Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
DNA repair capacity of lymphoblastoid cell lines from sisters discordant for breast cancer.

BACKGROUND Interindividual differences in DNA repair capacity may influence cancer risk. We tested whether the nucleotide excision repair pathway was deficient in breast cancer case patients by analyzing sister pairs. METHODS Cell lines derived from sisters discordant for breast cancer (137 families containing 158 case patients and 154 control sisters) were obtained from the Metropolitan New York Registry of Breast Cancer Families. Lymphoblastoid cells were treated with benzo[a]pyrene diolepoxide (BPDE) for 30 minutes and were either harvested immediately or were washed and cultured in complete medium for 4 hours to allow DNA repair. Immunofluorescence using a polyclonal anti-BPDE-DNA primary antibody was used to quantify BPDE-DNA adducts. Percent DNA repair capacity was calculated from the difference between staining immediately after treatment minus that after 4 hours of repair, divided by the initial damage and was categorized into quartiles based on control values. Odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated using conditional logistic regression models adjusted for age at blood donation, body mass index, and smoking. Statistical tests were two-sided. RESULTS Mean percent DNA repair capacity was lower in breast cancer case patients than in control subjects (difference = 8.6, 95% CI = 4.3 to 13.8, P = .001). Using the quartile with the highest percent DNA repair capacity as the referent group, adjusted odds ratios of breast cancer increased from 1.23 (95% CI = 0.57 to 2.65) to 2.38 (95% CI = 1.17 to 4.86) to 2.99 (95% CI = 1.45 to 6.17) (P(trend) = . 002) as DNA repair capacity decreased. CONCLUSIONS Deficient DNA repair capacity is associated with increased breast cancer risk.
Dynamic Growth and Shrinkage Govern the pH Dependence of RecA Filament Stability

RecA proteins form a long stable filament on a single-stranded DNA and catalyze strand exchange reaction. The stability of RecA filament changes dramatically with pH, yet its detailed mechanism is not known. Here, using a single molecule assay, we determined the binding and dissociation rates of RecA monomers at the filament ends at various pH. The pH-induced rate changes were moderate but occurred in opposite directions for binding and dissociation, resulting in a substantial increase in filament stability in lower pH. The highly charged residues in C-terminal domain do not contribute to the pH dependent stability. The stability enhancement of RecA filament in low pH may help the cell to cope with acidic stress by fine-tuning of the binding and dissociation rates without losing the highly dynamic nature of the filament required for strand exchange.
Feminism, power and pedagogy: editors’ introduction

In 2015, the Tenth Biennial Gender and Education Association Conference on the theme of Feminism, Power and Pedagogy was held at the University of Roehampton. The conference was, as those who were there will remember, vibrant, with many wonderful papers from a truly international set of contributors. As the two lead organisers of the conference, we were keen to produce a special issue of Gender and Education on the same themes as the conference. This special issue, also entitled Feminism, Power and Pedagogy, is the result. This conference was concerned with power – how it operates and how its different dimensions intersect and/or are articulated in a range of formal and informal educational settings and geographical and organisational contexts. It examined how power influences educational and pedagogic processes, what counts as knowledge and who is authorised to produce it – an enduring and highly significant theme in the field of education. While gender is increasingly being seen and understood as a mainstream and ‘soft’ concept, the theme of the conference, and, therefore, our special issue, called for its radical and political reconceptualisation. Simultaneously, it explored how feminist and other critical researchers and activists could challenge established power relationships and work together towards the promotion of equality in relation to education and other dimensions of the social world. It therefore sought to explore different dimensions of power and varied ways of analysing it, particularly through a range of Northern and Southern theories, but also in dialogue with subaltern, critical race and postcolonial theories to only cite a few. In our call for papers, we thus sought contributions from engaging with questions of power in education in relation to gender and other ‘differences that make a difference’ (such as nation, geography, race, class, sexuality and dis/ability). We defined all the terms in our title broadly, taking feminism to include a range of ways of understanding gender and power, relating these to other inequalities, and, for political reasons sometimes called by other names (like Alice Walker’s coinage, ‘womanism’). Similarly, we took the terms ‘education’ and ‘pedagogy’ to include not only the formal, apparent methods of and approaches to teaching offered in educational institutions like schools and universities, and the hidden curricula such organisations, but also the informal and often unnoticed pedagogies of, for example, material and popular cultures. We were certainly successful in attracting a range of papers that did precisely this, though we were disappointed not to be able to fulfil our desire for this special issue to be a forum for feminist engagements with and development of Southern theory in relation to education and pedagogy. While acknowledging our failure in this respect, we are nonetheless very happy with the papers that were submitted for the special issue, plus one from South Africa (Mayeza, this issue) that was already in process. We thought the paper fitted the
Cognitive functioning in anorexia and bulimia

This study compared cognitive test performance between matched controls and participants with anorexia (N=30) and bulimia (N=30). The results revealed that both of the eating disorder groups demonstrated a considerable number of neuropsychological deficits. However, between-group significance was not established and the deficits were accounted for by a small subgroup of poorer test performers. On analysing group results on a wide range of cognitive tests, both clinical groups performed more poorly than controls on attentional, learning and visuo-spatial/constructional tasks. There was however, no evidence of executive difficulties in either group. On partialling-out the effects of anxiety and depression, between-group significance was removed on a considerable proportion of the test results. However, significance remained for the anorexia group on a digit coding task, two auditory-verbal learning tests, a measure of incidental visual learning and a measure of visuo-spatial / constructional functioning. These results suggested mild difficulties in cognitive functioning across neuropsychological domains which were not fully explained by the influence of emotional and other psychological factors. In the bulimia group, significance remained on a digit coding task and an omnibus attentional measure together with two dependent measures of auditory-verbal learning. There was also a trend for poorer performance on tests of visuo-spatial / constructional functioning. However, the results were largely accountable by the effects of emotional variables on attentional processes. The results of cognitive test performance in anorexia and bulimia were discussed with reference to previous studies and with reference to clinical practice.
Human Papillomavirus awareness, knowledge and vaccine acceptance: a survey among 18-25 year old male and female vocational school students in Berlin, Germany.

BACKGROUND Human Papillomavirus (HPV) is a common sexually transmitted infection and is aetiologically linked with a number of health problems. In Germany, HPV vaccination for cervical cancer prevention is recommended for girls aged 12-17 years since 2007; however, a coordinated national immunization programme does not exist. We assessed whether socio-demographic factors and sexual history are associated with awareness of HPV and the HPV vaccine, vaccine uptake and HPV-related knowledge among young women and men. METHODS In 2010, a survey was conducted with 18- to 25-year-old students from six vocational schools in Berlin. A total of 259 women and 245 men completed the questionnaire that included socio-demographic and sexual behaviour characteristics, questions about HPV awareness, vaccine status, reasons for not wanting to get vaccinated and HPV-related knowledge. RESULTS Among women aged 18-20 years (those eligible for reimbursed vaccination), 67% were vaccinated. At trend level, women with low education and those without past sexual intercourse were less likely to be vaccinated. Ninety-five per cent of the women and 80% of the men were aware of the 'vaccine against cervical cancer', but only half of the women and 25% of the men had heard of HPV. Knowledge was poor (M = 2.8; SD = 2.10 for women and M = 1.5; SD = 1.49 for men; possible range 0-11). Fifty-one per cent of the women and 42% of the men thought that only women can be infected with HPV and the majority did not know that HPV is sexually transmitted. CONCLUSION Results indicate a need for better education about HPV that should extend beyond its link with cervical cancer.
Coherence-based Partial Exact Recovery Condition for OMP/OLS

We address the exact recovery of the support of a k-sparse vector with Orthogonal Matching Pursuit (OMP) and Orthogonal Least Squares (OLS) in a noiseless setting. We consider the scenario where OMP/OLS have selected good atoms during the first l iterations (l < k) and derive a new sufficient and worst-case necessary condition for their success in k steps. Our result is based on the coherence of the dictionary and relaxes Tropp's well-known condition < 1=(2k 1) to the case where OMP/OLS have a partial knowledge of the support.
News, Noise, and Estimates of the "True" Unobserved State of the Economy

Which provides a better estimates of the growth rate of “true” U.S. output, gross domestic product (GDP) or gross domestic income (GDI)? Past work has assumed the idiosyncratic variation in each estimate is pure noise, taking greater variability to imply lower reliability. We develop models that relax this assumption, allowing the idiosyncratic variation in the estimates to be partly or pure news; then greater variability may imply higher information content and greater reliability. Based on evidence from revisions, we reject the pure noise assumption for GDI growth, and our results favor placing sizable weight on GDI growth because of its relatively large idiosyncratic variability. This calls into question the suitability of the pure noise assumption in other contexts, including dynamic factor models.
Estimation of a semiparametric transformation model

This paper proposes consistent estimators for transformation parameters in semiparametric models. The problem is to find the optimal transformation into the space of models with a predetermined regression structure like additive or multiplicative separability. We give results for the estimation of the transformation when the rest of the model is estimated non- or semi-parametrically and fulfills some consistency conditions. We propose two methods for the estimation of the transformation parameter maximizing a profile likelihood function or minimizing the mean squared distance from independence. First the problem of identification of such models is discussed. We then state asymptotic results for a general class of nonparametric estimators. Finally, we give some particular examples of nonparametric estimators of transformed separable models. The small sample performance is studied in several simulations.
Enforcing Meter in Finite-Length Markov Sequences

Markov processes are increasingly used to generate finite-length sequences that imitate a given style. However, Markov processes are notoriously difficult to control. Recently, Markov constraints have been introduced to give users some control on generated sequences. Markov constraints reformulate finite-length Markov sequence generation in the framework of constraint satisfaction (CSP). However, in practice, this approach is limited to local constraints and its performance is low for global constraints, such as cardinality or arithmetic constraints. This limitation prevents generated sequences to follow structural properties which are independent of the style, but inherent to the domain, such as meter. In this article, we introduce meter, a constraint that ensures a sequence is 1) Markovian with regards to a given corpus and 2) follows metrical rules expressed as cumulative cost functions. Additionally, meter can simultaneously enforce cardinality constraints. We propose a domain consistency algorithm whose complexity is pseudo-polynomial. This result is obtained thanks to a theorem on the growth of sumsets by Khovanskii. We illustrate our constraint on meter-constrained music generation problems that were so far not solvable by any other technique.
Self-Gated Free-Breathing 3D Coronary CINE Imaging with Simultaneous Water and Fat Visualization

The aim of this study was to develop a novel technique for acquiring 3-dimensional (3D) coronary CINE magnetic resonance images with both water and fat visualization during free breathing and without external respiratory or cardiac gating. The implemented multi-echo hybrid 3D radial balanced Steady-State Free Precession (SSFP) sequence has an efficient data acquisition and is robust against motion. The k-space center along the slice encoding direction was repeatedly acquired to derive both respiratory and cardiac self-gating signals without an increase in scan time, enabling a free-breathing acquisition. The multi-echo acquisition allowed image reconstruction with water-fat separation, providing improved visualization of the coronary artery lumen. Ten healthy subjects were imaged successfully at 1.5 T, achieving a spatial resolution of 1.0×1.0×3.0 mm3 and scan time of about 5 minutes. The proposed imaging technique provided coronary vessel depiction comparable to that obtained with conventional breath-hold imaging and navigator gated free-breathing imaging.
Comparative Study on the Effectiveness of Coumavec® and Zinc Phosphide in Controlling Zoonotic Cutaneous Leishmaniasis in a Hyperendemic Focus in Central Iran

Background Zoonotic cutaneous leishmaniasis (ZCL) is an increasing health problems in many rural areas of Iran. The aim of this study was to introduce a new alternative rodenticide to control the reservoirs of ZCL, its effect on the vector density and the incidence of the disease in hyperendemic focus of Esfahan County, central Iran. Methods: The study was carried out from January 2011 to January 2012. In intervention areas, rodent control operation was conducted using zinc phosphide or Coumavec®. Active case findings were done by house-to-house visits once every season during 2011–2012. To evaluate the effect of rodent control operation on the vector density, sand flies were collected twice a month using sticky traps. Results: The reduction rate of rodent holes in intervention areas with Coumavec® and zinc phosphide were 48.46% and 58.15% respectively, whereas in control area results showed 6.66 folds intensification. The Incidence of ZCL significantly reduced in the treated areas. Totally, 3200 adult sand flies were collected and identified in the intervention and control areas. In the treated area with zinc phosphide, the density of Phlebotomus papatasi was higher in outdoors in contrast with the treated area by Coumavec® which the density of the sand fly was higher in indoors. Conclusion: Both rodenticides were effective on the incidence of ZCL and the population of the reservoirs as well. Coumavec® seems to be effective on the outdoor density of the vector. This combination of rodenticide-insecticide could be a suitable alternative for zinc phosphide while bait shyness or behavioral resistance is occurred.
Replicated data types: specification, verification, optimality

Geographically distributed systems often rely on replicated eventually consistent data stores to achieve availability and performance. To resolve conflicting updates at different replicas, researchers and practitioners have proposed specialized consistency protocols, called replicated data types, that implement objects such as registers, counters, sets or lists. Reasoning about replicated data types has however not been on par with comparable work on abstract data types and concurrent data types, lacking specifications, correctness proofs, and optimality results. To fill in this gap, we propose a framework for specifying replicated data types using relations over events and verifying their implementations using replication-aware simulations. We apply it to 7 existing implementations of 4 data types with nontrivial conflict-resolution strategies and optimizations (last-writer-wins register, counter, multi-value register and observed-remove set). We also present a novel technique for obtaining lower bounds on the worst-case space overhead of data type implementations and use it to prove optimality of 4 implementations. Finally, we show how to specify consistency of replicated stores with multiple objects axiomatically, in analogy to prior work on weak memory models. Overall, our work provides foundational reasoning tools to support research on replicated eventually consistent stores.
Late Holocene expansion of ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) in the Central Rocky Mountains, USA

Ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) experienced one of the most extensive and rapid post‐glacial plant migrations in western North America. We used plant macrofossils from woodrat (Neotoma) middens to reconstruct its spread in the Central Rocky Mountains, identify other vegetation changes coinciding with P. ponderosa expansion at the same sites, and relate P. ponderosa migrational history to both its modern phylogeography and to a parallel expansion by Utah juniper (Juniperus osteosperma).
The Restraint and Seclusion of Students With a Disability: Examining Trends in U.S. School Districts and Their Policy Implications

Restraint and seclusion are possible aversive responses to problematic student behavior used in some public schools, most commonly on students with a disability. Considerable recent attention has been paid to these practices both in the media and in Congress, and subsequently roughly half of U.S. states have made changes to their laws or policy statements around restraint and seclusion since 2009. In this article, we illuminate trends in restraint and seclusion across the United States in recent years to better inform policy discussions on these matters. Specifically, we examined rates of reported restraint and seclusion across U.S. districts in the 2009–2010 and 2011–2012 school years. We found that general trends persist between the data collections: Most districts report no/little use of restraint or seclusion, with a small percentage of districts reporting exceedingly high rates. Furthermore, the vast majority of variation exists within rather than between states, which may suggest the importance of local factors such as district policy, school culture, and practitioner support in determining the frequency of restraint and seclusion in schools.
Live Animal Markets in Minnesota: A Potential Source for Emergence of Novel Influenza A Viruses and Interspecies Transmission.

BACKGROUND Live animal markets have been implicated in transmission of influenza A viruses (IAVs) from animals to people. We sought to characterize IAVs at 2 live animal markets in Minnesota to assess potential routes of occupational exposure and risk for interspecies transmission. METHODS We implemented surveillance for IAVs among employees, swine, and environment (air and surfaces) during a 12-week period (October 2012-January 2013) at 2 markets epidemiologically associated with persons with swine-origin IAV (variant) infections. Real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (rRT-PCR), viral culture, and whole-genome sequencing were performed on respiratory and environmental specimens, and serology on sera from employees at beginning and end of surveillance. RESULTS Nasal swabs from 11 of 17 (65%) employees tested positive for IAVs by rRT-PCR; 7 employees tested positive on multiple occasions and 1 employee reported influenza-like illness. Eleven of 15 (73%) employees had baseline hemagglutination inhibition antibody titers ≥40 to swine-origin IAVs, but only 1 demonstrated a 4-fold titer increase to both swine-origin and pandemic A/Mexico/4108/2009 IAVs. IAVs were isolated from swine (72/84), air (30/45), and pen railings (5/21). Whole-genome sequencing of 122 IAVs isolated from swine and environmental specimens revealed multiple strains and subtype codetections. Multiple gene segment exchanges among and within subtypes were observed, resulting in new genetic constellations and reassortant viruses. Genetic sequence similarities of 99%-100% among IAVs of 1 market customer and swine indicated interspecies transmission. CONCLUSIONS At markets where swine and persons are in close contact, swine-origin IAVs are prevalent and potentially provide conditions for novel IAV emergence.
Image resolution enhancement by projection onto convex hull

This paper introduces a fast and simple geometric solution for solving the problem of example-based image superresolution with the advantages of well suppressing noise. Here, an image is considered as a set of small image patches, and super-resolution is performed on each patche with the help of a given database of low-resolution and high-resolution image patch pairs. For each given low-resolution patch, to estimate its corresponding high-resolution patch, a set of candidate highresolution patches is first searched from the database using a criteria based on Euclidean distance and statistical properties. Then, by considering each image patch as a point in a high dimensional space, the disered high-resolution patch is determined using the projection of the low-resolution point onto the convex hull of the candidate high-resolution points. Experiments are carried out to demonstrate the performance of the proposed method over some state-of-the-art methods.
Ready and Waiting: Heterosexual Men’s Decision-making Narratives in Initiation of Sexual Intimacy

Recent sexualities scholarship generally frames men as adhering to narratives of sexual assertion and constructions of hegemonic masculinity. However, research on masculinities notes scripts are changing and providing mixed messages regarding the expression of sexualities for heterosexual men. Given this, we look closely at sexual scripts in initiation of sexual intimacy as a means of exploring transformation in sexualities and understanding men’s interpersonal/intrapsychic narratives as expressions of masculinities. Based on in-depth interviews with sixty-nine heterosexual men, ages twenty to fifty-nine, we found that interviewees recounted feelings of readiness and desire for sex as boys and young men. We also found that though, as boys and young men, interviewees felt ready for and desired sex, yet in first experiences, they shared they were anxious and usually waited for partners to initiate or for clear clues partners were ready. Men’s accounts reflect concerns with sexual performance and the incongruence of sexual scripts at the cultural and interpersonal/intrapsychic levels, as well as a private expression of masculinity, reserved for situations with intimate partners.