Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impact of adjuvant breast cancer chemotherapy on fatigue, other symptoms, and quality of life.

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES To identify differences in fatigue, other physical symptoms, and psychological symptoms and their relationship to quality of life (QOL) during chemotherapy and as long as one year after. DESIGN Longitudinal, descriptive design embedded in a pilot intervention study. SETTING Midwestern urban oncology clinics and patient homes. SAMPLE 25 Caucasian women, aged 40-65 years (-X = 54.3), with stage I or II breast cancer receiving doxorubicin-based chemotherapy. METHODS The Piper Fatigue Scale, Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, Symptom Experience Scale, and Medical Outcomes Study Short-Form General Health Survey were completed before and after each treatment; 30, 60, and 90 days after the last treatment; and one year after the first treatment. MAIN RESEARCH VARIABLES Fatigue, physical and psychological symptoms, and QOL. FINDINGS Fatigue levels were moderately intense during treatments and decreased significantly over time. Sleep disturbances and pain were the most frequent, intense, and distressing other physical symptoms. Anxiety was highest at baseline, and depression was highest during the fourth chemotherapy treatment. Fatigue was correlated with other physical and psychological symptoms at some times during treatments and consistently following treatments. Higher fatigue was associated with lower QOL in several domains. CONCLUSIONS Fatigue is associated with other physical and psychological symptoms that fluctuate during and after treatment. Higher fatigue compromises QOL. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING Interventions targeting primary or cluster symptoms can reduce the impact of adjuvant chemotherapy on fatigue, other symptoms, and QOL.
On the Cross-Correlation between the Arrival Direction of Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays, BL Lacertae Objects, and EGRET Detections: A New Way to Identify EGRET Sources?

With the aim of testing recent claims for a particularly strong correlation between ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs), observed with the AGASA and Yakutsk experiments, and a sample of BL Lacertae objects, we conduct a blind statistical assessment. We search for associations between the same set of BL Lac objects and the arrival directions of 33 relevant UHECRs observed with the Haverah Park and Volcano Ranch experiments. Within the accuracy of the angle determination, there are no positional coincidences. The probability that this null result arises as a statistical fluctuation from the strongly correlated case is less than 5%. This implies that the possible correlation between the arrival directions of UHECRs and BL Lac objects is not statistically sustained. We discuss the impact of our findings on the proposed additional connection among UHECRs, BL Lac objects, and EGRET γ-ray blazars. Recently, such an association was used as a classification technique for EGRET sources. Here we show that its main underlying hypothesis (i.e., the EGRET angular uncertainty is twice that quoted in the third EGRET catalog) grossly underestimates the goodness of existing γ-ray data.
Membrane permeability of trace amines: Evidence for a regulated, activity‐dependent, nonexocytotic, synaptic release

Both pre‐ and post‐synaptic effects of trace amines have been demonstrated. The putative intracellular location of Trace Amine‐Associated Receptors necessitate that membrane transport processes be present in order for post‐synaptic effects to occur. Here we examine the ability of trace amines to cross synthetic (Fluorosomes) and native (synaptosomes) lipid bilayer membranes. Trace amines readily crossed Fluorosome membranes by simple diffusion, p‐tyramine (P = 0.01) and tryptamine (P = 0.0004) showing significantly faster diffusion than dopamine and 5‐HT, respectively, with diffusion half‐lives of 13.5 ± 4.1 (p‐tyramine) and 6.8 ± 0.7 seconds (tryptamine). Similarly, release of [3H]p‐tyramine and [3H]2‐phenylethylamine from pre‐loaded synaptosomes occurred significantly quicker than did [3H]dopamine (P = 0.0001), with half lives of 38.9 (p‐tyramine), 7.8 (2‐phenylethylamine) and 133.6 seconds (dopamine). This was, however, significantly slower than the diffusion mediated passage across Fluorosome membranes (P = 0.0001), suggesting a role for transporters in mediating trace amine release. Further, a pronounced shoulder region was observed in the synaptosome [3H]p‐tyramine release curve, suggesting that multiple processes regulate release. No such shoulder region was present for [3H]dopamine release. Surprisingly, both [3H]p‐tyramine (P = 0.001) and [3H]2‐phenylethylamine (P = 0.0001) release from synaptosomes was significantly decreased under depolarizing conditions. As expected, depolarization significantly increased [3H]dopamine release. The data presented indicate that the release of p‐tyramine and 2‐phenylethylamine from neuronal terminals occurs by a different mechanism than dopamine, and does not involve classical exocytosis. The data are consistent with an initial release of trace amines by simple diffusion, followed by an activity‐dependent regulation of synaptic levels via one or more transporter proteins. Synapse 67:656–667, 2013. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Mechanism of Formation of Human Calcium Oxalate Renal Stones on Randall's Plaque

Although calcium oxalate (CaOx) renal stones are known to grow attached to renal papillae, and specifically to regions of papillae that contain Randall's plaque (interstitial apatite deposits), the mechanisms of stone overgrowth on plaque are not known. To investigate the problem, we have obtained biopsy specimens from two stone patients that included an attached stone along with its tissue base and have studied the ultrastructural features of the attachment point using light and transmission electron microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (μ‐FTIR), and immunohistochemical analysis. The epithelium is disrupted at the attachment site. The denuded plaque that borders on the urinary space attracts an envelope of ribbon‐like laminates of crystal and organic matrix arising from urine ions and molecules. Into the matrix of this ribbon grow amorphous apatite crystals that merge with and give way to the usual small apatite crystals imbedded in stone matrix; eventually CaOx crystals admix with apatite and become the predominant solid phase. Over time, urine calcium and oxalate ions gradually overgrow on the large crystals forming the attached stone. Anat Rec, 290:1315‐1323, 2007. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
THE ANTICYCLOTOMIC MAIN CONJECTURE FOR ELLIPTIC CURVES AT SUPERSINGULAR PRIMES

The Main Conjecture of Iwasawa theory for an elliptic curve $E$ over $\mathbb{Q}$ and the anticyclotomic $\mathbb{Z}_p$-extension of an imaginary quadratic field $K$ was studied in \cite{bertolini_darmon}, in the case where $p$ is a prime of ordinary reduction for $E$. Analogous results are formulated, and proved, in the case where $p$ is a prime of supersingular reduction. The foundational study of supersingular main conjectures carried out by Perrin-Riou, Pollack, Kurihara, Kobayashi and Iovita and Pollack are required to handle this case in which many of the simplifying features of the ordinary setting break down.
A discrete event simulation to model passenger flow in the airport terminal

The Paper describes the analysis of passenger flow in the terminal airport, from entrance to boarding. In particular this study develops a simulation model. Based on the Discrete Event theory, that can be used to build a structure that helps to predict delay and to produce a logical and rational management of check-in and security checkpoint inside the airport terminal. The proposed model, tested in the South Italian reality (Capodichino - Naples International Airport), has a modular architecture and interface, enabling quick and easy model building and providing the capability of being adaptable to the configuration and operational characteristics of a wide range of airport terminals.
Tercihlerde Benzerlik Teorisinin Sınanması: Fildişi Sahili Cumhuriyeti’nin Waemu’ya İhracatının Panel Çekim Modeliyle Analizi

Bu calismada Fildisi Sahili Cumhuriyeti’nin WAEMU ulkelerine (Benin, Burkina Faso, Gine Bisav, Mali, Nijer, Senegal ve Togo) yaptigi ihracat arastirilmistir. “Tercihlerde Benzerlik Teorisi” baglaminda yapilan calismada, Panel Data yontemi ve Panel Cekim Modeli kullanilmistir. Analiz 2001-2014 yillarini kapsamaktadir. Analiz sonucuna gore, Fildisi Sahili Cumhuriyeti’nin ihracati ile WAEMU ulkelerinin okyanusa kiyisinin olmasi, ortak kara sinirlarinin olmasi ve nufuslarinin fazlaligi arasinda dogru yonlu iliski tespit edilmistir. Ancak Fildisi Sahili Cumhuriyeti’nin ihracati ile WAEMU ulkelerinin Fildisi Sahili Cumhuriyeti’ne fiziki uzakliklari arasinda ters yonlu iliski bulunmustur.
Horizons in nutritional science : The case for strategic international alliances to harness nutritional genomics for public and personal health.

Nutrigenomics is the study of how constituents of the diet interact with genes, and their products, to alter phenotype and, conversely, how genes and their products metabolise these constituents into nutrients, antinutrients, and bioactive compounds. Results from molecular and genetic epidemiological studies indicate that dietary unbalance can alter gene–nutrient interactions in ways that increase the risk of developing chronic disease. The interplay of human genetic variation and environmental factors will make identifying causative genes and nutrients a formidable, but not intractable, challenge. We provide specific recommendations for how to best meet this challenge and discuss the need for new methodologies and the use of comprehensive analyses of nutrient–genotype interactions involving large and diverse populations. The objective of the present paper is to stimulate discourse and collaboration among nutrigenomic researchers and stakeholders, a process that will lead to an increase in global health and wellness by reducing health disparities in developed and developing countries.
Networks and epidemic models

Networks and the epidemiology of directly transmitted infectious diseases are fundamentally linked. The foundations of epidemiology and early epidemiological models were based on population wide random-mixing, but in practice each individual has a finite set of contacts to whom they can pass infection; the ensemble of all such contacts forms a ‘mixing network’. Knowledge of the structure of the network allows models to compute the epidemic dynamics at the population scale from the individual-level behaviour of infections. Therefore, characteristics of mixing networks—and how these deviate from the random-mixing norm—have become important applied concerns that may enhance the understanding and prediction of epidemic patterns and intervention measures. Here, we review the basis of epidemiological theory (based on random-mixing models) and network theory (based on work from the social sciences and graph theory). We then describe a variety of methods that allow the mixing network, or an approximation to the network, to be ascertained. It is often the case that time and resources limit our ability to accurately find all connections within a network, and hence a generic understanding of the relationship between network structure and disease dynamics is needed. Therefore, we review some of the variety of idealized network types and approximation techniques that have been utilized to elucidate this link. Finally, we look to the future to suggest how the two fields of network theory and epidemiological modelling can deliver an improved understanding of disease dynamics and better public health through effective disease control.
Increased energy intake following sleep restriction in men and women: A one-size fits all conclusion?

This study assessed the degree of interindividual responses in energy intake (EI) to an imposed sleep restriction versus habitual sleep duration protocol. It also investigated participant (age, sex, ethnicity, and BMI) and study (study site and protocol order) characteristics as potential contributors to the variance in EI responses to sleep restriction between individuals.
Gyrokinetic equivalence

We compare two different derivations of the gyrokinetic equation: the Hamiltonian approach in Dubin D H E et al (1983 Phys. Fluids 26 3524) and the recursive methodology in Parra F I and Catto P J (2008 Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion 50 065014). We prove that both approaches yield the same result at least to second order in a Larmor radius over macroscopic length expansion. There are subtle differences in the definitions of some of the functions that need to be taken into account to prove the equivalence.
Bottom of the Heap: Having Heavier Competitors Accelerates Early-Life Telomere Loss in the European Starling, Sturnus vulgaris

Early-life adversity is associated with poorer health and survival in adulthood in humans and other animals. One pathway by which early-life environmental stressors could affect the adult phenotype is via effects on telomere dynamics. Several studies have shown that early-life adversity is associated with relatively short telomeres, but these are often cross-sectional and usually correlational in design. Here, we present a novel experimental system for studying the relationship between early-life adversity and telomere dynamics using a wild bird, the European starling (Sturnus vulgaris). We used cross-fostering to experimentally assign sibling chicks to either small or large broods for twelve days of the growth period. We measured telomere length in red blood cells using quantitative PCR near the beginning of the experimental manipulation (4 days old), at the end of the experimental manipulation (15 days old), and once the birds were independent (55 days old). Being in a larger brood slowed growth and retarded wing development and the timing of fledging. We found no evidence that overall brood size affected telomere dynamics. However, the greater the number of competitors above the focal bird in the within-brood size hierarchy, the greater was the telomere loss during the period of the experimental manipulation. The number of competitors below the focal in the hierarchy had no effect. The effect of heavier competitors was still evident when we controlled for the weight of the focal bird at the end of the manipulation, suggesting it was not due to retarded growth per se. Moreover, the impact of early competition on telomeres was still evident at independence, suggesting persistence beyond early life. Our study provides experimental support for the hypothesis that social stress, in this case induced by the presence of a greater number of dominant competitors, accelerates the rate of telomere loss.
Stochastic Analysis of the $k$-Server Problem on the Circle

We consider a stochastic version of the $k$-server problem in which $k$ servers move on a circle to satisfy stochastically generated requests. The requests are independent and identically distributed according to an arbitrary distribution on a circle, which is either discrete or continuous. The cost of serving a request is the distance that a server needs to move to reach the request. The goal is to minimize the steady-state expected cost induced by the requests. We study the performance of a greedy strategy, focusing, in particular, on its convergence properties and the interplay between the discrete and continuous versions of the process.
Model Checking Semantically Annotated Services

Model checking is a formal verification method widely accepted in the web service world because of its capability to reason about service behavior at process level. It has been used as a basic tool in several scenarios such as service selection, service validation, and service composition. The importance of semantics is also widely recognized. Indeed, there are several solutions to the problem of providing semantics to web services, most of them relying on some form of Description Logic. This paper presents an integration of model checking and semantic reasoning technologies in an efficient way. This can be considered the first step toward the use of semantic model checking in problems of selection, validation, and composition. The approach relies on a representation of services at process level that is based on semantically annotated state transition systems (asts) and a representation of specifications based on a semantically annotated version of computation tree logic (anctl). This paper proves that the semantic model checking algorithm is sound and complete and can be accomplished in polynomial time. This approach has been evaluated with several experiments.
Improving low-resource CD-DNN-HMM using dropout and multilingual DNN training

We investigate two strategies to improve the context-dependent deep neural network hidden Markov model (CD-DNN-HMM) in low-resource speech recognition. Although outperforming the conventional Gaussian mixture model (GMM) HMM on various tasks, CD-DNN-HMM acoustic modeling becomes challenging with limited transcribed speech, e.g., less than 10 hours. To resolve this issue, we firstly exploit dropout which prevents overfitting in DNN finetuning and improves model robustness under data sparseness. Then, the effectiveness of multilingual DNN training is evaluated when additional auxiliary languages are available. The hidden layer parameters of the target language are shared and learned over multiple languages. Experiments show that both strategies boost the recognition performance significantly. Combining them results in further reduction in word error rate, achieving 11.6% and 6.2% relative improvement on two limited data conditions.
Guidelines for Systematic Review in Conservation and Environmental Management

Abstract: An increasing number of applied disciplines are utilizing evidence‐based frameworks to review and disseminate the effectiveness of management and policy interventions. The rationale is that increased accessibility of the best available evidence will provide a more efficient and less biased platform for decision making. We argue that there are significant benefits for conservation in using such a framework, but the scientific community needs to undertake and disseminate more systematic reviews before the full benefit can be realized. We devised a set of guidelines for undertaking formalized systematic review, based on a health services model. The guideline stages include planning and conducting a review, including protocol formation, search strategy, data inclusion, data extraction, and analysis. Review dissemination is addressed in terms of current developments and future plans for a Web‐based open‐access library. By the use of case studies we highlight critical modifications to guidelines for protocol formulation, data‐quality assessment, data extraction, and data synthesis for conservation and environmental management. Ecological data presented significant but soluble challenges for the systematic review process, particularly in terms of the quantity, accessibility, and diverse quality of available data. In the field of conservation and environmental management there needs to be further engagement of scientists and practitioners to develop and take ownership of an evidence‐based framework.
Of isbræ and ice streams

Abstract Fast-flowing ice streams and outlet glaciers provide the major avenues for ice flow from past and present ice sheets. These ice streams move faster than the surrounding ice sheet by a factor of 100 or more. Several mechanisms for fast ice-stream flow have been identified, leading to a spectrum of different ice-stream types. In this paper we discuss the two end members of this spectrum, which we term the “ice-stream” type (represented by the Siple Coast ice streams in West Antarctica) and the “isbræ” type (represented by Jakobshavn Isbræ in Greenland). The typical ice stream is wide, relatively shallow (∼1000 m), has a low surface slope and driving stress (∼10 kPa), and ice-stream location is not strongly controlled by bed topography. Fast flow is possible because the ice stream has a slippery bed, possibly underlain by weak, actively deforming sediments. The marginal shear zones are narrow and support most of the driving stress, and the ice deforms almost exclusively by transverse shear. The margins seem to be inherently unstable; they migrate, and there are plausible mechanisms for such ice streams to shut down. The isbræ type of ice stream is characterized by very high driving stresses, often exceeding 200 kPa. They flow through deep bedrock channels that are significantly deeper than the surrounding ice, and have steep surface slopes. Ice deformation includes vertical as well as lateral shear, and basal motion need not contribute significantly to the overall motion. The marginal shear zone stend to be wide relative to the isbræ width, and the location of isbræ and its margins is strongly controlled by bedrock topography. They are stable features, and can only shut down if the high ice flux cannot be supplied from the adjacent ice sheet. Isbræs occur in Greenland and East Antarctica, and possibly parts of Pine Island and Thwaites Glaciers, West Antarctica. In this paper, we compare and contrast the two types of ice streams, addressing questions such as ice deformation, basal motion, subglacial hydrology, seasonality of ice flow, and stability of the ice streams.
Syntactic Unification Operations Are Reflected in Oscillatory Dynamics during On-line Sentence Comprehension

There is growing evidence suggesting that synchronization changes in the oscillatory neuronal dynamics in the EEG or MEG reflect the transient coupling and uncoupling of functional networks related to different aspects of language comprehension. In this work, we examine how sentence-level syntactic unification operations are reflected in the oscillatory dynamics of the MEG. Participants read sentences that were either correct, contained a word category violation, or were constituted of random word sequences devoid of syntactic structure. A time–frequency analysis of MEG power changes revealed three types of effects. The first type of effect was related to the detection of a (word category) violation in a syntactically structured sentence, and was found in the alpha and gamma frequency bands. A second type of effect was maximally sensitive to the syntactic manipulations: A linear increase in beta power across the sentence was present for correct sentences, was disrupted upon the occurrence of a word category violation, and was absent in syntactically unstructured random word sequences. We therefore relate this effect to syntactic unification operations. Thirdly, we observed a linear increase in theta power across the sentence for all syntactically structured sentences. The effects are tentatively related to the building of a working memory trace of the linguistic input. In conclusion, the data seem to suggest that syntactic unification is reflected by neuronal synchronization in the lower-beta frequency band.