Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Male adolescents’ perceptions of how they interpret and manage their asthma symptoms

ii Abbreviations . iii Definitions . iii Chapter One: Introduction . 1 1.1 Background . 1 1.2 Asthma management in adolescence . 2 1.3 The need to go beyond biological sex differences in addressing men’s health issues . 4 1.4 Constructions of masculinity and its influence on men’s health . 5 1.5 The influence of masculinities on adherence to asthma treatment . 7 1.6 Significance of the study . 8 1.7 Purpose, research question, and objectives of this study . 9 1.8 Overview of the following chapters . 9 Chapter Two: Literature Review . 11 2.1 Inclusion / exclusion criteria . 11 2.2 Key search words . 11 2.3 Search method . 12 2.4 Search results. 12 2.5 Social influences on asthma medication adherence . 13 2.5. 1 Desiring normality and peer acceptance . 13 2.5. 2 The role of peer pressure . 15 2.5. 3 Stereotyping and stigma of asthmatics . 16 2.6 Masculinities and Asthma . 20 2.6. 1 The state of male health research . 20 The need to go beyond biological sex differences in addressing men’s health issues . 20 The state of male health research in New Zealand. 21 The health status of men . 22 The increased health risks of being an adolescent male . 25 2.6. 2 Constructions of masculinity and its influence on men’s health . 26 Hegemonic masculinity . 27 Masculinity within New Zealand. 28 Changing men and masculinities . 29 The impact of masculinities on young males . 31 2.6. 3 The influence of masculinities on adherence to asthma treatment . 32 2.7 Literature review summary . 37 Chapter Three: Methodology and Methods . 39 3.1 Methodology . 39 3.1.1 Sample selection . 41 3.1.2 Sample size . 41 3.1.3 Sampling strategy . 41 3.1.4 Interview strategy . 42 3.1.5 Analytical process . 42 3.2 Methods . 43 3.2.1 Inclusion criteria . 43 3.2.2 Recruitment . 43 3.2.3 Data collection . 44 3.3 Data analysis . 46 3.3.1 Transcription . 46 3.3.2 Analytical procedure. 47 3.4 Trustworthiness . 50 3.4.1 Credibility and Conformability . 50 3.4.2 Transferability and Dependability . 51 Chapter Four: Findings . 53 4.1 The participants . 53 4.2 Themes . 55 4.3 Social influences . 56 4.3.1 Stereotyping and stigma of asthmatics. 56 4.3.2 Desiring normality and peer acceptance . 57 4.3.3 Social support . 59 4.4 Masculinities . 63 4.4.1 Participants’ perceptions of masculinity . 63 4.4.2 Masculinity in sport . 65 4.4.3 The influence of masculinities on asthma medication management . 66 4.5 Summary of findings . 67 Chapter Five: Discussion . 70 5.
Cost effectiveness of extended treatment with low molecular weight heparin (dalteparin) in unstable coronary artery disease: results from the FRISC II trial

Background: In unstable coronary artery disease short term treatment with low molecular weight heparin in addition to aspirin has been shown to be effective. Objective: To assess the cost effectiveness of extended treatment with dalteparin in patients managed with a non-invasive treatment strategy. Design: Prospective, randomised, multicentre study. Setting: 58 centres in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, of which 16 were interventional. Patients: After at least five days’ treatment with open label dalteparin, 2267 patients were randomised to continue double blind treatment with either subcutaneous dalteparin twice daily or placebo for three months. The patients’ use of health service resources was recorded prospectively. Main outcome measure: Death/myocardial infarction. Results: After one month into the double blind period there was a 47% relative reduction in death or myocardial infarction in the dalteparin group compared with the placebo group (p = 0.002). There was a non-significant mean cost difference, favouring the placebo group, of 849 Swedish crowns (SEK) per patient (equivalent to £58). The incremental cost effectiveness ratio for giving dalteparin treatment for one month was SEK 30 300 (range −78 000 to 139 000) (£2060, range −£5300 to £9400) per avoided death or myocardial infarct. At three months, the decrease in death or myocardial infarction was not significant, precluding cost effectiveness analyses. Conclusions: There is a marginal and non-significant increase in costs for one month of extended dalteparin treatment compared with placebo. Extended dalteparin treatment lowers the risk of death or myocardial infarction in patients with unstable coronary artery disease. While in many countries the resources for early intervention are limited, extended dalteparin treatment up to one month is a cost effective bridge to invasive intervention.
Automatic Acquisition of English Topic Signatures Based on a Second Language

We present a novel approach for automatically acquiring English topic signatures. Given a particular concept, or word sense, a topic signature is a set of words that tend to co-occur with it. Topic signatures can be useful in a number of Natural Language Processing (NLP) applications, such as Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD) and Text Summarisation. Our method takes advantage of the different way in which word senses are lexicalised in English and Chinese, and also exploits the large amount of Chinese text available in corpora and on the Web. We evaluated the topic signatures on a WSD task, where we trained a second-order vector cooccurrence algorithm on standard WSD datasets, with promising results.
UV induced ubiquitination of the yeast Rad4–Rad23 complex promotes survival by regulating cellular dNTP pools

Regulating gene expression programmes is a central facet of the DNA damage response. The Dun1 kinase protein controls expression of many DNA damage induced genes, including the ribonucleotide reductase genes, which regulate cellular dNTP pools. Using a combination of gene expression profiling and chromatin immunoprecipitation, we demonstrate that in the absence of DNA damage the yeast Rad4–Rad23 nucleotide excision repair complex binds to the promoters of certain DNA damage response genes including DUN1, inhibiting their expression. UV radiation promotes the loss of occupancy of the Rad4–Rad23 complex from the regulatory regions of these genes, enabling their induction and thereby controlling the production of dNTPs. We demonstrate that this regulatory mechanism, which is dependent on the ubiquitination of Rad4 by the GG-NER E3 ligase, promotes UV survival in yeast cells. These results support an unanticipated regulatory mechanism that integrates ubiquitination of NER DNA repair factors with the regulation of the transcriptional response controlling dNTP production and cellular survival after UV damage.
JConqurr - A Multi-Core Programming Toolkit for Java

—With the popularity of the multi-core and many-core architectures there is a great requirement for software frameworks which can support parallel programming methodologies. In this paper we introduce an Eclipse toolkit, JConqurr which is easy to use and provides robust support for ﬂexible parallel progrmaming. JConqurr is a multi-core and many-core programming toolkit for Java which is capable of providing support for common parallel programming patterns which include task, data, divide and conquer and pipeline parallelism. The toolkit uses an annotation and a directive mechanism to convert the sequential code into parallel code. In addition to that we have proposed a novel mechanism to achieve the parallelism using graphical processing units (GPU). Experiments with common parallelizable algorithms have shown that our toolkit can be easily and efﬁciently used to convert sequential code to parallel code and signiﬁcant performance gains can be achieved.
Control of robotic swarm behaviors based on smoothed particle hydrodynamics

The paper presents a fluid dynamics based framework for control of emergent behaviors of robot swarms that are modeled as fluids. A distributed low-level control mechanism is developed based on Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) and it is coupled with a high-level control layer that is responsible for the control of fluid parameters to generate desired behaviors from the swarming characteristics of the robots. It is shown by simulations that using the same low-level SPH model, different swarming behaviors can emerge from the local interactions of robots according to the settings of the fluid parameters that are controlled by the high-level control layer.
MAPTRAITS 2014: The First Audio/Visual Mapping Personality Traits Challenge

The Audio/Visual Mapping Personality Challenge and Workshop (MAPTRAITS) is a competition event aimed at the comparison of signal processing and machine learning methods for automatic visual, vocal and/or audio-visual analysis of personality traits and social dimensions, namely, extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, openness, engagement, facial attractiveness, vocal attractiveness, and likability. The MAPTRAITS Challenge aims to bring forth existing efforts and major accomplishments in modelling and analysis of personality and social dimensions in both quantised and continuous time and space. This paper provides the details of the two Sub-Challenges, their conditions, datasets, labels and baseline features that made available to the researchers who are interested in taking part in this challenge and workshop.
A Locality-Preserving Write Buffer Design for Page-Mapping Multichannel SSDs

Advanced SSDs employ a RAM-based write buffer to improve their write performance. The buffer intentionally delays write requests in order to reduce flash write traffic and reorders them to minimize the cost of garbage collection. This work presents a novel buffer algorithm for page-mapping multichannel SSDs. We propose grouping temporally or spatially correlated buffer pages and writing these grouped buffer pages to the same flash block. This strategy dramatically increases the probability of bulk data invalidations in flash blocks. In multichannel architectures, channels are assigned to their own groups of buffer pages for writing, and so channel striping does not divide a group of correlated buffer pages into small pieces. We have conducted simulations and experiments using a SSD simulator and a real SSD platform, respectively. Our results show that our design greatly outperforms existing buffer algorithms.
The Safety of Domestic Robotics: A Survey of Various Safety-Related Publications

Different branches of technology are striving to come up with new advancements that will enhance civilization and ultimately improve the quality of life. In the robotics community, strides have been made to bring the use of personal robots in office and home environments on the horizon. Safety is one of the critical issues that must be guaranteed for the successful acceptance, deployment, and utilization of domestic robots. Unlike the barrier-based operational safety guarantee that is widely used in industrial robotics, safety in domestic robotics deals with a number of issues, such as intrinsic safety, collision avoidance, human detection, and advanced control techniques. In the last decade, a number of researchers have presented their works that highlighted the issue of safety in a specific part of the complete domestic robotics system. This article presents a general survey of various safety-related publications that focus on safety criteria and metrics, mechanical design and actuation, and controller design.
Assessment of the prognostic value of the 8th AJCC staging system for patients with clinically staged prostate cancer; A time to sub-classify stage IV?

Background The American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) staging system (8th edition) for prostate cancer has been published. The current study seeks to validate the prognostic performance of the changes in the new system among clinically staged prostate cancer patients registered within the surveillance, epidemiology and end results (SEER) database. Methods SEER database (2004–2014) has been accessed through SEER*Stat program and AJCC 7th and 8th edition stages were calculated utilizing T, N and M stages as well as baseline prostatic specific antigen (PSA) and grade group. Cancer-specific and overall survival analyses according to 6th, 7th and 8th editions were conducted through Kaplan-Meier analysis. Moreover, multivariate analysis was conducted through a Cox proportional hazard model. Results A total of 110499 patients with prostate cancer were identified in the period from 2004-2014.For cancer- specific survival according to 8th AJCC, all pair wise P values for comparison were significant (<0.01) except for stage IIA vs. IIB; while for overall survival according to 8th AJCC, all pair wise P values for comparison were significant (<0.02) except for stage IIIA vs. IIIB. Results of c-index assessment for cancer-specific survival for the three AJCC editions were as follows: c-index for AJCC 6th edition was 0.816; c-index for AJCC 7th edition was 0.897; c-index for AJCC 8th edition was 0.907. For stage IVB prostate cancer (i.e.M1 disease), further sub-staging was proposed according to M1 sub-stage (i.e. M1a, M1b and M1c). Pair wise comparison between these proposed sub-stages was conducted for both cancer-specific and overall survival. For both cancer-specific and overall survival, all pair wise P values for comparisons were <0.0001. Conclusion Compared to older staging systems (6th and 7th), the 8th system is more discriminatory. Further sub-classification of stage IV disease is suggested.
Chronic Alcohol Consumption Is a Major Risk Factor for Pancreatic Necrosis in Acute Pancreatitis

BACKGROUND:Much of the late morbidity and mortality of acute pancreatitis (AP) is attributed to complications of pancreatic necrosis (PNEC). Early diagnosis of PNEC in high-risk patients is critical to management. Hemoconcentration is one risk factor for PNEC, but additional risk factors are likely implicated.AIMS:(1) To evaluate a series of preselected clinical factors in a prospectively collected cohort with AP to identify risk factors for PNEC and (2) to verify the relative risk of any newly identified factor(s) by retrospective analysis of a large patient cohort.METHODS:Phase I: 102 AP patients were prospectively ascertained, of which 77 (mean age 49 yr; 35 women, 42 men) underwent contrast-enhanced computerized tomography (CECT) and were studied. Eleven subjects developed PNEC (14%). Binary logistic regression was performed to identify any clinical factors associated with PNEC. Phase II: 1,474 anonymized patients admitted to the hospital with a diagnosis of AP were electronically reviewed to identify 359 subjects (mean age 54 yr; 157 women, 202 men) with AP and CECT. Seventy-six of these patients (21%) exhibited CECT evidence of PNEC. The associations found in the Phase I group were compared with Phase II by logistic regression analysis.RESULTS:In Phase I, only chronic alcohol consumption was identified as a significant new risk factor for the development of PNEC (6/19 vs 5/58, p = 0.02, OR 4.8, CI 1.27–18.2). In Phase II, it was verified that excessive alcohol consumption was a significant risk factor for PNEC (18/52 vs 58/307, p = 0.012, OR 2.27, CI 1.19–4.30). CONCLUSION:Chronic alcohol consumption seems to constitute a strong risk factor for PNEC.
Robust Logo Recognition for Mobile Phone Applications

In the paper, a new recognition method for logos imaged by mobile phone cameras is presented which can be incorporated with mobile phone services for use in enterprise identification, corporate website access, traffic sign reading, security check, content awareness, and the related applications. The main challenge in applying the logo recognition for mobile phone applications is the inevitable photometric and geometric transformations encountered when a handheld mobile phone camera operates at a varying viewpoint under different lighting environments. A new distinctive logo feature vector and an associated similarity measure are proposed for logo recognition using the Zernike moment (ZM) phase information. The discriminative power of the new logo recognition method is compared with three major existing methods. The experimental results indicate that the proposed ZM phase method has the best performance in terms of the precision and recall criterion under the above inevitable imaging variations. An analysis on the performances of the four recognition methods is given to account for the performance discrepancy.
A Novel Role for Banana MaASR in the Regulation of Flowering Time in Transgenic Arabidopsis

The abscisic acid (ABA)-, stress-, and ripening-induced (ASR) protein is a plant-specific hydrophilic transcriptional factor involved in fruit ripening and the abiotic stress response. To date, there have been no studies on the role of ASR genes in delayed flowering time. Here, we found that the ASR from banana, designated as MaASR, was preferentially expressed in the banana female flowers from the eighth, fourth, and first cluster of the inflorescence. MaASR transgenic lines (L14 and L38) had a clear delayed-flowering phenotype. The number of rosette leaves, sepals, and pedicel trichomes in L14 and L38 was greater than in the wild type (WT) under long day (LD) conditions. The period of buds, mid-flowers, and full bloom of L14 and L38 appeared later than the WT. cDNA microarray and quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) analyses revealed that overexpression of MaASR delays flowering through reduced expression of several genes, including photoperiod pathway genes, vernalization pathway genes, gibberellic acid pathway genes, and floral integrator genes, under short days (SD) for 28 d (from vegetative to reproductive transition stage); however, the expression of the autonomous pathway genes was not affected. This study provides the first evidence of a role for ASR genes in delayed flowering time in plants.
The Effects of Spatial Endogenous Pre-cueing across Eccentricities

Frequently, we use expectations about likely locations of a target to guide the allocation of our attention. Despite the importance of this attentional process in everyday tasks, examination of pre-cueing effects on attention, particularly endogenous pre-cueing effects, has been relatively little explored outside an eccentricity of 20°. Given the visual field has functional subdivisions that attentional processes can differ significantly among the foveal, perifoveal, and more peripheral areas, how endogenous pre-cues that carry spatial information of targets influence our allocation of attention across a large visual field (especially in the more peripheral areas) remains unclear. We present two experiments examining how the expectation of the location of the target shapes the distribution of attention across eccentricities in the visual field. We measured participants’ ability to pick out a target among distractors in the visual field after the presentation of a highly valid cue indicating the size of the area in which the target was likely to occur, or the likely direction of the target (left or right side of the display). Our first experiment showed that participants had a higher target detection rate with faster responses, particularly at eccentricities of 20° and 30°. There was also a marginal advantage of pre-cueing effects when trials of the same size cue were blocked compared to when trials were mixed. Experiment 2 demonstrated a higher target detection rate when the target occurred at the cued direction. This pre-cueing effect was greater at larger eccentricities and with a longer cue-target interval. Our findings on the endogenous pre-cueing effects across a large visual area were summarized using a simple model to assist in conceptualizing the modifications of the distribution of attention over the visual field. We discuss our finding in light of cognitive penetration of perception, and highlight the importance of examining attentional process across a large area of the visual field.
You Gotta Work at It

Treatments for severe depression have moderate success rates, often take many weeks to yield responses, and are often followed by relapse or recurrence. Neurobehavioral interventions address these limitations by targeting mechanisms of cognitive and emotional dysregulation directly. This study extends data and observations from a pilot study examining effects of 2 weeks (6 sessions) of adjunctive cognitive control training exercises added to medication and psychotherapy in severely depressed patients. We examined acute effects and predictors of change in rumination, and long-term effects on service utilization. Compared with treatment as usual, exercises were associated with decreases in rumination and decreased use of intensive outpatient services in the following year. Responses were strongest among patients who displayed physiological indicators (pupillary oscillations at the task frequency) of task engagement before the intervention. These indices changed following intervention, suggesting that the intervention required capitalization on relevant attentional mechanisms and addressed fundamental emotional processes through their cognitive substrates.
Cardiovascular nuclear magnetic resonance: basic and clinical applications.

Conflict of interest: The authors have declared that no conflict of interest exists. Nonstandard abbreviations used: magnetic resonance (MR); echo-planar imaging (EPI); cardiovascular MR (CMR); volume of interest (VOI); chemical shift imaging (CSI); image-selected in vivo spectroscopy (ISIS); spatial response function (SRF); radiofrequency (RF); gadolinium-diethyleneaminepentaacetate (Gd-DTPA); phosphocreatine (PCr); inorganic phosphate (Pi); tricarboxylic acid (TCA); spin-lattice relaxation time (T1); spin-spin relaxation time (T2); change in spin-spin relaxation time due to magnetic field inhomogeniety (T2*).
Relationship Satisfaction in B2B E-Commerce Trading Partnerships: The Countervailing Effects of Risk and Trust

This study investigates the antecedents of relationship satisfaction between B2B e-commerce trading partners. Relationship satisfaction is critical for sustaining long-term interorganizational relationships that allow for the development of interorganizational resources necessary to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. Using the relational view of the firm (Dyer and Singh, 1998) as a theoretical foundation, a research model is developed to investigate the direct and counterbalancing effects of organizational trust in the trading partner and trading partner B2B e-commerce risk on organizational relationship satisfaction. In addition, the indirect effects of justice and commitment are also considered. Using a field survey, data are collected from 205 managers involved in B2B e-commerce trading partnerships and evaluated using structural equation modeling. The results support all hypotheses and provide good model fit, strong explanatory power, and strong support for the theory. The findings indicate that justice perceptions and commitment are instrumental to the formation of trust within the context of a B2B e-commerce trading relationship. In turn, trust enhances relationship satisfaction. However, risk diminishes relationship satisfaction, thereby serving as a counterpoint to the positive effects of trust. This study makes contributions to interorganizational and accounting information systems research. First, this study addresses concerns on the relationship between risk and trust (Miller et al., 2008) by developing and testing the distinct and countervailing effects of risk and trust on B2B e-commerce partnerships. Second, this study contributes to research investigating interorganizational perceptions of procedural and distributive justice and the influence of justice perceptions on trading relationships (Luo, 2005; Beugre and Acar, 2008). Finally, this study addresses the call to acknowledge and consider the critical role of information technology in interorganizational relationships (Cuganesan and Lee, 2006; Granland, 2011).