Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Atrial remodelling is less pronounced in female endurance-trained athletes compared with that in male athletes

Abstract Objectives. Little data exists on atrial adaptation to training in women. Furthermore, data on right atrial (RA) volumes is lacking for both male and female athletes. The objective of this study was therefore to investigate atrial volumes in male and female athletes. Design. A total of 75 athletes (33 women) and 53 controls (21 women) underwent cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging. Left atrial (LA) and RA volumes were measured by manual delineation. The atrial appendage was included in the volumes, and pulmonary veins were excluded. Results. Atrial volumes were larger in athletes compared with those in controls (males: LA 116 ± 19 ml versus 93 ± 19 ml, RA 166 ± 32 ml versus 133 ± 23 ml, p < 0.0001, females: LA 90 ± 15 ml versus 83 ± 17 ml, p < 0.05, RA 119 ± 24 ml versus 108 ± 18 ml, p = 0.07). When normalized for body surface area, atrial volumes remained larger in athletes. However, when normalized for total heart volume (THV) there were no differences between groups except for LA volumes in females where controls had higher LA/THV compared with those in athletes (p < 0.05). Conclusion. Atrial volumes were significantly larger in athletes. Atrial volumes normalized for THV did not differ between athletes and controls indicating a balanced enlargement. There was only a small difference between female controls and female athletes, suggesting that atrial adjustment to training is more modest in women.
Helium Isotope Variations and mantle plume-spreading ridge interactions along the Galápagos Spreading Center

Along the Galapagos Spreading Center (GSC), 3He/4He varies from 8.5–5.9 RA. High 3He/4He ratios, resembling those in the western and southern Galapagos islands, are absent. This lack of high 3He/4He contrasts markedly with other localities of plume–ridge interaction, such as Iceland, Easter, and Amsterdam/St. Paul. The most striking feature is a 3He/4He gradient, decreasing westward from 8.4–7.0 RA between 89 and 93°W, where the GSC is shallowest and shows “axial high” morphology. The intra-segment 3He/4He variability within this region indicates that magma crosses the mantle/crust boundary at multiple points beneath individual ridge segments, and lateral mixing within the crust and upper mantle is limited. Some of the 3He/4He variability may also reflect transfer of discrete heterogeneity from beneath the northern sector of the Galapagos plateau. One possible explanation for the absence of high 3He/4He along the GSC is that helium is a relatively ineffective downstream tracer of mantle material from the core of the Galapagos plume, due to its preferential extraction beneath the archipelago compared to other incompatible, lithophile tracers. A second explanation is that the heterogeneous Galapagos plume is sheared in the upper mantle by motion of the Nazca Plate relative to the migrating GSC. In this case, plume core material having high 3He/4He (from beneath Fernandina and Isabela) would be dispersed mostly away from the ridge, while plume edge material having low 3He/4He plus enriched Sr and Pb isotope signatures (from beneath the northern periphery of the archipelago) is smeared into the sub-ridge mantle.
The Purpose and Age of Underwater Walls in the Bay of Elaia of Western Turkey: A Multidisciplinary Approach

Pergamum (modern: Bergama) was operating an important harbour used by military forces and merchants at the city of Elaia during Hellenistic and Roman Imperial times. Harbour‐related facilities such as warehouses, breakwaters and wharfs document the importance of this harbour site not only for the Pergamenians. This paper focuses on the purpose and age of six submerged wall structures situated approximately 1 km south of the ancient closed harbour basin of Elaia. Geoelectric cross‐sections and semi‐aquatic coring near these walls failed to detect any solid basement under the walls which excludes their possible use as breakwaters or wharfs. Instead, the walls were most likely delineating and separating evaporation ponds of salt works, which compares well with similar structures from other periods and places around the Mediterranean. Combined OSL and 14C‐dating determined the construction age of the installation between the 4th and 6th centuries A.D. Subsequent (re‐)uses are likely and are in agreement with findings from archaeological surveys.
MIT Open

The temporal organization of sleep is regulated by an interaction between the circadian clock and homeostatic processes. Light indirectly modulates sleep through its ability to phase shift and entrain the circadian clock. Light can also exert a direct, circadian-independent effect on sleep. For example, acute exposure to light promotes sleep in nocturnal animals and wake in diurnal animals. The mechanisms whereby light directly inﬂuences sleep and arousal are not well understood. In this review, we discuss the direct effect of light on sleep at the level of the retina and hypothalamus in rodents. We review murine data from recent publications showing the roles of rod, cone-and melanopsin-based photoreception on the initiation and maintenance of light-induced sleep. We also present hypotheses about hypothalamic mechanisms that have been advanced to explain the acute control of sleep by light. Speciﬁcally, we review recent studies assessing the roles of the ventrolateral preoptic area (VLPO) and the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN). We also discuss how light might differentially promote sleep and arousal in nocturnal and diurnal animals respectively. Lastly, we suggest new avenues for research on this topic which is still in its early stages.
Environmental influences on the ichthyoplankton in hypersaline estuaries located in a Semiarid Northeastern Brazilian coast

Hypersaline estuaries are commonly found in the Semiarid Northeast Brazilian coast. However, the utilization of these estuaries by early life stages of fishes is less well documented. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of environmental factors on the ichthyoplankton, and to describe their spatial and temporal variation in two estuaries (Tubarão and Casqueira). The sampling were diurnally in four excursions carried out during two dry-season months (November and December 2017) and two rainy-season months (May and July 2018). A total of 423 larvae representing 30 species (14 families) and 2,762 eggs (five families) were collected. Although the community structures were similar in both estuaries, there was strong seasonal variation, with higher abundances observed during the dry season. Low rainfall was the primary environmental driver affecting ichthyoplankton in both estuaries. Other environmental factors, such as depth, water temperature, and channel width, were also predictor variables for the distribution of eggs and larvae. The ichthyoplankton was dominated by marine estuarine-dependent species in both estuaries, accounting for 76% of individuals. The presence of the early life stages of typically marine species suggests that hypersaline environments provide important nursery areas and play an essential role for some coastal fish species.
Author's response to reviews Title: Graz Endocrine Causes Of Hypertension (GECOH) study: A diagnostic accuracy study of aldosterone to active renin ratio in screening for primary aldosteronism

Stefan Pilz (stefan.pilz@chello.at) Andreas Tomaschitz (Andreas.Tomaschitz@gmx.at) Vinzenz Steppan (vinzenz.stepan@klinikum-graz.at) Barbara Obermayer-Pietsch (barbara.obermayer@meduni-graz.at) Astrid Fahrleitner-Pammer (astrid.fahrleitner@meduni-graz.at) Natascha Schweighofer (natascha.schweighofer@meduni-graz.at) Horst R Portugaller (rupert.portugaller@meduni-graz.at) Harald Sourij (harald.sourij@meduni-graz.at) Harald Dobnig (harald.dobnig@klinikum-graz.at) Thomas R Pieber (thomas.pieber@meduni-graz.at)
University of Birmingham Family and community predictors of comorbid language, socioemotional and behavior problems at school entry

Objectives To identify the prevalence and family and community-level predictors of comorbid speech-language difficulties and socioemotional and behavioral (SEB) difficulties across a population of children at school entry. Methods The School Entry Health Questionnaire is a parent survey of children ’ s health and wellbeing, completed by all children starting school in Victoria, Australia (N = 53256). It includes parental report of speech-language difficulties, the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (behavior), and numerous family and community variables. Following univariate analysis, family and community risk characteristics were entered into a multinomial logistic regression model to identify the associated relative risk of comorbid speech/language and SEB needs. The influence of experiencing multiple risk factors was also examined.
Efficient Crowdsourcing With Stochastic Production

A principal seeks production of a good within a limited time-frame with a hard deadline, after which any good procured has no value. There is inherent uncertainty in the production process, which in light of the deadline may warrant simultaneous production of multiple goods by multiple producers despite there being no marginal value for extra goods beyond the maximum quality good produced. This motivates a crowdsourcing model of procurement. We address efficient execution of such procurement from a social planner's perspective, taking account of and optimally balancing the value to the principal with the costs to producers (modeled as effort expenditure) while, crucially, contending with self-interest on the part of all players. A solution to this problem involves both an algorithmic aspect that determines an optimal effort level for each producer given the principal's value, and also an incentive mechanism that achieves equilibrium implementation of the socially optimal policy despite the principal privately observing his value, producers privately observing their skill levels and effort expenditure, and all acting only to maximize their own individual welfare. In contrast to popular "winner take all" contests, the efficient mechanism we propose involves a payment to every producer that expends non-zero effort in the efficient policy.
An analysis of parameterization interactions and sensitivity of single‐column model simulations to convection schemes in CAM4 and CAM5

This paper uses different deep convection triggering functions and closure assumptions in two versions of the Community Atmospheric Model (CAM4 and CAM5) to investigate the interactions of parameterization components and the sensitivity of single‐column model simulations of tropical convection. The schemes include those used in the standard CAM4 and CAM5 as well as two variants used in other global models. Large‐scale forcing and verification data are from the Global Atmospheric Research Program's Atlantic Tropical Experiment and Kwajalein Experiment field campaigns during which many deep and shallow convective events were observed. Results show that in both CAM4 and CAM5, when the intensity of deep convection decreases as a result of parameterization change, the intensity of shallow convection increases, leading to little change in the total simulated precipitation but very different changes in precipitation types. The different precipitation types manifest themselves in other measures of model performances including temperature and humidity. The standard CAM4 and CAM5 both simulated warm bias in the middle troposphere and dry bias in the lower troposphere. In experiments where deep convection is reduced, these biases are also reduced, but the associated changes in shallow convection create new patterns of model biases. Results imply the need to use multiple independent observations simultaneously to constrain models so that the degrees of model freedom are reduced and to treat model physical parameterizations as an integrated system rather than individual components.
Modeling ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) – an overview of CISNET model approaches

Ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) can be a precursor of invasive breast cancer. Since the advent of screening mammography in the 1980’s, the incidence of DCIS has increased dramatically. The value of screen detection and treatment of DCIS is a matter of controversy, since it is unclear to what extent detection and treatment of DCIS prevents invasive disease and reduces breast cancer mortality. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of existing Cancer Intervention and Surveillance Modelling Network (CISNET) modeling approaches for the natural history of DCIS, and to compare these to other modeling approaches reported in the literature. Five of the six CISNET models currently include DCIS. Most models assume that some, but not all, lesions progress to invasive cancer. The natural history of DCIS cannot be directly observed and the CISNET models differ in their assumptions and in the data sources used to estimate the DCIS model parameters. These model differences translate into variation in outcomes such as the amount of overdiagnosis of DCIS with estimates ranging from 34%-72% for biennial screening from age 50-74 years. The other models described in the literature also report a large range in outcomes with, for example, progression rates varying from 20%-91%. In the future, DCIS data by grade from active surveillance trials, development of predictive markers of progression probability, and evidence from other screening modalities, such as tomosynthesis, may be utilized to inform and improve the models’ representation of DCIS and might lead to convergence of the model estimates.
CONGRUENCES FOR ANDREWS’ SPT-FUNCTION MODULO POWERS OF 5, 7 AND 13

Congruences are found modulo powers of 5, 7 and 13 for Andrews’ smallest parts partition function spt(n). These congruences are reminiscent of Ramanujan’s partition congruences modulo powers of 5, 7 and 11. Recently, Ono proved explicit Ramanujan-type congruences for spt(n) modulo ` for all primes ` ≥ 5 which were conjectured earlier by the author. We extend Ono’s method to handle the powers of 5, 7 and 13 congruences. We need the theory of weak Maass forms as well as certain classical modular equations for the Dedekind eta-function.
Marchandisation, individualisation et gestion intra-familiale des droits sur la terre en basse Côte-d'Ivoire

Cet article propose un decryptage des relations relatives au controle et a la gestion de la ressource fonciere, au sein de groupes familiaux de migrants Senoufo installes en Basse-Cote. L’analyse vise, a travers une demarche de type ethnographique, a cerner le contenu et les titulaires des droits fonciers, la question de l’articulation des unites socio-economiques et les eventuels conflits intrafamiliaux et leurs sources. Elle montre en particulier comment l’individualisation des droits d’usage des terres familiales ne s’accompagne pas d’une individualisation de leur appropriation, et comment l’acces aux terres familiales doit etre apprecie au regard des opportunites d’acces a la terre a travers le marche foncier locatif.
Seismic Imaging of Gas Hydrate Reservoir Heterogeneities

Natural gas hydrate, a type of inclusion compound or clathrate, are composed of gas molecules trapped within a cage of water molecules. The presence of gas hydrate has been confirmed by core samples recovered from boreholes. Interests in the distribution of natural gas hydrate stem from its potential as a future energy source, geohazard to drilling activities and their possible impact on climate change. However the current geophysical investigations of gas hydrate reservoirs are still too limited to fully resolve the location and the total amount of gas hydrate due to its complex nature of distribution. The goal of this thesis is twofold, i.e., to model (1) the heterogeneous gas hydrate reservoirs and (2) seismic wave propagation in the presence of heterogeneities in order to address the fundamental questions: where are the location and occurrence of gas hydrate and how much is stored in the sediments. Seismic scattering studies predict that certain heterogeneity scales and velocity contrasts will generate strong scattering and wave mode conversion. Vertical Seismic Profile (VSP) techniques can be used to calibrate seismic characterization of gas hydrate expressions on surface seismograms. To further explore the potential of VSP in detecting the heterogeneities, a wave equation based approach for Pand S-wave
DABNet: Depth-wise Asymmetric Bottleneck for Real-time Semantic Segmentation

As a pixel-level prediction task, semantic segmentation needs large computational cost with enormous parameters to obtain high performance. Recently, due to the increasing demand for autonomous systems and robots, it is significant to make a tradeoff between accuracy and inference speed. In this paper, we propose a novel Depthwise Asymmetric Bottleneck (DAB) module to address this dilemma, which efficiently adopts depth-wise asymmetric convolution and dilated convolution to build a bottleneck structure. Based on the DAB module, we design a Depth-wise Asymmetric Bottleneck Network (DABNet) especially for real-time semantic segmentation, which creates sufficient receptive field and densely utilizes the contextual information. Experiments on Cityscapes and CamVid datasets demonstrate that the proposed DABNet achieves a balance between speed and precision. Specifically, without any pretrained model and postprocessing, it achieves 70.1% Mean IoU on the Cityscapes test dataset with only 0.76 million parameters and a speed of 104 FPS on a single GTX 1080Ti card.
Lessons from the Destructive Mw 6.3 Christchurch, New Zealand, Earthquake

At 12:51 local time on 22 February 2011 New Zealand's second largest city was struck by a close, shallow Mw 6.3 earthquake. The event caused widespread damage in the city and resulted in about 180 deaths. At the time of this writing parts of the central business district are still cordoned off because of damage to structures (particularly unreinforced masonry). It is estimated that 800 buildings in the central business district will have to be demolished, and that 10,000 of the 140,000 domestic dwellings in the city will suffer the same fate. There has been extensive liquefaction and lateral spreading in the eastern half of the city, and 200,000 tons of ejected silt have already been removed. Costs of the damage are in the NZ$15–20 billion (US$11–15 billion) range. Given that Christchurch contributes 15% of New Zealand's GDP, this earthquake will have a significant effect on the nation's economy. The problem is that the extreme ground motions recorded for both the mw 7.1 mainshock and mw 6.3 aftershock were greater than this model predicted (even at 10,000-year return periods for the case of the mw 6.3 aftershock). The 22 February event was an aftershock of the Mw 7.1 earthquake of 04 September 2010 at 04:35 local time (see Figure 1). This complex event caused surface rupture of up to 5 m on the …
Comparative Effectiveness of Linezolid and Vancomycin Among a Comparative Effectiveness of Linezolid and Vancomycin Among a National Veterans Affairs Cohort with Methicillin-Resistant National Veterans Affairs Cohort with Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Pneumonia Staphylococcus aureus Pn

Study Objective: As variability in vancomycin dosing, susceptibility, and tolerability has driven the need to compare newer agents with vancomycin in real-world clinical settings, we sought to quantify the effectiveness of linezolid compared with vancomycin on clinical outcomes for the treatment of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) pneumonia. Design: Retrospective cohort study. Data Patients: Adults admitted to Veterans Affairs hospitals between January 2002 and September 2010 with diagnosis codes for MRSA and pneumonia, and who initiated and received at least 3 days of continuous intravenous vancomycin therapy (4943 patients) or intravenous or oral linezolid therapy (328 patients) while in the hospital. regression models quantified the effect of linezolid compared with vancomycin on time to 30-day mortality (primary outcome), therapy change, hospital discharge, discharge from intensive care, intubation, 30-day readmission, and 30-day MRSA reinfection. In addition, a composite outcome of clinical success was defined as discharge from the hospital or intensive care unit by day 14 after treatment initiation, in the absence of death, therapy change, or intubation by day 14. Subgroup analyses were performed in a validated microbiology-confirmed MRSA subgroup and clinical subgroup meeting clinical criteria for infection. Although a number of baseline variables differed significantly between the vancomycin and linezolid treatment groups, balance was achieved within propensity score quintiles. A significantly lower rate of therapy change was observed in the linezolid group (adjusted hazard ratio [HR] 0.68, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.48–0.96). The clinical success rate was significantly higher among patients treated with linezolid (adjusted HR 1.25, 95% CI 1.07–1.47). Comparable findings were observed in the subgroup analyses. of inpatient procedures, time to therapy initiation, year, MRSA pneumonia diagnosis code, inpatient admission in the previous 30 days, procedure in the previous 180 days, previous metastatic cancer, previous coronary heart disease, previous congestive heart failure, previous human immunodeficiency virus infection, previous peripheral vascular disease, previous plegia, previous rheumatoid arthritis or connective tissue disease, previous peptic ulcer, previous weight loss, previous depression, previous drug abuse, previous S. aureus infection, previous pneumonia, previous bacteremia, previous surgical site infection, previous skin abscess, previous chronic ulcer, previous infective arthritis, previous vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus infection, previous E. coli infection, and previous intravenous line.
Psychometric properties of the international otcome inventory for hearing AIDS

Summary It is paramount to assess the psychometric properties of self-assessment tools in order to check the tests' reliability and validity, also to enable proper outcome interpretation. Aim to check the psychometric properties of the IOI-HA (International Outcome Inventory for Hearing Aids) in its Portuguese version, called QI-AASI (International Questionnaire - Individual Sound Amplification Device), in terms of internal uniformity, correlation between the items and reproducibility. Study design: descriptive, observational and cross-sectional. Materials and Methods the questionnaire was deployed to 53 hearing aid users, 34 females and 19 males, with ages between 19 and 92 years - from incomplete basic education to complete higher education, encompassing subjects with monoaural and binaural sound amplification. Results the QI-AASI had a Cronbach Alpha of 0.69. In the correlation among the items, there were numerous significant correlations. The instrument was properly reproducible, except for item # 6, which presented a significant difference in comparing test and the retest. Conclusions the QI-AASI is suggested in the rehabilitation process of users of hearing aides; nonetheless, the questionnaire can be difficult for subjects with low social and economic status when self-employed.