Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Islet Product Characteristics and Factors Related to Successful Human Islet Transplantation From the Collaborative Islet Transplant Registry (CITR) 1999–2010

The Collaborative Islet Transplant Registry (CITR) collects data on clinical islet isolations and transplants. This retrospective report analyzed 1017 islet isolation procedures performed for 537 recipients of allogeneic clinical islet transplantation in 1999–2010. This study describes changes in donor and islet isolation variables by era and factors associated with quantity and quality of final islet products. Donor body weight and BMI increased significantly over the period (p < 0.001). Islet yield measures have improved with time including islet equivalent (IEQ)/particle ratio and IEQs infused. The average dose of islets infused significantly increased in the era of 2007–2010 when compared to 1999–2002 (445.4 ± 156.8 vs. 421.3 ± 155.4 ×103 IEQ; p < 0.05). Islet purity and total number of β cells significantly improved over the study period (p < 0.01 and <0.05, respectively). Otherwise, the quality of clinical islets has remained consistently very high through this period, and differs substantially from nonclinical islets. In multivariate analysis of all recipient, donor and islet factors, and medical management factors, the only islet product characteristic that correlated with clinical outcomes was total IEQs infused. This analysis shows improvements in both quantity and some quality criteria of clinical islets produced over 1999–2010, and these parallel improvements in clinical outcomes over the same period.
Acoustic features of the vocalisations of two children pre- and post-cochlear implantation : the effects of auditory feedback.

The present study investigates acoustic changes to the voices of two congenitally deaf toddlers before, during, and after activation of cochlear implants (CIs). Vocal segment duration, fundamental frequency (f0), and noise index (NI) were measured from weekly recordings spanning the months immediately preceding and following implant activation. Contrary to expectations, vocal duration and f0 increased for both children in the postactivation period; NI increased for one child and decreased for the other. These findings illustrate how the restoration of auditory feedback can affect the voices of preverbal deaf infants in ways largely unobserved in older children and adult implantees. This may be due to the commencement of a developmental stage of pre-babble vocal exploration. Nevertheless, these observable effects highlight the significant role auditory feedback plays in speech development. ACOUSTIC FEATURES PREAND POST-COCHLEAR IMPLANTATION viii ACOUSTIC FEATURES PREAND POST-COCHLEAR IMPLANTATION ix
Modern Environmental Health Hazards: A Public Health Issue of Increasing Significance in Africa

Objectives Traditional hazards such as poor sanitation currently account for most of Africa’s environmentally related disease burden. However, with rapid development absent appropriate safeguards for environment and health, modern environmental health hazards (MEHHs) may emerge as critical contributors to the continent’s disease burden. We review recent evidence of human exposure to and health effects from MEHHs, and their occurrence in environmental media and consumer products. Our purpose is to highlight the growing significance of these hazards as African countries experience urbanization, industrial growth, and development. Data sources We reviewed published epidemiologic, exposure, and environmental studies of chemical agents such as heavy metals and pesticides. Data synthesis The body of evidence demonstrates ongoing environmental releases of MEHHs and human exposures sometimes at toxicologically relevant levels. Several sources of MEHHs in environmental media have been identified, including natural resource mining and processing and automobile exhaust. Biomonitoring studies provided direct evidence of human exposure to metals such as mercury and lead and pesticides such as p,p′-dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and organophosphates. Land and water resource pollution and industrial air toxics are areas of significant data gaps, notwithstanding the presence of several emitting sources. Conclusion Unmitigated MEHH releases and human exposure have implications for Africa’s disease burden. For Africans encumbered by conditions such as malnutrition that impair resilience to toxicologic challenges, the burden may be higher. A shift in public health policy toward accommodating the emerging diversity in Africa’s environmental health issues is necessary to successfully alleviate the burden of avoidable ill health and premature death for all its communities now and in the future.
The Sensation Seeking Trait and Substance Use: Research Findings and Clinical Implications

Sensation seeking (SS) is a personality trait defined by a need to seek novel sensations and experiences, accompanied by a willingness to take risks for the sake of such experiences. Various measures of SS have been developed and validated, including a scale specifically for children. Among different populations, SS has been associated with the expression of various health-related risk behaviors, most notably substance use and abuse. Evidence from basic research with laboratory animals and from human clinical studies indicates that high sensation seekers may have an overactive mesocorticolimbic dopamine system relative to low sensation seekers. While the precise molecular mechanisms underlying SS remain to be elucidated, evidence suggests that low levels of monoamine oxidase activity, as well as altered dopamine receptor and dopamine transporter expression and function may play a role. Since altered monoamine function has been implicated in various psychiatric disorders, and since SS has been associated with some of these disorders, clinicians may find that SS offers a useful adjunct in promoting effective patient care and improving patient counseling. This may be especially useful in treating children, adolescents and young adults, as the risk for substance use and abuse is an especially relevant concern during this developmental period.
Optimal NetFlow Deployment in IP Networks

This paper investigates the problem of deploying NetFlow with optimized coverage and cost in an IP network. Deploying a network-wide monitoring infrastructure in operational networks is necessary for practical reasons and Cisco NetFlow is a promising solution. However, several cost factors are associated with enabling NetFlow given the current conditions in such a network. We argue that enabling NetFlow to cover a major portion of traﬃc instead of the entire traﬃc will achieve signiﬁcant cost savings while at the same time give operators enough monitoring capabilities. Therefore we aim to solve the Optimal NetFlow Location Problem (ONLP) for a given coverage ratio. We analyze various cost factors to enabling NetFlow in such a network. We model the problem as an Integer Linear Program (ILP). Although we are able to obtain optimal solutions for Sprint’s North America Network by solving the ILP, two heuristic algorithms, Max-Plus (MP) and Least-Minus (LM), are developed to cope with larger-sized problems, given the NP-hard nature of the ONLP problem. The performance of the ILP and heuristics is demonstrated by numerical results and the LM heuristic is able to achieve sub-optimal solutions within 1 ∼ 2% diﬀerence from the optimal solutions in a mixed router environment. It is observed that we can achieve 55% cost savings by covering 95% instead of 100% of the network traﬃc. The problem and the proposed methodology can be generalized to optimal deployment of new services and features in any types of networks.
KONTRIBUSI PEROLEHAN THEORY OF MIND TERHADAP PERKEMBANGAN MENTAL TIME TRAVEL PADA ANAK USIA 3-5 TAHUN

Berfikir mengenai masa depan merupakan kemampuan kognitif yang mendasar pada manusia dan merupakan kemampuan yang sangat penting. Mental Time Travel (MTT) merupakan kemampuan yang dimiliki manusia untuk me- recall masa lalu dan memprediksi masa depan. Melalui MTT manusia dapat untuk membuat perencanaan, memprediksi masa depan serta mengantisipasi masalah yang akan dihadapi. Salah satu faktor yang diduga memberikan pengaruh terhadap MTT adalah perolehan Theory of Mind (ToM) yaitu kemampuan manusia untuk memprediksi mental state orang lain. Oleh karena itu, diperlukan penelitian lebih jauh untuk melihat bagaimana kontribusi perolehan ToM terhadap perkembangan MTT. Untuk melihat kontribusi perolehan ToM terhadap MTT dilakukan pengukuran MTT melalui 2 eksperimen ( Verbal task dan Tool Task ) serta pengukuran skala ToM yang dikembangkan oleh Wellman dan Liu (2011) pada anak usia 3-5 tahun. Hasil dari penelitian ini diperoleh usia mulai berkembangnya MTT, urutan perolehan ToM serta kontribusi perolehan ToM terhadap MTT. Penelitian ini juga menunjukkan bahwa Perolehan ToM memiliki kontribusi positif sebesar 28% terhadap perkembangan MTT.
STAR-FORMING GALAXIES IN THE HERCULES CLUSTER: Hα IMAGING OF A2151

This paper presents the first results of an Hα imaging survey of galaxies in the central regions of the A2151 cluster. A total of 50 sources were detected in Hα, from which 41 were classified as secure members of the cluster and 2 as likely members based on spectroscopic and photometric redshift considerations. The remaining seven galaxies were classified as background contaminants and thus excluded from our study on the Hα properties of the cluster. The morphologies of the 43 Hα selected galaxies range from grand design spirals and interacting galaxies to blue compacts and tidal dwarfs or isolated extragalactic H ii regions, spanning a range of magnitudes of −21 ⩽ MB ⩽ −12.5 mag. From these 43 galaxies, 7 have been classified as active galactic nucleus (AGN) candidates. These AGN candidates follow the L(Hα) versus MB relationship of the normal galaxies, implying that the emission associated with the nuclear engine has a rather secondary impact on the total Hα emission of these galaxies. A comparison with the clusters Coma and A1367 and a sample of field galaxies has shown the presence of cluster galaxies with L(Hα) lower than expected for their MB, a consequence of the cluster environment. This fact results in differences in the L(Hα) versus EW(Hα) and L(Hα) distributions of the clusters with respect to the field, and in cluster-to-cluster variations of these quantities, which we propose are driven by a global cluster property as the total mass. In addition, the cluster Hα emitting galaxies tend to avoid the central regions of the clusters, again with different intensity depending on the cluster total mass. For the particular case of A2151, we find that most Hα emitting galaxies are located close to the regions with the higher galaxy density, offset from the main X-ray peak. Overall, we conclude that both the global cluster environment and the cluster merging history play a non-negligible role in the integral star formation properties of clusters of galaxies.
Automatic Extraction of the Central Symmetry ( Mid-Sagittal ) Plane from Neuroradiology Images

Normal human brains present an approximate bilateral symmetry. This symmetry is reflected in CT and MR images depicting axial and coronal slices of the brain. Though the internal structure of a pathologic brain may depart from its normal bilateral symmetry, the ideal imaginary bilateral symmetry plane remains invariant. This plane is often referred to as the mid-sagittal plane of the brain. Automatically detecting and explicitly representing the mid-sagittal plane can benefit image understanding in neuroradiology in many ways, including registration, lesion detection, screening and diagnosis. We have developed a simple yet effectivealgorithm for extracting the axis of bilateral symmetry from each axial brain slice and combining results from multiple slices to determine the central plane of bilateral symmetry for the 3D head. This algorithm has been tested on 12 sets of CT and MR normal and pathological neural scans – a total of 400+ single images. Given a set of axial scans, the accuracy of the algorithm is within one degrees in terms of yaw ( < 0:3 degrees) and roll (< 0:75 degrees) angles, and under five pixels in terms of the offset of the symmetry axis. These results are used to correct roll and yaw rotational errors in input images, to automatically produce the midsagittal plane of a given set of axial brain scans, and to detect asymmetries that may be caused by lesions or mass effect in the brain without human intervention.
Testing visual information retrieval methodologies case study: Comparative analysis of textual, icon, graphical, and spring displays

Although many different visual information retrieval systems have been proposed, few have been tested, and where testing has been performed, results were often inconclusive. Further, there is very little evidence of benchmarking systems against a common standard. An approach for testing novel interfaces is proposed that uses bottom-up, stepwise testing to allow evaluation of a visualization, itself, rather than restricting evaluation to the system instantiating it. This approach not only makes it easier to control variables, but the tests are also easier to perform. The methodology will be presented through a case study, where a new visualization technique is compared to more traditional ways of presenting data.
Interactive Channel Capacity Revisited

We provide the first capacity approaching coding schemes that robustly simulate any interactive protocol over an adversarial channel that corrupts any fraction of the transmitted symbols. Our coding schemes achieve a communication rate of 1 - O(∈√loglog1/∈) can be improved to 1 - O(√∈) for random, oblivious, and over any adversarial channel. This computationally bounded channels, or if parties have shared randomness unknown to the channel. Surprisingly, these rates exceed the 1 - Ω( H(ϵ)) = 1 - Ω(ϵ√log1/ϵ) interactive channel capacity bound which [Kol and Raz; STOC'13] recently proved for random errors. We conjecture 1- Θ(ϵ log log 1/ϵ) and 1- Θ(√ϵ) to be the optimal rates for their respective settings and therefore to capture the interactive channel capacity for random and adversarial errors. In addition to being very communication efficient, our randomized coding schemes have multiple other advantages. They are computationally efficient, extremely natural, and significantly simpler than prior (non-capacity approaching) schemes. In particular, our protocols do not employ any coding but allow the original protocol to be performed as-is, interspersed only by short exchanges of hash values. When hash values do not match, the parties backtrack. Our approach is, as we feel, by far the simplest and most natural explanation for why and how robust interactive communication in a noisy environment is possible.
Density-Dependent Patch Exploitation and Acquisition of Environmental Information

We study density-dependent resource harvest patterns due to Bayesian foraging for different distributions of resources. We first consider a forager with information about the stochastic properties of its environment. In this case we show that when the number of food items per patch follows a distribution from the exponential family, the density dependence is given by the ratio sigma2/μ of the distribution of number of food items per patch. Bayesian foraging can therefore lead to positive (negative binomial distribution) or negative (binomial distribution) density dependent resource harvest and even to density independent (Poisson distribution) resource harvest, depending on the distribution of resources in the environment. In a second stage we incorporate learning about the distribution of resources in the whole environment. The mean of the distribution of number of food items per patch of a given environment is learnt faster than the variance of the distribution. Learning occurs faster in poorer than richer environments. Copyright 1997 Academic Press
Effects of interchannel crosstalk in multichannel microphone technique

Even though the significance of interchannel crosstalk in multichannel microphone technique has been an issue of much debate in the field of sound recording, any effects on the perception of reproduced phantom images have not been investigated systematically. There is consequently no experimental data to which sound engineers can refer when attempting to control interchannel crosstalk in the design and application of multichannel microphone technique. It was therefore necessary to investigate the effects of such interchannel crosstalk in both the perceptual and the physical domains. Extant multichannel microphone techniques were reviewed, concentrating on their crosstalk characteristics. Findings from concert hall and room acoustics studies relating to the effects of early reflections, which might be the basis for understanding the perceptual effects of interchannel crosstalk, were also studied. The effects of interchannel time and intensity relationship and sound source type on the perception of stereophonic phantom image attributes were first examined in the context of two-channel stereophonic reproduction. The perceptual attributes of phantom sources affected by interchannel crosstalk in three- channel microphone technique were then elicited, and the effects of interchannel time and intensity relationship, sound source type and acoustic condition on the perception of those attributes were investigated. The effects of interchannel crosstalk on sound quality preference were also examined in both controlled and practical manners. Finally, following objective measurements of experimental stimuli, relationships were established between the perceptual and objectively measured effects of interchannel crosstalk. It was found that the most salient perceptual effects of interchannel crosstalk were an increase in source width and a decrease in locatedness. The relationship between interchannel time and intensity differences involved in the crosstalk signal was significant for both effects. The type of sound source was significant only for the source width effect whereas the acoustic condition was significant only for the locatedness effect. The source width increase was mainly influenced by the middle frequencies of crosstalk signals in a region of the spectrum around 1000Hz, at the onsets of the signal envelopes. The results of listener preference experiments suggested that the preference for interchannel crosstalk would depend on the spectral and temporal characteristics of sound source to be recorded rather than on the magnitude of interchannel crosstalk.
The behaviour of quiescent accretion discs in dwarf novae

We propose a simple explanation for the constant mean brightness observed between outbursts in dwarf novae. Secular changes in the total energy dissipation rate of the accretion disc brought about by variations in surface density, temperature and disc radius can be regulated by the gradual cooling of a small, critically stable hot inner region. The hypothesis is supported by two-dimensional time-dependent numerical models of dwarf nova accretion discs.
Employee Proactive Personality in Learning Culture

Abstract The paper attempts to investigate the influences of proactive personality and organizational learning culture on career satisfaction through Leader-Member Exchange quality as a mediating variable. Questionnaire was used as data collection method. The population of this study was Financial Cooperative employees based on health assessment in province level of Semarang City and Regency in 2015. Data was taken from 61 respondents using multi-stage sampling. From the result, it was found that (1) proactive personality influences career satisfaction, (2) organizational learning culture influences career satisfaction, (3) proactive personality influences Leader-Mem­ber Exchange quality, (4) organizational learning culture influences Leader-Member Exchange quality, (5) Leader-Member Exchange quality influences career satisfaction, (6) proactive per­sonality influences career satisfaction through Leader-Member Exchange quality as mediator variable, and (7) organizational learning culture influences career satisfaction with Leader-Mem­ber Exchange quality as mediator variable. Proactive personality and organizational learning culture influence career satisfaction through Leader-Member Exchange as a mediating variable.
Akita Spontaneously Type 1 Diabetic Mice Exhibit Elevated Vascular Arginase and Impaired Vascular Endothelial and Nitrergic Function

Background Elevated arginase (Arg) activity is reported to be involved in diabetes-induced vascular endothelial dysfunction. It can reduce L-arginine availability to nitric oxide (NO) synthase (NOS) and NO production. Akita mice, a genetic non-obese type 1 diabetes model, recapitulate human diabetes. We determined the role of Arg in a time-course of diabetes-associated endothelial dysfunction in aorta and corpora cavernosa (CC) from Akita mice. Methods and Results Endothelium-dependent relaxation, Arg and NOS activity, and protein expression levels of Arg and constitutive NOS were assessed in aortas and CC from Akita and non-diabetic wild type (WT) mice at 4, 12 and 24 wks of age. Systolic blood pressure (SBP) was assessed by tail cuff. In aorta and CC, Akita mice exhibited a progressive impairment of vascular endothelial and nitrergic function increased Arg activity and expression (Arg1 in aorta and both Arg1 and Arg2 in CC) compared with that of age-matched WT mice. Treatment of aorta and CC from Akita mice with an Arg inhibitor (BEC or ABH) reduced diabetes-induced elevation of Arg activity and restored endothelial and nitrergic function. Reduced levels of phospho-eNOS at Ser1177 (in aorta and CC) and nNOS expression (in CC) were observed in Akita mice at 12 and 24 wks. Akita mice also had decreased NOS activity in aorta and CC at 12 and 24 wks that was restored by BEC treatment. Further, Akita mice exhibited moderately increased SBP at 24 wks and increased sensitivity to PE-induced contractions in aorta and sympathetic nerve stimulation in CC at 12 and 24 wks. Conclusions Over 24 wks of diabetes in Akita mice, both aortic and cavernosal tissues exhibited increased Arg activity/expression, contributing to impaired endothelial and nitrergic function and reduced NO production. Our findings demonstrate involvement of Arg activity in diabetes-induced impairment of vascular function in Akita mouse.
A Socially Aware Routing Based on Local Contact Information in Delay-Tolerant Networks

In delay-tolerant networks, network topology changes dynamically and there is no guarantee of continuous connectivity between any two nodes. These features make DTN routing one of important research issues, and the application of social network metrics has led to the design of recent DTN routing schemes. In this paper, we propose an efficient routing scheme by using a node's local contact history and social network metrics. Each node first chooses a proper relay node based on the closeness to the destination node. A locally computed betweenness centrality is additionally utilized to enhance the routing efficiency. Through intensive simulation, we finally demonstrate that our algorithm performs efficiently compared to the existing epidemic or friendship routing scheme.
Quantum field theories on noncommutative R 4 versus θ-expanded quantum field theories

I recall the main motivation to study quantum field theories on noncommutative spaces and comment on the most-studied example, the noncommutative R 4. Unfortunately, the ⋆-product which has to be written in an integral form is very often confused with its Taylor expansion, which can be represented in an exponential form. By working out a striking example I hope to bring some order into the confusion. The noncommutative R 4 is a zero-dimensional space, therefore, physical quantities must be represented as matrices, not functions. The plane wave basis cannot be used to compute Feynman graphs. What one needs is a count-able basis of rapid decay in momentum space. Such a quantum field theory on noncommutative R 4 has nothing in common with θ-expanded quantum field theories. These are actually commutative local field theories which can be expanded into plane waves.