Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Home from home: residents' opinions of nursing homes and long-stay wards.

OBJECTIVE To compare the levels of satisfaction expressed by residents of nursing homes with those of patients in geriatric long-stay wards. DESIGN A structured satisfaction questionnaire containing 37 closed and two open questions was used to elicit responses from residents of nursing homes in the former South West Thames Regional Health Authority area. This was compared with a similar survey using the same questionnaire among patients in geriatric long-stay wards surveyed in 1989. SETTING respondents came from a sample of nursing homes chosen to be representative of both size and geographical location. Nursing homes were stratified by number of beds (1-19, 20-29, 30+) and clustered by location (to reflect the urban, semi-rural and coastal nature of the region). SUBJECTS A random sample was drawn from each grouping (size and location) to yield a resident sample of 850 in 36 nursing homes. This figure was similar to the number of patients (808) in geriatric long-staywards surveyed in 1989. All eligible nursing home patients were assessed for physical dependency. Mental confusion was ascertained by the Abbreviated Mental Test Score (AMTS). Patients who scored three or less on the AMTS (indicative of severe confusion) or had dysphasia, profound deafness or concurrent serious illness were excluded from further study. RESULTS 377 nursing home residents were able to complete the questionnaire and their answers were compared with those of 291 long-stay geriatric patients. The responses to the five themes--relations with staff, autonomy, amenities, privacy and social environment-show some minor differences between the two groups but what is more noticeable is the similarity of their views. This is important as much social policy assumes that the more 'homely' atmosphere of the nursing home should elicit higher levels of satisfaction than the 'institutional' setting of the hospital ward. CONCLUSION We conclude that the difference between nursing homes and hospital wards in terms of their institutionalizing capacities is not as profound as policy-makers believe.
Multi-agent System Simulation in Scala : An Evaluation of Actors for Parallel Simulation

Multi-agent system (MAS) simulation, a growing field within artificial intelligence, requires the creation of high-performance, parallel, and user-friendly simulation frameworks. The standard approach is to use threads and shared memory. The drawbacks of this approach are the common concurrency pitfalls of race conditions and performance loss due to synchronization. Our goal was to evaluate the feasibility of an alternate model of concurrency, actors. An actor can be thought of as a very lightweight thread that does not share memory with other threads, instead communicating only through message passing. Actors seem to be a natural fit for this task, since agents are concurrently processed objects that communicate with each other through message passing. We write an actor framework and an equivalent threaded framework in the modern object-functional JVM language Scala and compare their performance. We conclude that the actor model seems like a natural fit, but its performance is inferior to that of the threaded model. Despite this drawback, it shows great promise due to its elegance and simplicity. When scaling to multiple machines, the advantages of actors will almost certainly outweigh any
A model problem concerning recoverable strains of shape-memory polycrystals

This paper addresses a model problem of nonlinear homogenization motivated by the study of the shape-memory effect in polycrystalline media. Specifically, it numerically computes the set of recoverable strains in a polycrystal given the set of recoverable strains of a single crystal in the two-dimensional scalar (or antiplane shear) setting. This problem shares a direct analogy with crystal plasticity. The paper considers typical or random polycrystals where the grains are generated by a Voronoi tesselation of a set of random points and are randomly oriented. The numerical results show that for such microstructures, the Taylor bound appears to be the most accurate (though pessimistic) bound when the anisotropy is moderate, and that recent Kohn–Little–Goldsztein outer bounds overestimate the recoverable strains when the anisotropy is large. The results also show that the stress tends to localize on tortuous paths that traverse (poorly oriented) grains as the polycrystal reaches its limit of recoverable strain.
Thermal fluctuation noise in Mo/Au superconducting transition-edge sensor microcalorimeters

In many superconducting transition-edge sensor (TES) microcalorimeters, the measured electrical noise exceeds theoretical estimates based on a thermal model of a single body thermally connected to a heat bath. Here, we report on noise and complex impedance measurements of a range of designs of TESs made with a Mo/Au bilayer. We have fitted the measured data using a two-body model, where the x-ray absorber and the TES are connected by an internal thermal conductance Gae. We find that the so-called excess noise measured in these devices is consistent with the noise generated from the internal thermal fluctuations between the x-ray absorber and the TES. Our fitted parameters are consistent with the origin of Gae being from the finite thermal conductance of the TES itself. These results suggest that even in these relatively low resistance Mo/Au TESs, the internal thermal conductance of the TES may add significant additional noise and could account for all the measured excess noise. Furthermore, we find that around regions of the superconducting transition with rapidly changing derivative of resistance with respect to temperature, an additional noise mechanism may dominate. These observations may lead to a greater understanding of TES devices and allow the design of TES microcalorimeters with improved performance.
DYNAMICAL EVOLUTION AND SPECTRAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE STELLAR GROUP MAMAJEK 2

The dynamical evolution of the recently detected stellar group Mamajek 2 is studied by means of its past three-dimensional orbit. The past orbits of the open clusters NGC 2516 and α Persei, belonging to the so-called “Local Association,” were also computed in order to check for a possible common past dynamical evolution of these systems. To complete the data of the Mamajek 2 small group, we have obtained high-resolution FEROS spectra to measure the radial and also the projected rotational velocities of its members; an estimate of its metallicity was obtained as well. Two exceptionally low-rotating A-type stars turned out to be a strong magnetic Ap star in one case, and a normal A0 star with near-solar metallicity in the other. The dynamical results showed that NGC 2516 and Mamajek 2 may have had a common origin at the age of 135 ± 5 Myr. This dynamical age confirms the individual ages of 140 Myr for NGC 2516 and 120 ± 25 Myr for Mamajek 2 obtained independently by photometric methods. Both these groups appear to have the same solar metallicity giving support to a common birth scenario. The dynamical approach is showing that some bound open clusters can form in a coeval fashion with unbound stellar groups or with associations.
Human rhinovirus species associated with hospitalizations for acute respiratory illness in young US children.

BACKGROUND The contribution of human rhinovirus (HRV) to severe acute respiratory illness (ARI) is unclear. OBJECTIVE To assess the association between HRV species detection and ARI hospitalizations. METHODS Children <5 years old hospitalized for ARI were prospectively enrolled between December 2003 and April 2005 in 3 US counties. Asymptomatic controls were enrolled between December 2003 and March 2004 and between October 2004 and April 2005 in clinics. Nasal and throat swab samples were tested for HRV and other viruses (ie, respiratory syncytial virus, human metapneumovirus, parainfluenza virus, and influenza virus) by reverse-transcription-polymerase chain reaction, and genetic sequencing identified HRV species and types. HRV species detection was compared between controls and patients hospitalized during months in which controls were enrolled. RESULTS A total of 1867 children with 1947 ARI hospitalizations and 784 controls with 790 clinic visits were enrolled and tested for HRV. The HRV-A detection rate among participants ≥24 months old was 8.1% in the hospitalized group and 2.2% in the control group (P = .009), and the HRV-C detection rates among those ≥6 months old were 8.2% and 3.9%, respectively (P = .002); among younger children, the detection rates for both species were similar between groups. The HRV-B detection rate was ≤1%. A broad diversity of HRV types was observed in both groups. Clinical presentations were similar among HRV species. Compared with children infected with other viruses, children with HRV detected were similar for severe hospital outcomes and more commonly had histories or diagnoses of asthma or wheezing. CONCLUSIONS HRV-A and HRV-C were associated with ARI hospitalization and serious illness outcomes.
Emergence of neural encoding of auditory objects while listening to competing speakers

A visual scene is perceived in terms of visual objects. Similar ideas have been proposed for the analogous case of auditory scene analysis, although their hypothesized neural underpinnings have not yet been established. Here, we address this question by recording from subjects selectively listening to one of two competing speakers, either of different or the same sex, using magnetoencephalography. Individual neural representations are seen for the speech of the two speakers, with each being selectively phase locked to the rhythm of the corresponding speech stream and from which can be exclusively reconstructed the temporal envelope of that speech stream. The neural representation of the attended speech dominates responses (with latency near 100 ms) in posterior auditory cortex. Furthermore, when the intensity of the attended and background speakers is separately varied over an 8-dB range, the neural representation of the attended speech adapts only to the intensity of that speaker but not to the intensity of the background speaker, suggesting an object-level intensity gain control. In summary, these results indicate that concurrent auditory objects, even if spectrotemporally overlapping and not resolvable at the auditory periphery, are neurally encoded individually in auditory cortex and emerge as fundamental representational units for top-down attentional modulation and bottom-up neural adaptation.
Relationship Between Children’s Lexical Diversity in Written Narratives and Performance on a Standardized Reading Vocabulary Measure

The purpose of this study was to examine construct validity of methods of calculating lexical diversity in written narrative samples relative to children’s performance on a reading vocabulary measure. For 234 children in first to fifth grade, written narratives were examined and compared between grades for number of different words (NDW), total number of words (TNW), NDW in a truncated 50 word sample, and type token ratio (TTR). The relationship between lexical diversity in written narratives and a standardized reading vocabulary measure (Gates–McGinitie Reading Test–Fourth Edition [GMRT-4]) was analyzed by comparing correlations. Grade differences were observed in measures of lexical diversity and productivity. Lexical diversity showed a significant moderate correlation with the GMRT-4. NDW had a stronger relationship to GMRT-4 scores than TTR for participants in first and second grade. Considering length (TNW, NDW constrained to 50 words, or TTR) did not result in a stronger relationship with reading vocabulary. Following additional study establishing probe equivalence, NDW in written narratives may be an efficient, educationally relevant, marker of language maturity, and a good predictor of performance on a standardized reading vocabulary measure.
The effects of feeding rats diets deficient in folic acid and related methyl donors on the blood pressure and glucose tolerance of the offspring

In humans poor maternal folate status is associated with a decrease in infant birth weight. As low birth weight increases the risk of cardiovascular and metabolic disease in adults, an inadequate supply of folic acid in the mother's diet may increase the susceptibility of the offspring to disease. We have fed laboratory rats diets deficient in folic acid and the related methyl donors methionine and choline to examine the effects on growth, blood pressure and insulin action in the offspring. Poor folate status transiently increased fetal growth but did not produce a long-term change in body weight. There were, however, small changes in the hearts of the female offspring. When folate deficiency was combined with low intakes of methionine and choline, the kidneys of the male offspring were proportionately smaller, probably because of the limited availability of methionine. There was no effect on the blood pressure of either the male or female offspring. The pancreatic insulin content of fetuses from animals fed the folate-deficient diets were higher than those of the controls. Following an oral glucose challenge, there was a weak trend for glucose-stimulated insulin release to be increased in the offspring of dams fed the folate-deficient diet. The changes in insulin concentrations were, however, much smaller than the corresponding changes observed in the offspring of animals fed protein-deficient diets. These results suggest that folate deficiency during gestation causes modest changes to the insulin axis of the fetus.
Predicting Alzheimer's disease: a neuroimaging study with 3D convolutional neural networks

Pattern recognition methods using neuroimaging data for the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease have been the subject of extensive research in recent years. In this paper, we use deep learning methods, and in particular sparse autoencoders and 3D convolutional neural networks, to build an algorithm that can predict the disease status of a patient, based on an MRI scan of the brain. We report on experiments using the ADNI data set involving 2,265 historical scans. We demonstrate that 3D convolutional neural networks outperform several other classifiers reported in the literature and produce state-of-art results.
Drilling Predation on Serpulid Polychaetes (Ditrupa arietina) from the Pliocene of the Cope Basin, Murcia Region, Southeastern Spain

We report quantitative analyses of drilling predation on the free-living, tube-dwelling serpulid polychaete Ditrupa arietina from the Cope Cabo marine succession (Pliocene, Spain). Tubes of D. arietina are abundant in the sampled units: 9 bulk samples from 5 horizons yielded ∼5925 specimens of D. arietina. Except for fragmentation, tubes were well preserved. Complete specimens ranged from 3.1 to 13.4 mm in length and displayed allometric growth patterns, with larger specimens being relatively slimmer. Drilled Ditrupa tubes were observed in all samples. Drillholes, identified as Oichnus paraboloides, were characterized by circular to elliptical outline (drillhole eccentricity increased with its diameter), parabolic vertical profile, outer diameter larger than inner diameter, penetration of one tube wall only, narrow range of drill-hole sizes, and non-random (anterior) distribution of drillholes. A total of 233 drilled specimens were identified, with drilling frequencies varying across horizons from 2.7% to 21% (3.9% for pooled data). Many tube fragments were broken across a drillhole suggesting that the reported frequencies are conservative and that biologically-facilitated (drill-hole induced) fragmentation hampers fossil preservation of complete serpulid tubes. No failed or repaired holes were observed. Multiple complete drillholes were present (3.9%). Drilled specimens were significantly smaller than undrilled specimens and tube length and drill-hole diameter were weakly correlated. The results suggest that drillholes were produced by a size-selective, site-stereotypic predatory organism of unknown affinity. The qualitative and quantitative patterns reported here are mostly consistent with previous reports on recent and fossil Ditrupa and reveal parallels with drilling patterns documented for scaphopod mollusks, a group that is ecologically and morphologically similar to Ditrupa. Consistent with previous studies, the results suggest that free-dwelling serpulid polychaetes are preyed upon by drilling predators and may provide a viable source of data on biotic interactions in the fossil record.
Choosing Haplotype-Tagging SNPS Based on Unphased Genotype Data Using a Preliminary Sample of Unrelated Subjects with an Example from the Multiethnic Cohort Study

We describe an approach for picking haplotype-tagging single nucleotide polymorphisms (htSNPs) that is presently being taken in two large nested case-control studies within a multiethnic cohort (MEC), which are engaged in a search for associations between risk of prostate and breast cancer and common genetic variations in candidate genes. Based on a preliminary sample of 70 control subjects chosen at random from each of the 5 ethnic groups in the MEC we estimate haplotype frequencies using a variant of the Excoffier-Slatkin E-M algorithm after genotyping a high density of SNPs selected every 3–5 kb in and surrounding a candidate gene. In order to evaluate the performance of a candidate set of htSNPS (which will be genotyped in the much larger case-control sample) we treat the haplotype frequencies estimate above as known, and carry out a formal calculation of the uncertainty of the number of copies of common haplotypes carried by an individual, summarizing this calculation as a coefficient of determination, R2h. A candidate set of htSNPS of a given size is chosen so as to maximize the minimum value of R2h over the common haplotypes, h.
Facial Expression Recognition Using Multiple Feature Sets

Over the years, human facial expression recognition has always been a challenging problem in computer vision systems. In this paper, we have worked towards recognizing facial expressions from the images given in JAFFE database. From literature, a set of features have been identified to be potentially useful for recognizing facial expressions. Therefore, we propose to use a combination of 3-different types of features i.e. Scale Invariant Features Transform (SIFT), Gabor wavelets and Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT). Some pre-processing steps have been applied before extracting these features. Support Vector Machine (SVM) with radial basis kernel function is used for classifying facial expressions. We evaluate our results on the JAFFE database under the same experimental setup followed in literature. Experimental results show that our proposed methodology gives better results in comparison with existing literature work so far.
Exploring group mobility for replica data allocation in a mobile environment

The growth in wireless communication technologies attracts a considerable amount of attention in mobile ad-hoc networks. Since mobile hosts in an ad-hoc network usually move freely, the topology of the network changes dynamically and disconnection occurs frequently. These characteristics make a mobile ad-hoc network be likely to be separated into several disconnected partitions, and the data accessibility is hence reduced. Several schemes are proposed to alleviate the reduction of data accessibility by replicating data items. However, little research effort was elaborated upon exploiting the group mobility where the group mobility refers to the phenomenon that several mobile nodes tend to move together. In this paper, we address the problem of replica allocation in a mobile ad-hoc network by exploring group mobility. We first analyze the group mobility model and derive several theoretical results. In light of these results, we propose a replica allocation scheme to improve the data accessibility. Several experiments are conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme. The experimental results show that the proposed scheme is able to not only obtain higher data accessibility but also produce lower network traffic than prior schemes.
Encoding models of the subcortical whisker system

The purpose of the brain is to allow animals to make rapid, complex responses to external circumstances, which requires sensitive and effcient sensory systems. The use that can be made of a sensory modality depends entirely on how the sensory information is encoded by the primary afferents; hence, understanding the early stages of a sensory pathway can help to understand how that sensory information can be used by the brain.In this thesis we show that a simple Generalized Linear Model (GLM) describes stimulus response properties of the primary afferents of the rat whisker system to submillisecond precision, and analyse the parameters to reveal that the encoding mechanism of the system as a whole can be seen as a sparse, overcomplete basis of a low-dimensional projection of the stimulus space.We also show that although the neurons of the Ventro-Posterior Medial (VPM) nucleus of the thalamus can be described well by a GLM, more powerful models, with nonlinear multi-feature stimulus dependencies, are able to predict their responses to a much greater degree of accuracy, and that therefore the form of the information entering the somatosensory cortex and the brain beyond has already undergone some degree of information processing.
Combined QM/MM Study of Thyroid and Steroid Hormone Analogue Interactions with αvβ3 Integrin

Recent biochemical studies have identified a cell surface receptor for thyroid and steroid hormones that bind near the arginine-glycine-aspartate (RGD) recognition site on the heterodimeric αvβ3 integrin. To further characterize the intermolecular interactions for a series of hormone analogues, combined quantum mechanical and molecular mechanical (QM/MM) methods were used to calculate their interaction energies. All calculations were performed in the presence of either calcium (Ca2+) or magnesium (Mg2+) ions. These data reveal that 3,5′-triiodothyronine (T3) and 3,5,3′,5′-tetraiodothyroacetic acid (T4ac) bound in two different modes, occupying two alternate sites, one of which is along the Arg side chain of the RGD cyclic peptide site. These orientations differ from those of the other ligands whose alternate binding modes placed the ligands deeper within the RGD binding pocket. These observations are consistent with biological data that indicate the presence of two discrete binding sites that control distinct downstream signal transduction pathways for T3.
Novel Sequential Screening and Enhanced Production of Fibrinolytic Enzyme by Bacillus sp. IND12 Using Response Surface Methodology in Solid-State Fermentation

Fibrinolytic enzymes have wide applications in clinical and waste treatment. Bacterial isolates were screened for fibrinolytic enzyme producing ability by skimmed milk agar plate using bromocresol green dye, fibrin plate method, zymography analysis, and goat blood clot lysis. After these sequential screenings, Bacillus sp. IND12 was selected for fibrinolytic enzyme production. Bacillus sp. IND12 effectively used cow dung for its growth and enzyme production (687 ± 6.5 U/g substrate). Further, the optimum bioprocess parameters were found out for maximum fibrinolytic enzyme production using cow dung as a low cost substrate under solid-state fermentation. Two-level full-factorial experiments revealed that moisture, pH, sucrose, peptone, and MgSO4 were the vital parameters with statistical significance (p < 0.001). Three factors (moisture, sucrose, and MgSO4) were further studied through experiments of central composite rotational design and response surface methodology. Enzyme production of optimized medium showed 4143 ± 12.31 U/g material, which was more than fourfold the initial enzyme production (978 ± 36.4 U/g). The analysis of variance showed that the developed response surface model was highly significant (p < 0.001). The fibrinolytic enzyme digested goat blood clot (100%), chicken skin (83 ± 3.6%), egg white (100%), and bovine serum albumin (29 ± 4.9%).