Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Understanding the role of the immune system in adolescent idiopathic scoliosis: Immunometabolic CONnections to Scoliosis (ICONS) study protocol

Introduction Adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) affects up to 3% of children around the world. There is limited knowledge of AIS aetiopathogenesis, and this evidence is needed to develop new management strategies. Paraspinal muscle in AIS demonstrates evidence of differential fibrosis based on curve sidedness. Fibrosis is the hallmark of macrophage-driven inflammation and tissue remodelling, yet the mechanisms of fibrosis in paraspinal muscle in AIS are poorly understood. Objectives The primary objective of this study is to determine the influence of curve sidedness on paraspinal muscle inflammation. Secondary objectives include defining the mechanisms of macrophage homing to muscle, and determining muscle–macrophage crosstalk in muscle fibrosis in AIS. Methods and analysis This is a cross-sectional study conducted in a tertiary paediatric centre in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. We will recruit boys and girls, 10–17 years of age, who are having surgery to correct AIS. We will exclude children who have an active infection or are on immunosuppressive therapies within 2 weeks of surgery, smokers and pregnant girls. Paraspinal muscle biopsies will be obtained at the start of surgery. Also, blood and urine samples will be collected from participants, who will fill questionnaires about their lifestyle. Anthropometric measures will also be collected including height, weight, waist and hip circumferences. Ethics and dissemination This study has received ethics authorisation by the institutional review board. This work will be published in peer-reviewed journals and will be presented in oral and poster formats at scientific meetings. Discussion This study will explore the mechanisms of paraspinal muscle inflammation, remodelling and fibrosis in AIS. This will help identify pathways and molecules as potential therapeutic targets to treat and prevent AIS. It may also yield markers that predict scoliosis progression and response to treatment in these children.
Clustering by Maximizing Sum-of-Squared Separation Distance

Maximizing the separating margin is crucial for the good generalization performance of Support Vector Machines (SVMs). Analogous to the deﬁnition of separation distance or separating margin in SVMs, we propose a deﬁnition on separation distance in clustering tasks when a hyperplane is used to separate clusters. For given training data and a given metric distance, by maximizing the proposed separation distance, our clustering algorithm constructs an “optimal” hyperplane that can be applied to unseen data in the future. The resulting hyperplane corresponds to a nonlinear decision boundary in the input feature space through an appropriate distance feature mapping. A graph-theoretic perspective of the proposed method is discussed. In particular, we show that, under certain conditions, the proposed clustering algorithm is equivalent to a spectral relaxed graph cut. Extensive experimental results are provided to validate the method.
Disrupted Resting-State Default Mode Network in Betel Quid-Dependent Individuals

Recent studies have shown that substance dependence (addiction) is accompanied with altered activity patterns of the default mode network (DMN). However, the neural correlates of the resting-state DMN and betel quid dependence (BQD)-related physiopathological characteristics still remain unclear. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging images were obtained from 26 BQD individuals and 28 matched healthy control subjects. Group independent component analysis was performed to analyze the resting state images into spatially independent components. Gray matter volume was examined as covariate with voxel-based morphometry to rule out its effect on the functional results. The severity of BQD was assessed by the BQD Scale (BQDS). We observed decreased functional connectivity in anterior part of the DMN including ventral medial prefrontal cortex, orbital MPFC (OMPFC)/anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Furthermore, the functional connectivity within the OMPFC/ACC in BQD individuals was negatively correlated with BQDS (p = 0.01, r = -0.49). We reported decreased functional connectivity within anterior part of the DMN in BQD individuals, which provides new evidence for the role of the DMN in the pathophysiology of BQD.
The Flux Auto- and Cross-Correlation of the Lyα Forest. I. Spectroscopy of QSO Pairs with Arcminute Separations and Similar Redshifts

The Lyα forest has opened a new redshift regime for cosmological investigation. At z > 2 it provides a unique probe of cosmic geometry and an independent constraint on dark energy that is not subject to standard candle or ruler assumptions. In Paper I of this series on using the Lyα forest observed in pairs of QSOs for a new application of the Alcock-Paczyński test, we present and discuss the results of a campaign to obtain moderate-resolution spectroscopy (FWHM ≃ 2.5 Å) of the Lyα forest in pairs of QSOs with small redshift differences (Δ z < 0.25, z > 2.2) and arcminute separations (θ < 5′). This data set, composed of seven individual QSOs, 35 pairs, and one triplet, is also well suited for future investigations of the coherence of Lyα absorbers on ~1 Mpc transverse scales and the transverse proximity effect. We note seven revisions for previously published QSO identifications and/or redshifts.
Forecasting Returns with Fundamentals-Removed Investor Sentiment

The Baker and Wurgler (2006) sentiment index purports to measure irrational investor sentiment, while the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index is designed to largely reflect fundamentals. Removing this fundamental component from the Baker and Wurgler index creates an index of investor sentiment that may better capture irrational sentiment. This new index predicts returns better than the original Baker and Wurgler index as well as the alternative Baker and Wurgler sentiment index.
Who Trades?

Few retail investors actively buy and sell individual stocks. This paper finds that a sample of those who do - over 1,000 customers at a German broker who turn over their portfolio at a median annual rate of 85% - consists of predominantly male, younger, and more educated investors who earn higher incomes and almost unanimously profess to know more than the typical investor. Personal attributes including measures of self-reported investor sophistication, however, fail to explain much variation in sophistication (or lack thereof) inferred from actual investment decisions such as the tendency to tilt one's portfolio toward local and domestic stocks, take idiosyncratic risk, and churn one's portfolio. The one exception is self-reported risk tolerance, which is strongly positively correlated with portfolio risk and turnover, swamping previously documented gender and age effects.
High-temperature asymptotics of the 4d superconformal index

The superconformal index of a typical Lagrangian 4d SCFT is given by a special function known as an elliptic hypergeometric integral (EHI). The high-temperature limit of the index corresponds to the hyperbolic limit of the EHI. The hyperbolic limit of certain special EHIs has been analyzed by Eric Rains around 2006; extending Rains's techniques, we discover a surprisingly rich structure in the high-temperature limit of a (rather large) class of EHIs that arise as the superconformal index of unitary Lagrangian 4d SCFTs with non-chiral matter content. Our result has implications for $\mathcal{N}=1$ dualities, the AdS/CFT correspondence, and supersymmetric gauge dynamics on $R^3\times S^1$. We also investigate the high-temperature asymptotics of the large-N limit of the superconformal index of a class of holographic 4d SCFTs (described by toric quiver gauge theories with SU(N) nodes). We show that from this study a rather general solution to the problem of holographic Weyl anomaly in AdS$_5$/CFT$_4$ at the subleading order (in the 1/N expansion) emerges. Most of this dissertation is based on published works by Jim Liu, Phil Szepietowski, and the author. We include here a few previously unpublished results as well, one of which is the high-temperature asymptotics of the superconformal index of puncture-less SU(2) class-$\mathcal{S}$ theories.
Puberty , Aging and HRT Anti-Müllerian hormone and inhibin B levels as markers of premature ovarian aging and transition to menopause in type 1 diabetes mellitus

Néstor Soto1, Germán Iñiguez2, Patricia López2, Gladys Larenas3, Verónica Mujica4,5, Rodolfo A. Rey6, and Ethel Codner2,7 Endocrinology and Diabetes Unit, San Borja-Arriarán Hospital, Santiago, Chile Institute of Maternal and Child Research (I.D.I.M.I.), School of Medicine, University of Chile, Casilla, 226-3 Santiago, Chile Universidad de La Frontera, Temuco, Chile University of Talca, Talca, Chile Hospital Regional de Talca, Talca, Chile Centro de Investigaciones Endocrinológicas (CEDIE), Hospital de Niños R. Gutiérrez and Faculty of Medicine, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina
Introduction to the Special Issue. Gender and Science : Old Challenges, New Approaches

This special issue on gender and science, brings together 10 articles that present some of the results of the study ‘Meta-analysis of gender and science research’ and its final conference ‘Beyond the leaky pipeline: Challenges for research on gender and science’, held in Brussels in October 2010. The ‘meta-analysis’ study was a project of the 7th RTD Framework Programme of the European Union, coordinated by Maria Caprile at the CIREM Foundation. Its main objective was to carry out a comprehensive analysis of the last thirty years of European research on horizontal and vertical gender segregation in science with a view to steering policy-making and to defining future research priorities in this field. For the purposes of the study, ‘science’ was understood in its broadest meaning, including social sciences and humanities as well as research and technological development. The study covered all research on gender and science produced between 1980 and 2008, in all European languages, in 33 countries: the 27 EU Member States as well as 6 Associated Countries to the 7th Framework Programme (Croatia, Iceland, Israel, Norway, Switzerland, and Turkey). A major output of the study was the creation of the Gender and Science Database (GSD), a unique online resource containing 4,500 European academic publications scanning three decades. This introductory article summarises the main conclusions of our research project and presents the 10 articles comprised in this special issue. In addition to our synthesis report (Caprile et al. 2011), further details about the study and the conference can be found on the website of the study, which gives access to the GSD, all the reports produced in the framework of the study and the proceedings of the final conference (www.genderandscience.org). It also acknowledges all the experts who contributed to this research project, as national experts, members of the coordination team, of the advisory groups, keynote speakers and participants at the conference. We wish to express our deepest gratitude to all of them.
Cynicism in negotiation: When communication increases buyers’ skepticism

The economic literature on negotiation shows that strategic concerns can be a barrier to agreement, even when the buyer values the good more than the seller. Yet behavioral research demonstrates that human interaction can overcome these strategic concerns through communication. We show that there is also a downside of this human interaction: cynicism. Across two studies we focus on a seller-buyer interaction in which the buyer has uncertain knowledge about the goods for sale, but has a positive expected payoff from saying “yes” to the available transaction. Study 1 shows that most buyers accept offers made by computers, but that acceptance rates drop significantly when offers are made by human sellers who communicate directly with buyers. Study 2 clarifies that this effect results from allowing human sellers to communicate with buyers, and shows that such communication focuses the buyers’ attention on the seller’s trustworthiness. The mere situation of negotiated interaction increases buyers’ attention to the sellers’ self-serving motives and, consequently, buyers’ cynicism. Unaware of this downside of interaction, sellers actually prefer to have the opportunity to communicate with buyers.
Intercluster filaments of galaxies programme: abundance and distribution of filaments in the 2dFGRS catalogue

Filaments of galaxies are known to stretch between galaxy clusters at all redshifts in a complex manner. In this Letter, we present an analysis of the frequency and distribution of intercluster galaxy filaments selected from the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey. Out of 805 cluster-cluster pairs, we find at least 40 per cent have bona fide filaments. We introduce a filament classification scheme and divide the filaments into several types according to their visual morphology: straight (lying on the cluster-cluster axis; 37 per cent), warped or curved (lying off the cluster-cluster axis; 33 per cent), sheets (planar configurations of galaxies; 3 per cent), uniform (1 per cent) and irregular (26 per cent). We find that straight filaments are more likely to reside between close cluster pairs and they become more curved with increasing cluster separation. This curving is toward a larger mass concentration in general. We also show that the more massive a cluster is, the more likely it is to have a larger number of filaments. Our results are found to be consistent with a cold dark matter cosmology.
Effect of Different Inclusion Level of Condensed Distillers Solubles Ratios and Oil Content on Amino Acid Digestibility of Corn Distillers Dried Grains with Solubles in Growing Pigs

The purpose of this experiment was to determine and compare the digestibility of crude protein (CP) and amino acids (AA) in full-oil (no oil extracted) and de-oiled (oil extracted) corn distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS) with different condensed distillers solubles (CDS) ratios. Six barrows (29.6±2.3 kg) fitted with ileal T-cannula were allotted into a 6×6 Latin square design. Each period was comprised of a 5-d adaption period followed by a 2-d collection of ileal digesta. The five test diets contained 62% DDGS as the sole source of AA. A nitrogen-free diet was used to measure the basal endogenous losses of CP and AA. Chromic oxide (0.3%) was used as an index in each diet. The results showed that CP and AA were very similar in 5 DDGS, but the standardized ileal digestibility (SID) of lysine (from 56.16% to 71.15%) and tryptophan (from 54.90% to 68.38%) had the lowest values and largest variation within the essential AA, which suggests reduced availability of AA and different levels of Maillard reactions in the five DDGS. The apparent ileal digestibility and SID of CP and most of AA in full-oil DDGS (sources 1 and 2) were greater (p<0.05) than de-oiled DDGS (sources 3, 4, and 5). Comparing the AA SID in the 5 DDGS, full-oil with low CDS ratio DDGS (source 1) had non-significantly higher values (p >0.05) than full-oil with high CDS ratio DDGS (source 2); however, the SID of most AA of de-oiled with low CDS ratios DDGS (source 3) were non-significantly lower (p>0.05) than de-oiled with high CDS ratio DDGS (source 4); and the de-oiled DDGS with middle CDS ratio (source 5) but with different drying processing had the lowest SID AA values. In conclusion, de-oiled DDGS had lower SID of CP and AA than full-oil DDGS; a higher CDS ratio tended to decrease the SID of AA in full-oil DDGS but not in de-oiled DDGS; and compared with CDS ratio, processing, especially drying, may have more of an effect on AA digestibility of DDGS.
What's in a URL: Fast Feature Extraction and Malicious URL Detection

Phishing is an online social engineering attack with the goal of digital identity theft carried out by pretending to be a legitimate entity. The attacker sends an attack vector commonly in the form of an email, chat session, blog post etc., which contains a link (URL) to a malicious website hosted to elicit private information from the victims. We focus on building a system for URL analysis and classification to primarily detect phishing attacks. URL analysis is attractive to maintain distance between the attacker and the victim, rather than visiting the website and getting features from it. It is also faster than Internet search, retrieving content from the destination website and network-level features used in previous research. We investigate several facets of URL analysis, e.g., performance analysis on both balanced and unbalanced datasets in a static as well as live experimental setup and online versus batch learning.
Nutritional constraints at the cyanobacteria—Daphnia magna interface: The role of sterols

In past decades, a considerable amount of research has been conducted to elucidate the factors that affect the carbon transfer across the cyanobacteria‐Daphnia interface. It is well accepted that cyanobacteria are a nutritionally inadequate food source for cladocerans, but the underlying mechanisms are still controversial. Morphological properties, toxicity, and the absence of essential lipids, i.e., polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) and sterols, are discussed as the most important factors that account for this nutritional inadequacy. Here, we conducted standardized growth experiments with the herbivore Daphnia magna feeding on coccal, filamentous, and putatively toxic cyanobacterial strains comprising the genera Synechococcus, Anabaena, Aphanizomenon, and Microcystis and on a cyanobacterial mixture containing strains of these genera. The relative importance of PUFAs and sterols in determining the food quality of cyanobacteria for Daphnia was assessed by supplementation of eicosapentaenoic acid‐ and/or cholesterol‐containing liposomes to the cyanobacterial carbon. We provide evidence that somatic growth of daphnids on coccal as well as on filamentous cyanobacteria is primarily constrained by the absence of sterols, provided that the cyanobacterial carbon is readily ingested and nontoxic. The absence of PUFAs in cyanobacteria appears to be of minor importance for somatic growth but potentially affects egg production in Daphnia. Thus, the absence of sterols has to be considered a major food‐quality constraint that potentially affects the efficiency of carbon transfer across the cyanobacteria‐Daphnia interface.
ARGOS - System for Heterogeneous Mobile Robot Teleoperation

ARGOS (advanced robotic graphical operation system) for teleoperation of various mobile robots through sensory supported visual telepresence is presented. Two robots -Orpheus and Hermes - made on Department of Control and Instrumentation (DCI) are described as examples of systems with different features and capabilities that may be controlled through ARGOS. Integration of 3D scanners to the robots and their measurement to ARGOS system is presented. Data fusion of CCD color camera data, thermovision data and 3D proximity data through extended 3D robot evidence grids is described
Improving Dynamic Index Pruning via Linear Programming

Dynamic index pruning techniques are commonly used to speed up query processing in Web search engines. In this work, we propose a linear programming technique which can further improve the performance of the state-of-the-art dynamic index pruning techniques. The experiments we conducted demonstrate that the proposed technique achieves reduction in terms of the disk access, index decompression, and scoring costs compared to the well-known Max-Score technique.
Neuroendovascular Optical Coherence Tomography Imaging and Histological Analysis

BACKGROUND:Intravascular optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a recently developed optical imaging technique that provides high-resolution cross-sectional in situ images from intact tissue based on tissue reflectance of near-infrared or infrared light. OBJECTIVE:To report on the feasibility of neuroendovascular OCT imaging and compare the neuroendovascular OCT findings with histology in nondiseased vessels in an animal, cadaveric, and clinical study. METHODS:Catheter-based in vivo endovascular OCT imaging was performed in the common carotid arteries of 2 pigs and in the intracranial carotid arteries of 3 patients. The endovascular OCT device was delivered to the desired location via groin access and using standard endovascular procedures. Images were obtained via rotational and translational scanning using external motors. In vivo findings were reproduced using ex vivo OCT imaging in corresponding animal and human (cadaveric) harvested tissue segments. These segments underwent histological examination for comparison. RESULTS:The structural compositions of the OCT-imaged segments of the common carotid arteries in pigs as well as the petrous and cavernous intracranial carotid arteries in patients were visualized at high resolution (8 μm). The in vivo images were identical to those obtained ex vivo, demonstrating the imaging capabilities of the endovascular OCT device. The OCT images correlated well with the images obtained after histological sectioning and visualized in vivo the laminar vascular structure. CONCLUSION:Neuroendovascular OCT imaging is feasible for clinical use and can detect with high resolution the structure of arterial segments. Understanding OCT imaging in nondiseased arteries is important in establishing baseline findings necessary for interpreting pathological processes. This allows neuroendovascular optical biopsies of vascular tissue to be obtained without the need for excision and processing.
May Functional Imaging be Helpful for Behavioral Assessment in Children? Regions of Motor and Associative Cortico-Subcortical Circuits Can be Differentiated by Laterality and Rostrality

Background Cortico-subcortical circuits are organized into the sensorimotor, associative, and limbic loop. These neuronal preconditions play an important role regarding the understanding and treatment of behavioral problems in children. Differencing evidence argues for a lateralized organization of the sensorimotor loop and a bilateral (i.e., non-lateralized) organization of the associative loop. However, a firm behavioral–neurobiological distinction of these circuits has been difficult, specifically in children. Objectives Thus, the aim was a comprehensive functional visualization and differentiation of the sensorimotor and the associative circuit during childhood. As a new approach, laterality and rostrality features were used to distinguish between the two circuits within one single motor task. Methods Twenty-four healthy boys performed self-paced index finger tapping with each hand separately during functional magnetic resonance imaging at 3 Tesla. Results A contrast analysis for left against right hand movement revealed lateralized activation in typical sensorimotor regions such as primary sensorimotor cortex, caudal supplementary motor area (SMA), caudal putamen, and thalamus. A conjunction analysis confirmed bilateral involvement of known associative regions including pre-SMA, rostral SMA, and rostral putamen. Conclusion A functional visualization of two distinct corticostriatal circuits is provided in childhood. Both the sensorimotor and associative circuit may be discriminated by their laterality characteristics already in minors. Additionally, the results support the concept of a modified functional subdivision of the SMA in a rostral (associative) and caudal (motor) part. A further development of this approach might help to nurture behavioral assessment and neurofeedback training in child mental health.