Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Methods and processes of the CONSORT Group: example of an extension for trials assessing nonpharmacologic treatments.

BACKGROUND The conduct of randomized, controlled trials of nonpharmacologic treatments presents specific challenges that are not adequately addressed in trial reports. OBJECTIVE To develop an extension of the CONSORT (Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials) Statement for trials of nonpharmacologic treatments. DESIGN A consensus meeting was organized to develop an extension of the CONSORT Statement that addresses randomized trials of nonpharmacologic treatments. To prepare for the meeting, a survey was conducted to identify the specific issues for discussion. SETTING Consensus meeting in Paris, France. PARTICIPANTS A total of 33 experts attended the meeting. The experts were methodologists (n = 17); surgeons (n = 6); editors (n = 5); and clinicians involved in rehabilitation (n = 1), psychotherapy (n = 2), education (n = 1), and implantable devices (n = 1). MEASUREMENTS Experts indicated which of the 22 items on the CONSORT checklist should be modified or which additional items should be added specifically for nonpharmacologic treatments. During a 3-day consensus meeting, all items were discussed and additional methodological issues related to nonpharmacologic research were identified. RESULTS The consensus was that 11 items on the CONSORT checklist needed some modifications for nonpharmacologic trials: item 1 (title and abstract), item 3 (participants), item 4 (interventions), item 7 (sample size), item 8 (randomization), item 11 (blinding), item 12 (statistical methods), item 13 (participant flow), item 15 (baseline data), item 20 (discussion: interpretation), and item 21 (generalizability). In addition, the meeting participants added 1 item related to implementation of the intervention. LIMITATION Evidence was not always available to support the inclusion of each checklist item. CONCLUSION The methods and processes used to develop this extension could be used for other reporting guidelines. The use of this extension to the CONSORT Statement should improve the quality of reporting randomized, controlled trials assessing nonpharmacologic treatments.
Nitrogen Starvation Acclimation in Synechococcus elongatus: Redox-Control and the Role of Nitrate Reduction as an Electron Sink

Nitrogen starvation acclimation in non-diazotrophic cyanobacteria is characterized by a process termed chlorosis, where the light harvesting pigments are degraded and the cells gradually tune down photosynthetic and metabolic activities. The chlorosis response is governed by a complex and poorly understood regulatory network, which converges at the expression of the nblA gene, the triggering factor for phycobiliprotein degradation. This study established a method that allows uncoupling metabolic and redox-signals involved in nitrogen-starvation acclimation. Inhibition of glutamine synthetase (GS) by a precise dosage of l-methionine-sulfoximine (MSX) mimics the metabolic situation of nitrogen starvation. Addition of nitrate to such MSX-inhibited cells eliminates the associated redox-stress by enabling electron flow towards nitrate/nitrite reduction and thereby, prevents the induction of nblA expression and the associated chlorosis response. This study demonstrates that nitrogen starvation is perceived not only through metabolic signals, but requires a redox signal indicating over-reduction of PSI-reduced electron acceptors. It further establishes a cryptic role of nitrate/nitrite reductases as electron sinks to balance conditions of over-reduction.
Geometry helps in matching

A set of 2<italic>n</italic> points on the plane induces a complete weighted undirected graph as follows: The points are the vertices of the graph and the weight of an edge between any two points is the distance between the points under some metric. We study the problem of finding a minimum weight complete matching (MWCM) in such a graph. We give an <italic>&Ogr;</italic>(<italic>n</italic><supscrpt>23</supscrpt> (log<italic>n</italic>)<supscrpt>4</supscrpt>) algorithm for finding an MWCM in such a graph, for the <italic>L</italic><subscrpt>1</subscrpt> (<italic>manhattan</italic>), the <italic>L</italic><subscrpt>2</subscrpt> (<italic>euclidean</italic>), and the <italic>L</italic><subscrpt>∞</subscrpt> metrics. We also study the bipartite version of the problem, where half the points are painted with one color and the other half are painted with another color, and the restriction is that a point of one color may be matched only to a point of another color. We present an <italic>&Ogr;</italic>(<italic>n</italic><supscrpt>2.5</supscrpt> log<italic>n</italic>) algorithm for the bipartite version, for the <italic>L</italic><subscrpt>1</subscrpt>, <italic>L</italic><subscrpt>2</subscrpt>, and <italic>L</italic><subscrpt>∞</subscrpt>, metrics. The running time for the bipartite version can be further improved to <italic>&Ogr;</italic>(<italic>n</italic><supscrpt>2</supscrpt> (log<italic>n</italic>)<supscrpt>3</supscrpt>) for the <italic>L</italic><subscrpt>1</subscrpt> and <italic>L</italic><subscrpt>∞</subscrpt> metrics.
The effectiveness of attachment-based group training on the psychological well-beingof a non-clinical sample of students with preoccupied insecure attachment style

Introduction: The importance of the relationship between attachment patterns in childhood and the quality of close relationships in adulthood is one of the issues that have been of great interest to the researchers in recent decades. In this regard, this study was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of attachment-based group training on the psychological well-being of a non-clinical sample of students. Â Materials and Methods: In this clinical trial, through convenient sampling, 16 girl students of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad in the academic year of 2012-2013 with preoccupied attachment style were selected and randomly allocated to two groups. The Relationship Scales Questionnaire (RSQ) and the Ryff Scales of Psychological Well-Being (RSPWB) - short form- were used in this study. The experimental group received 7 sessions of 90-minute attachment-based group training while the control group was on the waiting list. Data were analyzed through descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation) and multivariate analysis of covariance by SPSS software version 19. Â Â Results: The results revealed that there was not significant difference between two groups in pre-test also there was not significant difference between two groups in the overall score of the psychological well-being in post-test (P>0.05). Â Conclusion: It seems that the application of attachment-based group training in people with preoccupied insecure style cannot lead to the significant improvement of the overall psychological well-being despite improvement in some variables.
The control server: a computational model for real-time control tasks

The paper presents a computational model for real-time control tasks, with the primary goal of simplifying the control and scheduling codesign problem. The model combines time-triggered I/O and inter-task communication with dynamic, reservation-based task scheduling. To facilitate short input-output latencies, a task may be divided into several segments. Jitter is reduced by allowing communication only at the beginning and at the end of a segment. A key property of the model is that both schedulability and control performance of a control task will depend on the reserved utilization factor only. This enables controllers to be treated as scalable real-time components. The model has been implemented in a real-time kernel and validated in a real-time control application.
Computing Floating-Point Square Roots via Bivariate Polynomial Evaluation

In this paper, we show how to reduce the computation of correctly rounded square roots of binary floating-point data to the fixed-point evaluation of some particular integer polynomials in two variables. By designing parallel and accurate evaluation schemes for such bivariate polynomials, we show further that this approach allows for high instruction-level parallelism (ILP) exposure, and thus, potentially low-latency implementations. Then, as an illustration, we detail a C implementation of our method in the case of IEEE 754-2008 binary32 floating-point data (formerly called single precision in the 1985 version of the IEEE 754 standard). This software implementation, which assumes 32-bit unsigned integer arithmetic only, is almost complete in the sense that it supports special operands, subnormal numbers, and all rounding-direction attributes, but not exception handling (that is, status flags are not set). Finally, we have carried out experiments with this implementation on the ST231, an integer processor from the STMicroelectronics' ST200 family, using the ST200 family VLIW compiler. The results obtained demonstrate the practical interest of our approach in that context: for all rounding-direction attributes, the generated assembly code is optimally scheduled and has indeed low latency (23 cycles).
Unlabeled Data Can Degrade Classification Performance of Generative Classifiers

This paper analyzes the effect of unlabeled training data in generative classifiers. We are interested in classification performance when unlabeled data are added to an existing pool of labeled data. We show that unlabeled data can degrade the performance of a classifier when there are discrepancies between modeling assumptions used to build the classifier and the actual model that generates the data; our analysis of this situation explains several seemingly disparate results in the literature.
The Effect of Time Length Consumption of Carbonated Beverage on Protein and Calcium in a Sample of Healthy Iraqi Adults

Background: Soft drink consumption has become a greatly visible and controversial public health and public policy issue. The lack of awareness concerning the ill -health consequence of soft drink consumption and lack of desire to changes this behavior could be addressed through a social marketing campaign. Objective: This study was performed to determine the effects oflong-term consumption of carbonated soft drinks on total serumprotein (TP), albumin, globulin, totalcalcium (CaT), corrected calcium and ionized calcium(Ca ++ ) in healthy persons. Results: The study included 80 healthy subjects who consumed carbonated drink at different time length.The period of carbonated beverage Consumption was conversely associated with serum albumin, TP, globulin (p<0.00) and (CaT) (p<0.00) but there was no effect on the level of corrected calcium and Ca ++ .
Oldest Near-Complete Acanthodian: The First Vertebrate from the Silurian Bertie Formation Konservat-Lagerstätte, Ontario

Background The relationships between early jawed vertebrates have been much debated, with cladistic analyses yielding little consensus on the position (or positions) of acanthodians with respect to other groups. Whereas one recent analysis showed various acanthodians (classically known as ‘spiny sharks’) as stem osteichthyans (bony fishes) and others as stem chondrichthyans, another shows the acanthodians as a paraphyletic group of stem chondrichthyans, and the latest analysis shows acanthodians as the monophyletic sister group of the Chondrichthyes. Methodology/Principal Findings A small specimen of the ischnacanthiform acanthodian Nerepisacanthus denisoni is the first vertebrate fossil collected from the Late Silurian Bertie Formation Konservat-Lagerstätte of southern Ontario, Canada, a deposit well-known for its spectacular eurypterid fossils. The fish is the only near complete acanthodian from pre-Devonian strata worldwide, and confirms that Nerepisacanthus has dentigerous jaw bones, body scales with superposed crown growth zones formed of ondontocytic mesodentine, and a patch of chondrichthyan-like scales posterior to the jaw joint. Conclusions/Significance The combination of features found in Nerepisacanthus supports the hypothesis that acanthodians could be a group, or even a clade, on the chondrichthyan stem. Cladistic analyses of early jawed vertebrates incorporating Nerepisacanthus, and updated data on other acanthodians based on publications in press, should help clarify their relationships.
Integration of multiple feature groups and multiple views into a 3D object recognition system

Proposes two approaches for utilizing multiple-feature group (triples) and multiple-view information to reduce the number of hypotheses passed to the verification stage in an invariant feature indexing (IFI)-based object recognition system. The first approach is based on a majority voting scheme that keeps track of the number of consistent votes cast by prototype hypotheses for particular object models. The second approach examines the consistency of estimated object pose from multiple scene-triples of a single view or multiple views. Monte Carlo experiments employing 500 single-view synthetic range images and 195 pairs of synthetic range images with a large CAD-based 3D object database show that a significant number of hypotheses can be eliminated by using these approaches. The proposed approaches have also been tested on real range images of several objects. A salient feature of this system and experiment design compared to most existing 3D object recognition systems is the use of a large object data base and a large number of test images. <<ETX>>
The Lived Experience of Psoriasis Patients from Social Stigma and Rejection: A Qualitative Study

Background Psoriasis is a common, chronic skin disease that causes challenges such as stigma and labeling from both the community and individuals due to its effects on appearance. Objectives The objective of this study was to describe and explain the social stigma and rejection experienced by patients with psoriasis. Patients and Methods The present research is a qualitative study with a hermeneutic phenomenological approach conducted among psoriasis patients referring to the dermatology clinic and ward of Imam Khomeini hospital in Ahvaz, Iran between June and December 2014. In this study, 15 patients with psoriasis were selected by purposeful sampling, and they were asked to express their experience of stigma and rejection. The data were collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews, and Diekelmann and colleagues’ method was used for data analysis. Results After analysis of interviews, four themes were extracted: lack of social support, unrealistic and inappropriate labeling, rejection and isolation, and feeling of absurdity and futility. These can be indicative of the patients’ experience from social stigma and rejection phenomena. Conclusions Patients’ experiences of stigma and rejection phenomena indicated that all aspects of their lives are affected. Moreover, these findings highlight the significance of stigma and rejection concepts in providing better care to these patients.
Precise age for the Permian–Triassic boundary in South China from high-precision U-Pb geochronology and Bayesian age–depth modeling

Abstract. This study is based on zircon U-Pb ages of 12 volcanic ash layers and volcanogenic sandstones from two deep water sections with conformable and continuous formational Permian–Triassic boundaries (PTBs) in the Nanpanjiang Basin (South China). Our dates of single, thermally annealed and chemically abraded zircons bracket the PTB in Dongpan and Penglaitan and provide the basis for a first proof-of-concept study utilizing a Bayesian chronology model comparing the three sections of Dongpan, Penglaitan and the Global Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) at Meishan. Our Bayesian modeling demonstrates that the formational boundaries in Dongpan (251.939 ± 0.030 Ma), Penglaitan (251.984 ± 0.031 Ma) and Meishan (251.956 ± 0.035 Ma) are synchronous within analytical uncertainty of ∼ 40 ka. It also provides quantitative evidence that the ages of the paleontologically defined boundaries, based on conodont unitary association zones in Meishan and on macrofaunas in Dongpan, are identical and coincide with the age of the formational boundaries. The age model also confirms the extreme condensation around the PTB in Meishan, which distorts the projection of any stratigraphic points or intervals onto other more expanded sections by means of Bayesian age–depth models. Dongpan and Penglaitan possess significantly higher sediment accumulation rates and thus offer a greater potential for high-resolution studies of environmental proxies and correlations around the PTB than Meishan. This study highlights the power of high-resolution radio-isotopic ages that allow a robust intercalibration of patterns of biotic changes and fluctuating environmental proxies and will help recognizing their global, regional or local significance.
To Share or Not To Share?

Intuitively, aggressive work sharing among concurrent queries in a database system should always improve performance by eliminating redundant computation or data accesses. We show that, contrary to common intuition, this is not always the case in practice, especially in the highly parallel world of chip multiprocessors. As the number of cores in the system increases, a trade-off appears between exploiting work sharing opportunities and the available parallelism. To resolve the trade-off, we develop an analytical approach that predicts the effect of work sharing in multi-core systems. Database systems can use the model to determine, statically or at runtime, whether work sharing is beneficial and apply it only when appropriate. The contributions of this paper are as follows. First, we introduce and analyze the effects of the trade-off between work sharing and parallelism on database systems running complex decision-support queries. Second, we propose an intuitive and simple model that can evaluate the trade-off using real-world measurement approximations of the query execution processes. Furthermore, we integrate the model into a prototype database execution engine, and demonstrate that selective work sharing according to the model outperforms never-share static schemes by 20% on average and always-share ones by 2.5x.
Seasonal and daily climate variation have opposite effects on species elevational range size

Variability for a day or a season Species that experience larger seasonal climatic fluctuations are likely to be more physiologically flexible and thus likely to occur across a wider elevational range. Daily changes in temperature are also common but have rarely been considered. Chan et al. used a global data set of vertebrates to look at how these two different sets of variation affect a species' elevational distribution (see the Perspective by Perez et al.). Unexpectedly, larger daily fluctuations were associated with smaller elevational distributions. Thus, specialists are favored where daily fluctuations are dominant, whereas generalists are favored where seasonal fluctuations are the main climate influence. Science, this issue p. 1437; see also p. 1392 Daily and seasonal variation influence the temperature tolerance of land vertebrates differently. [Also see Perspective by Perez et al.] The climatic variability hypothesis posits that the magnitude of climatic variability increases with latitude, elevation, or both, and that greater variability selects for organisms with broader temperature tolerances, enabling them to be geographically widespread. We tested this classical hypothesis for the elevational range sizes of more than 16,500 terrestrial vertebrates on 180 montane gradients. In support of the hypothesis, mean elevational range size was positively correlated with the scope of seasonal temperature variation, whereas elevational range size was negatively correlated with daily temperature variation among gradients. In accordance with a previous life history model and our extended versions of it, our findings indicate that physiological specialization may be favored under shorter-term climatic variability.
Impact of tocilizumab therapy on antibody response to influenza vaccine in patients with rheumatoid arthritis

Objectives We assessed the influence of tocilizumab (TCZ), a humanised monoclonal anti-interleukin-6 receptor antibody, on antibody response following influenza vaccination in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Methods A total of 194 RA patients received inactive trivalent influenza vaccination (A/H1N1, A/H3N2 and B/B1 strains). All patients were classified into the TCZ (n=62), TCZ+methotrexate (MTX) (n=49), MTX (n=65) and RA control (n=18) groups. Antibody titres were measured before and 4–6 weeks after vaccination using the haemagglutination inhibitory assay. Results For the A/H1N1 and A/H3N2 strains, the TCZ and TCZ+MTX groups achieved fold increases of 9.9–14.5, postvaccination seroprotection rates greater than 70% and seroresponse rates greater than 40%. For the B/B1 strain, seroresponse rates were approximately 30%, but fold increases and seroprotection rates were 5.0–5.4 and greater than 70%, respectively, in these treatment groups. MTX had a negative impact on vaccination efficacy, but adequate responses for protection were nevertheless demonstrated in the MTX group. Neither severe adverse effects nor RA flares were observed. Conclusions TCZ does not hamper antibody response to influenza vaccine in RA patients. Influenza vaccination is considered effective in protecting RA patients receiving TCZ therapy with or without MTX.
Business-OWL (BOWL)—A Hierarchical Task Network Ontology for Dynamic Business Process Decomposition and Formulation

Collaborative Business Processes (cBPs) form the backbone of enterprise integration. With the growing reliance on the web as a medium of business collaboration, there is an increasing need to quickly and dynamically form cBPs. However, current Business-to-Business (B2B) information systems are still static in nature, and are unable to dynamically form cBPs based on high-level Business Goals (BGs)and their underlying criteria (e.g., item cost, product name, order quantity, etc). This paper introduces the Business-OWL (BOWL), an ontology rooted in the Web Ontology Language (OWL), and modeled as a Hierarchical Task Network (HTN) for the dynamic formation of business processes. An ontologized extension and augmentation of traditional HTN, BOWL describes business processes as a hierarchical ontology of decomposable business tasks encompassing all possible decomposition permutations. Through BOWL, high-level business goals (e.g., "Buy”) can be easily decomposed right down to the lowest level tasks (e.g., "Send Purchase Order”), effectively bridging the gap between high-level business goals with operational level tasks and complementing currently static business process modeling languages. The design of BOWL and a case study demonstrating its implementation are also discussed.
Real-Time Contributions of Auditory Feedback to Avian Vocal Motor Control

Songbirds and humans both rely critically on hearing for learning and maintaining accurate vocalizations. Evidence strongly indicates that auditory feedback contributes in real time to human speech, but similar contributions of feedback to birdsong remain unclear. Here, we assessed real-time influences of auditory feedback on Bengalese finch song using a computerized system to detect targeted syllables as they were being sung and to disrupt feedback transiently at short and precisely controlled latencies. Altered feedback elicited changes within tens of milliseconds to both syllable sequencing and timing in ongoing song. These vocal disruptions were larger when feedback was altered at segments of song with variable sequence transitions than at stereotyped sequences. As in humans, these effects depended on the feedback delay relative to ongoing song, with the most disruptive delays approximating the average syllable duration. These results extend the parallels between speech and birdsong with respect to a moment-by-moment reliance on auditory feedback. Moreover, they demonstrate that song premotor circuitry is sensitive to auditory feedback during singing and suggest that feedback may contribute in real time to the control and calibration of song.