Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Health-related quality of life in multiple musculoskeletal conditions: a cross-sectional population based epidemiological study. II. The MAPPING study.

OBJECTIVE Musculoskeletal conditions are a major burden on individuals, health systems, and social care systems. The objective of the MAPPING study was to assess the impact of musculoskeletal conditions on health-related quality of life (HRQL) in an Italian population sample. METHODS Trained rheumatologists carried out structured visits in which subjects were asked about musculoskeletal symptoms and socio-demographic characteristics, completed validated instruments for measuring HRQL, such as the Short Form 36 items status survey questionnaire (SF-36), the EUROQoL five item questionnaire (EQ-5D), and chronic pain severity (Chronic Pain Grade - CPG questionnaire), and underwent a standardized physical examination. We considered a sample size of 576 patients diagnosed as having had musculoskeletal conditions. For the purposes of this study, musculoskeletal diseases were classified into 4 diagnostic groups: inflammatory rheumatic diseases (IRD), symptomatic peripheral osteoarthritis (SPOA), low back pain (LBP), and soft tissue disorders (STD). Cases were defined by previously validated criteria. RESULTS The 4 major musculoskeletal disease groups, compared to non-sufferers, significantly impaired all eight health concepts of the SF-36 in the following order of magnitude: IRD, SPOA, STD, and LBP. Similar results were found for EQ-5D. The most striking impact was seen for SF-36 physical measures. On multiple regression modelling the physical component (PCS) of the SF-36 was influenced by female sex, age, high BMI, and low educational level (all at a p level < 0.001), and by manual occupation (p = 0.028) and chronic co-morbidity (p = 0.035) in LBP In SPOA, factors influencing physical function were age (p = 0.0001), low educational level (p = 0.006), female sex (p = 0.028), and chronic co-morbidity (p = 0.037). Moreover, an association on chronic co-morbidity and low educational level (both at a p level < 0.001), age (p = 0.004), and manual occupation (p = 0.035) was found with IRD, as well as of chronic co-morbidity and low educational level (both at a p level < 0.001), female sex (p = 0.006) and high BMI (p = 0.036) with STD were also found. Similar results were found for EQ-5D. CONCLUSIONS The MAPPING study indicates that musculoskeletal conditions have a clearly detrimental effect on the HRQL and one third of the adult population in Italy visited at least one physician for musculoskeletal problem in the past year. These results enable a comparison to be made of the burden of musculoskeletal conditions with that of other common chronic conditions.
PhishScope: Tracking Phish Server Clusters

ABSTRACT Phishing often seems an intractable problem, because phishers go to such lengths to hide their tracks by staging attacks through multiple countries and legal regimes. Targets of phishing and law enforcement thus have few levers to use against phishing. This article demonstrates one such lever: a method (PhishScope) for pinpointing a cluster of active phishing servers that are all connected to the same part of the same Internet service provider (ISP) and are thus located in the same legal regime. Targets of phishing can use information about phishing server clusters to encourage ISPs to take appropriate action such as taking down rogue servers. An ISP infested by a phishing cluster may be unaware of its presence, so the receipt of such information may be all it takes to persuade an ISP to take action. Law enforcement agencies (LEAs) may not want to expend any effort on a single phishing report, but a cluster of phishing servers, especially one that involves multiple targets of phishing, may be wor.
Byzantine-tolerant Uniform Node Sampling Service

We consider the problem of achieving uniform node sampling in large scale systems in presence of Byzantine nodes. The uniform node sampling service offers to applications using it a single simple primitive that returns, upon invocation, the identifier of a random node that belongs to the system. We first propose an omniscient strategy that processes on the fly an unbounded and arbitrarily biased input stream made of node identifiers exchanged within the system, and outputs a stream that preserves the uniformity property. Informally, uniformity states that any node in the system should have the same probability to appear in the sample of any correct node of the system. We show through a Markov chain analysis that this property holds despite any arbitrary bias introduced by the adversary. We then propose a strategy based on a sketch data structure that is capable of approximating the omniscient strategy without requiring any prior knowledge on the composition of the input stream. We show through both theoretical analysis and extensive simulations that this " knowledge-free " strategy accurately approximates the omniscient one. We evaluate the resilience of the knowledge-free strategy by studying two representative attacks (flooding and targeted attacks). We quantify the minimum number of identifiers that Byzantine nodes must insert in the input stream to prevent uniformity. Finally, we propose a new construction that processes each input stream with sketches put in series that allows to both increase the accuracy of a single sketch and decrease the time to converge to a uniform output stream. To our knowledge, such a work has never been proposed before.
Syntheses of partially hydrogenated [1,2,4]triazolo[4,5-a] pyrimidine-4-ones through cyclisation of 2-arylidenehydrazino-6-methyl-4-pyrimidones

Arylsubstituted derivatives of 2H,3H,4H,7H- and 1H,2H,3H,4H-(1,2,4)triazolo(4,5- a)pyrimidin-4-ones were synthesized from 2-arylidenehydrazino-6-methyl-4-pyrimidones by treatment with acetic anhydride. The structures of the starting compounds and of the isomeric di- N-acetylated reaction products were established by NMR.
Localization of the lectin reactive sites in adult and prepubertal horse testes.

The testes of prepubertal and adult horses were investigated using 10 horseradish peroxidase conjugated lectins combined with sialidase digestion and potassium hydroxide treatment, to localise the oligosaccharide sequences of glycoconjugates during spermatid maturation. In adult animals, the lectins showed a variable affinity for spermatids and Sertoli cell apical extensions. Soybean agglutinin (SBA), peanut agglutinin (PNA), Ricinus communis agglutinin (RCA-I) and wheat germ agglutinin (WGA) bound to the acrosomal structures of spermatids, whereas Griffonia simplicifolia agglutinin (GSA-II) labelled these structures only during Golgi and cap phases. These results suggested that glycoproteins of mature acrosomes contain both N- and O-linked oligosaccharides and that these carbohydrate chains undergo modifications during spermiogenesis. Sialic acid residues were not detected throughout the acrosomal development. The lectin binding pattern of Sertoli cells was very similar to that of acrosome of spermatids during the maturation phase. In sexually immature horses, only the degenerated germinal cells and the Leydig cells showed reactivity towards lectins. The first cells reacted with SBA and Dolichos biflorus agglutinin (DBA), the latter with SBA, PNA, WGA, GSA-II, Canavalia ensiformis agglutinin (ConA), Lens culinaris agglutinin (LCA) and also with DBA after sialidase digestion.
A Review of the Mechanisms, Diagnosis and Preventative Treatment of Osteoporotic Fragility Fractures in Patients With Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

The primary association of both type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and fragility fractures with age has become cause for concern in the developed world, with T2DM now considered an independent risk factor for an increased risk of fragility fracture. The increased susceptibility to fragility fracture associated with T2DM has wide ranging and increasing socioeconomic, morbidity and mortality effects. As the incidence of T2DM increases, understanding the mechanisms behind why T2DM is a causative risk factor to decreased bone health is an important step. These may be split into two broad categories: those that involve an increased risk of falling, and those mechanisms that make fragility fracture after falling more likely due to detrimental changes to bone strength. The latter is not definitively understood making diagnosis in T2DM populations difficult. Current diagnostic methods do not sufficiently account for the unique endocrinological effects of T2DM on bone. New markers for identifying fragility fracture risk in patients with T2DM are required to overcome the paradoxical increase in bone mineral density (BMD) in these populations, and the shortcomings of predictive algorithms and dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) in identifying fracture risk in T2DM populations. Earlier identification of patients with T2DM who are at risk of fragility fracture is important, as these patients are not as responsive to current preventative medical interventions as those without T2DM, although there are also adoptive lifestyle changes that can help. J Endocrinol Metab. 2015;5(1-2):157-162 doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.14740/jem253w
Green's-matrix calculation of total energies of point defects in silicon.

The principal approximation in the Green’s-matrix method for calculating the electronic structure and total energy of point defects in crystalline solids is the choice of (finite) basis set. In this paper the results of total-energy calculations with a number of different Gaussian-orbital basis sets are presented for several defects in silicon, including the silicon lattice vacancy and the silicon self-interstitial. Particular attention is paid to the convergence of the total energy with respect to the number of atoms included in the defect cluster on which the Green’s matrix is represented. Our best estimate for the formation energy of an unrelaxed neutral silicon lattice vacancy is 4.4 eV. In many cases we are interested in calculating the distortion accompanying incorporation of a point defect or the total-energy difference when a defect is displaced. As illustrative examples, the breathing relaxation around the lattice vacancy and the migration energies of the self-interstitial and of interstitial oxygen are examined. It is shown that the atoms surrounding a neutral silicon lattice vacancy relax inwards toward the site of the missing atom. On including this symmetric relaxation and the Jahn-Teller pairing distortion, the formation energy becomes 3.6 eV. Because of the importance of the long-range response to the Jahn-Teller distortion, it was not possible to calculate the pairing energy entirely ab initio. For silicon self-interstitials in the empty channels of the silicon lattice, high-temperature (midgap Fermi-level) formation energies of upwards of 4.4 eV are found. The migration energies are strongly charge-state dependent but in general substantially smaller than the formation energies. The self-interstitial displays negative-U behavior, and its electronic structure supports athermal migration. The migration energy for interstitial oxygen is calculated to be 2.5 eV, which is in good agreement with the experimental value.
Dual Role of Mesenchymal Stem Cells Allows for Microvascularized Bone Tissue‐Like Environments in PEG Hydrogels

In vitro engineered tissues which recapitulate functional and morphological properties of bone marrow and bone tissue will be desirable to study bone regeneration under fully controlled conditions. Among the key players in the initial phase of bone regeneration are mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and endothelial cells (ECs) that are in close contact in many tissues. Additionally, the generation of tissue constructs for in vivo transplantations has included the use of ECs since insufficient vascularization is one of the bottlenecks in (bone) tissue engineering. Here, 3D cocultures of human bone marrow derived MSCs (hBM‐MSCs) and human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) in synthetic biomimetic poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG)‐based matrices are directed toward vascularized bone mimicking tissue constructs. In this environment, bone morphogenetic protein‐2 (BMP‐2) or fibroblast growth factor‐2 (FGF‐2) promotes the formation of vascular networks. However, while osteogenic differentiation is achieved with BMP‐2, the treatment with FGF‐2 suppressed osteogenic differentiation. Thus, this study shows that cocultures of hBM‐MSCs and HUVECs in biological inert PEG matrices can be directed toward bone and bone marrow‐like 3D tissue constructs.
Void Probabilities and Cauchy–Schwarz Divergence for Generalized Labeled Multi-Bernoulli Models

The generalized labeled multi-Bernoulli (GLMB) is a family of tractable models that alleviates the limitations of the Poisson family in dynamic Bayesian inference of point processes. In this paper, we derive closed form expressions for the void probability functional and the Cauchy–Schwarz divergence for GLMBs. The proposed analytic void probability functional is a necessary and sufficient statistic that uniquely characterizes a GLMB, while the proposed analytic Cauchy–Schwarz divergence provides a tractable measure of similarity between GLMBs. We demonstrate the use of both results on a partially observed Markov decision process for GLMBs, with Cauchy–Schwarz divergence based reward, and void probability constraint.
The SWAM Arabic Morphological Tagger : Multilevel Tagging and Diacritization Using Lexicon Driven Morphotactics and Viterbi

SWAM is an exhaustive systematic algorithm that employs a sliding window strategy to identify all candidate morphological decompositions (segmentations) of a given Arabic word. At the upper level, the algorithm applies lexicon driven morphotactics and utilizes morpheme level unigram and bigram statistics (inner word context) to rank the resulting morphological segmentations and pick the topmost candidate. As a side effect, the algorithm identifies the surface non-vocalized morphological pattern and the relevant features of the input word. The lexicon-driven morphotactics are used to handle deletions, transformations or transpositions resulting from morpheme interaction during the derivation process. The main tactics used include injecting artificial surface roots and patterns in the respective lexicons. This greatly improves the coverage of the algorithm, but leads to some redundancy. Inverse mappings are then used to identify the real deep morphemes. At the lower level, Viterbi algorithm is used to refine the search and identify the vocalized deep version of the surface pattern. Combining the deep pattern with the lexeme leads to a composite tag that provides a wealth of features associated with the input word. The accuracy of the algorithm is very impressive, ranging from 97.3 to 98.2. SWAM does not impose a restricted tag set and support multilevel fine-grain tagging.
Art‐photographic detail enhancement

We present a novel method for enhancing details in a digital photograph, inspired by the principle of art photography. In contrast to the previous methods that primarily rely on tone scaling, our technique provides a flexible tone transform model that consists of two operators: shifting and scaling. This model permits shifting of the tonal range in each image region to enable significant detail boosting regardless of the original tone. We optimize these shift and scale factors in our constrained optimization framework to achieve extreme detail enhancement across the image in a piecewise smooth fashion, as in art photography. The experimental results show that the proposed method brings out a significantly large amount of details even from an ordinary low‐dynamic range image.
Contribution to the operation of smart rural distribution grid with energy resources for improvement of the quality of service

This Thesis aims for contributing in the deployment and operation of Smart Grid, in isolated rural areas. As it would be expected, technological developments and investments in the electrical field have mainly focused on urban and industrial areas where the energy demand is high, as well as, the possibility to recover easily the investment. Therefore, difficult accessing areas where population and electrical demand are low are less attractive to invest. For this reason, this Thesis, in parallel to the European project known as Smart Rural Grid, has focused on the rural grid development. In this sense, the Thesis contributes directly in the design, conception and justification of an innovate architecture for rural systems. The architecture has been deployed and tested at the end of a medium voltage line of Estabanell Energia in Vallfogona del Ripolles. In addition, the presented architecture is characterised to integrate power electronics with embedded battery systems, an innovative management system and a proper telecommunication network in order to gain robustness, flexibility and hosting capacity for distributed and renewable generation. To sum up, the Thesis has focused on the design and development of new operation modes, algorithms and equipment that allow to manage automatically and optimally the energy resources; like power electronics, energy storage systems, distributed and renewable generation, and controllable loads. These strategies are able to correct common issues in rural grids, such as voltage variations and electrical losses. In addition, they improve and ensure the power quality and supply continuity, contribute to reduce operational costs and infrastructure optimization and deferral.
Graduate Student Selection: Graduate Record Examination, Socioeconomic Status, and Undergraduate Grade Point Average as Predictors of Study Success in a Western European University

Graduate students' mobility has increased within Europe. Yet, empirical evidence on the validity of standardized admission tests in Europe is still scarce. The aim of the present study was therefore to investigate the incremental validity of the GRE (R) revised general test above undergraduate grade point average (U-GPA) by focusing on a multinational sample of master students (N=282) enrolled at a Dutch university. Results indicated that the Analytical Writing part of the GRE predicts graduate grade point average above and beyond U-GPA. Furthermore, the results suggest that the relationship is independent of students' socioeconomic status as indexed by parental education. Implications for graduate student selection in a European context are discussed.
Depression in people with first-episode schizophrenia

Background Depression has been described in people presenting with first-episode schizophrenia, a group at high relative risk of suicide. Method This was a longitudinal cohort study of 113 people during an acute relapse and 13 having a first episode. Follow-up occurred at three months and at one year. This report compares level of depression in the first episode and in the relapsing group. Levels of depression were assessed using the Calgary Depression Scale for Schizophrenia (CDSS). Results The median CDSS score was statistically significantly higher in the first-episode group both during the acute phase and at three month follow-up. At one year the first-episode group continued to have higher levels of depression than the multiple episode group. Conclusions For people with a first episode of schizophrenia, depression is a major problem during the initial acute phase and during the first year of illness. In light of the high risk of suicide in this population, recognition and treatment of depression requires greater attention.
Generation of 3-D synthetic data for the modeling of the CONSERT experiment (the radiotomography of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko)

This paper presents a 3-D simulation of the COmet Nucleus Sounding Experiment by Radiowave Propagation (CONSERT) radiotomography experiment of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. This experiment is part of the ROSETTA space mission. Our simulation is based on a ray tracing algorithm and takes into account multiple internal reflections, power losses, phase delays and polarization distortions. We emulate as closely as possible the true CONSERT data and discuss the results of the simulation.
Toward a consistency cross‐check of eddy covariance flux–based and biometric estimates of ecosystem carbon balance

Quantification of an ecosystem's carbon balance and its components is pivotal for understanding both ecosystem functioning and global cycling. Several methods are being applied in parallel to estimate the different components of the CO2 balance. However, different methods are subject to different sources of error. Therefore, it is necessary that site level component estimates are cross‐checked against each other before being reported. Here we present a two‐step approach for testing the accuracy and consistency of eddy covariance–based gross primary production (GPP) and ecosystem respiration (Re) estimates with biometric measurements of net primary production (NPP), autotrophic (Ra) and heterotrophic (Rh) respiration. The test starts with closing the CO2 balance to account for reasonable errors in each of the component fluxes. Failure to do so within the constraints will classify the flux estimates on the site level as inconsistent. If the CO2 balance can be closed, the test continues by comparing the closed site level Ra/GPP with the Rh/GPP ratio. The consistency of these ratios is then judged against expert knowledge. Flux estimates of sites that pass both steps are considered consistent. An inconsistent ratio is not necessarily incorrect but provides a signal for careful data screening that may require further analysis to identify the possible biological reasons of the unexpected ratios. We reviewed the literature and found 16 sites, out of a total of 529 research forest sites, that met the data requirements for the consistency test. Thirteen of these sites passed both steps of the consistency cross‐check. Subsequently, flux ratios (NPP/GPP, Rh/NPP, Rh/Re, and Re/GPP) were calculated for the consistent sites. Similar ratios were observed at sites which lacked information to check consistency, indicating that the flux data that are currently used for validating models and testing ecological hypotheses are largely consistent across a wide range of site productivities. Confidence in the output of flux networks could be further enhanced if the required fluxes are independently estimated at all sites for multiple years and harmonized methods are used.
Attitudes, Subjective Experiences, and Behaviors in Imagined and Actual Encounters Between Gay and Heterosexual People

Abstract Across four studies, we assessed the relationship between participants' attitudes toward gay men and their experiences during either imagined or actual interpersonal encounters with gay men. In the first three studies, participants imagined interactions with gay men and either responded in an open-ended or a closed-ended fashion. In these imagined interactions, participants reported that they expected to have considerable agreement between their attitudes and their subjective experiences during the intergroup encounter. However, during actual interactions, there were no differences between members of different prejudice levels in their responses to the gay confederate. A comparison of the actual and imagined interactions demonstrated that high prejudice people are particularly unlikely to have subjective experiences that match their negative attitudes concerning actual interpersonal encounters.