Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Time course of temperature effects on cardiovascular mortality in Brisbane, Australia

Objective To quantify the lagged effects of mean temperature on deaths from cardiovascular diseases in Brisbane, Australia. Design Polynomial distributed lag models were used to assess the percentage increase in mortality up to 30 days associated with an increase (or decrease) of 1°C above (or below) the threshold temperature. Setting Brisbane, Australia. Patients 22 805 cardiovascular deaths registered between 1996 and 2004. Main outcome measures Deaths from cardiovascular diseases. Results The results show a longer lagged effect in cold days and a shorter lagged effect in hot days. For the hot effect, a statistically significant association was observed only for lag 0–1 days. The percentage increase in mortality was found to be 3.7% (95% CI 0.4% to 7.1%) for people aged ≥65 years and 3.5% (95% CI 0.4% to 6.7%) for all ages associated with an increase of 1°C above the threshold temperature of 24°C. For the cold effect, a significant effect of temperature was found for 10–15 lag days. The percentage estimates for older people and all ages were 3.1% (95% CI 0.7% to 5.7%) and 2.8% (95% CI 0.5% to 5.1%), respectively, with a decrease of 1°C below the threshold temperature of 24°C. Conclusions The lagged effects lasted longer for cold temperatures but were apparently shorter for hot temperatures. There was no substantial difference in the lag effect of temperature on mortality between all ages and those aged ≥65 years in Brisbane, Australia.
Bayesian Nonnegative Harmonic-Temporal Factorization and Its Application to Multipitch Analysis

Since important musical features are mutually dependent, their relations should be analyzed simultaneously. Their Bayesian analysis is particularly important to reveal their statistical relation. As the first step for a unified music content analyzer, we focus on the harmonic and temporal structures of the wavelet spectrogram obtained from harmonic sounds. In this paper, we present a new Bayesian multipitch analyzer, called Bayesian nonnegative harmonic-temporal factorization (BNHTF). BNHTF models the harmonic and temporal structures separately based on Gaussian mixture model. The input signal is assumed to contain a finite number of harmonic sounds. Each harmonic sound is assumed to emit a large number of sound quanta over the time-log-frequency domain. The observation probability is expressed as the product of two Gaussian mixtures. The number of quanta is calculated in the -neighborhood of each grid point on the spectrogram. BNHTF integrates latent harmonic allocation (LHA) and nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) to estimate both the observation probability and the number of quanta. The model is optimized by newly designed deterministic procedures with several approximations for the variational Bayesian inference. Results of experiments on multipitch estimation with 40 musical pieces showed that BNHTF outperforms the conventional method by 0.018 in terms of F-measure on average.
Performance bounds for sparse estimation with random noise

The problem considered in this paper is to estimate a deterministic vector representing elements in an overcomplete dictionary. The vector is assumed to be sparse and is to be estimated from measurements corrupted by Gaussian noise. Our goal is to derive a lower bound on the mean-squared error (MSE) achievable in this setting. To this end, an appropriate definition of unbiasedness in the sparse setting is developed, and the unbiased Cramér-Rao bound (CRB) is derived. The resulting bound is shown to be identical to the MSE of the oracle estimator. Combined with the fact that the CRB is achieved at high signal-to-noise ratios by the maximum likelihood technique, our result provides a new interpretation for the common practice of using the oracle estimator as a gold standard against which practical approaches are compared.
Asymptotic spectral efficiency of multiuser multisignature CDMA in frequency-selective channels

This paper presents an asymptotic analysis of multisignature code-division multiple access (CDMA) in the presence of frequency-selective channels. We characterize the sum spectral efficiency and spectral efficiency regions for both the optimal and linear minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) multiuser receivers. Both independent and identically distributed (i.i.d). signatures and isometric signatures, which are orthogonal at each transmitter, are considered. Our results are asymptotic as the number of signatures per user and processing gain both tend to infinity with fixed ratio. The spectral efficiency of the MMSE receiver is determined from the asymptotic output signal-to-interference-plus noise ratio (SINR). For isometric signatures, our results rely on approximating certain covariance matrices with unitarily invariant matrices that are asymptotically free. This approximation is shown to be very accurate through comparison with both simulation and an "incremental-signature" analysis, which can be used to compute asymptotic moments. Also, a novel proof of the convergence of the empirical spectral distribution of the signal correlation matrix is presented. From these results, we derive the optimal coding-spreading tradeoff, which maximizes the MMSE spectral efficiency, for the case of a single user with multiple i.i. d. signatures. Simulation studies demonstrate that the asymptotic results accurately predict the performance of finite-size systems of interest. The resulting expressions are used to highlight and infer properties of the multisignature CDMA system, including the benefit of orthogonal relative to i.i. d. signatures, and the tradeoff between spectral efficiency and the versatility of providing a variable data rate service through multiple signatures
Feeling by Doing The Social Organization of Everyday Emotions in Academic Talk-in-Interaction

The present dissertation is concerned with the social organization of emotions in talk-in-interaction. Conversation analytic procedures were used to uncover the practices through which participants in social interaction convey, understand, enact, and utilize emotions that are made relevant to the interaction. The central aim is to describe such practices and the contexts in which they are deployed, and to link emotions to the social actions that they perform or contribute to performing within situated activities. Conversation analytic work has generally not addressed emotions explicitly for reasons discussed in the dissertation, and a second aim was therefore to test the applicability of conversation analysis to emotion research, to theoretically bring together separate fields of inquiry, and to discuss advantages and limitations of a talk-in-interactional approach to emotions. Furthermore, the analytic approach to emotions is restricted to displays and orientations that are made relevant by participants themselves.Data consists of video recordings of six graduate school seminars at a large university in the United States, as well as interviews with all 22 participants. From the analyses, three themes emerged; "frustration", "embarrassment", and "enjoyment", and within each, an assortment of practices for doing emotions were found. Frustration was primarily located in the context of violations of activity-specific turn-taking norms. Embarrassment was found to do multiple interactional work; for example, in contexts of repair, teasing, and culturally delicate matters. Enjoyment was found to be collaboratively pursued between and within institutional activities; for example, through reported speech dramatizations, utilization of activity-transitional environments, and playful 'mock' emotions. Timing of gaze aversion, laughter, and gestures were also found to be key to the display and perception of emotions.The findings indicate that emotion displays can be viewed as transforming a situated action, opening up alternative trajectories for a sequences-in-progress, and also function as actions in themselves. Furthermore, it was concluded that conversation analysis is indeed a fruitful empirical route for understanding emotions and their role in social interaction.
Reconciling pro-social vs. selfish behavior: On the role of self-control

We test in the context of a dictator game the proposition that individuals may experience a self-control conflict between the temptation to act selfishly and the better judgment to act pro-socially. We manipulated the likelihood that individuals would identify self-control conflict, and we measured their trait ability to implement self-control strategies. Our analysis reveals a positive and significant correlation between trait self-control and pro-social behavior in the treatment where we expected a relatively high likelihood of conflict identification—but not in the treatment where we expected a low likelihood. The magnitude of the effect is of economic significance. We conclude that subtle cues might prove sufficient to alter individuals’ perception of allocation opportunities, thereby prompting individuals to draw on their own cognitive resources to act pro-socially.
Analytic model of a silicon nanowire pH sensor

An analytic model of silicon nanowire (Si-NW) pH sensor is presented. The model is based on the solution of the cylindrical Poisson equation and the nonlinear Poisson-Boltzmann equation in the Si-NW and the electrolyte, respectively. The results simulated from the proposed model are compared with experimental data.
Globally Optimal Bulk Data Transfers in Overlay Routing Networks

This report describes the results of a six-week research vis it by the first author to the INRIA RESO research group at ENS Lyon. We address the problem of scheduling bulk data transfers in routing overlays running over public networks, in a globally optimal manner. One challenge encountered in this endeavor is to jointly address the global optimization of routes taken by transfers in the r outing overlay, one one hand, and the transfer schedules in the time domain, on the other, such that a single global objective is optimized (we currently choose minimizing global network congestion as our objective). In this direct ion, we explore two alternative approaches, one based on a linear programming optimization, and another on oblivious routing strategies. A second challenge in scheduling deadline-constrained transfers in a public network settin g is dealing with uncertainties in future resource availabi lity (e.g. available bandwidths) given by the presence of cross-traffic. For this, we propose using distributions rather tha n fixed values for describing network links and further derivi ng probabilistic guarantees for deadlines to be met based on the distributions of transfer paths chosen by our algorit hm. Our system is currently still in a development and testing phase. We plan evaluations based on trace-driven simulations, using traces collected on PlanetLab by us and traces we downloaded from the S3 measurement project. We will use S3 traces we have been collecting for about two months. Depending on the outcome of the simulation approach and on other practical factors, we might also evaluate the system by running a full-fledged implementation over PlanetLab. Applications of our approach include p2p networks used for data transfers, QoS-enhancing routing overlays such as [5] [19] [12], SETI@home-like p2p computing, with deadline constraints, over large scale data (e.g. astronomic streams), as well as any scenario in which a distributed organization needs to transfer and process large amounts of data over public networks with deadline constraints.
The solute carrier 6 family of transporters

The solute carrier 6 (SLC6) family of the human genome comprises transporters for neurotransmitters, amino acids, osmolytes and energy metabolites. Members of this family play critical roles in neurotransmission, cellular and whole body homeostasis. Malfunction or altered expression of these transporters is associated with a variety of diseases. Pharmacological inhibition of the neurotransmitter transporters in this family is an important strategy in the management of neurological and psychiatric disorders. This review provides an overview of the biochemical and pharmacological properties of the SLC6 family transporters.
MOLECULAR DETECTION OF TOXOPLASMA GONDII DNA IN RAW GOAT AND SHEEP MILK WITH DISCUSSION OF ITS PUBLIC HEALTH IMPORTANCE IN ASSIUT GOVERNORATE

Received at: 31/3/2015 Accepted: 11/5/2015 This study was carried out to investigate the incidence of Toxoplasma gondii in 105 sheep and goat raw milk samples in Assiut, Egypt. Milk samples were tested by microscopic examination, Latex agglutination test and 50 samples were tested with PCR assay. The incidence of Toxoplasma gondii in sheep and goat milk samples was 10.48% (11/105) by microscopic examination, 39% (41/105) by Latex agglutination test and 16% (8/50) by PCR assay. High significant differences were recorded in incidence of Toxoplasma in raw sheep milk in 8.62% (5/58) by micropscopic examination, in 39.66% (23/58)) by latex agglutination test and detection of B1 gene of Toxoplasma gondii in 10.71% (3/28) by PCR assay. While, significance differences were found in incidence of Toxoplasma in raw goat milk in 12.77% (6/47)) by microscopical examination, in 38.30% (18/47) by Latex agglutination test in addition to detection of B1 gene of Toxoplasma gondii in 22.73% (5/22) by PCR assay. The results showed that sheep and goats were excreting Toxoplasma gondii DNA in their milk. The results of this study revealed that Latex agglutination test and PCR assay could become useful tools to diagnose the incidence of Toxoplasma gondii in sheep and goat milk samples. This study is the first report of direct detection of Toxoplasma gondii in sheep and goat milk samples in Assiut Governorate, Egypt. Control measures and public heath importance were also discussed in this study.
Human papillomavirus DNA in adenosquamous carcinoma of the lung.

AIM: To investigate the presence of human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA in adenosquamous carcinoma of the lung--which is relatively common in Okinawa but not in mainland Japan--and examine its histological features. METHODS: Of 207 cases where primary lung cancers were surgically removed between January 1995 and June 1997 in Okinawa, 23 were adenosquamous carcinoma. HPV was detected by non-isotopic in situ hybridisation (NISH) and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification with primers specific for E6 and E7 regions of the HPV genome. PCR products were analysed by Southern blotting. Immunohistochemical determination of high molecular weight cytokeratin (HMC) and involucrin was also carried out. RESULTS: 18 cases were positive for HPV DNA by PCR and NISH. HPV types 6, 11, 16, and 18 were found. Seven cases were dual positive for different types of HPV. Using NISH, HPV was also found in the squamous cell components and in neighbouring enlarged adenocarcinoma cells. The HMC and involucrin were demonstrated immunohistochemically in the same areas. CONCLUSIONS: HPV DNA was found in a high proportion (78.3%) of adenosquamous carcinomas in Okinawa, a region where HPV has previously been shown to be prevalent in squamous cell carcinoma of the lung. The adenocarcinoma cells adjacent to the squamous cell carcinoma component were enlarged and positive for HPV, HMC, and involucrin. This is thought to indicate the transition from adenocarcinoma to squamous cell carcinoma.
Particle-acceleration time-scales in TeV blazar flares

Observations of minute-scale flares in TeV Blazars place constraints on particle-acceleration mechanisms in those objects. The implications for a variety of radiation mechanisms have been addressed in the literature; in this paper, we compare four different acceleration mechanisms: diffusive shock acceleration, second-order Fermi, shear acceleration and the converter mechanism. When the acceleration time-scales and radiative losses are taken into account, we can exclude shear acceleration and the neutron-based converted mechanism as possible acceleration processes in these systems. The first-order Fermi process and the converter mechanism working via synchrotron self-Compton (SSC) photons are still practically instantaneous, however, provided sufficient turbulence is generated on the time-scale of seconds. We propose stochastic acceleration as a promising candidate for the energy-dependent time delays in recent gamma-ray flares of Markarian 501.
Utility of a Multiparametric Quantitative MRI Model That Assesses Myelin and Edema for Evaluating Plaques, Periplaque White Matter, and Normal-Appearing White Matter in Patients with Multiple Sclerosis: A Feasibility Study

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: T1 and T2 values and proton density can now be quantified on the basis of a single MR acquisition. The myelin and edema in a voxel can also be estimated from these values. The purpose of this study was to evaluate a multiparametric quantitative MR imaging model that assesses myelin and edema for characterizing plaques, periplaque white matter, and normal-appearing white matter in patients with MS. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We examined 3T quantitative MR imaging data from 21 patients with MS. The myelin partial volume, excess parenchymal water partial volume, the inverse of T1 and transverse T2 relaxation times (R1, R2), and proton density were compared among plaques, periplaque white matter, and normal-appearing white matter. RESULTS: All metrics differed significantly across the 3 groups (P < .001). Those in plaques differed most from those in normal-appearing white matter. The percentage changes of the metrics in plaques and periplaque white matter relative to normal-appearing white matter were significantly more different from zero for myelin partial volume (mean, −61.59 ± 20.28% [plaque relative to normal-appearing white matter], and mean, −10.51 ± 11.41% [periplaque white matter relative to normal-appearing white matter]), and excess parenchymal water partial volume (13.82 × 103 ± 49.47 × 103% and 51.33 × 102 ± 155.31 × 102%) than for R1 (−35.23 ± 13.93% and −6.08 ± 8.66%), R2 (−21.06 ± 11.39% and −4.79 ± 6.79%), and proton density (23.37 ± 10.30% and 3.37 ± 4.24%). CONCLUSIONS: Multiparametric quantitative MR imaging captures white matter damage in MS. Myelin partial volume and excess parenchymal water partial volume are more sensitive to the MS disease process than R1, R2, and proton density.
Exocytosis and Endocytosis in Neuroendocrine Cells: Inseparable Membranes!

Although much has been learned concerning the mechanisms of secretory vesicle formation and fusion at donor and acceptor membrane compartments, relatively little attention has been paid toward understanding how cells maintain a homeostatic membrane balance through vesicular trafficking. In neurons and neuroendocrine cells, release of neurotransmitters, neuropeptides, and hormones occurs through calcium-regulated exocytosis at the plasma membrane. To allow recycling of secretory vesicle components and to preserve organelles integrity, cells must initiate and regulate compensatory membrane uptake. This review relates the fate of secretory granule membranes after full fusion exocytosis in neuroendocrine cells. In particular, we focus on the potential role of lipids in preserving and sorting secretory granule membranes after exocytosis and we discuss the potential mechanisms of membrane retrieval.
Maximum Frame Rate Video Acquisition Using Adaptive Compressed Sensing

Compressed sensing is a novel technology to acquire and reconstruct sparse signals below the Nyquist rate. It has great potential in image and video acquisition to explore data redundancy and to significantly reduce the number of collected data. In this paper, we explore the temporal redundancy in videos, and propose a block-based adaptive framework for compressed video sampling. To address independent movement of different regions in a video, the proposed framework classifies blocks into different types depending on their inter-frame correlation, and adjusts the sampling and reconstruction strategy accordingly. Our framework also considers the diverse texture complexity of different regions, and adaptively adjusts the number of measurements collected for each region. The proposed framework also includes a frame rate selection module that selects the maximum achievable frame rate from a list of candidate frame rates under the hardware sampling rate and the perceptual quality constraints. Our simulation results show that compared to traditional raster scan, the proposed framework can increase the frame rate by up to six times depending on the scene complexity and the video quality constraint. We also observe a 1.5-7.8 dB gain in the average peak signal-to-noise ratio of the reconstructed frames when compared with prior works on compressed video sensing.
Re-evaluation of the intratesticular level of testosterone required for quantitative maintenance of spermatogenesis in the rat.

The amount of testosterone required for quantitative maintenance of spermatogenesis has been re-evaluated using techniques aimed at minimizing the synthesis of testosterone after removal of the testis. Adult male rats were treated with ethane dimethane-sulphonate (EDS) to destroy the Leydig cells, and were supplemented with 25, 5 or 1 mg testosterone esters by injection every 3 days for 21 days. Serum hormone levels, testicular morphology and spermatogenesis were assessed and the intratesticular levels of testosterone compared in testes either removed under ether anaesthesia and placed in liquid nitrogen (right testis) or removed after collection of blood and placed in ice (left testis). Data for testosterone-supplemented rats were compared with those for control rats and rats treated with EDS alone. All doses of testosterone suppressed LH and FSH levels in serum to within the hypophysectomized range, and Leydig cell regeneration in EDS-treated rats was prevented completely. Treatment of EDS-injected rats with 25 or 5 mg testosterone maintained testicular weight, the number of germ cells and the diameter of seminiferous tubules at stage VII within or above the control range, although there was a significant increase in the number of degenerating pachytene spermatocytes at stage VII with 5 but not 25 mg testosterone; none of these parameters was maintained at control levels by a dose of 1 mg testosterone. Levels of testosterone in testosterone-supplemented rats differed little between testes collected in ice and liquid nitrogen, but in controls and rats treated with EDS alone, testosterone levels were overestimated by 75 and 27% respectively when comparing testes collected in ice with those collected in liquid nitrogen. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Effective communication is crucial to self-management: the experiences of immigrants to Australia living with diabetes

Objectives: Ageing immigrant populations now pose problems for the management of chronic illness in Australia. This article asks questions about the experiences of immigrants in Australia with type II diabetes mellitus (DM). What impact, if any, have health policies had on the lives of immigrants? How do their experiences of living with DM compare with those of people with DM who were born in Australia? Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 32 participants who had DM (n = 25) or cared for someone with DM (n = 7). Fifteen participants had migrated to Australia and English was not their first language. Participants were asked to describe their experience of managing diabetes. Results: Immigrants to Australia confront linguistic and cultural barriers that create an extra layer of problems not experienced by Australian-born people. Older people who were born overseas face obstacles to effective engagement with the health system that weaken their ability to take an active part in the management of their conditions. Conclusions: Chronic disease policy is failing immigrants to Australia. Health professionals and services must recognize the central role that cultural diversity plays in self-management and the impact that this can have on health outcomes for immigrants with chronic illness.