Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Revolving Door Phenomenon Revisited: Time to Readmission in 17’415 Patients with 37’697 Hospitalisations at a German Psychiatric Hospital

Objective Despite the recurring nature of the disease process in many psychiatric patients, individual careers and time to readmission rarely have been analysed by statistical models that incorporate sequence and velocity of recurrent hospitalisations. This study aims at comparing four statistical models specifically designed for recurrent event history analysis and evaluating the potential impact of predictor variables from different sources (patient, treatment process, social environment). Method The so called Andersen-Gil counting process model, two variants of the conditional models of Prentice, Williams, and Peterson (gap time model, conditional probability model), and the so called frailty model were applied to a dataset of 17’415 patients observed during a 12 years period starting from 1996 and leading to 37’697 psychiatric hospitalisations. Potential prognostic factors stem from a standardized patient documentation form. Results Estimated regression coefficients over different models were highly similar, but the frailty model best represented the sequentiality of individual treatment careers and differing velocities of disease progression. It also avoided otherwise likely misinterpretations of the impact of gender, partnership, historical time and length of stay. A widespread notion of psychiatric diseases as inevitably chronic and worsening could be rejected. Time in community was found to increase over historical time for all patients. Most important protective factors beyond diagnosis were employment, partnership, and sheltered living situation. Risky conditions were urban living and a concurrent substance use disorder. Conclusion Prognostic factors for course of diseases should be determined only by statistical models capable of adequately incorporating the recurrent nature of psychiatric illnesses.
Compact Formulae in Sparse Elimination

It has by now become a standard approach to use the theory of sparse (or toric) elimination, based on the Newton polytope of a polynomial, in order to reveal and exploit the structure of algebraic systems. This talk surveys compact formulae, including older and recent results, in sparse elimination. We start with root bounds and juxtapose two recent formulae: a generating function of the m-Bezout bound and a closed-form expression for the mixed volume by means of a matrix permanent. For the sparse resultant, a bevy of results have established determinantal or rational formulae for a large class of systems, starting with Macaulay. The discriminant is closely related to the resultant but admits no compact formula except for very simple cases. We offer a new determinantal formula for the discriminant of a sparse multilinear system arising in computing Nash equilibria. We introduce an alternative notion of compact formula, namely the Newton polytope of the unknown polynomial. It is possible to compute it efficiently for sparse resultants, discriminants, as well as the implicit equation of a parameterized variety. This leads us to consider implicit matrix representations of geometric objects.
Caustic Ingestion in Children: a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Introduction:Caustic ingestion that occurs accidently is one of the most common problems in children. Methods: This systematic review has been performed by searching the databases including Science Direct, ProQuest, Google Scholar, and PubMed. A strategic search was performed with keywords including caustic, corrosive, ingestion, and children, and was limited to articles in English and Persian. Data were analyzed using Comprehensive Meta-Analysis2 and PASW Statistics 18. Results: We selected 64 articles regarding caustic ingestion with a total sample of 11,345 cases. The data analysis indicated a higher consumption in young boys (age range 2.78 (2.02) years (OR=0.53 with a 95% confidence interval of 0.49-0.57 (P=0.08)). The most common caustic substances were household cleaning agents, particularly bleaches and cleaners. Esophageal cancer and death were reported as well as digestive and respiratory complications. Invasive and expensive techniques are frequently used for diagnosis, treatment and follow up. Conclusion: The results demonstrated that although caustic ingestion is a serious problem among children, it is a preventable and manageable issue. Therefore, appropriate efforts by families, government, factories, health team and media should be made to handle adequately this matter.
Distribution of noise sources for seismic interferometry

SUMMARY We demonstrate that the distribution of seismic noise sources affects the accuracy of Green’s function estimates and therefore isotropic and anisotropic tomographic inversions for both velocity and attenuation. We compare three methods for estimating seismic noise source distributions and quantify the potential error in phase velocity, azimuthal anisotropy and attenuation estimates due to inhomogenous source distributions. The methods include: (1) least-squaresinversionofbeamformeroutput,(2)aleast-squaresinversionofyearlongstacked noise correlation functions assuming both a 2-D plane wave source density model and (3) a 3-D plane wave source density model. We use vertical component data from the 190 stations of the Southern California Seismic Network and some US Array stations for 2008. The good agreement between the three models suggests the 2-D plane wave model, with the fewest number of unknown parameters, is generally sufficient to describe the noise density function for tomographic inversions. At higher frequencies, 3-D and beamforming models are required to resolve peaks in energy associated with body waves. We illustrate and assess isotropic and azimuthally anisotropic phase velocity and attenuation uncertainties for the noise source distribution in southern California by inverting isotropic lossless synthetic Fourier transformed noise correlation function predictions from modelled 2-D source distribution. We find that the variation in phase velocity with azimuth from inhomogeneous source distribution yields up to 1 per cent apparent peak-to-peak anisotropy. We predict apparent attenuation coefficients from our lossless synthetics on the same order of magnitude as those previously reported for the region from ambient noise. Since noise source distributions are likely inhomogeneous varying regionally and with time, we recommend that noise correlation studies reporting attenuation and anisotropy incorporate source density information.
Stars in their eyes: what eye-tracking reveals about multimedia perceptual quality

Perceptual multimedia quality is of paramount importance to the continued take-up and proliferation of multimedia applications; users will not use and pay for applications if they are perceived to be of low quality. While traditionally distributed multimedia quality has been characterized by quality-of-service (QoS) parameters, these neglect the user perspective of the issue of quality. In order to redress this shortcoming, we characterize the user multimedia perspective using the quality-of-perception (QoP) metric, which encompasses not only a user's satisfaction with the quality of a multimedia presentation, but also his/her ability to analyze, synthesize, and assimilate informational content of multimedia. In recognition of the fact that monitoring eye movements offers insights into visual perception, as well as the associated attention mechanisms and cognitive processes, this paper reports on the results of a study investigating the impact of differing multimedia presentation frame rates on user QoP and eye path data. Our results show that provision of higher frame rates, usually assumed to provide better multimedia presentation quality, do not significantly impact upon the median coordinate value of eye path data. Moreover, higher frame rates do not significantly increase the level of participant information assimilation, although they do significantly improve overall user enjoyment and quality perception of the multimedia content being shown.
Towards a Theory of Trust Based Collaborative Search

We developed three new theoretical insights into the art of hierarchical clustering in the context of web-search. A notable example where these results may be useful is Trust Based Collaborative Search, where an active user consults agents that in the past performed a similar search. We proceed with this as an example throughout the paper, even though the results are more broadly applicable. The rst result is that under plausible conditions, trust converges to the extremes, creating clusters of maximal trust. The trust between any two agents, whose initial mutual trust is not maximal, eventually vanishes. In practice there is uncertainty about data, hence we have to approximate the rst result with less than maximal trust. We allow clustering tolerance equal to the uncertainty at each stage. The second result is that in the context of search, under plausible assumptions, this uncertainty converges exponentially fast as we descend the clustering tree. The third observation is that Shannons cryptography may help estimate that uncertainty.
Biochemical and cell biological activities of mouse , yeast , and Drosophila twinfilins

The actin cytoskeleton participates in a wide variety of cellular functions, including endocytosis, secretion, motility, cell division and intracellular signal transduction. In cells, actin exists as both filamentous (F-actin) and monomeric (G-actin) forms, and these dynamic pools of actin are regulated by a large number of actin-binding proteins. Most actin-binding proteins interact only with filaments and can promote nucleation, crosslinking and capping of actin filaments. Other actin-binding proteins interact with both actin monomers and filaments; some bind only the monomers (Sheterline et al., 1998). Actin-monomer-binding proteins play an important role in cells by controlling the size and localization of the cytoplasmic actin-monomer pool and by regulating the incorporation of actin monomers into filaments. Three classes of small actin-monomer-binding protein exist in organisms as diverse as yeasts and mammals: ADF/cofilin, profilin and twinfilin (Bamburg et al., 1999; Pollard et al., 2000; Lappalainen et al., 1998). In addition to these three ubiquitous proteins, a fourth class of small actin-monomer-binding protein, β-thymosins, is present in vertebrates. β-thymosins are small ATP-actin-monomer-binding proteins whose role is to sequester a large pool of unpolymerized actin in cells (Pollard et al., 2000). β-thymosins are expressed typically in highly motile cells such as platelets and differentiating neurons (Border et al., 1993). ADF/cofilins are small (15-19 kDa) proteins that bind both actin monomers and filaments. They promote rapid actin dynamics in cells by increasing the depolymerization rate at the minus end (pointed end) of actin filaments (Carlier et al., 1997; Rosenblatt et al., 1997; Lappalainen and Drubin, 1997). ADF/cofilins may also have a weak actin filament-severing activity, which would account for the formation of new filament ends (Chan et al., 2000). ADF/cofilins interact with
ALADIN is required for the production of fertile mouse oocytes

Asymmetric cell divisions depend upon the precise placement of the mitotic spindle. In mammalian oocytes, spindles assemble close to the cell’s centre but chromosome segregation takes place at the cell periphery where half of the chromosomes are expelled into small, nondeveloping polar bodies at anaphases. By dividing so asymmetrically, most of the cytoplasmic content within the oocyte is preserved, which is critical for successful fertilization and early development. Recently, we determined that the nucleoporin ALADIN participates in spindle assembly in somatic cells, and we have also shown that female mice homozygous deficient for ALADIN are sterile. In this study we show that this protein is involved in specific meiotic stages including meiotic resumption, spindle assembly, and spindle positioning. In the absence of ALADIN, polar body extrusion is impaired in a majority of oocytes due to problems in spindle orientation prior to the first meiotic anaphase. Those few oocytes that can mature far enough to be fertilized in vitro are unable to support embryonic development beyond the twocell stage. Overall, we find that ALADIN is critical for oocyte maturation and appears to be far more essential for this process than for somatic cell divisions.
On Competition, Access and Diversity in Media, Old and New: Some Remarks for Communications Policy in the Information Age

This article deals with access and diversity as central concepts of modern communications policy. Access may be sought at different layers of the communications system (Section 2), each presupposing a specific elaboration of communications policy questions (Table 1). Diversity, that is media diversity, refers to media content (Section 3). Media diversity has two faces: reflection of population preferences and openness, equal, uniform media access for divergent population preferences. These two faces have a dialectic relationship: usually for media systems it is not possible to produce full reflection and full openness at the same time. In Section 4 it is argued that, due to Hotelling's Law, media markets are often better at reflection than at openness. In Section 5 the relationships between media competition and media diversity are further explored within the framework of media and democracy. Three hypotheses on these relationships are being developed. In Section 6 a plea is made for the main objective of.
Intrafamilial correlation analysis for IgM serum levels.

The IgM serum level was determined in the members of 29 healthy families. The IgM mean concentrations between fathers and mothers and between sons and daughters were significantly different (P less than .01), with higher serum IgM levels in females than in males. Simple linear regression analysis was done for the following intrafamilial combinations: son-father, daughter-father, son-mother, and daughter-mother. Significant correlation coefficients (P less than .05) were obtained in all four combinations, which does not support the X-linked gene hypothesis (i.e., that the X chromosome carries quantitative genes for immunoglobulin M). An alternative explanation for the differences between sexes for IgM serum concentration is considered.
Ablation of Dihydroceramide Desaturase 1, a Therapeutic Target for the Treatment of Metabolic Diseases, Simultaneously Stimulates Anabolic and Catabolic Signaling

ABSTRACT The lipotoxicity hypothesis posits that obesity predisposes individuals to metabolic diseases because the oversupply of lipids to tissues not suited for fat storage leads to the accumulation of fat-derived molecules that impair tissue function. Means of combating this have been to stimulate anabolic processes to promote lipid storage or to promote catabolic ones to drive fat degradation. Herein, we demonstrate that ablating dihydroceramide desaturase 1 (Des1), an enzyme that produces ceramides, leads to the simultaneous activation of both anabolic and catabolic signaling pathways. In cells lacking Des1, the most common sphingolipids were replaced with dihydro forms lacking the double bond inserted by Des1. These cells exhibited a remarkably strong activation of the antiapoptotic and anabolic signaling pathway regulated by Akt/protein kinase B (PKB), were resistant to apoptosis, and were considerably larger than their wild-type counterparts. Paradoxically, Des1−/− cells exhibited high levels of autophagy. Mechanistic studies revealed that this resulted from impaired ATP synthesis due in part to decreased expression and activity of several complexes of the electron transport chain, particularly complex IV, leading to activation of AMP-activated protein kinase and its induction of the autophagosome. Thus, Des1 ablation enhanced starvation responses but dissociated them from the anabolic, prosurvival, and antiautophagic Akt/PKB pathways.
Detection of masked hypertension and the 'mask effect' in patients with well-controlled office blood pressure.

BACKGROUND Masked hypertension (MH) is characterized by its hidden nature and poor prognosis. However, it is not practical to routinely recommend home or ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (HBP or AMBP) to all patients with apparently well-controlled BP. The purpose of this study is to present, within the group of patients with well-controlled office BP (OBP), the clinical predictors of MH and to evaluate the gap (ie, the `mask effect' (ME)) between OBP and HBP. METHODS AND RESULTS BP was measured at the outpatient clinic and at home in 1,019 treated hypertensive patients. Candidate predictors for MH were analyzed within 511 patients with well-controlled OBP (45.6% men, 57.1±9.0 years). Among them, the prevalence of MH was 20.9% (n=107). In the multivariate-adjusted analysis, the risk of MH increased with high serum fasting blood glucose level (odds ratio (OR) 1.009, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.001-1.018, P=0.020), higher systolic OBP (OR 1.075, 95%CI 1.045-1.106, P<0.001), higher diastolic OBP (OR 1.045, 95%CI 1.007-1.084, P=0.019) and the number of antihypertensive medications (OR 1.320, 95%CI 1.113-1.804, P=0.021). Furthermore, systolic HBP correlated well with systolic OBP (r=0.351, P<0.001) and with the degree of systolic ME (r=-0.672, P<0.001). CONCLUSIONS To recognize MH, it is practical to investigate those patients who are taking multiple antihypertensive drugs and have a high OBP with a high FBG level. The term "ME" identifies MH more appropriately than the term "negative white-coat effect".
Nicotine and Cotinine Levels With Electronic Cigarette

Background: Since their introduction in 2004, electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) have gained popularity worldwide. E-cigarettes are marketed as nicotine delivery devices. Commonly reported reasons for use include to quit smoking, to reduce urge to smoke, or the perceived lower risk alternative to smoking. But what are the actual amounts of nicotine delivered? Aim: This review summarizes all the published studies concerning nicotine or cotinine levels following e-cigarette use. Methods: A literature search was conducted from the PubMed database, from 1985 to January 2014, using the following terms: electronic cigarette(s), e-cigarette(s), electronic nicotine delivery system, cotinine, and nicotine. Articles were excluded if they were not pertinent according to our criteria. References of all relevant articles were also evaluated. Results: Eight studies were included in this review. The following information was extracted from the articles: population size, age of participants, recruitment, inclusion and exclusion criteria, concentration of nicotine in refills liquids, study sample design, and observed concentrations. Following design of studies, plasma nicotine Cmax was observed between 0 and 5 ng/mL (no significant changes) or between 13.9 and 16.3 ng/mL (similar to a tobacco cigarette) with a Tmax between 70 and 75 minutes. Cotinine levels after “vaping” an e-cigarette are similar to a tobacco cigarette. Conclusion: This review summarizes e-cigarette studies that contain information on nicotine or cotinine levels. The peak concentration of nicotine appears to be dependent on the use and dose level of e-cigarette cartridge. The value of this peak concentration is similar to the value found with a tobacco cigarette. However, the time corresponding to the peak concentration is delayed compared to a tobacco cigarette.
Analyzing flow-based anomaly intrusion detection using Replicator Neural Networks

Defending key network infrastructure, such as Internet backbone links or the communication channels of critical infrastructure, is paramount, yet challenging. The inherently complex nature and quantity of network data impedes detecting attacks in real world settings. In this paper, we utilize features of network flows, characterized by their entropy, together with an extended version of the original Replicator Neural Network (RNN) and deep learning techniques to learn models of normality. This combination allows us to apply anomaly-based intrusion detection on arbitrarily large amounts of data and, consequently, large networks. Our approach is unsupervised and requires no labeled data. It also accurately detects network-wide anomalies without presuming that the training data is completely free of attacks. The evaluation of our intrusion detection method, on top of real network data, indicates that it can accurately detect resource exhaustion attacks and network profiling techniques of varying intensities. The developed method is efficient because a normality model can be learned by training an RNN within a few seconds only.
Analysis of Factors Influencing Secondary Traumatic Stress, Burnout, and Physical Symptoms in Firefighters

Purpose: This study was dont: to evaluate the factors that influence secondary traumatic stress, burnout, and physical symptoms experienced by firefighters. In addition, a hypothetical model was developed. Method: The data were collected using self-reported questionnaires from 410 field service firefighters. Data analysis was done with the SPSSWIN 10.0 program for descriptive statistics and Windows LISREL program to determine the causal relationship between the measurement variables. Results: The hypothetical model which was developed fits well with actual data(=3.16, p=0.99, GFI=1.00, AGFI=0.99, NFI=0.99, and NNFI=1.06). The variable, personality type, social support, and impact mobilization frequency had a significant effect and accounted for 7% of the secondary traumatic stress in firefighters. The variables, career, social support, and secondary traumatic stress had a significant effect and accounted for 24% of the burnout in firefighters. Social support, impact mobilization frequency, and secondary traumatic stress were important variables and accounted for 31% of the physical symptoms in firefighters. Conclusion: It is necessary for firefighters to manage themselves according to their personality types. Strategies that can increase the firefighters' social support and decrease their perceived secondary traumatic stress also need to be developed to minimize or prevent a negative effect on their health.
Ethanol Stabilizes the Open State of Single 5-Hydroxytryptamine3A(QDA) Receptors

Ethanol enhancement of 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT)3A receptor-mediated responses may have important consequences in the intoxicating and addictive properties of ethanol. Although the exact mechanism is unknown, ethanol-mediated enhancement of 5-HT3 receptor current has been proposed to occur due to stabilization of the open-channel state. It has not been possible to directly measure the open state of the channel due to the extremely low single-channel conductance of 5-HT3A channels. Recently, three arginine residues within the large intracellular loop of the 5-HT3A subunit were substituted by their equivalent residues (glutamine, aspartate, and alanine) of the 5-HT3B subunit to produce a 5-HT3A(QDA) subunit that forms functional homomeric channels exhibiting a measurable single-channel conductance. Using whole-cell rapid-agonist application techniques and the cell-attached single-channel recording configuration, we examined human 5-HT3A(QDA) receptors expressed in human embryonic kidney 293 cells. The agonist sensitivity, macroscopic kinetics, and modulation by ethanol were similar between mutant and wild-type channels, suggesting the substitutions had not altered these channel structure-function properties. The open time histogram for single-channel events mediated by 5-HT3A(QDA) receptors in the presence of maximal 5-HT was best fit by three exponentials, but in the presence of ethanol a fourth open state was evident. In summary, the QDA substitution greatly enhanced single-channel conductance with little effect on 5-HT3A channel's kinetic properties and ethanol enhances agonist action on 5-HT3A receptors by inducing a new, long-lived open-channel state. Furthermore, the 5-HT3A(QDA) receptor appears to be suitable for pharmacological studies of 5-HT3A receptor modulation at a single-channel level.