Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Long-term survival in patients with refractory angina.

AIMS An increasing number of patients with severe coronary artery disease (CAD) are not candidates for traditional revascularization and experience angina in spite of excellent medical therapy. Despite limited data regarding the natural history and predictors of adverse outcome, these patients have been considered at high risk for early mortality. METHODS AND RESULTS The OPtions In Myocardial Ischemic Syndrome Therapy (OPTIMIST) program at the Minneapolis Heart Institute offers traditional and investigational therapies for patients with refractory angina. A prospective clinical database includes detailed baseline and yearly follow-up information. Death status and cause were determined using the Social Security Death Index, clinical data, and death certificates. Time to death was analysed using survival analysis methods. For 1200 patients, the mean age was 63.5 years (77.5% male) with 72.4% having prior coronary artery bypass grafting, 74.4% prior percutaneous coronary intervention, 72.6% prior myocardial infarction, 78.3% 3-vessel CAD, 23.0% moderate-to-severe left-ventricular (LV) dysfunction, and 32.6% congestive heart failure (CHF). Overall, 241 patients died (20.1%: 71.8% cardiovascular) during a median follow-up 5.1 years (range 0-16, 14.7% over 9). By Kaplan-Meier analysis, mortality was 3.9% (95% CI 2.8-5.0) at 1 year and 28.4% (95% CI 24.9-32.0) at 9 years. Multivariate predictors of all-cause mortality were baseline age, diabetes, angina class, chronic kidney disease, LV dysfunction, and CHF. CONCLUSION Long-term mortality in patients with refractory angina is lower than previously reported. Therapeutic options for this distinct and growing group of patients should focus on angina relief and improved quality of life.
Validity of mouse mammary tumour models for human breast cancer: Comparative pathology

In March 1999, a panel of distinguished pathologists was convened by the U.S. National Institutes of Health Breast Cancer Think Tank to develop a classification of breast lesions based on their examination of 39 models of Genetically Engineered Mice (GEM) associated mouse mammary cancer (Cardiff et al., 2000). The meeting, in Annapolis, Maryland, resulted in a published summary report from the Pathology Panel (Cardiff et al., 2000). The Annapolis consensus report, developed from the Panel's deliberations, pointed out that the mammary lesions of GEM were different from most (spontaneous) mouse mammary tumors and could be divided into three distinct categories: (1) lesions that resemble those found in spontaneous mouse mammary tumorigenesis, (2) lesions that have a unique “signature” tumor phenotype that was specific for the transgene, and (3) lesions that resemble those found in human breast diseases (Cardiff et al., 2000). This review emphasizes the proposed nomenclature and the differences between the models and human breast cancer with the intention of stimulating discussion and the development of new models. Microsc. Res. Tech. 52:224–230, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Group Exposure (Flooding) in vivo for Agoraphobics

Exposure treatments such as flooding are being used increasingly for phobic and obsessive-compulsive disorders (reviewed by Marks, 1972). The shortage of treatment personnel has led to a search for ways to save therapist time. An obvious way of economizing is to expose a number of patients simultaneously in groups, instead of individually, to the real life situation which they fear.
Integrating mindfulness as self‐care into counselling and psychotherapy training

Aim: Within the last 10 years, mindfulness has quickly moved into the mainstream of behavioural medicine, psychotherapy, and counselling. This article examines the potential of applying mindfulness practices to the training of counsellors and psychotherapists. Method: Several qualitative research projects conducted over the past nine years are summarised. Findings: Mindfulness training can enhance the physical and psychological wellbeing of trainees. Implications for training: Mindfulness training is a specific way that training programmes can teach students strategies of self-care that can help prevent burnout, compassion fatigue, and vicarious traumatisation.
Dehydration affects cerebral blood flow but not its metabolic rate for oxygen during maximal exercise in trained humans

Dehydration accrued during exercise in the heat challenges systemic and locomotor muscle blood flow, but its impact on cerebral blood flow (CBF) and metabolism remains unknown. This study assessed whether dehydration compromises CBF and the cerebral metabolic rate for oxygen (CMRO2) during incremental exercise to exhaustion in trained males. Dehydration induced an early reduction in CBF during progressive exercise, but increased O2 extraction secured CMRO2. In all hydration conditions declining CBF at high exercise intensities was correlated to decreasing arterial carbon dioxide tension and increasing jugular venous plasma noradrenaline. These results suggest that dehydration impairs CBF at high exercise intensities, but this circulatory strain on the human brain does not compromise CMRO2.
Goal-Dependent and Goal-Independent Effects of Irrelevant Evaluations

Participants responded to pairs of words under different processing goals. In the first four experiments, they identified different attributes of the second word of each pair. Priming effects of irrelevant evaluations occurred if and only if the goal was to identify the valence of the second word. Equivalent goal-dependent priming effects were found for irrelevant nonevaluative attributes of the word pairs. In the second set of four experiments, participants made same-different comparisons on the word pairs. Irrespective of which (nonevaluative) attributes were task-relevant, effects of irrelevant evaluations occurred. Equivalent goal-independent effects of irrelevant, nonevaluative attributes were not found. A ninth study found crucial effects of both series simultaneously. The results bear on the issues of goal dependence of affective priming and automatic attitude activation, of whether affective processing differs from cognitive processing, and of the mechanisms underlying the effects of irrelevant evaluations.
Comparison of parallel and cascade methods for training support vector machines on large-scale problems

We have proposed two different methods for training support vector machines (SVMs) on large-scale pattern classification problems, namely min-max-modular SVM (M3-SVM) and cascade SVM (C-SVM). For speeding up the training of SVMs with new computing infrastructure such as cluster and grid systems, both methods decompose a large-scale two-class problem to a number of relatively smaller two-class sub-problems which can be implemented in a parallel way, but they use different decomposition and combination strategies. In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive investigation in the two methods to compare their generalization performance and training time. Our experiments show that M3-SVM needs shorter training time, but has a little lower generalization performance than the standard SVM and cascade SVM. The experiments also indicate that cascade SVM has the least number of support vectors among these three SVMs.
Parallel Implementations of Image Processing Algorithms on Multi-Core

The broad introduction of multi-core processors into computing has brought a great opportunity to deploy computationally demanding applications such as signal and image processing on parallel computing platforms. However it is not an easy task to decompose a computational problem into sub-problems to explore the massive parallelism provided by multi-core processors. In this paper, we study the cubic convolution interpolation algorithm for image processing. We shall parallelize the algorithm using the parallel programming tools TBB and OpenMP, and compare the performance of parallel and sequential implementations. Our experiments show that the parallel implementation of the algorithm using results in a speed-up about 200% compared with sequential implementation on a Dual-core processor, while a speed-up about 400% on a Quad-core processor.
Salmonella enterica in Swine Production: Assessing the Association between Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism and Epidemiological Units of Concern

ABSTRACT The aims of this study were to determine the ability of amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) to differentiate Salmonella isolates from different units of swine production and to demonstrate the relatedness of Salmonella between farms and abattoirs by AFLP. Twenty-four farms in the midwestern United States were visited four times from 2006 to 2009. At each farm or abattoir visit, 30 fecal samples or 30 mesenteric lymph nodes were collected, respectively. A total of 220 Salmonella isolates were obtained, serotyped, and genotyped by multilocus sequence typing (MLST) and AFLP. These 220 isolates clustered into 21 serotypes, 18 MLST types, and 14 predominant AFLP clusters based on a genetic similarity threshold level of 60%. To assess genetic differentiation between farms, harvest cohorts, and pigs, analysis of molecular variance was conducted using AFLP data. The results showed 65.62% of overall genetic variation was attributed to variance among pigs, 27.21% to farms, and 7.17% to harvest cohorts. Variance components at the farm (P = 0.003) and pig (P = 0.001) levels were significant, but not at the harvest cohort level (P = 0.079). A second analysis, a permutation test using AFLP data, indicated that on-farm and at-abattoir Salmonella from pigs of the same farms were more related than from different farms. Therefore, among the three subtyping methods, serotyping, MLST, and AFLP, AFLP was the method that was able to differentiate among Salmonella isolates from different farms and link contamination at the abattoir to the farm of origin.
Precise Power Delay Profiling with Commodity Wi-Fi

Power delay profiles characterize multipath channel features, which are widely used in motion- or localization-based applications. The performance of power delay profile obtained using commodity Wi-Fi devices is limited by two dominating factors. The resolution of the derived power delay profile is determined by the channel bandwidth, which is however limited on commodity WiFi. The collected CSI reflects the signal distortions due to both the channel attenuation and the hardware imperfection. A direct derivation of power delay profiles using raw CSI measures, as has been done in the literature, results in significant inaccuracy. In this paper, we present Splicer, a software-based system that derives high-resolution power delay profiles by splicing the CSI measurements from multiple WiFi frequency bands. We propose a set of key techniques to separate the mixed hardware errors from the collected CSI measurements. Splicer adapts its computations within stringent channel coherence time and thus can perform well in the presence of mobility. Our experiments with commodity WiFi NICs show that Splicer substantially improves the accuracy in profiling multipath characteristics, reducing the errors of multipath distance estimation to be less than $2\;\mathrm{m}$2m. Splicer can immediately benefit upper-layer applications. Our case study with recent single-AP localization achieves a median localization error of $0.95\;\mathrm{m}$0.95m.
Efficiency of Purine Utilization by Helicobacter pylori: Roles for Adenosine Deaminase and a NupC Homolog

The ability to synthesize and salvage purines is crucial for colonization by a variety of human bacterial pathogens. Helicobacter pylori colonizes the gastric epithelium of humans, yet its specific purine requirements are poorly understood, and the transport mechanisms underlying purine uptake remain unknown. Using a fully defined synthetic growth medium, we determined that H. pylori 26695 possesses a complete salvage pathway that allows for growth on any biological purine nucleobase or nucleoside with the exception of xanthosine. Doubling times in this medium varied between 7 and 14 hours depending on the purine source, with hypoxanthine, inosine and adenosine representing the purines utilized most efficiently for growth. The ability to grow on adenine or adenosine was studied using enzyme assays, revealing deamination of adenosine but not adenine by H. pylori 26695 cell lysates. Using mutant analysis we show that a strain lacking the gene encoding a NupC homolog (HP1180) was growth-retarded in a defined medium supplemented with certain purines. This strain was attenuated for uptake of radiolabeled adenosine, guanosine, and inosine, showing a role for this transporter in uptake of purine nucleosides. Deletion of the GMP biosynthesis gene guaA had no discernible effect on mouse stomach colonization, in contrast to findings in numerous bacterial pathogens. In this study we define a more comprehensive model for purine acquisition and salvage in H. pylori that includes purine uptake by a NupC homolog and catabolism of adenosine via adenosine deaminase.
Methodology and preliminary results from the neurobiology of late-life depression study

ABSTRACT Background: We sought to investigate the relationship between neuroticism and depression in an elderly cohort. In this paper, we describe the methods of an National Institute of Mental Health—NIMH-supported study and present findings among the cohort enrolled to date. Methods: We used the NEO Personality Inventory to assess neuroticism, and we employed several cognitive neuroscience-based measures to examine emotional control. Results: Compared with a group of 27 non-depressed older control subjects, 33 older depressed subjects scored higher on measures of state and trait anxiety and neuroticism. On our experimental neuroscience-based measures, depressed subjects endorsed more negative words compared with controls on an emotional characterization test. In addition, we found a significant group-by-congruency effect on an emotional interference test where subjects were asked to identify the face's emotional expression while ignoring the words “fear” or “happy” labeled across the face. Conclusion: Thus, in this preliminary work, we found significant differences in measures of neuroticism and emotional controls among older adults with and without depression.
An Objective Measure of Adolescents' Prosocial Moral Reasoning

Due to limitations and concerns regarding traditional interview measures of moral reasoning, a new objective measure of prosocial moral reasoning was developed to facilitate assessment of adolescents' moral reasoning. Several psychometric properties of the new measure were examined including test-retest reliability and convergent, concurrent, and discriminant validity. Sixty-four seventh and tenth graders were administered a self-report measure of prosocial moral reasoning (PROM) and measures of school aptitude, verbal skills, perspective taking, sympathy, and personal distress. Adolescents, 2 weeks later, were either re-administered the PROM or administered an interview measure of prosocial moral reasoning. In general, the psychometric analyses suggested that the PROM was sufficiently reliable and valid for use with adolescents. In addition, research on the development and correlates of adolescents' prosocial moral reasoning were discussed.
Follicular Dendritic Cell Dedifferentiation by Treatment with an Inhibitor of the Lymphotoxin Pathway Dramatically Reduces Scrapie Susceptibility

ABSTRACT Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) may be acquired peripherally, in which case infectivity usually accumulates in lymphoid tissues before dissemination to the nervous system. Studies of mouse scrapie models have shown that mature follicular dendritic cells (FDCs), expressing the host prion protein (PrPc), are critical for replication of infection in lymphoid tissues and subsequent neuroinvasion. Since FDCs require lymphotoxin signals from B lymphocytes to maintain their differentiated state, blockade of this stimulation with a lymphotoxin β receptor-immunoglobulin fusion protein (LTβR-Ig) leads to their temporary dedifferentiation. Here, a single treatment with LTβR-Ig before intraperitoneal scrapie inoculation blocked the early accumulation of infectivity and disease-specific PrP (PrPSc) within the spleen and substantially reduced disease susceptibility. These effects coincided with an absence of FDCs in the spleen for ca. 28 days after treatment. Although the period of FDC dedifferentiation was extended to at least 49 days by consecutive LTβR-Ig treatments, this had little added protective benefit after injection with a moderate dose of scrapie. We also demonstrate that mature FDCs are critical for the transmission of scrapie from the gastrointestinal tract. Treatment with LTβR-Ig before oral scrapie inoculation blocked PrPSc accumulation in Peyer's patches and mesenteric lymph nodes and prevented neuroinvasion. However, treatment 14 days after oral inoculation did not affect survival time or susceptibility, suggesting that infectivity may have already spread to the peripheral nervous system. Although manipulation of FDCs may offer a potential approach for early intervention in peripherally acquired TSEs, these data suggest that the duration of the treatment window may vary widely depending on the route of exposure.
Social Disclosure and the Individual Investor

The demand for social information by individual investors is supported by the survey reported in this study. Based on the results of the 1991 survey on the usefulness of annual reports to corporate shareholders, there appears to be a strong demand for information about product safety and quality, and about the company′s environmental activities. Furthermore, a majority of the shareholders surveyed also want the company to report on corporate ethics, employee relations and community involvement. Since there appears to be a strong demand for social information by shareholders, serious consideration should be given to requiring certain social disclosures in annual reports. Furthermore, a large minority of those surveyed would like these disclosures to be audited. It may be in the interest of the auditing profession actively to support those areas of social disclosure that it feels comfortable auditing and to develop the skills to provide such audits. If not, the profession may find itself in the position of .
Relationship and transfer between mental and written arithmetic

In a first experiment, adults practiced single- and two-digit mental addition over a 6-day period. There was a clear training effect for both types of problems, even if two-digit additions were different from one day to another. Moreover, participants were tested on their written calculation abilities before and after the training programme. We showed that participants who entered the mental arithmetic training programme did not progress more in written arithmetic than participants who did not receive any training between the pre- and the post-tests. Conversely, in a second experiment, participants were trained in multidigit written addition and we examined the effect of such training on single- and two-digit mental addition. Again and trivially, there was a clear effect of training on written addition, but, more importantly, a transfer on mental addition. The implications of these results on the nature of the relationship between mental and written arithmetic are discussed.
Access to UG and language transfer: a study of L2 learners' interpretation of reconstruction in Chinese

Twenty-seven English-speaking learners of Chinese (the experimental groups) and 20 native speakers of Chinese (the control group) participated in a study that investigated second language learners' knowledge of reconstruction (NP and predicate fronted sentences with ziji ‘self’) in Chinese. Results of a sentence interpretation task indicate that English-speaking learners of Chinese had knowledge of ambiguity of antecedence of ziji inside a moved predicate, and lack of ambiguity of antecedence of ziji inside a moved NP, although such information is not directly available in English. While the experiment produced evidence that they appeared to have access to Universal Grammar, English-speaking learners of Chinese bound ziji in non-movement sentences to an embedded subject, indicating that they mapped the narrower setting of reflexives in English onto a wider parameter setting of ziji in Chinese.
Correlation of Plasma Protein Carbonyls and C-Reactive Protein with GOLD Stage Progression in COPD Patients

Oxidative stress plays an important role in the pathogenesis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). To investigate the correlation between the progression of COPD and plasma biomarkers of chronic inflammation and oxidative injury, blood samples were obtained from healthy volunteers (HV, n = 14) and stabilized COPD patients. The patients were divided into three groups according to their GOLD stage (II, n = 34; III, n = 18; IV, n = 20). C-reactive protein (CRP), protein carbonyls (PC), malondialdehyde (MDA), susceptible lipoperoxidation of plasma substrates (SLPS), and myeloperoxidase activity (MPO) were measured. The plasma concentration of SLPS was measured as the amount of MDA generated by a metal ion-catalyzed reaction in vitro. PC, SLPS, and CPR were increased significantly (p < 0.001) in COPD patients when compared to HV. MDA concentrations and MPO activities were not significantly different from those of the HV group. In conclusion, increased oxidation of lipids and proteins resulting in a progressive increase in the amount of total plasma carbonyls and oxidative stress the presence of oxidative stress during COPD progression, concomitant with an increased oxidation of lipids and proteins resulting in a progressive and significant increase in the amount of total carbonyls formed from lipid-derived aldehydes and direct amino acid side chain oxidation in plasma, may serve as a biomarker and independent monitor of COPD progression and oxidative stress injury.
Evolutionary Pursuit and Its Application to Face Recognition

Introduces evolutionary pursuit (EP) as an adaptive representation method for image encoding and classification. In analogy to projection pursuit, EP seeks to learn an optimal basis for the dual purpose of data compression and pattern classification. It should increase the generalization ability of the learning machine as a result of seeking the trade-off between minimizing the empirical risk encountered during training and narrowing the confidence interval for reducing the guaranteed risk during testing. It therefore implements strategies characteristic of GA for searching the space of possible solutions to determine the optimal basis. It projects the original data into a lower dimensional whitened principal component analysis (PCA) space. Directed random rotations of the basis vectors in this space are searched by GA where evolution is driven by a fitness function defined by performance accuracy (empirical risk) and class separation (confidence interval). Accuracy indicates the extent to which learning has been successful, while separation gives an indication of expected fitness. The method has been tested on face recognition using a greedy search algorithm. To assess both accuracy and generalization capability, the data includes for each subject images acquired at different times or under different illumination conditions. EP has better recognition performance than PCA (eigenfaces) and better generalization abilities than the Fisher linear discriminant (Fisherfaces).