Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sexual Excitation/Sexual Inhibition Inventory (SESII-W/M): Adaptation and Validation Within a Portuguese Sample of Men and Women

The SESII-W/M is a self-report measure assessing factors that inhibit and enhance sexual arousal in men and women. The goal of this study was to adapt and validate it in a sample of Portuguese men and women. A total of 1,723 heterosexual men and women participated through a web survey, with ages ranging from 18 to 72 years old (M = 36.05, SD = 11.93). The levels of internal consistency were considered satisfactory in the first four factors, but not in Setting and Dyadic Elements of the Sexual Interaction. Confirmatory factor analysis partially supported the six-factor, 30-item model, as factor loadings and squared multiple correlations pointed to problems with items mainly loading on those two factors. General fit indices were lower than the ones estimated by Milhausen, Graham, Sanders, Yarber, and Maitland (2010). Psychometric sensitivity and construct validity were adequate and gender differences were consistent with the original study. The six-factor, 30-item model was retained, but changes to the factors Setting and Dyadic Elements of the Sexual Interaction, and their corresponding items, were recommended in order to strengthen the measure.
Triple-Negative Breast Cancer: Clinical Features and Patterns of Recurrence

Purpose: To compare the clinical features, natural history, and outcomes for women with “triple-negative” breast cancer with women with other types of breast cancer. Experimental Design: We studied a cohort of 1,601 patients with breast cancer, diagnosed between January 1987 and December 1997 at Women's College Hospital in Toronto. Triple-negative breast cancers were defined as those that were estrogen receptor negative, progesterone receptor negative, and HER2neu negative. The prognostic significance of triple-negative breast cancer was explored. Results: The median follow-up time of the 1,601 women was 8.1 years. One hundred and eighty of 1,601 patients (11.2%) had triple-negative breast cancer. Compared with other women with breast cancer, those with triple-negative breast cancer had an increased likelihood of distant recurrence (hazard ratio, 2.6; 95% confidence interval, 2.0-3.5; P < 0.0001) and death (hazard ratio, 3.2; 95% confidence interval, 2.3-4.5; P < 0.001) within 5 years of diagnosis but not thereafter. The pattern of recurrence was also qualitatively different; among the triple-negative group, the risk of distant recurrence peaked at ∼3 years and declined rapidly thereafter. Among the “other” group, the recurrence risk seemed to be constant over the period of follow-up. Conclusions: Triple-negative breast cancers have a more aggressive clinical course than other forms of breast cancer, but the adverse effect is transient.
The expression of metastasis suppressor MIM/MTSS1 is regulated by DNA methylation

MIM/MTSS1 was initially described as a gene missing in invasive bladder cancer cell lines. Functional analysis revealed that MIM is an actin binding protein involved in the regulation of actin cytoskeleton dynamics. MIM was shown to be sonic hedgehog (Shh) signaling dependent and synergizes with the effects of Gli transcription factors. Overexpression of MIM in cell lines leads to the inhibition of cell proliferation. In this study, we showed that the inhibition of cell growth by MIM is anchorage independent. We identified and cloned the promoter region of MIM and located the main promoter activity to 276 bp of 5′ flanking sequence sited within a CpG island. Analysis of DNA methylation using bisulphite sequencing revealed that MIM promoter is methylated in its 5′ region in cells and tissue samples with reduced endogenous MIM expression. Using luciferase reporter assay, we demonstrated that nonmethylated MIM promoter has a similar activity in cell lines with different endogenous MIM expression. Inhibition of DNA methylation by 5‐Aza‐2′‐deoxycytidine led to upregulation of MIM expression in a low expressing cell line. In conclusion, we clearly demonstrate here that the expression of metastasis suppressor MIM is regulated by DNA methylation of a CpG island within its promoter region. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Simultaneous concentration of four enteroviruses from tap, waste, and natural waters

The efficiency of virus recovery from water was investigated by using a method which enabled the concentration of a mixture of four enteroviruses with determination of their individual recovery efficiencies. The four viruses used (poliovirus 1, coxsackievirus A9, coxsackievirus B1, and echovirus 7) represented each of the four major subgroups of enteroviruses. This method, which was based on selective antibody neutralization, was used to investigate the effects of input water quality on enterovirus concentration by Balston filters (grade C; Balston, Inc., Lexington, Mass.) and organic flocculation. With tap water, the average recovery efficiency of the four viruses was 97%. Concentration from natural waters, including samples from two lakes (Lake Kinneret and the Hula Nature Reserve) and the Mediterranean Sea, resulted in similarly high average recovery efficiencies. Echovirus 7 was recovered with a slightly lower average efficiency from these types of water than were the other viruses. In comparison with other types of water, virus concentration from Jerusalem wastewater generally had a slightly lower efficiency of recovery, ranging from 63 to 75% for each of the viruses, with an overall average of 68%. The ability of each concentration step, membrane filtration or organic flocculation, to recover the viruses from water was assayed. For the filtration step, although there were not large differences in virus recoveries from tap water, echovirus 7 was recovered with the lowest efficiency (72%), and poliovirus 1 was recovered with the highest (87%) efficiency. Overall virus recovery by the filtration step was least efficient for wastewater (73%) and most efficient for seawater (107%). (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Relationship of Depressive Symptoms to Hypertension in a Household Survey in Harlem

Objective Two possible explanations for an hypothesized association between depression and hypertension were examined: (1) shared stress-related risk factors are associated with both depression and hypertension and (2) life-style factors associated with depression lead to hypertension. Methods A predominantly black sample of 695 adults were interviewed in the Harlem Household Survey. Two measures of hypertension were used and compared—1) self-report and 2) elevated blood pressure (above 140/90 mm Hg)—on the basis of the mean of two blood pressure measures. Depressive symptoms were measured by use of a 24-item scale based on the Diagnostic Interview Schedule. Logistic regression models were used to test associations between hypertension and depressive symptoms, stressors, and life-style factors. Results Depressive symptoms were associated with self-reported hypertension but not with elevated blood pressure. The association between self-reported hypertension and depressive symptoms was explained partly by shared stress-related risk factors but not by life-style factors. Several stressors and life-style variables were risk factors for elevated blood pressure independently of depressive symptoms. The findings are consistent with studies that have measured hypertension variously by either self-report or blood pressure. Possible explanations were explored (labeling and help-seeking) but were not supported by the data. Conclusions An association was found between self-reported hypertension and depressive symptoms, which was explained partly by shared stress-related risk factors. Elevated blood pressure was associated with stressors and life-style factors but not with depressive symptomatology. Research on illness representations and cultural dimensions of health suggest avenues for further investigation.
Trends and Sequences in Financial Performance : A Test of Behavioral Theories

Assessing the predictive ability of behavioral finance theories using out-of-sample data is important. The potentially boundless set of psychological biases underlying the behavioral explanations for observed security price behavior risk over-fitting theory to data. We test pricing effects attributed to a central psychological bias, representativeness, which underlies many behavioral-finance theories. According to this bias, individuals form predictions about future outcomes based on how closely past outcomes fit certain categories. To produce out-of sample tests, we use accounting performance to identify these categories and test the idea that investors misclassify firms and thus systematically misprice them. Evidence fails to suggest that the consistency or pattern of accounting performance, as a proxy for representativeness bias, influences investor expectations such as to generate return predictability. We gratefully acknowledge helpful comments of Jon Lewellen and Sendhil Mullainathan. Trends and Sequences in Financial Performance: A Test of Behavioral Theories
Abnormal heart rate recovery after exercise predicts coronary artery disease severity.

BACKGROUND Slow heart rate recovery (HRR) after exercise is considered to represent impaired parasympathetic tone and to be a predictor of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality, but the independent value of abnormal HRR in predicting the presence and severity of coronary artery disease (CAD) is unknown. The aim of this study was to evaluate these relationships in our patients. METHODS This prospective cross-sectional study included 208 patients (67.3% men), aged 34 to 74 (mean 53) years. Patients who had an ischemic response during symptom-limited exercise testing underwent selective coronary angiography. The value for HRR was defined as the decrease in heart rate from peak exercise to one minute after the exercise ceased. Eighteen beats per minute was defined as the lowest normal value for HRR. RESULTS Significant CAD was detected in 140 (67.3%) patients. There were 66 (31.7%) patients with an abnormal HRR. In multivariable logistic regression analysis adjusted for established CAD risk factors, abnormal HRR was independently correlated with the extent of major epicardial coronary involvement (p = 0.04). The sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values, and accuracy of abnormal HRR for predicting extensive CAD were 48%, 83.3%, 72.7%, and 63.4%, respectively. There was also a significant correlation between HRR one minute after exercise and smoking (p = 0.004), chronotropic variables (p = 0.001), and the calculated risk score for the exercise test (p = 0.03). There was no significant correlation between HRR and other risk factors including age and gender, left ventricular systolic function, and history of myocardial infarction. CONCLUSIONS There is a significant correlation between abnormal post-exercise HRR at one minute and the extent of major epicardial coronary involvement.
Reward Sharpens Orientation Coding Independently of Attention

It has long been known that rewarding improves performance. However it is unclear whether this is due to high level modulations in the output modules of associated neural systems or due to low level mechanisms favoring more “generous” inputs? Some recent studies suggest that primary sensory areas, including V1 and A1, may form part of the circuitry of reward-based modulations, but there is no data indicating whether reward can be dissociated from attention or cross-trial forms of perceptual learning. Here we address this issue with a psychophysical dual task, to control attention, while perceptual performance on oriented targets associated with different levels of reward is assessed by measuring both orientation discrimination thresholds and behavioral tuning functions for tilt values near threshold. We found that reward, at any rate, improved performance. However, higher reward rates showed an improvement of orientation discrimination thresholds by about 50% across conditions and sharpened behavioral tuning functions. Data were unaffected by changing the attentional load and by dissociating the feature of the reward cue from the task-relevant feature. These results suggest that reward may act within the span of a single trial independently of attention by modulating the activity of early sensory stages through a improvement of the signal-to-noise ratio of task-relevant channels.
Normalization of Pain-Evoked Neural Responses Using Spontaneous EEG Improves the Performance of EEG-Based Cross-Individual Pain Prediction

An effective physiological pain assessment method that complements the gold standard of self-report is highly desired in pain clinical research and practice. Recent studies have shown that pain-evoked electroencephalography (EEG) responses could be used as a readout of perceived pain intensity. Existing EEG-based pain assessment is normally achieved by cross-individual prediction (i.e., to train a prediction model from a group of individuals and to apply the model on a new individual), so its performance is seriously hampered by the substantial inter-individual variability in pain-evoked EEG responses. In this study, to reduce the inter-individual variability in pain-evoked EEG and to improve the accuracy of cross-individual pain prediction, we examined the relationship between pain-evoked EEG, spontaneous EEG, and pain perception on a pain EEG dataset, where a large number of laser pulses (>100) with a wide energy range were delivered. Motivated by our finding that an individual's pain-evoked EEG responses is significantly correlated with his/her spontaneous EEG in terms of magnitude, we proposed a normalization method for pain-evoked EEG responses using one's spontaneous EEG to reduce the inter-individual variability. In addition, a nonlinear relationship between the level of pain perception and pain-evoked EEG responses was obtained, which inspired us to further develop a new two-stage pain prediction strategy, a binary classification of low-pain and high-pain trials followed by a continuous prediction for high-pain trials only, both of which used spontaneous-EEG-normalized magnitudes of evoked EEG responses as features. Results show that the proposed normalization strategy can effectively reduce the inter-individual variability in pain-evoked responses, and the two-stage pain prediction method can lead to a higher prediction accuracy.
A quantum information architecture for cue-based heuristics.

Cues indicating the state of the world play a critical role in decision-making in both inferential and preferential tasks, and are the focus of many heuristic models of cognitive processes. In this paper, we present the formal logical structure that is presupposed in a specific class of these processes: fast and frugal heuristics. We review the structure of these heuristics and show that they make a number of implicit assumptions resulting from the formal classical logic that underpins their structure. These assumptions lead to a number of predictions that are inconsistent with existing empirical data, but they follow primarily from the classical logic structure of heuristics and not from the rule-based cue processing approach itself. We introduce an alternative logic based on quantum theory that proposes a different and potentially more accurate set of underlying assumptions, and show that this framework addresses many of the issues arising from classical logic. We then demonstrate how heuristics can be reconstructed by integrating them with a quantum logic structure, examine the benefits that heuristics and quantum logic provide to one another, and outline the new questions and predictions that their integration yields. We contend that the integration of heuristics with quantum logic enhances both frameworks, improving heuristics as descriptive models by bringing them closer to the empirical data and grounding quantum logic in a psychological theory by giving it concrete processing rules to implement.
Helix–hairpin–helix motifs confer salt resistance and processivity on chimeric DNA polymerases

Helix–hairpin–helix (HhH) is a widespread motif involved in sequence-nonspecific DNA binding. The majority of HhH motifs function as DNA-binding modules with typical occurrence of one HhH motif or one or two (HhH)2 domains in proteins. We recently identified 24 HhH motifs in DNA topoisomerase V (Topo V). Although these motifs are dispensable for the topoisomerase activity of Topo V, their removal narrows the salt concentration range for topoisomerase activity tenfold. Here, we demonstrate the utility of Topo V's HhH motifs for modulating DNA-binding properties of the Stoffel fragment of TaqDNA polymerase and Pfu DNA polymerase. Different HhH cassettes fused with either NH2 terminus or COOH terminus of DNA polymerases broaden the salt concentration range of the polymerase activity significantly (up to 0.5 M NaCl or 1.8 M potassium glutamate). We found that anions play a major role in the inhibition of DNA polymerase activity. The resistance of initial extension rates and the processivity of chimeric polymerases to salts depend on the structure of added HhH motifs. Regardless of the type of the construct, the thermal stability of chimeric Taq polymerases increases under the optimal ionic conditions, as compared with that of TaqDNA polymerase or its Stoffel fragment. Our approach to raise the salt tolerance, processivity, and thermostability of Taq and Pfu DNA polymerases may be applied to all pol1- and polB-type polymerases, as well as to other DNA processing enzymes.
Structural and biochemical studies of HCMV gH/gL/gO and Pentamer reveal mutually exclusive cell entry complexes

Significance Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in transplant patients and in fetuses after congenital infection. gH/gL/gO and Pentamer are targets for neutralizing antibodies. We show that gO and UL128/UL130/UL131A bind to the same site on gH/gL through formation of a disulfide bond with gL-Cys144. The alternative use of this binding site by either gO or the ULs may provide a mechanism for cell tropism modulation. Our analysis reveals that gH/gL antigenic sites are conserved among gH/gL, gH/gL/gO, and Pentamer, whereas gH/gL/gO- and Pentamer-specific neutralizing antibody-binding sites are located in the gH/gL N terminus protrusion that contains the gO and the UL subunits. These data support the development of vaccines and antibody therapeutics against HCMV. Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in transplant patients and the leading viral cause of birth defects after congenital infection. The glycoprotein complexes gH/gL/gO and gH/gL/UL128/UL130/UL131A (Pentamer) are key targets of the human humoral response against HCMV and are required for HCMV entry into fibroblasts and endothelial/epithelial cells, respectively. We expressed and characterized soluble forms of gH/gL, gH/gL/gO, and Pentamer. Mass spectrometry and mutagenesis analysis revealed that gL-Cys144 forms disulfide bonds with gO-Cys351 in gH/gL/gO and with UL128-Cys162 in the Pentamer. Notably, Pentamer harboring the UL128-Cys162Ser/gL-Cys144Ser mutations had impaired syncytia formation and reduced interference of HCMV entry into epithelial cells. Electron microscopy analysis showed that HCMV gH/gL resembles HSV gH/gL and that gO and UL128/UL130/UL131A bind to the same site at the gH/gL N terminus. These data are consistent with gH/gL/gO and Pentamer forming mutually exclusive cell entry complexes and reveal the overall location of gH/gL-, gH/gL/gO-, and Pentamer-specific neutralizing antibody binding sites. Our results provide, to our knowledge, the first structural view of gH/gL/gO and Pentamer supporting the development of vaccines and antibody therapeutics against HCMV.
Cognitive functions in neuromyelitis optica.

BACKGROUND Neuromyelitis optica (NMO) is characterized by optic neuritis and longitudinally extensive acute transverse myelitis. The brain is generally considered healthy in NMO, though very recent studies have demonstrated that magnetic resonance imaging abnormalities may be observed in various brain regions of NMO patients. To date, cognitive functions have never been investigated in NMO. OBJECTIVE To investigate cognitive functions in a cohort of 30 patients with NMO. DESIGN Observational, prospective study. PATIENTS We studied 30 patients with NMO and compared them with 30 patients with multiple sclerosis and 30 healthy controls matched for age, sex, and educational level. Main Outcome Measure We applied a French translation of the Brief Repeatable Battery of Neuropsychological Tests for Multiple Sclerosis and 3 additional tests. RESULTS Cognitive performance was significantly lower in the NMO and multiple sclerosis groups than in healthy controls for the 2-second (P< .001) and 3-second (P= .001) Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test, the digit symbol modality test (P= .005), word generation (P= .02), and forward (P= .002) and backward (P= .007) digit span test. We did not observe any difference in test performance between NMO and multiple sclerosis patients. We found no differences between the 3 groups for the other tests. We did not find any correlation between clinical, biological, or magnetic resonance imaging results and cognitive dysfunction. CONCLUSIONS This study confirms the recent concept of a possible brain involvement in NMO. Additional studies are needed to confirm these initial results and to better understand the mechanisms of such abnormalities.
Recent trends in the epidemiology of shigellosis in Israel

SUMMARY We provide an update on the epidemiology of shigellosis in Israel using data generated by a sentinel laboratory-based surveillance network for the period 1998–2012. The average annual incidence of culture-proven shigellosis was 97/100 000. We estimated that each case of shigellosis accounted for 25 cases in the community indicating the high burden of disease. Orthodox Jewish communities, living in highly crowded conditions and with a high number of children aged <5 years were the epicentre of country-wide biennial propagated epidemics of S. sonnei shigellosis. S. flexneri was the leading Shigella serogroup in Israeli Arabs. S. flexneri 2a and S. flexneri 6 alternated as the most common serotypes. Both S. sonnei and S. flexneri isolates showed high rates of resistance to ampicillin and trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole and very low rates of resistance to quinolones and third-generation cephalosporins. Shigellosis due to S. sonnei conferred 81% (95% confidence interval 69–89) protection against the homologous Shigella serotype when epidemic exposure re-occurred 2 years later. These data are of value in the process of Shigella vaccine development.
Structural Parameters of Dwarf Galaxies in the Coma Cluster: On the Origin of dS0 Galaxies

In this paper we analyze the structural parameters of the dwarf galaxies in the Coma Cluster with -18 ≤ MB ≤ -16 and classify them into two types; those with surface brightness profiles well fitted by a single Sérsic law are called dwarf ellipticals (dEs), and those fitted with Sérsic+exponential profiles are classified as dwarf lenticulars (dS0s). The comparison of the structural parameters of the dwarf galaxies in the Coma and Virgo Clusters shows that they are analogous. Photometrically, the dE and dS0 galaxies in Coma are equivalent, having similar colors and global scales. However, the scale of the innermost parts (bulges) of dS0 galaxies is similar to that of the bulges of late-type spiral galaxies. In contrast, dEs have larger scales than the bulges of bright galaxies. This may indicate that dS0 and dE galaxies have different origins. While dE galaxies can come from dwarf irregulars (dIs) or from processes similar to those that form bright E galaxies, the origin of dS0 galaxies could be harassed bright late-type spiral galaxies.