Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Restricted Social Engagement among Adults Living with Chronic Conditions

Background: Social engagement is key to health and quality of life. Little is known about social engagement patterns of middle-aged and older adults who live with one or more chronic illnesses. This study investigated social engagement restrictions among middle-aged and older adults with chronic conditions and factors associated with these restrictions. Methods: Cross-sectional representative data from the National Council on Aging Chronic Care Survey were examined for relationships between social engagement restrictions and chronic conditions, health status, support, quality of life implications, self-care barriers, caregiving, and demographics. Associations were tested using bivariate analyses and binary logistic regression. Results: Participants were 793 middle-aged (age 44–64) and older adults (age 65+) with one or more chronic conditions. Factors associated with social engagement restrictions included having higher education, receiving care, having more physician visits and hospitalizations, being disabled, being unemployed, and having higher Emotional and Physical Problems Scale scores. Conclusions: Findings reveal the prevalence of social engagement restrictions among middle-aged and older adults with chronic conditions. Results highlight the importance of promoting research, assessments, and interventions to increase social engagement among this aging population.
To Be Here, Then Gone: A Historical Review of Psychology’s Influence on Determining Time of Death

Humanity is both captivated by and terrified of death. Whole organized systems in culture exist to deal with this momentous moment, but despite this, dying itself remains rather mysterious. Our definition of death is largely determined by our understanding of consciousness and the “self. ” Great minds have for centuries tried to get a grasp on just what exactly happens in this turning point. The growing field of bioethics has emerged to wrestle with these questions, among others, and the dilemmas they present, drawing from not only ethics and general medicine but also our contemporary knowledge of consciousness and our understanding of the brain from psychology. This project is a conceptual review of literature examining consciousness and identity as related to determining time of death as prescribed by current bioethics. These topics are investigated in light of conceptual and historical issues in psychology, philosophy of science, and the work of authors including William James. PSYCH AND TIME OF DEATH 3 To Be Here, then Gone: A Historical Review of Psychology’s Influence on Determining Time of Death
The effects of disclosure policy on risk management incentives and market entry

This paper studies the effects of hedge disclosure requirements on corporate risk management and product market competition. The analysis is based on a simple model of market entry and shows that incumbent firms engage in risk management when these activities remain unobserved by outsiders. The resulting equilibrium is desirable from a social standpoint. Financial markets are well informed and entry is efficient. However, potential attempts for more transparency by additional disclosure requirements introduce a commitment device that provides firms with incentives to distort risk management activities thereby influencing entrant beliefs. In equililibrium, firms engage in significant risk-taking. This behavior limits entry and adversely affects the nature of competition in industries. Our findings thus suggest that more disclosure on risk management may change risk management in socially undesirable ways.
Providing test quality feedback using static source code and automatic test suite metrics

A classic question in software development is "How much testing is enough? " Aside from dynamic coverage-based metrics, there are few measures that can be used to provide guidance on the quality of an automatic test suite as development proceeds. This paper utilizes the software testing and reliability early warning (STREW) static metric suite to provide a developer with indications of changes and additions to their automated unit test suite and code for added confidence that product quality will be high. Retrospective case studies to assess the utility of using the STREW metrics as a feedback mechanism were performed in academic, open source and industrial environments. The results indicate at statistically significant levels the ability of the STREW metrics to provide feedback on important attributes of an automatic test suite and corresponding code
Classification of normal and pathological voices using TEO phase and Mel cepstral features

In this paper, a new feature-set, viz., Teager Energy Operator (TEO) phase has been proposed for automatic classification of normal vs. pathological voices. Development of TEO phase has been motivated from recently proposed linear prediction (LP) residual phase for speaker recognition. Classification was performed using a discriminatively-trained 2nd order polynomial classifier on a subset of the Massachusetts Ear and Eye Infirmary (MEEI) database. Score-level fusion of TEO phase and state-of-the-art Mel frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC) gave reduction in equal error rate (EER) by 1.86 % than EER of MFCC alone. Proposed TEO phase feature set is also evaluated under degraded conditions using the NOISEX-92 database for the case of additive car noise.
Unconscious Affective Reactions to Masked Happy Versus Angry Faces Influence Consumption Behavior and Judgments of Value

The authors explored three properties of basic, unconsciously triggered affective reactions: They can influence consequential behavior, they work without eliciting conscious feelings, and they interact with motivation. The authors investigated these properties by testing the influence of subliminally presented happy versus angry faces on pouring and consumption of beverage (Study 1), perception of beverage value (Study 2), and reports of conscious feelings (both studies). Consistent with incentive motivation theory, the impact of affective primes on beverage value and consumption was strongest for thirsty participants. Subliminal smiles caused thirsty participants to pour and consume more beverage (Study 1) and increased their willingness to pay and their wanting more beverage (Study 2). Subliminal frowns had the opposite effect. No feeling changes were observed, even in thirsty participants. The results suggest that basic affective reactions can be unconscious and interact with incentive motivation to influence assessment of value and behavior toward valenced objects.
Enhanced carbon overconsumption in response to increasing temperatures during a mesocosm experiment

Abstract. Increasing concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide are projected to lead to an increase in sea surface temperatures, potentially impacting marine ecosystems and biogeochemical cycling. Here we conducted an indoor mesocosm experiment with a natural plankton community taken from the Baltic Sea in summer. We induced a plankton bloom via nutrient addition and followed the dynamics of the different carbon and nitrogen pools for a period of one month at temperatures ranging from 9.5 °C to 17.5 °C, representing a range of ±4 °C relative to ambient temperature. The uptake of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) and the net build-up of both particulate (POC) and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) were all enhanced at higher temperatures and almost doubled over a temperature gradient of 8 °C. Furthermore, elemental ratios of carbon and nitrogen (C : N) in both particulate and dissolved organic matter increased in response to higher temperatures, both reaching very high C : N ratios of > 30 at +4 °C. Altogether, these observations suggest a pronounced increase in excess carbon fixation in response to elevated temperatures. Most of these findings are contrary to results from similar experiments conducted with plankton populations sampled in spring, revealing large uncertainties in our knowledge of temperature sensitivities of key processes in marine carbon cycling. Since a major difference to previous mesocosm experiments was the dominant phytoplankton species, we hypothesize that species composition might play an important role in the response of biogeochemical cycling to increasing temperatures.
Putting a Name to It: Diagnosis in Contemporary Society

Over a decade after medical sociologist Phil Brown called for a sociology of diagnosis, Putting a Name to It provides the first book-length, comprehensive framework for this emerging subdiscipline of medical sociology. Diagnosis is central to medicine. It creates social order, explains illness, identifies treatments, and predicts outcomes. Using concepts of medical sociology, Annemarie Goldstein Jutel sheds light on current knowledge about the components of diagnosis to outline how a sociology of diagnosis would function. She situates it within the broader discipline, lays out the directions it should explore, and discusses how the classification of illness and framing of diagnosis relate to social status and order. Jutel explains why this matters not just to doctor-patient relationships but also to the entire medical system. As a result, she argues, the sociological realm of diagnosis encompasses not only the ongoing controversy surrounding revisions to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in psychiatry but also hot-button issues such as genetic screening and pharmaceutical industry disease mongering. Both a challenge and a call to arms, Putting a Name to It is a lucid, persuasive argument for formalizing, professionalizing, and advancing longstanding practice. Jutel's innovative, open approach and engaging arguments will find support among medical sociologists and practitioners and across much of the medical system.
A Pro-Atherogenic HDL Profile in Coronary Heart Disease Patients: An iTRAQ Labelling-Based Proteomic Approach

Objectives This study aims to compare the protein composition of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) particles in coronary heart disease (CHD) patients and controls by proteomic methods. Background HDL has been reported to exert pro-atherogenic properties in CHD patients. Accumulating evidence indicates that HDL composition, rather than the HDL-C level, determines its functions. The changes in HDL composition involved in the conversion of anti-atherogenic to pro-atherogenic properties in CHD patients are currently unknown. Methods and Results iTRAQ combined with nanoLC-MS/MS was performed to obtain a differential expression profile of the HDL pooled samples of the male age-matched CHD patients and controls (n = 10/group). Of the 196 proteins identified in the examined HDL, 12 were differentially expressed between the CHD patients and the controls, including five up-regulated proteins and seven down-regulated proteins. Using GO analysis, we determined that the up-regulated proteins were mostly involved in inflammatory reactions, displaying a potential pro-atherogenic profile. In contrast, the down-regulated proteins were mostly involved in lipid metabolism processes, displaying anti-atherogenic properties. To confirm the proteomic results, serum amyloid A (SAA) and apoC-I were selected and quantified by ELISA, in the same population as the proteomic analysis, as well as another independent population (n = 120/group). Consistent with the proteomic results, the amount of SAA was significantly increased, and apoC-I was significantly decreased in the HDL particles of CHD patients compared with those of controls (P<0.05). Conclusions Our study shows that the HDL proteome changes to a pro-atherogenic profile in CHD patients, which might compromise the protective effects of HDL. Proteomic analysis of HDL composition may provide more relevant information regarding their functional properties than steady-state HDL-C levels.
Follicular dynamics in zebu cattle

Objetivou-se neste trabalho estudar a dinâmica folicular em vacas da raca Gir (Bos indicus). O crescimento e a atresia folicular foram monitorados diariamente ao longo de ciclos estrais completos (n = 15), utilizando-se um aparelho portatil de ultra-som. A atividade luteal em cada ciclo foi avaliada pela determinacao do nivel de progesterona plasmatica. Foram observados ciclos com duas (6,67%), tres (60,00%), quatro (26,67%) e cinco (6,67%) ondas de crescimento folicular. Nao houve diferenca significativa (P>0,05) nas taxas de crescimento e atresia de foliculos dominantes ou subordinados, entre ondas. O diâmetro maximo do foliculo ovulatorio foi maior (P 0,05) no comprimento do ciclo (21,11±1,76 e 22,25±1,71 dias) ou na concentracao de progesterona durante o diestro (4,48±1,45 e 5,08±1,40 ng/mL), entre ciclos com tres ou quatro ondas de crescimento. Esses resultados demonstraram que a dinâmica folicular na raca Gir e caracterizada pela predominância de ciclos com tres ou quatro ondas de crescimento folicular, associados a baixa persistencia dos foliculos dominantes das ondas intermediarias.
The century of welfare: eight countries

Over the past few years, a consensus has grown among European policy specialists that kinship should play a larger role in the welfare state. "Family, Kinship and State in Contemporary Europe" examines the fundamental questions about such kinship ties and seeks to understand how and why family members help each other and in what circumstances they might withhold their aid. The editors and their collaborators have gathered here three volumes of historical, sociological, and ethnographic studies that inform readers about the diversity of kin relationships in contemporary Europe, the strengths and weaknesses of the various systems, and the extent to which each can be influenced - for better or worse - by the state. Historical and comparative analyses track the impact of political and economic change and show how marriage, cohabitation, fertility rates, and population aging affects the performance and structure of these kinship networks.
IFN-γ ameliorates autoimmune encephalomyelitis by limiting myelin lipid peroxidation

Significance The mechanisms guiding tissue repair in autoimmune-mediated diseases of the CNS are not fully understood, but cytokines are believed to play an important role. The proinflammatory cytokine IFN-γ has been implicated in the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis and its animal model, experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE). Paradoxically, knockout studies in mice showed that EAE is exacerbated when the cytokine’s signaling is disrupted, but its mechanism of protection has not been resolved. Here, we show a critical role for IFN-γ in activating antigen-presenting cells toward a protective phenotype in the CNS by removing extracellular myelin debris and limiting the availability of substrate for oxidative stress-generated neurotoxic lipid peroxidation products. Evidence has suggested both a pathogenic and a protective role for the proinflammatory cytokine IFN-γ in experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE). However, the mechanisms underlying the protective role of IFN-γ in EAE have not been fully resolved, particularly in the context of CNS antigen-presenting cells (APCs). In this study we examined the role of IFN-γ in myelin antigen uptake by CNS APCs during EAE. We found that myelin antigen colocalization with APCs was decreased substantially and that EAE was significantly more severe and showed a chronic-progressive course in IFN-γ knockout (IFN-γ−/−) or IFN-γ receptor knockout (IFN-γR−/−) mice as compared with WT animals. IFN-γ was a critical regulator of phagocytic/activating receptors on CNS APCs. Importantly, “free” myelin debris and lipid peroxidation activity at CNS lesions was increased in mice lacking IFN-γ signaling. Treatment with N-acetyl-l-cysteine, a potent antioxidant, abolished lipid peroxidation activity and ameliorated EAE in IFN-γ–signaling-deficient mice. Taken together the data suggest a protective role for IFN-γ in EAE by regulating the removal of myelin debris by CNS APCs and thereby limiting the substrate available for the generation of neurotoxic lipid peroxidation products.
Cocycle superrigidity and harmonic maps with infinite-dimensional targets

We announce a generalization of Zimmer's cocycle superrigidity theorem proven using harmonic map techniques. This allows us to generalize many results concerning higher rank lattices to all lattices in semisimple groups with property $(T)$. In particular, our results apply to SP(1,n) and $F_4^{-20}$ and lattices in those groups. The main technical step is to prove a very general result concerning existence of harmonic maps into infinite dimensional spaces, namely a class of simply connected, homogeneous, aspherical Hilbert manifolds. This builds on previous work of Corlette-Zimmer and Korevaar-Schoen. Our result is new because we consider more general targets than previous authors and make no assumption concerning the action. In particular, the target space is not assumed to have non-positive curvature and in important cases has significant positive curvature. We also do not make a "reductivity" assumption concerning absence of fixed points at infinity. The proof of cocycle superrigidity given here, unlike previous ergodic theoretic ones, is effective. The straightening of the cocycle is explicitly a limit of a heat flow. This explicit construction should yield further applications.
The rs738409 (I148M) variant of the PNPLA3 gene and cirrhosis: a meta-analysis

The human patatin-like phospholipase domain-containing-3 (PNPLA3) gene rs738409 C>G polymorphism is associated with several types of liver disease. The aim of this meta-analysis was to assess the risk of cirrhosis on the basis of rs738409 allele frequency and genotype. Medline, the Cochrane Library, EMBASE, and Google Scholar were searched for prospective and retrospective studies assessing the effect of the rs738409 polymorphism on liver cirrhosis. Seven studies, involving 2,023 patients with cirrhosis, were included. The G allele was associated with a significantly increased risk of cirrhosis versus the C allele [pooled odds ratio (OR) = 1.86, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.64–2.12, Z = 9.55, P < 0.001]. Both the GC and GG genotypes were associated with a significantly increased risk of cirrhosis versus the CC genotype (GC vs. CC: pooled OR = 1.73, 95% CI = 1.51–1.98, Z = 7.86, P < 0.001; GG vs. CC: pooled OR = 3.41, 95% CI = 2.77–4.18, Z = 11.65, P < 0.001). There was no evidence of publication bias. Our findings suggest that patients at risk for liver cirrhosis may benefit from PNPLA3 genotyping and thus more intensive monitoring if the rs738409 C>G polymorphism is identified.
Development of Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus in Nonobese Diabetic Mice Follows Changes in Thymocyte and Peripheral T Lymphocyte Transcriptional Activity

As early as one month of age, nonobese diabetic (NOD) mice feature pancreatic infiltration of autoreactive T lymphocytes, which destruct insulin-producing beta cells, producing autoimmune diabetes mellitus (T1D) within eight months. Thus, we hypothesized that during the development of T1D, the transcriptional modulation of immune reactivity genes may occur as thymocytes mature into peripheral T lymphocytes. The transcriptome of thymocytes and peripheral CD3+ T lymphocytes from prediabetic or diabetic mice analyzed through microarray hybridizations identified 2,771 differentially expressed genes. Hierarchical clustering grouped mice according to age/T1D onset and genes according to their transcription profiling. The transcriptional activity of thymocytes developing into peripheral T lymphocytes revealed sequential participation of genes involved with CD4+/CD8+ T-cell differentiation (Themis), tolerance induction by Tregs (Foxp3), and apoptosis (Fasl) soon after T-cell activation (IL4), while the emergence of T1D coincided with the expression of cytotoxicity (Crtam) and inflammatory response genes (Tlr) by peripheral T lymphocytes.
Endothelium‐derived relaxing factor released by 5‐HT: distinct from nitric oxide in basilar arteries of normotensive and hypertensive rats

1 The role of the endothelium in cerebrovascular responses to 5‐hydroxytryptamine (5‐HT) was investigated in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) and normotensive Wistar‐Kyoto rats (WKY) in vitro. 2 Cumulative addition of 5‐HT caused concentration‐dependent contractions in ring preparations of SHR basilar arteries; the contractile response was smaller in WKY basilar arteries. 3 Removal of the endothelium enhanced markedly the contractile responses to 5‐HT in WKY arteries but had only a slight effect in SHR arteries. The responsiveness to 5‐HT in WKY arteries after removal of endothelium was comparable to that in SHR arteries. 4 The endothelium‐dependent relaxation induced by acetylcholine in WKY basilar arteries was almost abolished by treatment with 10 μm methylene blue or 10 μm NG‐nitro‐l‐arginine (l‐NOARG). However, the response to 5‐HT was not affected by treatment with methylene blue, l‐NOARG or indomethacin. 5 Application of 10–20 mm K+ or 3.2 mm tetraethylammonium (TEA) did not change significantly, or only increased slightly, the resting tension, but markedly enhanced the contractile response to 5‐HT in WKY arteries with endothelium. In contrast, the submaximal response to 5‐HT in SHR arteries with endothelium was significantly enhanced by 0.3 mm TEA. 6 In the presence of 1 mm TEA, the application of 10 μm l‐NOARG further enhanced the responses of 5‐HT in WKY arteries with endothelium. In SHR arteries with endothelium, 10 μm l‐NOARG per se enhanced slightly but significantly the responses to 5‐HT. 7 These results indicate that 5‐HT‐induced contraction in basilar arteries is substantially attenuated by an endothelium‐dependent mechanism in WKY, but to a much lesser extent in SHR. The major relaxing factor released by 5‐HT from endothelium in WKY is distinct from NO and may exert its effect by activating K+ channels.
Ieee Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence Learning to Track and Identify Players from Broadcast Sports Videos

— Tracking and identifying players in sports videos filmed with a single pan-tilt-zoom camera has many applications, but it is also a challenging problem. This article introduces a system that tackles this difficult task. The system possesses the ability to detect and track multiple players, estimates the homography between video frames and the court, and identifies the players. The identification system combines three weak visual cues, and exploits both temporal and mutual exclusion constraints in a Conditional Random Field. In addition, we propose a novel Linear Programming Relaxation algorithm for predicting the best player identification in a video clip. In order to reduce the number of labeled training data required to learn the identification system, we make use of weakly supervised learning with the assistance of play-by-play texts. Experiments show promising results in tracking, homography estimation, and identification. Moreover, weakly supervised learning with play-by-play texts greatly reduces the number of labeled training examples required. The identification system can achieve similar accuracies by using merely 200 labels in weakly supervised learning, while a strongly supervised approach needs a least 20000 labels.
Mucositis Secondary to Chlamydia pneumoniae Infection: Expanding the Mycoplasma pneumoniae–Induced Rash and Mucositis Concept

The term Mycoplasma pneumoniae–induced rash and mucositis (MIRM) was recently proposed to identify the mucocutaneous condition secondary to M. pneumoniae infection that had historically been regarded among the more confusing pathologies of erythema multiforme and Stevens–Johnson syndrome. Based on a number of previous reports, these syndromes require differentiation since they have different prognoses and specific treatment requirements. We report a case of oral and genital erosions that strongly resembled MIRM without rash but were found to be secondary to a Chlamydia pneumoniae infection. After a thorough review of the literature on this subject, we propose that C. pneumoniae should also be considered a potential causative agent of MIRM and that this term should be amended to include C. pneumoniae infection.