Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Coexistence of Antiphospholipid Syndrome and Systemic Lupus Erythematosus in Colombians

Objectives To examine the prevalence and associated factors related to the coexistence of antiphospholipid syndrome (APS) and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) in a cohort of Colombian patients with SLE, and to discuss the coexistence of APS with other autoimmune diseases (ADs). Method A total of 376 patients with SLE were assessed for the presence of the following: 1) confirmed APS; 2) positivity for antiphospholipid (aPL) antibodies without a prior thromboembolic nor obstetric event; and 3) SLE patients without APS nor positivity for aPL antibodies. Comparisons between groups 1 and 3 were evaluated by bivariate and multivariate analysis. Results Although the prevalence of aPL antibodies was 54%, APS was present in just 9.3% of SLE patients. In our series, besides cardiovascular disease (AOR 3.38, 95% CI 1.11–10.96, p = 0.035), pulmonary involvement (AOR 5.06, 95% CI 1.56–16.74, p = 0.007) and positivity for rheumatoid factor (AOR 4.68, 95%IC 1.63–14.98, p = 0.006) were factors significantly associated with APS-SLE. APS also may coexist with rheumatoid arthritis, Sjögren's syndrome, autoimmune thyroid diseases, systemic sclerosis, systemic vasculitis, dermatopolymyositis, primary biliary cirrhosis and autoimmune hepatitis. Conclusions APS is a systemic AD that may coexist with other ADs, the most common being SLE. Awareness of this polyautoimmunity should be addressed promptly to establish strategies for controlling modifiable risk factors in those patients.
Cinématique de l'Iran central et oriental : Morphotectonique et datations cosmogéniques et OSL

Ce travail de these presente les resultats d'etudes geomorphologiques sur la cinematique de failles dans le centre et l'est de l'Iran. Dans cette region, des observations geodesiques associees a l'analyse d'un reseau GPS a large maille (Vernant et al., 2004 ; Masson et al., 2007) suggerent que le cisaillement dextre entre l'Iran Central et le bloc Afghan est d'environ 16 mm/an. Un modele cinematique (Walker et al., 2004) propose que ce cisaillement dextre soit pris en compte depuis les 5 derniers Ma par les grands decrochements limitant le Lut a l'Ouest et a l'Est. Leur vitesse geologique est cependant mal contrainte tout comme celle de decrochements situes a l'interieur du plateau iranien, generalement consideres peu ou non actifs. Nous demontrons l'activite de deux decrochements dextres situes sur le plateau iranien, les failles d'Anar et de Deshir, et determinons leur vitesse de glissement moyennee sur plusieurs cycles sismiques. Pour cela, des decalages de bords d'incision de terrasses alluviales ont ete mesures et des datations par mesure de la production in-situ en isotopes cosmogeniques (10Be et 36Cl) et par luminescence stimulee optiquement (OSL) ont ete effectuees. L'analyse des donnees de surface et de profil, obtenues par les mesures d'isotopes cosmogeniques, a permis de mettre en evidence l'existence d'un heritage variable et important du materiel composant les terrasses alluviales. Nous avons propose une methode pour estimer la quantite minimum d'heritage variable, dans le but de determiner l'âge d'abandon des surfaces abandonnees puis les vitesses de glissement sur les failles. Les datations par isotopes cosmogeniques et OSL combinees aux mesures de decalages morphologiques impliquent des vitesses de glissement geologique court-terme de 0.8 mm/an pour la faille d'Anar et de 0.85 – 2 mm/an pour la faille de Deshir. Ces resultats nous permettent de discuter le role de ces failles dans l'accommodation de la deformation dans le centre et l'est de l'Iran, suggerant que la deformation cisaillante se repartit sur une zone plus large que le Lut et ses bordures, et est prise en compte par un plus grand nombre de failles, qu'initialement suppose. Les donnees geologiques et GPS disponibles sont encore en nombre insuffisant pour determiner s'il y a ou non des incompatibilites entre deformation finie et deformation instantanee.
Effect of stimulation frequency on contraction-induced glucose transport in rat skeletal muscle.

Previous studies have indicated that frequency of stimulation is a major determinant of glucose transport in contracting muscle. We have now studied whether this is so also when total force development or metabolic rate is kept constant. Incubated soleus muscles were electrically stimulated to perform repeated tetanic contractions at four different frequencies (0.25, 0.5, 1, and 2 Hz) for 10 min. Resting length was adjusted to achieve identical total force development or metabolic rate (glycogen depletion and lactate accumulation). Overall, at constant total force development, glucose transport (2-deoxyglucose uptake) increased with stimulation frequency (P < 0.05; basal: 25 +/- 2, 0.25 Hz: 50 +/- 4, 0.5 Hz: 50 +/- 3, 1 Hz: 81 +/- 5, 2 Hz: 79 +/- 3 nmol. g(-1). 5 min(-1)). However, glucose transport was identical (P > 0.05) at the two lower (0.25 and 0.5 Hz) as well as at the two higher (1 and 2 Hz) frequencies. Glycogen decreased (P < 0.05; basal: 19 +/- 1, 0.25 Hz: 13 +/- 1, 0.5 Hz: 12 +/- 2, 1 Hz: 7 +/- 1, 2 Hz: 7 +/- 1 mmol/kg) and 5'-AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) activity increased (P < 0. 05; basal: 1.7 +/- 0.4, 0.25 Hz: 32.4 +/- 7.0, 0.5 Hz: 36.5 +/- 2.1, 1 Hz: 63.4 +/- 8.0, 2 Hz: 67.0 +/- 13.4 pmol. mg(-1). min(-1)) when glucose transport increased. Experiments with constant metabolic rate were carried out in soleus, flexor digitorum brevis, and epitrochlearis muscles. In all muscles, glucose transport was identical at 0.5 and 2 Hz (P > 0.05); also, AMPK activity did not increase with stimulation frequency. In conclusion, muscle glucose transport increases with stimulation frequency but only in the face of energy depletion and increase in AMPK activity. This indicates that contraction-induced glucose transport is elicited by metabolic demands rather than by events occurring early during the excitation-contraction coupling.
Temporal Expressions in Speech and Gesture

People use spatial metaphors to talk about temporal concepts. They also gesture frequently during speech. The characteristics of these gestures give information regarding the mental timelines people form to experience time. The present study investigates the expression of temporal concepts on a natural setting with Turkish speakers. We found that Turkish speakers used more metaphoric temporal phrases (e.g., short period, time flies quickly) than words referring to time without spatial content (e.g., today, nowadays) in a session where they talked about people’s fortune. Spontaneous gestures were mainly classified as metaphoric and beat gestures and were mostly produced on the sagittal axis, which contradicts with the previous findings. Yet, we also found that people used vertical axis to represent current and future events. These findings suggest that lateral axis may not always be the most common direction for co-speech temporal gesture use, and the pragmatic constraints of the environment may influence the spatial conceptualization of time.
ANNOTATION AND ANALYSIS OF ACOUSTIC AND LEXICAL EVENTS IN A GENERIC CORPUS OF SPONTANEOUS SPEECH IN SPANISH

This paper presents the annotation and statistical analysis of spon-taneous speech events in a series of broadcast news interviews drawn from the so called Corpus Oral de Referencia de la Lengua Espa˜nola Contempor´anea . The annotated corpus consists of 42 interviews taken from radio and television broadcasts, fully transcribed and lasting 6.41 hours. The corpus is intended primarily to compare frequencies and typologies of spontaneous speech events between task-speciﬁc and generic speech, but also to train acoustic and language models and carry out recognition experiments. The annotation process involved two steps: (1) ﬁltering the initial transcriptions, and (2) augmenting the ﬁltered transcriptions with acoustic and lexical events. Filtering was applied not only to adapt the orthographic conventions and the mark-up format but also to discard some of the marks, which were irrelevant from the point of view of speech recognition. Besides human and non-human noises, annotation included acoustic events: lengthenings, silent pauses and ﬁlled pauses; lexical events: cut-off words, mispro-nunciations and guttural afﬁrmations; and speech overlaps, which rarely appear in human-computer dialogues. Statistics show that the probability of ﬁnding one of such events at each word is 0.19.
Tea and health.

Tea is a pleasant, popular, socially accepted, economical, and safe drink that is enjoyed every day by hundreds of millions of people across all continents. Tea also provides a dietary source of biologically active compounds that help prevent a wide variety of diseases. It is the richest source of a class of antioxidants called flavonoids and contains many other beneficial compounds such as vitamins and fluoride. A growing body of evidence suggests that moderate consumption of tea may protect against several forms of cancer, cardiovascular diseases, the formation of kidney stones, bacterial infections, and dental cavities. Future research needs to define the actual magnitude of health benefits, establish the safe range of tea consumption associated with these benefits, and elucidate potential mechanisms of action.
Zero-Crossings with Adaptation for Automatic Speech Recognition

An auditory model based on zero-crossings with peak amplitudes (ZCPA) was used as a front-end for automatic speech recognition (ASR) with the perceptual property of adaptation as determined by psychoacoustic observations. The model performance was evaluated on the isolated digits (TIDIGITS) database using continuous density HMM recognizer in additive noise. Experimental results indicate that the ASR performance of the ZCPA may be improved with adaptation over the static baseline performance in white Gaussian and factory noise. The perceptual front-end was also evaluated with dynamic (delta and delta-delta) features added to the adaptation. It was observed that adaptation with dynamic features performed better in factory, babble and car noise over a wide range of SNR values. The recognition performances were compared with the baseline MFCC. The performance of the dynamic ZCPA with adaptation was better than the dynamic MFCC in white Gaussian noise.
Layers of Ethnicity

What impact, if any, do ethnic federalism and the geographic concentration of ethnic minorities have on the political incorporation of minorities in democracies with single-member district elections? Many studies on ethnic voting in the United States have examined the impact of majority-minority districts on the turnout of minority voters and the election of minority candidates. However, few studies have explored the effects of similar institutions in other countries. The authors address this issue by applying insights on ethnic voting from the American politics literature to Russia’s 1995 parliamentary election. They use multilevel regression models and census and electoral data that are disaggregated at the subdistrict (raion) level to systematically assess whether ethnic federalism and majority-minority districts increase the vote share of minority candidates and encourage the turnout of minority voters. The findings suggest that district-level characteristics—specifically, majority-minority districts—are more important than ethnic federalism for promoting minority representation in Russia.
Experience in identifying the venous drainage of the adrenal gland during laparoscopic adrenalectomy

Laparoscopic adrenalectomy (LA) is the procedure of choice for most adrenal tumors. An important part of LA is the early identification and ligation of the adrenal veins. The venous drainage from each adrenal gland is usually via a single vein: the right vein draining into the inferior vena cava (IVC) and the left vein into the left renal vein. Although infrequent, variable venous drainage has been documented. The aim of the study was to clarify if LA identified venous drainage and its variants. Between January 1999 and January 2008, 142 consecutive patients underwent LA. Adrenal vein anatomy was documented on a prospective database. In total, 142 patients underwent 162 LA (right = 62, left = 66, bilateral = 17). All adrenal veins were identified at the time of laparoscopy. For 157 LA, the adrenal venous drainage was constant: right vein drained into the IVC and left vein drained into left renal vein. Five patients had adrenal vein variants: two right veins draining separately into IVC (n = 1), two right veins draining into the IVC and right renal vein (n = 1), and two left veins draining separately into the left renal vein (n = 3). Adrenal vein variants were present in patients with phaeochromocytomas (n = 4) or adrenocortical carcinoma (n = 1). The laparoscopic approach allowed an excellent view of the main adrenal venous anatomy. This has helped confirm the constant nature of the venous drainage and successfully identify variant adrenal veins. Clin. Anat. 21:660–665, 2008. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Decoupling Exploration and Exploitation in Multi-Armed Bandits

We consider a multi-armed bandit problem where the decision maker can explore and exploit different arms at every round. The exploited arm adds to the decision maker's cumulative reward (without necessarily observing the reward) while the explored arm reveals its value. We devise algorithms for this setup and show that the dependence on the number of arms, k, can be much better than the standard √k dependence, depending on the behavior of the arms' reward sequences. For the important case of piecewise stationary stochastic bandits, we show a significant improvement over existing algorithms. Our algorithms are based on a non-uniform sampling policy, which we show is essential to the success of any algorithm in the adversarial setup. Finally, we show some simulation results on an ultra-wide band channel selection inspired setting indicating the applicability of our algorithms.
A randomized trial of the effect of estrogen and testosterone on economic behavior

Existing correlative evidence suggests that sex hormones may affect economic behavior such as risk taking and reciprocal fairness. To test this hypothesis we conducted a double-blind randomized study. Two-hundred healthy postmenopausal women aged 50–65 years were randomly allocated to 4 weeks of treatment with estrogen, testosterone, or placebo. At the end of the treatment period, the subjects participated in a series of economic experiments that measure altruism, reciprocal fairness, trust, trustworthiness, and risk attitudes. There was no significant effect of estrogen or testosterone on any of the studied behaviors.
Polyhydramnios associated with Prader–Willi syndrome

bilateral ductus arteriosus due to its association with other cardiac and extra-cardiac anomalies. In summary, we report the prenatal diagnosis of a right aortic arch with an aberrant left subclavian artery and bilateral ductus arteriosus. More in-depth knowledge about the embryologic development of aortic and ductal arches may contribute to facilitating the prenatal diagnosis of arch anomalies.
Vertical Transmission of Zika Virus by Aedes aegypti and Ae. albopictus Mosquitoes

To determine the potential role of vertical transmission in Zika virus expansion, we evaluated larval pools of perorally infected Aedes aegypti and Ae. albopictus adult female mosquitoes; ≈1/84 larvae tested were Zika virus–positive; and rates varied among mosquito populations. Thus, vertical transmission may play a role in Zika virus spread and maintenance.
Sex determination from dentin and pulp in a medicolegal context.

BACKGROUND The techniques used to determine the sex of skeletons are limited. The authors conducted a study to analyze the accuracy of sex identification from dentin and pulp via DNA isolation. METHODS The authors extracted DNA from the dentin and pulp of 14 teeth by using a silica-based methodology. They used the amelogenin gene to determine the sex via polymerase chain reaction. β-actin, a housekeeping gene, was used as a control gene. The authors checked the results in agarose gel and semiquantified them by using gel analysis software. RESULTS The DNA yield depended on the type of tooth and was lowest in the smallest teeth (that is, incisors). In all cases, the authors were able to identify the sex, as well as the control gene, which suggests the potential to identify other genes, such as short tandem repeats. CONCLUSIONS It is possible to correctly identify a person's sex from dentin and pulp; in instances in which one dental material is not available, the other material can be used with the same efficiency. Practical Implications. The results of this study are applicable to forensic dentistry, particularly in situations in which there is commingling of remains and fragmentary remains, and there may be only one tooth with which to identify a person's sex.
Pathways for oxidation of low density lipoprotein by myeloperoxidase: tyrosyl radical, reactive aldehydes, hypochlorous acid and molecular chlorine

Many lines of evidence implicate oxidation of low density lipoprotein (LDL) in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis, a chronic inflammatory disease. The physiologically relevant mechanisms have not been identified, but phagocytic white cells may play an important role because macrophage‐rich lesions characterize the disorder.
Modulated electro-mechanical continuous-time lowpass sigma-delta-modulator for micromachined gyroscopes

In this paper a novel system concept is presented for the implementation of lowpass sigma-delta (ΣΔ) modulators for micromachined gyroscopes. Within the electro-mechanical ΣΔ-modulator two modulation-stages are implemented, reducing the sampling frequency compared to bandpass- and conventional lowpass modulators by a factor of 4 and 100, respectively. By implementing two modulation-stages in the loop the frequency characteristic of the mechanical sensor is changed, thus it is possible to model the mechanical sensor as filter with lowpass-characteristic in the band of interest. Therefore the complete system functions with only one relevant frequency, namely the primary resonance frequency of the mechanical sensor. This concept enables the design of a continuous-time (CT) interface with an extremely low sampling frequency, hence the power dissipation is reduced enormously. A systematic design approach of this architecture is presented and simulation results are shown and discussed.
Post-mortem Study of Chronic Schizophrenic Brains

Volume measurements were carried out on 29 brains from institutionalised, chronic schizophrenic patients and 30 age and sex-matched controls using a stereological method. The volumes of the total fixated brain, the hemispheres, the cortex, and the central grey matter of the schizophrenic brains were significantly reduced while the volumes of the ventricles were significantly enlarged compared with the control group. The patients had been diagnosed by a psychiatrist on the basis of their case records as having either a Type I or Type II syndrome according to the symptoms they presented in the first years of their disease. The Type II patients were found to have significantly enlarged ventricles compared with the Type I patients.
miR-206 regulates the growth of the teleost tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) through the modulation of IGF-1 gene expression

SUMMARY MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are ~22-nucleotide noncoding RNAs that play a crucial role in regulating muscle development. Our previous study shows that miR-206 is specifically expressed in tilapia skeletal muscle, and exhibits a dynamic expression pattern at different developmental stages. Here, we reveal that miR-206 emerges as a crucial regulator of tilapia growth. miR-206 loss of function leads to the acceleration of tilapia growth. IGF-1 is identified as the target gene of miR-206. miR-206 directly changes IGF-1 expression by targeting its 3′ UTR, and inhibition of miR-206 substantially increases the IGF-1 mRNA level in vivo. Thus, miR-206 could be developed as a molecular marker to assist fish breeding.
Trophic Interactions during Primary Succession: Herbivores Slow a Plant Reinvasion at Mount St. Helens

Lupines (Lupinus lepidus var. lobbii), the earliest plant colonists of primary successional habitats at Mount St. Helens, were expected to strongly affect successional trajectories through facilitative effects. However, their effects remain localized because initially high rates of reinvasive spread were short lived, despite widespread habitat availability. We experimentally tested whether insect herbivores, by reducing plant growth and fecundity at the edge of the expanding lupine population, could curtail the rate of reinvasion and whether those herbivores had comparable impacts in the older, more successionally advanced core region. We found that removing insect herbivores increased both the areal growth of individual lupine plants and the production of new plants in the edge region, thereby accelerating the lupine’s intrinsic rate of increase at the front of the lupine reinvasion. We found no such impacts of herbivory in the core region, where low plant quality or a complex of recently arrived natural enemies may hold herbivores in check. In the context of invasion theory, herbivore‐mediated decreases in lupine population growth rate in the edge region translate into decreased rates of lupine spread, which we quantify here using diffusion models. In the Mount St. Helens system, decreased rate of lupine reinvasion will result in reductions in rates of soil formation, nitrogen input, and entrapment of seeds and detritus that are likely to postpone or alter trajectories of primary succession. If the type of spatial subtleties in herbivore effects we found here are common, with herbivory focused on the edge of an expanding plant population and suppressed or ineffective in the larger, denser central region (where the plants might be more readily noticed and studied), then insect herbivores may have stronger impacts on the dynamics of primary succession and plant invasions than previously recognized.
Preparation of a Carbon-Based Solid Acid Catalyst by Sulfonating Activated Carbon in a Chemical Reduction Process

Sulfonated (SO3H-bearing) activated carbon (AC-SO3H) was synthesized by an aryl diazonium salt reduction process. The obtained material had a SO3H density of 0.64 mmol·g−1 and a specific surface area of 602 m2·g−1. The catalytic properties of AC-SO3H were compared with that of two commercial solid acid catalysts, Nafion NR50 and Amberlyst-15. In a 10-h esterification reaction of acetic acid with ethanol, the acid conversion with AC-SO3H (78%) was lower than that of Amberlyst-15 (86%), which could be attributed to the fact that the SO3H density of the sulfonated carbon was lower than that of Amberlyst-15 (4.60 mmol·g−1). However, AC-SO3H exhibited comparable and even much higher catalytic activities than the commercial catalysts in the esterification of aliphatic acids with longer carbon chains such as hexanoic acid and decanoic acid, which may be due to the large specific surface area and mesoporous structures of the activated carbon. The disadvantage of AC-SO3H is the leaching of SO3H group during the reactions.
Parametric trajectory models for speech recognition

The basic motivation for employing trajectory models for speech recognition is that sequences of speech features are statistically dependent and that the effective and efficient modeling of the speech process will incorporate this dependency. In our previous work we presented an approach to modeling the speech process with trajectories. In this paper we continue our development of parametric trajectory models for speech recognition. We extend our models to include time-varying covariances and describe our approach for defining a metric between speech segments based on trajectory models; it is important in developing mixture models of trajectories.