Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Aging with Long-term Physical Impairments: The Significance of Social Support*

RÉSUMÉ Cet article examine les situations de la vie et l’accès à la prise en charge sociale des personnes vivant dans des communautés, qui sont âgés de 50 à 65 ans, et qui ont vécu avec une déficience physique significative depuis plus de 15 ans. Les données ont été recueillies par le biais d’entretiens approfondis et semi-structurés avec huit hommes et femmes. Les conclusions suggèrent que faire façe à la dégradation à long terme peut être une expérience solitaire lorsqu’un individu ne dispose pas d’un réseau solide de la famille et/ou des amis à apporter le soutien émotionnel. Selon les participants, leurs expériences du vieillissment avec déficience à long terme ont été améliorées lorsqu’ils partagent les pensées, les sentiments et les problèmes avec d’autres. Les conclusions montrent également l’importance du genre concernant l’accès à l’assistance sociale, et indiquent l’importance d’utiliser des ententes subjectives pour déterminer le niveau de soutien social disponible aux individus. Plus généralement, les conclusions soulignent que les personnes qui vieillissent avec des déficiences plongent dans, et souhaitent entretenir, des relations réciproques. ABSTRACT This article examines the living situations and access to social support for community-dwelling people between the ages of 50 and 65, and who have lived with significant physical impairment for more than 15 years. Data were gathered through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with eight men and women. Findings suggest that coping with long-term impairment may be a lonely experience when the individual lacks a strong network of family and/or friends to offer emotional support. Participants felt their experiences of aging with significant long-term impairment were improved when they shared thoughts, feelings, and problems with others. Findings also show the significance of gender regarding access to social support and point towards the importance of using subjective understanding when ascertaining the level of social support available to individuals. More generally, findings underscore the broader point that individuals aging with impairments are immersed in and wish to maintain reciprocal relationships.
Anomalous lifetime distributions and topological traps in ordering dynamics

We address the role of community structure of an interaction network in ordering dynamics, as well as associated forms of metastability. We consider the voter and AB model dynamics in a network model which mimics social interactions. The AB model includes an intermediate state between the two excluding options of the voter model. For the voter model we find dynamical metastable disordered states with a characteristic mean lifetime. However, for the AB dynamics we find a power law distribution of the lifetime of metastable states, so that the mean lifetime is not representative of the dynamics. These trapped metastable states, which can order at all time scales, originate in the mesoscopic network structure.
Finding Approximate Tandem Repeats with the Burrows-Wheeler Transform

Approximate tandem repeats in a genomic sequence are two or more contiguous, similar copies of a pattern of nucleotides. They are used in DNA mapping, studying molecular evolution mechanisms, forensic analysis and research in diagnosis of inherited diseases. All their functions are still investigated and not well defined, but increasing biological databases together with tools for identification of these repeats may lead to discovery of their specific role or correlation with particular features. This paper presents a new approach for finding approximate tandem repeats in a given sequence, where the similarity between consecutive repeats is measured using the Hamming distance. It is an enhancement of a method for finding exact tandem repeats in DNA sequences based on the BurrowsWheeler transform. Keywords—approximate tandem repeats, Burrows-Wheeler transform, Hamming distance, suffix array
New Evidence for the Date of Five Rare Dutch-Italian Wall Maps: F. de Wit's World Map and W. J. Blaeu's Four Continents

ABSTRACT Imitations of famous Dutch wall maps originally produced in Amsterdam by F. de Wit and W. J. Blaeu have recently been rediscovered in Italy. In Bologna, in the archive of Opera Pia dei Poveri Vergognosi, is a set of Blaeu's four wall maps of the continents, engraved on new plates by Pietro Todeschi and published by Giuseppe Longhi. The value of the discovery lies in the completeness of the exemplars, which also bear the publisher's imprint and date of publication, hitherto unknown: Europe 1677; Africa 1678; Asia 1679; America 1679/1680(? ). An undated version of de Wit's world wall map, also published by Longhi, has come to light in the same archive. A copy of the same map, this time published by Giovanni Giacomo de' Rossi in Rome in 1675, was then found in Modena in the Seminario Metropolitano. Comparison of the two copies has provided a date for Longhi's undated issue; Longhi's map came after de' Rossi's, that is after 1675.
Dendritic Spikes and Their Inhibition in Alligator Purkinje Cells

Alligator Purkinje cells generate action potentials in the peripheral dendritic tree, after synaptic depolarization via superficial parallel fibers. These action potentials are inhibited at the dendrite level by preceding parallel-fiber volleys at close intervals. We conclude that this inhibition is produced by the activation of the inhibitory interneurons of the molecular layer, the stellate cells, which establish synaptic contacts with the dendrites of the Purkinje cells.
Outer membrane protein D2 catalyzes facilitated diffusion of carbapenems and penems through the outer membrane of Pseudomonas aeruginosa

The outer membrane of imipenem-resistant mutants of Pseudomonas aeruginosa with decreased permeability to imipenem was shown by Western (immuno-) blotting to contain protein D1 and to lack protein D2. Protein D2 was purified and was shown to allow the permeation of imipenem at a rate higher than expected from its molecular weight. Spontaneous imipenem-resistant mutants of P. aeruginosa PAO1 appeared at a frequency of 10(-8) in the laboratory and did not synthesize protein D2. Experiments performed with intact cells carrying plasmid pHN4 containing the gene for L-1 beta-lactamase from Pseudomonas maltophilia showed that this channel could also be used by SM-7338, Sch 33755, and Sch 33440 but apparently not by Sch 34343 or Sch 29482.
Autoantibodies Profile in Vitiligo

Vitiligo is one of the disease which is yet to understand its pathogenesis, however many studies associate this disease as an autoimmune. Detection of autoimmune cells in the serum, lesional and perilesional area of vitiligo patients gives more insight on the disease mechanism. Presence of autoantibodies against melanocytes antigens in vitiligo patients indicates an autoimmune involvement in the aetiology of the disease. Identification and characterization of vitiligo autoantibodies would pave the way for developing new laboratory test for diagnosis. Studying the autoantibodies profile can give an impression on the disease condition of vitiligo patients. We realized the need of research emphasis in this area as more is yet to be discovered. In this review we give an account on different autoantibodies and their associated autoantigens in vitiligo as another effort of providing an updated data for detail analysis.
Invasion percolation in a destabilizing gradient.

Extensive two- and three-dimensional computer simulations have been carried out to investigate the effect of a destabilizing external field (such as gravity) on invasion percolation processes. The displacement patterns found under these conditions are dominated by the growth of a single branch. This branch can be described in terms of a connected string of blobs of size ξ w , which form a directed random walk along the direction of the field. On length scales smaller than ξ w , the displacement figures have the structure of invasion percolation clusters without a destabilizing field
Conservatism of host specificity in parasites

As information becomes available for many groups of organisms a general pattern of phylogenetic conservatism in ecological characters or morphological traits is now widely recognized. Conversely, conservatism of external ecological attributes throughout a lineage is still a contentious theme in ecology. Moreover, the studies exploring this topic have focused on free-living organisms, and have ignored parasites. The main external ecological attribute of parasite species is certainly their host specificity, which is a key determinant of both their range size and local abundance. We address the subject of conservatism and predictability of host specificity using 2 large databases concerning, respectively, ectoparasites and endoparasites. We found a significant positive relationship between the numbers of host species infested by flea sister species. Moreover, this result was consistent whether we used sympatric or allopatric flea species, suggesting no influence of the mode of speciation on this conservatism of specificity. Additionally, our results showed that congeneric helminth species have more similar host taxonomic diversities than expected by chance, although this conservatism is due mostly to trematodes. Whilst there is evidence of conservatism, the moderate levels preclude robust prediction of host specificity for one species based on that of closely related species.
Scholastic achievement at age 16 and risk of schizophrenia and other psychoses: a national cohort study

Background There is abundant evidence that schizophrenia is associated with cognitive deficits in childhood. However, previous studies investigating school performance have been inconclusive. Furthermore, there are several biological and social factors that could confound the association. We investigated whether school performance at age 16 is associated with risk of adult schizophrenia and other psychoses in a large national cohort, while controlling for multiple confounders. Method Using a national sample of 907 011 individuals born in Sweden between 1973 and 1983, we used Cox regression to assess whether scholastic achievement at age 15–16 predicted hospital admission for psychosis between ages 17 and 31, adjusting for potential confounders. Results Poor school performance was associated with increased rates of schizophrenia [hazard ratio (HR) 3.9, 95% confidence interval (CI) 2.8–5.3], schizo-affective disorder (HR 4.2, 95% CI 1.9–9.1) and other psychoses (HR 3.0, 95% CI 2.3–4.0). Receiving the lowest (E) grade was significantly associated with risk for schizophrenia and other psychoses in every school subject. There was no evidence of confounding by migrant status, low birthweight, hypoxia, parental education level or socio-economic group. Conclusions Poor school performance across all domains is strongly associated with risk for schizophrenia and other psychoses.
NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION AS A MECHANISM OF COGNITIVE AND EMOTIONAL MEDIATION IN THE LEARNING

In the last decades, educational research on didactic discourse has focused primarily on the teacher and students use to make communicative behaviors to promote mutual understanding, build shared meaning and facilitate the acquisition of new knowledge. From this perspective, the focus has been on the analysis of verbal language to downplay the influence of nonverbal behaviors in the comprehension, in the process of negotiation of meaning and their construction. The present paper analyzes the role of non-verbal communication behaviors as a mechanism of cognitive and emotional mediation in the learning. The methodology used is based on case studies. The selected sample consists of 4 teachers from compulsory secondary education. However, the interactive analytical approach adopted, students who are part of the school classes studied are also considered part of the sample. The results show a high degree of dependence on both teachers and students of non-verbal communicative behaviors that occur in the classroom. These behaviors are used to access the meaning of educational content that explains the teacher or the mental representations constructed by students, and to create and maintain an emotionally positive classroom environment that promotes student involvement in the process of learning, social development and personal welfare
Visual memory errors in schizophrenic patients with auditory and visual hallucinations

Hallucinations have been found associated with false detection or false recognition of acoustic/verbal material in several studies. We investigated whether they were also linked with false recognition of pictures. Furthermore, an association between hallucinations and deficits in remembering temporal context was observed in previous research on schizophrenia. We investigated whether the association extends to deficits in remembering spatial context. Forty-one patients with schizophrenia underwent a visual memory task. Sixteen mixed black-and-white and colored pictures were presented at different locations. Participants had to recognize the pictures among distractors, then to recall the spatial context of the presentation of the target pictures. Results showed that auditory hallucinations were associated with poor recognition of the colored pictures. When recognition efficiency and negative symptoms were statistically controlled, auditory hallucinations were also associated with increased response bias toward false recognition of nontarget pictures, and with errors in remembering the spatial context. No associations with visual hallucinations emerged. Anhedonia was associated with response bias, in the direction opposite to that of hallucinations. In conclusion, the association between hallucinations and response bias extends across modalities to picture recognition. The association between hallucinations and temporal context impairment extends to spatial context. (JINS, 2007, 13, 832–838.)
Imaging and histopathological findings of lacrimal sac lymphoma

Background Lymphoma of the lacrimal sac is rare, often misdiagnosed clinically. This study aimed to investigate the imaging features of these tumors and provide suggestions to aid the diagnosis. Methods In this retrospective study, five cases were assessed according to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computed tomography (CT), and pathological findings. All five patients underwent MRI and contrast‐enhanced T1‐weighted imaging (CE‐T1WI), of which four patients underwent dynamic contrast‐enhanced (DCE) MRI and three patients underwent CT. Results Four cases and one case had a lymphoma in left and right medial canthus, respectively. Soft tissue surrounding the eyelids, subcutaneous tissue in the nasal dorsum, and involvement of the entire nasolacrimal canal were demonstrated in all five lesions. In two cases, the mass invaded the extraconal space. In one case, the mass invaded the adjacent medial rectus muscle and nasal area. Well‐defined margins were observed in three cases and ill‐defined margins in two cases. All cases showed homogeneous isointense lesions on T1WI. Four cases showed homogeneous isointensity and one case demonstrated heterogeneous isointensity on T2WI. After contrast injection, the lesion showed slight homogeneous isointensity and moderate enhancement in four cases and heterogeneous isointensity and moderate enhancement in one case. In the four patients who underwent DCE‐MRI, a plateau pattern was revealed in three cases and washout pattern in one case. In the three cases who underwent CT, two cases had isointense and one case had hyperintense lesions. The lacrimal duct was remodeled and the surrounding bone compressed. Conclusions Tumors of the lacrimal sac showed homogeneous and isointense patterns on T1WI and T2WI with mildtomoderate enhancement and a plateau pattern on DCE‐MRI. CT showed remodeling of the lacrimal duct with bone compression.
Topology Selection and Efficiency Improvement of Inductive Power Links

The problem of choosing the right topology for a wireless power transfer (WPT) application to maximize power transfer efficiency has been presented and addressed in this work. We analyze the series and parallel resonant topologies used in inductively coupled links, derive the efficiency expressions and verify them experimentally using planar inductors built on a PCB. We compare and contrast the two topologies and arrive at the frequency boundary that separates them. The results are verified experimentally and corroborated using simulation results from HFSS. We also address the misconception in the context of resonant tuning both qualitatively and quantitatively. Based on the analysis, we then provide the procedure to obtain the maximum power transfer efficiency for a given pair of coil across all frequencies, loads and topologies by proper selection of load, topology and the frequency of operation. The method is presented using an example pair of coils simulated in HFSS and the results agree well with the theoretical results.
Development and validation of a postpartum depression risk score in delivered women, Iran

Background: Investigators describe a dramatic increase in the incidence of mood disorder after childbirth, with the largest risk in the 90 days after delivery. This study is designed to develop a relatively simple screening tool and validate it from the significant variables associated with postpartum depression (PPD) to detect delivered women at high risk of having PPD. Materials and Methods: In the cross-sectional study, 6,627 from a total of 7,300 delivered women, 2-12 months after delivery were recruited and screened for PPD. Split-half validation was used to develop the risk score. The training data set was used to develop the model, and the validation data set was used to validate the developed the risk factors of postpartum depression risk score using multiple logistic regression analysis to compute the β coefficients and odds ratio (OR) for the dependent variables associated with possible PPD in this study. Calibration was checked using the Hosmer and Lemeshow test. A score for independent variables contributing to PPD was calculated. Cutoff points using a trade-off between the sensitivity and specificity of risk scores derived from PPD model using the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve. Results: The predicted and observed PPD were not different (P value = 0.885). The aROC with area under the curve (S.E.) of 0.611 (0.008) for predicting PPD using the suggested cut-off point of -0.702, the proportion of participants screening positive for PPD was 70.9% (sensitivity) (CI 95%; 69.5, 72.3) while the proportion screening negative was 60.1% (specificity) (CI 95%; 58.2, 62.1). Conclusion: Despite of the relatively low sensitivity and specificity in this study, it could be a simple, practical and useful screening tool to identify individual at high risk for PPD in the target population.
Inventaire et distribution spatio-temporelle des macroinvertébrés bioindicateurs de trois plans d'eau du bassin de la Volta au Burkina Faso

Une etude des macroinvertebres dans deux lacs de barrages hydro- agricoles (Bama et de Boura) et dans le lac naturel de Bala a permis de mettre en evidence la distribution spatio-temporelle des macroinvertebres bioindicateurs de la qualite des eaux. La collecte des echantillons a ete inspiree de la methode conventionnelle de la Directive Cadre sur l’Eau de l’Union Europeenne (DCE). L’etude a permis d’identifier 26405 individus de macroinvertebres repartis en 71 especes et 33 familles au total sur les trois sites de Bama (25 familles), Boura (23 familles) et Bala (30 familles). Les polluo-sensibles ont ete decrites au lac naturel de Bala : des crustaces de l’ordre des Cladoceres et 7 familles d’insectes (Gyrinides, Pleides, Baetides Ephemerelides, Tabanides, Ceratopogonides et Canaceides). L’etude a note la presence de l’espece Hydrocanthus ferruginicollis (Noterides) particulierement dominante dans les retenues hydro-agricoles de Bama (30,52% des Coleopteres) et Boura (27,32% des Coleopteres) ; tandis qu’elle ne represente que 7,51% des Coleopteres recoltes dans le lac naturel de Bala. Cette etude considere que les polluo-sensibles et les polluo-resitants decrits respectivement a Bala et a Bama et Boura peuvent etre consideres comme de potentiels bioindicateurs des plans d’eau du bassin de la Volta. Mots cles : Macroinvertebres, distribution, bioindicateurs, petits plans d’eau, bassin de la Volta, Burkina Faso.
Educational level, relative body weight, and changes in their association over 10 years: an international perspective from the WHO MONICA Project.

OBJECTIVES This study assessed the consistency and magnitude of the association between educational level and relative body weight in populations with widely different prevalences of over-weight and investigated possible changes in the association over 10 years. METHODS Differences in age-adjusted mean body mass index (BMI) between the highest and the lowest tertiles of years of schooling were calculated for 26 populations in the initial and final surveys of the World Health Organization (WHO) MONICA (Monitoring Trends and Determinants in Cardiovascular Disease) Project. The data are derived from random population samples, including more than 42,000 men and women aged 35 to 64 years in the initial survey (1979-1989) and almost 35,000 in the final survey (1989-1996). RESULTS For women, almost all populations showed a statistically significant inverse association between educational level and BMI; the difference between the highest and the lowest educational tertiles ranged from -3.3 to 0.4 kg/m2. For men, the difference ranged from -1.5 to 2.2 kg/m2. In about two thirds of the populations, the differences in BMI between the educational levels increased over the 10-year period. CONCLUSION Lower education was associated with higher BMI in about half of the male and in almost all of the female populations, and the differences in relative body weight between educational levels increased over the study period. Thus, socioeconomic inequality in health consequences of obesity may increase in many countries.
Horizontal transfer of dehalogenase genes involved in the catalysis of chlorinated compounds: evidence and ecological role

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) of dehalogenase genes is considered an important mechanism of genomic evolution, the metabolic resilience of biotopes, and microbial community adaptation in chlorinated compound-contaminated ecosystems. In this review, we summarize the current evidence for the HGT of dehalogenase genes involved in the catalysis of various chlorinated compounds, such as chlorinated alkanes and alkanoic acids, chlorinated ethenes, chlorinated herbicide, and chlorinated aromatics. We also highlight the ecological role of HGT as it relates to the contribution to the diversification of dehalogenating microorganisms and the resulting facilitation of rapid microbial community adaptation to ecosystem contaminated with chlorinated compounds.
Tight Two-Dimensional Outer-Approximations of Feasible Sets in Wireless Sensor Networks

Finding a tight ellipsoid that contains the intersection of a finite number of ellipsoids is of interest in positioning applications for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). To this end, we propose a novel geometrical method in 2-dimensional (2-D) space. Specifically, we first find a tight polygon, which contains the desired region and then obtain the tightest ellipse containing the polygon by solving a convex optimization problem. For demonstrating the usefulness of this method, we employ it in a distributed algorithm for elliptical outer-approximation of feasible sets in co-operative WSNs. Through simulations, we show that the proposed method gives a tighter bounding ellipse than conventional methods, while having similar computational cost.