Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Whole-body cardiovascular MRI for the comparison of atherosclerotic burden and cardiac remodelling in healthy South Asian and European adults

Objective: To determine the feasibility of using whole-body cardiovascular MRI (WB-CVMR) to compare South Asians (SAs)—a population known to have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) but paradoxically lower prevalence of peripheral arterial disease—and Western Europeans (WEs). Methods: 19 SAs and 38 age-, gender- and body mass index-matched WEs were recruited. All were aged 40 years and over, free from CVD and with a 10-year risk of CVD <20% as assessed by the adult treatment panel (ATP) III risk score. WB-CVMR was performed, comprising a whole-body angiogram (WBA) and cardiac MR (CMR), on a 3-T MRI scanner (Magnetom® Trio; Siemens, Erlangen, Germany) following dual-phase injection of gadolinium-based contrast agent. A standardized atheroma score (SAS) was calculated from the WBA while indexed left ventricular mass and volumes were calculated from the CMR. Results: SAs exhibited a significantly lower iliofemoral atheroma burden (regional SAS 0.0 ± 0.0 vs 1.9 ± 6.9, p = 0.048) and a trend towards lower overall atheroma burden (whole-body SAS 0.7 ± 0.8 vs 1.8 ± 2.3, p = 0.1). They had significantly lower indexed left ventricular mass (46.9 ± 11.8 vs 56.9 ± 13.4 ml m−2, p = 0.008), end diastolic volume (63.9 ± 10.4 vs 75.2 ± 11.4 ml m−2, p=0.001), end systolic volume (20.5 ± 6.1 vs 24.6 ± 6.8 ml m−2, p = 0.03) and stroke volume (43.4 ± 6.6 vs 50.6 ± 7.9 ml m−2, p = 0.001), but with no significant difference in ejection fraction, mass-volume ratio or global functioning index. These differences persisted after accounting for CVD risk factors. Conclusion: WB-CVMR can quantify cardiac and atheroma burden and can detect differences in these metrics between ethnic groups that, if validated, may suggest that the paradoxical high risk of CVD compared with PVD risk may be due to an adverse cardiac haemodynamic status incurred by the smaller heart rather than atherosclerosis. Advances in knowledge: WB-CVMR can be used to stratify and compare disease between ethnicities.
Adaptive coding of reward prediction errors is gated by striatal coupling

To efficiently represent all of the possible rewards in the world, dopaminergic midbrain neurons dynamically adapt their coding range to the momentarily available rewards. Specifically, these neurons increase their activity for an outcome that is better than expected and decrease it for an outcome worse than expected, independent of the absolute reward magnitude. Although this adaptive coding is well documented, it remains unknown how this rescaling is implemented. To investigate the adaptive coding of prediction errors and its underlying rescaling process, we used human functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in combination with a reward prediction task that involved different reward magnitudes. We demonstrate that reward prediction errors in the human striatum are expressed according to an adaptive coding scheme. Strikingly, we show that adaptive coding is gated by changes in effective connectivity between the striatum and other reward-sensitive regions, namely the midbrain and the medial prefrontal cortex. Our results provide evidence that striatal prediction errors are normalized by a magnitude-dependent alteration in the interregional connectivity within the brain's reward system.
A Comparative Study of Different Machine Learning Approaches for Decision Making

In this paper, several neural network and statistical learning approaches are proposed that learn to make human like decisions for the job assignment problem of the US Navy. Comparison study of Feedforward Neural Networks (FFNN), Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS), Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Adaptive Bayes (AB) classifier with Generalized Estimation Equation (GEE) is provided. Although Support Vector Machine provided the highest decision making rate, other methods also offer various unique advantages. In spite of the high correlation naturally present in the data, with the use of post-processing results were further improved. Key-Words: Feedforward Neural Network, Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System, Support Vector Machine, Adaptive Bayes Classifier
Special Education Graduates versus Nori-Graduates: A Longitudinal Study of Outcomes

LAURA L. KRANSTOVER is Special Education On-Site Data Management Specialist; MARTHA L. THURLOW is Assistant to the Director; and ROBERT H. BRUININKS is Director, all of The Institute on Community Integration at the University of Minnesota. PREPARING STUDENTS with handicaps in independent living skills, social skills, and employment skills should be major goals of the educational system. As interest in the post-school adjustment of former special education students in the community increases, questions arise as to how, or whether, these expectations of school special education programs are being met. The emphasis of current practice in special education implies an express relationship between school programming and a successful transition from school into post-school adult life. Therefore, comparison of outcomes of students who took advantage of curricular interventions (i.e., those who stayed in school), to those students who chose to exit or drop out of school programs prematurely make interesting study for teachers, families and advocates who are involved in special education programs and the personal lives of the students with handicaps. Four recent studies from
Identifying similar code with program dependence graphs

We present an approach to identifying similar code in programs based on finding similar subgraphs in attributed directed graphs. This approach is used on program dependence graphs and therefore considers not only the syntactic structure of programs but also the data flow within (as an abstraction of the semantics). As a result, there is no tradeoff between precision and recall; our approach is very good in both. An evaluation of our prototype implementation shows that the approach is feasible and gives very good results despite the non polynomial complexity of the problem.
Circulating monocyte subsets and cardio - vascular risk factors in coronary artery disease

Mihail Hristov1; Thorsten Leyendecker2*; Christoph Schuhmann4; Philipp von Hundels hausen1,2; Nicole Heussen3; Eva Kehmeier2*; Florian Krötz4; Hae-Young Sohn4; Volker Klauss4; Christian Weber1 1Institute for Molecular Cardiovascular Research (IMCAR), RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany; 2Department of Cardiology, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany; 3Institute for Medical Statistics, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany; 4Department of Cardiology, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Munich, Germany
Response Distortion in Applications of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) in Offender Rehabilitation

ABSTRACT The MMPI-2 continues to be widely used in many areas of professional forensic psychology, including the evaluation of criminal offenders for rehabilitation purposes. While many possible applications of the MMPI exist, not all are well-supported by strong empirical evidence. The origins of the scale among psychiatric populations suggest some utility in detecting other forms of psychopathology in use with offenders. In many applications with offenders, the utility of the validity scales and indicators of the MMPI/MMPI-2 in the detection of invalid or questionable profiles may rival the interpretation of the clinical scales in value. This commentary summarizes issues and research upon the nature and utility of the MMPI/MMPI-2 scales and indices that have been developed to detect various forms of response distortion that can affect the validity of the instrument.
The Relationship Between Maternal Hematocrit and Pregnancy Outcome

The relationship between maternal hematocrit and pregnancy outcome at various times in pregnancy was studied in 17,149 iron- and folate-supplemented pregnant women. On univariate analysis, early-pregnancy hematocrits below 37% were associated with preterm delivery. However, this relationship was not confirmed by multivariate analysis controlling for other risk factors. On both univariate and multivariate analyses, both early and later in pregnancy, hematocrits above 40% were associated with preterm delivery. In every gestational time period, at least part of the excess of preterm births was explained by an increase in indicated preterm deliveries. In both early and late pregnancy, and in both the univariate and multivariate analyses, only high hematocrits were associated with fetal growth retardation. The strongest association (odds ratio above 2) between high hematocrit and both fetal growth retardation and preterm delivery occurred with hematocrits at or above 43% at 31-34 weeks' gestation.
Does the Progressivity of Taxes Matter for Economic Growth

A sizeable literature has argued that the growth effects of changes in flat rate taxes are small. In this paper, we investigate the relatively unexplored area of the growth effect of changes in the tax structure, in particular, in the progressivity of taxes. Considering such a tax reform seems empirically more relevant than considering changes in flat tax rates. We construct a general equilibrium model of endogenous growth in which there is heterogeneity in income and in the tax rates. We limit heterogeneity to two types, skilled and unskilled, and posit that the probability of staying or becoming skilled in the subsequent period depends positively on expenses on "teacher" time. In the production sector, we consider two sources of growth. In the first, growth arises as a purely external effect on account of production activities of skilled workers. In the second, a portion of the skilled workforce is used to work in research and other productivity enhancing activities and is compensated for it. Our analysis shows that changes in the progressivity of tax rates can have positive growth effects even in situations where changes in flat rate taxes have no effect. Experiments on a calibrated model indicate that the quantitative effects of moving to a flat rate system are economically significant. The assumption made about the engine of growth has an important effect on the impact of a change in progressivity. Quantitatively, welfare is unambiguously higher in a flat rate system when comparisons are made across balanced growth equilibria; however, when the costs of transition to the higher growth equilibrium is taken into account only the currently rich slightly prefer the flat rate system.
Effects of hydration on the structure and compressibility of wadsleyite, β-(Mg2SiO4)

Abstract A suite of pure magnesian wadsleyite (β-Mg2SiO4) samples containing 0.005, 0.38, 1.18, and 1.66 wt% H2O was studied by single-crystal X-ray diffraction to determine the effects of hydration on cation ordering and crystal symmetry. Separate compressibility experiments were carried out to 9.6 GPa to determine the effects of hydration on isothermal equations of state. Crystal-structure refinements at ambient conditions show cation vacancies order onto the M3 site. The most hydrous sample (1.6 wt% H2O) displayed monoclinic symmetry with β = 90.090(7)°, whereas the samples with lower content were statistically orthorhombic. The density of wadsleyite decreases with increasing water content at STP according to the empirical relation, ρ = 3.470(2) - 0.046(2) CH2O g/cm3 (with CH2O in wt% H2O). Bulk moduli and pressure derivatives of wadsleyite are KT0 = 173(5) GPa, K0' = 4.1(15) for 0.005 wt% H2O; KT0 = 161(4) GPa, K0' = 5.4(11) for 0.38 wt% H2O; KT0 = 158(4) GPa, K0' = 4.2(9) for 1.18 wt% H2O; and KT0 = 154(4) GPa, K0' = 4.9(11) for 1.66 wt% H2O. Variation of the bulk modulus of wadsleyite with water content is non-linear, which may be attributable to softening of the structure by ordering of vacancies onto two non-equivalent M3 sites (M3a and M3b) and an accompanying dilution of orthorhombic symmetry.
Algorithmic improvements for fast concurrent Cuckoo hashing

Fast concurrent hash tables are an increasingly important building block as we scale systems to greater numbers of cores and threads. This paper presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of a high-throughput and memory-efficient concurrent hash table that supports multiple readers and writers. The design arises from careful attention to systems-level optimizations such as minimizing critical section length and reducing interprocessor coherence traffic through algorithm re-engineering. As part of the architectural basis for this engineering, we include a discussion of our experience and results adopting Intel's recent hardware transactional memory (HTM) support to this critical building block. We find that naively allowing concurrent access using a coarse-grained lock on existing data structures reduces overall performance with more threads. While HTM mitigates this slowdown somewhat, it does not eliminate it. Algorithmic optimizations that benefit both HTM and designs for fine-grained locking are needed to achieve high performance. Our performance results demonstrate that our new hash table design---based around optimistic cuckoo hashing---outperforms other optimized concurrent hash tables by up to 2.5x for write-heavy workloads, even while using substantially less memory for small key-value items. On a 16-core machine, our hash table executes almost 40 million insert and more than 70 million lookup operations per second.
Putting doctoral education to work: challenges to academic practice

Professional doctorates designed to meet the needs of particular groups (education, nursing, business, law, etc.) have been established, and the PhD now encompasses a wide range of academic pursuits. However, the combination of the PhD and designated professional doctorates does not exhaust the range of doctoral‐level education. Is there a particular role for a doctoral‐level qualification for those who do not wish to follow the academic path of the PhD, or the designated path of existing professional doctorates? This paper argues that there is such a need, and identifies and explores some of the issues to be faced in addressing such a need. The paper focuses on three challenges for academic practice in doctoral education arising from this. First, the impetus for new forms of doctoral education is considered and what this implies for the diversity of current provision. Second, the target population for new professionally orientated doctorates is examined, namely ‘new knowledge workers’, those who operate in areas not covered by specialized doctorates and those who wish to negotiate transdisciplinary programs. Finally, the paper examines issues universities face in meeting the needs of new populations of doctoral candidates, particularly the need to develop new academic cultural practices.
Binding site extraction by similar subgraphs mining from protein molecular surfaces

Most proteins express their functions by binding with other proteins or molecular compounds called ligands. The local portion involved in binding is called a binding site. The characteristics of the binding site often determine the function of the protein, so clarifying the location of the binding site of the protein helps analyze the function of proteins. Binding sites that bind to similar ligands often have common surface structures. Such common structures are called surface motifs. Therefore, extracting the surface motifs among several proteins with similar functions improves binding site prediction. We propose a method of predicting binding sites by extracting the surface motifs that are frequently observed in only a specific group, which means a set of proteins that bind to the same ligand. Since most binding sites have concave structures called pockets, the pockets are compared and common structures are searched for to extract the surface motifs by applying similar graph mining to the pocket data, which are represented as graphs, to find the frequent subgraphs among the pockets of several proteins. In addition, the common binding sites across several groups can be predicted in such a way to integrate more than one group. Applying our proposed method to a set of 37 proteins of five groups, we achieved success rates of binding site prediction over 40% and 50% for more than half of the groups without group integration and using integration, respectively.
Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder, c.1848-1918

Book synopsis: This book investigates the specific conception and descent of a language of 'degeneration' from 1848–1918, with particular reference to France, Italy and England. Daniel Pick shows how in the refraction and wake of evolution and naturalism, new images and theories of atavism, 'degenerescence' and socio-biological decline emerged in European culture and politics. He indicates the wide cultural and political importance of the idea of degeneration, whilst showing that the notion could mean different things at different times in different places.
LGBTQ Experiences with Religion and Spirituality: Occupational Transition and Adaptation

This paper explores how individuals experienced transition regarding spiritual or religious occupations after acknowledging identities as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer (LGBTQ). Based on qualitative interviews with 35 self-identified LGBTQ people, it explores experiences of identity conflict and processes of transition, as well as meanings of spiritual or religious occupations. For some, transition occurred very young, for others not until adulthood. Some participants remained in the faith traditions of their upbringings, others adopted new faith traditions, many created personal relationships to spirituality, and a few abandoned anything spiritual. Those who left religions often lost faith, rituals, community, family connections, and specific religious occupational roles. Occupational adaptation took three forms: reducing participation and engagement; altering the meaning of engagement; or changing the occupation itself. The occupations participants identified as spiritual were both private and collective. While borrowing from diverse spiritual paths was common, so too was creating individualized spiritual practices. Spiritual occupations held a range of meanings for participants: enacting openness, truth, honesty, and authenticity; providing meaning; connecting with self and others; transcending the mundane; and ultimately, survival. Occupational transition is shown to entail exploration, competence and achievement, but also loss, abandonment, altered meanings, and revised or novel occupations.
Relaxed LMI-based stability conditions for takagi-sugeno fuzzy control systems using regional membership-function-shape-dependent analysis approach

This paper presents relaxed stability conditions for Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy-model-based (FMB) control systems. Similar to many previous approaches, stability conditions are represented in the form of multi-dimensional fuzzy summa­tion. To investigate the system stability, the inequalities of p-dimensional fuzzy summation are expanded to n-dimensional fuzzy summation (n ≥ p). Then the boundary and regional information of membership functions are utilized for relaxation of stability analysis results. In the first step the lower and upper bounds of the membership functions and its products from 2 to n in the full operating domain are considered in the stability analysis. This approach is named Global-Membership-Function-Shape-Dependent (GMFSD). The second approach is named Regional-Membership-Function-Shape-Dependent (RMFSD) of which the operating region is partitioned to sub-regions and the boundary information of membership functions on each operating sub-region is employed to facilitate the stability analysis for further relaxation of stability conditions. Numerical example is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed stability conditions.
Arab prospective science teachers’ world view: presuppositions towards nature

This study investigated the nature of Arab prospective science teachers’ world view presuppositions towards nature. An instrument was developed and administered to 117 prospective science teachers. The instrument covers four world view presuppositions in a bipolar form. They are safety and fear, order and chaos, aesthetic and materialistic, special and mundane. The results showed that the prospective teachers mostly felt safe towards nature. They considered nature orderly, beautiful and special. More importantly, their presuppositions were mostly religious. Although many of them would be science teachers within a few months they lacked the usual scientific presuppositions. The study concludes that science education programmes in the Arab culture should be culturally sensitive.
Negation in French–Chinese, German–Chinese and English–Chinese Interlanguages

This article reports on an empirical study of L2 acquisition of Chinese negation by French-, German- and English-speaking learners. With regard to the syntactic structure of clausal negation, French and German are different from Chinese while English and Chinese are similar. It was hypothesised that it would be easier for English-speaking learners than for French- and German-speaking learners to acquire the syntactic structure of Chinese negation. However, this hypothesis is disconfirmed by the results of the study; little variation is found between the L2 groups in the acquisition of Chinese negation and their behaviours are all native-like. These results present a challenge to some influential L2-acquisition hypotheses. The findings suggest that L2 grammars can have fully and appropriately specified features of functional categories from the initial stage of L2 acquisition even though these features may have different values in learners’ L1s.
Statistical Practice: Putting Society on Display

As a contribution to current debates on the ‘social life of methods’, in this article we present an ethnomethodological study of the role of understanding within statistical practice. After reviewing the empirical turn in the methods literature and the challenges to the qualitative-quantitative divide it has given rise to, we argue such case studies are relevant because they enable us to see different ways in which ‘methods’, here quantitative methods, come to have a social life – by embodying and exhibiting understanding they ‘make the social structures of everyday activities observable’ (Garfinkel, 1967: 75), thereby putting society on display. Exhibited understandings rest on distinctive lines of practical social and cultural inquiry – ethnographic ‘forays’ into the worlds of the producers and users of statistics – which are central to good statistical work but are not themselves quantitative. In highlighting these non-statistical forms of social and cultural inquiry at work in statistical practice, our case study is an addition to understandings of statistics and usefully points to ways in which studies of the social life of methods might be further developed from here.