Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
PUS in turbulent times II – A shifting vocabulary that brokers inter-disciplinary knowledge

To reflect further on 20 years of the journal, we present a lexicographic and bibliometric study of all papers published in Public Understanding of Science (PUS). Lexicographical analysis of the vocabulary of 465 abstracts shows five classes of associated concepts in two periods, 1992–2001 and 2002–2010. The concern for public attitudes and mass media coverage remains on the card; while language has shifted from ‘public understanding’ to ‘public engagement’ and environmental concerns have waned then waxed. The bibliometric analysis traces the position of PUS in the inter-citation network of 165 related journals (ISI Web of Science citation database), grouped into 10 disciplines for the purpose of this analysis. Indicators derived from network logic show that the established position of PUS has been stable since 1997. PUS serves a varied brokerage role as gatekeeper into and liaison maker between disciplines. Its inter-citation network position allows PUS to perform inter-disciplinary boundary spanning work that offers a safe space for experimentation with ideas.
Eye-Distance Based Mask Selection for Person Identification

This paper presents a multi-resolution masks based pattern matching method for person identification. The system is commenced with the construction of multi-resolution mask cluster pyramid, where the mask size is chosen depending on the distance between two eyes, computed from the detected face. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the system with significantly higher precision, recall rates and matching probability comparing with conventional single resolution mask based person identification systems.
Scaling consideration on local hotspot for Si MOSFETs - for device length scale typically larger than 100 nm

Non-equilibrium thermal characteristics in Si MOSFETs are considered. Both lumped and rigorous electro-thermal model are deployed to examine the device lattice and electron temperatures. Non-equilibrium nature of electrons and phonons becomes important for devices with gate length typically shorter than 10−6 m. Lumped model cannot capture the local heat generation distribution at the device level. Further discussion on the heat generation characteristics revealed that the hotspot predictions of devices typically shorter than 200 nm needs different strategy from larger devices.
Surface Flattening based on Linear-Elastic Finite Element Method

— This paper presents a linear-elastic finite element method based flattening algorithm for three dimensional triangular surfaces. First, an intrinsic characteristic preserving method is used to obtain the initial developing graph, which preserves the angles and length ratios between two adjacent edges. Then, an iterative equation is established based on linear-elastic finite element method and the flattening result with an equilibrium state of internal force is obtained by solving this iterative equation. The results show that complex surfaces can be dealt with this proposed method, which is an efficient tool for the applications in computer aided design, such as mould design.
Quality of Life Following Stroke: Negotiating Disability, Identity, and Resources

Residual physical and cognitive impairments following a stroke can pose a significant threat to a survivor’s quality of life. Yet, there is not always a direct one-to-one correlation between functional disability and subjective quality of life. This research investigated the complexity of factors that influence quality of life after stroke, using qualitative interviews. Results indicate that a stroke has a significant impact on the quality of life of survivors, but some individuals find ways to adapt to their functional disabilities and report a high quality of life. Common elements of this process consist of reordering priorities to focus on those activities considered most salient to an individual’s identity; then drawing on existing resources, including health services and social supports, to maintain a customary activity, even in a modified form, retaining salient aspects of the individual’s identity and maintaining a sense of continuity in his or her life.
The Concurrence of Eating Disorders with Histories of Child Abuse among Adolescents.

This study examined the relationship between eating disorders and reported history of physical or sexual abuse among male and female adolescents. A survey administered to high school students in a rural midwestern slate school system contained questions on eating behaviors, weight, lifestyle habits, parental substance abuse, and history of physical abuse, extrafamilial sex abuse and incest. Results showed that eating disorders were correlated with all three types of abuse. There were differences in prevalence of eating and weight problems and of child abuse according to gender and race. Presence of an eating disorder correlated with presence of other addictive behaviors, family history of substance abuse, and with low selfesteem, hopelessness and anxiety.
Psychoanalytic psychotherapy for bulimia nervosa: A manualized approach

A condensed version of a manual for two-year psychoanalytic psychotherapy for bulimia nervosa, developed for a clinical trial comparing psychoanalytic psychotherapy and cognitive behaviour therapy, is presented. The conceptualization of the psychopathology is outlined followed by a presentation of the specific principles of psychoanalytic psychotherapy for bulimia nervosa. The phases of the therapy and the adaptation of the therapy to different patterns of personality are described, and principles for training and supervision are outlined.
Stability of Whole Brain and Regional Network Topology within and between Resting and Cognitive States

Background Graph-theory based analyses of resting state functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) data have been used to map the network organization of the brain. While numerous analyses of resting state brain organization exist, many questions remain unexplored. The present study examines the stability of findings based on this approach over repeated resting state and working memory state sessions within the same individuals. This allows assessment of stability of network topology within the same state for both rest and working memory, and between rest and working memory as well. Methodology/Principal Findings fMRI scans were performed on five participants while at rest and while performing the 2-back working memory task five times each, with task state alternating while they were in the scanner. Voxel-based whole brain network analyses were performed on the resulting data along with analyses of functional connectivity in regions associated with resting state and working memory. Network topology was fairly stable across repeated sessions of the same task, but varied significantly between rest and working memory. In the whole brain analysis, local efficiency, Eloc, differed significantly between rest and working memory. Analyses of network statistics for the precuneus and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex revealed significant differences in degree as a function of task state for both regions and in local efficiency for the precuneus. Conversely, no significant differences were observed across repeated sessions of the same state. Conclusions/Significance These findings suggest that network topology is fairly stable within individuals across time for the same state, but also fluid between states. Whole brain voxel-based network analyses may prove to be a valuable tool for exploring how functional connectivity changes in response to task demands.
Synthesis and Antimicrobial Activity of Some New Pyrimidinone and Oxazinone Derivatives Fused with Thiophene Rings Using 2-Chloro-6-ethoxy-4-acetylpyridine as Starting Material

A series of pyridines, pyrimidinones, oxazinones and their derivatives were synthesized as antimicrobial agents using citrazinic acid (2,6-dihydroxyisonicotinic acid) as a starting material. α,β-Unsaturated ketones 3a–c were condensed with cyanothio-acetamide in the presence of ammonium acetate to give 2-cyanopyridinethiones 4a–c, which were reacted with ethyl chloroacetate to yield the corresponding cyano esters 5a–c. The esters 5a–c were cyclized by action of sodium methoxide to aminoesters 6a–c, which were aminolyzed with ammonia to corresponding aminoamide derivatives 7a-c. Also, the esters 6a–c were hydrolyzed with NaOH to the corresponding sodium salt 8a–c, which were treated with acetic anhydride to afford 2-methyloxazinones 9a–c. The latter compounds were treated with ammonium acetate to afford 2-methylpyrimidinones 10a–c, followed by methylation with methyl iodide to yield 2,3-dimethyl-pyrimidinones 11a–c. The antimicrobial screening showed that many of these compounds have good antibacterial and antifungal activities comparable to streptomycin and fusidic acid used as reference drugs.
Molecular mechanisms of cervical carcinogenesis by high‐risk human papillomaviruses: novel functions of E6 and E7 oncoproteins

Over the last two decades, since the initial discovery of human papillomavirus (HPV) type 16 and 18 DNAs in cervical cancers by Dr. Harald zur Hausen (winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 2008), the HPVs have been well characterised as causative agents for cervical cancer. Viral DNA from a specific group of HPVs can be detected in at least 90% of all cervical cancers and two viral genes, E6 and E7, are invariably expressed in HPV‐positive cervical cancer cells. Their gene products are known to inactivate the major tumour suppressors, p53 and retinoblastoma protein (pRB), respectively. In addition, one function of E6 is to activate telomerase, and E6 and E7 cooperate to effectively immortalise human primary epithelial cells. Though expression of E6 and E7 is itself not sufficient for cancer development, it seems to be either directly or indirectly involved in every stage of multi‐step carcinogenesis. Epidemiological and biological studies suggest the potential efficacy of prophylactic vaccines to prevent genital HPV infection as an anti‐cancer strategy. However, given the widespread nature of HPV infection and unresolved issues about the duration and type specificity of the currently available HPV vaccines, it is crucial that molecular details of the natural history of HPV infection as well as the biological activities of the viral oncoproteins be elucidated in order to provide the basis for development of new therapeutic strategies against HPV‐associated malignancies. This review highlights novel functions of E6 and E7 as well as the molecular mechanisms of HPV‐induced carcinogenesis. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
A swarm aggregation algorithm based on local interaction with actuator saturations and integrated obstacle avoidance

In this paper, a novel decentralized swarm aggregation algorithm for multi-robot systems with an integrated obstacle avoidance is proposed. In this framework, the interaction among robots is limited to their visibility neighborhood, i.e., robots that are within the visibility range of each other. Furthermore, to better comply with the hardware/software limitations of mobile robotic platforms, robots actuators are assumed to be saturated. A theoretical characterization of the main properties of the proposed swarm aggregation algorithm is provided. Simulations have been carried out to validate the theoretical results and experiments have been performed with a team of low-cost mobile robots to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in real scenario.
Emerging Research Methods

In this column, Butcher describes the unitary field pattern portrait research method he began to develop as part of his dissertation work and has continued to refine, based on his examination of Rogerian ontology and epistemology. This method is a form of hermeneutic-phenomenology designed to capture field pattern manifestations. He describes the steps of this method of inquiry and briefly describes four studies that used this method. Parse describes the processes of the Parse method then provides an example for one participant in a study on the lived experience of feeling respected. She then describes the processes of the human becoming hermeneutic method.
A Comparative Study Of Backpropagation Algorithms In Financial Prediction

Stock market price index prediction is a challenging task for investors and scholars. Artificial neural networks have been widely employed to predict financial stock market levels thanks to their ability to model nonlinear functions. The accuracy of backpropagation neural networks trained with different heuristic and numerical algorithms is measured for comparison purpose. It is found that numerical algorithm outperform heuristic techniques.
Parsimonious Data-Oriented Parsing

This paper explores a parsimonious approach to Data-Oriented Parsing. While allowing, in principle, all possible subtrees of trees in the treebank to be productive elements, our approach aims at nding a manageable subset of these trees that can accurately describe empirical distributions over phrase-structure trees. The proposed algorithm leads to computationally much more tracktable parsers, as well as linguistically more informative grammars. The parser is evaluated on the OVIS and WSJ corpora, and shows improvements on efciency, parse accuracy and testset likelihood. 1 Data-Oriented Parsing Data-Oriented Parsing (DOP) is a framework for statistical parsing and language modeling originally proposed by Scha (1990). Some of its innovations, although radical at the time, are now widely accepted: the use of fragments from the trees in an annotated corpus as the symbolic grammar (now known as itreebank grammarsi, Charniak, 1996) and inclusion of all statistical dependencies between nodes in the trees for disambiguation (the iallsubtrees approachi, Collins & Duffy, 2002). The best known instantiations of the DOPframework are due to Bod (1998; 2001; 2003), using the Probabilistic Tree Substitution Grammar (PTSG) formalism. Bod has advocated a maximalist approach to DOP, inducing grammars that contain all subtrees of all parse trees in the treebank, and using them to parse unknown sentences where all of these subtrees can potentially contribute to the most probable parse. Although Bod’s empirical results have been excellent, his maximalism poses important computational challenges that, although not necessarily unsolvable, threaten both the scalability to larger treebanks and the cognitive plausibility of the models. In this paper I explore a different approach to DOP, that I will call iParsimonious Data-Oriented Parsingi (P-DOP). This approach remains true to Scha’s original program, by allowing, in principle, all possible subtrees of trees in the treebank to be the productive elements. But unlike Bod’s approach, P-DOP aims at nding a succinct subset of such elementary trees, chosen such that it can still accurately describe observed distributions over phrasestructure trees. I will demonstrate that P-DOP leads to computationally more tracktable parsers, as well as linguistically more informative grammars. Moreover, as P-DOP is formulated as an enrichment of the treebank Probabilistic Context-free Grammar (PCFG), it allows for much easier comparison to alternative approaches to statistical parsing (Collins, 1997; Charniak, 1997; Johnson, 1998; Klein and Manning, 2003; Petrov et al., 2006).
Reference intervals for serum creatinine concentrations: assessment of available data for global application.

BACKGROUND Reference intervals for serum creatinine remain relevant despite the current emphasis on the use of the estimated glomerular filtration rate for assessing renal function. Many studies on creatinine reference values have been published in the last 20 years. Using criteria derived from published IFCC documents, we sought to identify universally applicable reference intervals for creatinine via a systematic review of the literature. METHODS Studies were selected for inclusion in the systematic review only if the following criteria were met: (a) reference individuals were selected using an "a priori" selection scheme, (b) preanalytical conditions were adequately described; (c) traceability of the produced results to the isotope dilution-mass spectrometry (IDMS) reference method was demonstrated experimentally, and (d) the collected data received adequate statistical treatment. RESULTS Of 37 reports dealing specifically with serum creatinine reference values, only 1 report with pediatric data and 5 reports with adult data met these criteria. The primary reason for exclusion of most papers was an inadequate demonstration of measurement traceability. Based on the data of the selected studies, we have collated recommended reference intervals for white adults and children. CONCLUSION Laboratories using methods producing traceable results to IDMS can apply the selected reference intervals for serum creatinine in evaluating white individuals.
Viral Trigger for Type 1 Diabetes

The most popular hypothesis circulating within and beyond the scientific community is that viral infections enhance or elicit autoimmune disorders such as type 1 diabetes. Indeed, viruses can injure β-cells and have been isolated in pancreatic tissues from diabetic patients. However, accumulating evidence suggests that the opposite scenario, which is prevention or amelioration of type 1 diabetes, might be at least as common an outcome of viral infection. Here, we discuss epidemiological and experimental evidence for the main mechanisms accounting for the role of viruses in type 1 diabetes to better understand the complex relationship between viral infections and autoimmune diabetes. ### The influence of the environment. Type 1 diabetes is a genetic autoimmune disorder caused by autoreactive CD4+ and CD8+ T-cells that recognize pancreatic antigens such as insulin or GAD and subsequently destroy insulin-producing β-cells. The subject of very active research is the question of how endogenous β-cell antigens become immunogenic. Infiltration of the islets of Langerhans, where β-cells reside, by activated autoreactive T-cells is considered to be the major driving force in type 1 diabetes progression. The islet infiltrate in humans consists primarily of CD8+ T-cells and B-cells, followed by macrophages and dendritic cells of different subtypes (1). Interestingly, significantly fewer T-cells are found in human islets compared with islets from nonobese diabetic (NOD) mice. The reduced numbers of T-cells, and in this way a limited autoreactive component in human islets, leads one to consider whether other contributing factors may be involved in disease development. Otherwise, sufficient insulitic infiltrate to destroy islet β-cells might not be easily maintained in humans. Further supporting a role for nongenetic factors in the control of type 1 diabetes is the observation that disease concordance among monozygotic twins is below 50% (2). Migrant studies also suggest the involvement of an environmental factor in type 1 diabetes, …
Engaging the Tea Party Through Pedagogy

This paper describes the difficulties and rewards found by a cohort of undergraduate researchers as they engaged local Tea Party chapters. While gathering data as part of a research methods course, students found themselves in complicated territory, confronted by research subjects who were wary of higher education, and thus the students’ motives and demographics. Our engagement with the Tea Party highlighted a number of challenging issues related to researcher perspectives and roles, and the relationship between higher education and community. Ultimately students benefitted by being placed in a situation in which they had to justify their presence and engage members.
Apparent prevalence of swine brucellosisin feral swine in the United States

Samples were collected in 35 states as part of a national monitoring system to detect multiple diseases in feral swine (Sus scrofa). During March 2009 through December 2010, we collected serum samples from 4,479 feral swine from 13 states, and 159 animals tested were seropositive for brucellosis. No difference in likelihood of infection was found between males and females, but adults were more likely than sub-adults or juveniles to be exposed to brucellosis. Feral swine sampled during winter months also were more likely to be seropositive than animals sampled during other seasons. Apparent prevalence varied among states, and seropositive animals often were clustered in specifi c counties within a state. We recommend improved diagnostics and stricter regulations on movement of feral swine both intra- and inter-state to minimize further spread of the disease and to decrease the risk of re- introduction of brucellosis into livestock.
A Randomized, Multicenter, Placebo-Controlled Trial of Polyethylene Glycol Laxative for Chronic Treatment of Chronic Constipation

OBJECTIVES:Polyethylene glycol (PEG) 3350 (MiraLAX) is currently approved for the short-term treatment of occasional constipation. This study was designed to compare the safety and efficacy of PEG laxative versus placebo over a 6-month treatment period in patients with chronic constipation.METHODS:Study subjects who met defined criteria for chronic constipation were randomized in this double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel, multicenter study to receive PEG laxative as a single daily dose of 17 g or placebo for 6 months. Baseline constipation status was confirmed during a 14-day observation period. As a primary efficacy variable, treatment success was defined as relief of modified ROME criteria for constipation for 50% or more of their treatment weeks. Various secondary measures were assessed. An Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS) recorded daily bowel movement experience and study efficacy and safety information. Laboratory testing at baseline and monthly for the study duration was analyzed for hematology, blood chemistry including amylase, GGT, uric acid, lipids, and urinalysis.RESULTS:A total of 304 patients were enrolled and received treatment at one of 50 centers. Successful treatment according to the primary efficacy variable was seen in 52.0% of PEG and 11% of placebo subjects (P < 0.001). Similar efficacy was seen in a subgroup of 75 elderly subjects. According to the primary efficacy definition (based on individual treatment weeks), 61% of PEG treatment weeks versus 22% of the placebo weeks were successful (P < 0.001). There were no significant differences in laboratory findings or adverse events except for the gastrointestinal category where diarrhea, flatulence, and nausea were the most frequent with PEG although they were not individually statistically significant compared with placebo. Similar results were observed when analyzed for differences due to gender, race, or age.CONCLUSIONS:PEG laxative is safe and effective for use in patients with chronic constipation for 6 months.
iTAG: Automatically Annotating Textual Resources with Human Intentions

Annotations represent an increasingly popular means for organizing, categorizing and finding resources on the “social” web. Yet, only a small portion of the total resources available on the web are annotated. Work on automatic tag generation algorithms aims to tackle this problem by developing algorithms that attempt to approximate and support human tagging behavior. While existing algorithms largely focus on automatically describing the general topics covered by a resource (such as “ career ”, “ education ”), we suggest focusing on a different tagging dimension: i.e. automatically annotating resources with human intentions. Intent annotations aim to describe which goals are referenced in given textual resources (such as “ find a job ”, “ get a degree ”), thereby offering a new, interesting perspective on textual resources on the web. We describe a prototype – iTAG – for automatically annotating textual resources with human intent, and investigate the extent to which the automatic analysis of human intentions in textual resources is feasible. For evaluation purposes, we present results from an exploratory study that focused on annotating intent in transcripts of political speeches given by US presidential candidates in 2008.