Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Antioxidative Activities of Both Oleic Acid and Camellia tenuifolia Seed Oil Are Regulated by the Transcription Factor DAF-16/FOXO in Caenorhabditis elegans

Background Tea seed oil is a high quality edible oil, yet lacking sufficient scientific evidences to support the nutritional and medical purposes. We identified major and minor components in Camellia tenuifolia seed oil and investigated the antioxidative activity and its underlying mechanisms in Caenorhabditis elegans. Principal Findings The results showed that the major constitutes in C. tenuifolia seed oil were unsaturated fatty acids (~78.4%). Moreover, two minor compounds, β-amyrin and β-sitosterol, were identified and their antioxidative activity was examined. We found that oleic acid was the major constitute in C. tenuifolia seed oil and plays a key role in the antioxidative activity of C. tenuifolia seed oil in C. elegans. Conclusions This study found evidences that the transcription factor DAF-16/FOXO was involved in both oleic acid- and C. tenuifolia seed oil-mediated oxidative stress resistance in C. elegans. This study suggests the potential of C. tenuifolia seed oil as nutrient or functional foods.
Social Evolution: Opinions and Behaviors in Face-to-Face Networks

Exposure to new ideas and opinions, and their diffusion within social networks, are important questions in education, business, and government. However until recently there has been no method to automatically capture fine-grained face-to-face interactions between people, to better model the diffusion process. In this thesis, we describe the use of colocation and communication sensors in ‘socially aware’ mobile phones to model the spread of opinions and behaviors of 78 residents of an undergraduate residence hall for an entire academic year, based on over 320,000 hours of behavior data. Political scientists (Huckfeldt and Sprague, APSR, 1983) have noted the problem of mutual causation between face-to-face networks and political opinions. During the last three months of the 2008 US presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain, we find that political discussants have characteristic interaction patterns that can be used to recover the self-reported ‘political discussant’ ties within the community. Automatically measured mobile phone features allow us to estimate exposure to different types of opinions in this community. We propose a measure of ‘dynamic homophily’ which reveals surprising short-term, population-wide behavior changes around external political events such as election debates and Election Day. To our knowledge, this is the first time such dynamic homophily effects have been measured. We find that social exposure to peers in the network predicts individual future opinions (R2 ≈ 0.8, p < 0.001). The use of mobile phone based dynamic exposure increases the explained variance for future political opinions by up to 30%. It is well known that face-to-face networks are the main vehicle for airborne contagious diseases (Elliott, Spatial Epidemiology, 2000). However, epidemiologists have not had access to tools to quantitatively measure the likelihood of contagion, as a function of contact/exposure with infected individuals, in realistic scenarios (Musher, NEJM, 2003), since it requires data about both symptoms and social interactions between individuals. We use of co-location and communication sensors to understand the role of face-to-face interactions in the contagion process. We find that there are characteristic changes in behavior when individuals become sick, reflected in features like total communication, temporal structure in communication (e.g., late nights and weekends), interaction diversity, and movement entropy (both
What matters to principals when they evaluate teachers? Evidence from Cyprus

Teacher evaluation conducted by school principals is a common worldwide practice. However, there are many reservations about principals’ ability to evaluate teachers reliably. Reservations appearing in the literature include inflated ratings, minimal discrimination of teacher quality, and evaluations influenced by factors irrelevant to teacher effectiveness. This article examines whether principals can distinguish effective and ineffective teachers and whether principals can identify the teacher, principal and school characteristics influencing principals’ evaluations of teacher effectiveness. The sample consists of 80 school principals; data were collected from principals and teachers, combined with a database of teachers’ academic performance as students in a teacher preparation program. Principals rated teachers on a number of dimensions, and data were analyzed with multiple regression techniques. Results suggest that principal ratings contain enough discriminating ability both within teachers and within dimensions of teacher effectiveness. Factors irrelevant to teacher effectiveness do not influence ratings of teachers. Results also demonstrate greater principal involvement in teacher evaluations, especially in educational systems where their role is limited.
The combination of bendamustine, bortezomib, and rituximab for patients with relapsed/refractory indolent and mantle cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Given the significant activity and tolerability of bendamustine, rituximab, and bortezomib in patients with relapsed indolent and mantle cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and laboratory studies suggesting synergistic activity, we conducted a multicenter phase 2 study of the bendamustine/bortezomib/rituximab combination. Patients with relapsed or refractory indolent and mantle cell lymphoma with adequate organ function were treated with bendamustine 90 mg/m² days 1 and 4; rituximab 375 mg/m² day 1, and bortezomib 1.3 mg/m² days 1, 4, 8, 11. Six 28-day cycles were planned. Thirty patients (7 with mantle cell lymphoma) were enrolled and treated. Eight patients experienced serious adverse events, including one event of grade 5 sepsis. Common nonhematologic adverse events were generally grade 1 or grade 2 and included nausea (50%), neuropathy (47%), fatigue (47%), constipation (40%), and fever (40%). Of 29 patients evaluable for efficacy, 24 (83%) achieved an objective response (including 15 with complete response). With median follow-up of 24 months, 2-year progression-free survival is 47% (95% confidence interval, 25%-69%). On the basis of these promising results, the US cooperative groups have initiated randomized trials to evaluate this regimen in follicular and mantle cell lymphoma. This trial was registered at www.clinicaltrials. gov as #NCT00547534.
Should asymptomatic young men with iron deficiency anemia necessarily undergo endoscopy?

Background/Aims There has been no evidence for the necessity of endoscopy in asymptomatic young men with iron deficiency anemia (IDA). To determine whether endoscopy should be recommended in asymptomatic young men with IDA, we compared the prevalence of gastrointestinal (GI) lesions between young men (< 50 years) with IDA and those without IDA. Methods We conducted a case-control study on asymptomatic young men aged < 50 years who underwent both esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD) and colonoscopy as part of a health checkup between 2010 and 2014. Results Of 77,864 participants, 128 (0.16%) had IDA and 512 subjects without IDA were matched for several variables including age. Young men with IDA had a significantly higher proportion of colorectal cancer (CRC) (0.8% vs. 0.0%, p = 0.045), villous adenoma (0.8% vs. 0.0%, p = 0.045), and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD; 2.3% vs. 0.4%, p = 0.025) than those without IDA. Additionally, the prevalence of advanced colorectal neoplasia (ACRN) tended to be higher in subjects with IDA than in those without IDA (3.1% vs. 1.0%, p = 0.084). The prevalence of significant lower GI lesions including ACRN and IBD was higher in subjects with IDA than in those without IDA (5.5% vs. 1.4%, p = 0.011). Regarding upper GI lesions, a positive association with IDA was observed only for gastric ulcer (4.7% vs. 1.0%, p = 0.011). Conclusions GI lesions including CRC, villous adenoma, IBD, and gastric ulcer were more common in asymptomatic young men with IDA. Our results suggest that EGD and particularly colonoscopy should be recommended even in asymptomatic young men with IDA.
Integration of outcome estimations with a clinical decision support system: Application in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU)

Our previous research led to the development of mortality risk estimations for infants in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) using quality archived databases. A decision support system was created with a clinician module containing relevant patient information and a variety of outcome estimations; the PPADS (Physician-Parent Decision Support) tool also contains a module for parents with the aim to help them make joint decisions with physicians on the direction of care for their infant. New work developed the ANN-Builder which uses an open-source artificial neural network library that would enable handling real-time data streaming and automate the process of providing risk estimations of mortality. Additionally, the patient data and risk estimations were successfully integrated into the PPADS tool. The mortality estimations surpass the clinical expectations. The next and final step will be to replace missing values in the data and add alarms for major changes in the risk estimations provided by the system.
Worry facilitates corticospinal motor response to transcranial magnetic stimulation

Like other forms of emotion, anxiety has been theoretically linked to preparation for action. Worry is a type of anticipatory anxiety and the hallmark of generalized anxiety disorder. Research has shown that worry is associated with vigilance to threat cues and increased muscle tension, which may in part be explained by motor facilitation that accompanies preparation for action. This study assessed corticospinal motor responses during worry using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). Participants received TMS during a worry induction, during motor imagery, and during mental arithmetic, while electromyography and force were measured. TMS over the primary motor cortex elicited larger corticospinal motor responses during worry than mental arithmetic and smaller responses than motor imagery of maximum voluntary contraction of targeted muscles. These findings suggest that the association between worry and motor preparation cannot be explained by high cognitive load and provide further support for theoretical accounts emphasizing the role of action preparation in anxiety. Depression and Anxiety, 2008. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Managing Goal Commitment in Public Organizations: The Effects of Goal Conflict

ABSTRACT Public personnel policies increasingly adapt performance management systems that focus on goal attainment, and this makes goal commitment a critical issue in contemporary public administration research. Few studies have however empirically investigated the relationship between goal conflicts and goal commitment. This study examines the interplay between public managers’ goal prioritization, goal conflict and employees’ goal commitment. Multilevel data from 73 principals and 1464 teachers in secondary education show that goal conflict has a negative effect on the relationship between goal prioritization and goal commitment. The study thus adds to our knowledge about the conditions for influencing public employees’ goal commitment.
Chronic musculoskeletal pain rarely presents in a single body site: results from a UK population study.

OBJECTIVE To investigate the frequency and health impact of chronic multi-site musculoskeletal pain, in a representative UK sample. METHOD Population postal questionnaire survey, using 16 general practices in the southeast of England, nationally representative urban/rural, ethnic and socioeconomic mix. A random selection of 4049 registered patients, aged 18 or over, were sent a questionnaire. The main outcome measures were chronic pain location, identified using a pain drawing; distress, pain intensity and disability as measured by the GHQ12 and the Chronic Pain Grade. RESULTS A total of 2445 patients (60%) responded to the survey (44% male, mean age 52 yrs); 45% had chronic musculoskeletal pain. Of those with chronic pain, three quarters had pain in multiple sites (two or more sites). Variables significantly predicting this were: age under 55, [odds ratio (OR) 0.5, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.4, 0.6]; psychological distress (OR 1.8, CI at 95% 1.4, 2.2) and high pain intensity (OR 5.2, CI at 95% 4.1, 6.7). Only 33% of multi-site pain distributions conformed to the American College of Rheumatology definition of chronic widespread pain. CONCLUSIONS Multi-site chronic pain is more common than single-site chronic pain and is commonly associated with other problems. Indiscriminate targeting of research and care for chronic musculoskeletal pain on single sites may often be inappropriate.
Parallel SGD: When does averaging help?

Consider a number of workers running SGD independently on the same pool of data and averaging the models every once in a while -- a common but not well understood practice. We study model averaging as a variance-reducing mechanism and describe two ways in which the frequency of averaging affects convergence. For convex objectives, we show the benefit of frequent averaging depends on the gradient variance envelope. For non-convex objectives, we illustrate that this benefit depends on the presence of multiple globally optimal points. We complement our findings with multicore experiments on both synthetic and real data.
Detecting Signals of Bottleneck Activation for Freeway Operations and Control

Abstract Any application of intelligent transportation systems (ITS) to freeway operations and control relies on understanding the behavior of freeway bottlenecks. By improving our understanding of the formation and dissipation of queues at active freeway bottlenecks (points characterized by the presence of queued traffic immediately upstream and unqueued traffic immediately downstream) we can improve the techniques used to manage freeway traffic—one of the hallmarks of ITS. It is shown that freeway bottlenecks' activations can be diagnosed definitively using archived inductive loop detector data (measured at 20- or 30-sec intervals) from two sites in Toronto, Canada. Once the bottlenecks' locations and times of activation were determined, potential signals of their activations were explored. It is shown that certain potential signals were evident immediately before upstream queue formation, and that these were reproducible from day to day (over three or four days examined) at the two sites studied. As a result, it is suggested that these signals be used for systematic investigation of bottleneck behavior in either real time or in retrospect, on a more widespread basis as part of a real-time ITS control system.
A neural electrophysiological study of lexical stress parsing

Based on past theory and empirical results on the processing of lexical-level suprasegmental information, a Cascading Inhibition model for lexical stress parsing was proposed, in which lexical stress is situated at a different level from segmental information in a hierarchical structure and influences lexical identification via two mediating levels. These levels were proposed to direct lexical identification in a parallel and statistical manner. Because under this model, phonetic and lexical processing are both under the influence of lexical stress parsing, and because pre-attentive phonetic and lexical processing are both lateralized to the left hemisphere, two hypotheses were proposed: Hypothesis A: Lexical stress parsing can modulate lexical selection without the presence of segmental information; Hypothesis B: Lexical stress parsing is lateralized to the left hemisphere. To test these hypotheses, Noun-Verb homonym pairs (e.g. INsult vs inSULT) were used as targets in experimental listening conditions. Sentences that strongly predicted the Noun member (e.g. INsult) of the pair were spliced to end with the Verb member (e.g. inSULT) to create lexical stress anomalies. In the critical conditions, when targets were low-pass filtered to remove segmental information, listeners had to rely on the Lexical Stress Pattern for lexical identification of the target. For control conditions, the prosody changes associated with a shift in sex of the speaker (Gender Shift) were investigated in an auditory oddball paradigm. It was predicted that processing nonlinguistic prosody such as Gender Shift, in contrast to lexical stress, would be lateralized to the right hemisphere. Online EEG was recorded from right-handed young normal monolingual English speakers. For experimental conditions, the filtered Verb Lexical Stress Pattern induced larger N400 than filtered Noun Lexical Stress Pattern, and this component was left-lateralized, supporting both hypotheses. Global Field Power and source estimation demonstrated that the neural networks for parsing Lexical Stress Pattern were similar to those for processing segmental information. In control conditions, the P300 induced by Gender Shift was right lateralized. Overall, many features of the CI model were supported, but a direct influence from the prosody level to the lexical identification level is proposed to incorporate results from the current study.
Graded Limits of Minimal Affinizations in Type D

We study the graded limits of minimal affinizations over a quantum loop algebra of type D in the regular case. We show that the graded limits are isomorphic to multiple generalizations of Demazure modules, and also give their defining relations. As a corollary we obtain a character formula for the minimal affinizations in terms of Demazure operators, and a multiplicity formula for a special class of the minimal affinizations.
THE WOMEN OF STORMFRONT: AN EXAMINATION OF WHITE NATIONALIST DISCUSSION THREADS ON THE INTERNET

Although a plethora of literature exists on hate or extremist group activity, the role of racist women remains an unexplored area. The current study sought to explore one method of communication for racist women, the Internet. The researchers conducted a content analysis on 227 discussion threads provided on one of the oldest extremist websites on the Internet, Stormfront. The purpose of this study was to investigate the content of the discussion threads described as ‘For Stormfront Ladies Only. ’ Of primary interest to the researchers was whether the content discussed by women in this ‘White Nationalist’ cyber community supported the assertion by some scholars that the role of women in racist activities is undergoing a transformation and the implications of this study in that regard are discussed.
Effects of duration of type 2 diabetes mellitus on insulin secretion.

OBJECTIVE To gain insight into the effects of duration of type 2 diabetes on insulin secretion in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus. METHODS C-peptide concentrations were measured every 2 years before and after intravenous injection of 1 mg of glucagon in 89 patients with type 2 diabetes (51 men and 38 women) as part of the Rochester Diabetic Neuropathy Study in those subjects who participated in follow-up (median, 12 years; range, 6 to 14). RESULTS Although insulin secretion decreased over time (P<0.001) in the group as a whole, both the pattern and the rate of decline in C-peptide concentration differed considerably among the study subjects. Insulin secretion, whether measured as fasting C-peptide, 6-minute C-peptide, or postglucagon increment in C-peptide concentrations, declined with increasing duration of diabetes in approximately half of the patients but either increased or remained essentially constant over time in the other half. The decrease in insulin secretion was not associated with a deterioration in glycemic control because hemoglobin A1c also declined (P<0.005) during the same interval. CONCLUSION We conclude that insulin secretion decreases over time in many patients with type 2 diabetes. Because the rate of decline is variable, the predictive value of any single measurement is limited. These data indicate that although a decrease in insulin secretion over time is characteristic of type 2 diabetes mellitus, it is not inevitable.
Automatic generation of customized discrete Fourier transform IPs

This paper presents a parameterized soft core generator for the discrete Fourier transform (DFT). Reusable IPs of digital signal processing (DSP) kernels are important time-saving resources in DSP hardware development. Unfortunately, reusable IPs, however optimized, could introduce inefficiencies because they cannot fit the exact requirements of every application context. Given the well-understood and regular computation in DSP kernels, an automatic tool could generate high-quality ready-to-use IPs customized to user-specified cost/performance tradeoffs (beyond basic parameters such as input size and data format). The paper shows that the generated DFT cores could match closely the performance and cost of DFT cores from the Xilinx LogiCore library. Furthermore, the generator could yield DFT cores over a range of different performance/cost tradeoff points that are not available from the library.
Initial Assessment of the Beneficial Effect of Partial Splenectomy in Hereditary Spherocytosis

Clinical manifestations of hereditary spherocytosis (HS), the most common red blood cell (RBC) membrane disorder, can be abrogated or markedly reduced by splenectomy. However, concerns regarding risks from overwhelming infections after splenectomy have restricted its use, especially in children. This study was designed to determine if partial splenectomy can decrease the hemolytic rate while maintaining phagocytic function of the spleen. Partial splenectomy was performed in 1 1 children (age 2 to 13) with HS. The effect on hemolytic rate was assessed by comparing the presurgical and postsurgical values for hemoglobin, reticulocyte number, and RBC life span. The residual splenic phagocytic function was assessed using technetium 99m scans and by enumerating the percentage of pitted RBCs
Real Data Evaluation of a Crowd Supervising System for Stadium Evacuation and Its Hardware Implementation

The aim of this paper is to develop an integrated electronic system that allows the dynamical management of congestion and provides the fast evaluation of dynamical circumstances. Thus, a cellular-automata-based model is proposed that estimates the movement of individuals. The presented system incorporates a process that allows the efficient camera-based initialization of the model, without any special prerequirements. The efficiency of the model has been thoroughly validated. Specifically, simulation-derived diagrams that depict the relationship of flow and speed of people as a function of crowd density have been compared with corresponding diagrams from the literature. Furthermore, the system has been evaluated with the use of real data. In particular, simulation results have been compared with real video recordings that depict the crowd evacuation process from a football stadium. Results prove that the proposed management system can estimate fast possible routes of people for the very near future, evaluating all possible exit alternatives. Finally, the proposed model has been implemented in hardware with a field-programmable gate array, enabling its incorporation into an integrated electronic system that estimates crowd movement and prevents congestion in exits almost in real time. The proposed electronic system is advantageous in terms of easy incorporation and portability as well as performance when compared with its analogous graphical-processing-unit implementation.