Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Case Study of an Intense African Easterly Wave

Abstract The life cycle of an intense African easterly wave (AEW) over the African continent is examined using European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) operational analyses, Meteosat satellite images, and synoptic observations. This system, the strongest AEW of 2000, can be tracked from central North Africa into the eastern Atlantic Ocean, where it is associated with the genesis of Hurricane Alberto. Synoptic analysis of the kinematic and thermodynamic fields is supplemented by analysis of potential vorticity (PV), allowing exploration at the role of multiple scales in the evolution of this AEW. The authors’ analysis promotes the division of the AEW life cycle into three distinctive phases. (i) Initiation: The AEW development is preceded by a large convective event composed of several mesoscale convective systems over elevated terrain in Sudan. This convection provides a forcing on the baroclinically and barotropically unstable state that exists over tropical North Africa. (ii) Baroclini.
Muscular dystrophies: influence of physical conditioning on the disease evolution

Purpose of review To summarize the current knowledge of the effects of physical activity on muscular dystrophies. Recent findings Although the usefulness of exercise training in muscular dystrophy patients has been debated for many years, only a limited number of articles addressing this issue have been published to date. Existing studies on the effects of strength training in patients with muscular dystrophies have shown promising results, but interpretations are hampered by several methodological shortcomings. Summary The scientific basis for solid recommendations of different exercise regimens in muscular dystrophies is poor, but existing data suggest beneficial effects of adopting an active lifestyle. Low‐ to moderate‐intensity resistance and aerobic training may be recommended in slowly progressive myopathic disorders. To date, there is no evidence to support the recommendation of high‐resistance exercise regimens over low‐moderate intensity exercise. In rapidly progressive myopathies, which are due to aberrant structural proteins such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy, the use of high‐resistance and eccentric training should be avoided. There is still, however, no evidence that physical training can influence the evolution of muscular dystrophies in the long term.
Correlation between the position of hyoid bone and subregions of the pharyngeal airway space in lateral cephalometry and cone beam computed tomography.

OBJECTIVE To correlate the pharyngeal airway subregions with the positioning of the hyoid bone. MATERIAL AND METHODS The study examined 107 lateral cephalometric (LC) and cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) images. Linear and volumetric measurements of the pharyngeal subregions were made and correlated to linear measurements using hyoid triangle analysis on images of LC and multiplanar (MPR) and three-dimensional (3D) reconstructions of CBCT. RESULTS There was significant correlation between linear measurements of the pharyngeal subregions and hyoid bone position in LC images and in MPR and 3D reconstructions of the CBCT. Correlations were more frequent in the oropharynx and hypopharynx, especially for LC images. No correlations were observed between LC images or CBCT reconstructions and the volumetric measurements of the pharyngeal subregions and the position of the hyoid bone. CONCLUSION The hyoid bone position showed more correlations with oropharynx and hypopharynx airway measurements. The hyoid triangle method was not applicable to 3D images, since it showed a smaller number of measures correlated to the hyoid bone position.
The functionality of focus: An investigation into the interactive effects of leader focus and task interdependence

The Functionality of Focus: An Investigation into the Interactive Effects of Leader Focus and Task Interdependence. (May 2012) Thomas Brady Harris, B.B.A., Texas Tech University; M.B.A., University of Florida Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Bradley L. Kirkman Team leadership research has largely relied on traditional dyadic models (i.e., those capturing one-on-one relationships between a leader and follower) to explain teamlevel phenomena. Despite recent advancements, much of this research falls short of addressing the complexity inherent to teams. One promising alternative to the traditional perspectives, functional leadership theory, moves beyond the constraints of dyadic models and instead advances a needs-based approach for understanding team leadership (i.e., effective leaders are those that meet any and all team needs). Although intuitive, the ambiguous nature of simply meeting team needs does not provide sufficient specificity as to how exactly leaders meet team needs. In an effort to address this issue, I introduce a multi-dimensional construct, called leader focus, to explain how leaders meet team needs by focusing their efforts on teamwork or taskwork (i.e., person-task focus) as well as different relational entities in the team (i.e., entity focus). In total, I propose six unique foci of team leadership: individual task-focus, team task-focus, subgroup taskfocus, individual person-focus, team person-focus, and subgroup person-focus. Next, using social interdependence theory, I hypothesize that individual-focused leadership is
Burnout syndrome in the practice of oncology: results of a random survey of 1,000 oncologists.

Burnout, the end result of stress, can occur in any profession. We set out to determine the extent of burnout among a representative group of American oncologists. A questionnaire with 12 specific points was designed and prepared by the authors. It was mailed to 1,000 randomly selected physician subscribers to the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Five hundred ninety-eight completed surveys (60%) were returned before the cut-off date and included in the analysis. Overall, 56% of the respondents reported experiencing burnout in their professional life. No significance was found between the incidence of burnout and specialty within oncology, year medical training ended, or practice location. Significance was found, however, between type of practice and the incidence of burnout; institution- or university-based oncologists reported a lower incidence of burnout (47%) versus all other types of practice (66% burnout rate for oncology plus internal medicine, 63% for private adult oncology only, 39% for pediatric oncologists [there were too few pediatric oncologists for this rate to be significant], and 64% for others; P = .0003). Frustration or a sense of failure was the most frequently chosen (56%) description of burnout, and insufficient personal and/or vacation time was the most frequent reason (57%) chosen to explain the existence of burnout. To alleviate burnout, the majority (69%) of respondents indicated the need for more vacation or personal time. Administering palliative or terminal care, reimbursement issues, and a heavy work load were identified as contributing factors to burnout. Given the high response to the questionnaire and a 56% incidence of burnout in the surveyed population, it is concluded that further research on this issue is required.
Agenda-setting in the Common Security and Defence Policy: An institutionalist perspective

The European Union (EU) has launched an impressive number of crisis management missions since its Common Security and Defence Policy became operational in 2003. This article analyses the agenda-setting phase of these civilian and military operations in order to explain why the EU has sent troops, policemen, judges, prosecutors and monitors across three continents. It presents an institutionalist perspective and argues that the former High Representative Javier Solana and his officials have been instrumental in putting various operations on the agenda. They have employed deliberate agenda-setting strategies, such as venue shopping, conflict expansion and issue framing, to further their bureaucratic interest of launching new missions. Solana and his officials had the ability to affect the agenda-setting process thanks to their pivotal position in policy making. This gave them with superior information on the state of play and an early mover advantage as well as strong international networks. The article provides empirical evidence from the crisis management missions in Aceh, Bosnia, Chad and Kosovo. It concludes with the changes to the Common Security and Defence Policy after the Treaty of Lisbon.
Anomaly Detection Based on Trajectory Analysis Using Kernel Density Estimation and Information Bottleneck Techniques

In this paper, we propose a new technique to enhance the trajectory shape analysis by explicitly considering the speed attribute of trajectory data, as an effective and efficient way for anomaly detection. An object motion trajectory is mathematically represented by the Kernel Density Estimation, taking into account both the shape of the trajectory and the speed of the moving object. An unsupervised clustering algorithm, using the Information Bottleneck method, is employed for the trajectory learning to achieve an optimal number of trajectory clusters through maximizing the Mutual Information between the clusters and a feature space of the trajectory data. The trajectories are determined as either abnormal (infrequently observed) or normal by a measure based on Shannon entropy. Extensive tests on simulated and real data show that the proposed technique behaves very well and outperforms the state-of-the-art methods. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first technique to use the Information Bottleneck method on the trajectory data.
Investigations of the Neurobiological Bases of Inter-Temporal Choice Behaviour

Inter-temporal choice schedules entail choice between rewarding outcomes in which the primary reinforcers differ along two or more dimensions (usually size and delay). This paper summarizes a programme of research on the neurobiology of inter-temporal choice carried out in the authors’ laboratory. A theoretical model of inter-temporal choice (the multiplicative hyperbolic model, MHM) based on the principles of delay discounting and diminishing marginal utility is described. This model provides a basis for designing experiments which enable the influences of delay and size of reinforcers to be separately quantified. Experimental results are reviewed which implicate the orbital prefrontal cortex (OPFC) and the core of the nucleus accumbens (AcbC) in sensitivity to delay of reinforcement (delay discounting) and the OPFC and the subthalamic nucleus (STN) in sensitivity to reinforcer size. It is suggested that the OPFC may collate the influences of multiple features of reinforcers, and thereby determine the overall values of reinforcing outcomes. The implications of the results for the concepts of ‘value’ and ‘impulsiveness’ are discussed.
Effects of Dietary Tin and Copper on Rat Hepatocellular Antioxidant Protection

Abstract The effects of dietary tin on copper status and on enzymes and metabolites involved in hepatocellular antioxidant protection were measured in rats fed copper-adequate or copper-deficient diets with glucose or fructose. Rats became copper-depleted after 4 weeks on diets containing <0.5 μg of copper/g as evidenced by significant decreases in liver copper and serum ceruloplasmin. Signs of copper deficiency occurred in copper-depleted rats fed diets containing 100 μg of tin/g. Significant effects of tin on liver glutathione peroxidase and superoxide dismutase activities and on liver iron and total glutathione concentrations were observed. Interactions between copper and tin on liver copper and iron and on liver superoxide dismutase and malon-dialdehyde production are reported. Adverse effects of feeding diets containing 100 μg of tin/g include (i) copper depletion in rats fed copper-adequate diets, (ii) accelerated development of copper deficiency in rats fed copper-deficient diets, and (iii) reduction in hepatocellular antioxidant protection.
Occupational Gaps in Everyday Life after Stroke and the Relation to Functioning and Perceived Life Satisfaction

The objective of this study was to psychometrically evaluate the Persian version of the Occupational Gaps Questionnaire (OGQ-P) and LiSat-11 checklist, and to describe occupational gaps after stroke and their relation to aspects of functioning and perceived life satisfaction. A total of 102 individuals who had experienced a stroke were assessed for their occupational gaps, aspects of functioning, and life satisfaction. Psychometric analyses of the Persian versions of the OGQ and LiSat-11 were completed and the measures were applied for using univariate and multivariate analyses. The results provided evidence of internal scale validity, person response validity, and sensitivity for the instruments. The participants perceived the most common occupational gaps in “helping and supporting others. ” Furthermore, perceived physical function including activities of daily living ability, motor function, and perceived life satisfaction were the most influential variables for the prediction of occupational gaps. It is essential to address the occupations such as “helping and supporting others” that are important from an individual perspective but overlooked in rehabilitation. A combination of physical function, motor function, and life satisfaction can predict occupational gaps after stroke.
Sparking debate? Political deaths and Twitter discourses in Argentina and Russia

ABSTRACT The big question that pervades debate between techno-optimists and their detractors is whether social media are good for democracy. Do they help to produce or accelerate democratic change or, alternatively, might they hinder it? This article foregrounds an alternative perspective, arguing that individual social networking applications likely do not fulfil a single political function across national contexts. Their functionality may be mediated instead by language and by pre-existing relationships between the state and offline domestic media. We arrive at this conclusion through examining reactions on Twitter to two fatal events that occurred in early 2015: the death in suspicious and politically charged circumstances of the special prosecutor Alberto Nisman in Argentina, and the murder in Russia of opposition activist Boris Nemtsov. Several similarities between the two deaths provide the conditions for a comparative analysis of the discourses around them in the Spanish-language and Russian-language Twitter spheres, respectively. In Russia, a hostile social media environment polluted by high levels of automated content and other spam reduced the utility of Twitter for opposition voices, who work against an increasingly authoritarian state. In Argentina, a third-wave democracy, Twitter discourses appeared as predominantly coextensive with other pro-government and opposition online, print, and broadcast information and opinion sources, thus consolidating and amplifying a highly polarized and repetitive wider public political conversation. Despite the potential for social media to help citizens circumvent formal and informal restrictions to discursive participation in national public spheres, in the cases that we compare here domestic political structures play a key role in determining the uses and limitations of online spaces for recounting and expressing opinion on current affairs stories involving the state.
Collegiate athletes' perceptions of social support and athletic trainer-coach conflict

Abstract Objective: Athletes engage in a cognitive evaluation following an injury to determine if resources are present to manage any potential stress attributed to being injured. This evaluation determines both behavioral and emotional responses to the injury and can be influenced by a number of factors, including social support. Interpersonal conflict could be another factor that influences an injured athlete’s cognitive evaluation. Interpersonal conflict may be present in athletics in the form of athletic trainer-coach conflict. The purpose of this study was to describe the levels of social support and conflict collegiate athletes perceive following an injury, and determine relationships between those perceptions and other variables. Methods: NCAA Division I, II, and III athletes (N=246) from five institutions reported perceptions of social support from their athletic trainer, and the presence of conflict between their athletic trainer and head coach following an injury through a web-based survey. Demographics, such as type of sport, level of competition, and status on the team, were also collected. Results: Athletes perceived athletic trainers as quality sources of social support. Revenue sport athletes perceived higher levels of modeling social support from their athletic trainer when compared to non-revenue athletes (p<0.001). Injured athletes perceived low levels of athletic trainer-coach conflict with no differences based on demographic variables. Additionally, no group differences were found between perceptions of social support or conflict based upon the athlete’s status on the team or level of competition. Conclusions: These results indicate that athlete’s perceptions of social support from athletic trainers, may vary depending on the type of sport in which they participate. Understanding variables that influence how an athlete perceives support from their athletic trainer could improve rehabilitation outcomes by way of influencing the cognitive appraisal injured athletes make leading to both positive behavioral and cognitive actions.
Techniques and Architectures for Hazard-Free Semi-Parallel Decoding of LDPC Codes

The layered decoding algorithm has recently been proposed as an efficient means for the decoding of low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes, thanks to the remarkable improvement in the convergence speed (2x) of the decoding process. However, pipelined semi-parallel decoders suffer from violations or "hazards" between consecutive updates, which not only violate the layered principle but also enforce the loops in the code, thus spoiling the error correction performance. This paper describes three different techniques to properly reschedule the decoding updates, based on the careful insertion of "idle" cycles, to prevent the hazards of the pipeline mechanism. Also, different semi-parallel architectures of a layered LDPC decoder suitable for use with such techniques are analyzed. Then, taking the LDPC codes for the wireless local area network (IEEE 802.11n) as a case study, a detailed analysis of the performance attained with the proposed techniques and architectures is reported, and results of the logic synthesis on a 65 nm low-power CMOS technology are shown.
Proteomic Analysis of Polypeptides Captured from Blood during Extracorporeal Albumin Dialysis in Patients with Cholestasis and Resistant Pruritus

Albumin dialysis using the molecular adsorbent recirculating system (MARS) is a new therapeutic approach for liver diseases. To gain insight into the mechanisms involved in albumin dialysis, we analyzed the peptides and proteins absorbed into the MARS strong anion exchange (SAX) cartridges as a result of the treatment of patients with cholestasis and resistant pruritus. Proteins extracted from the SAX MARS cartridges after patient treatment were digested with two enzymes. The resulting peptides were analyzed by multidimensional liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry. We identified over 1,500 peptide sequences corresponding to 144 proteins. In addition to the proteins that are present in control albumin-derived samples, this collection includes 60 proteins that were specific to samples obtained after patient treatment. Five of these proteins (neutrophil defensin 1 [HNP-1], secreted Ly-6/uPAR-related protein 1 [SLURP1], serum amyloid A, fibrinogen alpha chain and pancreatic prohormone) were confirmed to be removed by the dialysis procedure using targeted selected-reaction monitoring MS/MS. Furthermore, capture of HNP-1 and SLURP1 was also validated by Western blot. Interestingly, further analyses of SLURP1 in serum indicated that this protein was 3-fold higher in cholestatic patients than in controls. Proteins captured by MARS share certain structural and biological characteristics, and some of them have important biological functions. Therefore, their removal could be related either to therapeutic or possible adverse effects associated with albumin dialysis.
Measurement of prompt ψ(2S) to J/ψ yield ratios in Pb-Pb and p-p collisions at sqrt[sNN]=2.76  TeV.

The ratio between the prompt ψ(2S) and J/ψ yields, reconstructed via their decays into μ+ μ-, is measured in Pb-Pb and p-p collisions at sqrt[sNN]=2.76 TeV. The analysis is based on Pb-Pb and p-p data samples collected by CMS at the Large Hadron Collider, corresponding to integrated luminosities of 150 μb(-1) and 5.4 pb(-1), respectively. The double ratio of measured yields (Nψ(2S)/N(J/ψ))(Pb-Pb)/(Nψ(2S)/N(J/ψ))(p-p) is computed in three Pb-Pb collision centrality bins and two kinematic ranges: one at midrapidity, |y|<1.6, covering the transverse momentum range 6.5<pT<30 GeV/c, and the other at forward rapidity, 1.6<|y|<2.4, extending to lower pT values, 3<pT<30 GeV/c. The centrality-integrated double ratio changes from 0.45±0.13(stat)±0.07(syst) in the first range to 1.67±0.34(stat)±0.27(syst) in the second. This difference is most pronounced in the most central collisions.
CD 154 Blockade Alters Innate Immune Cell Recruitment and Programs Alloreactive CD 8 + T Cells into KLRG-1 high Short-Lived Effector T Cells

CD154/CD40 blockade combined with donor specific transfusion remains one of the most effective therapies in prolonging allograft survival. Despite this, the mechanisms by which these pathways synergize to prevent rejection are not completely understood. Utilizing a BALB/c (H2-K) to B6 (H2-K) fully allogeneic skin transplant model system, we performed a detailed longitudinal analysis of the kinetics and magnitude of CD8 T cell expansion and differentiation in the presence of CD154/ CD40 pathway blockade. Results demonstrated that treatment with anti-CD154 vs. DST had distinct and opposing effects on activated CD44 CD62L CD8 T cells in skin graft recipients. Specifically, CD154 blockade delayed alloreactive CD8 T cell responses, while DST accelerated them. DST inhibited the differentiation of alloreactive CD8 T cells into multi-cytokine producing effectors, while CD40/CD154 blockade led to the diminution of the KLRG-1 long-lived memory precursor population compared with either untreated or DST treated animals. Moreover, only CD154 blockade effectively inhibited CXCL1 expression and neutrophil recruitment into the graft. When combined, anti-CD154 and DST acted synergistically to profoundly diminish the absolute number of IFN-c producing alloreactive CD8 T cells, and intra-graft expression of inflammatory chemokines. These findings demonstrate that the previously described ability of anti-CD154 and DST to result in alloreactive T cell deletion involves both delayed kinetics of T cell expansion and differentiation and inhibited development of KLRG-1 memory precursor cells. Citation: Ferrer IR, Wagener ME, Song M, Ford ML (2012) CD154 Blockade Alters Innate Immune Cell Recruitment and Programs Alloreactive CD8 T Cells into KLRG-1 Short-Lived Effector T Cells. PLoS ONE 7(7): e40559. doi:10.1371/journal.pone. 0040559 Editor: Mehrdad Matloubian, University of California, San Francisco, United States of America Received March 16, 2012; Accepted June 8, 2012; Published July 5, 2012 Copyright: 2012 Ferrer et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: This work was supported by National Institutes of Health grants AI073707 and AI079409 to Mandy L. Ford. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * E-mail: mandy.ford@emory.edu