Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prognostic validation of a non-laboratory and a laboratory based cardiovascular disease risk score in multiple regions of the world

Objective To evaluate the performance of the non-laboratory INTERHEART risk score (NL-IHRS) to predict incident cardiovascular disease (CVD) across seven major geographic regions of the world. The secondary objective was to evaluate the performance of the fasting cholesterol-based IHRS (FC-IHRS). Methods Using measures of discrimination and calibration, we tested the performance of the NL-IHRS (n=100 475) and FC-IHRS (n=107 863) for predicting incident CVD in a community-based, prospective study across seven geographic regions: South Asia, China, Southeast Asia, Middle East, Europe/North America, South America and Africa. CVD was defined as the composite of cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction, stroke, heart failure or coronary revascularisation. Results Mean age of the study population was 50.53 (SD 9.79) years and mean follow-up was 4.89 (SD 2.24) years. The NL-IHRS had moderate to good discrimination for incident CVD across geographic regions (concordance statistic (C-statistic) ranging from 0.64 to 0.74), although recalibration was necessary in all regions, which improved its performance in the overall cohort (increase in C-statistic from 0.69 to 0.72, p<0.001). Regional recalibration was also necessary for the FC-IHRS, which also improved its overall discrimination (increase in C-statistic from 0.71 to 0.74, p<0.001). In 85 078 participants with complete data for both scores, discrimination was only modestly better with the FC-IHRS compared with the NL-IHRS (0.74 vs 0.73, p<0.001). Conclusions External validations of the NL-IHRS and FC-IHRS suggest that regionally recalibrated versions of both can be useful for estimating CVD risk across a diverse range of community-based populations. CVD prediction using a non-laboratory score can provide similar accuracy to laboratory-based methods.
Early Onset Pre-Eclampsia Is Associated with Altered DNA Methylation of Cortisol-Signalling and Steroidogenic Genes in the Placenta

Placental cortisol is inactivated in normotensive pregnancies, but is frequently present in pre-eclampsia associated placentae. Since glucocorticoids are strongly associated with the programming of long-term health, we assessed DNA methylation of genes involved in cortisol signalling and bioavailability, and hormonal signalling in the placenta of normotensive and hypertensive pregnancies. Candidate genes/CpG sites were selected through analysis of Illumina Infinium HumanMethylation450 BeadChip array data on control (n = 19) and early onset pre-eclampsia (EOPET; n = 19) placental samples. DNA methylation was further quantified by bisulfite pyrosequencing in a larger cohort of control (n = 111) cases, in addition to EOPET (n = 19), late onset pre-eclampsia (LOPET; n = 18) and normotensive intrauterine growth restriction (nIUGR; n = 13) cases. DNA methylation (percentage points) was increased at CpG sites within genes encoding the glucocorticoid receptor (NR3C1 exon 1D promoter; +8.46%; P<0.01) and corticotropin releasing hormone (CRH) binding protein (CRHBP intron 3; +9.14%; P<0.05), and decreased within CRH (5′ UTR; −4.30%; P = 0.11) in EOPET-associated placentae, but not in LOPET nor nIUGR cases, compared to controls. Differential DNA methylation was not observed among groups at the 11β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 2 (HSD11B2) gene promoter. Significant hypomethylation was observed in pre-eclampsia but not nIUGR placentae for steroidogenic genes, including CYP11A1 (exon1; EOPET; −9.66%; P<0.00001, and LOPET; −5.77%; P<0.001), 3β-hydroxy-delta-5-steroid dehydrogenase type 1 (HSD3B1 exon 2; EOPET; −12.49%; P<0.00001, and LOPET; −6.88%; P<0.001), TEA domain family member 3 (TEAD3 intron 1; EOPET; −12.56%; P<0.00001) and CYP19 (placental-specific exon 1.1 promoter; EOPET; −10.62%, P<0.0001). These data represent dysregulation of the placental epigenome in pre-eclampsia related to genes involved in maintaining the hormonal environment during pregnancy and highlights particular susceptibility in the early onset syndrome.
WIDE-BAND LASER CLADDING: WEAR AND CORROSION RESISTANCE OF A Ni-BASED ALLOY

A novel wide-band laser cladding system, with high rate of cladding, has been developed in the present work. The system mainly consisted of a 5kW CO2 laser, an automatic Fowder feeder and a wide-band scanning rotative polygon mirmr which can produce a linear or rectangular focused laser beam. Using this system, a Ni-Cr-Si-B alloy powder was cladded on the sudece of tgpe 321 austenitic stainless steel in onder to improve its wear and cormsion resistance. The pitting cormsion, high temperuture oxidation and wear tests were conducted in onder to evaluate the propertles of the laser cladded layer. The results demonstrated that the cladded layer can significantly improtte the adhesive wear and pitting cormsion resistance of the substmte. Moreover,the cladded layer exhibited good oxidafion resistance, which is almost the same as that of GMR-235D N-based superalloy.
Measurement of water sorption of five different composite resin materials

Water sorption may affect composite resin materials by reducing their mechanical properties and wear resistance . The aim of this study is to measure the water sorption of five different composite resin materials, for different time intervals. Materials and methods: A stainless steel mold of 4 mm width, 8 mm length and 4 mm depth was constructed to form composite blocks. Seven blocks were made of each test resin composite material. All specimens were placed in a silica-gel desiccator for 48 hours. The samples were then weighed thrice using calibrated electronic microbalance, the average reading was recorded to the nearest 0.0001g. The specimens were kept in individual containers in deionized distilled water at 37 oC.All specimens were periodically weighed. The weight measurements were taken at 2, 8, 14, 28,42,56,70,100,150 and 240 days intervals. Results: The statistical analysis of the results showed that all composite resin specimens continued to gain weight for a period of 28 days. After that period, the weight gain continued, although at a reduced rate. The changes after the 28 days period were small for the Herculite XRV, Tetric ceram and Tetric composite resins, and greater for the Filtek P60 and Composan LCM composite resins. Conclusion: In this study water absorption increased steadily for all materials. The percentage weight change showed a tendency to increase with the time of water storage. This study concludes that over a period of 8 months, the differences in water sorption capacity of the five composite resin materials are related to the differences in the amount of filler loading in the composite resin matrix. With one exception, the composite resin materials with the largest quantity of fillers had the least water sorption capacity after eight months of storage in water.
Reducing shoulder-surfing by using gaze-based password entry

Shoulder-surfing -- using direct observation techniques, such as looking over someone's shoulder, to get passwords, PINs and other sensitive personal information -- is a problem that has been difficult to overcome. When a user enters information using a keyboard, mouse, touch screen or any traditional input device, a malicious observer may be able to acquire the user's password credentials. We present EyePassword, a system that mitigates the issues of shoulder surfing via a novel approach to user input. With EyePassword, a user enters sensitive input (password, PIN, etc.) by selecting from an on-screen keyboard using only the orientation of their pupils (i.e. the position of their gaze on screen), making eavesdropping by a malicious observer largely impractical. We present a number of design choices and discuss their effect on usability and security. We conducted user studies to evaluate the speed, accuracy and user acceptance of our approach. Our results demonstrate that gaze-based password entry requires marginal additional time over using a keyboard, error rates are similar to those of using a keyboard and subjects preferred the gaze-based password entry approach over traditional methods.
Genome-Wide Responses of Female Fruit Flies Subjected to Divergent Mating Regimes

Elevated rates of mating and reproduction cause decreased female survival and lifetime reproductive success across a wide range of taxa from flies to humans. These costs are fundamentally important to the evolution of life histories. Here we investigate the potential mechanistic basis of this classic life history component. We conducted 4 independent replicated experiments in which female Drosophila melanogaster were subjected to 'high' and 'low' mating regimes, resulting in highly significant differences in lifespan. We sampled females for transcriptomic analysis at day 10 of life, before the visible onset of ageing, and used Tiling expression arrays to detect differential gene expression in two body parts (abdomen versus head+thorax). The divergent mating regimes were associated with significant differential expression in a network of genes showing evidence for interactions with ecdysone receptor. Preliminary experimental manipulation of two genes in that network with roles in post-transcriptional modification (CG11486, eyegone) tended to enhance sensitivity to mating costs. However, the subtle nature of those effects suggests substantial functional redundancy or parallelism in this gene network, which could buffer females against excessive responses. There was also evidence for differential expression in genes involved in germline maintenance, cell proliferation and in gustation / odorant reception. Interestingly, we detected differential expression in three specific genes (EcR, keap1, lbk1) and one class of genes (gustation / odorant receptors) with previously reported roles in determining lifespan. Our results suggest that high and low mating regimes that lead to divergence in lifespan are associated with changes in the expression of genes such as reproductive hormones, that influence resource allocation to the germ line, and that may modify post-translational gene expression. This predicts that the correct signalling of nutrient levels to the reproductive system is important for maintaining organismal integrity.
Therapeutic Effects of the Feldenkrais Method ( Awareness Through Movement ) in Eating Disorders

„Based on the movement-pedagogical concept of Feldenkrais and the findings of disturbed body perception by eating disordered patients this research aimed at studying the therapeutical effects of the Feldenkrais Method „Awareness through Movement“ with eating disorder patients. 15 eating disordered patients treated at the Roseneck hospital for behavioural medicine rated – by means of a questionnaire consisting of scales of the Body Cathexis Scale (BCS), the Body Parts Satisfaction Scale (BPSS), the questionnaire for body perception (Fragebogen zum Körpererleben; FKE), the Emotion Inventory (Emotionalitätsinventar; EMIB), the Anorexia-Nervosa-Inventory for Self-rating (ANIS) and the Eating Disorder Inventory-2 (EDI) – various aspects of their eating disorder before and after participating in a nine hour course of the Feldenkrais Method. The data of these patients were compared to those of the members of a control group, also consisting of 15 eating disordered patients who did not participate in a Feldenkrais course. The participants of the Feldenkrais-course showed increasing contentment with regard to problematic zones of their body and their own health as well as concerning acceptance and familiarity with their own body. Other results were a more spontaneous, open and self-confident behaviour, the decrease of feelings of helplessness and decrease of the wish to return to the security of the early childhood, which indicates the development of felt sense of self, self-confidence and a general process of maturation of the whole personality. The outcome points to the therapeutical effectiveness of the Feldenkrais Method with eating-disorder patients within a multimodal treatment program. ”
Evidence that Marine‐derived, Multi‐mineral, Aquamin Inhibits the NF‐κB Signaling Pathway In Vitro

It is well established that nuclear factor kappa B (NF‐κB) is a central regulator of the immune response and that dysregulation of NF‐κB contributes to the pathogenesis of many autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. The food supplement Aquamin is a natural multi‐mineral derived from the red algae Lithothamnion corallioides, rich in calcium, magnesium and 72 other trace minerals. This study describes an anti‐inflammatory role for Aquamin in inhibiting NF‐κB activation through reducing the phosphorylation and degradation of its upstream inhibitor IκBα. Aquamin inhibition of NF‐κB activation results in significantly reduced cyclo‐oxygenase‐2 gene expression following treatment of macrophage cells with lipopolysaccharide. These data suggest that nutritional supplements such as Aquamin may play an important role in regulating the inflammatory response by modulating the nuclear factor kappa B signalling pathway. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Pedigree-Free Estimates of Heritability in the Wild: Promising Prospects for Selfing Populations

Estimating the genetic variance available for traits informs us about a population’s ability to evolve in response to novel selective challenges. In selfing species, theory predicts a loss of genetic diversity that could lead to an evolutionary dead-end, but empirical support remains scarce. Genetic variability in a trait is estimated by correlating the phenotypic resemblance with the proportion of the genome that two relatives share identical by descent (‘realized relatedness’). The latter is traditionally predicted from pedigrees (ΦA: expected value) but can also be estimated using molecular markers (average number of alleles shared). Nevertheless, evolutionary biologists, unlike animal breeders, remain cautious about using marker-based relatedness coefficients to study complex phenotypic traits in populations. In this paper, we review published results comparing five different pedigree-free methods and use simulations to test individual-based models (hereafter called animal models) using marker-based relatedness coefficients, with a special focus on the influence of mating systems. Our literature review confirms that Ritland’s regression method is unreliable, but suggests that animal models with marker-based estimates of relatedness and genomic selection are promising and that more testing is required. Our simulations show that using molecular markers instead of pedigrees in animal models seriously worsens the estimation of heritability in outcrossing populations, unless a very large number of loci is available. In selfing populations the results are less biased. More generally, populations with high identity disequilibrium (consanguineous or bottlenecked populations) could be propitious for using marker-based animal models, but are also more likely to deviate from the standard assumptions of quantitative genetics models (non-additive variance).
Effectiveness of training workplace managers to understand and support the mental health needs of employees: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Managers are in an influential position to make decisions that can impact on the mental health and well-being of their employees. As a result, there is an increasing trend for organisations to provide managers with training in how to reduce work-based mental health risk factors for their employees. A systematic search of the literature was conducted to identify workplace interventions for managers with an emphasis on the mental health of employees reporting directing to them. A meta-analysis was performed to calculate pooled effect sizes using the random effects model for both manager and employee outcomes. Ten controlled trials were identified as relevant for this review. Outcomes evaluating managers’ mental health knowledge (standardised mean difference (SMD)=0.73; 95% CI 0.43 to 1.03; p<0.001), non-stigmatising attitudes towards mental health (SMD=0.36; 95% CI 0.18 to 0.53; p<0.001) and improving behaviour in supporting employees experiencing mental health problems (SMD=0.59; 95% CI 0.14 to 1.03; p=0.01) were found to have significant pooled effect sizes favouring the intervention. A significant pooled effect was not found for the small number of studies evaluating psychological symptoms in employees (p=0.28). Our meta-analysis indicates that training managers in workplace mental health can improve their knowledge, attitudes and self-reported behaviour in supporting employees experiencing mental health problems. At present, any findings regarding the impact of manager training on levels of psychological distress among employees remain preliminary as only a very limited amount of research evaluating employee outcomes is available. Our review suggests that in order to understand the effectiveness of manager training on employees, an increase in collection of employee level data is required.
Design of High Average Power OPCPA Based on Simultaneous Temperature and Wavelength Insensitive Phase Matching

Optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification (OPCPA) provides an efficient route to push ultrafast pulses toward ultrahigh peak powers. However, in high average power regime, the unavoidable thermal effects in nonlinear crystals will intrinsically destroy the phase-matching (PM) condition, which fundamentally limit average power scaling. Here, we present a theoretical design of high average power OPCPA based on simultaneous temperature and wavelength insensitive PM. By regulating the temperature set for PM as well as the wavelength of interacting waves in lithium triborate crystal, the noncollinear angles for temperature insensitive PM and wavelength insensitive PM will coincide and thus ensures simultaneous temperature and wavelength insensitive PM condition. We investigate the performances of the proposed PM scheme in comparison with traditional wavelength insensitive noncollinear PM. Because of the larger temperature bandwidth, higher average power can be anticipated in OPCPA with the proposed PM scheme. Besides, the large spectral bandwidth also allows the amplification of sub-10 fs pulses in the visible spectral range. The proposed PM scheme will provide a promising approach in generating ultrashort pulses with high peak and average powers.
A Proximal Point Algorithm for Log-Determinant Optimization with Group Lasso Regularization

We consider the covariance selection problem where variables are clustered into groups and the inverse covariance matrix is expected to have a blockwise sparse structure. This problem is realized via penalizing the maximum likelihood estimation of the inverse covariance ma- trix by group Lasso regularization. We propose to solve the resulting log-determinant optimization problem with the classical proximal point algorithm (PPA). At each iteration, as it is difficult to update the primal variables directly, we first solve the dual subproblem by an inexact semismooth Newton-CG method and then update the primal variables by explicit formulas based on the com- puted dual variables. We also propose to accelerate the PPA by an inexact generalized Newton's method when the iterate is close to the solution. Theoretically, we prove that at the optimal solution, the nonsingularity of the generalized Hessian matrices of the dual subproblem is equivalent to the constraint nondegeneracy condition for the primal problem. Global and local convergence results are also presented for the proposed PPA. Moreover, based on the augmented Lagrangian function of the dual problem we derive an alternating direction method (ADM), which is easily implementable and is demonstrated to be efficient for random problems. Numerical results, including comparisons with the ADM on both synthetic and real data, are presented to demonstrate that the proposed Newton-CG based PPA is stable and efficient and, in particular, outperforms the ADM when high accuracy is required.
Root responses along a subambient to elevated CO2 gradient in a C3–C4 grassland

Atmospheric CO2 (Ca) concentration has increased significantly during the last 20 000 years, and is projected to double this century. Despite the importance of belowground processes in the global carbon cycle, community‐level and single species root responses to rising Ca are not well understood. We measured net community root biomass over 3 years using ingrowth cores in a natural C3–C4 grassland exposed to a gradient of Ca from preglacial to future levels (230–550 μmol mol−1). Root windows and minirhizotron tubes were installed below naturally occurring stands of the C4 perennial grass Bothriochloa ischaemum and its roots were measured for respiration, carbohydrate concentration, specific root length (SRL), production, and lifespan over 2 years. Community root biomass increased significantly (P<0.05) with Ca over initial conditions, with linear or curvilinear responses depending on sample date. In contrast, B. ischaemum produced significantly more roots at subambient than elevated Ca in minirhizotrons. The lifespan of roots with five or more neighboring roots in minirhizotron windows decreased significantly at high Ca, suggesting that after dense root growth depletes soil resource patches, plants with carbon surpluses readily shed these roots. Root respiration in B. ischaemum showed a curvilinear response to Ca under moist conditions in June 2000, with the lowest rates at Ca<300 μmol mol−1 and peak activity at 450 μmol mol−1 in a quadratic model. B. ischaemum roots at subambient Ca had higher SRLs and slightly higher carbohydrate concentrations than those at higher Ca, which may be related to drier soils at low Ca. Our data emphasize that belowground responses of plant communities to Ca can be quite different from those of the individual species, and suggest that complex interactions between and among roots and their immediate soil environment influence the responses of root physiology and lifespan to changing Ca.
Fracture behavior under mixed mode I/II static and dynamic loading of ADCB specimens

In this paper, the phenomenon of delamination under static and dynamic loading of a composite made of an epoxy matrix and carbon fiber reinforcement has been studied, analyzing its fracture behavior under mixed mode I/II loading employing an asymmetric double cantilever beam test. Under static loading, some of the most representative formulations for calculating the energy release rate were analyzed, finding a good agreement between the results obtained by means of the different formulations. Under dynamic loading, the number of cycles necessary for the crack onset was determined (determination of ΔG − N fatigue curves and number of cycles necessary for the delamination onset for a given energy release rate). As regards the experimental results, apparent fatigue limits of the order of 38% of the critical fracture energy were obtained for an asymmetry coefficient of 0.1. Subsequent statistical analysis of the results enabled the fatigue limit to be defined more accurately. This was found to be 15% for this material, indicating the need to use these tools for the actual determination of the infinite fatigue life of the material. Finally, an optical study of the fracture surfaces was carried out which confirmed the presence of mixed mode fracture typologies.