FDG-PET is not only an important tool for the early detection of viable residual tumors in patients with malignancy but also early detection of asynchronously developing cancers in other parts of the body.
Transformative professional learning: an ecological approach to agency through critical reflection

Abstract Within the global economy, education leverages social and economic improvement. Teachers are positioned as drivers and agents of compliance within change processes. Addressing this concern, we investigate intern teacher agency, as transformative professional learning, that occurs through a process of critical reflection. Critical reflection is conceived as an important element of teacher agency within the current political milieu. This article addresses the role of critical reflection in school-based intern teacher professional learning (PL). It is argued that intern teacher agency is inherent in transformative PL characterized through partnerships, which provide scope for decision-making and critical reflection.
On strong identifiability and convergence rates of parameter estimation in finite mixtures

Abstract: This paper studies identifiability and convergence behaviors for parameters of multiple types, including matrix-variate ones, that arise in finite mixtures, and the effects of model fitting with extra mixing components. We consider several notions of strong identifiability in a matrix-variate setting, and use them to establish sharp inequalities relating the distance of mixture densities to the Wasserstein distances of the corresponding mixing measures. Characterization of identifiability is given for a broad range of mixture models commonly employed in practice, including locationcovariance mixtures and location-covariance-shape mixtures, for mixtures of symmetric densities, as well as some asymmetric ones. Minimax lower bounds and rates of convergence for the maximum likelihood estimates are established for such classes, which are also confirmed by simulation studies.
Energy Efficiency Aspects of Base Station Deployment Strategies for Cellular Networks

In the strive for lessening of the environmental impact of the information and communication industry, energy consumption of communication networks has recently received increased attention. Although cellular networks account for a rather small share of energy use, lowering their energy con- sumption appears beneficial from an economical perspective. In this regard, the deployment of small, low power base stations, alongside conventional sites is often believed to greatly lower the energy consumption of cellular radio networks. This paper investigates on the impact of deployment strategies on the power consumption of mobile radio networks. We consider layouts featuring varying numbers of micro base stations per cell in addition to conventional macro sites. We introduce the concept of area power consumption as a system performance metric and employ simulations to evaluate potential improvements of this metric through the use of micro base stations. The results suggest, that for scenarios with full traffic load, the use of micro base stations has a rather moderate effect on the area power consumption of a cellular network.
Overcoming Challenges of Semantic Question Answering in the Semantic Web

Semantic Question Answering (SQA) removes two major access requirements to the Semantic Web: the mastery of a formal query language like SPARQL and knowledge of a specific vocabulary. Because of the complexity of natural language, SQA presents difficult challenges and many research opportunities. Instead of a shared effort, however, many essential components are redeveloped, which is an inefficient use of researcher's time and resources. This survey analyzes 62 different SQA systems, which are systematically and manually selected using predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria, leading to 70 selected publications out of 1960 candidates. We identify common challenges, structure solutions, and provide recommendations for future systems. This work is based on publications from the end of 2010 to July 2015 and is also compared to older but similar surveys.
Efficient Induction of Logic Programs

Recently there has been increasing interest in systems which induce rst order logic programs from examples. However, many diiculties need to be overcome. Well-known algorithms fail to discover correct logical descriptions for large classes of interesting predicates , due either to the intractability of search or overly strong limitations applied to the hypothesis space. In contrast, search is avoided within Plotkin's framework of relative least general generalisation (rlgg). It is replaced by the process of constructing a unique clause which covers a set of examples relative to given background knowledge. However, such a clause can in the worst case contain innnitely many literals, or at best grow exponentially with the number of examples involved. In this paper we introduce the concept of h-easy rlgg clauses and show that they have nite length. We also prove that the length of a certain class of \determinate" rlgg is bounded by a polynomial function of certain features of the background knowledge. This function is independent of the number of examples used to construct them. An existing implementation called GOLEM is shown to be capable of inducing many interesting logic programs which have not been demonstrated to be learnable using other algorithms.
The mentoring experiences of an Irish student teacher on his physical education teaching practicum

As part of a larger on-going programmatic research effort examining student teaching supervision in physical education at a four year university course in Ireland, this study examined the mentoring experiences of a student teacher during teaching practice. Over the past two decades there has been a plethora of international research on education supervision as a whole, however, there is a lack of research into the area of PE supervision, especially in Ireland. This study focuses on the interactions within the student teaching triad from the perspective of the student teacher, which is composed of the cooperating teacher (CT), university tutor (UT) and student teacher (ST). The main research question examines the type and frequency of feedback given to the ST from the CT and the UT. This is a descriptive study which uses both qualitative and quantitative methods to form a detailed view of the mentoring experiences of a student teacher. A combination of field notes, weekly observations, daily logs, observation time logs and conference analysis were kept by the student teacher. Results reported are a culmination of descriptive and qualitative analysis of data which indicate that the CT provided minimum feedback, spent little time observing teaching and that the interaction between the CT and the UT was minimal.
School inclusion of children with intellectual disability: An intervention program

ABSTRACT Background: This study evaluated the impact of a structured 10-didactic units intervention on promoting the school inclusion of elementary school students with intellectual disability (ID). Method: The intervention was devised for 152 Italian typically developing (TD) elementary school students that were randomly assigned to the experimental (EG) or to the control (CG) group. Specifically, we examined the positive and negative social behaviours that took place in naturalistic class settings between TD students and their classmates with ID and the positive and negative peer sociometric nominations that children with ID received from their TD classmates. Results: At post-test, the children with ID included in the classes randomly assigned to the EG, received more positive sociometric nominations and social behaviours than peers with ID of the CG, and adopted more positive behaviours towards TD peers. Conclusions: The study highlighted the potential of the intervention to promote the school inclusion of students with ID.
Seasoned Equity Offerings and the Cost of Market Timing

A robust finding in the literature is that seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) are followed by negative long-run abnormal returns, which can be seen as evidence of market timing. In this paper I document the cost of market timing, based on the idea that investors view companies with the most negative abnormal returns in the year following a SEO, as most likely to have timed the issue. I find that these companies compensate investors by offering a larger discount in subsequent SEOs. I also show that issuers anticipate the higher underpricing and are more likely to switch to debt if the returns following a previous SEO were more negative. The effect of past market timing on underpricing is more pronounced if the CEO does not change in between issues. I also find that investors show a greater aversion to losses, in line with the predictions of prospect theory. I find no evidence that underpricing is related to the returns following an IPO, suggesting that investors view IPOs as being less indicative of the market timing motives of follow-on equity issuers.
Local excision following pre-operative chemoradiotherapy-induced downstaging for selected cT3 distal rectal cancer.

OBJECTIVE To investigate the long-term outcomes of selected patients with cT3 distal rectal cancer treated with local excision following pre-operative chemoradiotherapy. METHODS Between January 2003 and February 2008, 11 patients with cT3 distal rectal cancer received a local excision following pre-operative chemoradiotherapy. The median age of the patients was 61 years (range, 42-71). The median tumor size was 3 cm (range, 2-5), and the median distance of the caudal tumor edge from the anal verge was 3 cm (range, 1-4). Clinical lymph node status was positive in five patients. Pre-operative chemoradiotherapy consisted of a 50.4 Gy in 28 fractions with concurrent chemotherapy. A transanal full-thickness local excision was performed after a median of 54 days (range, 31-90) from chemoradiotherapy completion. Ten patients received post-operative chemotherapy. RESULTS Pathologically complete responses occurred in eight patients, ypT1 in two and ypT2 in one. The pathologic tumor size for three ypT1-2 tumors was 0.9, 1.1 and 2.2 cm. The follow-up period was a median of 59 months (range, 24-85). One patient (ypT0) developed recurrence at the excision site 14 months after surgery, but was successfully salvaged with an abdominoperineal resection and adjuvant chemotherapy. Another patient (ypT2) developed bone metastasis after 8 months and died of the disease. The 5-year local recurrence-free, disease-free and overall survival rates were 90.9%, 81.8% and 88.9%, respectively. No Grade 3 or worse gastrointestinal toxicity was detected. CONCLUSIONS Full-thickness local excision following chemoradiotherapy may be an acceptable option for cT3 distal rectal cancer that responds well to chemoradiotherapy.
Relationship of cervical ectopy to chlamydia infection in young women

Objective Genital Chlamydia trachomatis infection is the most common bacterial sexually transmitted infection (STI) in the UK. Behaviours including multiple sex partners and inconsistent condom use, and biological factors such as cervical ectopy, may increase susceptibility to STIs. Cervical ectopy is thought to increase risk of chlamydia infection by exposing columnar epithelium to a potential infectious inoculum. This study aimed to determine whether chlamydia was more prevalent in young women with cervical ectopy. Methods Clinical notes of women aged 16–24 years attending the Portsmouth Genitourinary Medicine Clinic for an STI screen during the period May–July 2003 were reviewed retrospectively. Information collected included the presence or absence of cervical ectopy, smoking habits, methods of contraception, number of sexual partners in the previous 3 months, and previous STIs. Chlamydia infection was diagnosed by using strand displacement amplification on cervical swabs. Results A total of 231 women were included in the study. The mean age was 19.8 years. Evidence of cervical ectopy was found in 107 women. Chlamydial infection was detected in 37.4% (40/107) of those women with cervical ectopy and 21.8% (27/124) in those without cervical ectopy. This difference was statistically significant (p = 0.009). The significance remained even when accounting for confounding variables. Conclusions Cervical ectopy is a common physiological process in young women. Recognition of cervical ectopy should alert the clinician to the possibility of a genital chlamydia infection. Opportunistic screening for chlamydia in young people should be offered to reduce the prevalence of infection and its sequelae.
Evaluati ng Multi-Column Bar Charts and Treemaps for Dense Visualization of Sorted Numeric Data

A single column bar chart can effectively visualize a sorted and labeled list of numeric records, such as salaries per employee. However, its height limits the number of visible records. As the number of records increase, scrolling requires interaction to see an overview, and using shorter bars hinders observing individual records. For dense visualization of sorted numeric data, we consider two multi-column bar chart designs, wrapped bars and piled bars, in addition to treemaps, a space-filling design that is commonly used to scale in the number of records. We evaluate their design characteristics and graphical perception performance by crowdsourcing under comparison, ranking and overview tasks. Our results suggest that multi-column designs can outperform the space-filling treemap design to show more records for comparison and overview tasks with training. Author
Learning word embeddings efficiently with noise-contrastive estimation

Continuous-valued word embeddings learned by neural language models have recently been shown to capture semantic and syntactic information about words very well, setting performance records on several word similarity tasks. The best results are obtained by learning high-dimensional embeddings from very large quantities of data, which makes scalability of the training method a critical factor. We propose a simple and scalable new approach to learning word embeddings based on training log-bilinear models with noise-contrastive estimation. Our approach is simpler, faster, and produces better results than the current state-of-the-art method. We achieve results comparable to the best ones reported, which were obtained on a cluster, using four times less data and more than an order of magnitude less computing time. We also investigate several model types and find that the embeddings learned by the simpler models perform at least as well as those learned by the more complex ones.
Conditional transition maps: Learning motion patterns in dynamic environments

In this paper we introduce a method for learning motion patterns in dynamic environments. Representations of dynamic environments have recently received an increasing amount of attention in the research community. Understanding dynamic environments is seen as one of the key challenges in order to enable autonomous navigation in real-world scenarios. However, representing the temporal dimension is a challenge yet to be solved. In this paper we introduce a spatial representation, which encapsulates the statistical dynamic behavior observed in the environment. The proposed Conditional Transition Map (CTMap) is a grid-based representation that associates a probability distribution for an object exiting the cell, given its entry direction. The transition parameters are learned from a temporal signal of occupancy on cells by using a local-neighborhood cross-correlation method. In this paper, we introduce the CTMap, the learning approach and present a proof-of-concept method for estimating future paths of dynamic objects, called Conditional Probability Propagation Tree (CPPTree). The evaluation is done using a real-world dataset collected at a busy roundabout.