Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Genetic variation and circulating levels of IGF‐I and IGFBP‐3 in relation to risk of proliferative benign breast disease

Insulin‐like growth factor‐I (IGF‐I) and its major binding protein IGFBP‐3 have been implicated in breast carcinogenesis. We examined the associations between genetic variants and circulating levels of IGF‐I and IGFBP‐3 with proliferative benign breast disease (BBD), a marker of increased breast cancer risk, in the Nurses' Health Study II (NHSII). Participants were 359 pathology‐confirmed proliferative BBD cases and 359 matched controls. Circulating IGF‐I and IGFBP‐3 levels were measured in blood samples collected between 1996 and 1999. Thirty single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in IGF‐I, IGFBP‐1, and IGFBP‐3 genes were selected using a haplotype tagging approach and genotyped in cases and controls. Circulating IGF‐I levels were not associated with proliferative BBD risk. Higher circulating IGFBP‐3 levels were significantly associated with increased risk of proliferative BBD (highest vs. lowest quartile odds ratio (OR) [95% confidence interval (CI)], 1.70 (1.06–2.72); p‐trend = 0.03). The minor alleles of 2 IGFBP‐3 SNPs were associated with lower proliferative BBD risk (homozygous variant vs. homozygous wild‐type OR (95% CI): rs3110697: 0.6 (0.4–0.9), p‐trend = 0.02; rs2132570: 0.2 (0.1–0.6), p‐trend = 0.02). Three other IGFBP‐3 SNPs (rs2854744, rs2960436 and rs2854746) were significantly associated with circulating IGFBP‐3 levels (p < 0.01). Although these SNPs were not significantly associated with proliferative BBD risk, there was suggestive evidence that the alleles associated with higher circulating IGFBP‐3 levels were also associated with higher risk of proliferative BBD. These results suggest that genetic variants and circulating levels of IGFBP‐3 may play a role in the early stage of breast carcinogenesis.
Plasmid DNA transfection using magnetite cationic liposomes for construction of multilayered gene‐engineered cell sheet

Modification of cellular functions by overexpression of genes is being increasingly practiced for tissue engineering. In the present study, we investigated whether transfection efficiency could be enhanced by magnetofection that involves the use of plasmid DNA (pDNA)/magnetite cationic liposomes (MCLs) complexes (pDNA/MCL) and magnetic force. The transfection efficiencies of the magnetofection technique by pDNA/MCL in fibroblasts and keratinocytes using reporter genes were 36‐ and 10‐fold higher, respectively, than those of a lipofection technique by cationic liposomes. Moreover, in vitro construction of three‐dimensional (3D) tissues is an important challenge. We recently proposed a novel technique termed “magnetic force‐based tissue engineering” (Mag‐TE) to produce 3D tissues. Since the fibroblasts after magnetofection incorporated both magnetite nanoparticles and pDNA, we investigated whether multilayered heterotypic cell sheets expressing transgene could be fabricated by Mag‐TE. First, the fibroblasts were seeded onto an ultra‐low attachment culture plate. When a magnet was placed under the plate, the cells accumulated at the bottom of the culture plate. After 24 h of culture, the transgene‐expressing cells formed a multilayered cell sheet‐like structure. These results indicated that MCLs are a potent biomanipulation tool for both gene transfer and 3D tissue construction, suggesting that these techniques are useful for tissue engineering. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2008;100: 168–176. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
The Impact of Subjective and Objective Experience on Mobile Banking Usage: An Analytical Approach

This paper aims to investigate mobile banking (MB) usage through the theoretical lens of UTAUT model with its four pillars. The research model will be tested via a hybrid neural networks-based structural equation modeling (SEM-NN) to reveal significant factors. Universal structural modeling (USM) will be then utilized to find the hidden paths and nonlinearity in our research model. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the role of subjective and objective experience on MB usage using a multianalytical approach. Neural network (NN) and USM can identify the most significant determinants and hidden interaction effects, respectively. Thus, both techniques would help to complement SEM and increase our understanding of the influential factors on MB usage. Preliminary results are presented and discussed. Potential contribution and conclusion are communicated to both academia and industry.
Efficacy of multi-electrode duty-cycled radiofrequency ablation in patients with paroxysmal and persistent atrial fibrillation.

BACKGROUND Radiofrequency (RF) catheter ablation is a first-line therapy for patients withdrug-refractory atrial fibrillation (AF). Complete isolation of electrical potentials at the ostium of pulmonary vein (PV) is a challenging procedure. There are different techniques and devicesused for PV isolation (PVI). The objective of this study was to evaluate the efficacy and safety of PV ablation catheter (PVAC). METHODS A total of 67 consecutive patients with paroxysmal and persistent AF were treated with the PVAC. The patients' information were obtained from clinical charts. Follow-up was obtained by one day Holter monitoring at 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12 months after ablation and ECG registration if any symptoms or arrhythmia occurred. RESULTS The median follow-up duration was 16 months (IQR: 12-20 months). In the population which was available at follow-up (n = 60), 22 (36.7%) patients were in sustained sinus rhythm (SR) without anti-arrhythmic drugs (AAD). Overall 26 (43.3%) patients were in sustained SR with and without AAD. In the paroxysmal AF group, after a single PVAC ablation procedure (n = 39), 19 (48.7%) patients had sustained SR without AAD. In the persistent AF group (n = 15), after the single PVAC ablation, 2 (13.3%) patients had sustained SR without AAD. CONCLUSIONS PVI with PVAC is a safe procedure with 48.7% efficacy in patients with paroxysmal AF. The efficacy of PVAC in patients with persistent or long-standing persistent AF is not acceptable.
Book Translations as Idea Flows: The Effects of the Collapse of Communism on the Diffusion of Knowledge

We use book translations as a new measure of international idea flows and study the effects of Communism's collapse in Eastern Europe on these flows. Using novel data on 800,000 translations and difference-in-differences approaches, we show that while translations between Communist languages decreased by two thirds with the collapse, Western-to-Communist translations increased by a factor of 4 and quickly converged to Western levels. Convergence was more pronounced in the fields of applied and social sciences, and was more complete in Satellite and Baltic than in Soviet countries. We discuss how these patterns help us understand how repressive institutions and preferences towards Western European ideas shaped the international diffusion of knowledge.
Cycling Promotion and Non-Communicable Disease Prevention: Health Impact Assessment and Economic Evaluation of Cycling to Work or School in Florence

Objective To estimate the effects of cycling promotion on major non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and costs from the public healthcare payer’s perspective. Design Health impact assessment and economic evaluation using a dynamic model over a ten-year period and according to two cycling promotion scenarios. Setting Cycling to work or school in Florence, Italy. Population All individuals aged 15 and older commuting to work or school in Florence. Main outcome measures The primary outcome measures were changes in NCD incidence and healthcare direct costs for the Tuscany Regional Health Service (SST) due to increased cycling. The secondary outcome was change in road traffic accidents. Results Increasing cycling modal share in Florence from 7.5% to about 17% (Scenario 1) or 27% (Scenario 2) could decrease the incidence of type 2 diabetes by 1.2% or 2.5%, and the incidence of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and stroke by 0.6% or 1.2%. Within 10 years, the number of cases that can be prevented is 280 or 549 for type 2 diabetes, 51 or 100 for AMI, and 51 or 99 for stroke in Scenario 1 or Scenario 2, respectively. Average annual discounted savings for the SST are estimated to amount to €400,804 or €771,201 in Scenario 1 or Scenario 2, respectively. In Florence, due to the high use of vulnerable motorized vehicles (such as scooters, mopeds, and motorcycles), road traffic accidents are expected to decline in both our scenarios. Sensitivity analyses showed that health benefits and savings for the SST are substantial, the most sensitive parameters being the relative risk estimates of NCDs and active commuting. Conclusions Effective policies and programs to promote a modal shift towards cycling among students and workers in Florence will contribute to reducing the NCD burden and helping long-term economic sustainability of the SST.
A technique to extract dispersion characteristics of one-dimensional periodic structures

A method is proposed to extract the phase constant β and attenuation constant α of bounded waves in a finite periodic structure using scattering parameters. The proposed method accounts for the mutual coupling between the unitcells when computing the wavenumbers of the propagating modes. It is useful when the unit cell configuration is complex and typical eigen-mode solvers fail.
The orthographic buffer in writing Chinese characters: Evidence from a dysgraphic patient

We investigated the postlexical processes in writing Chinese characters by studying the delayed copying performance of a Chinese dysgraphic patient, W.L. Z. His delayed copying difficulty could not be attributed to peripheral motor deficit and could not be readily explained by lexical or semantic factors. Instead, the copying performance was sensitive to a word length variable (number of logographemes), and the most prevalent errors were logographeme substitutions. Furthermore, in the substitution errors, the target logographemes and responses tended to share visual/motoric attributes. We propose that the delayed copying difficulty reflects a deficit to the buffering component in writing (coined “logographeme output buffer”), and the universality and language-specific features of the output buffer in writing are discussed.
Rules Versus Statistics: Insights From a Highly Inflected Language

Inflectional morphology has been taken as a paradigmatic example of rule-governed grammatical knowledge (Pinker, 1999). The plausibility of this claim may be related to the fact that it is mainly based on studies of English, which has a very simple inflectional system. We examined the representation of inflectional morphology in Serbian, which encodes number, gender, and case for nouns. Linguists standardly characterize this system as a complex set of rules, with disagreements about their exact form. We present analyses of a large corpus of nouns which showed that, as in English, Serbian inflectional morphology is quasiregular: It exhibits numerous partial regularities creating neighborhoods that vary in size and consistency. We then asked whether a simple connectionist network could encode this statistical information in a manner that also supported generalization. A network trained on 3,244 Serbian nouns learned to produce correctly inflected phonological forms from a specification of a word's lemma, gender, number, and case, and generalized to untrained cases. The model's performance was sensitive to variables that also influence human performance, including surface and lemma frequency. It was also influenced by inflectional neighborhood size, a novel measure of the consistency of meaning to form mapping. A word-naming experiment with native Serbian speakers showed that this measure also affects human performance. The results suggest that, as in English, generating correctly inflected forms involves satisfying a small number of simultaneous probabilistic constraints relating form and meaning. Thus, common computational mechanisms may govern the representation and use of inflectional information across typologically diverse languages.
Consequences of Zeeman Degeneracy for van der Waals Blockade between Rydberg Atoms

We analyze the effects of Zeeman degeneracies on the long-range interactions between like Rydberg atoms, with particular emphasis on applications to quantum-information processing using the van der Waals blockade. We present a general analysis of how degeneracies affect the primary error sources in blockade experiments, emphasizing that blockade errors are sensitive primarily to the weakest possible atom-atom interactions between the degenerate states, not the mean interaction strength. We present explicit calculations of the van der Waals potentials in the limit where the fine-structure interaction is large compared to the atom-atom interactions. The results are presented for all potential angular momentum channels involving $\mathit{s}$, $\mathit{p}$, and $\mathit{d}$ states. For most channels there are one or more combinations of Zeeman levels that have extremely small dipole-dipole interactions and are therefore poor candidates for effective blockade experiments. Channels with promising properties are identified and discussed. We also present numerical calculations of Rb and Cs dipole matrix elements and relevant energy levels using quantum defect theory, allowing for convenient quantitative estimates of the van der Waals interactions to be made for principal quantum numbers up to 100. Finally, we combine the blockade and van der Waals results to quantitatively analyze the angular distribution of the blockade shift and its consequence for angular momentum channels and geometries of particular interest for blockade experiments with Rb.
Abnormal neural filtering of irrelevant visual information in depression

The pathophysiology of major depressive disorder (MDD) includes both affective and cognitive dysfunctions. We aimed to clarify how regions regulating affective processing interact with those involved in attention, and how such interaction impacts perceptual processing within sensory cortices. Based on previous work showing that top-down influences from attention can determine the processing of external inputs within early sensory cortices, we tested with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) whether MDD alters attentional (“top-down”) effects on the neural filtering of irrelevant, nonemotional visual stimuli. The present fMRI study was conducted in 14 nonmedicated patients with a first episode of unipolar MDD and 14 matched controls. During scanning, subjects performed two tasks imposing two different levels of attentional load at fixation (easy or difficult), while irrelevant colored stimuli were presented in the periphery. Analyses of fMRI data revealed that MDD patients show (1) an abnormal filtering of irrelevant information in visual cortex, (2) an altered functional connectivity between frontoparietal networks and visual cortices, and (3) a hyperactivity in subgenual cingulate/medial orbitofrontal cortex that was modulated by attentional load. These results demonstrate that biological abnormalities contribute to the cognitive deficits seen in major depression, and clarify how neural networks implicated in mood regulation influence executive control and perceptual processes. These findings not only improve our understanding of the pathophysiological mechanisms underlying cognitive dysfunctions in MDD, but also shed new light on the interaction between cognition and mood regulation.
In vivo efficacy of bone marrow stromal cells coated with beta-tricalcium phosphate for the reconstruction of orbital defects in canines.

PURPOSE To repair the segmental orbital rim defects of dogs with three-dimensional (3D) tissue-engineered constructs derived from culturing autogenous bone marrow stromal cells (BMSCs) on β-tricalcium phosphate (β-TCP) scaffolds. METHODS A 25-mm segmental defect on the canine inferior orbital rim was created. BMSCs were isolated and osteogenically induced in vitro, then were seeded onto 3D β-TCP scaffolds and implanted to repair the orbital defects after 5 days of cultivation. The group of noninduced BMSC/β-TCP, β-TCP alone, and the normal inferior orbital rim were set as controls. The orbits of all groups had spiral computed tomography (CT) scans 1, 4, 8, and 12 weeks after surgery. Gross examination, bone density, microCT, and histologic measurements were performed 12 weeks after surgery. The results were analyzed to evaluate the extent of bone repair. RESULTS Twelve weeks after surgery, CT examination revealed good inferior orbital rim recovery in the induced BMSC/β-TCP group, and the bone density was 0.30 ± 0.03 g/cm(2) with no dominant variance, compared with the normal control (P > 0.05). MicroCT and histologic examination confirmed that the implantations led to good repair of the defects. Pore-like spongy bone surrounded the implants through the section plane, with some residue remaining in the center. In contrast, the noninduced BMSC/β-TCP implants were not fully repaired, and nonunion was evident. The bony density for this group was 0.23 ± 0.07 g/cm(2), which was significantly lower than that of the control group (P < 0.05). The β-TCP group was largely held by fibrous tissues. CONCLUSIONS Engineered bone from induced BMSCs and 3D biodegradable β-TCP can efficiently repair critical-sized segmental orbital defects in dogs.
Diacylglycerol-Stimulated Endocytosis of Transferrin in Trypanosomatids Is Dependent on Tyrosine Kinase Activity

Small molecule regulation of cell function is an understudied area of trypanosomatid biology. In Trypanosoma brucei diacylglycerol (DAG) stimulates endocytosis of transferrin (Tf). However, it is not known whether other trypanosomatidae respond similarly to the lipid. Further, the biochemical pathways involved in DAG signaling to the endocytic system in T. brucei are unknown, as the parasite genome does not encode canonical DAG receptors (e.g. C1-domains). We established that DAG stimulates endocytosis of Tf in Leishmania major, and we evaluated possible effector enzymes in the pathway with multiple approaches. First, a heterologously expressed glycosylphosphatidylinositol phospholipase C (GPI-PLC) activated endocytosis of Tf 300% in L. major. Second, exogenous phorbol ester and DAGs promoted Tf endocytosis in L. major. In search of possible effectors of DAG signaling, we discovered a novel C1-like domain (i.e. C1_5) in trypanosomatids, and we identified protein Tyr kinases (PTKs) linked with C1_5 domains in T. brucei, T. cruzi, and L. major. Consequently, we hypothesized that trypanosome PTKs might be effector enzymes for DAG signaling. General uptake of Tf was reduced by inhibitors of either Ser/Thr or Tyr kinases. However, DAG-stimulated endocytosis of Tf was blocked only by an inhibitor of PTKs, in both T. brucei and L. major. We conclude that (i) DAG activates Tf endocytosis in L. major, and that (ii) PTKs are effectors of DAG-stimulated endocytosis of Tf in trypanosomatids. DAG-stimulated endocytosis of Tf may be a T. brucei adaptation to compete effectively with host cells for vertebrate Tf in blood, since DAG does not enhance endocytosis of Tf in human cells.
Towards Addressing the Winograd Schema Challenge - Building and Using a Semantic Parser and a Knowledge Hunting Module

Concerned about the Turing test's ability to correctly evaluate if a system exhibits human-like intelligence, the Winograd Schema Challenge (WSC) has been proposed as an alternative. A Winograd Schema consists of a sentence and a question. The answers to the questions are intuitive for humans but are designed to be difficult for machines, as they require various forms of commonsense knowledge about the sentence. In this paper we demonstrate our progress towards addressing the WSC. We present an approach that identifies the knowledge needed to answer a challenge question, hunts down that knowledge from text repositories, and then reasons with them to come up with the answer. In the process we develop a semantic parser (www.kparser.org). We show that our approach works well with respect to a subset of Winograd schemas.
Preventing crime against older Australians

Since the 1970s, there has been an increase in concern about older people as victims of crime. This report shows that older people are at risk from a number of sources, including: family members and friends; strangers; commercial organisations; or carers. When understanding and responding to crime and older people there are, therefore, three issues which need to be discussed. These are: crime and abuse; fear of crime; and risk assessment and strategic partnership. This report summarises the important issues under debate, suggests ways of moving these debates forward, and reports on activities and programs around Australia which attempt to address the perceived problem of crime and older people.
Prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors in an African, urban inner city community.

With the epidemiological transition phenomenon, more countries are expected to move from a disease pattern dominated by infectious diseases to one characterised by non-communicable diseases. Many developing countries are contending with infectious diseases as well as non-communicable diseases, yet little is known about the prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors in poor urban communities in developing countries. The objective of this community based study was to determine the prevalence of selected cardiovascular risk factors in an urban inner city community which had been followed up prospectively from 1993 to 1998. Results show that the prevalence of hypertension (Blood Pressure BP > 160/95 mm Hg) was 12.4 percent with an age-adjusted rate of 7.4 percent. This is higher than what is found in the rural parts of the country but much lower than what is generally observed in industrialized countries of the world. Though there was no significant difference in the proportion with hypertension by gender (P > 0.05), the mean systolic BP was significantly higher for men (123.9 +/- 23.9) mm Hg) than for women (120.6 +/- 26.8 mg Hg) t = 2.93, p < 0.01. The mean diastolic BP was similarly higher for men (75.8 +/- 14.9) mm Hg than women (74.0 +/- 14.9) mm Hg t = 2.76 p < 0.01). Eight percent of the study population were obese (BMI > 30), and generally, more women than men were obese. However, at ages 15-19 significantly more males than females were obese (X2 = 73, p < 0.01). Both mean systolic and diastolic BP increased with increasing weight. When adjusting for gender, the association between hypertension and other CVD risk factors remained similar for males and females and gender was not a modifier of the factors. Of the CVD risk factors studied, Age > 40 years and obesity, were significantly associated with the presence of hypertension in this community (P < 0.0001 and P < 0.0001), smoking, alcohol intake and gender were not (P > 0.05). It is necessary to implement a national plan for the control of cardiovascular diseases in order to reduce and keep to minimum cardiovascular diseases and its complications in the country.