Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Alcohol Use Behaviors, Fat Intake and the Function of Pancreatic β-Cells in Non-Obese, Healthy Korean Males: Findings from 2010 Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey

Aims: In the present study, we aimed to identify dietary factors related to insulin secretion function especially in healthy, non-obese Korean males. Methods: Data were obtained from the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey V-1 (KNHANES V-1). Nine hundred and twenty male adults aged >30 years of normal weight were included, excluding those with type 2 diabetes mellitus and liver disease. Alcohol use disorders identification test (AUDIT) score which represents alcohol use behaviors and nutrient intakes was used, and homeostasis model assessment of β-cell function (HOMA-B score) was calculated. Results: HOMA-B score was associated with age (p < 0.001), AUDIT score (p = 0.030), and percentage of fat from total energy intake (p = 0.002). HOMA-B scores in the problematic AUDIT group were significantly lower than those in the normal AUDIT group. In addition, HOMA-B scores in the lowest fat intake group were significantly lower than those in the medium fat intake group, but similar to those in the highest fat intake group. There was an interaction between alcohol use behaviors and percentage of fat from energy intake in determining HOMA-B score (p for interaction = 0.034). Conclusions: Alcohol use behaviors and percentage of fat from energy intake were found to be associated with HOMA-B score in healthy, non-obese Korean males.
Phase Diagram and Storage Capacity of Sequence-Storing Neural Networks

We solve the dynamics of Hopfield-type neural networks which store sequences of patterns, close to saturation. The asymmetry of the interaction matrix in such models leads to violation of detailed balance, ruling out an equilibrium statistical mechanical analysis. Using generating functional methods we derive exact closed equations for dynamical order parameters, viz. the sequence overlap and correlation and response functions. in the limit of an infinite system size. We calculate the time translation invariant solutions of these equations. describing stationary limit-cycles. which leads to a phase diagram. The effective retarded self-interaction usually appearing in symmetric models is here found to vanish, which causes a significantly enlarged storage capacity of αc ≈ 0.269. compared to αc ≈ 0.139 for Hopfield networks storing static patterns. Our results are tested against extensive computer simulations and excellent agreement is found.
Quantification of Geometrical and Morphological Characteristics of Desiccation Crack and Shrinkage Behavior of Composite Clay Liner

Clay soil and their related irregular behavior such as shrinkage, swelling, desiccation cracks etc. are the main concern for the construction of composite clay liner (CCL) in waste landfill site. In this study, an investigation was conducted on a scaled model of prototype landfill liner to quantify both the geometrical and morphological characteristics of desiccation crack of CCL. For evaluating its cracking behavior cement, Khoa Brick and fiber were used as additives for two phases of investigation. In this study, for the quantification of geometrical and morphological characteristics of desiccation crack of CCL, both the image-based algorithms on MATLAB and Image J software was performed. To evaluate additives significance on soil, surface crack ratio, average length and width of cracks, number of crack segments, crack density and others related parameters were determined. Results showed significant impact on clayed soil due to presence of various types and percentages of additives. Experiential results depicted that surface crack ratio increases with reducing water content on prototype sample and finally stabilized its propagation. For preparing CCL with clay from selected landfill site of Khulna the optimum content of additives were found 5, 5 and 1.5% for Khoa Brick, cement and polymer fiber, respectively.
External Validity: From Do-Calculus to Transportability Across Populations

The generalizability of empirical findings to new environments, settings or populations, often called "external validity," is essential in most scientific explorations. This paper treats a particular problem of generalizability, called "transportability," defined as a license to transfer causal effects learned in experimental studies to a new population, in which only observational studies can be conducted. We introduce a formal representation called "selection diagrams" for expressing knowledge about differences and commonalities between populations of interest and, using this representation, we reduce questions of transportability to symbolic derivations in the do-calculus. This reduction yields graph-based procedures for deciding, prior to observing any data, whether causal effects in the target population can be inferred from experimental findings in the study population. When the answer is affirmative, the procedures identify what experimental and observational findings need be obtained from the two populations, and how they can be combined to ensure bias-free transport.
Founder Mutations in Myosin-Binding Protein C: Maybe Not So Benign After All.

Linkage studies and genetic sequencing in families with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) in the 1980s and 1990s established the sarcomere as the genetic basis for HCM.1 In contemporary cohorts, a pathogenic mutation is found in about half of patients with HCM, with ≈50% of these mutations in MYBPC3 (myosin-binding protein C). 2,3 Many mutations are unique or seen in a limited number of families. However, in some geographically or culturally isolated populations, founder mutations have arisen from common ancestors many generations ago. The reported frequency of founder mutations for HCM ranges considerably among different countries, with the highest reported prevalence being in Iceland, where almost 90% of all sarcomere gene mutation carriers harbor a single founder mutation in MYBPC3 , comprising 67% of the entire HCM population.4 The vast majority of founder mutations in HCM across all reported studies are found in MYBPC3 , with fewer reported in MYH7 (myosin), TNNT2 (troponin T), and TPM1 (tropomyosin). 5 Because of the need for founder mutations to withstand negative selection pressure to perpetuate through multiple generations, there is a general perception that founder mutations confer a more benign phenotype and disease course.4,6,7 This view has been supported by a previous study in France, which found that carriers of a founder mutation identified in 8% of their HCM population were diagnosed 15 years later and experienced a delayed onset of disease complications compared with carriers of other sarcomere gene mutations.8 However, other studies have observed relative equivalence between carriers of founder and nonfounder mutations.5,9 All of the previously reported studies are limited by relatively small numbers and some by incomplete genotyping in comparator HCM cohorts, which could confound results. Most studies have also not distinguished between probands and relatives of probands …
Impact of pain in vertebral column on activities of daily living in the Iranian amputees with bilateral lower limb amputation

Purpose: To determine the impact of pain in the vertebral column on the activities of daily living (ADL) level of war victims with bilateral lower limb amputation. Method: All the war-related bilateral lower limb amputees were invited. More than half of them (n = 335) participated and underwent a thorough assessment after giving informed consent. Results: The majority of the participants were male (97.6%). Their mean age was 42 years and 97.6% of them were married. The most common causes of injury leading to amputation were shells of artillery and mortar (56.7%). The most common level of amputation was bilateral transtibial (37.6%) and 64% were wearing the prosthesis of both sides. The most ADL dependency were transfer activities (27.8%) and bathing (23.3%) and the most independent functioning was eating (97.6%). Upper cervical vertebral pain was associated with dependency in the bowel and bladder management and dressing (p < 0.03 and p < 0.04, respectively). Pain in the lower cervical vertebrae was associated with dependency in toileting and dressing (p < 0.01 and p < 0.01, respectively). There were significant relationships between pain in the thoracic vertebrae and dependency in bathing, transfer activities and toileting (p < 0.02, p < 0.003 and p < 0.03, respectively). Pain in the lumbosacral region had a relationship with the level of amputation, transfer activities and toileting (p < 0.006, p < 0.03 and p < 0.05, respectively). Conclusions: Vertebral pain in bilateral lower limb amputees, especially lumbosacral pain, was accompanied with higher dependency in ADL. Therefore, a multidisciplinary approach to the management of pain is required to minimize disability and maximize functioning. Implications for Rehabilitation As common as back pain in the general population, some studies have found that people with lower limb amputation are at even greater risk of back pain and interference with their lifestyle. The results of this study suggest that after bilateral lower extremity amputations, some patients experience various kinds of pain in the spinal column, which may affect their activities of daily living. A multidisciplinary approach to the management of pain is necessary to minimize disability and maximize functioning in these patients.
A Monte Carlo Evaluation of Weighted Community Detection Algorithms

The past decade has been marked with a proliferation of community detection algorithms that aim to organize nodes (e.g., individuals, brain regions, variables) into modular structures that indicate subgroups, clusters, or communities. Motivated by the emergence of big data across many fields of inquiry, these methodological developments have primarily focused on the detection of communities of nodes from matrices that are very large. However, it remains unknown if the algorithms can reliably detect communities in smaller graph sizes (i.e., 1000 nodes and fewer) which are commonly used in brain research. More importantly, these algorithms have predominantly been tested only on binary or sparse count matrices and it remains unclear the degree to which the algorithms can recover community structure for different types of matrices, such as the often used cross-correlation matrices representing functional connectivity across predefined brain regions. Of the publicly available approaches for weighted graphs that can detect communities in graph sizes of at least 1000, prior research has demonstrated that Newman's spectral approach (i.e., Leading Eigenvalue), Walktrap, Fast Modularity, the Louvain method (i.e., multilevel community method), Label Propagation, and Infomap all recover communities exceptionally well in certain circumstances. The purpose of the present Monte Carlo simulation study is to test these methods across a large number of conditions, including varied graph sizes and types of matrix (sparse count, correlation, and reflected Euclidean distance), to identify which algorithm is optimal for specific types of data matrices. The results indicate that when the data are in the form of sparse count networks (such as those seen in diffusion tensor imaging), Label Propagation and Walktrap surfaced as the most reliable methods for community detection. For dense, weighted networks such as correlation matrices capturing functional connectivity, Walktrap consistently outperformed the other approaches for recovering communities.
Pulmonary arterial hypertension in congenital heart disease

GREAT STRIDES have been made in the surgery of congenital heart disease during the past 20 years. The progress that dates from the first ligation of a patent ductus arteriosus in 1938, and culminates in the successful use of the pump-oxygenator technic in open-heart surgery, has made approximately 85 per cent of the defects in patients over 2 years of age potentially correctible today. The advent of these technics, and the understandable enthusiasm of cardiac surgeons for them, places a particular responsibility on the cardiologist. Indication for and optimal timing of corrective surgery may be very difficult to determine in the individual case. In the lesions grouped under the heading of "left-to-right shunts," which includes atrial and ventricular defects as well as patent ductus arteriosus, the question of operative indication is tied closely to the problem of pulmonary hypertension. When surgery on patent ductus arteriosus was first begun, it became obvious that patients with significant elevation of the pulmonary arterial pressure did not tolerate division of the ductus as well as those without pulmonary arterial hypertension. The same observations were made in regard to correction of atrial defects and more recently in regard to ventricular defects. These experiences led to closer examination
Scalable Topical Phrase Mining from Text Corpora

While most topic modeling algorithms model text corpora with unigrams, human interpretation often relies on inherent grouping of terms into phrases. As such, we consider the problem of discovering topical phrases of mixed lengths. Existing work either performs post processing to the results of unigram-based topic models, or utilizes complex n-gram-discovery topic models. These methods generally produce low-quality topical phrases or suffer from poor scalability on even moderately-sized datasets. We propose a different approach that is both computationally efficient and effective. Our solution combines a novel phrase mining framework to segment a document into single and multi-word phrases, and a new topic model that operates on the induced document partition. Our approach discovers high quality topical phrases with negligible extra cost to the bag-of-words topic model in a variety of datasets including research publication titles, abstracts, reviews, and news articles.
Computation of temperature elevation in fetus due to radio-frequency exposure with a new thermal modeling

The temperature elevation in the fetus is of concern for radio-frequency exposure. According to the IEC standard, the temperature elevation in the fetus should be lower than 0.5°C for exposure in magnetic resonance equipment. However, no previous study succeeded to simulate the temperature difference between the fetus and mother in the thermoneutral condition. The present study proposes a new thermal modeling for the pregnant woman model. The thermal modeling is then applied to the temperature variation for plane wave exposure at 80 MHz. From computational results, the core temperature in the fetus at the themoneutral condition was 37.5°C, which is 0.35°C larger than that of the mother and coincident with measured data. When the pregnant woman model is irradiated by the plane wave with the whole-body averaged specific absorption rate of 2 W/kg for 1 hour, the temperature elevation in the fetus is 0.50°C, which is larger than that in the mother by 0.11°C.
Direct-Conversion Molecular Breast Imaging of Invasive Breast Cancer: Imaging Features, Extent of Invasive Disease, and Comparison Between Invasive Ductal and Lobular Histology.

OBJECTIVE The purposes of this study were to compare the tumor appearance of invasive breast cancer on direct-conversion molecular breast imaging using a standardized lexicon and to determine how often direct-conversion molecular breast imaging identifies all known invasive tumor foci in the breast, and whether this differs for invasive ductal versus lobular histologic profiles. MATERIALS AND METHODS Patients with prior invasive breast cancer and concurrent direct-conversion molecular breast imaging examinations were retrospectively reviewed. Blinded review of direct-conversion molecular breast imaging examinations was performed by one of two radiologists, according to a validated lexicon. Direct-conversion molecular breast imaging findings were matched with lesions described on the pathology report to exclude benign reasons for direct-conversion molecular breast imaging findings and to document direct-conversion molecular breast imaging-occult tumor foci. Associations between direct-conversion molecular breast imaging findings and tumor histologic profiles were examined using chi-square tests. RESULTS In 286 patients, 390 invasive tumor foci were present in 294 breasts. A corresponding direct-conversion molecular breast imaging finding was present for 341 of 390 (87%) tumor foci described on the pathology report. Invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC) tumor foci were more likely to be a mass (40% IDC vs 15% invasive lobular carcinoma [ILC]; p < 0.001) and to have marked intensity than were ILC foci (63% IDC vs 32% ILC; p < 0.001). Direct-conversion molecular breast imaging correctly revealed all pathology-proven foci of invasive disease in 79.8% of cases and was more likely to do so for IDC than for ILC (86.1% vs 56.7%; p < 0.0001). Overall, direct-conversion molecular breast imaging showed all known invasive foci in 249 of 286 (87%) patients. CONCLUSION Direct-conversion molecular breast imaging features of invasive cancer, including lesion type and intensity, differ by histologic subtype. Direct-conversion molecular breast imaging is less likely to show all foci of ILC compared with IDC.
Home is where the head is: a distributed cognition account of personal health information management in the home among those with chronic illness

Abstract Managing chronic illness requires personal health information management (PHIM) to be performed by lay individuals. Paramount to understanding the PHIM process is understanding the sociotechnical system in which it frequently occurs: the home environment. We combined distributed cognition theory and the patient work system model to investigate how characteristics of the home interact with the cognitive work of PHIM. We used a 3D virtual reality CAVE that enabled participants who had been diagnosed with diabetes (N = 20) to describe how they would perform PHIM in the home context. We found that PHIM is distinctly cognitive work, and rarely performed ‘in the head’. Rather, features of the physical environment, tasks, people, and tools and technologies present, continuously shape and are shaped by the PHIM process. We suggest that approaches in which the individual (sans context) is considered the relevant unit of analysis overlook the pivotal role of the environment in shaping PHIM. Practitioner Summary: We examined how Personal Health Information Management (PHIM) is performed in the homes of diabetic patients. We found that approaches to studying cognition that focus on the individual, to the exclusion of their context, overlook the pivotal role of environmental, social, and technological features in shaping PHIM.
Institutional Change Management Challenges Faced by Microfinance Institutions in Transforming into Regulated Deposit Taking Financial Institutions in Kenya

The objectives of this study were to establish the extent to which institutional change management is a challenge in the transformation of microfinance institutions into regulated deposit taking institutions in Kenya and to make recommendations for successful transformation. The target population was 48 member institutions of AMFI. Using purposive sampling, the study selected 25 MFIs from which 100 respondents were selected using simple random sampling. Data was first explored for the underlying factor structure through factor analysis before descriptive and inferential statistical analyses. The study established a significant association between institutional change management and successful MFI transformation in Kenya and concluded that institutional change management was a significant challenge in the transformation of microfinance institutions. The study recommends that transforming MFIs should prepare well so as to overcome institutional change management challenges. It recommends further research to determine the impact of MFI transformation on overall financial
Mechanistic evaluation of the effect of calcium carbide waste on properties of asphalt mixes

*Corresponding author’s e-mail address: nuhamz@gmail.com doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.4314/njtd.v15i1. 4 ABSTRACT: Calcium Carbide Waste (CCW) was used as an alternative to traditional Portland cement mineral filler in hot mix asphalt concrete to rid its disposal problem. Its effect on mechanical properties of hot mix asphalt was assessed using the Marshall method of mix design. Using the optimum bitumen content determined from Marshall Test, Portland cement used as mineral filler was partially replaced with 0, 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50% CCW by dry weight. Results of tests indicated an increase in stability, voids in mineral aggregates, Marshall Stiffness and reduction in flow, unit weight, voids filled with binder when the percentage of CCW increases. Based on results of tests, partial replacement of Portland cement with 40% CCW could be used in asphalt production. This will ensure economy in asphalt production and promote disposal of CCW which constitute environmental hazards.
SKP2 and CKS1 promote degradation of cell cycle regulators and are associated with hepatocellular carcinoma prognosis.

BACKGROUND & AIMS The cell cycle regulators P21(WAF1), P27(KIP1), P57(KIP2), P130, RASSF1A, and FOXO1 are down-regulated during hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) pathogenesis. We investigated the role of the ubiquitin ligase subunits CKS1 and SKP2, which regulate proteasome degradation of cell cycle regulators, in HCC progression. METHODS Human HCC tissues from patients with better (HCCB, >3 years survival) and poorer prognosis (HCCP, <3 years survival) and HCC cell lines were analyzed. RESULTS The promoters of P21(WAF1), P27(KIP1), and P57(KIP2) were more frequently hypermethylated in HCCP than HCCB. Messenger RNA levels of these genes were up-regulated in samples in which these genes were not methylated; protein levels increased only in HCCB because of CKS1- and SKP2-dependent ubiquitination of these proteins in HCCP. The level of SKP2 expression correlated with rate of HCC cell proliferation and level of microvascularization of samples and was inversely correlated with apoptosis and survival. In HCCB, SKP2 activity was balanced by degradation by the ubiquitin ligase anaphase-promoting complex/cyclosome (APC/C)-CDH1 and up-regulation of SKP2 suppressor histidine triad nucleotide binding protein 1 (HINT1). In HCCP, however, SKP2 was not degraded because of down-regulation of the phosphatase CDC14B, CDK2-dependent serine phosphorylation (which inhibits interaction between CDH1 and SKP2), and HINT1 inactivation. In HCC cells, small interfering RNA knockdown of SKP2 reduced proliferation and ubiquitination of the cell cycle regulators, whereas SKP2 increased proliferation and reduced expression of cell cycle regulators. CONCLUSIONS Ubiquitination and proteasome degradation of P21WAF1, P27KIP1, P57KIP2, P130, RASSF1A, and FOXO1 and mechanisms that prevent degradation of SKP2 by APC/C-CDH1 contribute to HCC progression. CKS1-SKP2 ligase might be developed as a therapeutic target or diagnostic marker.
Complementary Channels and the Additivity Problem

We explore the complementarity between output and environment of a quantum channel (or, more generally, completely positive (CP) map), making an observation that the output purity characteristics for complementary CP maps coincide. Hence, the validity of the mutiplicativity/additivity conjecture for a class of CP maps implies its validity for complementary maps. The class of CP maps complementary to entanglement‐breaking ones is described and is shown to contain diagonal CP maps as a proper subclass, resulting in a new class of CP maps (channels) for which the multiplicativity/additivity holds. Covariant and Gaussian channels are discussed briefly in this context.