Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Population-based prevalence of symptomatic and asymptomatic astrovirus infection in rural Mayan infants.

Symptomatic and asymptomatic astrovirus infection was prospectively determined in a 3-year birth cohort of Mayan infants. Stool samples from 271 infants and 268 older siblings were tested for astrovirus, adenovirus 40/41, rotavirus and Salmonella, Shigella and Campylobacter species. Concurrent diarrhea, vomiting, fever, or anorexia were noted. Astrovirus was detected in 164 infants (61%) and 20 siblings (7%). Rotavirus (4%) and adenovirus 40/41 (13%) were isolated less frequently. Of all diarrheal episodes reported at a visit, 26% (78/305) were associated with astrovirus; 17% (78/452) of astrovirus infections were associated with diarrhea and 9% with other symptoms. Only diarrhea was associated with astrovirus infection (odds ratio, 1.4; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.07-1.92; P = .01). Of infants with astrovirus, 70% shed at multiple visits over a period of 2-17 weeks (median, 5). The point prevalence of astrovirus infection was significantly higher among infants than siblings (relative risk, 6.18; 95% CI, 3.93-9.72; P < .0001, chi2). Astrovirus was identified throughout the year, peaked in March and May, and decreased in September. In this population, astrovirus was the most common enteric pathogen isolated; symptomatic infection was prevalent among infants.
Oral Rabies Vaccination in North America: Opportunities, Complexities, and Challenges

Steps to facilitate inter-jurisdictional collaboration nationally and continentally have been critical for implementing and conducting coordinated wildlife rabies management programs that rely heavily on oral rabies vaccination (ORV). Formation of a national rabies management team has been pivotal for coordinated ORV programs in the United States of America. The signing of the North American Rabies Management Plan extended a collaborative framework for coordination of surveillance, control, and research in border areas among Canada, Mexico, and the US. Advances in enhanced surveillance have facilitated sampling of greater scope and intensity near ORV zones for improved rabies management decision-making in real time. The value of enhanced surveillance as a complement to public health surveillance was best illustrated in Ohio during 2007, where 19 rabies cases were detected that were critical for the formulation of focused contingency actions for controlling rabies in this strategically key area. Diverse complexities and challenges are commonplace when applying ORV to control rabies in wild meso-carnivores. Nevertheless, intervention has resulted in notable successes, including the elimination of an arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus) rabies virus variant in most of southern Ontario, Canada, with ancillary benefits of elimination extending into Quebec and the northeastern US. Progress continues with ORV toward preventing the spread and working toward elimination of a unique variant of gray fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) rabies in west central Texas. Elimination of rabies in coyotes (Canis latrans) through ORV contributed to the US being declared free of canine rabies in 2007. Raccoon (Procyon lotor) rabies control continues to present the greatest challenges among meso-carnivore rabies reservoirs, yet to date intervention has prevented this variant from gaining a broad geographic foothold beyond ORV zones designed to prevent its spread from the eastern US. Progress continues toward the development and testing of new bait-vaccine combinations that increase the chance for improved delivery and performance in the diverse meso-carnivore rabies reservoir complex in the US.
Repeated Exposure to Dissection Does Not Influence Students' Attitudes towards Human Body Donation for Anatomy Teaching

The use of unclaimed bodies for anatomical dissection has been the main method of instruction at our institution. There is however a shortage of cadavers for dissection given the increase in the number of medical schools as well as in the number of students enrolling in these schools. This shortage could be mitigated by having voluntary human body donation programs. This study aimed at assessing the attitudes of medical students and surgical residents towards body donation for anatomy learning. We conducted an online survey involving 72 first-year medical students and 41 surgical residents at University of Nairobi who had completed one year of anatomy dissection. For the medical students, this was their first dissection experience while it was the second exposure for the surgery trainees. Most of the surgical trainees (70.7%) and medical students (68.1%) were opposed to self-body donation. This was mainly due to cultural (37%) and religious (20%) barriers. Surprisingly, of those not willing to donate themselves, 67.9% (82.8% surgical trainees, 59.2% medical students) would recommend the practice to other people. Exposure to repeated dissection does not change the perceptions towards body donation. It is noteworthy that culture and religion rank high as clear barriers amongst this “highly informed” group of potential donors.
Breast cancer associated with pregnancy.

THE ASSOCIATION of breast cancer with pregnancy is an infrequent one, and whilst many reports in the past suggested that such an association led to an almost hopeless situation, more recent re-appraisal indicates that where clinical findings are identical the prognosis may be no different from that of a similar group of non-pregnant breast cancer patients. It is suggested, indeed, that in some circumstances pregnancy can have a favourable influence on the prognosis and it is emphasised that radical or curative treatment should be attempted whenever possible. Where pregnancy complicates breast cancer, however, it must be accepted that there are many additional problems facing the surgeon, gynaecologist, radiotherapist and family doctor. Should the pregnancy be terminated? Should the young woman treated for breast cancer be advised against subsequent pregnancies? Obviously, many factors other than purely clinical considerations must be taken into account and these, together with the infrequency of the condition and the degree of individualisation, necessarily plays havoc with any attempt to determine a treatment policy. As further reports appear in the literature, however, it becomes possible to indicate more positively what treatment measures and factors may influence the prognosis and this present article reviews our experience in the Northern Ireland Radiotherapy Centre over an eleven year period. The cases are discussed and compared with similar groups already reported.
Gas physics, disk fragmentation, and bulge formation in young galaxies

We investigate the evolution of star-forming gas-rich disks, using a 3D chemodynamical model including a dark halo, stars, and a two-phase interstellar medium with feedback processes from the stars. We show that galaxy evolution proceeds along very different routes depending on whether it is the gas disk or the stellar disk which first becomes unstable, as measured by the respective Q-parameters. This in turn depends on the uncertain efficiency of energy dissipation of the cold cloud component from which stars form. When the cold gas cools efficiently and drives the instability, the galactic disk fragments and forms a number of massive clumps of stars and gas. The clumps spiral to the center of the galaxy in a few dynamical times and merge there to form a central bulge component in a strong starburst. When the kinetic energy of the cold clouds is dissipated at a lower rate, stars form from the gas in a more quiescent mode, and an instability only sets in at later times, when the surface density of the stellar disk has grown sufficiently high. The system then forms a stellar bar, which channels gas into the center, evolves, and forms a bulge whose stars are the result of a more extended star formation history. We investigate the stability of the gas-stellar disks in both regimes, as well as the star formation rates and element enrichment. We study the morphology of the evolving disks, calculating spatially resolved colours from the distribution of stars in age and metallicity, including dust absorption. We then discuss morphological observations such as clumpy structures and chain galaxies at high redshift as possible signatures of fragmenting, gas-rich disks. Finally, we investigate abundance ratio distributions as a means to distinguish the different scenarios of bulge formation.
Regression on manifolds: Estimation of the exterior derivative

Collinearity and near-collinearity of predictors cause difficulties when doing regression. In these cases, variable selection becomes untenable because of mathematical issues concerning the existence and numerical stability of the regression coefficients, and interpretation of the coefficients is ambiguous because gradients are not defined. Using a differential geometric interpretation, in which the regression coefficients are interpreted as estimates of the exterior derivative of a function, we develop a new method to do regression in the presence of collinearities. Our regularization scheme can improve estimation error, and it can be easily modified to include lasso-type regularization. These estimators also have simple extensions to the "large $p$, small $n$" context.
Termination Results for Sorted Multi-Adjoint Logic Programs

In this paper we present a logic programming-based language allowing for the combination of several adjoint lattices of truth-values. A model and fixpoint theory are presented, but the main contribution of the paper is the study of general properties guaranteeing termination of all queries. New results are presented and related to other alternative formalisms.
Online Risks, Sexual Behaviors, And Mobile Technology Use In Early Adolescent Children: Parental Awareness, Protective Practices, And Mediation

v List of Tables . viii List of Symbols . ix List of Abbreviations . x Chapter 1: Introduction . 1 Chapter 2: The Role of Parental Engagement Within the Context of Adolescent Sexual Behaviors and Risks Online: A Scoping Review . 9 Chapter 3: Mobile Technology Use in Early Adolescent Children and Parental Mediation Online . 32 Chapter 4: Parental Perceptions Regarding Early Adolescent Behaviors and Sexual Risks Online via Mobile Technologies: Awareness, Protective Practices, and Support . 60 Chapter 5: Conclusions and Recommendations . 93 References . 103 Appendix A: IRB Approval Letter . 120
Advances in characterization of the soil clay mineralogy using X-ray diffraction: from decomposition to profile fitting

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. Advances in characterization of the soil clay mineralogy using X-ray diffraction: from decomposition to profile fitting Fabien Hubert, Laurent Caner, Alain Meunier, Bruno Lanson
ANGELMS: A privacy preserving data publishing framework for microdata with multiple sensitive attributes

Multi-dimension bucketization is a typical framework for preventing privacy disclosure of microdata with multiple sensitive attributes. However, it results in too much tuple suppression when the considered microdata have more than 3 sensitive attributes. Besides, it does not generalize quasi-identifiers, which make the anonymized data easy to suffer from linking attack. To overcome these drawbacks, we propose an improved bucketization framework, named ANGELMS. ANGELMS first vertically partitions sensitive attributes into several independent tables, and then bucketizes them according to l-diversity principle and generalizes quasi-identifiers according to k-anonymity principle. In addition, we proposed an MSB-KACA algorithm for the k-anonymizing process of our ANGELMS framework. Experiments show that the proposed framework can generate anonymized tables with less information loss and suppress ratio than simple multi-dimension bucketization do.
Inhibition of MDM2 attenuates neointimal hyperplasia via suppression of vascular proliferation and inflammation.

AIMS Tumour protein p53 plays an important role in the vascular remodelling process as well as in oncogenesis. p53 is negatively regulated by murine double minute 2 (MDM2). A recently developed MDM2 inhibitor, nutlin-3, is a non-genotoxic activator of the p53 pathway. So far, the effect of MDM2 inhibition on vascular remodelling has not been elucidated. We therefore investigated the effect of nutlin-3 on neointima formation. METHODS AND RESULTS Nutlin-3 up-regulated p53 and its downstream target p21 in vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs). DNA synthesis assay and flow cytometric analysis revealed that nutlin-3 inhibited platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF)-induced VSMC proliferation by cell cycle arrest. This inhibitory effect was abrogated in p53-siRNA-transfected VSMCs. Furthermore, nutlin-3 inhibited PDGF-stimulated VSMC migration. Treatment with nutlin-3 attenuated neointimal hyperplasia at 28 days after vascular injury in mice, associated with up-regulation of p53 and p21. BrdU incorporation was decreased at 14 days after injury in nutlin-3-treated mice. TUNEL assay showed that nutlin-3 did not exaggerate apoptosis of the injured vessels. Infiltration of macrophages and T-lymphocytes and mRNA expression of chemokine (C-C motif) ligand-5, interleukin-6, and intercellular adhesion molecule-1 were decreased in the injured vessels of nutlin-3-treated mice. Nutlin-3 suppressed NF-κB activation in VSMCs, but not in p53-siRNA-transfected VSMCs. CONCLUSIONS The MDM2 antagonist nutlin-3 inhibits VSMC proliferation, migration, and NF-κB activation, and also attenuates neointimal hyperplasia after vascular injury in mice, which is associated with suppression of vascular cell proliferation and an inflammatory response. Targeting MDM2 might be a potential therapeutic strategy for the treatment of vascular proliferative diseases.
5G air interface design based on Universal Filtered (UF-)OFDM

In this paper we discuss 5G air interface design with respect to waveforms, multiple access and frame structure. We start by introducing the 5G system level requirements and expected scenarios. 5G will be driven by supporting very heterogeneous service and device classes. A unified frame structure for handling those heterogeneous traffic types is presented. Multiple access for 5G will make use of strict synchronicity where it is justifiable and will drop it where signalling overhead and energy consumption will demand for. In order to serve this unified frame structure best, the choice of the underlying waveform is discussed. CP-OFDM has its limitations in spectral properties and in conjunction with relaxed time-frequency alignment. The most discussed contender so far is Filter-Bank based Multi-Carrier (FBMC), with better spectral properties but new drawbacks introduced by offset-QAM and long filter lengths. Hence, a new alternative is required: Universal-Filtered OFDM (UF-OFDM), also known as Universal Filtered Multi-Carrier (UFMC), is a recent technology close to OFDM. UF-OFDM, according to encouraging results so far, summarized in this paper, fits best to the 5G system requirements. A further feature of the Unified Frame Structure is the usage of multiple signal layers. Here, users can be separated e.g. based on their interleavers, as done in Interleave-Division Multiple-Access (IDMA). This will introduce an additional degree of freedom for the system, improve robustness against crosstalk and helps to exploit the capacity of the multiple access channel (MAC). Altogether, the proposed new concepts offer an emboldening approach for dealing with the new challenges, faced by 5G wireless system designers.
Prognostic Model Based on Systemic Inflammatory Response and Clinicopathological Factors to Predict Outcome of Patients with Node-Negative Gastric Cancer

Prognostic models are generally used to predict gastric cancer outcomes. However, no model combining patient-, tumor- and host-related factors has been established to predict outcomes after radical gastrectomy, especially outcomes of patients without nodal involvement. The aim of this study was to develop a prognostic model based on the systemic inflammatory response and clinicopathological factors of resectable gastric cancer and determine whether the model can improve prognostic accuracy in node-negative patients. We reviewed the clinical, laboratory, histopathological and survival data of 1397 patients who underwent radical gastrectomy between 2007 and 2013. Patients were split into development and validation sets of 1123 and 274 patients, respectively. Among all 1397 patients, 545 had node-negative gastric cancer; 440 were included in the development set, 105 were included in the validation set. A prognostic model was constructed from the development set. The scoring system was based on hazard ratios in a Cox proportional hazard model. In the multivariate analysis, age, tumor size, Lauren type, depth of invasion, lymph node metastasis, and the neutrophil—lymphocyte ratio were independent prognostic indicators of overall survival. A prognostic model was then established based on the significant factors. Patients were categorized into five groups according to their scores. The 3-year survival rates for the low- to high-risk groups were 98.9%, 92.8%, 82.4%, 58.4%, and 36.9%, respectively (P < 0.001). The prognostic model clearly discriminated patients with stage pT1-4N0M0 tumor into four risk groups with significant differences in the 3-year survival rates (P < 0.001). Compared with the pathological T stage, the model improved the predictive accuracy of the 3-year survival rate by 5% for node-negative patients. The prognostic scores also stratified the patients with stage pT4aN0M0 tumor into significantly different risk groups (P = 0.004). Furthermore, the predictive value of this model was validated in an independent set of 274 patients. This model, which included the systemic inflammatory markers and clinicopathological factors, is more effective in predicting the prognosis of node-negative gastric cancer than traditional staging systems. Patients in the high-risk group might be good candidates for adjuvant chemotherapy.
A high performance CAVLC encoder design for MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 video coding applications

This paper presents a high performance VLSI architecture design for MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 CAVLC encoding. In the proposed design, we propose a forward-based parallel coding (FPC) technique to increase the data throughput rate. Moreover, two approaches called arithmetic table elimination (ATE) and fast look-up table matching (FLM) are exploited to reduce the hardware cost. With the synthesis constraint of 125 MHz clock, the hardware cost of the proposed design is 9724 gates based on a 0.18mum CMOS technology, which achieves the real-time processing requiremenwat for H.264 video encoding on HD1080 format video
Distributional Impact of Commodity Price Shocks: Australia Over a Century

This paper explores the distributional impact of commodity price shocks over the both the short and very long run. Using a GARCH model, we find that Australia experienced more volatility than many commodity exporting poor countries between 1865 and 2007. A single equation error correction model suggests that commodity price shocks increase the income share of the top 1, 0.05, and 0.01 percent in the short run. The very top end of the income distribution benefits from commodity booms disproportionately more than the rest of society. The short run effect is mainly driven by wool and mining and not agricultural commodities. A sustained increase in the price of renewables (wool) reduces inequality whereas the same for non-renewable resources (minerals) increases inequality. We expect that the initial distribution of land and mineral resources explains the asymmetric result.
The exponential map for the unitary group SU(2,2)

In this article, we extend our previous results for the orthogonal group SO(2,4) to its homomorphic group SU(2,2). Here we present a closed finite formula for the exponential of a 4*4 traceless matrix, which can be viewed as the generator (Lie algebra elements) of the SL(4,C) group. We apply this result to the SU(2,2) group, the lie algebra of which can be represented by Dirac matrices, and discuss how the exponential map for SU(2,2) can be written by means of Dirac matrices.
Robust Topological Inference: Distance To a Measure and Kernel Distance

Let P be a distribution with support S. The salient features of S can be quantified with persistent homology, which summarizes topological features of the sublevel sets of the distance function (the distance of any point x to S). Given a sample from P we can infer the persistent homology using an empirical version of the distance function. However, the empirical distance function is highly non-robust to noise and outliers. Even one outlier is deadly. The distance-to-a-measure (DTM), introduced by Chazal et al. (2011), and the kernel distance, introduced by Phillips et al. (2014), are smooth functions that provide useful topological information but are robust to noise and outliers. Chazal et al. (2014) derived concentration bounds for DTM. Building on these results, we derive limiting distributions and confidence sets, and we propose a method for choosing tuning parameters.
Neural Correlates of Prior Expectations of Motion in the Lateral Intraparietal and Middle Temporal Areas

Successful decision making involves combining observations of the external world with prior knowledge. Recent studies suggest that neural activity in macaque lateral intraparietal area (LIP) provides a useful window into this process. This study examines how rapidly changing prior knowledge about an upcoming sensory stimulus influences the computations that convert sensory signals into plans for action. Two monkeys performed a cued direction discrimination task, in which an arrow cue presented at the start of each trial communicated the prior probability of the direction of stimulus motion. We hypothesized that the cue would either shift the initial level of LIP activity before sensory evidence arrived, or it would scale sensory responses according to the prior probability of each stimulus, manifesting as a change in slope of LIP firing rates. Neural recordings demonstrated a clear shift in the activity level of LIP neurons following the arrow cue, which persisted into the presentation of the motion stimulus. No significant change in slope of responses was observed, suggesting that sensory gain was not strongly modulated. To confirm the latter observation, middle temporal area (MT) neurons were recorded during a version of the cued direction discrimination task, and we found no change in MT responses resulting from the presentation of the directional cue. These results suggest that information about an immediately upcoming stimulus does not scale the sensory response, but rather changes the amount of evidence that must be accumulated to reach a decision in areas that are involved in planning action.