Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of Particle Size Fractions on Reducing Heart Rate Variability in Cardiac and Hypertensive Patients

It is still unknown whether the associations between particulate matter (PM) and heart rate variability (HRV) differ by particle sizes with aerodynamic diameters between 0.3 μm and 1.0 μm (PM0.3–1.0), between 1.0 μm and 2.5 μm (PM1.0–2.5), and between 2.5 μm and 10 μm (PM2.5–10). We measured electrocardiographics and PM exposures in 10 patients with coronary heart disease and 16 patients with either prehypertension or hypertension. The outcome variables were standard deviation of all normal-to-normal (NN) intervals (SDNN), the square root of the mean of the sum of the squares of differences between adjacent NN intervals (r-MSSD), low frequency (LF; 0.04–0.15 Hz), high frequency (HF; 0.15–0.40 Hz), and LF:HF ratio for HRV. The pollution variables were mass concentrations of PM0.3–1.0, PM1.0–2.5, and PM2.5–10. We used linear mixed-effects models to examine the association between PM exposures and log10-transformed HRV indices, adjusting for key personal and environmental attributes. We found that PM0.3–1.0 exposures at 1- to 4-hr moving averages were associated with SDNN and r-MSSD in both cardiac and hypertensive patients. For an interquartile increase in PM0.3–1.0, there were 1.49–4.88% decreases in SDNN and 2.73–8.25% decreases in r-MSSD. PM0.3–1.0 exposures were also associated with decreases in LF and HF for hypertensive patients at 1- to 3-hr moving averages except for cardiac patients at moving averages of 2 or 3 hr. By contrast, we found that HRV was not associated with either PM1.0–2.5 or PM2.5–10. HRV reduction in susceptible population was associated with PM0.3–1.0 but was not associated with either PM1.0–2.5 or PM2.5–10.
Age, Cohort and Co-Authorship

The previously documented trend toward more co- and multi-authored research in economics is partly (perhaps 20 percent) due to different research styles of scholars in different birth cohorts (of different ages). Most of the trend reflects profession-wide changes in research style. Older scholars show greater variation in their research styles than younger ones, who use similar numbers of co-authors in each published paper; but there are no differences across cohorts in scholars' willingness to work with different coauthors. There are only small gender differences in the impacts of age on numbers of coauthors, but substantial differences on choice of coauthors.
Development and Application of a Next Generation Air Sensor Network for the Hong Kong Marathon 2015 Air Quality Monitoring

This study presents the development and evaluation of a next generation air monitoring system with both laboratory and field tests. A multi-parameter algorithm was used to correct for the impact of environmental conditions on the electrochemical sensors for carbon monoxide (CO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) pollutants. The field evaluation in an urban roadside environment in comparison to designated monitors showed good agreement with measurement error within 5% of the pollutant concentrations. Multiple sets of the developed system were then deployed in the Hong Kong Marathon 2015 forming a sensor-based network along the marathon route. Real-time air pollution concentration data were wirelessly transmitted and the Air Quality Health Index (AQHI) for the Green Marathon was calculated, which were broadcast to the public on an hourly basis. The route-specific sensor network showed somewhat different pollutant patterns than routine air monitoring, indicating the immediate impact of traffic control during the marathon on the roadside air quality. The study is one of the first applications of a next generation sensor network in international sport events, and it demonstrated the usefulness of the emerging sensor-based air monitoring technology in rapid network deployment to supplement existing air monitoring.
Rapid Cooling Methods for Pulsed Magnets

Pulsed magnets are generally evaluated and compared in terms of the magnetic field they can achieve in combination with a bore size. However, in practice another criterion is equally important: the waiting time for a researcher in between two consecutive shots. The cooling time of pulsed magnets can range from a few minutes up to several hours, depending on coil size and desired field. Using simulations and measurements several options to reduce the cool down time are compared in this paper. One of the discussed methods is now routinely in use at the Laboratoire National des champs magnetiques pulses (LNCMP) in Toulouse.
Cultural diversity, families, and the special education system: Communication and empowerment.

Cultural Diversity and Minority Status Minority Students in Special Education Culturally Diverse Families and the Special Education System - the Challenge of Building Trust A Study of Puerto Rican American Parents' Views of Special Education - Background and Method Making Sense of Disability - Parents' Theories of the Problem Communication, Information and Meaning Towards Informed Consent - Legal Compliance Versus Culturally Responsive Practice The School District - Challenge and Change.
Using Recreation Specialization to Understand Conservation Support

Abstract Previous empirical research has not provided definitive support for an association between participation in outdoor recreation activities and conservation attitudes and behaviors. This paper explored the relationships that construct recreationists' conservation behaviors in the context of recreational fishing. Study objectives were to investigate relationships of recreation specialization and personal motivations and attitudes that mediate conservation attitudes and behaviors; and explore causal connections between conservation attitudes and behaviors. Analyses generally supported the theoretical propositions in the model. Recreation specialization and the other concepts taken together appeared to provide insights to understanding patterns of conservation attitudes and behaviors. By knowing the causal relationships explaining conservation attitudes and behaviors, managers can better understand the extent of anglers' support for various conservation measures.
TrkB Signaling Is Required for Postnatal Survival of CNS Neurons and Protects Hippocampal and Motor Neurons from Axotomy-Induced Cell Death

Newborn mice carrying targeted mutations in genes encoding neurotrophins or their signaling Trk receptors display severe neuronal deficits in the peripheral nervous system but not in the CNS. In this study, we show that trkB (−/−) mice have a significant increase in apoptotic cell death in different regions of the brain during early postnatal life. The most affected region in the brain is the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus, although elevated levels of pyknotic nuclei were also detected in cortical layers II and III and V and VI, the striatum, and the thalamus. Furthermore, axotomized hippocampal and motor neurons of trkB (−/−) mice have significantly lower survival rates than those of wild-type littermates. These results suggest that neurotrophin signaling through TrkB receptors plays a role in the survival of CNS neurons during postnatal development. Moreover, they indicate that TrkB receptor signaling protects subpopulations of CNS neurons from injury- and axotomy-induced cell death.
Downregulation of Histone H3 Lysine 9 Methyltransferase G9a Induces Centrosome Disruption and Chromosome Instability in Cancer Cells

Background Modifications of the histone amino-terminal tails affect access of regulatory factors and complexes to chromatin and thereby influence biological processes. Cancer cells are characterized by prominent epigenetic dysregulation, including histone modifications. However, the functional roles of the histone methyltransferases (HMT) in cancer remain unclear. Methodology/Principal Findings We studied RNAi-based inhibition (knockdown, KD) of 2 different H3K9 HMTs, SUV39H1 and G9a. Knockdown of the 2 HMTs in PC3 cancer cell line markedly inhibited cell growth and caused profound morphological changes with loss of telomerase activity and shortened telomeres. SUV39H1 KD cells showed substantial increase in G2/M fraction. G9a KD cells showed increased DNA content (1.7-fold in 2 independent clones) compared with FACS analyses to control. Karyotype analyses showed that this was due to an increased number of chromosomes (from 61 to 102) in G9a KD cells compared to parental PC3. Intriguingly, we found abnormal centrosome morphology and number in about 25% of the G9a KD cells, while centrosomes were morphologically normal in control cells. Microarray analyses after KD of SUV39H1 or G9a showed very few genes up-regulated among the 39,000 genes. The silenced tumor-suppressor genes p16 and RASSF1A were not activated in KD cells. Conclusions/Significance These data suggest that the 2 HMTs, SUV39H1 and G9a are required to perpetuate the malignant phenotype. Furthermore, G9a plays a critical role in regulating centrosome duplication presumably through chromatin structure rather than through affecting gene expression in cancer cells. Targeting these histone methyltransferases may be of therapeutic benefit in cancers.
The Effect of Coccidians on the Condition and Immune Profile of Molting House Sparrows (Passer domesticus)

ABSTRACT. Feather molt is recognized as an energetically costly activity for birds, and parasite infestation during molt has the potential to reduce host fitness because parasites sequester essential nutrients and stimulate the immune system. We manipulated the coccidian parasite load of captive male House Sparrows (Passer domesticus) by suppressing the natural infection of control birds with an anticoccidial drug and infecting experimental birds with coccidian oocysts. Following infestation, the effect of chronic coccidian infection on individual condition, molt and 12 indices of physiological and immunological function was assessed. We found a significant positive relationship between infestation and heterophil/lymphocyte ratio measured at capture, indicating infectioninduced stress. We also found that coccidians negatively affected feather growth during molt: the increase in wing length of the noninfected birds was significantly higher than that of infected birds. In comparison to control birds, infected birds showed a significantly higher concentration of white blood cells and greater blood bactericidal activity. There was also a positive correlation between infection intensity, agglutination and lysis of blood in the experimentally infested birds, which indicated activation of the constitutive innate immune system during infection. Finally, the total antioxidant capacity of the blood increased significantly, while the carotenoid concentration decreased significantly in infected compared with control birds. Therefore, we showed that coccidians stimulated several measures of the constitutive innate immunity, including the bactericidal activity of the blood, and that coccidians can have significant negative effects on the health and possibly fitness of molting House Sparrows.
Bone Metastasis in Cervical Cancer Patients Over a 10-Year Period

Introduction: Cervical cancer is the major cancer burden in developing countries. Bone is the third most common site of distant metastasis after the lungs and liver. Therefore, the aims of this study were to find the incidence and clinical characteristics of bone metastasis in our hospital. Patients and Methods: Fifty-one cervical cancer patients with bone metastasis during the period from January 1998 to December 2007 were recruited. All patients' medical records were reviewed and analyzed. Results: Among 4620 cervical cancer patients, there were 51 patients (1.1%) who had bone metastases. Ten patients' medical records were not found; thus, 41 patients were available for evaluation. The median age of the patients was 49 years. International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics stage IIB was the most common stage (43.9%). Most patients had squamous cell carcinoma (80.48%) and received radiation therapy alone as their primary treatment (58.53%). The most common presenting symptom was pain (78.04%). Most of the patients had multiple bone lesions and extrapelvic bone metastases. The lumbar spine was the most common site (36.36%). Sixteen patients (39.02%) were treated by palliative radiation therapy. The median overall survival was 23 months. Conclusions: Bone metastases could be found at all stages. Common sites were the bone beyond the radiation field of their primary treatment. It was found at a median of 16 months after cervical cancer diagnosis. Currently, there are many varieties of treatment that result only in palliation. This group of patients has a poor prognosis.
Sentence Similarity Measures for Fine-Grained Estimation of Topical Relevance in Learner Essays

We investigate the task of assessing sentence-level prompt relevance in learner essays. Various systems using word overlap, neural embeddings and neural compositional models are evaluated on two datasets of learner writing. We propose a new method for sentence-level similarity calculation, which learns to adjust the weights of pre-trained word embeddings for a specific task, achieving substantially higher accuracy compared to other relevant baselines.
A Performance Study of Big Data on Small Nodes

The continuous increase in volume, variety and velocity of Big Data exposes datacenter resource scaling to an energy utilization problem. Traditionally, datacenters employ x86-64 (big) server nodes with power usage of tens to hundreds of Watts. But lately, low-power (small) systems originally developed for mobile devices have seen significant improvements in performance. These improvements could lead to the adoption of such small systems in servers, as announced by major industry players. In this context, we systematically conduct a performance study of Big Data execution on small nodes in comparison with traditional big nodes, and present insights that would be useful for future development. We run Hadoop MapReduce, MySQL and in-memory Shark workloads on clusters of ARM big. LITTLE boards and Intel Xeon server systems. We evaluate execution time, energy usage and total cost of running the workloads on self-hosted ARM and Xeon nodes. Our study shows that there is no one size fits all rule for judging the efficiency of executing Big Data workloads on small and big nodes. But small memory size, low memory and I/O bandwidths, and software immaturity concur in canceling the lower-power advantage of ARM servers. We show that I/O-intensive MapReduce workloads are more energy-efficient to run on Xeon nodes. In contrast, database query processing is always more energy-efficient on ARM servers, at the cost of slightly lower throughput. With minor software modifications, CPU-intensive MapReduce workloads are almost four times cheaper to execute on ARM servers.
The public's response to the obesity epidemic in Australia: weight concerns and weight control practices of men and women

Abstract Objective To assess weight perceptions, weight concerns and weight control behaviours and related beliefs in a representative sample of adults. Design Cross-sectional postal survey. Setting The survey was conducted between October and December 1997 in the state of Victoria, Australia. Subjects A total of 2500 subjects were selected at random from the Australian electoral roll; 900 provided usable responses. Results At the time of the survey, 2.7% of respondents were trying to gain weight, 26.6% were trying to avoid gaining weight, 22.9% were trying to lose weight and 47.9% were not doing anything for their weight. Men (47.2%) were less likely than women (55.3%) to be attempting any form of weight control. Watching the type of food eaten (95.6%), reducing dietary fat intake (87.3%) and engaging in physical activity or exercise (84.4%) were the most common weight control strategies used. Potentially harmful strategies, such as self-induced vomiting and smoking, were used by relatively few respondents. Many adults believed that vigorous activity (26.8%) and total omission of fat from the diet (35.3%) are necessary in order to lose weight. Conclusions Attempts at weight control are common in the community. However, many men, including men who are already overweight, appear to be unconcerned about their weight. Obesity prevention initiatives should attempt to influence individuals' weight-related beliefs and behaviours, as well as seeking to change policies and environments to better support weight control.
Pump characteristic based optimization of a direct water cooling system for a 10 kW/500 kHz Vienna rectifier

A high power density 10 kW/500 kHz three-phase PWM rectifier (Vienna Rectifier) is under development. Due to preliminary measurements and numerical simulations the total efficiency is assumed to be 95% at full load, resulting in power losses of up to 150 W in each multi-chip power module realizing a bridge leg of the rectifier. In order to keep the power density of the system high direct water cooling is employed where water is in direct contact with the module base plate. Based on the measured characteristic of the water pump (pressure drop dependent on water flow) the geometry of different water channel structures below the module base plate is systematically optimized based on analytical expressions which are formulated based on the well-established theory of fluid dynamics. The design optimization is constrained by the desire to keep the geometry of the water channels in a range that allows simple and low-cost manufacturing. The aim is to find a channel structure resulting in a minimum thermal resistance of the power module for a given pump characteristic. In this paper a very simple slot channel is investigated. The dependency of the thermal resistance on the cooling system is calculated in dependency on the height of the slot channel, and an optimized channel height is found under the side condition of simple manufacturability. Discussing the shortcomings of the simple slot structure, a novel metallic inlay structure is introduced and optimized resulting in a reduction of the thermal resistance of the direct water cooling scheme as compared to the slot channel system. All theoretical considerations are verified via experimental measurements. The general optimization scheme introduced in this paper can easily be adapted to other cooling problems.
Covert Reorienting and Inhibition of Return: An Event-Related fMRI Study

Using event-related fMRI, we analyzed the functional neuroanatomy of covert reorienting and inhibition of return (IOR). Covert reorienting to a target appearing within 250 msec after an invalid contralateral location cue elicited increased activation in the left fronto-polar cortex (LFPC), right anterior and left posterior middle frontal gyrus, and right cerebellum, areas that have previously been associated with attentional processes, specifically attentional change. In contrast, IOR, which leads to prolonged response times to targets that appear at the cued location at a stimulus-onset-asynchrony (SOA)>250 msec, was accompanied by increased activation in brain areas involved in oculomotor programming, such as the right medial frontal gyrus (supplementary eye field; SEF) and the right inferior precentral sulcus (frontal eye field; FEF), supporting the oculomotor bias theory of IOR. Pre-SEF and pre-FEF areas were involved both in covert reorienting and IOR. The supramarginal gyri were bilaterally involved in IOR, with the right supramarginal gyrus additionally involved in covert reorienting.
Exploring recovery in women diagnosed with personality disorder in a secure setting

Section A consists of a literature review which explores the concept of recovery and its relevance for women who have been detained in a secure setting and diagnosed with a personality disorder. Section B presents the findings of a study to explore the concept of recovery in women diagnosed with personality disorder in a secure unit. Six semi- structured interviews, conducted with women diagnosed with personality disorder and experience of being detained in secure accommodation, were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Analysis of the transcripts revealed five master themes: recovering; centrality of relationships; assuming responsibility for own care; evolving an identity; understanding of the mental health experience. The study concludes that, as far as is consistent with a secure setting, women should be given maximum opportunity to participate in decisions about their own care. Staff should be creative in providing opportunities for the women to engage in meaningful activities that promote a positive identity. Education with respect to personal recovery and the presentation and aetiology of personality disorder may support more caring and hopeful relationships between staff and service users, within which recovery can be facilitated. Section C involves a critical appraisal of the study.
STUDIES ON THE INTERACTION BETWEEN TRIPTOLIDE AND BOVINE SERUM ALBUMIN (BSA) BY SPECTROSCOPIC AND MOLECULAR MODELING METHODS

Background: Triptolide is a major active constituent isolated from Tripterygiumwilfordii Hook F, a Chinese herbal medicine. This study investigated the intermolecular interaction between triptolide and bovine serum albumin (BSA). Materials and Methods: The fluorescence, circular dichroism (CD) and molecular docking methods were used to investigate the intermolecular interaction between triptolide and BSA. The binding constant, the number of binding sites, binding subdomain and the thermodynamic parameters were measured. Results: The results of this experiment revealed that the intrinsic fluorescence of BSA was effectively quenched by triptolide via static quenching. The experimental results of synchronous fluorescence and CD spectra showed that the conformation of BSA was changed in the presence of triptolide. Conclusion: It indicated that triptolide could spontaneously bind on site II (subdomain IIIA) of BSA mainly via hydrogen bonding interactions and Van der Waals force.
Forest patterns and possum densities within podocarp/mixed hardwood forests on Mt. Bryan O'Lynn, Westland.

The podocarp/mixed hardwood forests on Mt Bryan O'Lynn, Central Westland, are described from 304 plots surveyed during 1975-77. Eight major plant associations are identified, using patterns of forest structure, physionomie dominance, diversity and distribution. Each association possesses distinct physiographic requirements, which ultimately results in a broad altitudinal stratification of the forest. Thus, the forests on low-altitude cutover terrace lands are dominated by Weinmannia racemosa and Cyathea smithii on partially cleared areas and by scrub hardwood species on clear-felled sites; the unmilled mid-altitudinal slopes are dominated by W. racemosa and Quintinia acutifolia; the ridges by Metrosideros umbellata and W. racemosa; the high altitude forests by Griselinia littoralis and Libocedrus bidwillii; and the alpine scrublands by scrub hardwoods, e.g., Olearia spp. and Dracophyllum spp. Forest mortality is altitudinally stratified also. Few dead stems occur in the low-altitude and alpine scrub forests. Conversely, in mid and high-altitude forests 9.6-15.5% of all standing stems are dead. The latter forests are structurally simple, are highly palatable to browsing animals, particularly possums, and appear to have been extensively modified by this marsupial. Possum densities throughout the forest profile are derived from a comprehensive extinction trapping programme and verified by faecal pellet surveys. Mean density is 10.7/ha, ranging from 25.4/ha to 1.9/ha in the low and high-altitude forests respectively. Current densities correlate with a gross palatibility index calculated for each association, but do not reflect present patterns of forest mortality as possum densities within the highly modified mid-altitude forests are moderate to low.