Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Neuropsychological effects of the CSMD1 genome‐wide associated schizophrenia risk variant rs10503253

The single‐nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs10503253, located within the CUB and Sushi multiple domains‐1 (CSMD1) gene on 8p23.2, was recently identified as genome‐wide significant for schizophrenia (SZ), but is of unknown function. We investigated the neurocognitive effects of this CSMD1 variant in vivo in patients and healthy participants using behavioral and imaging measures of brain structure and function. We compared carriers and non‐carriers of the risk ‘A’ allele on measures of neuropsychological performance typically impaired in SZ (general cognitive ability, episodic and working memory and attentional control) in independent samples of Irish patients (n = 387) and controls (n = 171) and German patients (205) and controls (n = 533). Across these groups, the risk ‘A’ allele at CSMD1 was associated with deleterious effects across a number of neurocognitive phenotypes. Specifically, the risk allele was associated with poorer performance on neuropsychological measures of general cognitive ability and memory function but not attentional control. These effects, while significant, were subtle, and varied between samples. Consistent with previous evidence suggesting that CSMD1 may be involved in brain mechanisms related to memory and learning, these data appear to reflect the deleterious effects of the identified ‘A’ risk allele on neurocognitive function, possibly as part of the mechanism by which CSMD1 is associated with SZ risk.
Integration Research for Shaping Sustainable Regional Landscapes

Ecological and social systems are complex and entwined. Complex social-ecological systems interact in a multitude of ways at many spatial scales across time. Their interactions can contribute both positive and negative consequences in terms of sustainability and the context in which they exist affecting future landscape change. Non-metropolitan landscapes are the major theatre of interactions where large-scale alteration occurs precipitated by local to global forces of economic, social, and environmental change. Such regional landscape effects are critical also to local natural resource and social sustainability. The institutions contributing pressures and responses consequently shape future landscapes and in turn influence how social systems, resource users, governments, and policy makers perceive those landscapes and their future. Science and policy for "sustainable" futures need to be integrated at the applied "on-ground" level where products and effects of system interactions are fully included, even if unobserved. Government agencies and funding bodies often consider such research as "high-risk". This paper provides some examples of interdisciplinary research that has provided a level of holistic integration through close engagement with landholders and communities or through deliberately implementing integrative and innovative on-ground experimental models. In retrospect, such projects have to some degree integrated through spatial (if not temporal) synthesis, policy analysis, and (new or changed) institutional arrangements that are relevant locally and acceptable in business, as well as at broader levels of government and geography. This has provided transferable outcomes that can contribute real options and adaptive capacity for suitable positive futures.
Long-term status and change of body fat distribution, and risk of colorectal cancer: a prospective cohort study.

BACKGROUND Although obesity has been linked to an increased risk of colorectal cancer (CRC), the risk associated with long-term status or change of body fat distribution has not been fully elucidated. METHODS Using repeated anthropometric assessments in the Nurses' Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-up Study, we prospectively investigated cumulative average waist circumference, hip circumference and waist-to-hip ratio, as well as their 10-year changes over adulthood, in relation to CRC risk over 23-24 years of follow-up. Cox proportional hazards models were used to calculate the hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence interval (CI). RESULTS High waist circumference, hip circumference and waist-to-hip ratio were all associated with a higher CRC risk in men, even after adjusting for body mass index. The association was attenuated to null in women after adjusting for body mass index. Ten-year gain of waist circumference was positively associated with CRC risk in men (P for trend = 0.03), but not in women (P for trend = 0.34). Compared with men maintaining their waist circumference, those gaining waist circumference by ≥ 10 cm were at a higher risk of CRC, with a multivariable-adjusted HR of 1.59 (95% CI, 1.01-2.49). This association appeared to be independent of weight change. CONCLUSIONS Abdominal adiposity, independent of overall obesity, is associated with an increased CRC risk in men but not in women. Our findings also provide the first prospective evidence that waist circumference gain during adulthood may be associated with higher CRC risk in men, thus highlighting the importance of maintaining a healthy waist for CRC prevention.
Automatic Control and Machine Learning for Semiconductor Manufacturing: Review and Challenges

Semiconductor manufacturing is one of the most technologically advanced industrial sectors. Process quality and control are critical for decreasing costs and increasing yield. The contribution of automatic control and statistical modeling in this area can drastically impact production performance. For this reason in the past decade major collaborative research projects have been undertaken between fab industries and academia in the areas of Virtual Metrology, Predictive Maintenance, Fault Detection, Run-to-Run control and modeling. In this paper we review some this research, discuss its impact on production and highlight current challenges.
Book Review Essay: Promises and Perils at the Bottom of the Pyramid*

The World Bank offers us some disquieting news. Four billion people in the world earn less than $2 per day (World Bank, 2002). We learn that 52 percent of the people in China and 86 percent of the people in India live under these circumstances, while no one in the U.S., Japan, or Germany lives in such poverty. Poverty and prosperity live side by side in a very uneasy relationship. The prosperous among us feel called upon to act.
Chondroprotective Effect of Kartogenin on CD44-Mediated Functions in Articular Cartilage and Chondrocytes

Objective: A recent report identified the small molecule kartogenin as a chondrogenic and chondroprotective agent. Since changes in hyaluronan metabolism occur during cartilage degeneration in osteoarthritis, we began studies to determine whether there was a connection between extracellular hyaluronan, CD44–hyaluronan interactions and the effects of kartogenin on articular chondrocytes. Methods: Chondrocytes cultured in monolayers, bioengineered neocartilages, or cartilage explants were treated with kartogenin with or without stimulation by IL-1β. Accumulation of matrix was visualized by a particle exclusion assay or by safranin O staining and release of sulfated glycosaminoglycans was determined. Production of aggrecanases and aggrecan G1-ITEGE neoepitope, fragmentation of CD44 and the SMAD1/5/8 signaling pathway were evaluated by western blotting. Results: Kartogenin treatment enhanced chondrocyte pericellular matrix assembly and retention in the presence of IL-1β. The chondroprotective effects of kartogenin on IL-1β-induced release of sulfated glycosaminoglycans from articular cartilage explants, reduction in safranin O staining of neocartilage discs as well as a reduction in aggrecan G1-ITEGE neoepitope in chondrocyte and explant cartilage cultures were observed. Kartogenin partially blocked the IL-1β-induced increased expression of ADAMTS-5. Additionally, kartogenin-treated articular chondrocytes exhibited a decrease in CD44 proteolytic fragmentation. However, kartogenin treatment did not enhance proteoglycan in control, non-IL-1β-treated cultures. Similarly, kartogenin enhanced the SMAD1 phosphorylation but only following pretreatment with IL-1β. Conclusion: These studies provide novel information on the chondroprotective function of kartogenin in adult articular cartilage. The effects of kartogenin are significant after activation of chondrocytic chondrolysis, which may occur following disruption of homeostasis maintained by hyaluronan–CD44 interactions.
Nodular thyroid cancer. Diagnostic value of real time elastography.

BACKGROUND The most important aspect in the diagnostic approach of thyroid nodule is identifying the malignancy Elastography is a newly technique that measures the elasticity of tissue, after applying a external force, standardized control. US elastography is currently used in differentiation of malignant from benign lesions. PATIENTS This prospective study included 69 patients, mean age 50.08 +/- 12.43 years, 67 females and 2 men, with thyroid nodules on conventional US, with a volume higher than 0.20 ml. All patients underwent surgery after complete evaluation. Extemporaneous and postsurgical histopathological exam was performed in all cases. Tissue stiffness was scored from one (greatest elasticity) to 5 (no strain), according to the UENO scale. RESULTS In the 69 cases we diagnosed 107 nodules, which we analyzed. 27 nodules had score 1 on US elastography and 37 nodules had score 2. All nodules were benign on histopathological exam. Score 3 was found in 33 cases, 32 benign and one papillary carcinoma. Score 4 as found in 10 cases, all carcinomas. ES score of 4 is highly predictive for malignancy (sensitivity of 90.9%, specificity of 98.96%, positive predictive value of 100%, negative predictive value if 98.60%). The diagnostic quality of elastography was independent of the nodule volume. CONCLUSION US elastography has a good potential in diagnosing thyroid malignancy, independent of nodule volume, allowing the study of small nodules, less than 0.5 ml.
A CAM fault-tolerant strategy for multiprocessor by using bloom filter and history lookup table

A content addressable memory (CAM) like conventional memories can be affected by the occurrence of single event upsets (SEUs) to cause different effects. In this paper, a fault-tolerant strategy proposed at system level can be applied to a CAM used as the coherence directory in the context of multiprocessor. For one thing, with the combined use of an interleaved parity bits protection scheme, a probabilistic structure called Bloom filter is adopted to signal if a given data is presented. Moreover, a novel history lookup table is proposed to compensate the limitation of the Bloom filter used in multiprocessor. It could denote an accurate count of data sharers to check the response of the CAM in conjunction with the Bloom filter. For the different types of errors detected, the proposed strategy further presents the corresponding solutions to maintain coherence amongst the private caches. Simulation results show that, the proposed technique can reduce the incremental execution time by an average 40% at the cost of slightly increased area and power consumption.
Friendship Prediction on Social Network Users

Undoubtedly friendship is one of key factors which keep social networking service users active and the whole community expanding. Hence, predicting friendships becomes an indispensable service provided by the platforms like Plurk, Twitter and Facebook. In this study, an empirical prediction resolution is presented by taking into account the interactions among Plurk users in Taiwan. Both response links and content information extracted from the interaction corpus are used as features in the implementation of the vector space machine based prediction. Experimental results show that the presented approach outperforms those bag-of-word based methods presented in previous studies.
Enhancing Computer-Mediated Teaching through Interactivity: The Second Iteration of a World Wide Web-Based Graduate Social Work Course

Objective This study evaluated the effects of increasing opportunities for interactivity on student attitudes and behavior over two iterations of an Internet-based graduate social work research methods course. Method In both iterations, lectures and class discussions were carried out over the Internet. In the second iteration, additional opportunities for interaction (self-tests, automated feedback, discussion questions, and links to an Internet discussion list) were added. Type and frequency of class participation were measured for both iterations as well as attitude toward the course. Results Students in the second iteration participated in class list discussions more frequently than their first iteration counterparts. Students in the second iteration also tended to rate their experience more positively than did their counterparts in the first class. Conclusion The incorporation of interactivity into a Web site served to make it easier to create an active learning environment for students.
An Evaluation of a Helping Skills Training Program for Intern Psychometrists

This study reports on the effectiveness of a helping skills training program for intern psychometrists. A randomized pretest–posttest comparison group design was used to evaluate the training program. Participants (N = 22; 82% = female, and Afrikaans-speaking = 95%) were selected from the psychometrist-in-training program from a tertiary institution. Three helping skills development measuring instruments were administered before and after the training program. Data were quantitatively analysed to examine training effects on empathy, respect and genuineness, as well as the participants’ ability to respond to content and personalise meaning. At the conclusion of the training, participants appeared to have evidently developed a heightened sense of purpose in life.
Ontology specific data mining based on dynamic grammars

In this paper we introduce a new formal approach for mining biological data sets. The proposed grammar based approach provides a flexible and powerful tool for advanced sequence comparison and data mining. The approach benefits from the power of regular expressions in allowing the use of advanced queries in comparing sequences and searching for motifs or sequence attributes in biological databases. The formal grammar and the corresponding data mining engine is capable of extracting records from biological databases, filtering a subset of those records for mining, and then sorting those records based on similarity scheme designed by the user. This model is based on the objective (ontology) of the user and scoring is dynamic that is provided at runtime.
Motion leadership: The Skinny on Becoming Change Savvy

Micheal Fullan’s latest contribution book is Motion Leadership: The Skinny on Becoming Change Savvy. For Fullan, the idea of “motion” leadership involves helping leaders to move individuals, institutions, and whole systems forward in a positive way and managing and embracing the intricate challenges inherent within the chance process.
Neuritin Attenuates Cognitive Function Impairments in Tg2576 Mouse Model of Alzheimer's Disease

Neuritin, also known as CPG15, is a neurotrophic factor that was initially discovered in a screen to identify genes involved in activity-dependent synaptic plasticity. Neuritin plays multiple roles in the process of neural development and synaptic plasticity, although its binding receptor(s) and downstream signaling effectors remain unclear. In this study, we found that the cortical and hippocampal expression of neuritin is reduced in the brains of Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients and demonstrated that viral-mediated expression of neuritin in the dentate gyrus of 13-month-old Tg2576 mice, an AD animal model, attenuated a deficit in learning and memory as assessed by a Morris water maze test. We also found that neuritin restored the reduction in dendritic spine density and the maturity of individual spines in primary hippocampal neuron cultures prepared from Tg2576 mice. It was also shown that viral-mediated expression of neuritin in the dentate gyrus of 7-week-old Sprague-Dawley rats increased neurogenesis in the hippocampus. Taken together, our results demonstrate that neuritin restores the reduction in dendritic spine density and the maturity of individual spines in primary hippocampal neurons from Tg2576 neurons, and also attenuates cognitive function deficits in Tg2576 mouse model of AD, suggesting that neuritin possesses a therapeutic potential for AD.
Studying the Barriers to Parental Involvement in Primary Schools from the Perspective of the Teachers: A Study of Nikshahr City Iran

The main purpose of this study is to determine barriers to parental involvement in primary schools from the perspective of their teachers in Nikshahr City and its related districts during the 2014 to 2015 academic year. It is an applied research and due to the nature of its subject and the research objectives, it has cross-correlation method. Its population includes all the teachers of primary schools in Nikshahr City and its districts, they are 1484 people. We have selected 306 people from the population based on random stratified sampling to carry out this study. We have used questionnaire for data collection and its reliability using Cronbach’s alpha is 0.82. We have analyzed the data of this research using inferential statistics (Pearson’s correlation and t-test). According to the results, there is a significant and positive relation between intra-organizational and inter-organizational factors of barriers to parent involvement. Schools management does not prevent parents from involving in schools affairs. The type of education and lack of awareness of parents towards participation are barriers to parental involvement in schools affairs. There is a positive, significant relation between social, economic and cultural status of families and the extent of their participation in schools affairs.
A digital evidence protection method with hierarchical access control mechanisms

Digital evidences are the important basis in digital forensic. This paper proposed a concrete digital evidence protection method with hierarchical access control mechanisms using cryptographic techniques. It allows judicial policeman to authenticated encrypt the collected digital evidences from being disclosed and modified by potential malicious attackers (including malicious insiders and outsiders). Only the authorized users can retrieve and access the digital evidences and verify their integrity. Hence, confidentiality, integrity, authenticity protection for digital evidences can be achieved. Moreover, this method also allows the judiciary bureaus to present the digital evidences together with protection proof to a trusted third party in case of a later dispute. We further considered the access control security issues in hierarchical judiciary bureaus to propose two access control mechanisms, i.e. partial and full supervision. In the partial supervision, the supervisor will given a partial privilege to access some specified digital evidences when he want to monitor and supervise the investigation progress. In the full supervision, the supervisor is given a full privilege to access all digital evidences investigated by his subordinates in a particular situation.
Germany's Next Top Manager: Does Personality Explain the Gender Career Gap?

The higher the hierarchical level, the fewer women are represented in management positions. Many studies have focused on the influence of human capital and other "objective" factors on career opportunities to explain this phenomenon. We are now looking at the impact of self-reported personality traits on gender differences in career chances and compare women and men in management positions and other white-collar employees in Germany's private sector 2007. While bivariate results based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) show that there are significant gender differences in personality traits, multivariate estimations and the decomposition of the gender career gap clearly indicate that these differences cannot account for gender differences in career opportunities. The decomposition shows that only 8.6 percent of the inequality of career chances between women and can be explained by differences in personality. Nevertheless, personality traits might indeed play a role, albeit more indirectly: Some of the stronger career effects, such as long working hours, and labour market segregation, can also reflect differences in personality traits. These might have been influenced at an early stage by a gender-biased environment. Our results strongly stress the need for a gender-neutral environment outside and inside companies in order to enforce equal career opportunities for women and men.
SeaLion: An eclipse-based IDE for answer-set programming with advanced debugging support

Abstract In this paper, we present SeaLion, an integrated development environment (IDE) for answer-set programming (ASP). SeaLion provides source-code editors for the languages of Gringo and DLV and offers popular amenities like syntax highlighting, syntax checking, code completion, visual program outline, and refactoring functionality. The tool has been realised in the context of a research project whose goal is the development of techniques to support the practical coding process of answer-set programs. In this respect, SeaLion is the first IDE for ASP that provides debugging features that work for real-world answer-set programs and supports the rich languages of modern answer-set solvers. Indeed, SeaLion implements a stepping-based debugging approach that allows the developer to quickly track down programming errors by simply following his or her intuitions on the intended semantics. Besides that, SeaLion supports ASP development using model-driven engineering techniques including domain modelling with extended UML class diagrams and visualisation of answer sets in corresponding instance diagrams. Moreover, customised visualisation as well as visual editing of answer sets is realised by the Kara plugin of SeaLion. Further implemented features are a documentation generator based on the Lana annotation language, support for external solvers, and interoperability with external tools. SeaLion comes as a plugin of the popular Eclipse platform and provides interfaces for future extensions of the IDE.