Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evidence for the origin of the binaural interaction component of the auditory brainstem response

The binaural interaction component (BIC) represents the mismatch between auditory brainstem responses (ABR) obtained with binaural stimulation and the sum of ABRs obtained with monaural left and right stimulation. It is generally assumed that the BIC reflects binaural integration. Its potential use as a diagnostic tool, however, is hampered by the lack of direct evidence about its origin. While an origin at the initial site of binaural integration seems likely, there is no general agreement on the contribution of the two primary candidate nuclei, the lateral and medial superior olives (LSO and MSO, respectively). Here, we recorded local field potentials (LFP) and responses of units in the LSO and MSO of Mongolian gerbils (Meriones unguiculatus), presenting clicks with an interaural time or level difference (ITD and ILD, respectively), while simultaneously recording ABR. We determined the BIC from the ABR and, importantly, from LFP and responses of units in the LSO and MSO. If stimulus‐induced changes in the ABR‐derived BIC have their source in the LSO and/or MSO, we expect coherent changes in the unit‐derived and the ABR‐derived BIC. We find that BIC obtained from LSO units exhibits the same ITD and ILD dependence as the ABR‐derived BIC. Neither BIC obtained from MSO units nor LFP‐derived BIC recorded in either LSO or MSO did. The data thus strongly suggest that it is the activity of LSO units in the gerbil that is decisive for the generation of the ABR‐derived BIC, determining its properties.
Prognostic value and immune infiltration of novel signatures in clear cell renal cell carcinoma microenvironment

Growing evidence has highlighted the immune response as an important feature of carcinogenesis and therapeutic efficacy in clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC). This study categorized ccRCC cases into high and low score groups based on their immune/stromal scores generated by the ESTIMATE algorithm, and identified an association between these scores and prognosis. Differentially expressed tumor environment (TME)-related genes extracted from common upregulated components in immune and stromal scores were described using functional annotations and protein–protein interaction (PPI) networks. Most PPIs were selected for further prognostic investigation. Many additional previously neglected signatures, including AGPAT9, AQP7, HMGCS2, KLF15, MLXIPL, PPARGC1A, exhibited significant prognostic potential. In addition, multivariate Cox analysis indicated that MIXIPL and PPARGC1A were the most significant prognostic signatures, and were closely related to immune infiltration in TCGA cohort. External prognostic validation of MIXIPL and PPARGC1A was undertaken in 380 ccRCC cases from a real-world cohort. These findings indicate the relevance of monitoring and manipulation of the microenvironment for ccRCC prognosis and precision immunotherapy.
The Risk of Individual Stocks’ Tail Dependence with the Market and Its Effect on Stock Returns

Traditional beta is only a linear measure of overall market risk and places equal emphasis on upside and downside risks, but actually the latter is always much stronger probably due to the trading mechanism like short-sale constraints. Therefore, this paper employs the nonlinear measure, tail dependence, to measure the extreme downside risks that individual stocks crash together with the whole market and investigates whether such tail dependence risks will affect stock returns. Our empirical evidence based on Shanghai A shares confirms that most stocks display nonnegligible tail dependence with the whole market, and, more importantly, such tail dependence risks can indeed provide additional information beyond beta and other factors for asset pricing. In cross-sectional regression, it is proved that this tail dependence does help to explain monthly returns on Shanghai A shares, whereas the time-series regression further indicates that mimicking portfolio returns for tail dependence can capture strong common variation of Shanghai A stock returns.
Innovation routes and evidence guidelines for eHealth small and medium-sized enterprises

eHealth applications hold many promises, for instance to improve the quality of health care, to increase its accessibility, or to reduce its cost. Yet, many eHealth innovations never reach the stage where they get embedded into routine health care. This is due in part to a lack of evidence that these innovations indeed deliver what they promise. For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in particular, collecting convincing evidence for eHealth innovations proves to be a challenge as the available time, resources and expertise to do so are often limited. In response to this challenge, the research group ICT Innovations in Health Care at the Windesheim University of Applied Sciences initiated the project Successful Entrepreneurship in eHealth. The project is a cooperation between 28 parties in The Netherlands: health care providers, patient organizations, health insurance companies, national health care authorities, and 15 eHealth SMEs. Its aim is to speed up eHealth innovation by providing eHealth SMEs with guidelines for collecting feasible yet convincing evidence. In this paper the project’s approach is introduced and the main results and lessons learned are discussed. The evaluation of eHealth innovations was found to be highly context-driven, with parties involved each employing their own criteria. Among the project’s main results is an eHealth innovation map, a diagram showing eHealth SMEs which parties in the Dutch health care system to involve, their roles and their mutual relations, their interests in eHealth innovation, and the kinds of evidence that may convince them of the added value of an eHealth innovation. A set of corresponding fact sheets was developed to provide eHealth SMEs with concise yet easily accessible information for choosing an innovation route and for determining what evidence to collect for relevant stakeholders.
Dynamic cutting process modelling and its impact on the generation of surface topography and texture in nano/micro cutting

Abstract In the nano/micro cutting process, the surface quality is heavily dependent on all the dynamic factors, including those from the material, tooling, process parameters, servo accuracy, mechanical structural stiffness, and non-linear factors as well. The machined surface is generated based on the tool profile and the real tool path combining with the various external and internal disturbances. To bridge the gap between the cutting process and the surface topography/texture generation, an integrated simulation-based approach is presented involving the dynamic cutting process, control/drive system, and the surface generation. The simulations take account of all the intricate aspects of the cutting process resulting in the surface topography and texture formation, such as material heterogeneity, regenerative chatter, built-up edge (BUE), tool wear, spindle run-out, environmental vibration, tool interference, etc. Both the frequency ratio method and sampling theorem are used to interpret the surface topography and texture formation. The effects of non-linear factors on the surface generation are simulated and analysed through the power spectral density (PSD) and significance on surface texture. The relationships among cutting force, tool path, and surface profile are discussed in detail. Furthermore, the proposed systematic modelling approach is verified by cutting trials, which provide the coincident results of the surface topography and areal power spectral density (APSD).
Survival and Prognosis of Chondrosarcoma Subtypes: SEER Database Analysis

Chondrosarcomas are rare tumors and, historically, investigation of these tumors has been limited to small series and single‐institution studies. There have been no studies that evaluated the identification or comparison of differences in prognostic factors between the five known non‐conventional chondrosarcoma subtypes (myxoid, juxtacortical, clear‐cell, mesenchymal, and dedifferentiated). The purpose of this paper was to determine the demographic, clinical, incidence, and tumor characteristics of all five known non‐conventional chondrosarcoma subtypes, determine the 1‐, 5‐year, and median survival differences between these subtypes, and to determine the demographic and clinical variables that are significant prognostic indicators for each chondrosarcoma subtypes. We retrospectively reviewed the SEER database for all patients with non‐conventional chondrosarcoma. χ2 testing was used for correlations between clinical variables. Kaplan–Meier and Cox proportional hazard analysis were used to compare survival of the subtypes, and to assess the prognostic value of age group, race, sex, grade, anatomic location, and metastatic involvement. Several demographic characteristics including gender, race, age, and grade varied between chondrosarcoma subtypes. The tumor characteristics showed marked differences in presence of metastasis on presentation between the subtypes with increasing order of rate of metastasis with juxtacortical (2.1%), clear cell (5.7%), myxoid (7.6%), mesenchymal (10.6%), and the highest in dedifferentiated (19.8%). One‐, 5‐year, and median survival differed significantly between chondrosarcomas subtypes. The highest median survival was found in the juxtacortical subtype (97 months), followed by clear cell (79 months), myxoid (60 months), mesenchymal (33.5 months), and lowest in dedifferentiated (11 months). The only prognostic variable that was shown to significantly impact the survival of each non‐conventional chondrosarcoma subtype was a metastatic disease at diagnosis (p = 0.03 to p < 0.001). Subtyping classification of chondrosarcoma should be made whenever possible, given differences in survival and prognostic factors between chondrosarcoma subtypes. © 2019 Orthopaedic Research Society. Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Orthop Res 38:311‐319, 2020
Rivalries, Tradition, and Recession Proof Collegiate Football Attendance in El Paso

This study examines potential determinants of American football game attendance for the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) Miners program. Time series data are utilized to analyze UTEP attendance from 1967 to 2014. Among the more notable outcomes, ticket sales are found to follow the local business cycle and be inversely correlated with unemployment. Demand for tickets is also found to be upward sloping. Forecasts are generated for the 2015 season and several quantitative metrics indicate that good out-of-sample simulation performance is attained. Replication of this study for football teams in more traditional “college towns” provides an intriguing opportunity for further research.
The Effect of Management Compensation and Debt Requirements on Earnings Management Concerning the Impairment of Assets

This study determines the relationship between the impairment decision, as well as its magnitude, and two earnings management motivations, namely increasing management compensation, and meeting debt requirements. The computation of value in use in the impairment loss is subject to management’s estimate of future cash flows and choice of discount rate, which tolerates earnings management. Certain indicators and financial ratios were used to depict the effect of the two motives on impairment. In addition to this, the effect of firm size on impairment was also analyzed. The data were obtained from the OSIRIS database and the SEC form 17-A of the respective companies, as well as from telephone interviews and surveys. Probit regression was used to analyze the effect of the different motives to the impairment decision while multiple linear regression was used for the impairment magnitude. The findings show that publicly listed companies in the Philippines are engaging in “income smoothing” and “big bath” accounting with the use of impairment. Results also indicate that most “big bath” happens during periods where changes in the company’s executive officers occur. Lastly, there is also evidence that financially strong companies are deferring their impairment recognition to obtain a lower cost of financing.
Oxymatrine protects against l-arginine-induced acute pancreatitis and intestine injury involving Th1/Th17 cytokines and MAPK/NF-κB signalling

Abstract Context: Oxymatrine (OMT) has various pharmacological effects, including immune reaction regulation, anti-inflammation and anti-hypersensitive reaction. Objective: This is the first report to investigate the molecular mechanism of OMT function in l-arginine (Arg)-induced acute pancreatitis (AP) involving intestinal injury. Materials and methods: Rat pancreatic AR42J and small intestinal IEC-6 cells were treated with Arg (200–800 µM) for 48 h plus OMT (4 mg/mL) treatment. Thirty adult Wistar rats were randomly assigned to control (saline), AP (i.p. of 250 mg/100 g body weight Arg) and OMT (i.p. injection of 50 mg/kg b.w. OMT every 6 h following Arg). Both cells and rats were harvested at 48 h. Results: Arg-induced cell proliferation in both rats AR42J (EC50 633.9 ± 31.4 µM) and IEC-6 cells (EC50 571.3 ± 40.4 µM) in a dose-dependent manner, which was significantly inhibited by OMT (4 mg/mL). Meanwhile, Arg (600 µM) induced expression of proinflammatory cytokines (TNF-α, IL-6, IL-1β, NF-κB, IL-17A/IL-17F and IFN-γ) and activation of p-p38/p-ERK in vitro, which was reversed by OMT. In vivo, OMT (50 mg/kg) inhibited 250 mg/100 g of Arg-induced AP involving intestinal injury, including inhibiting Arg-induced inflammatory in pancreas and intestine, inhibiting Arg-induced increase of TNF-α, IL-6, IL-1β, NF-κB and p-p38/p-ERK-MAPK signalling, and inhibiting Arg-induced increase of IL-17A/IL-17F, IFN-γ, ROR-γt and T-bet. Meanwhile, OMT inhibited Arg-induced expression of CD44 and CD55 in intestinal injury. Discussion and conclusions: OMT protects against Arg-induced AP involving intestinal injury via regulating Th1/Th17 cytokines and MAPK/NF-κB signalling, which is a promising therapeutic agent in clinics.
Flexural waves in drill‐string tubulars with variable loads

We revisit the equations governing the bending motions in thin rods and analyse the filtration of flexural waves in vertical drill strings pre‐stressed by gravity. The aim is to study transverse drill‐string vibrations at seismic frequencies for acoustic communication purposes and provide an algorithm for processing reflected and transmitted bending motions generated by downhole lateral vibrations. We obtain the dispersion equation, including attenuation due to a gravity pre‐stress gradient and frequency‐dependent reflection and transmission coefficients at the interface between subsequent tube intervals. We then develop a propagation‐matrix algorithm to simulate flexural waves in a drill string consisting in an assembly of multiple tube sections of different dimensions. The deflection vibrations are obtained at any arbitrary recording point in the drill string. The modelling is cross‐checked with a full‐wave grid algorithm. The analysis shows that the waves produced by a concentrated force are partitioned in standing and propagating modes, which are calculated by using the flexural impedance of the drill string. Moreover, the reflection coefficients weakly depend on the pre‐stress conditions and pre‐stress has important effects for far‐field signal transmission with variable weight on bit (WOB). We discuss the approximations and limits of the method with respect to realistic drilling conditions.
Immune responses in the microenvironment of a metastatic 4T1 mouse model

The 4T1 murine mammary carcinoma cells have the ability to spread to target organs in BALB/c mice breast cancer model. The spread of 4T1 cells mimics human stage IV breast cancer and elicits immune responses. The aim of this study is to establish an animal model of mammary carcinoma metastasis to discern the in vivo effects of growth and spread of breast cancer. Six-weeks-old female BALB/c mice were inoculated with 4T1 murine breast cancer cells. Gross and histological studies were carried out to determine the approximate day of metastatic onset. Production of IFN-gamma was assessed by ELISA to understand its role in tumour growth and metastasis. Lymphocyte markers such as CD8 + , CD25 and CD49b were analysed to elucidate its role in tumour growth and progression. The metastatic onset occurs approximately 11 days after inoculation and accompanied with hepatosplenomegaly. The breast cancer cells from primary tumour were found to spread rapidly to the liver on day 11. IFN-γ production was higher in inoculated mice serum compared to control. Higher numbers of CD8 + , CD25 and CD49b cells were observed in the peripheral blood of inoculated mice, compared to control. In conclusion, the 4T1 murine breast cancer cells can migrate and metastasise rapidly to the liver, eliciting various immune responses.
Continuous observations of Asian dust and other aerosols by polarization lidars in China and Japan during ACE-Asia

[1] Continuous observations of aerosols in China and Japan were made by polarization lidars during March to May 2001, corresponding with the Asian Pacific Regional Aerosol Characterization Experiment (ACE-Asia) field campaign period. Lidars in Beijing, Nagasaki, and Tsukuba were continuously operated regardless of weather conditions. Scatterers in the atmosphere were categorized for all vertical profiles, and occurrence frequencies of dust, spherical aerosols, and clouds up to 6 km were calculated. The frequency of dust was highest in Beijing for the whole height range. There was a peak of dust occurrence near the ground in Nagasaki. Dust was frequently detected in the free troposphere in Tsukuba. The contributions of dust and spherical aerosols to the total backscattering coefficient were estimated from the depolarization ratio with the assumption of the external mixture of both kinds of aerosols. Vertical profiles of backscattering by dust and by spherical aerosols represented the different characteristics of these aerosols. The monthly averaged backscattering coefficients by dust near the surface were 0.003/km/sr in Beijing, 0.001–0.002/km/sr in Nagasaki, and 0.0006/km/sr in Tsukuba. The backscattering coefficients by spherical aerosols near the surface were 0.002–0.004/km/sr at all three observatories. We compared the derived backscattering coefficients with aerosol mass concentrations calculated by a numerical model, Chemical Weather Forecasting System (CFORS). CFORS reproduced well the vertical structures of the tall dust events and the enhancements of spherical aerosols throughout the observation period. A specific dust event on 16–19 May 2001 was analyzed by using five lidars in Japan, and its fine structure is described.
Subject-specific geometry affects acetabular contact pressure during gait more than subject-specific loading patterns

Abstract Finite element modeling (FEM) can predict hip cartilage contact mechanics. This study investigated how subject-specific boundary conditions and joint geometry affect acetabular cartilage contact mechanics using a multi-scale workflow. For two healthy subjects, musculoskeletal models calculated subject-specific hip kinematics and loading, which were used as boundary conditions for FEM. Cartilage contact mechanics were predicted using either generic or subject-specific FEM and boundary conditions. A subject-specific mesh resulted in a more lateral contact. Effects of subject-specific boundary conditions varied between both subjects. Results highlight the complex interplay between loading and kinematics and their effect on cartilage contact mechanics.
Stochastic User Equilibrium for Route Choice Model Based on Random Regret Minimization

A static stochastic user equilibrium (SUE) problem was formulated: the mode of random regret minimization (RRM) was used for route choices. The RRM approach assumes that individuals minimize anticipated regret, rather than maximize expected utility, when choosing from alternative routes. The cost function for the RRM model is not separable, and so a variational inequality approach was adopted to formulate the problem. A path-based algorithm was applied to solve the RRM-SUE problem with the method of successive averages. Implementation of the algorithm in a real-world network is illustrated, and the trade-offs and differences between the proposed model and the SUE based on random utility models is discussed.
Binned k-d Tree Construction for Sparse Volume Data on Multi-Core and GPU Systems

While k-d trees are known to be effective for spatial indexing of sparse 3-d volume data, full reconstruction, e.g. due to changes to the alpha transfer function during rendering, is usually a costly operation with this hierarchical data structure. In a recent publication we showed how to port a clever state of the art k-d tree construction algorithm to a multi-core CPU architecture and by means of thorough optimization we were able to obtain interactive reconstruction rates for moderately sized to large data sets. The construction scheme is based on maintaining partial summed-volume tables that fit in the L1 cache of the multi-core CPU and that allow for fast occupancy queries. In this work we propose a GPU implementation of the parallel k-d tree construction algorithm and compare it with the original multi-core CPU implementation. We conduct a thorough comparative study that outlines performance and scalability of our implementation.
Perceived Effectiveness of Anti-Marijuana Messages in Adult Users and Nonusers: An Examination of Responses to Messages About Marijuana's Effects on Cognitive Performance, Driving, and Health.

OBJECTIVE Marijuana use is associated with negative cognitive and health outcomes and risky driving. Given the rapidly changing policies regarding legal recreational and medicinal marijuana use, it is important to examine what types of marijuana prevention messages may be effective in minimizing such outcomes. This study examined cognitive and affective responses to anti-marijuana public health messages in a sample of adult marijuana users and nonusers to determine the correlates of perceived message effectiveness. METHOD Participants (N = 203; mean age = 37.7 years) were adult marijuana users and nonusers recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk (August 2017). After completing self-report measures of marijuana use, they viewed six anti-marijuana messages presented in a random order, addressing marijuana's effects in each of three topic areas: cognitive performance, driving, and adverse health outcomes (e.g., two messages per topic). Participants completed assessments of cognitive and affective perceptions after viewing each message. For each message topic, a linear regression model was used to determine which cognitive and affective perceptions were most predictive of perceived message effectiveness. RESULTS For all message topics, nonusers perceived the messages as more effective than did users (p < .001). In the majority of analyses, greater message effectiveness was associated with increased perceived harm of marijuana and increased liking of the message. For driving and health messages, greater message effectiveness was also significantly correlated with lower pleasant affect. CONCLUSIONS The findings suggest that audience perceptions may be uniquely predictive of message effectiveness, depending on the topic.