Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Comparison of Anthropometric Measures for Classification of Metabolic Syndrome and Cardiometabolic Risk Factors, NHANES 2007-2010

BACKGROUND: Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease (CVD) are among the leading causes of death in the United States. The Metabolic Syndrome, which comprises a cluster of cardiometabolic risk factors, puts individuals at increased risk for these diseases. It is therefore important that people with Metabolic Syndrome, at high risk for CVD and type 2 diabetes, are identified and treated. Since it may not often be practical to obtain the laboratory measures necessary for diagnosing the Metabolic Syndrome, simple anthropometric measures are a useful way of quickly identifying individuals at increased risk for the Metabolic Syndrome. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate the utility of three of the most commonly used anthropometric measures – Body Mass Index (BMI), Waist Circumference (WC), and Waist-to-Height Ratio (WC) – for classifying individuals with and without the Metabolic Syndrome and its component risk factors in the United States. Using Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve analysis and Area Under the Curve (AUC) statistics, this thesis will assess the utility of each body measurement and compare it to BMI. METHODS: A large, multi-ethnic, nationally representative sample from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2007-2010 was used for this analysis. The study sample was restricted to adults aged 20-65 with complete information on height, weight, waist circumference, blood pressure, HDL cholesterol, fasting glucose, and triglycerides (n=3,769). In order to compare the utility of different anthropometric measures for classification, weighted ROC curves were constructed for each anthropometric measure-outcome combination and AUC statistics were compared. AUC statistics were calculated by approximating the definite integral of the ROC curves with the trapezoidal rule. Variances for AUC statistics and differences in AUC statistics were estimated with jackknife repeated replication. Analyses were completed for the entire sample and separately for non-Hispanic whites, non-Hispanic blacks, and Mexican Americans. RESULTS: For the entire sample, WC (AUC=0.752) did a better job than BMI (AUC=0.728) at classifying individuals with and without the Metabolic Syndrome (p<0.001) and all of the component risk factors except for HDL cholesterol. WHtR (AUC=0.740) performed better than BMI at classifying the Metabolic Syndrome (p=0.048), high blood pressure, and high triglycerides. The performance of WHtR was inconsistent across race. For every analysis in the overall sample and in the race subgroups, WC performed significantly better than BMI or no different from BMI, except for low HDL cholesterol among Mexican Americans where it performed significantly worse than BMI. CONCLUSION: Waist circumference should be considered, especially over BMI, for risk stratification in clinical settings and research. Further research should attempt to identify optimum waist circumference cut points for use in the US population.
Disruption of chromodomain helicase DNA binding protein 2 (CHD2) causes scoliosis

Herein we characterize an apparently balanced de novo translocation, t(X;15)(p22.2;q26.1)dn, in a female patient with scoliosis, hirsutism, learning problems, and developmental delay (DGAP025). Other clinical findings include a high‐arched palate, 2–3 syndactyly of the toes, and mildly elevated serum testosterone. No known or predicted genes are disrupted by the Xp22.2 breakpoint. The 15q26.1 breakpoint disrupts chromodomain helicase DNA binding protein 2 (CHD2). Another member of the chromatin‐remodeling gene family, CHD7, has been associated with a defined constellation of congenital anomalies known as coloboma, heart anomaly, choanal atresia, mental retardation, genital and ear anomalies syndrome (CHARGE) and idiopathic scoliosis. Monosomy of 15q26 also has been associated with a spectrum of congenital abnormalities and growth retardation that overlaps with those of DGAP025. To provide a biological correlate, we characterized a mutant mouse model with Chd2 disruption that is associated with embryonic and perinatal lethality. Expression analysis indicated that Chd2 is expressed in the heart, forebrain, extremities, facial and dorsal regions during specific times of embryonic development. Chd2+/m mice showed pronounced lordokyphosis, reduced body fat, postnatal runting, and growth retardation. These data suggest that haploinsufficiency for CHD2 could result in a complex of abnormal human phenotypes that includes scoliosis and possibly features similar to CHARGE syndrome. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Leaders: Strategies for Taking Charge

In this illuminating study of corporate America's most critical issue-leadership-world-renowned leadership guru Warren Bennis and his co-author Burt Nanus reveal the four key principles every manager should know: Attention Through Vision, Meaning Through Communication, Trust Through Positioning, and The Deployment of Self. In this age of "process", with downsizing and restructuring affecting many workplaces, companies have fallen trap to lack of communication and distrust, and vision and leadership are needed more than ever before. The wisdom and insight in Leaders addresses this need. It is an indispensable source of guidance all readers will appreciate, whether they're running a small department or in charge of an entire corporation.
Hopf’s lemma and constrained radial symmetry for the fractional Laplacian

In this paper we prove Hopf’s boundary point lemma for the fractional Laplacian. With respect to the classical formulation, in the non-local framework the normal derivative of the involved function u at z ∈ ∂Ω is replaced with the limit of the ratio u(x)/(δR(x)) , where δR(x) = dist(x, ∂BR) and BR ⊂ Ω is a ball such that z ∈ ∂BR. More precisely, we show that lim inf B∋x→z u(x) (δR(x)) > 0 . Also we consider the overdetermined problem  (−∆) u = 1 in Ω u = 0 in R \ Ω lim Ω∋x→z u(x) (δΩ(x)) s = q(|z|) for every z ∈ ∂Ω . Here Ω is a bounded open set in R , N ≥ 1, containing the origin and satisfying the interior ball condition, δΩ(x) = dist(x, ∂Ω), and (−∆), s ∈ (0, 1), is the fractional Laplace operator defined, up to normalization factors, as
Exploring Ethnic Variation in the Relationship Between Stress, Social Networks, and Depressive Symptoms Among Older Black Americans

The relationship between different types of stressors and depressive symptoms among older Black populations is poorly understood. Even less is known about the social networks that might buffer different stressors on individuals within Black ethnic groups. The purpose of this study was to examine whether there are differences in the relationship between stress and social networks on depressive symptoms by ethnic group while ethnicity functioned as a proxy for culture. Data were drawn from the National Survey of American Life, which includes older African Americans (N = 837) and Caribbean Blacks (N = 271). In this survey, the measures of stress were perceived discrimination and material hardship; measures of social networks were social support and social connectedness. The association between perceived discrimination and depressive symptoms was significant for both groups while the association between material hardship and depressive symptoms was only significant for older African Americans. Results also indicate that compared with African Americans, Caribbean Blacks derived greater protective effects against depression from social support and social connectedness in late life.
On the extent and reduction of avoidable absenteeism: An assessment of absence policy provisions.

This field study of employees of a public utility company had several objectives: (a) to identify that portion of employee absenteeism that is avoidable; (b) to compare this measure with more traditional measures, and (c) to examine the relationship of the measure of avoidable absenteeism with a selected absence policy - a waiting-time provision whereby employees were compensated differently for absenteeism.
A Comparison of the Glasgow Coma Scale Score with Full Outline of Unresponsiveness Scale to Predict Patients' Traumatic Brain Injury Outcomes in Intensive Care Units

Background. Neurological assessment is an essential element of early warning scores used to recognize critically ill patients. We compared the performance of the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) with Full Outline of Unresponsiveness (FOUR) scale as an alternative method in the identification of clinically relevant outcomes in traumatic brain injury. Objective. The purpose of this study was to compare the performance of GCS with FOUR scale. Methods. For this study 104 patients with brain injury were recruited from the ICU of Taleghani Hospital, a major teaching hospital in Kermanshah in the western part of Iran. Data was collected concurrently from the ICU admissions by three well-educated nurses and then checked for accuracy by the researcher. Patients were followed up until two weeks or hospital discharge to record their survival status. As a final point expected risk of mortality was calculated using the original formulas for each scale. Results. The mean age of 104 participants was 41.38 ± 18.22 (rang 17 to 86 years) mostly (81 patients 77.9%) males. The FOUR scale has a better prediction for death than GCS. Conclusion. It appears that FOUR scale had better predictive power for mortality and may be a suitable alternative or complementary tool for GCS.
Architecture and Applications of DADO: A Large-Scale Parallel Computer for Artificial Intelligence

As part of our research on very high performance parallel architectures, we have been investigating; machine architectures specially adapted to the highly efficient implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) software. In the course of our research we designed DADO, a highly parallel, VLSI-based, tree-structured machine, and implemented a high-speed algorithm for production systems on a simulator for DADO. Subsequent research has convinced us that DADO can support many other AI applications, including the very rapid execution of PROLOG programs, and a large share of the symbolic processing typical of contemporary knowledge-based systems. In this brief report, we outline the hardware design of a moderate size DADO prototype, comprising 1023 processing elements, which is currently under construction at Columbia University. We then sketch the software base being implemented on a small 15 processing element prototype system including several applications written in PPL/M, a high-level language designed for specifying parallel computations on DADO.
School Characteristics and Educational Outcomes: Toward an Organizational Model of Student Achievement in Middle Schools

Empowerment is defined and measured in terms of teachers’ power to control critical decisions about teaching and learning conditions. This research first considers the relationship between school climate and teacher empowerment and then the relationship between teacher empowerment and school effectiveness, which includes measures of mathematics and reading achievement in 86 middle schools. The results support the pivotal importance of teacher empowerment in the effectiveness of schools. Finally, a theoretical model is proposed to explain the linkages between organizational characteristics and student achievement.
Kinetic Description of Martian Atmospheric Entry Plasma

A kinetic model for Martian atmospheric entry plasma (MAEP) is presented. The model was calculated based on data from Viking, Pathfinder, and the Mars Exploration Rovers Opportunity and Spirit. Calculations of the density, temperature, and electron density across the shock front were made. We employed steady-state and nonsteady-state kinetic models to describe the rate of dissociation of CO2 in the Martian atmosphere as well as the production of O2. Water vapor was included in the models since it represents 0.03% of the surface atmospheric composition. With the addition of small amounts of water vapor, we found a decrease in the dissociation of CO2 in the Martian air as well as an increase in the production of O2. This paper is to report an analysis of MAEP and its interactions with the shock front which forms in the front of the Martian Landers.
The political culture of the 1990s immigrants from the former Soviet Union in Israel and their views toward the indigenous Arab minority: a case of ethnocratic multiculturalism

This paper deals with the potential and actual impacts of the 1990s immigrants from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) on the state of multiculturalism, peace orientation and civil society in Israel. It examines the attitudes of these immigrants toward the character of Israel and their location in its cultural fabric. At the same time, it explores their stand toward the indigenous Palestinian Arab citizens and the prospects of creating an all‐encompassing civil culture. The analysis shows that immigrants are tending toward the expansion of pluralism and the secularisation of Israel, and a redefinition of the legitimate borders of Israeli society. However, this orientation is not based on a holistic perspective. It is, rather, aimed at serving the needs of the immigrants themselves and facilitating their integration into the existing ethno‐national structure from an advantaged position. Therefore, they are expected to reinforce a system of exclusion that places the indigenous Arab population beyond the pale. In this sense, the FSU immigrants are leading toward a type of multiculturalism that may be termed ‘ethnocratic multiculturalism’. This type differs from types of multiculturalism that have developed in Western democratic countries by being selective: it draws the borders of legitimacy according to an exclusive ethno‐national basis, rather than on the basis of inclusive values.
Disability and labour force participation in Ireland

The extent and nature of participation in the labour market by persons affected by disability has a multitude of direct and indirect effects on their living standards and quality of life, and so is a critical area for investigation and policy concern. This paper seeks to quantify the effects of disability on labour force participation in Ireland for the first time. Using data from the Living in Ireland Survey, 2000 and the Quarterly National Household Survey Disability Module 2002, we look at the relationship between participation and self-reported disability. The results show that those individuals reporting a severely limiting condition have a much lower probability of participation in the labour force than others, and this continues to be the case having controlled for other characteristics such as age, education and marital status. The reporting of such conditions itself may not be exogenous, however, and this is a priority for further research.
This Paper Is Included in the Proceedings of the 11th Usenix Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (nsdi '14). How Speedy Is Spdy? How Speedy Is Spdy?

SPDY is increasingly being used as an enhancement to HTTP/1.1. To understand its impact on performance, we conduct a systematic study of Web page load time (PLT) under SPDY and compare it to HTTP. To identify the factors that affect PLT, we proceed from simple, synthetic pages to complete page loads based on the top 200 Alexa sites. We find that SPDY provides a significant improvement over HTTP when we ignore dependencies in the page load process and the effects of browser computation. Most SPDY benefits stem from the use of a single TCP connection, but the same feature is also detrimental under high packet loss. Unfortunately, the benefits can be easily overwhelmed by dependencies and computation , reducing the improvements with SPDY to 7% for our lower bandwidth and higher RTT scenarios. We also find that request prioritization is of little help, while server push has good potential; we present a push policy based on dependencies that gives comparable performance to mod spdy while sending much less data.
Opiate Addicted and Non-Addicted Siblings in a Slum Area

Comparison of addicted and non-addicted siblings in a slum area supports an ideographic “relative deprivation-differential anticipation” explanation for current opiate addiction in the United States. The major sibling differences were the addicts' greater participation in street life at an early age and lesser work and schooling, despite as high or higher aspirations and ostensibly similar home settings and parental relationships. The addicts' current greater anomie and alienation may be more consequence than cause of this. What seems to have insulated the non-addict from drugs was an early commitment to becoming a conventional and conforming adult. These differentiations within single families have compatible explanations in reinforcement, opportunity, and stigmatization theories, and their existence contradicts the image of uniformly enculturating high delinquency neighborhoods.
A universal image forensic strategy based on steganalytic model

Image forensics have made great progress during the past decade. However, almost all existing forensic methods can be regarded as the specific way, since they mainly focus on detecting one type of image processing operations. When the type of operations changes, the performances of the forensic methods usually degrade significantly. In this paper, we propose a universal forensics strategy based on steganalytic model. By analyzing the similarity between steganography and image processing operation, we find that almost all image operations have to modify many image pixels without considering some inherent properties within the original image, which is similar to what in steganography. Therefore, it is reasonable to model various image processing operations as steganography and it is promising to detect them with the help of some effective universal steganalytic features. In our experiments, we evaluate several advanced steganalytic features on six kinds of typical image processing operations. The experimental results show that all evaluated steganalyzers perform well while some steganalytic methods such as the spatial rich model (SRM) [4] and LBP [19] based methods even outperform the specific forensic methods significantly. What is more, they can further identify the type of various image processing operations, which is impossible to achieve using the existing forensic methods.
Improvement of statin‐associated myotoxicity by L‐carnitine

Although statins represent the mainstay therapy for the treatment of hypercholesterolemia and have a positive tolerability and safety profile, the occurrence of statinassociated myopathy, an accepted class effect of these drugs, may bemore common than originally thought. In this regard, a recent paper by Phillips and collegues on the myotoxic effect of statin has been followed by a number of interesting letters and authors’ responses addressing several issues of statin myotoxicity [1,2]. Among them, Toma reasoned that L-carnitine (LC) treatment might have a favorable impact on the incidence of statin-associated therapy [2]. We have recently completed a study in young rodents treated with myotoxic doses of simvastatin, a useful model for statin myotoxicity studies [3], in combination or not with LC and our results strengthen Toma’s proposal in addressing the preventive or therapeutic effect of LC on statin-associated myopathy in human clinical trials. Indeed, our study shows that, at the highest dose of simvastatin, creatine kinase (CK) plasma levels were significantly elevated in treated animals compared with controls and that carnitine coadministration efficiently counteracted plasma CK levels in the former group (Table 1). Statin treatment at the two highest doses also caused a significant elevation of glutamic oxalacetate transaminase (GOT) and glutamic pyruvate transaminase (GPT), which may reflect both hepatic and muscle insult. LC administration did not lead to a significant correction of these two enzymatic indices in statin-treated groups, although, at the highest dose of simvastatin, LC seems to oppose GOT and GPT elevations (Table 1). The beneficial effect of carnitine administration in the simvastatin-treated animals does not seem to be linked to an alteration of the pharmacokinetic properties of the statin, since the cholesterollowering effect observed at the highest dose of simvastatin was not affected by carnitine (Table 1). Statin-treated animals were also treadmill-tested at a constant 15 angle and a speed of 10 m min. As expected, their walking capacity was severely impaired at the highest statin dose (90% of rats fell more than three times over a period of 5 min walking) compared with controls (no fall over a period of 5 min walking). A marked improvement by adding carnitine to statin treatment was observed (60% of rats fell more than three times over a period of 5 min walking). Themajority of the specificmyotoxic actions described in the literature seem to indicate that muscle membrane represents a common pathogenic target of statins’ mode of action [4]. Since several cellular functions rely on the integrity of biological membranes (i.e. ionic homeostasis, signal transduction, com-
Potentiation of LPS-Induced Apoptotic Cell Death in Human Hepatoma HepG2 Cells by Aspirin via ROS and Mitochondrial Dysfunction: Protection by N-Acetyl Cysteine

Cytotoxicity and inflammation-associated toxic responses have been observed to be induced by bacterial lipopolysaccharides (LPS) in vitro and in vivo respectively. Use of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), such as aspirin, has been reported to be beneficial in inflammation-associated diseases like cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disorders. Their precise molecular mechanisms, however, are not clearly understood. Our previous studies on aspirin treated HepG2 cells strongly suggest cell cycle arrest and induction of apoptosis associated with mitochondrial dysfunction. In the present study, we have further demonstrated that HepG2 cells treated with LPS alone or in combination with aspirin induces subcellular toxic responses which are accompanied by increase in reactive oxygen species (ROS) production, oxidative stress, mitochondrial respiratory dysfunction and apoptosis. The LPS/Aspirin induced toxicity was attenuated by pre-treatment of cells with N-acetyl cysteine (NAC). Alterations in oxidative stress and glutathione-dependent redox-homeostasis were more pronounced in mitochondria compared to extra- mitochondrial cellular compartments. Pre-treatment of HepG2 cells with NAC exhibited a selective protection in redox homeostasis and mitochondrial dysfunction. Our results suggest that the altered redox metabolism, oxidative stress and mitochondrial function in HepG2 cells play a critical role in LPS/aspirin-induced cytotoxicity. These results may help in better understanding the pharmacological, toxicological and therapeutic properties of NSAIDs in cancer cells exposed to bacterial endotoxins.
Disorganized Attachment Promotes Mystical Experiences via a Propensity for Alterations in Consciousness (Absorption)

In this article, the authors argue that mystical experiences are linked to disorganized attachment via a proposed mediator—the propensity to enter altered states of consciousness (absorption). Using a sample of predominantly religious/spiritual participants (N = 62), they report that disorganized attachment, as identified with the Adult Attachment Interview, predicted lifetime occurrence of mystical experiences and that this link was mediated by absorption. Alternative mediational models received less conclusive support. Also, more conventional aspects of religion (theistic beliefs and degree of general religiousness) were not related to disorganized attachment or absorption, supporting the discriminant validity of the mediational model. In the discussion, the authors argue that mystical experiences represent a nonpathological and potentially self-reparative “outcome” of disorganized attachment and the related propensity to experience alterations in consciousness.