Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impact of migration on infectious diseases in Europe For further information

Impact of migration on infectious diseases in Europe | August 2007 | 1 Summary Most migrants to the EU are healthy but in population terms may bear a disproportionate burden of infectious disease. Communicable diseases will vary in the extent to which a migrant might be infected before entry to the EU (for example, HIV/AIDS) or afterwards, within the Member State and linked to vulnerable socio-economic status (for example, tuberculosis (TB)). Comprehensive data on infectious disease burdens of migrants are currently lacking.
Cultural Differences in Memory for Objects and Backgrounds in Pictures

The purpose of this study is to investigate cultural differences in memory for individual objects and backgrounds that have been studied together in one picture. Thirty-six Caucasian Canadians in Toronto and 36 Han Chinese in Beijing were tested with a picture recognition paradigm. At encoding, participants viewed 60 line drawing pictures, each containing an object and a background scene. Participants then recognized these objects and backgrounds in isolation, and were asked to report subjectively whether they allocated their attention toward the objects, backgrounds, or both during encoding. In general, we did not find any cultural difference in memory for the isolated objects. However, Canadian participants showed significantly better memory for backgrounds than Chinese participants. Our supplementary data suggested that this effect appeared primarily among participants who self-reported paying attention to both objects and backgrounds. We speculated that relative to Canadian participants, Chinese participants might be more likely to engage in a holistic processing style and thus spontaneously bind background scenes with their associated focal objects when viewing both elements in pictures, which made it more difficult for them to “unbind” the information and recognize backgrounds in isolation. The results of this study add new insights into cultural differences in memory for individual elements in pictures.
Do high-commitment work systems affect creativity? A multilevel combinational approach to employee creativity.

In this article, some information about the data used in the article and a citation were not included. The details of the corrections are provided. ] This study uses 3-level, 2-wave time-lagged data from a random sample of 55 high-technology firms, 238 teams, and 1,059 individuals in China to investigate a multilevel combinational model of employee creativity. First, we hypothesize that firm (macrolevel) high-commitment work systems are conducive to individual (microlevel) creativity. Furthermore, we hypothesize that this positive crosslevel main impact may be combined with middle-level (mesolevel) factors, including team cohesion and team task complexity, such that the positive impact of firm high-commitment work systems on individual creativity is stronger when team cohesion is high and the team task more complex. The findings from random coefficient modeling analyses provide support for our hypotheses. These sets of results offer novel insight into how firms can use macrolevel and mesolevel contextual variables in a systematic manner to promote employee creativity in the workplace, despite its complex nature.
The Decline in Child Sexual Abuse Cases

The analysis of child sexual abuse cases presented in this Bulletin revealed that substantiated cases of child sexual abuse decreased from a national estimated peak of 149,800 cases in 1992 to 103,600 cases in 1998, a decline of 31 percent. This decrease occurred in the majority of States, with no clear regional pattern. The average decline for all States was 37 percent and for most the decline was gradual, rather than abrupt, and occurred over several years. Although cases of other types of child maltreatment have also declined in recent years, the decrease in child sexual abuse cases has been more marked. Substantiated cases of physical abuse declined 16 percent from a 1995 peak, compared with a 31-percent decline in child sexual abuse cases. In addition to the decline in the number of substantiated cases, child sexual abuse reports also decreased from an estimated 429,000 in 1991 to 315,400 in 1998, a 26-percent decline. Possible explanations for the decline include a real underlying decline in the incidence of child sexual abuse or changes in attitudes, policies, and standards that have reduced the amount of child sexual abuse being reported and substantiated. It is possible that both of these processes are affecting trends in child sexual abuse.
Effectiveness of MR Urography in the Evaluation of Kidney which Failed to Opacify during Excretory Urography: Comparison with Ultrasonography

Objective The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of MR urography (MRU) with that of ultrasonography (US) in the evaluation of urinary tract when this failed to opacify during excretory urography (EXU). Materials and Methods Twelve urinary tracts in 11 patients were studied. In each case, during EXU, the urinary system failed to opacify within one hour of the injection of contrast media, and US revealed dilatation of the pelvocalyceal system. Patients underwent MRU, using a HASTE sequence with the breath-hold technique; multi-slice acquisition was then performed, and the images were reconstructed using maximal intensity projection. Each set of images was evaluated by three radiologists to determine the presence, level, and cause of urinary tract obstruction. Results Obstruction was present in all twelve cases, and in all of these, MRU accurately demonstrated its level. In this respect, however, US was successful in only ten. The cause of obstruction was determined by MRU in eight cases, but by US in only six. In all of these six, MRU also successfully demonstrated the cause. Conclusion MRU is an effective modality for evaluation of the urinary tract when this fails to opacify during EXU, and appears to be superior to US in demonstrating the level and cause of obstruction.
Counseling Students’ Perceptions of Journaling as a Tool for Developing Reflective Thinking

While much has been written about the potential benefits of journaling for counseling students, less is known about whether students themselves view this purportedly learner-centered practice as beneficial. This study explored the phenomenological experiences and writings of four counseling students in a CACREPaccredited program at a mid-sized public Midwestern university who kept a journal during an addictions counseling course. Participants indicated that journaling led to greater self-awareness and provided opportunities to practice the reflective thinking they will need in their counseling careers. The findings are useful to counselor educators who may be considering implementing or modifying journal or other reflective thinking assignments in their courses. Author's Notes Lindsay Woodbridge and Brenda Rust O’Beirne, Department of Counselor Education, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. Lindsay Woodbridge is now at Journey Mental Health Center in Madison, WI. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Lindsay Woodbridge, 49 Kessel Ct, Madison, WI 53711 (email: lindsay.woodbridge@journeymhc.org).
The Metal‐strong Damped Lyα Systems

We have identified a metal‐strong [log N(Zn+)≥13.15 or log N(Si+)≥15.95] damped Lyα (MSDLA) population from an automated quasar (QSO) absorber search in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 3 quasar sample and find that MSDLAs comprise ≈5% of the entire DLA population with zabs≥2.2 found in QSO sight lines with r<19.5. We have also acquired 27 Keck ESI (Echellete Spectrograph and Imager) follow‐up spectra of metal‐strong candidates in order to evaluate our automated technique and examine the MSDLA candidates at higher resolution. We demonstrate that the rest equivalent widths of strong Zn ii λ2026 and Si ii λ1808 lines in low‐resolution SDSS spectra are accurate indicators of metal‐strong systems in higher resolution spectra, and predict the observed equivalent widths Wobs and signal‐to‐noise ratios needed to detect certain extremely weak lines with high‐resolution instruments. We investigate how the MSDLAs may affect previous studies concerning a dust obscuration bias and the N(H i)–weighted cosmic mean metallicity 〈Z(z)〉. Finally, we include a brief discussion of abundance ratios in our ESI sample and find that underlying mostly Type II supernova enrichment are differential depletion effects due to dust (and in a few cases, these are quite strong); we present here a handful of new Ti and Mn measurements, both of which are useful probes of depletion in DLAs. Future papers will present detailed examinations of particularly metal‐strong DLAs from high‐resolution Keck I HIRES and VLT UVES spectra.
Cosmological Cosmic Rays and the Observed 6Li Plateau in Metal-poor Halo Stars

Very recent observations of the 6Li isotope in halo stars reveal a 6Li plateau about 1000 times above the predicted big bang nucleosynthesis abundance. We calculate the evolution of 6Li versus redshift generated from an initial burst of cosmological cosmic rays (CCRs) up to the formation of the Galaxy. We show that the pre-Galactic production of the 6Li isotope can account for the 6Li plateau observed in metal-poor halo stars without additional overproduction of 7Li. The derived relation between the amplitude of the CCR energy spectra and the redshift of the initial CCR production puts constraints on the physics and history of the objects, such as Population III stars, responsible for these early cosmic rays. Consequently, we consider the evolution of 6Li in the Galaxy. Since 6Li is also produced in Galactic cosmic-ray nucleosynthesis, we argue that halo stars with metallicities between [Fe/H] = -2 and -1 must be somewhat depleted in 6Li.
Two-State Membrane Potential Fluctuations Driven by Weak Pairwise Correlations

Physiological experiments demonstrate the existence of weak pairwise correlations of neuronal activity in mammalian cortex (Singer, 1993). The functional implications of this correlated activity are hotly debated (Roskiesetal., 1999). Nevertheless, it is generally considered a wide spread feature of cortical dynamics. In recent years, another line of research has attracted great interest: the observation of a bimodal distribution of the membrane potential defining up states and down states at the single cell level (Wilson & Kawaguchi, 1996; Steriade, Contreras, & Amzica, 1994; Contreras & Steriade, 1995; Steriade, 2001). Here we use a theoretical approach to demonstrate that the latter phenomenon is a natural consequence of the former. In particular, we show that weak pairwise correlations of the inputs to a compartmental model of a layer V pyramidal cell can induce bimodality in its membrane potential. We show how this relationship can account for the observed increase of the power in the frequency band during up states, as well as the increase in the standard deviation and fraction of time spent in the depolarized state (Anderson, Lampl, Reichova, Carandini, & Ferster, 2000). In order to quantify the relationship between the correlation properties of a cortical network and the bistable dynamics of single neurons, we introduce a number of new indices. Subsequently, we demonstrate that a quantitative agreement with the experimental data can be achieved, introducing voltage-dependent mechanisms in our neuronal model such as Ca2+- and Ca2+-dependent K+ channels. In addition, we show that the up states and down states of the membrane potential are dependent on the dendritic morphology of cortical neurons. Furthermore, bringing together network and single cell dynamics under a unified view allows the direct transfer of results obtained in one context to the other and suggests a new experimental paradigm: the use of specific intracellular analysis as a powerful tool to reveal the properties of the correlation structure present in the network dynamics.
Evaluation of the Performance of Nitrate Reductase Assay for Rapid Drug-susceptibility Testing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in North India

The objective of the study was to evaluate the performance of nitrate reductase assay (NRA) as a rapid, reliable and inexpensive method for drug-susceptibility testing (DST) of Mycobacterium tuberculosis against first-line antitubercular drugs, such as rifampicin (RIF), isoniazid (INH), streptomycin (STR), and ethambutol (EMB). In total, 286 isolates were subjected to test by proportion method (PM) and NRA. By comparing the results of NRA with those of the gold standard PM, sensitivities and specificities were 98.4%, 97%, 88.5%, and 94.2% and 100%, 100%, 94%, and 99% for RIF, INH, STR, and EMB respectively. The positive predictive values were 100%, 100%, 95%, and 98% for RIF, INH, STR, and EMB respectively. The negative values were 99%, 98%, 87%, and 96% for RIF, INH, STR, and EMB respectively. The median time of obtaining results was shorter using NRA (10 days) compared to PM (28 days). An excellent agreement was observed between the two phenotypic tests with the κ values of 0.98, 0.97, 0.81, and 0.93 for RIF, INH, STR, and EMB respectively. The results demonstrated that NRA is suitable for the early determination of INH and RIF resistance and has the potential to be a useful tool for rapid drug-sensitivity test of M. tuberculosis in resource-constrained settings.
Modulation of rat neutrophil function in vitro by cis- and trans-MUFA

In the present study, the effects of trans-MUFA, elaidic acid (EA; 18 : 1-9t) and vaccenic acid (VA; 18 : 1-11t) on rat neutrophil functions were compared with those of cis-monounsaturated oleic acid (OA) (18 : 1-9c) and saturated stearic acid (SA; 18 : 0) (10–150 μm). Trans-fatty acids enhanced neutrophil phagocytic capacity, superoxide (O2∙-) and hydrogen peroxide production, and candidacidal activity. The same effects were observed for OA. Cells treated with trans-MUFA showed reduced production of NO∙, whereas those treated with OA showed an increase in production. Treatment with SA did not provoke significant effect on the parameters investigated. The increase in O2∙- production induced by MUFA was not observed when diphenyleneiodonium, an NADPH oxidase inhibitor, was added to the medium. This finding suggests that MUFA stimulate neutrophil NADPH oxidase activity. The addition of 3-[1-[3-(dimethylamino)propyl]-1H-indol-3-yl]-4-(1H-indol-3-yl)-1H-pyrrole-2,5-dione, a protein kinase C (PKC) inhibitor, and wortmannin, a phosphatidylinositol-3 kinase (PI3K) inhibitor, did not affect O2∙- production induced by MUFA. Therefore, the mechanisms by which MUFA stimulate NADPH oxidase are not dependent on PKC and do not seem to involve PI3K. Experiments using Zn2+, an inhibitor of NADPH oxidase H+ channel, indicated that MUFA activate the NADPH oxidase complex in rat neutrophil due to opening of H+ channel.
Prediction of Fundamental Frequency and Voicing From Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients for Unconstrained Speech Reconstruction

This work proposes a method for predicting the fundamental frequency and voicing of a frame of speech from its mel-frequency cepstral coefficient (MFCC) vector representation. This information is subsequently used to enable a speech signal to be reconstructed solely from a stream of MFCC vectors and has particular application in distributed speech recognition systems. Prediction is achieved by modeling the joint density of fundamental frequency and MFCCs. This is first modeled using a Gaussian mixture model (GMM) and then extended by using a set of hidden Markov models to link together a series of state-dependent GMMs. Prediction accuracy is measured on unconstrained speech input for both a speaker-dependent system and a speaker-independent system. A fundamental frequency prediction error of 3.06% is obtained on the speaker-dependent system in comparison to 8.27% on the speaker-independent system. On the speaker-dependent system 5.22% of frames have voicing errors compared to 8.82% on the speaker-independent system. Spectrogram analysis of reconstructed speech shows that highly intelligible speech is produced with the quality of the speaker-dependent speech being slightly higher owing to the more accurate fundamental frequency and voicing predictions
STATISTICAL PROPERTIES OF GENEALOGICAL TREES

We analyze the statistical properties of genealogical trees in a neutral model of a closed population with sexual reproduction and nonoverlapping generations. By reconstructing the genealogy of an individual from the population evolution, we measure the distribution of ancestors appearing more than once in a given tree. After a transient time, the probability of repetition follows, up to a rescaling, a stationary distribution which we calculate both numerically and analytically. This distribution exhibits a universal shape with a nontrivial power law which can be understood by an exact, though simple, renormalization calculation. Some real data on human genealogy illustrate the problem, which is relevant to the study of the real degree of diversity in closed interbreeding communities.
The Effect of 3D Nanofibrous Scaffolds on the Chondrogenesis of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells and Their Application in Restoration of Cartilage Defects

The discovery of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) rendered the reprogramming of terminally differentiated cells to primary stem cells with pluripotency possible and provided potential for the regeneration and restoration of cartilage defect. Chondrogenic differentiation of iPSCs is crucial for their application in cartilage tissue engineering. In this study we investigated the effect of 3D nanofibrous scaffolds on the chondrogenesis of iPSCs and articular cartilage defect restoration. Super-hydrophilic and durable mechanic polycaprolactone (PCL)/gelatin scaffolds were fabricated using two separate electrospinning processes. The morphological structure and mechanical properties of the scaffolds were characterized. The chondrogenesis of the iPSCs in vitro and the restoration of the cartilage defect was investigated using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), the Cell Counting Kit-8 (CCK-8), histological observation, RT-qPCR, and western blot analysis. iPSCs on the scaffolds expressed higher levels of chondrogenic markers than the control group. In an animal model, cartilage defects implanted with the scaffold-cell complex exhibited an enhanced gross appearance and histological improvements, higher cartilage-specific gene expression and protein levels, as well as subchondral bone regeneration. Therefore, we showed scaffolds with a 3D nanofibrous structure enhanced the chondrogenesis of iPSCs and that iPSC-containing scaffolds improved the restoration of cartilage defects to a greater degree than did scaffolds alone in vivo.
The Aesthetics of Failure: Post-Digital Tendencies in Contemporary Computer Music

Over the past decade, the Internet has helped spawn a new movement in digital music. It is not academically based, and for the most part the composers involved are self-taught. Music journalists occupy themselves inventing names for it, and some have already taken root: glitch, microwave, DSP, sinecore, and microscopic music. These names evolved through a collection of deconstructive audio and visual techniques that allow artists to work beneath the previously impenetrable veil of digital media. The Negroponte epigraph above inspired me to refer to this emergent genre as “post-digital” because the revolutionary period of the digital information age has surely passed. The tendrils of digital technology have in some way touched everyone. With electronic commerce now a natural part of the business fabric of the Western world and Hollywood cranking out digital fluff by the gigabyte, the medium of digital technology holds less fascination for composers in and of itself. In this article, I will emphasize that the medium is no longer the message; rather, specific tools themselves have become the message. The Internet was originally created to accelerate the exchange of ideas and development of research between academic centers, so it is perhaps no surprise that it is responsible for helping give birth to new trends in computer music outside the confines of academic think tanks. A non-academic composer can search the Internet for tutorials and papers on any given aspect of computer music to obtain a good, basic understanding of it. University computer music centers breed developers whose tools are shuttled around the Internet and used to develop new music outside the university. Unfortunately, cultural exchange between nonacademic artists and research centers has been lacking. The post-digital music that Max, SMS, AudioSculpt, PD, and other such tools make possible rarely makes it back to the ivory towers, yet these non-academic composers anxiously await new tools to make their way onto a multitude of Web sites. Even in the commercial software industry, the marketing departments of most audio software companies have not yet fully grasped the post-digital aesthetic; as a result, the more unusual tools emanate from developers who use their academic training to respond to personal creative needs. This article is an attempt to provide feedback to both academic and commercial music software developers by showing how current DSP tools are being used by post-digital composers, affecting both the form and content of contemporary “non-academic“ electronic music.
Adaptive tetrapuzzles: efficient out-of-core construction and visualization of gigantic multiresolution polygonal models

We describe an efficient technique for out-of-core construction and accurate view-dependent visualization of very large surface models. The method uses a regular conformal hierarchy of tetrahedra to spatially partition the model. Each tetrahedral cell contains a precomputed simplified version of the original model, represented using cache coherent indexed strips for fast rendering. The representation is constructed during a fine-to-coarse simplification of the surface contained in diamonds (sets of tetrahedral cells sharing their longest edge). The construction preprocess operates out-of-core and parallelizes nicely. Appropriate boundary constraints are introduced in the simplification to ensure that all conforming selective subdivisions of the tetrahedron hierarchy lead to correctly matching surface patches. For each frame at runtime, the hierarchy is traversed coarse-to-fine to select diamonds of the appropriate resolution given the view parameters. The resulting system can interatively render high quality views of out-of-core models of hundreds of millions of triangles at over 40Hz (or 70M triangles/s) on current commodity graphics platforms.