Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The use of imputed values in the meta‐analysis of genome‐wide association studies

In genome‐wide association studies (GWAS), it is a common practice to impute the genotypes of untyped single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) by exploiting the linkage disequilibrium structure among SNPs. The use of imputed genotypes improves genome coverage and makes it possible to perform meta‐analysis combining results from studies genotyped on different platforms. A popular way of using imputed data is the “expectation‐substitution” method, which treats the imputed dosage as if it were the true genotype. In current practice, the estimates given by the expectation‐substitution method are usually combined using inverse variance weighting (IVM) scheme in meta‐analysis. However, the IVM is not optimal as the estimates given by the expectation‐substitution method are generally biased. The optimal weight is, in fact, proportional to the inverse variance and the expected value of the effect size estimates. We show both theoretically and numerically that the bias of the estimates is very small under practical conditions of low effect sizes in GWAS. This finding validates the use of the expectation‐substitution method, and shows the inverse variance is a good approximation of the optimal weight. Through simulation, we compared the power of the IVM method with several methods including the optimal weight, the regular z‐score meta‐analysis and a recently proposed “imputation aware” meta‐analysis method (Zaitlen and Eskin [2010] Genet Epidemiol 34:537–542). Our results show that the performance of the inverse variance weight is always indistinguishable from the optimal weight and similar to or better than the other two methods. Genet. Epidemiol. 2011. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 35:597‐605, 2011
Personality and Social Psycholog Y Bulletin Social Exclusion and Selective Memory: How the Need to Belong Influences Memory for Social Events

The need to belong has been forwarded as a pervasive human motive, influencing a range of cognitive, emotional, and behav-ioral responses. The current research explored the influence of belongingness needs on the selective retention of social information. Just as physical hunger results in selective memory for food-relevant stimuli, it was hypothesized that social hunger, aroused when belongingness needs were unmet, would result in selective memory for socially relevant stimuli. In two studies, the authors used a simulated computer chat room to present brief acceptance or rejection experiences to participants. Participants then read a diary containing both social and individual events. In both, rejection experiences resulted in selective memory for the explicitly social events of the diary. The implications of these results for the existence and consequences of a basic need to belong are discussed. Humans are inherently social creatures. We gather in groups the world over and form affectional pair-bonds in every known human society (Brewer & Capo-rael, 1995). Social exclusion is an effective and ubiquitous form of punishment across all age groups and cultures (see Williams, 1997, for review), and a lack of positive social relationships has repeatedly been associated with startling decreases in physical and mental well-being (for review, see Gardner, Gabriel, & Diekman, 2000). Indeed, the need to belong—a need fulfilled only through affiliation with and acceptance from others—is so universally powerful that it has been proposed to be as basic to our psychological makeup as hunger or thirst is to our physical makeup (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). In their review of the evidence supporting the need to belong as an innate, evolutionarily adaptive human motive, Baumeister and Leary (1995) set several criteria for inclusion as a fundamental human motivation. Two of these were (a) that a fundamental motive should drive cognitive responses and (b) that satiation patterns should be evident (i.e., the motive should increase when levels of belongingness fall below threshold and diminish when levels of belongingness are satisfied). The current studies explored the interplay of these two criteria through investigating the extent to which situationally induced belongingness needs affected the processing of subsequent social information. One possible consequence of a basic need to belong might be the development of a social monitoring system that guides social information processing. Higgins (1996) has argued that a regulatory function of self-knowledge is to monitor an individual's current state in relation to a desired end-state. Given the importance …
National Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Title A Faster Parallel Algorithm and Efficient Multithreaded Implementations for Evaluating Betweenness Centrality on Massive Datasets Permalink

We present a new lock-free parallel algorithm for computing betweenness centrality of massive small-world networks. With minor changes to the data structures, our algorithm also achieves better spatial cache locality compared to previous approaches. Betweenness centrality is a key algorithm kernel in HPCS SSCA#2, a benchmark extensively used to evaluate the performance of emerging high-performance computing architectures for graph-theoretic computations. We design optimized implementations of betweenness centrality and the SSCA#2 benchmark for two hardware multithreaded systems: a Cray XMT system with the Threadstorm processor, and a single-socket Sun multicore server with the UltraSPARC T2 processor. For a small-world network of 134 million vertices and 1.073 billion edges, the 16-processor XMT system and the 8-core Sun Fire T5120 server achieve TEPS scores (an algorithmic performance count for the SSCA#2 benchmark) of 160 million and 90 million respectively, which corresponds to more than a 2× performance improvement over the previous parallel implementations. To better characterize the performance of these multithreaded systems, we correlate the SSCA#2 performance results with data from the memory-intensive STREAM and RandomAccess benchmarks. Finally, we demonstrate the applicability of our implementation to analyze massive real-world datasets by computing approximate betweenness centrality for a large-scale IMDb movie-actor network.
Associations between Fiction Reading, Trait Empathy and Theory of Mind Ability

Several studies suggest a link between fiction reading and Theory of Mind, a component of cognitive empathy which refers to the ability to understand other people’s mental and affective states. More frequent fiction readers perform better in tasks that require inference of intentions or emotions in others, like the Reading the Mind in the Eyes task. In addition, subjects who read a fiction text obtain better scores than controls reading non-fiction. Since most of this research has been conducted on caucasic subjects, cross-cultural replication of the effect is still needed. The present study is the first to investigate the subject in a Latin American sample (208 adults -137 females-, ranging from 18 to 59 years old (M= 27.66). We replicated the association between lifelong exposure to print fiction and performance in the Reading the Mind in the eyes task, but the effect was only significant in men. The association remained significant after controlling for age, education level and self-reported Trait Empathy scores. The results are congruent with the hypothesis that reading promotes Theory of Mind ability by engaging mentalizing processes in order to represent the thoughts and feelings of fictional characters. The sex difference we observed had not been reported before and requires further replication and analysis.
Maximum power tracking for photovoltaic power system

The electric power supplied by a photovoltaic power generation system depends on the solar radiation and temperature. Designing efficient PV systems heavily emphasizes tracking the maximum power operating point. This work develops a novel three-point weight comparison method that avoids the oscillation problem of the perturbation and observation algorithm which is often employed to track the maximum power point. Furthermore, a low cost control unit is developed, based on a single chip to adjust the output voltage of the solar cell array. Finally, experimental results confirm the superior performance of the proposed method.
Cooperative path-following control with logic-based communications: theory and practice

This chapter introduces an event-driven, logic-based communication system for decentralized control of a network of nonlinear systems (agents) with the objective of driving their outputs along predefined paths at desired speeds, while holding a desired formation pattern compatible with the paths. An extended cooperative path following (CPF) framework is adopted where communications among agents take place at discrete time instants, instead of continuously. The communication system takes into account explicitly the topology of the communications network, the fact that communications are discrete, and the cost of exchanging information among agents. The theoretical framework adopted allows for the consideration of communication losses and bounded delays. Conditions are derived under which the resulting multi-agent closed-loop system is input-to-state stable, that is stable and with guaranteed levels of performance in the presence of bounded external disturbances and measurement noise. The set-up derived is used to solve the problem of CPF control of multiple underactuated autonomous marine vehicles. The results of experimental field tests with a group of marine vehicles are presented and discussed.
Cell response to sterilized electrospun poly(ɛ‐caprolactone) scaffolds to aid tendon regeneration in vivo

Abstract The functional replacement of tendon represents an unmet clinical need in situations of tendon rupture, tendon grafting, and complex tendon reconstruction, as usually there is a finite source of healthy tendon to use as donors. The microfibrous architecture of tendon is critical to the function of tendon. This study investigates the use of electrospun poly(ɛ‐caprolactone) scaffolds as potential biomaterial substitutes for tendon grafts. We assessed the performance of two electrospinning manufacturers (small‐ and large‐scale) and the effect of two sterilization techniques—gamma irradiation and ethanol submersion—on cell response to these electrospun scaffolds after their implantation into a murine tendon model. Cell infiltration and proliferation analyses were undertaken to determine the effect on cell response within the implant over a 6‐week period. Immunohistochemical analysis was performed to characterize inflammatory response and healing characteristics (proliferation, collagen deposition, myofibroblast activity, and apoptosis). Neither the sterilization techniques nor the manufacturer was observed to significantly affect the cell response to the scaffold. At each time point, cell response was similar to the autograft control. This suggests that ethanol submersion can be used for research purposes and that the scaffold can be easily reproduced by a large‐scale manufacturer. These results further imply that this electrospun scaffold may provide an alternative to autograft, thus eliminating the need for sourcing healthy tendon tissue from a secondary site. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part A: 105A: 389–397, 2017.
Discrete Laplacians on general polygonal meshes

While the theory and applications of discrete Laplacians on triangulated surfaces are well developed, far less is known about the general polygonal case. We present here a principled approach for constructing geometric discrete Laplacians on surfaces with arbitrary polygonal faces, encompassing non-planar and non-convex polygons. Our construction is guided by closely mimicking structural properties of the smooth Laplace--Beltrami operator. Among other features, our construction leads to an extension of the widely employed cotan formula from triangles to polygons. Besides carefully laying out theoretical aspects, we demonstrate the versatility of our approach for a variety of geometry processing applications, embarking on situations that would have been more difficult to achieve based on geometric Laplacians for simplicial meshes or purely combinatorial Laplacians for general meshes.
Administrative Processes as an Anti-Corruption Tool? A View from Public Employees in the Baltic States

Abstract Many studies have documented the negative effect of corruption on development, economic growth, and democracy. Independent anti-corruption agencies are often recommended as the tool to curb corruption. However, their efficiency depends on the political will to allocate authority, powers, and resources. Moreover, setting up new institutions is always costly and accordingly problematic to low and middle income countries. The present study suggests that public administration processes in their own right are a tool to combat corruption. The article uses a survey with responses from 1706 public employees in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Using OLS regression, the study confirms others findings that strengthening meritocracy is an important factor in curbing corruption. It adds to this that enhancing monitoring is a factor just as effective against corruption as meritocracy. It adds attention to the reverse effect associated with hierarchical organizations, norms accepting rule bending, and network decisions. Finally, addressing salaries’ and performance payment’s impact on corruption the study finds no relation.
Document Transformation Technologies Conference Organised by : Event Dynamics INSTITUTIONS AND AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY IN SUB-SAHARA AFRICA

Agricultural productivity in 41 Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries from 1960 to 1999 is examined by estimating a semi-nonparametric Fourier production frontier. Over the four decades the estimated rate of productivity change was 0.83% per year, although the average rate from 1985-99 was a strong 1.90% per year. Former UK colonies exhibited significantly higher productivity gains than others, while Liberia and countries that had been colonies of Portugal or Belgium exhibited net reductions in productivity. We measure a significant reduction in productivity during political conflicts and wars, and a significant increase in productivity among those countries with a measure of political rights and civil liberties.
Can we predict the prognosis of COPD with a routine blood test?

Background The major characteristic of COPD is systemic inflammation. The parameters such as neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and eosinophil-to-basophil ratio (EBR) in routine blood test (RBT) are considered to be the underlying biomarkers of inflammation. We hypothesized that the prognosis of patients with COPD can be predicted with RBT. Methods Patients with COPD in stable stage were enrolled. The RBT, pulmonary function testing (PFT), BODE index, C-reactive protein (CRP), procalcitonin, and erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) were performed at enrollment and every follow-up once in every 3 months during the 24-month follow-up period. Meanwhile, exacerbation count and mortality incidence were recorded. The correlation between the prognostic biomarkers and the prognosis of patients was analyzed. Results The NLR and EBR in RBT have a significant correlation with the severity of patients with COPD. The NLR is an independent predictor for mortality and the EBR is an independent predictor for exacerbation. Conclusion As an inexpensive, accessible, and convenient assay, RBT may be used as a practical means in the prediction of prognosis of patients with COPD in future clinical settings.
Re-Locating to Intermediate Housing + Old Age Care Structures in Italy

In a context of huge and fast-ageing population, in Italy and in particular in Lombardy, policy makers are trying to enlarge “housing plus care” alternatives to which elderly people can turn to before being in need of complex care and eventually moving to a nursing home, in a country were caring needs are normally coped with through informal assistance given at home by family members and, increasingly, by migrant personal assistants. The article discusses the rationale of re-locating in old age to these “light” residential solutions and presents the findings of 101 face-to-face interviews with elderly persons who already moved into them in Lombardy. The main research question addressed here is to what extent people feel “in place” in these new habitats, and which are the aspects that enrich lives in old age in these new settings.
Muslims, Socio-cultural Integration, and Pride in Canadian Democracy

Abstract:In this paper, I use the General Social Survey 2013 (Cycle 27) and address three aspects of integration anxiety about Muslims in Canada: a) the extent to which Muslim immigrants' level of integration differs from other religious denominations, b) how Muslims differ from other groups in their support for democracy, and c) whether there is a relationship between integration and support for democracy. Results show that contrary to the anxiety of some academics, policymakers, and the public, Muslim immigrants in Canada are equally, if not more, integrated than Christians or other religious immigrants. They also express a higher sense of pride in Canadian democracy when compared to Christians or other religious groups. Finally, integrated immigrants have as much pride in Canadian democracy as assimilated ones, and both have more pride in Canadian democracy than those who are marginalized or have a separatist orientation. The implication of these findings for anxiety about Muslims' incompatibility with Western values are discussed. Résumé:Dans cet article, je me sers du sondage General Social Survey 2013 (cycle 27) et aborde trois aspects de l'anxiété de l'intégration chez les musulmans au Canada : a) l'étendue de laquelle le niveau d'intégration des immigrants musulmans diffère des autres confessions religieuses, b) comment les musulmans sont différents d'autres groupes dans leur soutien à la démocratie, et c) s'il existe une relation entre l'intégration et le soutien à la démocratie. Les résultats montrent que, contrairement à l'inquiétude de certains universitaires, décideurs et du public, les immigrants musulmans au Canada sont équitablement, sinon plus, intégrés que les chrétiens ou les immigrants des autres confessions religieuses. Ils expriment également un plus grand sentiment de fierté à l'égard de la démocratie canadienne par rapport aux chrétiens ou à d'autres groupes religieux. Enfin, les immigrants intégrés sont aussi fiers de la démocratie canadienne que les immigrants assimilés et tous les deux sont plus fiers de la démocratie canadienne que ceux qui sont marginalisés ou qui ont une orientation séparatiste. L'implication de ces résultats de l'anxiété à propos de l'incompatibilité des musulmans avec les valeurs occidentales est ainsi analysée.
Control of Spatial and Feature-Based Attention in Frontoparietal Cortex

Visual attention selects task-relevant information from scenes to help achieve behavioral goals. Attention can be deployed within multiple domains to select specific spatial locations, features, or objects. Recent evidence has shown that voluntary shifts of attention in multiple domains are consistently associated with transient increases in cortical activity in medial superior parietal lobule, suggesting that this may be the source of a domain-independent control signal that initiates the reconfiguration of attention. To investigate this hypothesis, we used fMRI to measure changes in cortical activation while human subjects shifted attention between spatial locations or between colors at a location. Univariate multiple regression analysis revealed a common, domain-independent transient signal [in posterior parietal cortex (PPC) and prefrontal cortex] time-locked to shifts of attention in both domains. However, multivariate pattern classification conducted on the cortical surface revealed that the spatiotemporal pattern of activity within PPC differed reliably for spatial and feature-based attention shifts. These results suggest that the posterior parietal cortex is a common hub for the control of attention shifts but contains subpopulations of neurons with domain-specific tuning for cognitive control.
23-year experience on diagnosis and surgical treatment of benign and malignant cardiac tumors

Introduction Although myxoma is the most frequent cardiac tumor, other conditions should be taken into consideration in the differential diagnosis. Transthoracic echocardiography (TTE), followed by transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) remain the principal methods for cardiac tumor screening and visualizing. The aim of the study was to compare the diagnostics, surgical treatment and prognosis of malignant and benign cardiac tumors. Material and methods From 1986 to 2009 there were 121 patients with cardiac tumors operated on in the Cardiac Surgery Clinic of the Medical University in Lodz. Patients were referred to surgery mainly on the basis of the TTE and TEE image. In 4 cases valvular prosthesis implantation or valve repair were carried out. Patients remained under long-term observation in the Cardiac Surgery Outpatient Clinic. Results Myxoma was diagnosed in 114 cases. Malignancies were discovered in 7 cases. The left atrium was the most frequent localization. The echocardiographic image differed significantly in benign and malignant tumors. The postoperative period was complicated by embolic events or myocardial infarctions. Only malignant tumors were associated with mortality due to cardiovascular events. The survival for malignant tumors was significantly shorter. Conclusions Short and long-term results of operative treatment are very good for benign tumors in contrast to cardiac malignancies. The TTE and TEE image can be very significant in the final diagnosis.
H∞ estimation for discrete-time linear uncertain systems

SUMMARY This paper is concerned with the problem of Hm estimation for linear discrete-time systems with timevarying norm-bounded parameter uncertainty in both the state and output matrices. We design an estimator such that the estimation error dynamics is quadratically stable and the induced operator norm of the mapping from noise to estimation error is kept within a prescribed bound for all admissible uncertainties. A Riccati equation approach is proposed to solve the estimation problem and it is shown that the solution is related to two algebraic Riccati equations.
Neural correlates of the ‘Aha! reaction’

An ‘Aha! reaction’ is a brief moment of exceptional thinking where an unexpected change in one's mental perspective reveals the solution to an otherwise intractable problem. In this event-related fMRI study, subjects read incomprehensible sentences followed by solution cues that were used to evoke such a reaction by triggering an alternative interpretation of the critical concepts. For 73% of the trials, subjects attributed their failure in the initial stage of sentence presentation to “having thought about it in another direction”. This behavior implies that the breaking of mental impasse is a critical component of the Aha! reaction phenomenon. During the Aha! reaction we observed anterior cingulate and left lateral prefrontal cortical activation, which are two areas known to mediate cognitive conflict.