Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pain intensity, depressive symptoms, and functional limitations among older adults with serious mental illness

ABSTRACT Objective: To examine pain-related activity interference as a mediator for the relationship between pain intensity and depressive symptoms among older adults with serious mental illness (SMI). Method: Ordinary least-squares regressions were used to investigate the mediation analysis among older adults with SMI (n = 183) from community mental health centers. Analyses used secondary data from the HOPES intervention study. Results: Higher pain intensity was associated with greater pain-related activity interference. Higher pain intensity and pain-related activity interference were also associated with elevated depressive symptoms. Finally, greater pain-related activity interference significantly mediated the association between higher pain intensity and elevated depressive symptoms. Conclusions: These findings demonstrate that pain and depressive symptoms may be linked to functional limitations. Clinicians and researchers in the mental health field should better address pain-related activity interference among older adults with SMI, especially among those with higher pain intensity and elevated depressive symptoms.
A Drift Diffusion Model Account of the Semantic Congruity Effect in a Classification Paradigm

The semantic congruity effect refers to the facilitation of judgements (i) when the direction of the comparison of two items coincides with the relative position of the items along the dimension comparison or (ii) when the relative size of a standard and a target stimulus coincides. For example, people are faster in judging 'which is bigger? ' for two large items, than judging 'which is smaller? ' for two large items (selection paradigm). Also, people are faster in judging a target stimulus as smaller when compared to a small standard, than when compared to a large standard, and vice versa (classification paradigm). We use the Drift Diffusion Model (DDM) to explain the time course of a semantic congruity effect in a classification paradigm. Formal modelling of semantic congruity allows the time course of the decision process to be described, using an established model of decision making. Moreover, although there have been attempts to explain the semantic congruity effect within evidence accumulation models, two possible accounts for the congruity effect have been proposed but their specific predictions have not been compared directly, using a model that could quantitatively account for both; a shift in the starting point of evidence accumulation or a change in the rate at which evidence is accumulated. With our computational investigation we provide evidence for the latter, while controlling for other possible explanations such as a variation in non-decision time or boundary separation, that have not been taken into account in the explanation of this phenomenon.
Atrial high-rate episodes and stroke prevention

While the benefit of oral anticoagulants (OACs) for stroke prevention in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) is well established, it is not known whether oral anticoagulation is indicated in patients with atrial high-rate episodes (AHRE) recorded on a cardiac implantable electronic device, sometimes also called subclinical AF, and lasting for at least 6 min in the absence of clinically diagnosed AF. Clinical evidence has shown that short episodes of rapid atrial tachycarrhythmias are often detected in patients presenting with stroke and transient ischaemic attack. Patients with AHRE have a higher likelihood of suffering from subsequent strokes, but their stroke rate seems lower than in patients with diagnosed AF, and not all AHRE episodes correspond to AF. The prognostic and pathological significance of AHRE is not yet fully understood. Clinical trials of OAC therapy are being conducted to determine whether therapeutic intervention would be beneficial to patients experiencing AHRE in terms of reducing the risk of stroke.
Parent–child agreement on the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Functioning (BRIEF) in a community sample of adolescents

ABSTRACT Despite its widespread use, a minimal amount is known regarding the agreement between parent and youth ratings of youth’s executive functioning on the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Functioning (BRIEF) in typically developing youth. The present study examined parent–child agreement on the BRIEF with a community sample of adolescents and their parents. Ninety-seven parent–child dyads (Mage = 13.91 years; SD = .52) completed the BRIEF self- and parent-report forms and a demographic questionnaire. Intraclass Correlation Coefficients (ICCs) and paired sample t-tests were used to evaluate agreement between self- and parent-reports on the BRIEF. Total sample ICCs indicated moderate to good parent–child agreement (0.46–0.68). Parents from the total sample reported significantly higher mean T-scores for their adolescents on Inhibit, Working Memory, Planning/Organization, Behavioral Regulation Index (BRI), Metacognition Index, and Global Executive Composite. Differences were found in regard to gender and race/ethnicity: ICCs were higher between parent–girl dyads on the scales that comprise the BRI than between parent–boy dyads. Parent–adolescent ICCs were also higher for adolescents who self-identified as White in comparison to those who identified as Non-White/Mixed Race on Emotional Control. These findings suggest gender and racial/ethnic differences should be considered when examining parent–child agreement on the BRIEF in typically developing adolescents.
Concurrent and Accurate Short Read Mapping on Multicore Processors

We introduce a parallel aligner with a work-flow organization for fast and accurate mapping of RNA sequences on servers equipped with multicore processors. Our software, HPG Aligner SA (HPG Aligner SA is an open-source application. The software is available at http://www.opencb.org/), exploits a suffix array to rapidly map a large fraction of the RNA fragments (reads), as well as leverages the accuracy of the Smith-Waterman algorithm to deal with conflictive reads. The aligner is enhanced with a careful strategy to detect splice junctions based on an adaptive division of RNA reads into small segments (or seeds), which are then mapped onto a number of candidate alignment locations, providing crucial information for the successful alignment of the complete reads. The experimental results on a platform with Intel multicore technology report the parallel performance of HPG Aligner SA , on RNA reads of 100-400 nucleotides, which excels in execution time/sensitivity to state-of-the-art aligners such as TopHat 2+Bowtie 2, MapSplice, and STAR.
Agarose coated spherical micro resonator for humidity measurements.

A new type of fiber optic relative humidity (RH) sensor based on an agarose coated silica microsphere resonator is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. Whispering gallery modes (WGMs) in the micro resonator are excited by evanescent coupling using a tapered fiber with ~3.3 µm waist diameter. A change in the relative humidity of the surrounding the resonator air induces changes in the refractive index (RI) and thickness of the Agarose coating layer. These changes in turn lead to a spectral shift of the WGM resonances, which can be related to the RH value after a suitable calibration. Studies of the repeatability, long-term stability, measurement accuracy and temperature dependence of the proposed sensor are carried out. The RH sensitivity of the proposed sensor depends on the concentration of the agarose gel which determines the initial thickness of the deposited coating layer. Studies of the micro- resonators with coating layers fabricated from gels with three different Agarose concentrations of 0.5%, 1.125% and 2.25 wt. /vol.% showed that an increase in the initial thickness of the coating material results in an increase in sensitivity but also leads to a decrease of quality factor (Q) of the micro resonator. The highest sensitivity achieved in our experiments was 518 pm/%RH in the RH range from 30% to 70%. The proposed sensor offers the advantages of a very compact form factor, low hysteresis, good repeatability, and low cross sensitivity to temperature.
Accuracy of Two-Dimensional Transvaginal Sonography and Office Hysteroscopy for Detection of Uterine Abnormalities in Patients with Repeated Implantation Failures or Recurrent Pregnancy Loss.

Background We sought to compare diagnostic values of two-dimensional transvaginal sonography (2D TVS) and office hysteroscopy (OH) for evaluation of endometrial pathologies in cases with repeated implantation failure (RIF) or recurrent pregnancy loss (RPL). MATERIALS AND METHODS This prospective study was performed at Royan Institute from December 2013 to January 2015. TVS was performed before hysteroscopy as part of the routine diagnostic work-up in 789 patients with RIF or RPL. Uterine biopsy was performed in cases with abnormal diagnosis in TVS and/or hysteroscopy. We compared the diagnostic accuracy values of TVS in detection of uterine abnormalities with OH by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis. RESULTS TVS examination detected 545 (69%) normal cases and 244 (31%) pathologic cases, which included 84 (10.6%) endometrial polyps, 15 (1.6%) uterine fibroids, 10 (1.3%) Asherman's syndrome, 9 (1.1%) endometrial hypertrophy, and 126 (15.9%) septate and arcuate uterus. TVS and OH concurred in 163 pathologic cases, although TVS did not detect some pathology cases (n=120). OH had 94% sensitivity, 95% specificity, 62% positive predictive value (PPV), and 99% negative predictive value (NPV) for detection of endometrial polyps. In the diagnosis of myoma, sensitivity, specificity, PPV, and NPV were 100%. TVS had a sensitivity of 50% and specificity of 98% for the diagnosis of myoma. For polyps, TVS had a sensitivity of 54% and specificity of 80%. Area under the ROC curve (AUROC) was 70.69% for the accuracy of TVS compared to OH. CONCLUSION TVS had high specificity and low sensitivity for detection of uterine pathologies in patients with RIF or RPL compared with OH. OH should be considered as a workup method prior to treatment in patients with normal TVS findings.
Foveal fully convolutional nets for multi-organ segmentation

Most fully automatic segmentation approaches target a single anatomical structure in a specific combination of image modalities and are often difficult to extend to other modalities and protocols or segmentation tasks. More recently, deep learning-based approaches promise to be readily adaptable to new applications as long as a suitable training set is available, although most deep learning architectures are still tuned towards a specific application and data domain. In this paper, we propose a novel fully convolutional neural network architecture for image segmentation and show that the same architecture with the same learning parameters can be used to train models for 20 different organs on two different protocols, while still achieving segmentation accuracy that is on par with the state-of-the-art. In addition, the architecture was designed to minimize the amount of GPU memory required for processing large images, which facilitates the application to full-resolution whole-body CT scans. We have evaluated our method on the publicly available data set of the VISCERAL multi-organ segmentation challenge and compared the performance of our method with those of the challenge and two recently proposed deep learning-based approaches. We achieved the highest Dice similarity coefficients for 17 out of 20 organs for the contrast enhanced CT scans and for 10 out of 20 organs for the uncontrasted CT scans in a cross-comparison between our method and participating methods.
Shimura Varieties and Motives

Deligne has expressed the hope that a Shimura variety whose weight is defined over Q is the moduli variety for a family of motives. Here we prove that this is the case for “most” Shimura varieties. As a consequence, for these Shimura varieties, we obtain an explicit interpretation of the canonical model and a modular description of its points in any field containing the reflex field. Moreover, when we assume the existence of a sufficiently good theory of motives in mixed characteristic, we are able to obtain a description of the points on the Shimura variety modulo a prime of good reduction.
Clinical implications of residual SYNTAX score after percutaneous coronary intervention in patients with chronic total occlusion and multivessel coronary artery disease: a comparison with coronary artery bypass grafting.

AIMS In this study we sought to evaluate the clinical impact of the residual SYNTAX score (rSS) after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) in patients with chronic total occlusion (CTO) and multivessel coronary artery disease (CAD). METHODS AND RESULTS We analysed data from 1,043 patients with CTO and multivessel CAD who were treated with PCI or coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). Patients were divided into three groups: patients with rSS≤12 after PCI (rSS≤12 group, n=445), patients with rSS>12 after PCI (rSS>12 group, n=150), and patients who underwent CABG (CABG group, n=448). We compared the incidence of cardiac death among the three groups. During a median follow-up period of 42 months, cardiac death occurred in 14 patients (3.1%) in the rSS≤12 group, 14 patients (9.3%) in the rSS>12 group, and 29 patients (6.5%) in the CABG group. On multivariate analysis, the rSS≤12 group had a significantly lower incidence of cardiac death than the rSS>12 group (hazard ratio [HR] 0.35, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.16 to 0.75; p=0.01), but had an incidence of cardiac death similar to that of the CABG group (HR 0.63, 95% CI: 0.32 to 1.23; p=0.17). CONCLUSIONS An rSS≤12 after PCI may reduce the risk of cardiac mortality and could be a measure of reasonable incomplete revascularisation in patients with CTO and multivessel CAD.
“Mask-bot”: A life-size robot head using talking head animation for human-robot communication

In this paper, we introduce our life-size talking head robotic system, “Mask-bot”, developed as a platform to support and accelerate human-robot communication research. The “Mask-bot” hardware consists of a semi-transparent plain mask, a portable LED projector with a fish-eye conversion lens mounted behind the mask, a pan-tilt unit and a mounting base. The hardware is driven by a software animation engine controlling face model selection and calibration augmented by an OpenHRI-based speech communication module that generates text-to-speech responses for conversational exchanges. The system projects the calibrated animated head onto the mask. Via this process the head becomes a life-size talking head in real space as opposed to 2D flat screen space or stereo pseudo-3D screen space. “Mask-bot” can easily change the appearance and behavior of the face model, affording the means for easily evaluating new face platforms for a variety of characteristics, including AV speech synthesis and perception, without building a new actual robotic head, thus accelerating the design cycle for robot heads.
Large animal model of functional tricuspid regurgitation in pacing induced end-stage heart failure.

OBJECTIVES Functional tricuspid regurgitation (FTR) is common in patients with advanced heart failure and frequently complicates left ventricular assist device implantation yet remains poorly understood. We set out to establish large animal model of FTR that could serve as a research platform to investigate the pathogenesis of FTR associated with end-stage heart failure. METHODS : Through right thoracotomy, ten adult sheep underwent implantation of pacemaker with epicardial LV lead, five sonomicrometry crystals on the right ventricle, and left and right ventricular telemetry pressure sensors during a beating heart off-pump procedure. After 5 ± 1 days of recovery, baseline haemodynamic, echocardiographic and sonomicrometry data were collected. Animals were paced thereafter at a rate of 220-240 beats/min until the development of heart failure and concomitant tricuspid regurgitation. RESULTS : Three animals died during early recovery period and one during the pacing phase. Six surviving animals were paced for a mean of 14 ± 5 days. Cardiac function was significantly depressed compared to baseline, with LV ejection fraction falling from 69 ± 2% to 22 ± 4% ( P < 0.001) and RV fractional area change from 52 ± 11% to 25 ± 9% ( P = 0.005). All animals developed significant enlargement of tricuspid annulus (from 29.5 ± 1.6 to 36.5 ± 4.5 mm; P = 0.01) and right ventricle (from 21.9 ± 0.2 to 30.3 ± 0.6 mm; P = 0.03). Sonomicrometry derived contractility of RV free wall was depressed and at least moderate tricuspid insufficiency developed in all animals. CONCLUSIONS : Biventricular dysfunction, tricuspid annular dilatation and significant FTR were observed in our model of ovine tachycardia induced cardiomyopathy. This animal model reflects the clinical situation of end-stage heart failure patients presenting for mechanical support.
A Deformable Mixture Parsing Model with Parselets

In this work, we address the problem of human parsing, namely partitioning the human body into semantic regions, by using the novel Parselet representation. Previous works often consider solving the problem of human pose estimation as the prerequisite of human parsing. We argue that these approaches cannot obtain optimal pixel level parsing due to the inconsistent targets between these tasks. In this paper, we propose to use Parselets as the building blocks of our parsing model. Parselets are a group of parsable segments which can generally be obtained by low-level over-segmentation algorithms and bear strong semantic meaning. We then build a Deformable Mixture Parsing Model (DMPM) for human parsing to simultaneously handle the deformation and multi-modalities of Parselets. The proposed model has two unique characteristics: (1) the possible numerous modalities of Parse let ensembles are exhibited as the ``And-Or" structure of sub-trees, (2) to further solve the practical problem of Parselet occlusion or absence, we directly model the visibility property at some leaf nodes. The DMPM thus directly solves the problem of human parsing by searching for the best graph configuration from a pool of Parse let hypotheses without intermediate tasks. Comprehensive evaluations demonstrate the encouraging performance of the proposed approach.
“It’s Like a Phantom Disease”: Patient Perspectives on Access to Treatment for Chagas Disease in the United States

Abstract. Chagas disease (CD) affects > 6 million people globally, including > 300,000 in the United States. Although early detection and etiological treatment prevents chronic complications from CD, < 1% of U.S. cases have been diagnosed and treated. This study explores access to etiological treatment from the perspective of patients with CD. In semi-structured interviews with 50 Latin American–born patients of the Center of Excellence for Chagas Disease at the Olive View–UCLA Medical Center, we collected demographic information and asked patients about their experiences managing the disease and accessing treatment. Patients were highly marginalized, with 63.4% living below the U.S. poverty line, 60% lacking a high school education, and only 12% with private insurance coverage. The main barriers to accessing health care for CD were lack of providers, precarious insurance coverage, low provider awareness, transportation difficulties, and limited time off. Increasing access to diagnosis and treatment will not only require a dramatic increase in provider and public education, but also development of programs which are financially, linguistically, politically, and geographically accessible to patients.
Expertentreffen COPD: Exazerbation der COPD

Zusammenfassung Akute Verschlechterungen der chronisch obstruktiven Lungenerkrankung (COPD) galten über lange Zeit als vorübergehende, gelegentlich auch lebensbedrohliche Symptomverschlechterungen, die jedoch keinen Bezug zum Verlauf der Grunderkrankung haben. Erst Mitte des letzten Jahrzehnts wurde gezeigt, dass Patienten mit schweren, stationär behandlungsbedürftigen Exazerbationen in der Folge eine erheblich erhöhte Sterblichkeit aufweisen. Diese Einsicht konnte 2012 durch eine große, populationsbasierte Kohortenanalyse konsolidiert werden. Heute gilt die schwere Exazerbation als ein Hauptrisikofaktor für die Krankheitsprogression. In der vorliegenden Zusammenfassung einer Expertentagung im Februar 2017 wird der aktuelle Stand der Kenntnisse zur Exazerbation der COPD dargestellt. Er umfasst die pathogenetischen Prozesse, die auslösenden Mechanismen, die Charakteristika der Patientengruppen mit häufigen Exazerbationen und die Prädiktoren einer schlechten Überlebensprognose. Die Rolle von Komorbiditäten wird näher betrachtet. Die Darstellung der Pharmakotherapie der Exazerbation wird ergänzt durch eine ausführliche Betrachtung des ventilatorischen Supports. Zur Frage der Exazerbationsprävention werden die verfügbaren Pharmaka analysiert. Die Bedeutung nicht medikamentöser Präventivmaßnahmen wird im Einzelnen untersucht.
TSSC1 is novel component of the endosomal retrieval machinery

A previously uncharacterized WD40 domain–containing protein named TSSC1 is shown to interact with the GARP and EARP tethering complexes, promoting retrograde transport of Shiga toxin from endosomes to the TGN, as well as recycling internalized transferrin from endosomes to the plasma membrane.
Vulnerable Narcissism Is (Mostly) a Disorder of Neuroticism.

OBJECTIVE Increasing attention has been paid to the distinction between the dimensions of narcissistic grandiosity and vulnerability. We examine the degree to which basic traits underlie vulnerable narcissism, with a particular emphasis on the importance of Neuroticism and Agreeableness. METHOD Across four samples (undergraduate, online community, clinical-community), we conduct dominance analyses to partition the variance predicted in vulnerable narcissism by the Five-Factor Model personality domains, as well as compare the empirical profiles generated by vulnerable narcissism and Neuroticism. RESULTS These analyses demonstrate that the lion's share of variance is explained by Neuroticism (65%) and Agreeableness (19%). Similarity analyses were also conducted in which the extent to which vulnerable narcissism and Neuroticism share similar empirical networks was tested using an array of criteria, including self-, informant, and thin slice ratings of personality; interview-based ratings of personality disorder and pathological traits; and self-ratings of adverse events and functional outcomes. The empirical correlates of vulnerable narcissism and Neuroticism were nearly identical (MrICC = .94). Partial analyses demonstrated that the variance in vulnerable narcissism not shared with Neuroticism is largely specific to disagreeableness-related traits such as distrustfulness and grandiosity. CONCLUSIONS These findings demonstrate the parsimony of using basic personality to study personality pathology and have implications for how vulnerable narcissism might be approached clinically.
A Context-Aware Trust-Oriented Influencers Finding in Online Social Networks

Online Social Networks (OSNs) have been used as the means for a variety of applications, like employment system, e-Commerce and CRM system. In these applications, social influence acts as a significant role, affecting people's decision-making. However, the existing social influence evaluation methods do not fully consider the social contexts, like the social relationships and the social trust between participants, and the preferences of participants, which have significant impact on social influence evaluation in OSNs. Thus, these existing methods cannot deliver accurate social influence evaluation results. In our paper, we propose a Context-Aware Trust-Oriented Influencers Finding method, called CT-Influence, with social contexts taken into account. We conduct experiments onto two real social network datasets, i.e., Epinions and DBLP. The experimental results illustrate that our CT-Influence method greatly outperforms the state-of-the-art method So Cap in terms of effectiveness and efficiency.