Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Simple Method for Measuring the Bilateral Symmetry of Leaves

Many plant leaves exhibit bilateral symmetry, but such symmetry has rarely been measured because of the lack of practical methods. We propose a simple method for achieving the above objective. A leaf is divided into left and right sides, and several equally-sized strips are generated to intersect each side of that leaf to generate pairwise left and right sub-regions. A standardized index (SI) for measuring bilateral symmetry is built based on the left–right areal differences of those sub-regions. The leaves of 10 species of plants were sampled for testing the method’s validity. Based on the experimental data, we compared the root-mean-squared error (RMSE), SI, and areal ratio (AR) of the left side to the right side of the leaf. The SI measures the bilateral symmetry of plant leaves well, and it is better than the RMSE and AR for eliminating the effect of leaf size on the goodness of fit. The SI proposed here is the best indicator for evaluating the degree of bilateral symmetry and can be potentially used for comparing the difference in the bilateral symmetry of leaves of different plants.
The Effect of Social Capital on Hispanic Post-Secondary Educational Outcomes

Hispanics have one of the lowest college enrollment rate of any racial/ethnic group in the United States, and for those who enroll, they are three times less likely than Whites to graduate with a four-year degree. Past research has explored racial and socioeconomic disparities for Hispanics and focused on educational attrition. This study takes a different approach, drawing attention to factors which positively influence college degree attainment. Specifically, utilizing a social capital and education retention theory framework, this study sought to understand how social capital factors may contribute to Hispanic educational outcomes. Using a national data set from the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002, I hypothesized that students who have faculty, peer and family social networks, along with participation in formal extracurricular participation at the high school and college levels, would be more likely to enroll in college after high school and complete a bachelor’s degree. I found that peer networks, faculty encouragement, and participation in extracurricular activities all predict greater educational outcomes for Hispanics, net of racial differences and socioeconomic background. Not all social networks produced positive outcomes: receiving college information from siblings and teachers had detrimental effects for Hispanics. Implications for applied interventions are discussed. INDEX WORDS: Retention, Educational outcomes, Social capital, Social networks, Engagement, Hispanic, Latino, College completion, Bachelor degree THE EFFECT OF SOCIAL CAPITAL ON HISPANIC POST-SECONDARY EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES
Human Endothelial Cell-derived Nuclear Proteins that Recognise Polymorphic DNA Elements in the von Willebrand Factor Gene Promoter Include YY1

Summary Four common base-change polymorphisms have been found in the von Willebrand factor gene promoter: (-1793 C/G, -1234 T/C, -1185 G/A and -1051 A/G). All four polymorphisms are in strong linkage dis-equilibrium and recent reports have indicated these polymorphisms are associated with plasma vWF:Ag levels suggesting that one or more of these elements influence regulation of the vWF gene. We report that human endothelial cell-derived trans-acting factors display allelic preferences in binding activity to each polymorphic site. The common A allele variant of the –1051 polymorphism and the rarer A allele variant of the –1185 polymorphism provided specific binding of nuclear proteins. The G allele counterpart of these two variants did not produce any complex formation indicating that the nucleotide substitution at these positions alters the DNA binding ability of nuclear factors. The two alleles of the –1234 polymorphism produced two complexes with a similar migration pattern however stronger binding was found to the common T variant of this allele. Two specific complexes associated with the rarer G allele of the –1793 polymorphism, but only one associated with the C allele. Supershift experiments revealed that the trans-acting factor YY1 recognised the slower migrating complex formed on the –1234 T/C and the –1051 A polymorphic sites with a strong binding preference for the –1234 T allele variant. The identification of YY1 as a component of the factors that recognise these elements suggests that this ubiquitous nuclear protein may play a role in the regulation of the vWF promoter.
Updates on adolescent dating and sexual violence prevention and intervention

Purpose of review Dating and sexual violence victimization are not uncommon in early adolescence and increase in prevalence throughout adolescence into young adulthood with profound health and social consequences. Greater attention to what works in prevention is needed to inform current policies and practices. Recent findings Adolescent dating violence (ADV) and sexual violence victimization, including cyber dating abuse, are highly prevalent among adolescents. Studies have found sex category differences, with adolescent girls reporting more victimization than boys, particularly sexual violence. Sexual and gender minority youth also experience a higher prevalence of violence victimization than their heterosexual counterparts. Studies on risk factors include examinations of childhood adversities, exposure to sexually explicit material and substance use as well as the role of gender inequitable attitudes on violence perpetration. Recent prevention research includes examining the impact of bystander interventions and transforming gender norms. Summary Recent ADV/ sexual violence research highlights both prevalence and modifiable risk and protective factors that may help reduce such violence. Practitioners caring for youth should consider ADV/ sexual violence when seeing patients (including those struggling with substance use and other behaviours that contribute to poor health) and not simply rely on screening tools to identify those suffering from ADV/ sexual violence.
Visible and Extended Near-Infrared Multispectral Imaging for Skin Cancer Diagnosis

With the goal of diagnosing skin cancer in an early and noninvasive way, an extended near infrared multispectral imaging system based on an InGaAs sensor with sensitivity from 995 nm to 1613 nm was built to evaluate deeper skin layers thanks to the higher penetration of photons at these wavelengths. The outcomes of this device were combined with those of a previously developed multispectral system that works in the visible and near infrared range (414 nm–995 nm). Both provide spectral and spatial information from skin lesions. A classification method to discriminate between melanomas and nevi was developed based on the analysis of first-order statistics descriptors, principal component analysis, and support vector machine tools. The system provided a sensitivity of 78.6% and a specificity of 84.6%, the latter one being improved with respect to that offered by silicon sensors.
Leveraging Grammar and Reinforcement Learning for Neural Program Synthesis

Program synthesis is the task of automatically generating a program consistent with a specification. Recent years have seen proposal of a number of neural approaches for program synthesis, many of which adopt a sequence generation paradigm similar to neural machine translation, in which sequence-to-sequence models are trained to maximize the likelihood of known reference programs. While achieving impressive results, this strategy has two key limitations. First, it ignores Program Aliasing: the fact that many different programs may satisfy a given specification (especially with incomplete specifications such as a few input-output examples). By maximizing the likelihood of only a single reference program, it penalizes many semantically correct programs, which can adversely affect the synthesizer performance. Second, this strategy overlooks the fact that programs have a strict syntax that can be efficiently checked. To address the first limitation, we perform reinforcement learning on top of a supervised model with an objective that explicitly maximizes the likelihood of generating semantically correct programs. For addressing the second limitation, we introduce a training procedure that directly maximizes the probability of generating syntactically correct programs that fulfill the specification. We show that our contributions lead to improved accuracy of the models, especially in cases where the training data is limited.
Raising sustainability awareness and understanding in higher education

Sustainability has been defined by the Brundtland Commission (Brundtland, 1987) as "meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". In times of increasing expectations of customers, shareholders, employees, and communities as well as the general public about corporations' contributions to sustainability (WBCSD - World Business Council for Sustainable Development), the latter are severely and continuously criticized for actions that contradict their glossy sustainability reports (Holliday, 2010). However, it is often the case that such criticism is rooted in a lack of awareness of the complexity of relationships and the role that sustainability plays within the context of a firm's operations, particularly SMEs, which cannot dedicate major resources to cope with the issues. Therefore, the question arises of what universities can do to build awareness and understanding among students in order to prepare them to cope with sustainability aspects in their future careers (Starik et al., 2010). This paper presents findings based on quantitative and qualitative data from five consecutive crossfunctional courses in sustainability for students in business, law, architecture, health management and engineering, and evaluates the extent to which their attitude and awareness changed over the course. Recommendations are given for institutions in higher education as well as for companies to follow up with further training initiatives for junior managers.
Determinants of Adherence to Antiretroviral Among HIV Positive Adolescents at Comprehensive Care Clinic, Gertrude’s Children Hospital, Nairobi, Kenya

Antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) requires adherence of more than 95% for adequate viral suppression. The consequences of poor adherence are failure of viral suppression, decrease CD4 cell count, disease progression, drug resistance, risk of transmission of resistance virus and limited future treatment options. Published data on adherence to ARVs in Kenyan adolescents is limited. The purpose of this study was to determine the ARVS adherence level and describe the healthcare system, medication and social environmental factors affecting this adherence among Human Immune-deficiency Virus (HIV) positive adolescents. This was a descriptive cross-sectional study, where 185 patients aged 10-18 years who had been on ARVs for at least two years were systematically and randomly selected. Only 129 respondents who were HIV fully disclosed were interviewed using a structured questionnaire about their experience taking ARVs. Adherence was measured based on a composite score derived from a three questions adherence tool developed by Center for Adherence Support Evaluation (CASE). Data was also collected via Focused Group Discussion, Key Informant Interviews and from records retrieval. Data analysis was done using Epi data software 3.1 with statistical significance set at p<0.05. Overall, 185 patients were selected but 129 disclosed patients were interviewed; 52.7% males and 47.3% females, estimated level of adherence of 67.34% and the main (63.6%) reason for missing therapy was forgetting. Long waiting time in the clinic and stigmatization were other factors found to affect adherence. The CASE Index Tool depicted high reliability with a Cronbach’s α=0.696. The results showed a significant positive correlation between CD4 counts and adherence (Rh0=0.255, p=0.003) and a significant inverse correlation between Viral Load levels and Adherence (Rh0= -0.189, p=0.031). Therefore, the 67.34% adherence level to ART reported in this study is below optimum adherence of 95%. This study gives the following recommendations; (a) Policy review on HIV disclosure procedures with training of health workers on it (b) Put fitting strategies to improve patients’ ability to impact on forgetfulness (c) Clinic staff to adopt the use of CASE Tool in assessing adolescent’s adherence to ARVs.
Anthropogenic‐driven rapid shifts in tree distribution lead to increased dominance of broadleaf species

Over the past century, major shifts in the geographic distribution of tree species have occurred in response to changes in land use and climate. We analyse species distribution and abundance from about 33 000 forest inventory plots in Spain sampled twice over a period of 10–12 years. We show a dominance of range contraction (extinction), and demographic decline over range expansion (colonization), with seven of 11 species exhibiting extinction downhill of their distribution. Contrary to expectations, these dynamics are not always consistent with climate warming over the study period, but result from legacies in forest structure due to past land use change and fire occurrence. We find that these changes have led to the expansion of broadleaf species (i.e. family Fagaceae) over areas formerly dominated by conifer species (i.e. family Pinaceae), due to the greater capacity of the former to respond to most disturbances and their higher competitive ability. This recent and rapid transition from conifers to broadleaves has important implications in forest dynamics and ecosystem services they provide. The finding raises the question as to whether the increasing dominance of relatively drought‐sensitive broadleaf species will diminish resilience of Mediterranean forests to very likely drier conditions in the future.
Shock Compression and Melting of an Fe‐Ni‐Si Alloy: Implications for the Temperature Profile of the Earth's Core and the Heat Flux Across the Core‐Mantle Boundary

Understanding the melting behavior and the thermal equation of state of Fe‐Ni alloyed with candidate light elements at conditions of the Earth's core is critical for our knowledge of the region's thermal structure and chemical composition and the heat flow across the liquid outer core into the lowermost mantle. Here we studied the shock equation of state and melting curve of an Fe‐8 wt% Ni‐10 wt% Si alloy up to ~250 GPa by hypervelocity impacts with direct velocity and reliable temperature measurements. Our results show that the addition of 10 wt% Si to Fe‐8 wt% Ni alloy slightly depresses the melting temperature of iron by ~200–300 (±200) K at the core‐mantle boundary (~136 GPa) and by ~600–800 (±500) K at the inner core‐outer core boundary (~330 GPa), respectively. Our results indicate that Si has a relatively mild effect on the melting temperature of iron compared with S and O. Our thermodynamic modeling shows that Fe‐5 wt% Ni alloyed with 6 wt% Si and 2 wt% S (which has a density‐velocity profile that matches the outer core's seismic profile well) exhibits an adiabatic profile with temperatures of ~3900 K and ~5300 K at the top and bottom of the outer core, respectively. If Si is a major light element in the core, a geotherm modeled for the outer core indicates a thermal gradient of ~5.8–6.8 (±1.6) K/km in the D″ region and a high heat flow of ~13–19 TW across the core‐mantle boundary.
Extensive and Intensive Margins of Exports and Labor Heterogeneity

This paper investigates how changes in skilled and unskilled labor supply affect different margins of exports. Using bilateral trade data in manufacturing sectors of 34 countries from 1995 to 2010, we find that most of the impact of skilled labor on exports goes through the intensive margin, whereas most of the effect of unskilled labor works through the extensive margin. These outcomes result from the impact of labor skill composition on the productivity cut‐off of exporters. We also find that the impact of skilled and unskilled labor on trade margins depends on the income level of countries and on the type of products. The results indicate that the effect of skilled labor is greater for low‐income countries and differentiated products, while that of unskilled labor is greater for high‐income countries and homogeneous products.
MUC16: molecular analysis and its functional implications in benign and malignant conditions

MUC16 is a high‐molecular‐weight glycoprotein that is expressed by the various epithelial cell surfaces of the human body to protect the cell layer from a myriad of insults. It is the largest mucin known to date, with an ~22,152 aa sequence. Structurally, MUC16 is characterized into 3 distinct domains: the amino terminal, the tandem repeat, and the carboxyl terminal domain, with each domain having unique attributes. The extracellular portion of MUC16 is shed into the bloodstream and serves as a biomarker for diagnosing and monitoring patients with cancer; however, its functional role in cancer is yet to be elucidated. Several factors contribute to this challenge, which include the large protein size; the extensive glycosylation that the protein undergoes, which confers functional heterogeneity; lack of specific antibodies that detect the unique domains of MUC16; and the existence of splicing variants. Despite these limitations, MUC16 has been established as a molecule of significant application in cancer. Hence, in this review, we discuss the various aspects of MUC16, which include its discovery, structure, and biological significance both in benign and malignant conditions with an attempt to dissect its functional relevance. — Haridas, D. , Ponnusamy, M. P., Chugh, S. , Lakshmanan, I. , Seshacharyulu, P., and Batra, S. K. , MUC16: molecular analysis and its functional implications in benign and malignant conditions. FASEB J. 28, 4183‐4199 (2014). www.fasebj. org
Barriers of medication adherence in patients with type-2 diabetes: a pilot qualitative study

Background: Patients with type-2 diabetes have poor adherence to the therapeutic regime. It can result in various complications in body systems associated with undesirable metabolic control. Purpose: The present study aimed to explore the inhibitors of medication adherence in patients with type-2 diabetes. Patients and methods: This was a qualitative study using a conventional content analysis method. Participants were 12 patients with type-2 diabetes referred to the diabetes unit in Saghez, Kurdistan Province in 2015. The purposive sampling method was used with a maximum variation in sampling, and data collection was continued until data saturation was achieved. Semi-structured interviews were used for data collection. Interviews were recorded and immediately transcribed verbatim. Results: Data analysis led to the development of four main categories including disbelief in medical explanatory/prescriptive knowledge, lived experiences of the disease, challenges of everyday life, and interactive/economic challenges. The main inhibitors were the patient’s understanding of his/her own physical status and strategies used for maintaining the internal balance. Healthcare providers need to take patients’ perceptions into account when they are prescribing medicinal diets. Another inhibitor was the incidents of everyday life, including economic and social challenges, and interactions to receive education and skills for living with the disease. Conclusion: Beliefs of the medical team and patients should be brought closer to each other, and patients’ trust in the medical team should be increased. Nurses should consider the unique experience of every patient when giving healthcare recommendations, and try to limit the existing challenges as much as possible.
Towards an application of an active tendon in rotorcraft: A numerical and experimental study of coupled bending-torsion vibration of a beam-tendon system

This paper presents a numerical and experimental study of coupled bending-torsion vibration of a beam loaded by a tendon-induced axial force. The rotating beam-tendon system is described using a set of partial differential equations and free vibration analysis is performed. The model is validated against a benchtop experiment which features a reinforced open-section cantilever beam subjected to tendon loading. A satisfactory agreement between the numerical and experimental results is obtained and it is shown that the tendon not only reduces the natural frequencies of the beam, but also introduces frequency loci veering. The validated model is then used to perform a case study on the Bo105 helicopter to present some benefits of incorporating a tendon in a rotorcraft blade, making a first step towards an active tendon concept. This concept should eventually allow rotorcraft to operate with a variable rotor speed, thereby increasing their performance and efficiency.
Simulation of biological therapies for degenerated intervertebral discs

The efficacy of biological therapies on intervertebral disc repair was quantitatively studied using a three‐dimensional finite element model based on a cell‐activity coupled multiphasic mixture theory. In this model, cell metabolism and matrix synthesis and degradation were considered. Three types of biological therapies‐increasing the cell density (Case I), increasing the glycosaminoglycan (GAG) synthesis rate (Case II), and decreasing the GAG degradation rate (Case III)‐to the nucleus pulposus (NP) of each of two degenerated discs [one mildly degenerated (e.g., 80% viable cells in the NP) and one severely degenerated (e.g., 30% viable cells in the NP)] were simulated. Degenerated discs without treatment were also simulated as a control. The cell number needed, nutrition level demanded, time required for the repair, and the long‐term outcomes of these therapies were analyzed. For Case I, the repair process was predicted to be dependent on the cell density implanted and the nutrition level at disc boundaries. With sufficient nutrition supply, this method was predicted to be effective for treating both mildly and severely degenerated discs. For Case II, the therapy was predicted to be effective for repairing the mildly degenerated disc, but not for the severely degenerated disc. Similar results were predicted for Case III. No change in cell density for Cases II and III were predicted under normal nutrition level. This study provides a quantitative guide for choosing proper strategies of biological therapies for different degenerated discs. © 2015 Orthopaedic Research Society. Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Orthop Res 34:699–708, 2016.
Econometric Properties Of Alternative Security Return Methods

In recent years, security price research has experienced a proliferation of research designs. As a result, there is a lack of interstudy comparability, which is aggravated by the absence of a formal analysis of the properties of the alternative designs under various conditions. The purpose here is to examine one important aspect of research design-the choice of the security return measure-in a simple, but well-defined setting of limited parameter uncertainty. The analysis leads to the following results. (1) With respect to "raw" returns versus "residual" returns, it explicitly offers three potential rationales for residual returns. As such, the analysis provides a formal statement of the reasons for residual analyses to supplement the intuitive, but less precise statements in the early literature. (2) With respect to "residual" return versus "difference in returns" methods, the analysis indicates the conditions under which: (a) the "residual" approach dominates the "difference in returns" approach as judged by the statistical criteria examined, (b) the converse holds, and (c) the two methods possess the same econometric properties. (3) The relative properties described in (2) are derived for a "general" model of nonzero covariation among returns and for two important special cases, the zero-beta model and the industry effects model.