Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The relation of early maladaptive schemas and behavioral inhibition/approach systems to defense styles in abusers of synthetic drug: a cross-sectional study

Abstract The aim of the study was to examine the relationship of early maladaptive schemas (EMSs) and behavioral inhibition/approach systems (BIS/BAS) with defense styles in the abusers of synthetic drug admitted at Niyayesh addiction treatment clinic in the city of Shiraz, Iran. In a cross-sectional design, we examined the relationship between EMSs (via Young Maladaptive Schemas Questionnaire —Short Form “YSQ-SF”) and BIS/BAS (via Carver & White BIS/BAS Scale) to defense styles (via Defense Style Questionnaire “DSQ-40”) for 340 abusers of synthetic drug (male = 53.5%, female = 46.5%). To analyze the relationship between the studied variables, zero-order correlation and multivariate regression were used. Also, sex differences in the means of the responses for each of EMSs, BIS/BAS, and defense styles were analyzed using the independent samples t test. Correlational analyses revealed that all five EMSs were correlated with both neurotic and immature defense styles, and negatively with mature defense style. Also, BIS and all BAS subscales were related to both neurotic and immature and negatively to mature defense style. Finally, there were significant sex differences in BIS, BAS subscales, EMSs, and defense styles. We concluded that EMSs, excessive BIS and BAS subscales, and maladaptive defense styles (e.g., neurotic and immature styles) are important factors in understanding the causes of drug abuse in the abusers of synthetic drug.
Role of specific DNA mutations in the peripheral blood of colorectal cancer patients for the assessment of tumor stage and residual disease following tumor resection

In the present study, the detection of tumor-specific KRAS proto-oncogene, GTPase (KRAS) and B-Raf proto-oncogene, serine/threonine kinase (BRAF) mutations in the peripheral blood of colorectal cancer (CRC) patients at all stages and adenomas was used for the estimation of disease stage prior to surgery and for residual disease following surgery. A total of 65 CRC patients were enrolled. The primary tumor tested positive for the specific mutations (KRAS mutations in codons 12, 13, 61, 117 or 146 and BRAF mutations in codon 600) in 35 patients. In all these patients, the specimen of normal bowel resected with the tumor was also tested for the presence of the same mutations in order to exclude the germ-line mutations. Only patients who tested positive for the specific mutation in the primary tumor were included in further analysis for the presence of tumor-specific mutation in the peripheral blood. No statistically significant differences were found between the detection rates of tumor mutations in the blood and different tumor stages (P=0.491). However, statistically significant differences in the proportions of patients with detected tumor-specific DNA mutations in the peripheral blood were found when comparing the groups of patients with R0 and R2 resections (P=0.038). Tumor-specific DNA mutations in the peripheral blood were more frequently detected in the patients with an incomplete surgical clearance of the tumor due to macroscopic residual disease (R2 resections). Therefore, the study concludes that the follow-up of somatic KRAS- and BRAF-mutated DNA in the peripheral blood of CRC patients may be useful in assessing the surgical clearance of the disease.
Optimality of Reinforcement Learning Algorithms with Linear Function Approximation

There are several reinforcement learning algorithms that yield approximate solutions for the problem of policy evaluation when the value function is represented with a linear function approximator. In this paper we show that each of the solutions is optimal with respect to a specific objective function. Moreover, we characterise the different solutions as images of the optimal exact value function under different projection operations. The results presented here will be useful for comparing the algorithms in terms of the error they achieve relative to the error of the optimal approximate solution.
An Intrinsic Geometric Framework for Simultaneous Non-Rigid Registration and Segmentation of Surfaces ?

In clinical applications where structural asymmetries between homologous shapes have been correlated with pathology, the questions of definition and quantification of ‘asymmetry’ arise naturally. When not only the degree but the position of deformity is thought relevant, asymmetry localization must also be addressed. Asymmetries between paired shapes can and have been formulated in the literature in terms of (nonrigid) diffeomorphisms between the shapes. For the infinity of such maps possible for a given pair, we define optimality as the minimization of total distortion, where ‘distortion’ is in turn defined as deviation from isometry. We thus propose a novel variational formulation for segmenting asymmetric regions from surface pairs based on the minimization of a functional of both the deformation map and the segmentation boundary, which controls gradient discontinuity of the map. This minimization is achieved via a quasi-simultaneous evolution of the map and curve. Our formulation is inherently intrinsic and parameterization-independent. We present examples using both synthetic data and pairs of left and right hippocampal structures, hippocampus malformation being linked with such neurological disorders as epilepsy and schizophrenia.
On testing the significance of sets of genes

This paper discusses the problem of identifying dieren tially expressed groups of genes from a microarray experiment. The groups of genes are externally dened, for example, sets of gene pathways derived from biological databases. Our starting point is the interesting Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) procedure of Subramanian et al. (2005). We study the problem in some generality and propose two potential improvements to GSEA: the maxmean statistic for summarizing gene-sets, and restandardization for more accurate inferences. We discuss a variety of examples and extensions, including the use of gene-set scores for class predictions. We also describe a new R language package GSA that implements our ideas.
Modulation of working memory function by motivation through loss‐aversion

Cognitive performance is affected by motivation. Few studies, however, have investigated the neural mechanisms of the influence of motivation through potential monetary punishment on working memory. We employed functional MRI during a delayed recognition task that manipulated top‐down control demands with added monetary incentives to some trials in the form of potential losses of bonus money. Behavioral performance on the task was influenced by loss‐threatening incentives in the form of faster and more accurate performance. As shown previously, we found enhancement of activity for relevant stimuli occurs throughout all task periods (e.g., stimulus encoding, maintenance, and response) in both prefrontal and visual association cortex. Further, these activation patterns were enhanced for trials with possible monetary loss relative to nonincentive trials. During the incentive cue, the amygdala and striatum showed significantly greater activation when money was at a possible loss on the trial. We also evaluated patterns of functional connectivity between regions responsive to monetary consequences and prefrontal areas responsive to the task. This analysis revealed greater delay period connectivity between and the left insula and prefrontal cortex with possible monetary loss relative to nonincentive trials. Overall, these results reveal that incentive motivation can modulate performance on working memory tasks through top‐down signals via amplification of activity within prefrontal and visual association regions selective to processing the perceptual inputs of the stimuli to be remembered. Hum Brain Mapp , 2013. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Developmental differences of neurocognitive networks for phonological and semantic processing in Chinese word reading

Developmental differences in the neurocognitive networks for phonological and semantic processing in Chinese word reading were examined in 13 adults and 13 children using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Rhyming and semantic association judgments were made to two‐character words that were presented sequentially in the visual modality. These lexical tasks were compared with a nonlinguistic control task involving judgment of line patterns. The first main finding was that adults showed greater activation than children in right middle occipital gyrus on both the meaning and rhyming task, suggesting adults more effectively engage right hemisphere brain regions involved in the visual‐spatial analysis of Chinese characters. The second main finding was that adults showed greater activation than children in left inferior parietal lobule for the rhyming as compared with the meaning task, suggesting greater specialization of phonological processing in adults. The third main finding was that children who had better performance in the rhyming task on characters with conflicting orthographic and phonological information relative to characters with nonconflicting information showed greater activation in left middle frontal gyrus, suggesting greater engagement of brain regions involved in the integration of orthography and phonology. Hum Brain Mapp, 2009. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Laryngeal ultrasound: a useful method in predicting post-extubation stridor. A pilot study

The cuff-leak test was widely used for the prediction of post-extubation stridor, but controversial results limit its clinical application. The current study used real-time ultrasonography to evaluate the air-leak and hypothesised that the air-column width, measured by ultrasonography, may be correlated to the development of post-extubation stridor. From June 1, 2001 to March 1, 2002, a total of 51 planned extubations in 51 consecutively intubated patients were included. All of the patients received ultrasonographical examinations of their vocal cords and larynx in addition to an air-column width measurement within 24 h prior to extubation. The overall post-extubation stridor rate was 7.8%. The air-leak volume presented as median (interquartile range) were 300 (350) mL and 25 (20) mL, respectively, for the nonstridor and stridor groups. The air-column width during cuff deflation was 6.4 (2) mm and 4.5 (0.8) mm, respectively. They were found to be statistically significant. In conclusion, the authors demonstrated that laryngeal ultrasonography could be a reliable, noninvasive method, in the evaluation of vocal cords, laryngeal morphology and the ease of airflow, which passed through vocal cords or subglottic area due to laryngeal oedema. The air-column width during cuff deflation was a potential predictor of post-extubation stridor.
Predictive Factors of Response to Proton Pump Inhibitors in Korean Patients With Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease

Background/Aims Proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) are widely used in the treatment of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). However, some patients fail to respond to PPI therapy. We investigated the efficacy of response to PPI therapy in patients with GERD symptoms. Methods A total of 179 subjects with GERD symptoms were prospectively enrolled and diagnosed with non-erosive reflux disease (NERD, n = 100) and erosive reflux disease (n = 79) by gastroscopy and Bernstein test and/or 24-hour esophageal pH testing. Subjects then received a standard dose of daily PPI therapy for at least 4 weeks. PPI therapy response was evaluated using questionnaires including questions about demographics, GERD symptoms, GERD impact scale, Epworth sleepiness scale, Pittsburgh sleep quality index (PSQI), hospital anxiety and depression scale, and abbreviated version of the World Health Organization quality of life scale. Results The rates of complete (≥ 80%), satisfactory (≥ 50%), partial (< 50%), and refractory response in the 179 participants were 41.3%, 30.2%, 18.4%, and 10.1%, respectively. Thus, overall response rate (complete and satisfactory responses) was 71.5%. Multivariate analysis showed body mass index < 23 kg/m2 (OR, 2.20; 95% CI, 1.12–4.34), higher total PSQI score (OR, 1.20; 95% CI, 1.05–1.35), history of psychotherapy or neuropsychiatric medication (OR, 2.44; 95% CI, 1.23–4.85), and NERD (OR, 3.30; 95% CI, 1.54–7.11) were associated with poor response to PPI therapy. Conclusions Psychological factors, sleep dysfunction, body mass index < 23 kg/m2, and NERD seem to be the major factors that lead to a poor response to PPI treatment in patients with GERD symptoms.
Short-Term Episodic Memory for Visual Textures

Cognition is shaped by the way that past experiences are represented in memory. To examine the representation of recent visual experiences, we devised a novel procedure that measures episodic recognition memory for synthetic textures. On each trial, two brief study stimuli were followed by a probe, which either replicated one of the study stimuli or differed in spatial frequency from both. The probe's spatial frequency roved from trial to trial, testing recognition with a range of differences between probe and study items. Repeated testing of recognition generated mnemometric functions, snapshots of memory strength's distribution. The distributional characteristics of the mnemometric functions rule out several hypotheses about memory representation, including the hypothesis that representations are prototypes constructed from previously seen stimuli; instead, stimuli are represented in memory as noisy exemplars.
Accelerating imitation learning through crowdsourcing

Although imitation learning is a powerful technique for robot learning and knowledge acquisition from näıve human users, it often suffers from the need for expensive human demonstrations. In some cases the robot has an insufficient number of useful demonstrations, while in others its learning ability is limited by the number of users it directly interacts with. We propose an approach that overcomes these shortcomings by using crowdsourcing to collect a wider variety of examples from a large pool of human demonstrators online. We present a new goal-based imitation learning framework which utilizes crowdsourcing as a major source of human demonstration data. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach experimentally on a scenario where the robot learns to build 2D object models on a table from basic building blocks using knowledge gained from locals and online crowd workers. In addition, we show how the robot can use this knowledge to support human-robot collaboration tasks such as goal inference through object-part classification and missing-part prediction. We report results from a user study involving fourteen local demonstrators and hundreds of crowd workers on 16 different model building tasks.
American Journal of Epidemiology Original Contribution a Difference-in-differences Analysis of Health, Safety, and Greening Vacant Urban Space

Greening of vacant urban land may affect health and safety. The authors conducted a decade-long difference-indifferences analysis of the impact of a vacant lot greening program in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on health and safety outcomes. ''Before'' and ''after'' outcome differences among treated vacant lots were compared with matched groups of control vacant lots that were eligible but did not receive treatment. Control lots from 2 eligibility pools were randomly selected and matched to treated lots at a 3:1 ratio by city section. Random-effects regression models were fitted, along with alternative models and robustness checks. Across 4 sections of Philadelphia, 4,436 vacant lots totaling over 7.8 million square feet (about 725,000 m 2) were greened from 1999 to 2008. Regression-adjusted estimates showed that vacant lot greening was associated with consistent reductions in gun assaults across all 4 sections of the city (P < 0.001) and consistent reductions in vandalism in 1 section of the city (P < 0.001). Regression-adjusted estimates also showed that vacant lot greening was associated with residents' reporting less stress and more exercise in select sections of the city (P < 0.01). Once greened, vacant lots may reduce certain crimes and promote some aspects of health. Limitations of the current study are discussed. Community-based trials are warranted to further test these findings. Economic downturns, deindustrialization, and population outmigration have made the abandonment of land a challenge for many US cities. The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (PHS), along with other community and municipal partners, directs a program to clean, green, and maintain abandoned vacant lots in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. These vacant lot treatments often produce immediately noticeable, visually dramatic results; are straightforward to implement; cost little, relative to other urban health and safety programs; and are responsive to community concerns (1, 2). The treatment of vacant lots is also in line with the 21st century ''eco-epidemiology'' movement, which seeks to move beyond studies of individuals and lifestyle modification to environmental modification programs that offer widespread protection and enhanced health with less reliance on personal behavior change (3). Such programs avoid working only with high-risk individuals, as it is thought that this produces, at best, only short-term improvements because the system will continue to replace persons who leave high-risk status, allowing the cycle of poor health to persist over the long term (4). Programs that focus on places or structural changes, such as vacant lot greening, may have a greater influence on more …
Chapter 9 Living and Working Between Two Worlds: Using Qualitative Phenomenological Findings to Enhance Understanding of Lived Experiences

Purpose — The purpose of this chapter is to provide knowledge and insights gained into Canadian expatriates' perspectives of living and working in Indonesia and to enhance the reader's understanding of the lived experience of being immersed in another culture. Methodology — A descriptive phenomenological qualitative method was employed, which uncovered paradoxes that were lived by Canadian expatriate managers. Findings — The following paradoxes are presented using participants' words and lived experiences of the authors: powerful-powerless, understanding-not understanding, being supported-not supported, belonging-not belonging and freedom-restriction. Research limitations — While the qualitative findings may not be ‘generalisable’ according to a quantitative viewpoint, they are certainly applicable to others' experiences as demonstrated by the authors' description of their own experiences. Practical implications — Enhanced understanding of this lived experience will spark improved expatriation strategies and lead directly to significant improvement in the overall performance of international organisations because an effective expatriate will be more capable of facilitating the two-way sharing and blending of the local and exogenous knowledge, therefore fulfilling a key role in knowledge transfer. Social implications –– The importance of being open to others' lived experiences and supporting others who are immersed in another culture has universal appeal from a social perspective. Originality/value of chapter — This is a unique research chapter describing research findings and joining participants' words and experiences with the authors' experiences. As well it is hoped that readers will relate to the paradoxes.
SS-DB : A Standard Science DBMS Benchmark

In this paper, we propose a new benchmark for scientific data management systems called SS-DB. This benchmark, loosely modeled on an astronomy workload, is intended to simulate applications that manipulate array-oriented data through relatively sophisticated user-defined functions. SS-DB is representative of the processing performed in a number of scientific domains in addition to astronomy, including earth science, oceanography, and medical image analysis. The benchmark includes three types of operations: (i) manipulation of raw imagery, including processing pixels to extract geo-spatial observations; (ii) manipulation of observations, including spatial aggregation and grouping into related sets; and (iii) manipulation of groups, including a number of relatively complex geometric
Blazar sequence – an artefact of Doppler boosting

Context. The blazar sequence is a scenario in which the bolometric luminosity of the blazar governs the appearance of its spectral energy distribution. The most prominent result is the significant negative correlation between the synchrotron peak frequencies and the synchrotron peak luminosities of the blazar population. Aims. Observational studies of the blazar sequence have, in general, neglected the effect of Doppler boosting. We study the dependence of both the synchrotron peak frequency and luminosity with Doppler-corrected quantities. Methods. We determine the spectral energy distributions of 135 radio-bright AGN and find the best-fit parabolic function for the distribution to quantify their synchrotron emission. The corresponding measurements of synchrotron peak luminosities and frequencies are Doppler-corrected with a new set of Doppler factors calculated from variability data. The relevant correlations for the blazar sequence are determined for these intrinsic quantities. Results. The Doppler factor depends strongly on the synchrotron peak frequency, the lower energy sources being more boosted. Applying the Doppler correction to the peak frequencies and luminosities annuls the negative correlation between the two quantities, which becomes positive . For BL Lacertae objects, the positive correlation is particularly strong. Conclusions. The blazar sequence, when defined as the anticorrelation between the peak frequency and luminosity of the synchrotron component of the spectral energy distribution, disappears when the intrinsic, Doppler-corrected values are used. It is an observational phenomenon created by variable Doppler boosting across the synchrotron peak frequency range.
Decreasing Seroprevalence of Measles Antibodies after Vaccination – Possible Gap in Measles Protection in Adults in the Czech Republic

Aims In recent years, Europe has recorded an increase in the number of measles outbreaks despite the implementation of vaccination into the National Immunization Programs. The Czech Republic introduced vaccination against measles into National Immunization Program in 1969. The aim of this study was to determine seroprevalence of IgG antibodies against measles in adults. Methods Our study was designed as a prospective, multicenter cohort study. Samples of blood were taken from adults aged 18 years and over. Specific IgG antibodies were determined by ELISA method. Results A number of 1911 sera samples were obtained. The total seropositivity reached 83.3%, 14.3% of the results were negative and 2.4% were borderline. When comparing the individual age groups, the highest antibody seropositivity (> 96%) was detected in persons aged 50 years and over who were naturally infected in pre-vaccine era. The lowest seropositivity was recorded in the age groups 30–39 years (61.5%), 40–49 years (77.5%) and 18–29 years (81.1%). Conclusions A long term high rate of seropositivity persists after natural measles infection. By contrast, it decreases over time after vaccination. Similarly, the concentrations of antibodies in persons with measles history persist for a longer time at a higher level than in vaccinated persons. Our results indicate possible gap in measles protection in adults born after implementation of vaccination into the National Immunization Programs. There are two probable reasons, decrease of measles antibody seropositivity in time after vaccination in setting of limited natural booster and one-dose vaccination schedule used in the first years after implementation.