Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The context and experience of new mothers: Postpartum depression, family relationships, knowledge of infant development, and infant outcomes

Maternal psychological well-being is one of many factors that shape the interactions a woman has with her infant. According to Belsky’s (1984) Determinants of Parenting Process Model, he suggests that maternal personality and psychological wellbeing play a significant role in the observation of parenting behaviors. This model was utilized as the overarching framework for this dissertation. The dissertation, in the form of three manuscripts, outlines important factors within the marital relationship that impact postpartum depression, then exploring the moderation of depression by knowledge of infant development in four behavioral scales observed during a mother-infant interaction. Finally, two maternal behaviors that impact child outcomes were utilized as predictors of infant social-emotional and cognitive outcome, while testing for moderation by infant age. Results. In study one, women were more likely to report postpartum depression when they experienced more arguments with family and lower relationship depth. The second study found that knowledge of infant development moderated maternal reports of postpartum depression, thus allowing women with higher knowledge to maintain positive behaviors compared to women with low or average knowledge. The third study indicated that verbal stimulation resulted in higher scores for infant social-emotional and cognitive development, whereas maternal sensitivity was the only variable impacting socialemotional development. The test of moderation by infant age found mothers of older infants did speak more to their older infants, but the differences were minimal.
Predicting hurricane regional landfall rates: comparing local and basin-wide track model approaches

We compare two methods for making predictions of the climatological distribution of the number of hurricanes making landfall along short sections of the North American coastline. The first method uses local data, and the second method uses a basin-wide track model. Using cross-validation we show that the basin-wide track model gives better predictions for almost all parts of the coastline. This is the first time such a comparison has been made, and is the first rigourous justification for the use of basin-wide track models for predicting hurricane landfall rates and hurricane risk.
Weaning Foods and Their Impact on Child-Feeding Practices among Low-Income Nigerian Mothers

Background Many children in rural communities of developing countries die of nutrition-related causes due to lack of nutrition education and low purchasing power of the families, which result in low-quality weaning foods and poor feeding practices. Objective To evaluate the nutritional composition of local weaning foods and their impact on child feeding practices among low-income Nigerian mothers. Methods A cross-sectional survey was conducted between March and June 2005 among 294 randomly selected pairs of nursing mothers and their children who attended the postnatal clinic of State Specialist Hospital and Comprehensive Health Centers in Akure community, Ondo State, Nigeria. A structured, self-or interviewer-administered questionnaire was used to collect information on infant demographic characteristics, feeding, and socioeconomic characteristics of the parents. The children's weights were recorded, and samples of the weaning foods were analyzed. Results The mothers' ages ranged from 22 to 37 years, and the children's from one to 12 months. Among the parents, two-fifths of the respondents worked as drivers, mechanics, carpenters, and the like, while the remaining respondents were civil servants, health professionals, teachers, merchants, and housewives. The educational attainment of the parents ranged from no formal education (1.4%) to higher education (46%); 13% had completed primary school, and 39.6% had completed secondary school. The average monthly family income was between 3,500 and 30,000 naira (US$23.3–$200). Among the children, 58.3% were of normal weight, 41.1% were mildly underweight, 0.3% moderately underweight, and 0.3% severely underweight; 23.1% were exclusively breastfed, 9.5% received breastmilk and traditional medicinal herbs, 15.6% received breastmilk and commercial weaning food, 7.4% received commercial weaning food only, 14.8% received local weaning foods only, 24.1% received local weaning foods plus breastmilk, and 5.8% received the family diet. Conclusions We found that a high proportion of the nursing mothers used local ingredients to formulate weaning foods for their babies. The nutritional compositions of these foods is of high quality and are suitable as weaning foods, particularly for infants of low-income parents who do not have access to commercial weaning foods.
Negative regulation of autoimmune demyelination by the inhibitory receptor CLM-1

Multiple sclerosis and its preclinical model, experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis, are marked by perivascular inflammation and demyelination. Myeloid cells, derived from circulating progenitors, are a prominent component of the inflammatory infiltrate and are believed to directly contribute to demyelination and axonal damage. How the cytotoxic activity of these myeloid cells is regulated is poorly understood. We identify CMRF-35–like molecule-1 (CLM-1) as a negative regulator of autoimmune demyelination. CLM-1 is expressed on inflammatory myeloid cells present in demyelinating areas of the spinal cord after immunization of mice with MOG35-55 (myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein) peptide. Absence of CLM-1 resulted in significantly increased nitric oxide and proinflammatory cytokine production, along with increased demyelination and worsened clinical scores, whereas T cell responses in the periphery or in the spinal cord remained unaffected. This study thus identifies CLM-1 as a negative regulator of myeloid effector cells in autoimmune demyelination.
Neighborhood topologies in fully informed and best-of-neighborhood particle swarms

In this study, we vary the way an individual in the particle swarm interacts with its neighbors. The performance of an individual depends on population topology as well as algorithm version. It appears that a fully informed particle swarm is more susceptible to alterations in the topology, but with a good topology, it can outperform the canonical version
Ductile deformation and mass loss in the Franciscan Subduction Complex: implications for exhumation processes in accretionary wedges

Abstract Deformation measurements from 64 sandstone samples collected in three study areas from the Eastern Belt of the Franciscan Complex are used to evaluate how the high-pressure metamorphic interior of the Franciscan wedge was exhumed. Pressure estimates indicate 25–30 km of exhumation in this part of the Franciscan Complex. Much of the Eastern Belt has a semi-penetrative cleavage that formed by solution mass transfer (SMT) while the rocks were moving through the wedge. Individual samples have absolute principal stretches of SX = 1.00–1.52, SY = 0.60–1.21, and SZ = 0.33–0.81. Strain magnitudes and directions are quite variable at the local scale. The deformation at the regional scale is estimated by calculating tensor averages for groups of measurements. The three study areas, which are spaced over a distance of c. 500 km along the Franciscan margin, give remarkably similar averages, which indicates that the deformation of the Eastern Belt is consistent at the regional scale. The tensor average for all data indicates a nearly vertical Z direction with SX = 0.96, SY = 0.92, and SZ = 0.70. SX and SY are near one because at the local scale, the X and Y directions vary considerably in orientation, which means that their stretch contributions are averaged out at the regional scale. This unusual strain type, consisting of both plane strain and uniaxial shortening, results from the fact that shortening in Z was balanced by a pervasive mass-loss volume strain, averaging about 38%. The geometry of directed fibre overgrowths was used to measure internal rotations. These data indicate that in sandstones, SMT deformation was nearly coaxial (mean kinematic vorticity number is 0.05 at the regional scale and generally <0.4 for individual samples). A simple one-dimensional steady-state model indicates that ductile thinning accounted for only c. 10% of the overall exhumation. Ductile shortening across the Franciscan wedge was very slow, at rates <8 × 10−17 s−1 (<0.3% Ma−1). Assuming that this strain was active in an across-strike zone <200 km wide, we estimate that horizontal ductile flow would have accounted for <0.25% of the total convergence across the Franciscan margin. We conclude that the SMT mechanism operated slowly as a background deformation process, and that the dislocation glide mechanism was completely inactive down to depths of 25–30 km. Thus, the stability of the Franciscan wedge was probably better defined by the Coulomb wedge criterion than by a viscous wedge criterion. No definitive normal faults have been found in or adjacent to the Eastern Belt. Therefore, we infer that wedge taper was mainly controlled by deep accretion and erosion of an emergent forearc high.
Towards Cross-lingual Automatic Diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Condition in Children's Voices

Automatic diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) from the voice is still in its infancy. The comparably few studies up to now focus mostly on the relevance of acoustic features and optimal learning algorithms. However, cross-lingual studies with a higher number of speakers are a white spot in the literature. The present contribution thus focusses on extensive cross-lingual evaluations based on four databases collected in English, French, Hebrew, and Swedish. The datasets contain speech of children with ASC and typically developing (TD) children matched in both age and gender. Their speech further intentionally varies in emotion. This introduces an additional challenge besides the change of languages. We demonstrate automatic ASC vs TD classification to be feasible despite such variation with a remaining error.
A cross-sectional study of acute diarrhea in Pudong, Shanghai, China: prevalence, risk factors, and healthcare-seeking practices

SUMMARY Diarrhea is a common cause of morbidity and mortality and the incidence of diarrhea in the world has changed little over the past four decades. To assess the prevalence of and healthcare practices for diarrhea, a cross-sectional study was conducted in Pudong, Shanghai, China. In October 2014, a total of 5324 community residents were interviewed. Respondents were asked if they had experienced diarrhea (defined as ⩾3 passages of watery, loose, bloody, or mucoid stools within a 24-h period) in the previous month prior to the interview. The monthly prevalence of diarrhea was 4·1% (95% CI: 3·3–4·8), corresponding to an incidence rate of 0·54 episodes per person-year. The proportion of individuals with diarrhea who sought healthcare was 21·2% (95% CI: 13·4–29·0). Diarrhea continues to impose a considerable burden on the community and healthcare system in Pudong. Young age and travel were identified as predictors of increased diarrhea occurrence.
Neural Programmer-Interpreters

We propose the neural programmer-interpreter (NPI): a recurrent and compositional neural network that learns to represent and execute programs. NPI has three learnable components: a task-agnostic recurrent core, a persistent key-value program memory, and domain-specific encoders that enable a single NPI to operate in multiple perceptually diverse environments with distinct affordances. By learning to compose lower-level programs to express higher-level programs, NPI reduces sample complexity and increases generalization ability compared to sequence-to-sequence LSTMs. The program memory allows efficient learning of additional tasks by building on existing programs. NPI can also harness the environment (e.g. a scratch pad with read-write pointers) to cache intermediate results of computation, lessening the long-term memory burden on recurrent hidden units. In this work we train the NPI with fully-supervised execution traces; each program has example sequences of calls to the immediate subprograms conditioned on the input. Rather than training on a huge number of relatively weak labels, NPI learns from a small number of rich examples. We demonstrate the capability of our model to learn several types of compositional programs: addition, sorting, and canonicalizing 3D models. Furthermore, a single NPI learns to execute these programs and all 21 associated subprograms.
Histamine H3 Heteroreceptors Suppress Glutamatergic and GABAergic Synaptic Transmission in the Rat Insular Cortex

Histamine H3 receptors are autoreceptors that regulate histamine release from histaminergic neuronal terminals. The cerebral cortex, including the insular cortex (IC), expresses abundant H3 receptors; however, the functions and mechanisms of H3 receptors remain unknown. The aim of this study was to elucidate the functional roles of H3 in synaptic transmission in layer V of the rat IC. Unitary excitatory and inhibitory postsynaptic currents (uEPSCs and uIPSCs) were obtained through paired whole-cell patch-clamp recording in cerebrocortical slice preparations. The H3 receptor agonist, R-α-methylhistamine (RAMH), reduced the uEPSC amplitude obtained from pyramidal cell to pyramidal cell or GABAergic interneuron connections. Similarly, RAMH reduced the uIPSC amplitude in GABAergic interneuron to pyramidal cell connections. RAMH-induced decreases in both the uEPSC and uIPSC amplitudes were accompanied by increases in the failure rate and paired-pulse ratio. JNJ 5207852 dihydrochloride or thioperamide, H3 receptor antagonists, inhibited RAMH-induced suppression of uEPSCs and uIPSCs. Unexpectedly, thioperamide alone increased the uIPSC amplitude, suggesting that thioperamide was likely to act as an inverse agonist. Miniature EPSC or IPSC recordings support the hypothesis that the activation of H3 receptors suppresses the release of glutamate and GABA from presynaptic terminals. The colocalization of H3 receptors and glutamate decarboxylase or vesicular glutamate transport protein 1 in presynaptic axon terminals was confirmed through double pre-embedding microscopy, using a combination of pre-embedding immunogold and immunoperoxidase techniques. The suppressive regulation of H3 heteroreceptors on synaptic transmission might mediate the regulation of sensory information processes, such as gustation and visceral sensation, in the IC.
Evaluation of the air caloric test as a routine examination procedure

The nystagmus responses of normal subjects to air and water caloric irrigations of comparable temperatures were compared. Irrigations of 0° air for 60 sec were found to produce nystagmus responses equal in amplitude, frequency and eye‐speed to those evoked by irrigations of 5 cc of ice water. Ice water produced significantly longer responses than did 0° air (mean difference = 11.6 sec). Responses to bithermal air stimuli of 24° C and 50° C were compared to those produced by 30°C and 44° C water. No significant differences were found between the cool stimuli for any of the measures. The warm stimuli produced responses of equal eye‐speed, but the water responses were significantly greater than those of air when the measures of total amplitude, frequency and duration were compared; thus, air stimulation was the preferred method of performing the standard caloric test, since the air responses were equal in reliability to those of water and because of the advantages of the use of air, which include greater convenience, patient tolerance, applicability, and flexibility.
Plasma level of platelet-derived microparticles is associated with coronary heart disease risk score in healthy men.

AIM The aim of this study was to clarify the relationship between platelet-derived microparticles (PDMPs) and the Framingham 10-yr coronary heart disease (CHD) risk score. METHODS A cross-sectional study of healthy volunteers free of medication, and cardiovascular or cerebrovascular disease was conducted. The subjects were 190 Japanese men (median age 41). An ELISA kit and monoclonal antibodies against CD42b and CD42a (glycoprotein Ib and IX) were used. RESULTS PDMPs are correlated with platelet count, high sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP), and diastolic blood pressure by multivariate analysis (R(2)=0.316, p <0.001). Quartile range of PDMPs is significantly associated with the 10-yr CHD risk score after adjusting for age, platelet count, hsCRP, and hypertension (p=0.033) and for age, platelet count, hsCRP, and presence of metabolic syndrome (MS) (p=0.020). In individuals with a predicted 10-yr risk for CHD >or=8% (corresponding with the highest quartile), compared to those with a predicted 10-yr risk <8%, the odds ratio (OR), adjusted for age, platelet count, hsCRP, and hypertension, was 3.3 (1.2-8.9) and adjusted for age, platelet count, hsCRP, and MS, was 4.5 (1.6-11.8). The age-, platelet count-, hsCRP- and hypertension-adjusted OR for a 10-yr CHD risk score >or=8% was 0.8 (0.5-1.3) for hsCRP and 3.9 (1.6-9.4) for hypertension. The age-, platelet count-, hsCRP- and MS -adjusted OR for a 10-yr CHD risk score >or=8% was 0.7 (0.4-1.2) for hsCRP and 7.9 (2.6-24.5) for MS. CONCLUSION Elevated PDMPs are associated with the 10-yr CHD risk score in healthy men.
SMCGen: Generating Reconfigurable Design for Sequential Monte Carlo Applications

The Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) method is a simulation-based approach to compute posterior distributions. SMC methods often work well on applications considered intractable by other methods due to high dimensionality, but they are computationally demanding. While SMC has been implemented efficiently on FPGAs, design productivity remains a challenge. This paper introduces a design flow for generating efficient implementation of reconfigurable SMC designs. Through templating the SMC structure, the design flow enables efficient mapping of SMC applications to multiple FPGAs. The proposed design flow consists of a parametrisable SMC computation engine, and an open-source software template which enables efficient mapping of a variety of SMC designs to reconfigurable hardware. Design parameters that are critical to the performance and to the solution quality are tuned using a machine learning algorithm based on surrogate modelling. Experimental results for three case studies show that design performance is substantially improved after parameter optimisation. The proposed design flow demonstrates its capability of producing reconfigurable implementations for a range of SMC applications that have significant improvement in speed and in energy efficiency over optimised CPU and GPU implementations.
Optimal Energy Management in Hybrid Energy Small Cell Access Points

In this paper, we consider a multiantenna small-cell access-point serving multiple users on the downlink and uplink sides using the frequency division duplex scheme. The access point is powered by both renewable and non-renewable energy sources. The objective of this paper is to process the frequency division duplex frame by drawing the minimum amount of energy from the non-renewable energy source while guaranteeing the quality of service of downlink transmission and decoding all the received uplink packets. Assuming that the energy used for sampling and decoding the received packets is not negligible, the optimal transmit power allocation and received packet decoding policy is investigated first in an offline setting and then in an online setting. An iterative offline algorithm based on dual decomposition method is proposed to find the optimal policy. In the online setting, an optimal high-complexity solution using dynamic programming approach is developed. Then, a reduced complexity suboptimal online algorithm using dual decomposition is proposed. Finally, two more suboptimal and low-complexity online algorithms for maximizing the ratio of throughput and non-renewable energy, and fairness metric are further addressed. Numerical simulations evaluate the performance of the proposed offline and online algorithms and show the efficiency of our proposed algorithms.
Seek-Efficient I/O Optimization in Single Failure Recovery for XOR-Coded Storage Systems

Erasure coding provides an effective means for storage systems to protect against disk failures with low redundancy. One important objective for erasure-coded storage systems is to speed up single disk failure recovery. Previous approaches reduce the amount of read data for recovery by reading only a small subset of data. However, they often incur high disk seeks, which may negate the resulting recovery performance. We propose <italic>SIOR</italic>, a seek-efficient I/O recovery algorithm for improving the performance of single disk failure recovery. SIOR carefully balances the trade-off between the amount of read data and the number of disk seeks by considering the data layout at the multi-stripe level. It then greedily determines the data to read for recovery using Tabu search. Experiments show that SIOR achieves similar performance to the brute-force enumeration method while keeping high search efficiency. Also, SIOR reduces <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$31.8\sim 65.1$</tex-math><alternatives> <inline-graphic xlink:href="shen-ieq1-2591040.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula> percent of disk seeks during recovery and provides up to 150.0 percent recovery speed improvement, when compared to a state-of-the-art greedy recovery approach.
A role for the dystrophin-glycoprotein complex as a transmembrane linker between laminin and actin

The dystrophin-glycoprotein complex was tested for interaction with several components of the extracellular matrix as well as actin. The 156-kD dystrophin-associated glycoprotein (156-kD dystroglycan) specifically bound laminin in a calcium-dependent manner and was inhibited by NaCl (IC50 = 250 mM) but was not affected by 1,000-fold (wt/wt) excesses of lactose, IKVAV, or YIGSR peptides. Laminin binding was inhibited by heparin (IC50 = 100 micrograms/ml), suggesting that one of the heparin-binding domains of laminin is involved in binding dystroglycan while negatively charged oligosaccharide moieties on dystroglycan were found to be necessary for its laminin-binding activity. No interaction between any component of the dystrophin- glycoprotein complex and fibronectin, collagen I, collagen IV, entactin, or heparan sulfate proteoglycan was detected by 125I-protein overlay and/or extracellular matrix protein-Sepharose precipitation. In addition, laminin-Sepharose quantitatively precipitated purified dystrophin-glycoprotein complex, demonstrating that the laminin-binding site is accessible when dystroglycan is associated with the complex. Dystroglycan of nonmuscle tissues also bound laminin. However, the other proteins of the striated muscle dystrophin-glycoprotein complex appear to be absent, antigenically dissimilar or less tightly associated with dystroglycan in nonmuscle tissues. Finally, we show that the dystrophin-glycoprotein complex cosediments with F-actin but does not bind calcium or calmodulin. Our results support a role for the striated muscle dystrophin-glycoprotein complex in linking the actin- based cytoskeleton with the extracellular matrix. Furthermore, our results suggest that dystrophin and dystroglycan may play substantially different functional roles in nonmuscle tissues.