Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Self-optimization Rule-chain Mining Based on Potential Association Rule Directed Graph

This paper presents an ACO-based (ant colony optimization) mining algorithm aiming to discover longer rule-chains directly. Firstly, a potential association rule directed graph (PAGraph) is created, in which, the dynamic heuristics is used to record participant-intensity of edge. Secondly, making use of ant's positive feedback, pheromone on edge that ants passed is adjusted by heuristics so that it could make paths, which have longer rule-chains, have higher selection probability. Meanwhile, a bitwise-AND operation is introduced to compute rule's confidence easily. Finally, the experimental results show the proposed method can sufficiently capture longer rule-chains and it also confirms the robustness of the algorithm.
Impact of Increased Early Statin Administration on Ischemic Stroke Outcomes: A Multicenter Electronic Medical Record Intervention

Background Statin administration early in ischemic stroke may influence outcomes. Our aim was to determine the clinical impact of increasing statin administration early in ischemic stroke hospitalization. Methods and Results This is a retrospective analysis of a multicenter electronic medical record (EMR) intervention to increase early statin administration in ischemic stroke across all 20 hospitals of an integrated healthcare delivery system. A stroke EMR order set was modified from an “opt‐in” to “opt‐out” mode of statin ordering. Outcomes were mortality by 90 days, discharge disposition, and increase in stroke severity. We examined the relationship between intervention and outcome using autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) time‐series modeling. The EMR intervention increased both overall in‐hospital statin administration (from 87.2% to 90.7%, P<0.001) and early statin administration (from 16.9% to 26.3%, P<0.001). ARIMA models showed a small increase in the rate of survival (difference in probability [P diff]=0.02, P=0.016) and discharge to home or rehabilitation facility (P diff=0.04, P=0.034) associated with the intervention. The increase in statin administration <8 hours was associated with much larger increases in survival (P diff=0.17, P=0.033) and rate of discharge to home or rehabilitation (P diff=0.29, P=0.011), as well as a decreased rate of neurological deterioration in‐hospital (P diff=−0.14, P=0.026). Conclusions A simple EMR change increased early statin administration in ischemic stroke and was associated with improved clinical outcomes. This is, to our knowledge, the first EMR intervention study to show that a modification of an electronic order set resulted in improved clinical outcomes.
Tea and Iron Absorption

• Haem iron is present in the haemaglobin and myoglobin of animals and as a result is found in meat, liver, offal and meat products. This form of iron is relatively available and typically 20-30% of haem iron is absorbed from the diet, although this can rise to 40% in situations of iron deficiency. The level of haem iron absorption is relatively unaffected by other dietary factors. • Non-haem iron is found in plant foods such as cereals, vegetables, pulses, dried fruit, etc and compared to haem iron it is relatively poorly absorbed, typically less than 10% and often under 5%. The absorption of non-haem iron is much more influenced by an individual’s iron status and several factors in the diet that can either inhibit or enhance its absorption.
A jump-diffusion Libor model and its robust calibration

In this paper we propose a jump-diffusion Libor model with jumps in a high-dimensional space (ℝ m ) and test a stable non-parametric calibration algorithm that takes into account a given local covariance structure. The algorithm returns smooth and simply structured Lévy densities, and penalizes the deviation from the Libor market model. In practice, the procedure is FFT based, thus fast, easy to implement, and yields good results, particularly in view of the severe ill-posedness of the underlying inverse problem.
Expression of amyloid precursor protein‐like molecule in astroglial cells of the subventricular zone and rostral migratory stream of the adult rat forebrain

In adult mammals, new neurons in the subventricular zone (SVZ) of the lateral ventricle (LV) migrate tangentially through the rostral migratory stream (RMS) to the olfactory bulb (OB), where they mature into local interneurons. Using a monoclonal antibody for the β‐amyloid precursor protein (APP) (mAb 22C11), which is specific for the amino‐terminal region of the secreted form of APP and recognizes all APP isoforms and APP‐related proteins, immunoreactivity was detected in specific subpopulations of cells in the SVZ and RMS of the adult rat forebrain. In the SVZ, APP‐like immunoreactivity was detected in the ependymal cells lining the LV and some of the subependymal cells. The latter were regarded as astrocytes, because they were positive for the glial markers, S‐100 protein (S‐100) and glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP). APP‐like immunoreactive astrocytes exhibited strong labelling of the perinuclear cytoplasm and often possessed a long, fine process similar to that found with radial glia. The process extended to an APP‐like immunoreactive meshwork in the RMS that consisted of cytoplasmic processes of astrocytes forming ‘glial tubes’. Double‐immunofluorescent labelling with a highly polysialylated neural cell adhesion molecule (PSA‐NCAM) confirmed that the APP‐like immunoreactive astrocytes in the SVZ and meshwork in the RMS made close contact with PSA‐NCAM‐immunopositive neuroblasts, suggesting an interaction between APP‐containing cells and neuroblasts. This region of the adult brain is a useful in vivo model to investigate the role of APP in neurogenesis.
Prosocial motives, emotions, and behavior: The better angels of our nature.

This book examines the interplay of positive and negative influences on human behavior from a variety of perspectives. It contains contributions from recognized pioneers of research on prosocial behavior. It also includes contributions from widely-recognized experts in their subject areas. It examines several prosocial emotions, such as compassionate love, gratitude, generosity, and forgiveness, showing how these arise in individuals and groups and how they can be fostered.
Metal ions modulate the folding and stability of the tumor suppressor protein S100A2

The EF‐hand protein S100A2 is a cell cycle regulator involved in tumorigenesis, acting through regulation of the p53 activation state. Metal ion‐free S100A2 is homodimeric and contains two Ca2+‐binding sites and two Zn2+‐binding sites per subunit, whereby the Zn2+ ion binding to one of the sites is coordinated by residues from two homodimers. The effect of selective binding of these metal ions was investigated using site‐specific mutants which lacked one or both zinc sites. CD analysis of secondary structure changes on metallation showed that Zn2+ binding was associated with a decrease in the secondary structure content, whereas Ca2+ had the opposite effect in two of the three S100A2 mutants studied. The energy of unfolding (ΔGU) of the apo wild‐type S100A2 was determined to be 89.9 kJ·mol−1, and the apparent midpoint transition temperature () was 58.4 °C. In addition, a detailed study of the urea and thermal unfolding of the S100A2 mutants in different metallation states (apo, Zn2+ and Ca2+) was performed. Thermal denaturation experiments showed that Zn2+ acts as a destabilizer and Ca2+ as a stabilizer of the protein conformation. This suggests a synergistic effect between metal binding, protein stability and S100A2 biological activity, according to which Ca2+ activates and stabilizes the protein, the opposite being observed on Zn2+ binding.
Speech rate perception in Spanish L1 and L2: Effect of L1, perceived degree of regional accent and competence in L2

The present research examines the role of the following factors in the perception of speech rate in Spanish : the L1 (Spanish or French), the perceived degree of regional accent in Spanish and the competence in Spanish L2 (i.e. oral comprehension in L2). Results are the following : 1) The non-natives speakers of Spanish perceive the rate of speech as faster than natives. 2) The perceived degree of regional accent has no effect on the perception of speech rate in natives. 3) The oral comprehension in Spanish L2 plays a role in the perception of speech rate in non-natives : the worse the oral comprehension in L2, the faster the speech rate is perceived.
Tight Continuous Relaxation of the Balanced k-Cut Problem

Spectral Clustering as a relaxation of the normalized/ratio cut has become one of the standard graph-based clustering methods. Existing methods for the computation of multiple clusters, corresponding to a balanced k-cut of the graph, are either based on greedy techniques or heuristics which have weak connection to the original motivation of minimizing the normalized cut. In this paper we propose a new tight continuous relaxation for any balanced k-cut problem and show that a related recently proposed relaxation is in most cases loose leading to poor performance in practice. For the optimization of our tight continuous relaxation we propose a new algorithm for the difficult sum-of-ratios minimization problem which achieves monotonic descent. Extensive comparisons show that our method outperforms all existing approaches for ratio cut and other balanced k-cut criteria.
Predicting the growth of nanoscale nuclei by histotripsy pulses

Histotripsy is a focused ultrasound therapy that ablates tissue through the mechanical action of cavitation. Histotripsy-initiated cavitation activity is generated from shocked ultrasound pulses that scatter from incidental nuclei (shock scattering histotripsy), or purely tensile ultrasound pulses (microtripsy). The Yang/Church model was numerically integrated to predict the behavior of the cavitation nuclei exposed to measured shock scattering histotripsy pulses. The bubble motion exhibited expansion only behavior, suggesting that the ablative action of a histotripsy pulse is related to the maximum size of the bubble. The analytic model of Holland and Apfel was extended to predict the maximum size of cavitation nuclei for both shock scattering histotripsy and microtripsy excitations. The predictions of the analytic model and the numerical model agree within 2% for fully developed shock scattering histotripsy pulses (>72 MPa peak positive pressure). For shock scattering histotripsy pulses that are not fully developed (<72 MPa), the analytic model underestimated the maximum size by less than 5%. The analytic model was also used to predict bubble growth nucleated from microtripsy insonations, and was found to be consistent with experimental observations. Based on the extended analytic model, metrics were developed to predict the extent of the treatment zone from histotripsy pulses.
Prospective controlled trial of an electrophoretic method of sperm preparation for assisted reproduction: comparison with density gradient centrifugation.

BACKGROUND A membrane-based electrophoretic filtration system, known as the Cell Sorter-10 (CS-10), that preferentially isolates spermatozoa with very low levels of DNA damage has recently been developed. However, it remains to be proven whether spermatozoa prepared in this way are capable of achieving fertilization in assisted conception. Therefore, this clinical trial was designed to answer this question. METHODS A split-sample split-cohort study design was employed to control for differences in semen and oocyte quality between 28 couples undergoing either intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) or IVF in this clinical trial. Each semen sample was split between preparation using the CS-10 and preparation by standard density gradient centrifugation (DGC) and each cohort of oocytes was split for insemination using either CS-10 (n = 197) or DGC (n = 195) prepared spermatozoa. RESULTS Both methods of sperm preparation yielded comparable rates of sperm recovery, motility and DNA fragmentation. There was no significant difference between the ability of CS-10 and DGC prepared spermatozoa to produce fertilization (62.4% versus 63.6%), cleavage (99.0% versus 88.5%) and high-quality embryos (27.4% versus 26.1%). CONCLUSIONS This pilot study demonstrates that membrane-based electrophoresis is as effective as DGC in preparing sperm for IVF and ICSI, although it takes only a fraction of the time.
Automatic and Controlled Information Processing in Alzheimer's Disease

AUTOMATIC AND CONTROLLED INFORMATION PROCESSING IN ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE by Linda S. Carozza Adviser: Professor David Swinney This research investigation explored the cognitive processing operations of 18 healthy elderly (HE) subjects and 12 Alzheimer's Disease (AD) subjects in the mild clinical stage of the disease in their performance on a semantic priming task involving semantic lexical activations o f both automatic and controlled processing natures. Relatively little conclusive evidence has been documented regarding the relative roles of attention and memory processing in the lexical-semantic impairment of Alzheimer's Disease. A lexical decision processing task was implemented to investigate the effects of normal aging and neuropathological damage of Alzheimer's Disease on subjects' semantic priming abilities. The research design was based on the growing body of literature reporting successful procedural use of priming techniques with HE and AD subjects, as well as the fact that temporal boundaries reflecting attention-dependent and non-attention dependent processing have been suggested, particularly with healthy young populations. Findings of this investigation revealed that healthy elderly subjects demonstrate priming of a facilitative Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. nature, at both automatic and controlled temporal processing boundaries, whereas AD subjects demonstrated priming due to inhibition at long controlled temporal processing boundaries. Implications of these findings relative to normal age-related changes in language function and progressive lexical semantic impairment in AD are addressed. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
A multigrid approach to the scalar quantization problem

A multigrid framework for the one-dimensional (scalar) fixed-rate quantization problem is presented. The framework is based on the Lloyd-Max iterative process, which is a central building block in many quantization algorithms. This process iteratively improves a given initial solution and generally converges to a local minimum of the quantization distortion. Contrary to the classical Lloyd-Max process, the convergence of the multigrid algorithm is practically independent of the number of representation levels sought. Using this approach, a local minimum is reached at the cost of just a few Lloyd-Max iterations. The complexity of the proposed method is O(n) operations for the continuous case and 3N+O(n) for the discrete case, where n is the number of representation levels sought and N is the size of the discrete probability density function. In addition to its independent attributes, this work is a precursor to the more important vector quantization problem, for which a multiscale framework is also being developed.
Urban-rural differences in disability-free life expectancy in Bangladesh using the 2010 HIES data

Background Research on health expectancy has been carried out in Bangladesh but none of it has examined the differences in Disability-Free Life Expectancy (DFLE) between urban and rural setting in context of rapid urbanization of Bangladesh in past decades. Objectives The present study aims to estimate DFLE for people of all ages living in urban and rural areas in Bangladesh, and to examine the differences in DFLE between these two areas. Methods Data from the Sample Vital Registration System 2010 and the Bangladesh Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) 2010 were used in this study. The Sullivan method was applied to estimate DFLE in Bangladesh. Results Higher rates of mortality and disability were observed in rural areas compared to urban areas with few exceptions. Statistically significant differences in DFLE were revealed from birth to age 15 years for both sexes between urban and rural areas. Urban males had a longer life expectancy (LE), longer DFLE and shorter LE with disability both in number and proportion when compared to rural males. Rural females at age 20+ years had a longer LE than urban females but urban females had a longer DFLE and a shorter LE with disability in both number and proportion at all ages than did rural females. Conclusion This study demonstrates that there were clear inequalities in LE, DFLE and LE with disability between rural and urban areas of Bangladesh along with age-specific differences as well. These findings may serve as useful and benchmark for intervention and policy implications for reducing the gap in health outcomes.
A Conserved Gly436-Trp-Leu-Ala-Gly-Leu-Phe-Tyr Motif in Hepatitis C Virus Glycoprotein E2 Is a Determinant of CD81 Binding and Viral Entry

ABSTRACT The hepatitis C virus (HCV) glycoproteins E1 and E2 form a heterodimer that mediates CD81 receptor binding and viral entry. In this study, we used site-directed mutagenesis to examine the functional role of a conserved G436WLAGLFY motif of E2. The mutants could be placed into two groups based on the ability of mature virion-incorporated E1E2 to bind the large extracellular loop (LEL) of CD81 versus the ability to mediate cellular entry of pseudotyped retroviral particles. Group 1 comprised E2 mutants where LEL binding ability largely correlated with viral entry ability, with conservative and nonconservative substitutions (W437 L/A, L438A, L441V/F, and F442A) inhibiting both functions. These data suggest that Trp-437, Leu-438, Leu-441, and Phe-442 directly interact with the LEL. Group 2 comprised E2 glycoproteins with more conservative substitutions that lacked LEL binding but retained between 20% and 60% of wild-type viral entry competence. The viral entry competence displayed by group 2 mutants was explained by residual binding by the E2 receptor binding domain to cellular full-length CD81. A subset of mutants maintained LEL binding ability in the context of intracellular E1E2 forms, but this function was largely lost in virion-incorporated glycoproteins. These data suggest that the CD81 binding site undergoes a conformational transition during glycoprotein maturation through the secretory pathway. The G436P mutant was an outlier, retaining near-wild-type levels of CD81 binding but lacking significant viral entry ability. These findings indicate that the G436WLAGLFY motif of E2 functions in CD81 binding and in pre- or post-CD81-dependent stages of viral entry.
Late effects of childhood cancer therapy.

One in every 900 young adults is a survivor of childhood cancer. Survivors may experience a wide variety of late effects stemming from the treatment they received. It is estimated that a significant portion of adult survivors of childhood cancer are not followed regularly in a center familiar with the late effects of their specific therapy. Therefore it is important for health care professionals in any setting to have an understanding of these possible late effects and encourage the survivor to seek appropriate follow-up. This article will provide a general overview of the potential late effects of childhood cancer therapy.
High-Velocity Gas toward Hot Molecular Cores: Evidence for Collimated Outflows from Embedded Sources

We present observations made with the Berkeley-Illinois-Maryland Association millimeter array of the H2S 2(2,0) → 2(1,1) and C18O 2 → 1 transitions toward a sample of four hot molecular cores associated with ultracompact H II regions: G9.62+0.19, G10.47+0.03, G29.96-0.02, and G31.41+0.31. The angular resolution varies from 1. ″5 to 2. ″4, corresponding to scales of ~0.06 pc at the distance of these sources. High-velocity wings characteristic of molecular outflows are detected toward all four sources in the H2S line. In two cases (G29.96 and G31.41) red- and blueshifted lobes are clearly defined and spatially separate, indicating that the flows are collimated. We also confirm the previous detection of the outflow in G9.62F. Although the gas-phase H2S abundance is not well constrained, assuming a value of 10-7 yields lower limits to total outflow masses of ~8 M☉, values that are consistent with the driving sources being massive protostars. Linear velocity gradients are detected in both C18O and H2S across G9.62, G29.96, and, to a lesser extent, G31.41. These gradients are observed to be at a different position angle to the outflow in G9.62F and G29.96, suggestive of a rotation signature in these two hot cores. Our observations show that these hot cores contain embedded massive protostellar objects that are driving bipolar outflows. Furthermore, the lack of strong centimeter-wave emission toward the outflow centers in G29.96 and G31.41 indicates that the outflow phase begins prior to the formation of a detectable ultracompact H II region.
Representations of Attachment Security in the Bird's Nest Drawings of Clients with Substance Abuse Disorders

This article presents the results of an exploratory study of the graphic indicators in drawings by patients with substance abuse disorders. The Bird's Nest Drawing (BND) (Kaiser, 1996), an assessment task previously devised to elicit pictorial representations of attachment security, was used to examine attachment patterns of a sample of volunteers (N=70) from a Veterans' Administration hospital. A group of patients with diagnosed substance abuse disorders (n=43) and a comparison group with no known history of substance abuse (n=27) completed a relationship questionnaire to establish their attachment classification, a brief demographic questionnaire, and a BND. Results showed that those with substance abuse diagnoses were more likely to have insecure attachment and used less color than those in the comparison group. In addition, those in the comparison group tended to more often use green as the dominant color. The comparison group had a higher proportion of securely attached individuals, and demographics showed that they were more likely to be married. Results of the study, implications for practice, and suggestions for future research are discussed with an emphasis on substance abuse relational patterns and the recovery process.