Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Can combining different risk interventions into a single formulation contribute to improved cardiovascular disease risk reduction? The single pill of amlodipine/atorvastatin

In order to prevent cardiovascular events, it is essential to effectively manage overall risk of cardiovascular disease. However, despite guideline recommendations to this effect, current management of the major, modifiable cardiovascular risk factors such as hypertension and dyslipidemia is disconnected and patient adherence to therapy is poor. This is particularly important for patients with multiple cardiovascular risk factors, who are often prescribed multiple medications. The JEWEL study program investigated the use of single-pill amlodipine/atorvastatin as a strategy to improve management of these patients. The JEWEL program consisted of two 16-week, international, open-label, multicenter, titration-to-goal studies in patients with hypertension and dyslipidemia. The two studies differed based on country of enrollment and certain tertiary endpoints, but the overall designs were very similar. Patients were enrolled from 255 centers across Canada and 13 European countries. The study was designed to assess the efficacy, safety, and utility of amlodipine/atorvastatin single-pill therapy in a real-world setting. Patients were initiated at a dose of amlodipine 5 mg/atorvastatin 10 mg, unless previously treated, and were uptitrated as necessary. The primary efficacy parameter was the percentage of patients, at different levels of cardiovascular risk, achieving country-specific guideline-recommended target levels for blood pressure and lipids. A secondary analysis of efficacy measured attainment of the same single goal for blood pressure across all study participants (JEWEL I and II) and the same single goal for LDL-C across all study participants (JEWEL I and II). The program utilized a newly developed questionnaire to gain better understanding of participants’ beliefs and behaviors towards medical treatment of their multiple risk factors. Approximately 2850 patients were enrolled in the program, which was completed in August 2005. The JEWEL program assessed the effectiveness of a single pill (amlodipine/atorvastatin) in targeting the two principal risk factors for cardiovascular disease simultaneously to achieve nationally applicable treatment targets in a routine clinical practice setting.
An Empirical Study of Sentiment Analysis for Chinese Microblogging

This paper used three machine learning algorithms, three kinds of feature selection methods and three feature weight methods to study the sentiment classification for Chinese microblogging. The experimental results indicate that the performance of SVM is best in three machine learning algorithms; IG is the better feature selection method compared to the other methods, and TF-IDF is best fit for the sentiment classification in Chinese microblogging. Combining the three factors the conclusion can be drawn that the performance of combination of SVM, IG and TF-IDF is best.
Photodynamical mass determination of the multiplanetary system K2-19

K2-19 is the second multiplanetary system discovered with K2 observations. The system is composed of two Neptune size planets close to the 3: 2 mean-motion resonance. To better characterize the system we obtained two additional transit observations of K2-19b and five additional radial velocity observations. These were combined with K2 data and fitted simultaneously with the system dynamics ( photodynamical model) which increases the precision of the transit time measurements. The higher transit time precision allows us to detect the chopping signal of the dynamic interaction of the planets that in turn permits to uniquely characterize the system. Although the reflex motion of the star was not detected, dynamic modelling of the system allowed us to derive planetary masses of M-b = 44 +/- 12 M-circle plus and M-c = 15.9 +/- 7.0 M-circle plus for the inner and the outer planets, respectively, leading to densities close to Uranus. We also show that our method allows the derivation of mass ratios using only the 80 d of observations during the first campaign of K2.
A Statistical Approach for Handwritten Character Recognition Using Bayesian Filter

This paper proposes a new handwritten character recognition method using a statistical technique based on Bayes' theorem. This technique is the so-called Bayesian filter. The Bayesian filter was originally intended for spam mail recognition, and is known to be a very effective approach. Consequently, we applied the Bayesian filter method to recognition of handwritten characters read by a scanner. Experimental results indicated that the proposed method has high recognition performance in spite its simplicity.
Adaptation and Performance of Covert Channels in Dynamic Source Routing

Advancements in ad-hoc wireless network routing protocols have raced to keep up with the demands of a less structured, mobile, and dynamic routing environment. Along with the rapid development of these protocols, new forms of attacks and exploitations have begun to raise security issues in data transmission. Current ad-hoc mobile network protocols allow for the presence of covert channels, which create secret information transfer across an otherwise secure network policy. In this paper, we present several methods of data encoding and undetectable communication transfer between nodes in the Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) protocol. The DSR protocol uses source routing rather than the hop-by-hop routing used by the majority of other protocols, which eliminates the need for frequent route advertisement and neighbor detection packets. Unlike covert channels seen in other protocols such as the Ad-hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV) protocol, due to promiscuous listening and salvaging by intermediate node route caches, a destination node in a DSR network does not always receive routing packets sent from an originating sender node. We therefore present several methods of covert communication which guarantee covert information delivery. We also explore methods of detection and prevention from this manipulation of network resources, and provide a frame of comparison for the protocol’s capacity for covert channels versus other network routing protocols. The comparison demonstrates that covert channels in DSR are sometimes impossible to detect; however, measures such as aggressive cache cleanup, neighborhood watches, and digital signatures on forwarded request packets can provide a backdrop of security against malicious users.
The SMAs: Neural Substrate of the Temporal Accumulator?

One of the most widely cited models in time estimation is the “pacemaker-counter clock” which consists of a pacemaker generating pulses and an accumulator in which pulses are stored. The level reached in this accumulator at the end of an interval to be estimated sets the subjective elapsed time. Although this model is able to accurately describe temporal performance, it can nevertheless be considered no more than a good metaphor of actual temporal processing mechanisms. Finding specific brain areas behaving as a pacemaker and/or as an accumulator would provide additional support for this model. Evidence has now been amassed suggesting that the SMAs could be a neural substrate of the accumulator.
Are employability and entrepreneurial measures for higher education relevant? Introducing AGILE reflection

This article considers the relevance of current measures of employability and entrepreneurial (E&E) outcomes for evaluating the longer term value of a course of higher education (HE) study. HE stakeholders continue to discuss whether exit performance metrics engender positive or negative responses, with educators arguing that E&E outcomes should not focus heavily on hard skills, but should take into account a broader range of behavioural, attitudinal and mindset changes, claiming that these provide greater longitudinal value for graduates. Through a critical review of literature and models, the article explores the effectiveness of HE first-destination metrics in capturing E&E outcomes; whether explicit links exist between the metrics and outcomes; and what role students have in developing a narrative of their own E&E outcomes. The discussion examines ‘atheoretical’ perspectives in E&E education and issues of generalizability due to contextual variability, but identifies common key mindset dimensions that are incorporated into a proposed ‘AGILE’ learning tool so that students can reflect and develop a narrative of their E&E-related development against: adaptable, gatherer, identity awareness, life-long learning and enterprising capabilities. Thus, it sets out an approach that HE stakeholders may wish to consider embedding in their own curricula, which places the onus on students to reflect, self-evaluate and record personalized ‘small wins’.
Analyzing the Spectrum of Asset Returns: Jump and Volatility Components in High Frequency Data

This paper describes a simple yet powerful methodology to decompose asset returns sampled at high frequency into their base components (continuous, small jumps, large jumps), determine the relative magnitude of the components, and analyze the finer characteristics of these components such as the degree of activity of the jumps. We extend the existing theory to incorporate to effect of market microstructure noise on the test statistics, apply the methodology to high frequency individual stock returns, transactions and quotes, stock index returns and compare the qualitative features of the estimated process for these different data and discuss the economic implications of the results.
The consequences of alcohol measure: psychometric evaluation of a new measure of positive and negative consequences of alcohol use

Alcohol is a widely used substance among university students. There are several measures that are used to assess the consequences of alcohol consumption. However, current instruments fail to capture several behavioural consequences established in literature. Negative consequences missing from existing measures are related to sexual behaviour, suicidal and non-suicidal selfinjury, and criminal and delinquent behaviour. In addition to negative consequences, positive consequences have been neglected from these measures. The goal of this research was to develop a new measure that addresses these gaps. In Study One, items from current and widely used measures in research and clinical applications, as well as newly developed items, were administered to a sample of undergraduate students. Factor analysis and item performance indices (e.g., item to total scale correlations, item variance, relationship to desirable responding) were used to construct a new scale. In Study Two, the new scale was administered to assess indices of reliability and validity. Although many of the new behavioural consequences (e.g., suicidality, eating behaviours, and aggression) were eliminated from the scale through empirical methods of item retention, the final scale was found to perform well across nearly all indices; there was strong evidence of construct, concurrent, and convergent validity. The final scale was comprised of positive and negative consequences, with an index for valence ratings. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. ii ABSTRACT. iii LIST OF TABLES. vii LIST OF FIGURES. ix CHAPTER
Culturally Motivated Remembering: The Moderating Role of Culture for the Relation of Episodic Memory to Well-Being

Episodic memory for specific personal events is a fundamental human cognitive faculty. Yet it is variably valued across cultures and may thus have different implications for psychological well-being. In a series of studies, we investigated the consequences of cultural fit in detailed episodic recall for psychological well-being among healthy adults and children from European American and East Asian cultural backgrounds. Participants recalled recent and distant personal events (Studies 1, 2, and 3) or recent positive and negative events (Study 4). The findings showed that culture moderated the relation of episodic memory to various aspects of mental health and well-being. Whereas detailed recall was linked to decreased use of avoidant coping among European Americans, it was associated with elevated depressive symptoms, decreased adaptive skills, and increased negative affect among East Asians. The findings support the person-culture-fit framework and suggest that the functional significance of episodic memory depends on cultural contexts.
Time Will Show: Real Time Predictions during Interpersonal Action Perception

Predictive processes are crucial not only for interpreting the actions of individual agents, but also to predict how, in the context of a social interaction between two agents, the actions of one agent relate to the actions of a second agent. In the present study we investigated whether, in the context of a communicative interaction between two agents, observers can use the actions of one agent to predict when the action of a second agent will take place. Participants observed point-light displays of two agents (A and B) performing separate actions. In the communicative condition, the action performed by agent B responded to a communicative gesture performed by agent A. In the individual condition, agent A's communicative action was substituted with a non-communicative action. For each condition, we manipulated the temporal coupling of the actions of the two agents, by varying the onset of agent A's action. Using a simultaneous masking detection task, we demonstrated that the timing manipulation had a critical effect on the communicative condition, with the visual discrimination of agent B increasing linearly while approaching the original interaction timing. No effect of the timing manipulation was found for the individual condition. Our finding complements and extends previous evidence for interpersonal predictive coding, suggesting that the communicative gestures of one agent can serve not only to predict what the second agent will do, but also when his/her action will take place.
Parallelization and Optimization of SIFT on GPU Using CUDA

Scale-invariant feature transform (SIFT) based feature extraction algorithm is widely applied to extract features from images, and it is very attractive to accelerate these SIFT based algorithms on GPU. In this paper, we present several parallel computing strategies, implement and optimize the SIFT algorithm using CUDA programming model on GPU. Each stage of SIFT is analyzed in detail to choose the parallel strategy. On the basis of the elementary CUDA-SIFT and CUDA architecture, we optimize the implementation from several aspects to speedup the CUDA-SIFT. Experimental results demonstrate that our implementation after optimization is 2.5 times faster than previous optimization, and our CUDA based SIFT can run at the speed of 20 frames per second on most images with 1280×960 resolution in the test. Using 1920×1440 image to test, we have obtained a speed of 11 frames per second on average, which is about 60 times faster than the CPU implementation of SIFT. In short, our implementation obtains appropriate accuracy and higher efficiency compared to CPU implementations and other GPU implementations, which is attributed to our dedicated optimization strategies.
he time-course of global and local attentional guidance in Kanizsa-figure etection

Object configurations can be perceptually represented at various hierarchical levels. For example, in visual search, global Kanizsa figures are detected efficiently, whereas search for local groupings is inefficient, with similarity-dependent nontarget interference arising at the hierarchical level that defines the target (Conci, Müller, & Elliott, 2007). The present study was designed to examine the electrophysiological correlates of this global–local search asymmetry. The results revealed differences between hierarchical object levels to be evident throughout a number of processing stages: search for a global, versus a local, target elicited larger amplitudes in early sensory components (P1, N1). Moreover, the efficiency of attenanizsa figure erceptual grouping ocal/global processing vent-related potentials tional orienting towards a target was mirrored in the Posterior Contralateral Negativity (PCN), with PCN latencies being substantially delayed (by ∼70 ms) with local, versus global, targets. Finally, late components (P3 and slow wave—SW) reflected the overall search efficiency, which was determined by both the hierarchical level at which the target was defined and the similarity-based nontarget interference. Taken together, this pattern shows that multiple, sequential processes of object completion contribute to the f a glo
Minor Role of Plasminogen in Complement Activation on Cell Surfaces

Atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome (aHUS) is a rare, but severe thrombotic microangiopathy. In roughly two thirds of the patients, mutations in complement genes lead to uncontrolled activation of the complement system against self cells. Recently, aHUS patients were described with deficiency of the fibrinolytic protein plasminogen. This zymogen and its protease form plasmin have both been shown to interact with complement proteins in the fluid phase. In this work we studied the potential of plasminogen to restrict complement propagation. In hemolytic assays, plasminogen inhibited complement activation, but only when it had been exogenously activated to plasmin and when it was used at disproportionately high concentrations compared to serum. Addition of only the zymogen plasminogen into serum did not hinder complement-mediated lysis of erythrocytes. Plasminogen could not restrict deposition of complement activation products on endothelial cells either, as was shown with flow cytometry. With platelets, a very weak inhibitory effect on deposition of C3 fragments was observed, but it was considered too weak to be significant for disease pathogenesis. Thus it was concluded that plasminogen is not an important regulator of complement on self cells. Instead, addition of plasminogen was shown to clearly hinder platelet aggregation in serum. This was attributed to plasmin causing disintegration of formed platelet aggregates. We propose that reduced proteolytic activity of plasmin on structures of growing thrombi, rather than on complement activation fragments, explains the association of plasminogen deficiency with aHUS. This adds to the emerging view that factors unrelated to the complement system can also be central to aHUS pathogenesis and suggests that future research on the mechanism of the disease should expand beyond complement dysregulation.
Late Cretaceous Volcanoplutonic Arcs in Northwestern British Columbia: Implications for Porphyry and Epithermal Deposits

2003). Recognizing the presence, types of deposits, and age of the mineralized volcanoplutonic complexes in under-explored terranes is an important step toward identifying the metallogenic potential of a terrane as a means to aid exploration. Historically in British Columbia (BC), porphyry Cu deposits have dominated exploration and mining activity (
Overstating the Role of Environmental Factors in Success: A Cautionary Note

Several currently popular areas of research—brain training, mind-set, grit, deliberate practice, and the bilingual advantage—are premised on the idea that environmental factors are the overwhelming determinants of success in real-world pursuits. Here, we describe the major claims from each of these areas of research and discuss evidence for these claims, particularly focusing on meta-analyses. We suggest that overemphasizing the malleability of abilities and other traits can have negative consequences for individuals, science, and society. We conclude with a call for balanced appraisals of the available evidence concerning this issue, to reflect current scientific discrepancies and thereby enable informed individual decisions and collective policies.
Cardioversion using feedback stimuli in human atria

Beatbox, a novel cardiac simulation environment, was used to study low amplitude human atrial cardioversion. Chronic atrial fibrillation (CAF) was simulated using the Courtemanche et al. cell model with reduced ICaL and increased IK1 current conductances. In 2D and 3D models, re-entry was induced using the phase distribution method. The feedback stimulation method was applied to eliminate such re-entry under CAF conditions. CAF dramatically reduced action potential duration by 47%. Under CAF conditions, a single threshold amplitude shock of 4.5 pA/pF eliminated the stable reentry. In 2D simulations, multiple feedback induced stimuli of 1 pA/pF caused re-entrant waves to migrate out of the 2D tissue. In 3D CAF simulation, feedback induced stimuli also caused the re-entrant wave migration eventually eliminating the re-entry. The effectiveness of the cardioversion method is affected by the 3D anatomy and warrants further studies.
Approximation of Nonnegative Systems by Finite Impulse Response Convolutions

We pose the deterministic, nonparametric, approximation problem for scalar nonnegative input/output systems via finite impulse response convolutions, based on repeated observations of input/output signal pairs. The problem is converted into a nonnegative matrix factorization with special structure for which we useCsiszár's I-divergenceas the criterion of optimality. Conditions are given, on the input/output data, that guarantee the existence and uniqueness of the minimum. We propose an algorithm of the alternating minimization type for I-divergence minimization, and study its asymptotic behavior. For the case of noisy observations, we give the large sample properties of the statistical version of the minimization problem. Numerical experiments confirm the asymptotic results and exhibit the fast convergence of the proposed algorithm.
On the Performance of an Array-Based ADT for OLAP Workloads

There is currently a raging debate among OLAP vendors on the best way to provide OLAP func-tionality: Relational OLAP (ROLAP) vendors advocate using sophisticated front ends to provide a multidimensional view of a standard relational database, whereas Multidimensional OLAP (MOLAP) vendors provide custom servers that generally store their data as arrays (instead of tables.) An important question in this debate is the relative performance of arrays vs. tables for common OLAP operations. To shed some light on this question, we have implemented a MOLAP Abstract Data Type (ADT), which uses a multidimensional array as its principle storage mechanism, within the Paradise object-relational DBMS. Using this implementation, we have studied MOLAP and ROLAP performance on the same DBMS platform (by using either the MOLAP ADT or standard relational tables.) In particular, we have compared a new MOLAP consolidation algorithm with three ROLAP consolidation algorithms, and found that our MOLAP implementation signiicantly outperforms ROLAP both in terms of disk storage and query execution time. This suggests that the ADT mechanism of object-relational database systems is useful for constructing hybrid solutions that provide the beneets of both ROLAP and MOLAP systems.
The Relation between Rumination and Emotional Reactions to Infidelity in Romantic Relationships

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between rumination and emotional reactions to infidelity. The sample of the study consisted of 72 participants from Turkey who reported being cheated on by their dating relationship. A Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (Watson et al. 1988) was used to measure the reactions to infidelity and the Ruminative Response Scale (Treynor et al. 2003) was used to measure rumination. Canonical correlation analyses were utilized to determine the relationships between rumination with the canonical variables of Brooding and Reflection and the emotional reactions to infidelity with the canonical variables of Positive Affect and the Negative Affect of participants. Results indicated that brooding and reflection, and negative and positive effects are interrelated. In other words, rumination is positively related with negative effects and negatively related with positive effects as reactions to infidelity.