Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Fractal Structure of the Universe: A New Field Theory Approach

While the universe becomes more and more homogeneous at large scales, statistical analysis of galaxy catalogs have revealed a fractal structure at small scales (λ < 100 h-1 Mpc), with a fractal dimension D = 1.5-2. We study the thermodynamics of a self-gravitating system using the theory of critical phenomena and finite-size scaling, and we show that gravity provides a dynamical mechanism for producing this fractal structure. We develop a field theoretical approach for computing the galaxy distribution, assuming them to be in quasi-isothermal equilibrium. Only a limited (although large) range of scales is involved, between a short-distance cutoff, below which other physics intervene, and a large-distance cutoff, beyond which the thermodynamic equilibrium is not satisfied. The galaxy ensemble can be considered at critical conditions, with large density fluctuations developing at any scale. From the theory of critical phenomena, we derive the two independent critical exponents ν and η and predict the fractal dimension D = 1/ν to be either 1.585 or 2, depending on whether the long-range behavior is governed by the Ising or the mean-field fixed points, respectively. Both set of values are compatible with present observations. In addition, we predict the scaling behavior of the gravitational potential to be r-(1+η)/2; that is, r-0.5 for mean field or r-0.519 for the Ising fixed point. The theory allows us to compute the 3 and higher density correlators without any assumption or Ansatz. We find that the N-point density scales as r when r1 ≫ ri, 2 ≤ i ≤N. There are no free parameters in this theory.
Nosocomial bacterial infections and their antimicrobial resistance patterns in university hospitals of hamedan, iran.

BACKGROUND Nosocomial infections constitute a global health problem, leading to a high rate of morbidity and mortality. The aim of this study was to determine the frequency and antimicrobial resistance patterns of nosocomial infections in edu-cational hospitals of Hamadan, western Iran. METHODS During a 1-year period from April 2006 to March 2007, all patients with cul-ture-proven nosocomial infections from educational hospitals in Hamedan, west-ern Iran were included. Nosocomial infections were defined as a culture-proven infection, which occurred more than 48h after admission in the hospital. An-timicrobial susceptibility testing of isolated bacteria was performed by disc dif-fusion method. RESULTS A total of 170 cases of culture-proven nosocomial infections were diag-nosed. Most cases were in intensive care units (ICUs) (57.4%). The common sites of infection were lower respiratory tract (51.8%) and urinary tract (31.9%). Kleb-siella pneumoniae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Escherichia coli, were the most prevalent pathogens (32.7%, 22.9%, and 14.8% respectively). Most en-terobacteriacea isolates were resistant to third generation cephalosporins. The resis-tant rates to ceftriaxone were 75.5% for K. pneumoniae, and 76% for E. coli. Among P. aeruginosa isolates, 26.5% were resistant to ceftazidim, and 36% to cipro-floxacin. Among S. aureus isolates, 80% were methicillin-resistant. CONCLUSION The patients in the ICUs are at a higher risk of nosocomial infec-tions. The high prevalence of antimicrobial resistance in the hospitals highlights the need of further infection control activities and surveillance programs.
New Methods of Transforming Belief Functions to Pignistic Probability Functions in Evidence Theory

For many real time information fusion systems, one way to reduce the computational complexity is to establish safe decision threshold, and only those above the safe thresholds are considered in decision making. Pignistic probability transform is a useful tool for decision making by mapping belief functions to probabilities to improve decision credibility and reduce computational complexity as well. In practical systems, safe decision thresholds are often set in advance, so under the condition of not increasing the risk of wrong decisions, finding a reasonable probability transform to decrease the elements above the safe thresholds is essential. This paper introduces three new pignistic probability transforms based on multiple belief functions, then compares with other popular transform methods. Results show that the three methods are robust to mature or immature information sets, can decrease efficiently the elements above the safe decision thresholds, making the decision problem simpler.
Association of Intrauterine and Early-Life Exposures with Diagnosis of Uterine Leiomyomata by 35 Years of Age in the Sister Study

Background Early-life exposures to hormonally active compounds and other factors may affect later response to estrogen or progesterone and hence may influence development of uterine leiomyomata (fibroids). Objectives We evaluated associations of in utero and early-life exposures, including soy formula, with self-report of physician-diagnosed fibroids by 35 years of age. Methods Our study included 19,972 non-Hispanic white women who were 35–59 years of age when they enrolled in the Sister Study in 2003–2007. We estimated risk ratios (RRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) using log-binomial regression models for fibroid associations with adjustment for participant’s age and education, maternal age at participant’s birth, birth order, and childhood family income. Results Greater risk of early fibroid diagnosis was associated with soy formula during infancy (RR = 1.25; 95% CI, 0.97–1.61), maternal prepregnancy diabetes (RR = 2.05; 95% CI, 1.16–3.63), low childhood socioeconomic status (RR = 1.28; 95% CI, 1.01–1.63), and gestational age at birth (RR = 1.64; 95% CI, 1.27–2.13, for being born at least 1 month early). In utero diethylstilbestrol (DES) exposure was also associated with early fibroid diagnosis (RR = 1.42; 95% CI, 1.13–1.80), but this association was driven by women reporting probable rather than definite exposure. Conclusions There are plausible biological pathways by which these early-life factors could promote fibroid pathogenesis. This is the first epidemiologic study to evaluate such exposures, with the exception of in utero DES, in relation to fibroid risk, and replication of findings in other populations is needed.
A mini-review on factors and countermeasures associated with false-negative sentinel lymph node biopsies in breast cancer

Sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) is a new surgical technique for local axillary lymph nodes (ALNs) of breast cancer. Large-scale clinical trials have confirmed that undergoing SLNB and ALN dissection (ALND) showed no significant difference for sentinel lymph node (SLN)-negative patients in terms of disease-free survival, overall survival and recurrence-free survival. However, false-negative results are still the main concern of physicians as well as patients who undergo SLNB instead of ALND. The American Society of Breast Surgeons established a task force to suggest acceptable standards for SLNB. In 2000, the task force recommended that the identification rate for SLNB be 85% or higher and the false-negative rate be 5% or lower. This review focuses on clinical factors (tumor volume, multifocal/multi-center cancers, neoadjuvant chemotherapy and skip metastasis), tracer techniques and pathological factors affecting SLNB and explores methods for reducing the false-negative rate
Community Organizing and Community Building for Health and Welfare

The third edition of Community Organizing and Community Building for Health and Welfare provides new and more established ways to approach community building and organising, from collaborating with communities on assessment and issue selection to using the power of coalition building, media advocacy, and social media to enhance the effectiveness of such work. With a strong emphasis on cultural relevance and humility, this collection offers a wealth of case studies in areas ranging from childhood obesity to immigrant worker rights to health care reform. A "tool kit" of appendixes includes guidelines for assessing coalition effectiveness, exercises for critical reflection on our own power and privilege, and training tools such as "policy bingo. " From former organiser and now President Barack Obama to academics and professionals in the fields of public health, social work, urban planning, and community psychology, the book offers a comprehensive vision and on-the-ground examples of the many ways community building and organising can help us address some of the most intractable health and social problems of our times.
DISCOVERY OF AN ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEUS DRIVEN MOLECULAR OUTFLOW IN THE LOCAL EARLY-TYPE GALAXY NGC 1266

We report the discovery of a powerful molecular wind from the nucleus of the non-interacting nearby S0 field galaxy NGC 1266. The single-dish CO profile exhibits emission to ±400 km s−1 and requires a nested Gaussian fit to be properly described. Interferometric observations reveal a massive, centrally concentrated molecular component with a mass of 1.1 × 109 M☉ and a molecular outflow with a molecular mass of ≈2.4 × 107 M☉. The molecular gas close to the systemic velocity consists of a rotating, compact nucleus with a mass of about 4.1 × 108 M☉ within a radius of ≈60 pc. This compact molecular nucleus has a surface density of ≈2.7 × 104 M☉ pc−2, more than two orders of magnitude larger than that of giant molecular clouds in the disk of the Milky Way, and it appears to sit on the Kennicutt–Schmidt relation despite its extreme kinematics and energetic activity. We interpret this nucleus as a disk that confines the outflowing wind. A mass outflow rate of ≈13 M☉ yr−1 leads to a depletion timescale of ≲85 Myr. The star formation in NGC 1266 is insufficient to drive the outflow, and thus it is likely driven by the active galactic nucleus. The concentration of the majority of the molecular gas in the central 100 pc requires an extraordinary loss of angular momentum, but no obvious companion or interacting galaxy is present to enable the transfer. NGC 1266 is the first known outflowing molecular system that does not show any evidence of a recent interaction.
International Adverse Selection in Life Insurance and Annuities

This paper evaluates the extent of adverse selection in life insurance and annuities in international markets, for both group and individual products. We also compare results with prior analyses of adverse selection in international annuity markets, focusing on the US, the UK, and Japan. Our results help assess the extent to which life insurers can hedge mortality exposure by writing both life insurance and annuities, and they may be used to determine a normal range for adverse selection in international insurance markets.
Cognitive Decision Making Process Supervising the Radio Dynamic Reconfiguration

Cognitive radio is a technological concept pushing for the introduction of intelligent radio operation going beyond system adaptation and reconfiguration on the basis of simple criteria and rules. Insofar, a rather limited amount of work has been published on the cognitive mechanisms that should be embedded into the communicating equipments to achieve such an intelligent behavior. Towards filling this gap, this paper presents an innovative optimization algorithm driving the decision making process supervising the cognitive radio reconfiguration. This cognitive algorithm, called RALFE for "Reason And Learn From Experience", presents interesting features since it allows to perform autonomous decision making with regard to multiple, possibly conflicting, operational objectives in the face of an uncertain environment. The proposed approach is illustrated for a case of cognitive waveform design.
Treatment of Biased Error Distributions in SBAS

The original protection level equations for SBAS assumed that all actual error distributions could be easily overbounded by zero-mean gaussian distributions. However, several error sources have since been found that could lead to significant biases for specific users. The expectation is that over long periods of time and all users, the aggregate errors should have a very small mean. However, certain users, at specific times or locations, may have significant biases in their measured pseudoranges. One source of bias is signal deformations. Originally thought of as a failure mode, it is now recognized that geostationary satellites have a noticeably different signal than the GPS satellites (primarily due to their bandwidth limit). Recent results also show that the GPS satellites have measurable differences from satellite to satellite as well. The magnitude and sign of the biases depend on the user equipment and have been shown to have significant unit-to-unit variation. A biased distribution may be overbounded by a zero mean gaussian, provided the sigma value has been sufficiently increased. As the bias becomes larger, this inflation leads to a greater loss of availability than if the protection level equations had explicitly accounted for it. It is therefore important to find the smallest possible inflation to adequately bound the bias. This paper makes use of new overbounding methods to relate the required inflation to the bound.
The Avise Lupus Test and Cell-bound Complement Activation Products Aid the Diagnosis of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

Background: Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a multifaceted disease, and its diagnosis may be challenging. A blood test for the diagnosis of SLE, the Avise Lupus test, has been recently commercialized and validated in clinical studies. Objectives: To evaluate the use of the Avise Lupus test by community rheumatologists. Methods: The study is a longitudinal, case-control, retrospective review of medical charts. Cases had a positive test result, and controls had a negative result; all patients were anti-nuclear antibodies (ANA) positive but negative for SLE-specific autoantibodies. Features of SLE, diagnosis, and medications at two time points were recorded. Results: Twenty of the 23 cases (87%) and 4 of the 23 controls (17%) were diagnosed with SLE (sensitivity=83%; specificity=86%). More cases than controls (43% vs. 17%) fulfilled 4 American College of Rheumatology (ACR) classification criteria of SLE. Sensitivity of the test was significantly higher than the ACR score (83% vs. 42%, p=0.006). A higher percentage of patients who met the classification criteria had elevated cell-bound complement activation products (CB-CAPs) compared to patients who did not. Anti-rheumatic medications were used in a higher percentage of cases than controls (83% vs. 35% at baseline, p=0.002), suggesting that cases were treated more aggressively early on. Conclusion: A positive Avise Lupus test result aids in formulating a SLE diagnosis when diagnosis based on standard-of-care tests and clinical features may be challenging, and impacts patient management. Prospective studies will be performed to better evaluate the clinical utility of the test and of CB-CAPs as biomarkers of SLE.
Protection by glia-conditioned medium in a cell model of Huntington disease

The physiological role of huntingtin and the pathogenic mechanisms that produce the disease are unknown. Mutant huntingtin changes its normal localization and produces cytoplasmic and intranuclear inclusions, changes gene transcription, alters synaptic transmission, impairs mitochondrial activity and activates caspases and other pro-apoptotic molecules, promotes excitotoxicity, energy deficits, synthesis and release reduction of neurotrophic factors and oxidative stress. Previous studies confirm that the mutant huntingtin difficult neurotrophic function of astrocytes leading to neuronal dysfunction in Huntington’s disease. Our objective was to study the neuroprotective potential role of glia-conditioned medium (GCM) in an in vitro model of Huntington’s disease. We used conditionally-immortalized striatal neuronal progenitor cell lines (STHdhQ7/Q7 and STHdhQ111/Q111) expressing endogenous levels of normal and mutant huntingtin with 7 and 111 glutamines, respectively. We studied the protection of fetal and postnatal glia conditioned medium (GCM) on H2O2 (2 µM), glutamate (5 mM) and 3-nitropropionic acid (2.5 mM) related toxicity. We also compared the neuroprotective effects of GCM versus that of the growth factors bFGF, BDNF and GDNF. Fetal GCM protects from every toxin, reducing the cell death and increasing the cell survival. Fetal GCM reduces the caspases fragmentation of the protein PARP, the expression of chaperone Hsp70 and the accumulation of ROS and polyubiquitinated proteins. In addition, in Q111 striatal cells treated with H2O2 (2 µM) for 24 hours, the intracellular GSH levels are higher in the presence of GCM. Notably, the 13-day and 2-month postnatal GCM, totally protects from H2O2 induced cell death in mutant striatal cells. GCM neuroprotective effects are more potent than those of the already identified neurotrophic factors. We conclude that GCM protects Q111 cells from neuronal neurotoxins and the effects of GCM are more potent than those of any known neurotrophic factor. GCM may contain new and more potent, as yet unidentified, neurotrophic molecules, potentially useful in patients with Huntington’s disease.
Value of coronary artery calcium scanning by computed tomography for predicting coronary heart disease in diabetic subjects.

OBJECTIVE The South Bay Heart Watch is a cohort study designed to determine the significance of coronary calcium in high-risk asymptomatic patients. This is a report of the relative risk (RR) for outcomes of coronary artery calcium in diabetic and nondiabetic subjects. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS A total of 1312 diabetic and nondiabetic subjects underwent risk factor screening and computed tomography testing for coronary calcium at baseline and were followed clinically for 6.3 +/- 1.4 years. End points were either 1). hard events of nonfatal myocardial infarction (MI) or coronary death or 2). any cardiovascular event (nonfatal MI, coronary death, coronary revascularization, or stroke). RESULTS The incidence rates of a hard event and any cardiovascular event for diabetic and nondiabetic subjects were 14.5 and 6.1% and 23.8 and 12.2%, respectively (P < 0.001). Cox regression analyses of the combined risk relationship of diabetes status and calcium score demonstrated that relative to nondiabetic subjects with low calcium scores (<2.8), diabetic subjects with calcium scores >or=2.8 exhibited at least a fourfold increase in the risk of either a hard or any cardiovascular event (P < 0.001). Cox regression analyses conducted separately for nondiabetic and diabetic subjects revealed that coronary calcium score risk groups were significantly associated with events in nondiabetic subjects (RR >or= 2.6, P <or= 0.01), but not in diabetic subjects (RR <or= 1.7, P > 0.05). CONCLUSIONS The risk of coronary heart disease increases with increasing calcium scores and diabetes status. Calcium scores have less prognostic value in diabetic subjects.
Impact of Quantity and Timeliness of EWOM Information on Consumer's Online Purchase Intention Under C2C Environment

Based on consumers’ “cognitive→affective→behavior” hierarchy theory of reaction, this paper builds the relational model of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) information (from two dimensions, quantity and timeliness), consumer trust, and purchase intention under C2C environment. The 2×2×2 between-subjects experiment on 320 undergraduates in Southwestern University of Finance and Economics illustrates that quantity and timeliness of EWOM information have significant influences on consumer trust, which has significantly positive influence on purchase intention; and the effect of the quantity and timeliness of EWOM information on consumer trust is also affected by the difference of product category. When buying fashion product (such as fashionable dress), the influence of quantity and timeliness of eWOM information on consumer trust is greater than that on functional products (such as books).
Gray and white matter correlates of navigational ability in humans

Humans differ widely in their navigational abilities. Studies have shown that self‐reports on navigational abilities are good predictors of performance on navigation tasks in real and virtual environments. The caudate nucleus and medial temporal lobe regions have been suggested to subserve different navigational strategies. The ability to use different strategies might underlie navigational ability differences. This study examines the anatomical correlates of self‐reported navigational ability in both gray and white matter. Local gray matter volume was compared between a group (N = 134) of good and bad navigators using voxel‐based morphometry (VBM), as well as regional volumes. To compare between good and bad navigators, we also measured white matter anatomy using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and looked at fractional anisotropy (FA) values. We observed a trend toward higher local GM volume in right anterior parahippocampal/rhinal cortex for good versus bad navigators. Good male navigators showed significantly higher local GM volume in right hippocampus than bad male navigators. Conversely, bad navigators showed increased FA values in the internal capsule, the white matter bundle closest to the caudate nucleus and a trend toward higher local GM volume in the caudate nucleus. Furthermore, caudate nucleus regional volume correlated negatively with navigational ability. These convergent findings across imaging modalities are in line with findings showing that the caudate nucleus and the medial temporal lobes are involved in different wayfinding strategies. Our study is the first to show a link between self‐reported large‐scale navigational abilities and different measures of brain anatomy. Hum Brain Mapp 35:2561–2572, 2014. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
PDS 456: an extreme accretion rate quasar?

We present quasi-simultaneous ASCA and RXTE observations of the most luminous known active galactic nucleus in the local (z<0.3) Universe, the recently discovered quasar PDS 456. Multiwavelength observations have been conducted that show that PDS 456 has a bolometric luminosity of ∼1047 erg s−1 peaking in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum. In the X-ray band the 2–10 keV (rest-frame) luminosity is 1045 erg s−1. The broad-band X-ray spectrum obtained with ASCA and RXTE contains considerable complexity. The most striking feature observed is a very deep, ionized iron K edge, observed at 8.7 keV in the quasar rest-frame. We find that these features are consistent with reprocessing from highly ionized matter, probably the inner accretion disc. PDS 456 appeared to show a strong (factor of ∼2.1) outburst in just ∼17 ks, although non-intrinsic sources cannot be completely ruled out. If confirmed, this would be an unusual event for such a high-luminosity source, with a light-crossing-time corresponding to ∼2RS. The implication would be that flaring occurs within the very central regions, or else that PDS 456 is a ‘super-Eddington’ or relativistically beamed system. Overall we conclude on the basis of the extreme blue/UV luminosity, the rapid X-ray variability and from the imprint of highly ionized material on the X-ray spectrum, that PDS 456 is a quasar with an unusually high accretion rate.