Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The role of PTSD, guilt and shame in predicting moral injury in veterans that have experienced active deployment

Paper one is a literature review of ten empirical studies. It reviews what is known about the relationship between killing in combat and PTSD, exploring the question within a military and veteran population. The findings highlighted that those who kill in combat are more likely to report greater severity of PTSD symptoms, although there is some disparity. Other factors, such as victim characteristics and gender, may influence this relationship. Some of the studies were limited by lack of a representative sample and generalisability. There were also issues with transparency, which limits the reliability of some of the conclusions made. Paper two is an empirical study. This was internet-mediated research which explored the relationship between PTSD, guilt, shame and moral injury in a British veteran population. 104 participants took part in the study. A standard multiple regression analysis was conducted on the data. Findings indicated a significant relationship between PTSD and moral injury. The results did not support the hypothesis that guilt and shame would predict moral injury. The findings are discussed, along with their clinical implications, limitations and direction for future research. Paper three is an executive summary. This has been written as an accessible document intended for dissemination of the findings of the empirical study to a veteran and general population. The research method, findings and clinical implications have been summarised within this report.
Efficient Isolation of Cardiac Stem Cells from Brown Adipose

Cardiac stem cells represent a logical cell type to exploit in cardiac regeneration. The efficient harvest of cardiac stem cells from a suitable source would turn promising in cardiac stem cell therapy. Brown adipose was recently found to be a new source of cardiac stem cells, instrumental to myocardial regeneration. Unfortunately, an efficient method for the cell isolation is unavailable so far. In our study we have developed a new method for the efficient isolation of cardiac stem cells from brown adipose by combining different enzymes. Results showed that the total cell yield dramatically increased (more than 10 times, P < .01) compared with that by previous method. The content of CD133-positive cells (reported to differentiate into cardiomyocytes with a high frequency) was much higher than that in the previous report (22.43% versus 3.5%). Moreover, the isolated cells could be the efficiently differentiated into functional cardiomyocytes in optimized conditions. Thus, the new method we established would be of great use in further exploring cardiac stem cell therapy.
An enhanced beamforming algorithm for three dimensional MIMO in LTE-advanced networks

Multiple input multiple output (MIMO) system with large number of antennas, referred to as massive MIMO, has drawn increasing attention for it enables very high throughput in LTE-Advanced networks. Massive MIMO arrays are expected to be implemented in a three dimensional (3D) array structure and 3D MIMO is introduced. Antenna propagation was considered only in horizontal domain during the past few years. In this paper, vertical domain of antenna is taken into account and the modeling of 3D channel is investigated. Furthermore, an enhanced dynamic beamforming algorithm is proposed where beamforming vector can be obtained according to both users' horizontal and vertical directions. Enhanced performance can be obtained by the proposed algorithm compared with conventional 2D beamforming. In addition, the impact of sector radius on spectral efficiency as well as cell coverage is analyzed and the optimal downtilts for different senarios are explored.
The P2P Network Experiment Council's Activities and Experiments with Application-Layer Traffic Optimization (ALTO) in Japan

This document describes experiments that clarify how an approach similar to Application-Layer Traffic Optimization (ALTO) was effective in reducing network traffic. These experiments were performed in Japan by the P2P Network Experiment Council in an attempt to harmonize peer- to-peer (P2P) technology with network infrastructure. Based on what was learned from these experiments, this document provides some suggestions that might be useful for the ALTO architecture and especially for application-independent ALTO- like server operation.
Optimal Use of Conservation and Accessibility Filters in MicroRNA Target Prediction

It is generally accepted that filtering microRNA (miRNA) target predictions by conservation or by accessibility can reduce the false discovery rate. However, these two strategies are usually not exploited in a combined and flexible manner. Here, we introduce PACCMIT, a flexible method that filters miRNA binding sites by their conservation, accessibility, or both. The improvement in performance obtained with each of these three filters is demonstrated on the prediction of targets for both i) highly and ii) weakly conserved miRNAs, i.e., in two scenarios in which the miRNA-target interactions are subjected to different evolutionary pressures. We show that in the first scenario conservation is a better filter than accessibility (as both sensitivity and precision are higher among the top predictions) and that the combined filter improves performance of PACCMIT even further. In the second scenario, on the other hand, the accessibility filter performs better than both the conservation and combined filters, suggesting that the site conservation is not equally effective in rejecting false positive predictions for all miRNAs. Regarding the quality of the ranking criterion proposed by Robins and Press and used in PACCMIT, it is shown that top ranking interactions correspond to more downregulated proteins than do the lower ranking interactions. Comparison with several other target prediction algorithms shows that the ranking of predictions provided by PACCMIT is at least as good as the ranking generated by other conservation-based methods and considerably better than the energy-based ranking used in other accessibility-based methods.
Does gender matter? A cross-national investigation of primary class-room discipline

ABSTRACT Fewer than 15% of primary school teachers in both Germany and the UK are male. With the on-going international debate about educational performance highlighting the widening gender achievement gap between girl and boy pupils, the demand for more male teachers has become prevalent in educational discourse. Concerns have frequently been raised about the underachievement of boys, with claims that the lack of male ‘role models’ in schools has an adverse effect on boys’ academic motivation and engagement. Although previous research has examined ‘teaching’ as institutional talk, men’s linguistic behaviour in the classroom remains largely ignored, especially in regard to enacting discipline. Using empirical spoken data collected from four primary school classrooms in both the UK and in Germany, this paper examines the linguistic discipline strategies of eight male and eight female teachers using Interactional Sociolinguistics to address the question, does teacher gender matter?
Effect of Immunosuppression on Newcastle Disease Virus Persistence in Ducks with Different Immune Status

This study was carried out to verify the possibility that ducks are sources of Newcastle disease (ND) virus infection for chickens in mixed flocks. Immunosuppressed (IS) and non immunosuppressed (NIS) birds, at three different antibody levels (medium, low and absent) were used; the titres having been induced through vaccination, and Immunosuppression done using dexamethazone. Each of the 3 respective groups was further divided into 2 groups of about 12 ducks each: one challenged with velogenic ND virus; the other not challenged. Selected ducks from all groups had their antibody titres monitored serially using hemagglutination inhibition test, while two birds from each of the challenged groups were killed and respective tissues processed for ND viral recovery, using chicken embryo fibroblasts. In general, antibody titres of IS and NIS challenged ducks were significantly higher than their unchallenged counterparts (P < 0.05). Non-challenged pre-immunised ducks had a progressive decrease in antibody levels; non-immunised ducks did not seroconvert. Newcastle disease virus was isolated from livers and kidneys of the challenged ducks throughout the experimental period; indicating a possibility of viral excretion, especially when the birds are stressed. It, therefore, provides another possible model of viral circulation within mixed flocks.
IFNα gene/cell therapy curbs colorectal cancer colonization of the liver by acting on the hepatic microenvironment

Colorectal cancer (CRC) metastatic dissemination to the liver is one of the most life‐threatening malignancies in humans and represents the leading cause of CRC‐related mortality. Herein, we adopted a gene transfer strategy into mouse hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells to generate immune‐competent mice in which TEMs—a subset of Tie2+ monocytes/macrophages found at peritumoral sites—express interferon‐alpha (IFNα), a pleiotropic cytokine with anti‐tumor effects. Utilizing this strategy in mouse models of CRC liver metastasis, we show that TEMs accumulate in the proximity of hepatic metastatic areas and that TEM‐mediated delivery of IFNα inhibits tumor growth when administered prior to metastasis challenge as well as on established hepatic lesions, improving overall survival. Further analyses unveiled that local delivery of IFNα does not inhibit homing but limits the early phases of hepatic CRC cell expansion by acting on the radio‐resistant hepatic microenvironment. TEM‐mediated IFNα expression was not associated with systemic side effects, hematopoietic toxicity, or inability to respond to a virus challenge. Along with the notion that TEMs were detected in the proximity of CRC metastases in human livers, these results raise the possibility to employ similar gene/cell therapies as tumor site‐specific drug‐delivery strategies in patients with CRC.
Metabolic reduction in the posterior cingulate cortex in very early Alzheimer's disease

This study investigated cerebral glucose metabolism in very early Alzheimer's disease, before a clinical diagnosis of probable Alzheimer's disease is possible, using [18F]fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography. First, 66 patients with probable Alzheimer's disease with a spectrum of dementia severity (Mini‐Mental State Examination score, 0–23) were recruited and studied. Cortical metabolic activity was analyzed topographically using three‐dimensional stereotactic surface projections. Regression analysis was performed for each brain pixel to predict metabolic patterns of very early disease. Predictions were tested prospectively in a group of 8 patients who complained only of memory impairment without general cognitive decline (Mini‐Mental State Examination score, 25 · 1) at the time of scanning but whose condition later progressed to probable Alzheimer's disease. Both results were compared to cerebral metabolic activity in 22 age‐similar normal control subjects. Prediction and analysis of actual patients consistently indicated marked metabolic reduction (21–22%) in the posterior cingulate cortex and cinguloparietal transitional area in patients with very early Alzheimer's disease. Mean metabolic reduction in the posterior cingulate cortex was significantly greater than that in the lateral neocortices or parahippocampal cortex. The result suggests a functional importance for the posterior cingulate cortex in impairment of learning and memory, which is a feature of very early Alzheimer's disease.
Spatial Analyses of the Impact of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families on Child Neglect Caseloads During the Great Recession

Abstract Loss of market income to families is recognized as a major risk factor of child neglect. In the 2008 recession, some poor families replaced their market incomes with cash assistance from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). Using secondary data for 42 contiguous jurisdictions and DC, we examined the relationship between increases in TANF caseloads and changes in substantiated child neglect cases in each of the contiguous jurisdiction’s 2008 recession. Key findings suggest that reductions in child neglect cases in the presence of increasing TANF caseloads were more profound in about half the states than any increases in child neglect cases found in the remainder of the states. Applying Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis tools, local spatial clusters were found in four neighboring states in the Midwest-South corridor suggesting that child neglect increases were similar and substantial across these four states. Our findings provide important information to stakeholders who may want to better target federal resources to specific geographic regions. Neighboring states experiencing large increases in child neglect during economic downturns may extend their collaborative efforts so they can develop strategies for improving services. Future research should explain the growth in child neglect with other variables aside from TANF caseloads.
Subclinical Bacteriuria in Older Cats and its Association with Survival

Background Bacterial urinary tract infections are uncommon in cats in general but the prevalence increases to 29% in older cats with comorbidities (Veterinary Clinical Pathology 2008, 37, 317; Journal of Feline Medicine & Surgery 2007, 9, 124; Veterinary Microbiology 2009, 136, 130). Frequently, the infections are subclinical. The clinical relevance of subclinical bacteriuria (SB) is uncertain, and the optimal treatment requires clarification. Objective Prospective, observational study to: (i) identify the prevalence and incidence count of SB in older (≥7 years), nonazotemic cats, (ii) evaluate specific risk factors for SB, and (iii) investigate the potential relationship between untreated SB and survival. Animals Sixty‐seven, nonazotemic cats were tested on 5 occasions over 3 years. Methods Urine samples were obtained by cystocentesis for quantitative urine culture and blood samples for measurement of serum creatinine concentration. Episodes of SB were not treated. Serum creatinine concentration, body weight, urine specific gravity, sex, and age were evaluated as potential risk factors for a positive urine culture. The association between urine culture results and survival was evaluated with Cox's proportional hazard model. Results A total of 256 urine samples was obtained. The prevalence of SB varied between 10 and 13%, and incident infections were uncommon. Female cats were 21 times more likely to have a positive urine culture than were male cats (odds ratio [OR], 21.2; confidence interval [CI], 4.1–110; P = .00028). Subclinical bacteriuria was not significantly associated with survival. Conclusion and clinical importance Subclinical bacteriuria is common in nonazotemic, older cats. Although antimicrobial treatment was withheld, the presence of SB was not adversely associated with survival.
Integration of Neural Networks and Probabilistic Spatial Models for Acoustic Blind Source Separation

We formulate a generic framework for blind source separation (BSS), which allows integrating data-driven spectro-temporal methods, such as deep clustering and deep attractor networks, with physically motivated probabilistic spatial methods, such as complex angular central Gaussian mixture models. The integrated model exploits the complementary strengths of the two approaches to BSS: the strong modeling power of neural networks, which, however, is based on supervised learning, and the ease of unsupervised learning of the spatial mixture models whose few parameters can be estimated on as little as a single segment of a real mixture of speech. Experiments are carried out on both artificially mixed speech and true recordings of speech mixtures. The experiments verify that the integrated models consistently outperform the individual components. We further extend the models to cope with noisy, reverberant speech and introduce a cross-domain teacher–student training where the mixture model serves as the teacher to provide training targets for the student neural network.
CTH10-4: High-rate, Double-Symbol-Decodable STBCs from Clifford Algebras

For the number of transmit antennas N = 2a the maximum rate (in complex symbols per channel use) of all the Quasi-Orthogonal Designs (QODs) reported in the literature is a/2 a-1. In this paper, we report double-symbol-decodable Space- Time Block Codes with rate a-1/2 a-2 for N = 2a transmit antennas. In particular, our code for 8 and 16 transmit antennas offer rates 1 and 3/4 respectively, the known QODs offer only 3/4 and 1/2 respectively. Our construction is based on the representations of Clifford algebras and applicable for any number of transmit antennas. We study the diversity sum and diversity product of our codes. We show that our diversity sum is larger than that of all known QODs and hence our codes perform better than the comparable QODs at low SNRs for identical spectral efficiency. We provide simulation results for various spectral efficiencies.
Automated e-business negotiation: model, life cycle, and system architecture

ABSTRACT (cont.): This dissertation focuses on the negotiation messages and the negotiation decision model. The other elements have been dealt with in a previous work that involves the implementation of an Internet-based negotiation server. Messages passed between replicated negotiation servers are defined in terms of business object documents in the XML format. They correspond to the primitive operations needed to implement the negotiation protocol. The negotiation decision model formally defines the relationship between a business enterprise's mini-world, negotiation contexts, negotiation goals, plans of decisions and actions, negotiation policies, negotiation strategies, and cost-benefit evaluation and selection. The negotiation life cycle divides the entire negotiation process into four phases: analysis, design, execution, and post-negotiation analysis. The results from the upstream phases are used as inputs in the downstream phases. Since business negotiation is an iterative and continuous process, a feedback mechanism from the post-negotiation analysis phase to previous phases is also included. A system architecture based on the negotiation model and the negotiation life cycle model is proposed, and its implementation is described.
Task-Relevant and Accessory Items in Working Memory Have Opposite Effects on Activity in Extrastriate Cortex

During visual search, the working memory (WM) representation of the search target guides attention to matching items in the visual scene. However, we can hold multiple items in WM. Do all these items guide attention at the same time? Using a new functional magnetic resonance imaging visual search paradigm, we found that items in WM can attain two different states that influence activity in extrastriate visual cortex in opposite directions: whereas the target item in WM enhanced processing of matching visual input, other “accessory” items in memory suppressed activity. These results imply that the representation of task-relevant and (currently) task-irrelevant representations in WM differs, revealing new insights into the organization of human visual WM. The suppressive influence of irrelevant WM items may complement the attention-guiding influence of task-relevant WM items, helping us to focus on task-relevant information without getting distracted by irrelevant memory content.
An exploration of semantic features in an unsupervised thematic ﬁt evaluation framework

English. Thematic ﬁt is the extent to which an entity ﬁts a thematic role in the semantic frame of an event, e.g., how well humans would rate “knife” as an instrument of an event of cutting. We explore the use of the SENNA semantic role-labeller in deﬁning a distributional space in order to build an unsupervised model of event-entity thematic ﬁt judgements. We test a number of ways of extracting features from SENNA-labelled versions of the ukWaC and BNC corpora and identify tradeoffs. Some of our Distributional Memory models outperform an existing syntax-based model (TypeDM) that uses hand-crafted rules for role inference on a previously tested data set. We combine the results of a selected SENNA-based model with TypeDM’s results and ﬁnd that there is some amount of complementarity in what a syntactic and a semantic model will cover. In the process, we create a broad-coverage semantically-labelled corpus.
Decreased Expression of Transcription Elongation Factor A-Like 7 Is Associated with Gastric Adenocarcinoma Prognosis

Background We sought to investigate the expression levels and prognosis value of TCEAL7 in primary gastric cancer. Methods and Results We investigated TCEAL7 and other homologous five members of the TCEAL family expression in normal gastricepithelial cell line and gastric cancer cell lines using real-time quantitative PCR. Furthermore, we examined the expression of TCEAL7 in 39 paired cancerous and matched adjacent noncancerous gastric mucosa tissues by real-time quantitative PCR and western blotting. Moreover, we analyzed TCEAL7 expression in 406 gastric cancer patients using immunohistochemistry. The relationships between the TCEAL7 expression levels, the clinicopathological factors, and patient survival were investigated. RT- qPCR data showed that mRNA expression level of TCEAL7 was significantly lower in the gastric cancer cell lines comparing with the levels of other five members of the TCEAL family. Results also revealed decreased TCEAL7 mRNA (P = 0.025) and protein (P = 0.012) expression in tumor tissue samples compared with matched adjacent non-tumor tissue samples. Immunohistochemical staining data showed that TCEAL7 expression was significantly decreased in 43.3% of gastric adenocarcinoma cases. The result also showed that the low TCEAL7 expression was significantly correlated with female, larger tumor size, higher histological grade and worse nodal status. Kaplan–Meier survival curves revealed that the reduced expression of TCEAL7 was associated with a poor prognosis in gastric adenocarcinoma patients (P<0.001). Based on a univariate analysis that included all 406 patients, TCEAL7 expression was found to have statistically significant associations with overall survival (P<0.001). Multivariate analysis also demonstrated that TCEAL7 expression (P = 0.009), age, tumor size, histological grade, lymphovascular invasion, T stage, N stage and M stage were independent risk factors in the prognosis of gastric cancer patients. Conclusions Our study suggests that TCEAL7 might serve as a candidate tumor suppressor and a potential prognostic biomarker in gastric carcinogenesis.