Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Characterization of projections from a sexually dimorphic motor nucleus in the spinal cord of adult green anoles

Male green anoles possess two copulatory organs (hemipenes), which are independently controlled by bilateral muscles: the transversus penis (TPN) and retractor penis magnus (RPM). Adult females do not possess hemipenes or either of the two related muscles. Motoneurons projecting to the TPN lie in spinal segments trunk 17 and sacral 1 (T17–S1). Overall, motoneurons in this region are larger and more numerous in males than females. The present studies were designed to determine 1) whether motoneurons projecting to the RPM are located in the same sexually dimorphic nucleus, 2) other targets of T17–S1 motoneurons, and 3) the approximate proportion of motoneurons projecting to each muscle. In Study 1, unilateral injection of the retrograde tracer Fast Blue (FB) into RPMs and simultaneous unilateral injection of either Cholera Toxin‐fluorescein (CT‐FITC) or Diamidino Yellow into TPNs revealed that RPM and TPN motoneurons are indeed interdigitated in T17–S1. In Study 2, FB was used to characterize other targets of this nucleus in both males and females. In adult males, projections to four muscles accounted for 96% of the T17–S1 motoneurons: the TPN, RPM, caudifemoralis (CF), and cloacal sphincter (SC). In adult females, projections to the CF and SC comprised 70% of this nucleus. These data demonstrate that the T17–S1 nucleus is a mixed spinal nucleus that has projections to muscles present in both sexes, as well as those present only in males and specialized for male copulatory behavior. J. Comp. Neurol. 471:180–187, 2004. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
German and Anglo-Saxon Approaches to Services and Services Marketing: Taking Stock - Looking Ahead

The paper discusses what has been achieved by one German and two Anglo-Saxon approaches to services with reference to the concept of service, the analysis of service economies, and the tasks which evolve from that for the further development of marketing theory. It addresses three approaches to marketing theory: a German theory of the firm having roots in transaction cost economics and property rights theory, which has particularly gained influence in Germany's business-to-business marketing, a service-centered approach called 'service-dominant logic,' and the rental-access approach by Lovelock and Gummesson. The paper does not only compare recognitions and shortcomings of the above mentioned approaches; it also deals with the identification of criteria which will contribute to the advancement of this field of study.
Private Health Insurance and Hospitalization Under Japanese National Health Insurance

We empirically examine how the decision to purchase private health insurance and hospitalization are made based on labor income, socio-demographic factors, and private health insurance. The increase in household labor income and wealth has a positive effect on purchasing private health insurance. This suggests a supplementary effect for public health insurance under the strict control of a two-tier healthcare coverage system. Our results support the hypothesis that moral hazard presents for the costs paid to private health insurance by households. A strong positive association with the risk of hospitalization causes individuals to change their health behavior after purchasing private health insurance leading to lower costs in the ill health status and acquire less preventive measures. Thus, moral hazard exists in Japanese health insurance market. Unlike the previous study, adverse selection based on our results is not negligible in the case of hospitalization in Japan. The positive effect indicates that the higher the risk of illness with households, the more insurance policies a household possesses. The results support our hypotheses that the decision to purchase health insurance in case of death in an insured household in a hospital is attributed to the initial health stock of the household. This means that households purchase private health insurance when there is a high probability of hospitalization with claimed insurance on death. The benefits from private health insurance policies for hospitalization provide incentives for individuals to purchase health insurance that are a reflection of adverse selection against private health insurance.
Suicide Probability in Adolescents With a History of Childhood Maltreatment: The Role of Non-Suicidal Self-Injury, Emotion Regulation Difficulties, and Forms of Self-Criticism

Background Suicidal attempt and non-suicidal self-injury are very common in adolescents with a history of childhood maltreatment. By identifying correlates of these kinds of high-risk behaviors, it is possible to prevent and decrease completed suicide. Objectives The aims of this study were: 1) to compare adolescents with a history of childhood maltreatment with non-suicidal self injury (NSSI) or past suicidal attempt in terms of suicide probability, and 2) to investigate the association between NSSI, forms of self-criticism, emotion regulation difficulties, and suicide probability. Patients and Methods Participants were 169 adolescents living in Iranian social welfare centers who had a history of childhood maltreatment. The Suicide Probability Scale, Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale, Forms of Self-criticism, and the Non-Suicidal Self injury (NSSI) checklist were used for assessment. Results Adolescents with NSSI and suicidal attempts had higher rates of suicide ideation than adolescents with NSSI-only (P < 0.05). Feelings of inadequacy, self-hatred, difficulty with impulse control, and frequency of NSSI can predict 50% variance of suicide probability (P < 0.001). Conclusions Adolescents with histories of suicidal attempts and NSSI, compared with adolescents with NSSI-only, were more prone to suicide. Self-criticism, poor impulse control, and the frequency of NSSI were the main risk factors associated with suicide probability in adolescents with a history of childhood maltreatment.
Estimating Phylogeny from microRNA Data: A Critical Appraisal

As progress toward a highly resolved tree of life continues to expose nodes that resist resolution, interest in new sources of phylogenetic information that are informative for these most difficult relationships continues to increase. One such potential source of information, the presence and absence of microRNA families, has been vigorously promoted as an ideal phylogenetic marker and has been recently deployed to resolve several long-standing phylogenetic questions. Understanding the utility of such markers for phylogenetic inference hinges on developing a better understanding for how such markers behave under suitable evolutionary models, as well as how they perform in real inference scenarios. However, as yet, no study has rigorously characterized the statistical behavior or utility of these markers. Here we examine the behavior and performance of microRNA presence/absence data under a variety of evolutionary models and reexamine datasets from several previous studies. We find that highly heterogeneous rates of microRNA gain and loss, pervasive secondary loss, and sampling error collectively render microRNA-based inference of phylogeny difficult, and fundamentally alter the conclusions for four of the five studies that we re-examine. Our results indicate that miRNA data have far less phylogenetic utility in resolving the tree of life than is currently recognized and we urge ample caution in their interpretation.
Crowd-sourcing Applied to Photograph-Based Automatic Habitat Classification

Habitat classification is a crucial activity for monitoring environmental biodiversity. To date, manual methods, which are laborious, time-consuming and expensive, remain the most successful alternative. Most automatic methods use remote-sensed imagery but remotely sensed images lack the necessary level of detail. Previous studies have treated automatic habitat classification as an image-annotation problem and have developed a framework that uses ground-taken photographs, feature extraction and a random-forest-based classifier to automatically annotate unseen photographs with their habitats. This paper builds on this previous framework with two new contributions that explore the benefits of applying crowd-sourcing methodologies to automatically collect, annotate and classify habitats. First, we use Geograph, a crowd-sourcing photograph website, to collect a larger geo-referenced ground-taken photograph database, with over 3,000 photographs and 11,000 habitats. We tested the original framework on this much larger database and show that it maintains its success rate. Second, we use a crowd-sourcing mechanism to obtain higher-level semantic features, designed to improve the limitations that visual features have for Fine-Grained Visual Categorization (FGVC) problems, such as habitat classification. Results show that the inclusion of these features improves the performance of a previous framework, particularly in terms of precision.
An approach to redesigning the course Didáctica del Inglés for future Pre-primary teachers

This paper details the views and perspectives of the teachers on the new design of the course Didactica del Ingles for Pre-Primary Education. These teachers were invited to participate on in-depth interviews as it was essential to understand their point of view on the changes made to the course and to explore interesting areas for further changes and/or possible research. An unstructured interview was chosen as it can be particularly useful for getting the story behind a participant’s experiences and it allows the interviewer to pursue in-depth information around the topic. (Clandinin & Murphy, 2009; McNamara,1999). These interviews were meant to be qualitative research interviews that sought to cover both the facts and meaning behind the words used by the participants (Brinkman, 2018; Atkins & Wallace, 2012). The programme AQUAD was used for data collection and treatment. The interviews showed a divide in general between the two professors of the four morning groups and the three professors of the three afternoon groups on the issues of methodologies, class materials and assignments and assessment. It became clear that in many cases, other underlying issues were at the heart of this divide such as student language proficiency and student characteristics: younger vs. older, and professional profile vs. student profile. The results show a need to continue modifying aspects of the course Didactica del Ingles to facilitate the teaching-learning processes for all students.
System Resilience at Extreme Scale White Paper

Professor Ricardo Bianchini, Rutgers University, Piscataway Professor Tarek El-Ghazawi, George Washington University, Washington D.C. Professor Armando Fox, University of California, Berkeley Forest Godfrey, Cray, Minneapolis Dr. Adolfy Hoisie, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos Professor Kathryn McKinley, University of Texas, Austin Professor Rami Melhem, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Professor James Plank, University of Tennessee, Knoxville Dr. Partha Ranganathan, HP Labs, Palto Alto Josh Simons, Sun Microsystems, Cambridge
Insurance within the Firm

We evaluate the allocation of risk between firms and their workers using matched employer‐employee panel data. Unlike previous contributions, this paper focuses on idiosyncratic shocks to the firm, which are the correct empirical counterpart of the theoretical notion of diversifiable risk. We allow for both temporary and permanent shocks to output and find that firms absorb temporary fluctuations fully but insure workers against permanent shocks only partially. Risk‐sharing considerations can account for about 15 percent of overall earnings variability, the remainder originating from idiosyncratic shocks to individual workers. Our welfare calculations indicate that firms are an important vehicle of insurance provision.
Prevalence and factor analysis of metabolic syndrome in an urban Korean population.

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to explore the prevalence and pattern of the metabolic syndrome and its association with hyperinsulinemia in an urban Korean population of 269 men and 505 women. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS The National Cholesterol Education Program Adult Treatment Panel (ATP) III guidelines were used to calculate the sex-specific prevalence of the metabolic syndrome. After excluding individuals taking medication for hypertension, diabetes, or dyslipidemia, we used factor analysis to examine the pattern of the metabolic syndrome in 206 men and 449 women. RESULTS The prevalence of metabolic syndrome was 16.0% in men and 10.7% in women aged 30-80 years. However, ATP III criteria for central obesity are not optimal for an Asian-Pacific population; when waist circumference is reduced from 102 to 90 cm in men and 88 to 80 cm in women, the prevalence of the metabolic syndrome increased to 29.0 and 16.8%, respectively. Sex-specific factor analysis showed four factors in men (obesity, glucose intolerance, hypertension, and dyslipidemia) and three in women (obesity-hypertension, glucose intolerance, and obesity-dyslipidemia). Insulin resistance estimated from fasting insulin levels clustered with three of the four factors in men and two of the three factors in women. By ATP III or Asian-Pacific waist circumference criteria, the prevalence of the metabolic syndrome increased with increasing tertiles of insulin resistance, which was estimated by a homeostasis model assessment. CONCLUSIONS The metabolic syndrome is common in an urban Korean population when using Asian-Pacific waist criteria. The prevalence of the metabolic syndrome increased with increasing tertiles of insulin resistance.
Accurate prediction of solvent accessibility using neural networks–based regression

Accurate prediction of relative solvent accessibilities (RSAs) of amino acid residues in proteins may be used to facilitate protein structure prediction and functional annotation. Toward that goal we developed a novel method for improved prediction of RSAs. Contrary to other machine learning–based methods from the literature, we do not impose a classification problem with arbitrary boundaries between the classes. Instead, we seek a continuous approximation of the real‐value RSA using nonlinear regression, with several feed forward and recurrent neural networks, which are then combined into a consensus predictor. A set of 860 protein structures derived from the PFAM database was used for training, whereas validation of the results was carefully performed on several nonredundant control sets comprising a total of 603 structures derived from new Protein Data Bank structures and had no homology to proteins included in the training. Two classes of alternative predictors were developed for comparison with the regression‐based approach: one based on the standard classification approach and the other based on a semicontinuous approximation with the so‐called thermometer encoding. Furthermore, a weighted approximation, with errors being scaled by the observed levels of variability in RSA for equivalent residues in families of homologous structures, was applied in order to improve the results. The effects of including evolutionary profiles and the growth of sequence databases were assessed. In accord with the observed levels of variability in RSA for different ranges of RSA values, the regression accuracy is higher for buried than for exposed residues, with overall 15.3–15.8% mean absolute errors and correlation coefficients between the predicted and experimental values of 0.64–0.67 on different control sets. The new method outperforms classification‐based algorithms when the real value predictions are projected onto two‐class classification problems with several commonly used thresholds to separate exposed and buried residues. For example, classification accuracy of about 77% is consistently achieved on all control sets with a threshold of 25% RSA. A web server that enables RSA prediction using the new method and provides customizable graphical representation of the results is available at http://sable.cchmc. org. Proteins 2004. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
High-Level Synthesis of Multiple Word-Length DSP Algorithms Using Heterogeneous-Resource FPGAs

In this paper we address the high-level synthesis of multiple word-length DSP algorithms over programmable devices (FPGAs). Previous approaches tend to simplify the set of resources, thus alleviating the complexity of the high-level synthesis, but leading to non-optimal solutions. Here, we present a high-level synthesis framework that overcomes these limitations by means of considering: (i) both logic-based and embedded multipliers, (ii) both constant and generic multipliers and (iii) variable latency resources. A simulated annealing based approach for the combined scheduling, resource allocation and binding tasks is presented. When compared to previous approaches, area improvements of up to 60% are reported
Myth and Reality of Discriminatory Power for Rating Systems

Under the Revised International Capital Framework, debtors’ credit ratings and probabilities of default in credit portfolios have a key role in determining minimum regulatory capital re-quirements. To measure discriminatory power of rating systems, methods such as the area under a ROC curve, the Accuracy Ratio and PowerStat are often used both in academic stud-ies and in practice. This paper shows that these measures need to be interpreted with caution since their values hinge crucially on the characteristics of the portfolio under consideration and not just on the quality of the rating system.
What do academic libraries have to do with Open Educational Resources

This paper will discuss the possible roles of academic libraries in promoting, supporting, and sustaining institutional Open Educational Resource initiatives. It will note areas in which libraries or librarians have skills and knowledge that intersect with some of the needs of academic staff and students as they use and release OERs. It will also present the results of a brief survey of the views of some OER initiatives on the current and potential role of academic libraries.
Competitiveness, convergence, and international specialization

David Dollar and Edward Wolff look at claims that a deindustrialized United States is on the road to secondrate status in the global marketplace and find them to be both unfounded and simplistic. Their systematic and empirical investigation of the mechanisms through which countries like Japan and Germany have caught up with the United States in terms of productivity and standard of living will inform public debate about which government policies are likely to improve a nation's competitiveness. Looking at productivity convergence from the industry and subindustry level, Dollar and Wolff also examine questions of the relationship of productivity growth in individual industries to convergence of overall productivity in developed countries, the identification of industries crucial for aggregate productivity growth, the sources of productivity growth within industries, the relationship between international trade and productivity convergence, and whether the same mechanics of convergence are at work in developing countries. The authors' findings reveal, among other things, that the slowness of U.S. productivity growth relative to other nations is largely due to forces pushing for convergence of aggregate productivity levels. Although other countries have been catching up with the U.S., there is no evidence that they will surpass the US. or that the U.S. has deindustrialized. Perhaps most important, Dollar and Wolff find that countries catch up by raising their productivity levels in all manufacturing industries, not by large shifts of their employment and output from low- to high-value-added sectors. The growing similarity of advanced economies in terms of overall productivity masks a continued high degree of specialization in particular industries. Today different countries are the productivity leaders in different industries. Accordingly, the authors recommend that public policy focus on institutions and policies to promote innovation in general, rather than in key industries, and on free trade rather than protectionism.
Projected impact of implementing the results of the diabetes prevention program in the U.S. population.

OBJECTIVE To determine the feasibility of using either fasting plasma glucose or HbA(1c) to identify individuals in the U.S. population who meet the Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) criteria for intervention, defined as BMI >/=24 kg/m(2), fasting plasma glucose level 96-125 mg/dl, and 2-h glucose level 140-199 mg/dl in an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT). RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Analysis of a representative sample of U.S. adults aged 40-74 years with no medical history of diabetes for whom data on height, weight, fasting plasma glucose, HbA(1c), and 2-h plasma glucose during an OGTT were obtained. Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), and receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curves for fasting glucose and HbA(1c) were determined. RESULTS Using BMI <24 kg/m(2) as an initial criterion eliminated 27.2% of U.S. adults from further testing. Of the remaining group, 41.1% did not have to be considered for an OGTT because their fasting glucose level was below or above 96-125 mg/dl. Overall, 10.6% of adults aged 40-74 years without medical history of diabetes met the DPP eligibility criteria for intervention. Among individuals with BMI >/=24 kg/m(2) and fasting glucose level 96-125 mg/dl, applying a fasting plasma glucose cutoff of >/=105 mg/dl excluded 62.5% of this group and resulted in 56.0% of those with 2-h glucose level 140-199 mg/dl in this group being identified, with a specificity of 72.0% and a PPV of 17.1%. Similar values were obtained for an HbA(1c) cutoff value of >/=5.5%. CONCLUSIONS Using data on BMI and setting cutoff values for fasting glucose and HbA(1c) would greatly reduce the number of individuals who would need to undergo an OGTT while achieving adequate sensitivity, specificity, and PPV.
Measuring serum oestradiol in women with Alzheimer's disease: the importance of the sensitivity of the assay method.

OBJECTIVE Oestrogens could be protective against the development of Alzheimer's disease (AD) but reports on oestrogen levels in AD have been conflicting. DESIGN AND METHODS A meta-analysis using robust regression was carried out to assess whether the sensitivity of the assays of past studies had affected the reported level of total oestradiol. We had also measured total oestradiol in women with AD (n=66) and controls (n=62) not using hormone replacement therapy. We used two assays for total oestradiol to assess the difference between sensitive (radioimmunoassay with a specific rabbit antibody: 3 pmol/l) and relatively insensitive (immunoassay: 37 pmol/l) assays. RESULTS Meta-analysis using robust regression indicated that insensitive assays gave higher levels of total oestradiol when many samples fall below the level of sensitivity of the method. Earlier reports of low levels of total oestradiol in AD might be explained by this phenomenon, since total oestradiol levels (using the sensitive assay) in our controls were one third of those reported in the earlier studies. Using the sensitive assay we found that women with AD had significantly (P<0.01) higher levels (26+/-13 pmol/l) of total oestradiol than controls (21+/-13 pmol/l). Using the insensitive assay, there was no significant difference in the levels of total oestradiol. CONCLUSIONS The sensitivity of the assay determines the reported value of the oestradiol levels. Studies using a sensitive assay do not report significantly lower levels of total oestradiol in women with AD. This weighs against the hypothesis that low levels of total oestradiol are a risk factor for AD.