Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Palliative pamidronate treatment in patients with bone metastases from breast cancer.

PURPOSE An open, randomized study was performed to assess the effects of supportive pamidronate treatment on morbidity from bone metastases in breast cancer patients. PATIENTS AND METHODS Eighty-one pamidronate patients and 80 control patients were monitored for a median of 18 and 21 months, respectively, for events of skeletal morbidity and the radiologic course of metastatic bone disease. The oral pamidronate dose was 600 mg/d (high dose [HD]) during the earliest study years, then changed to 300 mg/d (low dose [LD]) because of gastrointestinal toxicity. Twenty-nine of 81 pamidronate (HD/LD) patients first received 600 mg/d and were then changed to 300 mg/d; 52 of 81 pamidronate LD patients received 300 mg/d throughout the study. Tumor treatment was unrestricted. RESULTS An overall intent-to-treat analysis was performed. In the pamidronate group, the occurrence of hypercalcemia, severe bone pain, and symptomatic impending fractures decreased by 65%, 30%, and 50%, respectively; event-rates of systemic treatment and radiotherapy decreased by 35% (P < or = .02). The event-free period (EFP), radiologic course of disease, and survival did not improve. Subgroup analyses suggested a dose-dependent treatment effect. Compared with their controls, in pamidronate HD/LD patients, events occurred 60% to 90% less frequently (P < or = .03) and the EFP was prolonged (P = .002). In pamidronate LD patients, event-rates decreased by 15% to 45% (P < or = .04). Gastrointestinal toxicity of pamidronate caused a 23% drop-out rate, but other cancer-associated factors seemed to contribute to this toxicity. CONCLUSION Pamidronate treatment of breast cancer patients efficaciously reduced skeletal morbidity. The effect appeared to be dose-dependent. Further research on dose and mode of treatment is mandatory.
Face image validation system

In this paper, we present a novel face image validation system. The purpose of the system is to evaluate quality of face images for identification documents and to detect face images that do not satisfy the image quality requirements. To determine image quality the system first performs face detection in order to find facial features and determine image background. The system consists of seventeen separate tests. Each test checks one quality aspect of the face or of the whole image and compares it to the requirements of International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) proposals for machine readable travel documents. The requirements are designed to ensure good conditions for automatic face recognition. The tests are organized in a hierarchical way so the low-level tests are executed first and the high-level tests are executed last. The result of a test is a fuzzy value representing a measure of the image quality. Each test has a set of parameters that can be tuned to produce desired performance of the test. Initial testing of the system has been performed on the set of 190 face images and has demonstrated the feasibility of the method.
ABO blood groups and viral diseases.

Tlhe role of ABO blood groups in differential susceptibility to various diseases lhas lonig been a subject of investigation ani(1 debate(1). The genetic factors involve(l in resistanice against Virus infectionis lhave been reviewed by Allison(2). In the l)ast few years tlhree reports l)y Englislh writers lhave claimed to slhow a hiiglher susceptibility of persons of )loo0( grotup 0 to influenza than otlher blood groups. In 1962 'McDoniald and Ztuckerman analyzedl the dlistribution of blood groups among 2000 serologically conifiirmed respiratory illnesses in Royal Air Force personinel from 195(6 to 1961 as comipared to their distribution in a control group of about 50,000 RAF recruiits wlhose blood0 grotups were known(3). A statistically significant excess of Grotp 0 p)atienlts was foulnd( among those witlh illness due to A2 influeniza but not among those witlh illniesses dute to influenza Al or B or to Coxsackie A21. An opposite trend was seen for certain adlenovirus infections. In 1968 Potter andl Schild(4) tested the prevalence of antibody to the A2/Singapore strain of influenza in the sera of 515 persons of different ages collectedl from 1961 to 1963. A hiiglerl prevalence of this antibody in persons of group 0 b)lood was ob)serve(l in all age groups but in only two age groups, age 16 to 20 and over 30-years-old, was this relationslhip significant by the X2 test. In a third sttldy by Tyrell, Sparrow, an(d Bear publislhecl in 1968(5) the role of ABO stus-
Essays in Revealed Preference Theory and Behavioral Economics

Time, risk, and attention are all integral to economic decision making. The aim of this work is to understand those key components of decision making using a variety of approaches: providing axiomatic characterizations to investigate time discounting, generating measures of visual attention to infer consumers' intentions, and examining data from unique field settings. Chapter 2, co-authored with Federico Echenique and Kota Saito, presents the first revealed-preference characterizations of exponentially-discounted utility model and its generalizations. My characterizations provide non-parametric revealed-preference tests. I apply the tests to data from a recent experiment, and find that the axiomatization delivers new insights on a dataset that had been analyzed by traditional parametric methods. Chapter 3, co-authored with Min Jeong Kang and Colin Camerer, investigates whether "pre-choice" measures of visual attention improve in prediction of consumers' purchase intentions. We measure participants' visual attention using eyetracking or mousetracking while they make hypothetical as well as real purchase decisions. I find that different patterns of visual attention are associated with hypothetical and real decisions. I then demonstrate that including information on visual attention improves prediction of purchase decisions when attention is measured with mousetracking. Chapter 4 investigates individuals' attitudes towards risk in a high-stakes environment using data from a TV game show, Jeopardy! I first quantify players' subjective beliefs about answering questions correctly. Using those beliefs in estimation, I find that the representative player is risk averse. I then find that trailing players tend to wager more than "folk" strategies that are known among the community of contestants and fans, and this tendency is related to their confidence. I also find gender differences: male players take more risk than female players, and even more so when they are competing against two other male players. Chapter 5, co-authored with Colin Camerer, investigates the dynamics of the favorite-longshot bias (FLB) using data on horse race betting from an online exchange that allows bettors to trade "in-play. " I find that probabilistic forecasts implied by market prices before start of the races are well-calibrated, but the degree of FLB increases significantly as the events approach toward the end.
Passing a USA National Bar Exam: a First Corpus for Experimentation

Bar exams provide a key watershed by which legal professionals demonstrate their knowledge of the law and its application. Passing the bar entitles one to practice the law in a given jurisdiction. The bar provides an excellent benchmark for the performance of legal information systems since passing the bar would arguably signal that the system has acquired key aspects of legal reason on a par with a human lawyer. The paper provides a corpus and experimental results with material derived from a real bar exam, treating the problem as a form of textual entailment from the question to an answer. The providers of the bar exam material set the Gold Standard, which is the answer key. The experiments carried out using the ‘out of the box’ the Excitement Open Platform for textual entailment. The results and evaluation show that the tool can identify wrong answers (non-entailment) with a high F1 score, but it performs poorly in identifying the correct answer (entailment). The results provide a baseline performance measure against which to evaluate future improvements. The reasons for the poor performance are examined, and proposals are made to augment the tool in the future. The corpus facilitates experimentation by other researchers.
The republican ideal of freedom as non-domination and the Rojava experiment

This article problematizes the republican reliance on contemporary ‘states as they are’ as protectors and guarantors of the republican notion of freedom as non-domination. While the principle of freedom as non-domination constitutes an advance over the liberal principle of freedom as non-interference, its reliance on the national, territorial, legal-technical and extra-economic contemporary state prevents the theoretical uncovering of its full potential. The article argues that to make the most of the principle of freedom as non-domination, a strong Athenian element is required. The democratic confederalist project that is being experimented with by Syrian Kurds in the cantons of Rojava, it is maintained, can contribute theoretically and practically to this republican ideal through its democratic and participatory mechanisms, despite fundamental challenges it has to face.
Comparison Between the Panic Disorder with Agoraphobia Patients and Normal Controls on the Basis of Cognitions Affect and Physiology

Research using ambulatory monitoring and cognitive sampling procedures has revealed the importance of negatively biased cognitions in panic attacks and panic disorder. However, the normal population has never been investigated on the basis of these procedures and it is still unclear how patients deviate from them on the basis of negative cognitions and their interaction with affect and physiology. The present study investigated these issues by comparing 15 panic disorder patients with an equal number of normal controls. The results revealed that, although the pattern of reporting cognitions was similar, the two groups differed on type and content of the cognitions. In general, there were significant differences between the two groups for neutral and negative cognitions. Patients experienced high anxiety levels that were associated with cognitions of negative affect. There was a low frequency of reported panic attacks in the patients group. Possible reasons for the limited number of panic attacks are discussed.
Analysis of fast excitatory postsynaptic currents in bullfrog parasympathetic ganglion cells

Excitatory postsynaptic currents (EPSCs), miniature excitatory postsynaptic currents (MEPSCs), and acetylcholine-induced current fluctuations (noise) have been studied in voltage-clamped bullfrog parasympathetic ganglion cells of the atrial septum. EPSCs were also recorded from voltage-clamped sympathetic B cells and, in general, it was found that the basic properties of the EPSCs are similar in both parasympathetic and sympathetic B cells. For parasympathetic cells, the EPSC reached a peak amplitude of several nanoamperes within 3 msec and decayed exponentially. For 31 cells voltage-clamped to -50 mV (22 to 23 degrees C), peak amplitude was -4.3 +/- 1.4 nA (mean +/- SD) and the decay time constant, tau, was 5.6 +/- 1.0 msec. tau was independent of EPSC amplitude at a set voltage but increased with hyperpolarization, the coefficient of voltage dependence being -0.0070 +/- 0.0025 mV-1 in 13 cells (21 to 23 degrees C). The EPSC amplitude-voltage relationship was linear between -30 and -90 mV. The reversal potential, determined by interpolation, was -4.0 +/- 6.7 mV (n = 11). The EPSC tau had a Q10 equal to 2.9. Blocking the acetylcholinesterase with methane sulfonyl fluoride (MSF) pretreatment prolonged EPSC decay but decreased EPSC amplitude. In addition, EPSC decay after MSF treatment deviated from a single exponential function. MEPSCs exhibited decay characteristics very similar to those of EPSCs recorded at the same voltage and temperature. Acetylcholine-induced current fluctuations were well described by a single Lorentzian function with the estimated mean channel open time (tau noise) very similar to the EPSC decay time constant. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Spatial and Temporal Dynamics in Brook Trout Density: Implications for Population Monitoring

AbstractMany potential stressors to aquatic environments operate over large spatial scales, prompting the need to assess and monitor both site-specific and regional dynamics of fish populations. We used hierarchical Bayesian models to evaluate the spatial and temporal variability in density and capture probability of age-1 and older Brook Trout Salvelinus fontinalis from three-pass removal data collected at 291 sites over a 37-year time period (1975–2011) in Pennsylvania streams. There was high between-year variability in density, with annual posterior means ranging from 2.1 to 10.2 fish/100 m2; however, there was no significant long-term linear trend. Brook Trout density was positively correlated with elevation and negatively correlated with percent developed land use in the network catchment. Probability of capture did not vary substantially across sites or years but was negatively correlated with mean stream width. Because of the low spatiotemporal variation in capture probability and a strong correlat.
The Dynamics of Creative Self-Concept: Changes and Reciprocal Relations Between Creative Self-Efficacy and Creative Personal Identity

Although creative self-concept constructs are intensively studied in the creativity literature, little is known about the dynamics of their changes during the life span and the relationships between different aspects of the creative self-concept. Using a longitudinal and a cross-sequential design, this investigation aimed to test changes in two important creative self-concept constructs—creative self-efficacy and creative personal identity—over short (6 months) and longer (20 months) periods of time, while simultaneously examining reciprocal relationships between them. The results showed the short-term stability of both constructs, but they also revealed significant change over the longer period―specifically, a growth of creative self-efficacy and creative personal identity in people from late adolescence to early adulthood and a drop among older participants. Reciprocal longitudinal relationships between creative self-efficacy and creative personal identity were also demonstrated, with creative self-efficacy being a more stable predictor of creative personal identity than the reverse.
Downsizing a giant: re-evaluating Dreadnoughtus body mass

Estimates of body mass often represent the founding assumption on which biomechanical and macroevolutionary hypotheses are based. Recently, a scaling equation was applied to a newly discovered titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur (Dreadnoughtus), yielding a 59 300 kg body mass estimate for this animal. Herein, we use a modelling approach to examine the plausibility of this mass estimate for Dreadnoughtus. We find that 59 300 kg for Dreadnoughtus is highly implausible and demonstrate that masses above 40 000 kg require high body densities and expansions of soft tissue volume outside the skeleton several times greater than found in living quadrupedal mammals. Similar results from a small sample of other archosaurs suggests that lower-end mass estimates derived from scaling equations are most plausible for Dreadnoughtus, based on existing volumetric and density data from extant animals. Although volumetric models appear to more tightly constrain dinosaur body mass, there remains a clear need to further support these models with more exhaustive data from living animals. The relative and absolute discrepancies in mass predictions between volumetric models and scaling equations also indicate a need to systematically compare predictions across a wide size and taxonomic range to better inform studies of dinosaur body size.
Reducing Waiting Time at a Nigerian HIV Treatment Clinic

We assessed the waiting time and perceived satisfaction with care among people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHIV) at an antiretroviral clinic in Nigeria. A structured questionnaire was administered during interviews. Four hundred patients completed the questionnaire. The mean age of the respondents was 36.4 years (SD 9.7 years), and 61% of them were females. A majority, 72.9%, reported that the time elapsed between entry into the clinic and access to medical care services (waiting time) was more than an hour. However, a majority (77%) expressed satisfaction with the medical care they received. Although the majority of PLHIV were satisfied with their medical care, more needs to be done to reduce patient waiting time before access to medical services.
Theory of Transmission and Dissipation of Radiation near a Metallic Slab Based on Angular Spectrum Representation

The radiation properties of oscillating electric dipoles are studied theoretically for three and four layered systems including a single metallic slab based on angular spectrum representation of vector spherical waves. One of the remarkable results obtained is the transmission energy spectrum showing strong dependence on the thickness of a dielectric layer placed between oscillating electric dipole and metallic surface, which explains the experimental results of molecular fluorescence into surface plasmon modes. The theory based on angular spectrum representation and tunneling current provides us with a clear identification of plasmonic excitation transfer, transmission loss associated with plasmon transport in metallic layer, and energy dissipation or quenching of excitation due to surface plasmon excitation at the metallic surface in relation to the characteristic complex wave number of evanescent waves.
The Non-word Repetition Task as a clinical marker of Specific Language Impairment in Spanish-speaking children

Forty native Spanish-speaking children (age 8;0–10;3), 20 with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and 20 with Typical Language Development (TLD), received a battery of psycholinguistic tests, IQ, hearing screenings, and the Spanish Non-word Repetition Task (NRT). The children’s repetition of 20 non-words was scored. The percentage of correct non-words was significantly lower in children with SLI than in age-matched children with TLD. A length effect was found, with the subset of three-, four-, and five-syllable non-words leading to greater differences between groups. The NRT identified SLI accurately; likelihood ratios are reported with significant good sensitivity and specificity. Significant positive correlations were found, for all children together, between the overall NRT accuracy and the eight contemporary expressive/receptive language scores: PPVT-III, TTFC-2, and CEG tests; WISC-IV/Vocabulary subtest; and four ITPA subtests, including lexical fluency and comprehension of sentences/stories. The Spanish NRT can be used as a diagnostic marker for SLI. The clinical implications of phonological working memory links to psycholinguistic abilities are discussed.
Inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate-independent calcium signalling by platelet-derived growth factor in the human SH-SY5Y neuroblastoma cell.

In adherent SH-SY5Y human neuroblastoma cells, activation of G-protein-coupled muscarinic M3 receptors evoked a biphasic elevation of both intracellular [Ca(2+)] ([Ca(2+)]i) and inositol-1,4,5-trisphosphate (D-Ins(1,4,5)P3) mass. In both cases, temporal profiles consisted of rapid transient elevations followed by a decline to a lower, yet sustained level. In contrast, platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF), a receptor tyrosine kinase agonist acting via PDGF receptor b chains in these cells, elicited a slow and transient elevation of [Ca(2+)]i that returned to basal levels within 5 to 10 min with no evidence of inositol phosphate generation. Full responses for either receptor type required intracellular and extracellular Ca(2+) and mobilization of a shared thapsigargin-sensitive intracellular Ca(2+) store. Strategies that affected the ability of D-Ins(1,4,5)P3 to interact with the Ins(1,4,5)P3-receptor demonstrated an Ins(1,4,5)P3-dependency of the muscarinic receptor-mediated elevation of [Ca(2+)]i but showed that PDGF-mediated elevations of [Ca(2+)]i are Ins(1,4,5)P3-independent in these cells.
No Evidence for Parasitism-Linked Changes in Immune Function or Oxidative Physiology over the Annual Cycle of an Avian Species

Temporally changing environmental conditions occur in most parts of the world and can exert strong pressure on the immune defense of organisms. Seasonality may result in changes in physiological traits over the year, and such changes may be essential for the optimization of defense against infections. Evidence from field and laboratory studies suggest the existence of links between environmental conditions, such as infection risk, and the ability of animals to mount an immune response or to overcome infections; however, the importance of parasites in mediating seasonal change in immune defense is still debated. In this study, we test the hypothesis that seasonal change in immune function and connected physiological traits is related to parasite infection. We sampled captive house sparrows (Passer domesticus) once every 2 mo over 14 mo and compared the annual variation in 12 measures of condition, immune function, antioxidant status, and oxidative damage among birds naturally infested with coccidians or medicated against these parasites. We found significant variation in 10 of 12 traits over the year. However, we found little support for parasite-mediated change in immune function and oxidative status in captive house sparrows. Of the 12 measures, only one was slightly affected by parasite treatment. In support of the absence of any effect of coccidians on the annual profile of the condition and physiological traits, we found no consistent relationships between the intensity of infestation and these response variables over the year. Our results show that chronic coccidian infections have limited effect on the seasonal changing of physiological traits and that the patterns of these measures are probably more affected by acute infection and/or virulent parasite strains.
Distributed Search and Decision-Making using Cooperative Coevolutionary Agents

This paper presents a class of cooperative coevolutionary algorithms executing in a distributed information architecture consisting of coevolutionary agents, mobile software agents, and databases for superior network-efficient search and consequent distributed decision-making. In this approach to distributed decision-making, an objective function guides the concurrent search for logically interrelated information residing in databases widely distributed over a heterogeneous network environment. The information in these databases is logically interrelated due to the objective function that guides the decision-making. Application examples from the fields of manufacturing planning, intelligent internet search, and internet traffic management are utilized to highlight the applicability of this basic approach to network-efficient distributed decision-making.