Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Relationship Between Channel Migration and Radius of Curvature on the Red River

The system behavior of meanders was investigated on the Red River between Shreveport, LA, and Index, AR. The effects of plan form geometry (r/w) and erodibility of bank material on the erosion rate of meanders was documented. Using this information, a technical basis for projecting bankline locations into the future was established.
Risky Behavior in Youth: An Analysis of the Factors Influencing Youth Smoking Decisions in Canada

This article considers smoking behavior among young people in Canada, looking in particular for evidence on why young people take up smoking. Using data from the National Population Health Survey, we find that reported knowledge about the health effects of own smoking is less useful than might have been expected in explaining why some young people smoke but that responses to a question about whether people worry too much about the health effects of second-hand smoke is informative. We also find that for subjects too young to have begun their own household formation, the number of people in their household who regularly smoke in the house is an informative variable. In particular, among young people aged 12–14 years, having a household member who regularly smokes inside the house (as opposed to having none) increases the probability that the young person will smoke by 2%, whereas for the those aged 15–19, having a household member who regularly smokes inside the house increases the probability that the young person will smoke by 18%.
Impact de la chasse sur la dynamique d'une population migratrice : le cas de la Grande Oie des neiges

In animal population management, the control of a population can be achieved by modifying one or more demographic parameters (survival, reproduction or movements). The population of Greater Snow Geese (Chen caerulescens atlantica), a species that nests in the Arctic, is now considered overabundant due to the exponential growth of its population in the late 20th century. In 1999, special conservation measures aimed at stabilizing the population through increased harvest rates by hunting were introduced, the most spectacular being a hunting season during spring migration in Québec. This thesis aims to evaluate the effects of these measures on the following underlying demographic processes: survival, reproduction and recruitment of young adults as breeders. We first present a new statistical model of survival that can produce unbiased estimates of survival in the presence of uncertainty about the loss of auxiliary markers used for the detection of individuals. This model uses all the information from live recaptures, observations and hunt recoveries of individuals marked from 1993 to 2005. By contrasting two periods, before and since 1999, we showed that the decrease in survival was greater for adults during the fall and spring migration in Québec than during wintering in the USA. Based on data from the main colony, Bylot Island, Nunavut (1995-2007), we found no evidence of a carry-over effect of hunting pressure in Québec during the spring on various reproductive parameters the following summer (nest density, clutch size and laying date), once the effect of weather conditions encountered during migration and upon arrival at the nesting site were considered. However, the harvest rate of adults in spring after 1998 emerged as an important factor affecting the decline in the recruitment of young adults during the period 1992-2005. In line with the mixed capital/income breeding strategy of geese, the suggested underlying mechanism is a carry-over effect of disturbance from hunt on foraging during the spring, leading to a decrease in endogenous reserves. We demonstrate empirically that hunting not only decreased survival, but it can also reduce access to reproduction. We suggest that the previously documented decreases in productivity of the population likely occurred via the decision to breed or not (recruitment and propensity to breed) rather than a decrease in reproductive success once the decision to reproduce has occurred. This population appears stable today, highlighting that these conservation measures have been potentially successful.
The SNARC Effect in the Processing of Second-Language Number Words: Further Evidence for Strong Lexico-Semantic Connections

We present new evidence that word translation involves semantic mediation. It has been shown that participants react faster to small numbers with their left hand and to large numbers with their right hand. This SNARC (spatial-numerical association of response codes) effect is due to the fact that in Western cultures the semantic number line is oriented from left (small) to right (large). We obtained a SNARC effect when participants had to indicate the parity of second-language (L2) number words, but not when they had to indicate whether L2 number words contained a particular sound. Crucially, the SNARC effect was also obtained in a translation verification task, indicating that this task involved the activation of number magnitude.
The Fate of Nonradiative Magnetized Accretion Flows: Magnetically Frustrated Convection

We present a scenario for nonradiative accretion onto the supermassive black hole at the Galactic center. Conducting MHD simulations with 14003 grid zones that break the axial and reflection symmetries of earlier investigations and extend inward from the Bondi radius, we find a quasi-hydrostatic radial density profile ρ ∝ r-0.72 with a superadiabatic gradient corresponding to an n ~ 0.72 polytrope. Buoyancy generated by magnetic dissipation is resisted by the same fields so effectively that energy is advected inward: a state of magnetically frustrated convection. This scenario is consistent with observational constraints on energetics and outer boundary conditions.
Psycho-ophthalmology: Contributions of Health psychology to the assessment and treatment of glaucoma

Background: Asymptomatic in its early stages, glaucoma is the second leading cause of blindness worldwide. While psychosocial factors are taken into consideration for a host of diseases such as cancer, heart disease and autoimmune conditions, to date, psychological issues have been ignored in the clinical management of glaucoma. Objective: This work reviews the most relevant contributions from a health psychology perspective for the assessment and treatment of glaucoma, which is emerging in the field of psycho-ophthalmology. Method: To provide scientific evidence regarding contributions of psychology to the comprehension of glaucoma, a bibliographic review of three databases (Psicodoc, PsycInfo and Medline) was conducted, spanning the period between 1940 and 2016. Results: This review yielded a total of 66 studies published in the period analysed and identified three areas where health psychology has made substantive contributions to glaucoma screening, monitoring and treatment: the emotional impact on patients suffering from glaucoma, the adherence to treatment and the effects of stress on intraocular pressure. Conclusions: A health psychology approach for research and therapy of glaucoma must focus on the management of the negative affect associated with the diagnosis, the optimisation of treatment adherence and the stress management of the intraocular pressure measurements.
Fractional Repetition Codes With Flexible Repair From Combinatorial Designs

Fractional repetition (FR) codes are a class of regenerating codes for distributed storage systems with an exact (table-based) repair process that is also uncoded, i.e., upon failure, a node is regenerated by simply downloading packets from the surviving nodes. In this paper, we present the constructions of FR codes based on Steiner systems and resolvable combinatorial designs, such as affine geometries, Hadamard designs, and mutually orthogonal Latin squares. The failure resilience of our codes can be varied in a simple manner. We construct codes with normalized repair bandwidth (β) strictly larger than one; these cannot be obtained trivially from codes with β = 1. Furthermore, we present the Kronecker product technique for generating new codes from existing ones and elaborate on their properties. FR codes with locality are those where the repair degree is smaller than the number of nodes contacted for reconstructing the stored file. For these codes, we establish a tradeoff between the local repair property and the failure resilience and construct codes that meet this tradeoff. Much of prior work only provided lower bounds on the FR code rate. In this paper, for most of our constructions, we determine the code rate for certain parameter ranges.
Family History and Stroke Risk in China: Evidence from a Large Cohort Study

Background and Purpose Large cohort studies on relationship between family history of stroke (FHS) and stroke risk are lacking in Asians. We aimed to systematically evaluate the association of FHS with stroke risk in a cohort study of 0.5 million Chinese adults. Methods Information about FHS was self-reported. The median follow-up time was 7.16 years and the end-point of follow-up was incident stroke, which was entered directly into the China Kadoorie Biobank system. Multivariate analyses were performed with Cox proportional hazards model, and interaction analyses were carried using likelihood-ratio tests. Results Compared with participants without FHS, the hazard ratio (HR) (95% confidence interval, CI) of stroke for participants with FHS was 1.50 (1.46-1.55). The HRs increased with the number of first degree relatives with stroke (HRs=1.41, 1.98 and 2.47 for 1, 2 and ≥3 relatives, respectively, Ptrend <0.001). The HRs were 1.57 (95% CI: 1.50-1.66) and 1.49 (95% CI: 1.45-1.54) for sibling history and parental history, respectively. Similar associations with offspring stroke risk were observed between paternal history (HR=1.48, 95% CI: 1.43-1.54) and maternal history (HR=1.49, 95% CI: 1.43-1.55). Moreover, significant interactions were detected between FHS and health-risk behaviors (tobacco smoking and alcohol drinking). Conclusions FHS is an independent risk factor for stroke in Chinese. The more first degree relatives are affected by stroke, the higher are individuals’ risk of suffering from stroke. The management of the health-risk behaviors for reducing stroke should be highlighted, especially for the individuals with FHS.
Genetic and environmental contributions to stability and change in children's internalizing and externalizing problems.

OBJECTIVE To estimate genetic, shared environmental, and nonshared environmental contributions to stability and change in internalizing and externalizing problems. METHOD Maternal Child Behavior Checklist ratings were obtained for 3,873 twin pairs at age 3 and 1,924 twin pairs at age 7. For 1,575 twin pairs, ratings were available at both ages. RESULTS For Internalizing/Externalizing ratings, genetic, shared, and nonshared environmental factors explained about 59/51%, 10/30%, and 31/19% of the variance at age 3, and 40/52%, 31/32%, and 29/16% of the variance at age 7. The phenotypic correlation of r = 0.38/0.54 between problems assessed at 3 and 7 years of age was explained for 66/55% by genetic factors, for 23/37% by shared environmental factors, and for 11/8% by nonshared environmental factors. The genetic, shared environmental, and nonshared environmental correlations between ages 3 and 7 were 0.51/0.57, 0.47/0.66, and 0.13/0.24, respectively. CONCLUSIONS Genetic and shared environmental factors were most important for the stability of Internalizing and Externalizing Problems between ages 3 and 7. Nonshared environmental factors were mainly age-specific. For Internalizing Problems, shared environment may become more important from early to middle childhood.
Animated 3D Creatures from Single-view Video by Skeletal Sketching

Extraction of deformable 3D geometry is not accessible to casual users, as it either requires dedicated hardware or vast manual effort. Inspired by the recent success of semi-automatic 3D reconstruction from a single image, we introduce a sketch-based extraction technique that allows a fast reconstruction of a dynamic articulated shape from a single video. We model the shape as a union of generalized cylinders deformed by an animation of their axes, representing the "limbs" of the articulated shape. The axes are acquired from strokes sketched by the user on top of a few key frames. Our method bypasses the meticulous effort required to establish dense correspondences when applying common structure from motion techniques for shape reconstruction. Instead, we produce a plausible shape from the fusion of silhouettes over multiple frames. Reconstruction is performed at interactive rates, allowing interaction and refinement until the desired quality is achieved.
OF.CPP: consistent packet processing for openflow

This paper demonstrates a new class of bugs that is likely to occur in enterprise OpenFlow deployments. In particular, step-by-step, reactive establishment of paths can cause network-wide inconsistencies or performance- and space-related inefficiencies. The cause for this behavior is inconsistent packet processing: as the packets travel through the network they do not encounter consistent state at the OpenFlow controller. To mitigate this problem, we propose to use transactional semantics at the controller to achieve consistent packet processing. We detail the challenges in achieving this goal (including the inability to directly apply database techniques), as well as a potentially promising approach. In particular, we envision the use of multi-commit transactions that could provide the necessary serialization and isolation properties without excessively reducing network performance.
The Effects of Cigarette Smoke on Cancer Cells

Smoking is one of the largest preventable risk factors for developing cancer and continued smoking by cancer patients is associated with increased toxicity, recurrence, and mortality. Cigarette smoke (CS) contains thousands of chemicals including many known carcinogens. Most research examines the carcinogenic properties of CS and relatively little work has been done on the effects of CS on cancer cells. Examination of the literature demonstrates that CS induces a more malignant tumor phenotype by increasing proliferation, migration, invasion, angiogenesis, and conferring a pro-survival tumor phenotype. Specific pathways associated with CS exposure are reviewed.
Does Early Treatment Prevent Deafness in Thiamine-Responsive Megaloblastic Anaemia Syndrome?

Thiamine-responsive megaloblastic anaemia (TRMA; OMIM 249270) syndrome is an autosomal recessive disorder characterized by diabetes mellitus, megaloblastic anaemia, and sensorineural deafness. Progressive hearing loss is one of the cardinal findings of the syndrome and is known to be irreversible. Whether the deafness in TRMA syndrome can be prevented is not yet known. Here, we report a four-month-old female infant diagnosed with TRMA syndrome at an early age. There was no hearing loss at the time of diagnosis. The patient’s initial auditory evoked brainstem response measurements were normal. Although she was given thiamine supplementation regularly following the diagnosis, the patient developed moderate sensorineural hearing loss at 20 months of age, indicating that early diagnosis and treatment with oral thiamine (100 mg/day) could not prevent deafness in TRMA syndrome. It would be premature to draw general conclusions from one case, but we believe that further patient-based observations can shed light on the pathophysiology of this rare syndrome as well as prediction of its prognosis. Conflict of interest:None declared.
Progressive Image Transmission over Noisy Channels : An End-to-End Statistical Optimization Framework

We present a statistical optimization framework for solvin g the end-to-end problem of multiple antenna transmission of progressive images over noisy chan nels. Such channels exhibit temporally correlated loss characterisitics and are associated with wire less communication links. In our study, we protect the progressive bitstream associated with an image source utilizing a family of rate compatible punctured RS codes along with receiver feedback. We conside r the impacts of transmission bit errors as well as packet erasures. To cope with the impact of random b it errors, we formulate an optimization problem aimed at minimizing the end-to-end expected distor t on of a reconstructed image subject to rate and efficiency constraints. In order to eliminate the impact of packet erasures, we propose utilizing an algorithm that is capable of statistically guaranteeing th e delivery of a number of packet sets associated with a progressive bitstream. Index Terms Progressive Transmission of Images, Multiple Antennas, Ra ndom Bit Error, Packet Erasure, Temporally Correlated Loss.
Nanoparticles for Cancer Treatment

An overview is presented of an approach for treating cancer that uses nanoparticles to deliver heat to diseased areas after absorbing energy from a laser of the appropriate wavelength. The implications are discussed of the relationship of parameters necessary to raise the temperature to therapeutically beneficial levels. Tight focusing is required for a continuous‐wave laser to sufficiently heat individual nanoparticles because of heat loss to the surrounding fluid during the period of exposure. The natural thermal confinement of pulse lasers minimizes this effect because of the finite thermal diffusion time, which restricts the absorbed energy to a region around the particle, that offers the potential for achieving high temperatures that can promote phase change on the surface of a nanoparticle or even melting of the particle. A discussion of a way to potentially measure temperature on the scale of an individual nanoparticle is included based on using a single‐walled nanotube (SWNT) of carbon as a thermistor. The challenges of this undertaking are that SWNTs do not always follow Ohm's law, they may exhibit metallic or semiconductor behavior with an often unpredictable result in manufacturing, and no two SWNTs behave identically, which necessitates calibration for each SWNT. Some results are presented that show the electrical characteristics of SWNTs and their potential for exploitation in this application.
Evidence of left ventricular dyssynchrony resulting from right ventricular pacing in patients with severely depressed left ventricular ejection fraction.

AIMS Cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) has recently emerged as an effective treatment for patients with moderate-to-severe systolic heart failure and left bundle branch block (LBBB). Right ventricular pacing (RVP) leads to an LBBB-like pattern in the electrocardiogram. The aim of this study was to evaluate the frequency of ventricular mechanical dyssynchrony in patients induced by RVP. METHODS AND RESULTS The study included 33 patients with a conventional single or dual chamber pacemaker, 18 with ejection fraction (EF) > 35% and 15 with EF < or = 35%. In all patients, an intrinsic rhythm without intraventricular conduction delay (QRS < or = 120 ms) was present without RVP. Two-dimensional and Doppler echocardiographic criteria for mechanical dyssynchrony [aortic pre-ejection delay (APE), interventricular mechanical delay (IVMD), delayed activation of the posterior left ventricular wall (PD), septal-to-posterior wall motion delay (SPWMD)] were evaluated in all patients with and without RVP. QRS duration showed no difference between the two EF-groups without RVP (93 +/- 10 vs. 96 +/- 9 ms), but was significantly longer in patients with low EF with RVP (152 +/- 18 vs. 181 +/- 18 ms; P < 0.001). In patients with EF > 35%, only APE was slightly prolonged by RVP (111 +/- 20 vs. 129 +/- 17 ms; P = 0.03), whereas in patients with EF < or = 35% marked pathological differences in APE (118 +/- 29 vs. 169 +/- 24 ms; P < 0.001), IVMD (22 +/- 17 vs. 58 +/- 14 ms; P < 0.001), SPWMD (103 +/- 28 vs. 125 +/- 29 ms; P = 0.004), and PD (-21 +/- 25 vs. - 39 +/- 25 ms; P = 0.005) were found. A significant correlation between QRS duration and mechanical ventricular dyssynchrony was only found for two echocardiographic parameters (IVMD, APE) with RVP. CONCLUSION In patients with a conventional pacemaker, mechanical dyssynchrony with RVP was shown exceptionally in patients with preserved or moderately depressed systolic left ventricular (LV) function, but in nearly all patients with severely depressed systolic LV function. These patients might benefit from CRT when frequent RVP is required.
Detecting high-order interactions of single nucleotide polymorphisms using genetic programming

MOTIVATION Not individual single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), but high-order interactions of SNPs are assumed to be responsible for complex diseases such as cancer. Therefore, one of the major goals of genetic association studies concerned with such genotype data is the identification of these high-order interactions. This search is additionally impeded by the fact that these interactions often are only explanatory for a relatively small subgroup of patients. Most of the feature selection methods proposed in the literature, unfortunately, fail at this task, since they can either only identify individual variables or interactions of a low order, or try to find rules that are explanatory for a high percentage of the observations. In this article, we present a procedure based on genetic programming and multi-valued logic that enables the identification of high-order interactions of categorical variables such as SNPs. This method called GPAS cannot only be used for feature selection, but can also be employed for discrimination. RESULTS In an application to the genotype data from the GENICA study, an association study concerned with sporadic breast cancer, GPAS is able to identify high-order interactions of SNPs leading to a considerably increased breast cancer risk for different subsets of patients that are not found by other feature selection methods. As an application to a subset of the HapMap data shows, GPAS is not restricted to association studies comprising several 10 SNPs, but can also be employed to analyze whole-genome data. AVAILABILITY Software can be downloaded from http://ls2-www.cs. uni-dortmund.de/~nunkesser/#Software
Molecular Imaging-Guided Interventional Hyperthermia in Treatment of Breast Cancer

Breast cancer is the most frequent malignancy in women worldwide. Although it is commonly treated via chemotherapy, responses vary among its subtypes, some of which are relatively insensitive to chemotherapeutic drugs. Recent studies have shown that hyperthermia can enhance the effects of chemotherapy in patients with refractory breast cancer or without surgical indications. Recent advances in molecular imaging may not only improve early diagnosis but may also facilitate the development and response assessment of targeted therapies. Combining advanced techniques such as molecular imaging and hyperthermia-integrated chemotherapy should open new avenues for effective management of breast cancer.
DNA Double-Strand Breaks Trigger Genome-Wide Sister-Chromatid Cohesion Through Eco1 (Ctf7)

Faithful chromosome segregation and repair of DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) require cohesin, the protein complex that mediates sister-chromatid cohesion. Cohesion between sister chromatids is thought to be generated only during ongoing DNA replication by an obligate coupling between cohesion establishment factors such as Eco1 (Ctf7) and the replisome. Using budding yeast, we challenge this model by showing that cohesion is generated by an Eco1-dependent but replication-independent mechanism in response to DSBs in G2/M. Furthermore, our studies reveal that Eco1 has two functions: a cohesive activity and a conserved acetyltransferase activity, which triggers the generation of cohesion in response to the DSB and the DNA damage checkpoint. Finally, the DSB-induced cohesion is not limited to broken chromosomes but occurs also on unbroken chromosomes, suggesting that the DNA damage checkpoint through Eco1 provides genome-wide protection of chromosome integrity.