Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of primary HIV‐1 infection on subsets of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes

ObjectiveTo analyse changes in T-lymphocyte subsets in patients with primary HIV infection and to determine their specificity (and therefore their diagnostic utility) by comparing these changes with those seen in other acute illnesses as well as in HIV-uninfected patients. MethodsT-lymphocyte subsets were analysed by two- and three-colour flow cytometry, and compared between HIV seroconverters (n = 16), HIV-infected (n = 18) and uninfected (n = 33) controls, patients with infectious mononucleosis (n = 7), and patients suspected clinically of having primary HIV infection but who were later found to be uninfected (referred to as HIV non-converters; n = 17). ResultsCD4+ lymphocyte counts were significantly lower in HIV seroconverters (mean, 444×106/I) than in the HIV non-converters (793×106/I; P = 0.003), HIV-seronegative controls (888×106/I; P < 0.0001) and, to a lesser extent, those with mononucleosis (694 × 106/I; P = 0.045). The reduction in CD4+ lymphocytes occurred in both the CD45RA+ (55%) and CD45RO+ (33%) subsets. CD8+ lymphocyte counts were significantly higher in HIV seroconverters (942×106/I) than in HIV non-converters (570×106/I; P = 0.003) and seronegative controls (467×106/I; P < 0.0001), but significantly lower than in the mononucleosis group (3682×106/I; P = 0.004). The CD8+ cells in the HIV seroconverters had increased coexpression of CD45RO, human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-DR, CD38 and CD11a/CD18. The mean CD4:CD8 ratio in the HIV seroconverters was 0.49, versus 1.52 in the non-converters (P < 0.0001), 2.08 in the seronegative patients (P < 0.0001) and 0.37 in the mononucleosis patients (P > 0.2). ConclusionsPrimary HIV infection is characterized by a depletion of CD4+ lymphocytes, especially of the CD45RA+ phenotype, and by an increase in CD8+ lymphocytes with an activated phenotype; the latter was also seen in patients with infectious mononucleosis but not in HIV non-converters or HIV-seronegative patients. Patients suspected clinically of having primary HIV infection but with normal T-cell phenotype are less likely to have primary HIV infection. These phenotypic changes, as well as an inverted CD4: CD8 ratio, can readily distinguish patients with primary HIV infection from HIV-uninfected patients except those with infectious mononucleosis. Therefore, T-cell-subset enumeration may be useful in the diagnosis of primary HIV infection.
The Impact of Experiences of Parental Divorce and Parental Conflict on Young Australian Adult Men and Women.

This study (a) investigated the long-term effects of parental conflict and divorce on young men and women who had experienced these disturbances in their childhood or adolescence, and (b) explored gender and socioeconomic status differences in the impact of these factors on externalising and internalising behaviours. The participants were 120 Psychology 1 students (60 females and 60 males) from the University of Sydney, consisting of 40 males and 40 females with married parents, and 20 males and 20 females with divorced parents. Results of the study indicate that when parental marital status alone is considered, there does appear to be evidence of increased externalising behaviour in children of divorce, even after 2 years. However, there was no evidence of an interaction with gender, and the increase held to the same extent for males as for females. When parental conflict and socioeconomic status were controlled, the relationship between divorce and externalising behaviour was no longer significant, with parental conflict being the sole significant independent contributor to the effect. With regard to internalising behaviour, the results suggest that females are more aflected by parental divorce than are males.This result is maintained when controlling for the effects of parental conflict and socioeconomic status.
A Methodological Critique

painful, and sometimes dull accumulation of quantitative data to show whether the almost infinite variations in the way human beings think, feel, and act are actually linked to gender. Let us hasten to say that we are not arguing that the sexes do not differ in important respects. We only urge that claims about what these differences are should be subjected to the empirical tests that are the basis of social science.
Leveraging Heterogeneity in DRAM Main Memories to Accelerate Critical Word Access

The DRAM main memory system in modern servers is largely homogeneous. In recent years, DRAM manufacturers have produced chips with vastly differing latency and energy characteristics. This provides the opportunity to build a heterogeneous main memory system where different parts of the address space can yield different latencies and energy per access. The limited prior work in this area has explored smart placement of pages with high activities. In this paper, we propose a novel alternative to exploit DRAM heterogeneity. We observe that the critical word in a cache line can be easily recognized beforehand and placed in a low-latency region of the main memory. Other non-critical words of the cache line can be placed in a low-energy region. We design an architecture that has low complexity and that can accelerate the transfer of the critical word by tens of cycles. For our benchmark suite, we show an average performance improvement of 12.9% and an accompanying memory energy reduction of 15%.
T-cell function is critical for murine cholesterol gallstone formation.

BACKGROUND & AIMS The formation of cholesterol gallstones is a complex process involving contributions from genes and environmental factors. Although gallbladder inflammation is believed to be common during cholelithogenesis, the role of immunologic factors is unknown. METHODS The role of adaptive immunity in cholesterol cholelithogenesis was analyzed utilizing immunocompetent Helicobacter spp. -infected and -uninfected BALB/c and congenic immunodeficient Rag2(-/-) (Rag) mice. Lymphocyte transfer studies were performed to determine which cellular subset was responsible for cholesterol gallstone formation. Also, gallbladder inflammation was quantified to determine the nature of the inflammatory response associated with cholelilithogenesis. RESULTS When fed a lithogenic diet for 8 weeks, wild-type mice developed significantly more cholesterol gallstones (27%-80% prevalence) than Rag mice ( approximately 5%, P < .05). Helicobacter spp. -infected BALB/cJ mice displayed statistically significant increases in cholesterol gallstone prevalence compared with uninfected mice (81% vs. 39%; P < .05). Transfer of splenocytes or T lymphocytes to Rag2(-/-) mice increased stone prevalence markedly (26% and 40% respectively; P < .05), whereas transfer of B cells was not appreciably cholelithogenic (13%). The adaptive immune response increased the expression of gallbladder Muc genes and accumulation of mucin gel. In addition, T cells and cholesterol monohydrate crystals induced proinflammatory gene expression in the gallbladder, which likely contributes to gallbladder dysfunction. CONCLUSIONS These studies indicate that T cells are critical in murine cholesterol cholelithogenesis. Furthermore, cholesterol monohydrate crystals induce expression of proinflammatory cytokines in a T-cell-dependent fashion. Acquired immunity and inflammation are likely to be crucial factors in cholesterol gallstone pathogenesis, rather then merely the result of cholelithogenesis.
Efficient Distributed Density Peaks for Clustering Large Data Sets in MapReduce

Density Peaks (DP) is a recently proposed clustering algorithm that has distinctive advantages over existing clustering algorithms. It has already been used in a wide range of applications. However, DP requires computing the distance between every pair of input points, therefore incurring quadratic computation overhead, which is prohibitive for large data sets. In this paper, we study efficient distributed algorithms for DP. We first show that a naive MapReduce solution (Basic-DDP) has high communication and computation overhead. Then, we propose LSH-DDP, an approximate algorithm that exploits Locality Sensitive Hashing for partitioning data, performs local computation, and aggregates local results to approximate the final results. We address several challenges in employing LSH for DP. We leverage the characteristics of DP to deal with the fact that some of the result values cannot be directly approximated in local partitions. We present formal analysis of LSH-DDP, and show that the approximation quality and the runtime can be controlled by tuning the parameters of LSH-DDP. Experimental results on both a local cluster and EC2 show that LSH-DDP achieves a factor of 1.7-70x speedup over the naive Basic-DDP and 2x speedup over the state-of-the-art EDDPC approach, while returning comparable cluster results. Compared to the popular K-means clustering, LSH-DDP also has comparable or better performance. Furthermore, LSH-DDP could achieve even higher efficiency with a lower accuracy requirement.
Toward a Theory of Occupational Choice: A Restatement

I n 1952, the editor of Occupations invited me to summarize [3] the theory of occupational choice that had been set forth by Ginzberg, Ginsburg, Axelrad, and Herma in our recently published book, Occupational Choice: An Approach to a General Theory [6]. Now, two decades later, the editor of its successor journal has suggested that I reformulate our theory in light of the intervening research undertaken by the Conservation of Human Resources Project at Columbia University. The editor was alerted to the need for such a restatement by certain comments in my Foreword to Dale L. Hiestand’s Changing Careers After 35 [9], which included the statement that, in contrast to my earlier view that saw the process of occupational choice as coming to a permanent closure when an individual begins to work in his early or middle ~ O ’ S , I now believe that the choice process is coextensive with a person’s working life; he may reopen the issue at any time. The editor appreciated that this was not a minor gloss, but, instead, pointed to a fund* mental restatement of our earlier position.
The Subjective and Objective Evaluation of Incentive Stock Options

Owners of incentive options invariably hold undiversified portfolios. This paper derives a model for the subjective and objective values of such options. The subjective value—the value to the holder—is less than the market value because the option is held in an undiversified portfolio and because it is exercised suboptimally from the market perspective. The objective value is the cost to the firm of issuing the option and lies between the market and subjective values. This value recognizes the suboptimal exercise but not the undiversified discount. The model, which is the Black-Scholes model with modified parameters, is simple to use.
Deciding versus Reacting: Conceptions of Moral Judgment and the Reason-Affect Debate

Recent approaches to moral judgment have typically pitted emotion against reason. In an effort to move beyond this debate, we propose that authors presenting diverging models are considering quite different prototypical situations: those focusing on the resolution of complex dilemmas conclude that morality involves sophisticated reasoning, whereas those studying reactions to shocking moral violations find that morality involves quick, affect-laden processes. We articulate these diverging dominant approaches and consider three directions for future research (moral temptation, moral self-image, and lay understandings of morality) that we propose have not received sufficient attention as a result of the focus on these two prototypical situations within moral psychology.
Temporal acuity as a function of frequency.

The ear can discriminate between two transient signals that have identical energy spectra but different phase spectra (hence different waveshapes) as long as the total duration of the signals exceeds about 2 msec. A natural question, but one impossible to answer on the basis of previous work, which used transient signals having a broad energy spectrum, is whether this value for temporal acuity is dependent on the frequency content of the signal. Two types of experiments were conducted to answer this question. In one experiment, the energy spectrum was broad but the temporal cues were restricted to specific regions of the frequency spectra. In the second experiment, two segments of a sinusoid (one 10 dB more intense than the other) was played in one order on the reverse. Both experiments confirm the finding that the value of temporal acuity is about 2 msec and that this value is largely independent of frequency. Also of interest is the fact that for the sinusoidal signals the percentage of correct discrimi.
Dispositional Employability and Online Training Purchase. Evidence from Employees' Behavior in Spain

This article explores the relationship between dispositional employability and online training purchase. Through a sample of 883 employees working for enterprises in Spain, and a using principal component analysis and binomial logit probabilistic models, the research revealed two main results. First, it was found that dispositional employability is characterized by five factors: “openness to changes at work,” “career motivation and work resilience,” “work and career proactivity,” “optimism and engagement at work,” and “work identity. ” Second, the research also found a double causality in the relationship analysis between dispositional employability and online training purchase. However, this causality is not direct. In explaining dispositional employability, certain motivations and types of behavior of employees participating in online training are significant. In particular, greater sensitivity toward career-related personal empowerment, a greater predisposition toward developing new experiences at work, and a greater awareness of the fact that positive job outcomes are related to preparation conscientiousness. In explaining online training purchase, employees who are more motivated and who better identify with their jobs are more likely to pay. Moreover, employees who spend more time on training and have less contact with new trends in their jobs, find it hard to keep calm in difficult situations, and have a greater predisposition toward effort, and preference for novelty, variety and challenges at work are more likely to purchase online training.
Education and politics in Afghanistan: the importance of an education system in peacebuilding and reconstruction

Afghanistan has a long history of social unrest and ethnic conflict, and the manipulation of the education system by internal and external powers for political purposes has been one of the major contributors to these divisions. As Afghanistan attempts to build peace and maintain co‐existence after more than 20 years of violence, there continues to be limited attention given to one of the main contributors to the social divisions. More than four million children returned to school in the first two years of ‘peace’ in Afghanistan. Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent by the United Nations and other international donors on ensuring the physical provision of schools for children. However in 2005, three years into ‘the new era for Afghanistan’, teachers continue to teach ethnic hatred and intolerance. The textbooks continue to be highly politicised, promoting social divisions and violence, seemingly unnoticed by the International Community, whose expensive investments fuel rather than restrain this problem. A new curriculum for Afghanistan together with upgraded teacher capacities are the most pertinent factors to ensure that peace is established and maintained in the country. This will ensure that the new generation of Afghans learns a sense of social responsibility and national pride, incorporating ideas of unity in diversity and not an intolerance of perceived ‘difference’ based on militant ideologies.
Categorization of methods used in cost–effectiveness analyses of vaccination programs based on outcomes from dynamic transmission models

The aim of this study is to categorize methods used to estimate the cost–effectiveness of vaccination programs using dynamic transmission models, and assess value to decision-makers. A targeted literature search of PubMed has been carried out for this purpose. A review of 43 articles presenting cost–effectiveness analyses of vaccination programs based on dynamic transmission models identified four methods for the estimation of a cost–effectiveness ratio: cumulative population values over a fixed time horizon; population values for a steady-state year; cohort values from time of program initiation; and cohort values at steady state. Cost–effectiveness estimates are sensitive to the choice of time horizon or number of cohorts included. Estimates at steady state are the most comparable to estimates for other healthcare interventions but do not account for pre-steady-state periods. Population values provide estimates of budget impact. In conclusion, four different methods were identified for converting clinical outcomes from a dynamic transmission model to cost–effectiveness estimates. Sensitivity analyses for time horizon or number of cohorts considered should be routinely performed.
Prediction of strategy and outcome as negotiation unfolds by using basic verbal and behavioral features

Negotiations can be characterized by the strategy participants adopt to achieve their ends (e.g., individualistic strategies are based on self-interest, cooperative strategies are used when participants try to maximize the joint gain, while competitive strategies focus on maximizing each participant’s score against the other) and the outcomes that each participant achieves in the negotiation. This paper investigates the process and the result of predicting the outcome and strategy of participants throughout the progress of the negotiation by using basic, easy to extract, linguistic and acoustic features. We evaluate our approach on a face-to-face negotiation dataset consisting of 41 dyadic interactions and show that it’s possible to significantly improve over a majority-class baseline in tasks of predicting the strategy and outcome of the interaction by analyzing only basic low level features of the negotiation.
Influences on students’ assistive technology use at school: the views of classroom teachers, allied health professionals, students with cerebral palsy and their parents

Abstract Purpose: This study explored how classroom teachers, allied health professionals, students with cerebral palsy, and their parents view high-tech assistive technology service delivery in the classroom. Methods: Semi-structured interviews with six classroom teachers and six parents and their children were conducted. Additionally, two focus groups comprising 10 occupational therapists and six speech pathologists were carried out. Ethical and confidentiality considerations meant that the groups were not matched. Results: Results revealed that it is often untrained staff member who determine students’ educational needs. The participants’ experiences suggested that, particularly in mainstream settings, there is a need for support and guidance from a professional with knowledge of assistive technology who can also take a lead and guide classroom teachers in how to meet students’ needs. Students’ motivation to use the technology was also found to be critical for its successful uptake. Conclusions: The study points to the need for classroom teachers to be given sufficient time and skill development opportunities to enable them to work effectively with assistive technology in the classroom. The participants’ experiences suggest that such opportunities are not generally forthcoming. Only in this way can it be ensured that students with disabilities receive the education that is their right. Implications for Rehabilitation Classroom teachers, allied health professionals, students, parents need ongoing support and opportunities to practise operational, strategic and linguistic skills with the assistive technology equipment. System barriers to the uptake of assistive technology need to be addressed. To address the lack of time available for training, programing and other support activities around assistive technology, dedicated administrative support is crucial. Professional development around the use of the quality low cost ICF-CY checklist is recommended for both school and allied health staff.
Single-sided Real-time PESQ Score Estimation

For several years now, the ITU-T's Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality (PESQ) has been the reference for objective speech quality assessment. It is widely deployed in commercial QoE measurement products, and it has been well studied in the literature. While PESQ does provide reasonably good correlation with subjective scores for VoIP applications, the algorithm itself is not usable in a real-time context, since it requires a reference signal, which is usually not available in normal conditions. In this paper we provide an alternative technique for estimating PESQ scores in a single-sided fashion, based on the Pseudo Subjective Quality Assessment (PSQA) technique.
Anxiety sensitivity, anxiety, and depression in older patients and their relation to hypochondriacal concerns and medical illnesses

This study examined the role of anxiety sensitivity (the fear of anxiety symptoms because such symptoms are believed to have harmful consequences), anxiety, and depression in older adults and their relation to hypochondriacal concerns and medical illnesses. The sample included 53 clinic-referred ( M age = 78.8 years), and 53 non-clinic referred ( M age = 70.9 years) older adults. It was examined whether (1) anxiety sensitivity was elevated in the clinic-referred group relative to the non-referred group, (2) symptoms of anxiety, anxiety sensitivity and depression were related to number of medical illnesses and/or to hypochondriacal concerns, and (3) anxiety sensitivity was a better predictor of hypochondriacal concerns relative to depression or trait anxiety. The results indicated that anxiety sensitivity was significantly elevated in the clinic-referred group relative to the non-clinic referred group, was negatively associated with history of medical illnesses, was strongly associated with hypochondriacal concerns, and was a better predictor of hypochondriacal concerns than depression and trait anxiety. The findings are discussed in terms of problems facing older adults as they relate to the constructs of anxiety sensitivity and hypochondriacal concerns.
Carotid Resection and Reconstruction for Locally Advanced Head and Neck Tumors

Head and neck surgeons hesitate to resect the carotid artery because of the postoperative risk of neurologic sequelae. However, there is no curative therapeutic option for head and neck neoplasms involving the carotid artery, with the exception of complete tumor removal. To evaluate the benefits and risks of carotid revascularization techniques in locally advanced head and neck tumors we performed a retrospective analysis in an institutional, tertiary care medical center. Seven patients (5 males, 2 females) with a median age of 58 years underwent en bloc removal of locally advanced head and neck tumors, including carotid resection and revascularization, in the University of Vienna General Hospital, over a 15-year period. In six patients carotid reconstruction was accomplished by bypass grafting (five autologous grafts, one synthetic graft) and in one patient angiopatchplasty was used. There were no perioperative neurologic complications or deaths. Survival was >12 months in 5/7 patients; the other 2 patients died within 6 months due to untractable progression of cancer. We conclude that carotid revascularization techniques offer the possibility of better local control for advanced head and neck tumors without additional risks of neuromorbidity or mortality.