Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Physical Activity, Coronary Artery Calcium, and Cardiovascular Outcomes in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA)

Supplemental digital content is available in the text. ABSTRACT Introduction Although the inverse relationship between physical activity (PA) and cardiovascular disease (CVD) is well established, observational studies suggest that very high levels of PA may be harmful. This study sought to understand the relationship between PA, coronary artery calcium (CAC), and cardiovascular outcomes among individuals at different levels of risk. Methods PA and CAC were assessed in 6777 baseline participants of the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis. Total PA in MET-minutes per week was categorized into quartiles, and CAC was categorized as “low risk” (<100 Agatston units; n = 5180) and “high risk” (≥100 Agatston units; n = 1597). Cox proportional hazard regression analyses and Kaplan–Meier curves were generated to understand relationships between PA and CAC with CVD and all-cause mortality. Results In low-risk participants in the highest PA quartile, there was a decrease in the adjusted hazard ratio (HR) for CVD (HR, 0.72; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.56–0.94) and all-cause mortality (HR, 0.69; 95% CI, 0.57–0.84) compared with those in the lowest PA quartile. In high-risk participants in the highest PA quartile, there was a decrease in the adjusted HR for all-cause mortality (HR, 0.59; 95% CI, 0.47–0.74) compared with those in the lowest PA quartile. High PA was not associated with an increased risk of either outcome, regardless of CAC category, sex, or race/ethnicity. Conclusions Our research suggests that there is no increased risk associated with high levels of PA, even among individuals at high risk of CVD.
Wideband Tympanometry Findings in School-aged Children: Effects of Age, Gender, Ear Laterality, and Ethnicity

Objectives: Wideband tympanometry (WBT) measures middle-ear function across a range of frequencies (250 to 8000 Hz) while the ear-canal pressure is varied from +200 to –300 daPa. WBT is a suitable test to evaluate middle-ear function in children, but there is a lack of age-, ear-, gender-, or ethnicity-specific data throughout the literature. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of age, ear laterality, gender, and ethnicity on the WBT data retrieved from children aged 4 to 13 years determined to have normal middle-ear function. Design: Data were collected cross-sectionally from 924 children aged 4 to 13 years who passed a test battery consisting of 226-Hz tympanometry, ipsilateral acoustic stapedial reflexes, and pure-tone screening, and without significant history of middle-ear dysfunction. Participants were grouped according to their age: 4 to 6 years, 7 to 9 years, 10 to 13 years. Wideband absorbance values were extracted at 0 daPa (WBA0) and tympanometric peak pressure (WBATPP). Results: The effects of age, frequency, and pressure (WBA0 versus WBATPP) were statistically significant. There were significant differences between WBA0 and WBATPP for all age groups such that WBA0 had lower absorbance at low frequencies (250 to 1600 Hz) and greater absorbance at mid to high frequencies (2500 to 8000 Hz). Statistically significant effects of age were present for WBA0 and WBATPP such that absorbance generally increased with age from 250 to 1250 Hz and decreased with age from 2000 to 5000 Hz. There were no significant main effects of gender, ear, or ethnicity. Conclusions: Gender-, ear-, and ethnicity-specific clinical WBA0 and WBATPP norms are not required for diagnostic purposes; however, age-specific norms may be necessary. Age-related changes in middle-ear function were observed across WBA0 and WBATPP. The data presented in this study are a suitable clinical reference for evaluating the outer- and middle-ear function of school-aged children.
Multi-dimensional leaf phenotypes reflect root system genotype in grafted grapevine over the growing season

Abstract Background Modern biological approaches generate volumes of multi-dimensional data, offering unprecedented opportunities to address biological questions previously beyond reach owing to small or subtle effects. A fundamental question in plant biology is the extent to which below-ground activity in the root system influences above-ground phenotypes expressed in the shoot system. Grafting, an ancient horticultural practice that fuses the root system of one individual (the rootstock) with the shoot system of a second, genetically distinct individual (the scion), is a powerful experimental system to understand below-ground effects on above-ground phenotypes. Previous studies on grafted grapevines have detected rootstock influence on scion phenotypes including physiology and berry chemistry. However, the extent of the rootstock's influence on leaves, the photosynthetic engines of the vine, and how those effects change over the course of a growing season, are still largely unknown. Results Here, we investigate associations between rootstock genotype and shoot system phenotypes using 5 multi-dimensional leaf phenotyping modalities measured in a common grafted scion: ionomics, metabolomics, transcriptomics, morphometrics, and physiology. Rootstock influence is ubiquitous but subtle across modalities, with the strongest signature of rootstock observed in the leaf ionome. Moreover, we find that the extent of rootstock influence on scion phenotypes and patterns of phenomic covariation are highly dynamic across the season. Conclusions These findings substantially expand previously identified patterns to demonstrate that rootstock influence on scion phenotypes is complex and dynamic and underscore that broad understanding necessitates volumes of multi-dimensional data previously unmet.
SVETIM ŲJŲ KALB Ų STUDIJOS/ STUDIES OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES The Estonian Academic Writers' Perceptions of the Most Important Aspects of Effective English Texts: a Questionnaire Survey Conducted at Tallinn University of Technology

Writing in English has become an important tool for communication in today's international academic discourse community. This has motivated Estonian academic writers to pro duce increasingly more academic prose in English. There is a considerable concern, however, that the writers do not have the discourse and socio-cultural competences in Anglo-American academic writing essential for success in the target community. In an attempt to investigate how knowledgeable Estonian writers are about the various aspec ts of English academic writing, an experimental study was conducted at Tallinn University of Technology (200 4- 2008). This paper reports on a questionnaire survey into the perceptions of undergraduate students (N= 23) and EAP instructors (N=16) on the most important aspect s of writing effective English texts. The outcomes of the survey suggest that Estonian academic writers consi der mastery of grammar and lexis as the key contrib utor to the production of effective English texts, and they are not sufficiently knowledgeable about the signi ficance of text-level discourse in reader-based writing. Impli cations of the research include the necessity of ra ising writers' awareness of the textual and socio-cultura l aspects of English academic writing through a ren ewed, discourse-driven perspective for EAP writing instru ction in Estonia.
Blocking PSD95‐PDZ3's amyloidogenesis through point mutations that inhibit high‐temperature reversible oligomerization (RO)

The third PDZ domain of the postsynaptic density protein 95 (PSD95‐PDZ3; 11 kDa, 103 residues) has a propensity to form amyloid fibrils at high temperatures. At neutral pH, PDZ3 is natively folded, but it exhibits a peculiar three‐state thermal unfolding with a reversible oligomerization (RO) equilibrium at high temperatures, which is uncharacteristic in the unfolding of a small globular protein as PDZ3 is. Here, we examined the RO's role in PDZ3's amyloidogenesis at high‐temperature using two variants (F340A and L342A) that suppress the high‐temperature RO and five single‐alanine‐mutated variants, where we mutated surface‐exposed hydrophobic residues to alanine. Circular Dichroism (CD), Analytical Ultracentrifuge (AUC), and other spectroscopic measurements confirmed the retention of the native structure at ambient temperature. Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) was used to assess the presence or absence of the high‐temperature RO, and the amyloidogenicity of the variants was measured by Thioflavin T (ThT) fluorescence and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM). By comparing the fraction of RO and the ThT signal, we found that mutations that suppressed the high‐temperature RO strongly inhibited amyloidogenesis. On the other hand, all variants forming RO also formed amyloids under the same conditions as the wild‐type PDZ3.
Neurorehabilitation in Adults With Traumatic Upper Extremity Amputation: A Scoping Review

Background Most of the current literature around amputation focuses on lower extremity amputation or engineering aspects of prosthetic devices. There is a need to more clearly understand neurobehavioral mechanisms related to upper extremity amputation and how such mechanisms might influence recovery and utilization of prostheses. Objective This scoping review aims to identify and summarize the current literature on adult traumatic upper limb amputation in regard to recovery and functional outcomes and how neuroplasticity might influence these findings. Methods We identified appropriate articles using Academic Search Complete EBSCO, OVID Medline, and Cochrane databases. The resulting articles were then exported, screened, and reviewed based on Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) guidelines. Results Eleven (11) studies met the study criteria. Of these studies, 7 focused on sensory involvement, 3 focused on neuroplastic changes post-amputation related to functional impact, and 1 study focused on motor control and learning post-amputation. Overall, these studies revealed an incomplete understanding of the neural mechanisms involved in motor rehabilitation in the central and peripheral nervous systems, while also demonstrating the value of an individualized approach to neurorehabilitation in upper limb loss. Conclusions There is a gap in our understanding of the role of neurorehabilitation following amputation. Overall, focused rehabilitation parameters, demographic information, and clarity around central and peripheral neural mechanisms are needed in future research to address neurobehavioral mechanisms to promote functional recovery following traumatic upper extremity amputation.
Impact of Duration of Neoadjuvant Aromatase Inhibitors on Molecular Expression Profiles in Estrogen Receptor–positive Breast Cancers

Abstract Purpose: Aromatase inhibitor (AI) treatment is the standard of care for postmenopausal women with primary estrogen receptor–positive breast cancer. The impact of duration of neoadjuvant endocrine therapy (NET) on molecular characteristics is still unknown. We evaluated and compared changes of gene expression profiles under short-term (2-week) versus longer-term neoadjuvant AIs. Experimental Design: Global gene expression profiles from the PeriOperative Endocrine Therapy for Individualised Care (POETIC) trial (137 received 2 weeks of AIs and 47 received no treatment) and targeted gene expression from 80 patients with breast cancer treated with NET for more than 1 month (NeoAI) were assessed. Intrinsic subtyping, module scores covering different cancer pathways and immune-related genes were calculated for pretreated and posttreated tumors. Results: The differences in intrinsic subtypes after NET were comparable between the two cohorts, with most Luminal B (90.0% in the POETIC trial and 76.3% in NeoAI) and 50.0% of HER2 enriched at baseline reclassified as Luminal A or normal-like after NET. Downregulation of proliferative-related pathways was observed after 2 weeks of AIs. However, more changes in genes from cancer-signaling pathways such as MAPK and PI3K/AKT/mTOR and immune response/immune-checkpoint components that were associated with AI-resistant tumors and differential outcome were observed in the NeoAI study. Conclusions: Tumor transcriptional profiles undergo bigger changes in response to longer NET. Changes in HER2-enriched and Luminal B subtypes are similar between the two cohorts, thus AI-sensitive intrinsic subtype tumors associated with good survival might be identified after 2 weeks of AI. The changes of immune-checkpoint component expression in early AI resistance and its impact on survival outcome warrants careful investigation in clinical trials.
Floorplan-guided placement for large-scale mixed-size designs

In the nanometer scale era, placement has become an extremely challenging stage in modern VeryLarge-Scale Integration (VLSI) designs. Millions of objects need to be placed legally within a chip region, while both the interconnection and object distribution have to be optimized simultaneously. Due to the extensive use of Intellectual Property (IP) and embedded memory blocks, a design usually contains tens or even hundreds of big macros. A design with big movable macros and numerous standard cells is known as mixed-size design. Due to the big size difference between big macros and standard cells, the placement of mixed-size designs is much more difficult than the standard-cell placement. This work 1 presents an efficient and high-quality placement tool to handle modern large-scale mixed-size designs. This tool is developed based on a new placement algorithm flow. The main idea is to use the fixed-outline floorplanning algorithm to guide the state-of-the-art analytical placer. This new flow consists of four steps: 1) The objects in the original netlist are clustered into blocks; 2) Floorplanning is performed on the blocks; 3) The blocks are shifted within the chip region to further optimize the wirelength; 4) With big macro locations fixed, incremental placement is applied to place the remaining objects. Several key techniques are proposed to be used in the first two steps. These techniques are mainly focused on the following two aspects: 1) Hypergraph clustering algorithm that can cut down the original problem size without loss of placement Quality of Results (QoR); 2) Fixedoutline floorplanning algorithm that can provide a good guidance to the analytical placer at the global level. The effectiveness of each key technique is demonstrated by promising experimental results compared with the state-of-the-art algorithms. Moreover, using the industrial mixed-size designs, the new placement tool shows better performance than other existing approaches. This work was partially supported by IBM Faculty Award, NSF under grant CCF-0540998 and NSC under grant NSC 99-2220-E-007-007.
Cochlear implantation restores cortical processing for spatial hearing in asymmetric hearing loss

In asymmetric hearing loss (AHL), the normal pattern of contralateral hemispheric dominance for monaural stimulation is modified, with a shift towards the hemisphere ipsilateral to the better ear. The extent of this shift has been shown to relate to sound localisation deficits. In this study, we examined whether cochlear implantation to treat AHL can restore the normal functional pattern of auditory cortical activity and whether this relates to improved sound localisation. We recruited 10 subjects with a cochlear implant for AHL (AHL-CI) and 10 normally-hearing controls. The participants performed a voice/non-voice discrimination task with binaural and monaural presentation of the sounds, and the cortical activity was measured using positron emission tomography (PET) brain imaging with a H215O tracer. The auditory cortical activity was found to be lower in the AHL-CI participants for all of the conditions. A cortical asymmetry index was calculated and showed that a normal contralateral dominance was restored in the AHL-CI patients for the non-implanted ear, but not for the ear with the cochlear implant. It was found that the contralateral dominance for the non-implanted ear strongly correlated with sound localisation performance (rho = 0.8, p < 0.05). We conclude that the restoration of binaural mechanisms in AHL-CI subjects reverses the abnormal lateralisation pattern induced by the deafness, and that this leads to improved spatial hearing. Our results suggest that cochlear implantation fosters the rehabilitation of binaural excitatory/inhibitory cortical interactions, which could enable the reconstruction of the auditory spatial selectivity needed for sound localisation.
How do consumers choose to click ‘like’ on luxury ads in social media? Role of envy, number of likes, and culture

Abstract We conducted two experimental studies to examine how malicious and benign envy and the number of likes as a social proof determine the intention to click “like” on luxury advertisements on social media. As expected, benign enviers reacted positively to an ad with high like totals. In contrast, malicious enviers reacted positively to an ad with low like totals. Testing the effects of culture on this relationship revealed individualistic versus collectivist cultural differences. US consumers tend to have higher intentions to click “like” when malicious envy is paired with low numbers of likes. Comparatively, Korean consumers show higher click intentions when benign envy is paired with high numbers of likes. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.
Reliability and validity of a long term survey for automobile seat comfort

Automobile seat comfort is, undeniably, a subjective construct. In this context, jury evaluations, administered in the form of surveys, are, and will always be, the best way to understand customer/consumer perceptions and expectations of comfort. This is true even in the midst of a movement towards measurement technologies that produce objective data (e.g., pressure distribution, vibration transmissibility, etc.). Overlooked by this movement is the fact that design targets (i.e., human criteria for objective data) cannot be established without considering perceptions of comfort. Given the important role of surveys in the automobile seat comfort development process, it is surprising that well-documented aspects of survey design are given so little attention. The present contribution, while considering the wording of the survey items, the type and number of rating scale categories, the verbal tags associated with the categories, and the interest and motivation of the respondent, delivers a survey with acceptable levels of test-retest reliability, internal consistency, criterion-related validity, and construct validity. These are important attributes, if design decisions are to be made with minimal risk.
Prosodic entrainment in individuals with autism spectrum disorder

Abstract Entrainment is the tendency of people to behave similarly during an interaction. It occurs on different levels of behaviour, including speech, and has been associated with pro-social behaviour and increased rapport. This review paper outlines the current understanding of linguistic entrainment, particularly at the speech level, in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a disorder that is associated with social difficulties and unusual prosody. Aberrant entrainment patterns in individuals with ASD could thus contribute to both their perceived unusual prosody and their social difficulties. Studying the relationship between speech entrainment and ASD holds great potential for applied benefits in utilizing this knowledge for pre-screening or diagnosis, monitoring progress longitudinally, and intervention practices. Our findings suggest that research on entrainment in ASD is sparse and exploratory, and the ecological validity of experimental paradigms varies. Moreover, there is little consistency in methodology and results vary between studies, which highlights the need for standardized methods in entrainment research. A promising way to standardize methods, facilitate their use, and extend them to everyday clinical practice, is by implementing automatic methods for speech analysis and adhering to open-science principles.
Investigative properties of CeO2 doped with niobium: A combined characterization and DFT studies

Abstract Catalytic capacity of ceria mainly stems from a facile switch in the Ce oxidation states from +4 to +4 − x. While various experimental and computational studies pinpoint the reduction chemistry of Ce atom through the creation of oxygen vacancies, the analogous process when ceria surface is decorated with cations remains poorly understood. Where such results are available, a synergy between experimental and first principle calculation is scarce. Niobium materials are evolving and their use in catalysis is being widely investigated due to their high surface acidity and thermal and chemical stability. This study aims to report structural and electronic properties of various configurations of mixed Ce–Nb oxides and elaborates on factors that underpin potential catalytic improvements. Evaluations of the samples through X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), N2-adsorption–desorption, scanning electron microscope (SEM), energy dispersive spectroscope (EDS), and thermogravimetric (TGA) analyses are examined and discussed. First principles density functional theory (DFT) calculations provide structural features of the Ce–Nb solutions at low concentration of Nb via computing atomic charge distribution. Contraction in the lattice parameter after Nb doping was confirmed with both XRD and DFT results. SEM analysis reveals particle growth at the loading of 50 wt%. FTIR results established the Ce–Nb–O bond at 1,100 cm−1 and the TGA analysis confirms the thermal stability of Nb-doped ceria. Tetrahedral O atoms demonstrate an increase in electronegativity and this in turn facilitates catalytic propensity of the material because the O atoms will exhibit higher affinity for adsorbed reactants. Cerium oxide (CeO2) after Nb doping displays a noticeable band gap narrowing, confirming the possible improvement in the catalytic behavior. The 4d states of the Niobium pentoxide (Nb2O5) is found to fill up the 4f states of CeO2 around the Fermi energy level promoting electrons excitation in the CeO2. Reported electronic, structural, and thermal characteristics herein indicate promising catalytic applications of niobium-promoted ceria.
The Innovative Impact of Insurance for Economic Growth: The Evidence from New EU Member States

Abstract Insurance market activity, both as a financial intermediary and a provider of risk transfer and indemnification, may contribute to economic growth by allowing different risks to be managed more efficiently and by mobilizing domestic savings. During the last decade, there has been faster growth in insurance market activity, particularly in emerging markets given the process of liberalization and financial integration, which raises questions about its impact on economic growth.The aim of this paper is to examine relationship between insurance sector development and economic in 11 new EU member states from CentralandEasternEurope, using annual data fortheperiod 1999-2018. We apply dynamic and fully modified ordinary least squares to estimate the relationship between the variables. The results of our study indicate there are a positive and a significant relationship between insurance, measured through penetration, and economic growth Thus, functions of insurance companies - providing means of risk management and performing mobilization and allocation of resources - are important for economic growth and is in line with previous studies and with our hypothesis These results could be useful for regional governments that seek to improve economic growth as they suggest the need for implementation of stimulative policies for the development of insurance industry