Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
FARM: a data mining system for discovering fuzzy association rules

In this paper, we introduce a novel technique, called FARM, for mining fuzzy association rules. FARM employs linguistic terms to represent the revealed regularities and exceptions. The linguistic representation is especially useful when those rules discovered are presented to human experts for examination because of the affinity with the human knowledge representations. The definition of linguistic terms is based on fuzzy set theory and hence we call the rules having these terms fuzzy association rules. The use of fuzzy technique makes FARM resilient to noises such as inaccuracies in physical measurements of real-life entities and missing values in the databases. Furthermore, FARM utilizes adjusted difference analysis which has the advantage that it does not require any user-supplied thresholds which are often hard to determine. In addition to this interestingness measure, FARM has another unique feature that the conclusions of a fuzzy association rule can contain linguistic terms. Our technique also provides a mechanism to allow quantitative values be inferred from fuzzy association rules. Unlike other data mining techniques that can only discover association rules between different discretized values, FARM is able to reveal interesting relationships between different quantitative values. Our experimental results showed that FARM is capable of discovering meaningful and useful fuzzy association rules in an effective manner from a real-life database.
Increased physical fitness among patients following endurance training during haemodialysis

Abstract Objective. The study aimed to investigate the effect of 6 months of endurance training of moderate intensity on physical performance and the risk of falling in haemodialysis patients. Material and methods. This was a prospective interventional study in which 21 of 35 eligible patients accepted to participate. The 6-minute walk test (6MWT), timed up and go (TUG), timed stand test and Romberg's test were used to evaluate physical fitness. The Borg scale was used to control the workload. The patients bicycled for 12–40 min with increasing workload according to their capabilities. Wilcoxon signed ranks and McNemar's tests were used for analysis. Results. Of the 21 participants, 12 completed 3 months of training. Their median (range) age was 69 (37–88) years, duration of dialysis was 2.5 (1–11) years and body mass index was 25.0 (20.0–31.9). Romberg's test was positive in four participants at the beginning but in three after 3 months. Nine participants completed 6 months of training; none had a positive Romberg's test at that time. Walking distance increased significantly after 3 and 6 months of training (p = 0.002 and p = 0.012, respectively), and time for the TUG decreased significantly (p = 0.041 and p = 0.044), as did time for the timed stand test (p = 0.015 and 0.018), compared with baseline values. The TUG test was in excess of 14 s in four patients at baseline but only one at the end of training. Conclusion. Endurance training of moderate intensity during dialysis results in significantly increased physical performance in haemodialysis patients.
Transcriptional Activity of Baculovirus Very Late Factor 1

ABSTRACT The product of the vlf-1 (very late factor 1) gene is required for expression of very late genes during the final phase of infection. To determine whether VLF-1 functions as a transcriptional activator, VLF-1 was overexpressed and purified by affinity and cation exchange chromatography. The addition of purified protein to transcription assays containing baculovirus RNA polymerase stimulated transcription of the very late polyhedrin promoter but not the late 39k promoter. Furthermore, construction and analysis of chimeric templates identified sequences within the polyhedrin promoter that were necessary for enhancement.
Hydrophobic interactions between the voltage sensor and pore mediate inactivation in Kv11.1 channels

Kv11.1 channels are critical for the maintenance of a normal heart rhythm. The flow of potassium ions through these channels is controlled by two voltage-regulated gates, termed “activation” and “inactivation,” located at opposite ends of the pore. Crucially in Kv11.1 channels, inactivation gating occurs much more rapidly, and over a distinct range of voltages, compared with activation gating. Although it is clear that the fourth transmembrane segments (S4), within each subunit of the tetrameric channel, are important for controlling the opening and closing of the activation gate, their role during inactivation gating is much less clear. Here, we use rate equilibrium free energy relationship (REFER) analysis to probe the contribution of the S4 “voltage-sensor” helix during inactivation of Kv11.1 channels. Contrary to the important role that charged residues play during activation gating, it is the hydrophobic residues (Leu529, Leu530, Leu532, and Val535) that are the key molecular determinants of inactivation gating. Within the context of an interconnected multi-domain model of Kv11.1 inactivation gating, our REFER analysis indicates that the S4 helix and the S4–S5 linker undergo a conformational rearrangement shortly after that of the S5 helix and S5P linker, but before the S6 helix. Combining REFER analysis with double mutant cycle analysis, we provide evidence for a hydrophobic interaction between residues on the S4 and S5 helices. Based on a Kv11.1 channel homology model, we propose that this hydrophobic interaction forms the basis of an intersubunit coupling between the voltage sensor and pore domain that is an important mediator of inactivation gating.
Recalling sexual behavior: A methodological analysis of memory recall bias via interview using the diary as the gold standard

This study examined the effect of time lag on the validity of retrospective self‐reports of sexual behavior. Seventy‐five heterosexual students (44 women, 31 men) made daily recordings of sexual behavior, condom use, and alcohol or substance use for 1 month. Ability of respondents to recall sexual behavior recorded during this period was assessed at 1, 2, and 3 months after diary completion using recall interviews (25 interviewed at each interval). For vaginal intercourse, total recall error was significantly greater at 3 months than at 1 month post‐diary. For all other variables assessed, the 2‐ and 3‐month time intervals did not produce significant increases in total recall error. Higher frequency of vaginal intercourse, orgasm, and alcohol use prior to sexual activity were associated with total recall error for some but not all behaviors and outcomes. The results provide a partial validation of the diary‐interview recall model as a method for studying recall error.
Localized Populations of CD8low/− MHC Class I Tetramer+ SIV-Specific T Cells in Lymphoid Follicles and Genital Epithelium

CD8 T cells play an important role in controlling viral infections. We investigated the in situ localization of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV)-specific T cells in lymph and genital tissues from SIV-infected macaques using MHC-class I tetramers. The majority of tetramer-binding cells localized in T cell zones and were CD8+. Curiously, small subpopulations of tetramer-binding cells that had little to no surface CD8 were detected in situ both early and late post-infection, and in both vaginally and rectally inoculated macaques. These tetramer+CD8low/− cells were more often localized in apparent B cell follicles relative to T cell zones and more often found near or within the genital epithelium than the submucosa. Cells analyzed by flow cytometry showed similar populations of cells. Further immunohistological characterization revealed small populations of tetramer+CD20− cells inside B cell follicles and that tetramer+ cells did not stain with γδ-TCR nor CD4 antibodies. Negative control tetramer staining indicated that tetramer+CD8low/− cells were not likely NK cells non-specifically binding to MHC tetramers. These findings have important implications for SIV-specific and other antigen-specific T cell function in these specific tissue locations, and suggest a model in which antigen-specific CD8+ T cells down modulate CD8 upon entering B cell follicles or the epithelial layer of tissues, or alternatively a model in which only antigen-specific CD8 T cells that down-modulate CD8 can enter B cell follicles or the epithelium.
Assessing Students' Self-Reflective Thinking in the Classroom: The Self-Reflective Thinking Questionnaire

The development of a questionnaire to assess students' use of self-reflective thinking in the classroom is described. On the basis of a literature search, items were selected. The items are students' self-report measures and open-ended questions. The participants were 96 fourth grade secondary vocational students from six classes in The Netherlands, all of whom were used to learning in cooperative groups. Complementary data were selected to validate this questionnaire. Visual inspection of the frequencies indicated a difference between levels of students' self-reflecting thinking. Between-subjects t tests showed that students' motivational engagement and marks could be used to validate the measure of self-reflective thinking. The implication of the questionnaire to assess students' self-reflective thinking within the classroom are discussed.
Rapid adaptation to Coriolis force perturbations of arm trajectory.

1. Forward reaching movements made during body rotation generate tangential Coriolis forces that are proportional to the cross product of the angular velocity of rotation and the linear velocity of the arm. Coriolis forces are inertial forces that do not involve mechanical contact. Virtually no constant centrifugal forces will be present in the background when motion of the arm generates transient Coriolis forces if the radius of body rotation is small. 2. We measured the trajectories of arm movements made in darkness to a visual target that was extinguished as movement began. The reaching movements were made prerotation, during rotation at 10 rpm in a fully enclosed rotating room, and postrotation. During testing the subject was seated at the center of the room and pointed radially. Neither visual nor tactile feedback about movement accuracy was present. 3. In experiment 1, subjects reached at a fast or slow rate and their hands made contact with a horizontal surface at the end of the reach. Their initial perrotary movements were highly significantly deviated relative to prerotation in both trajectories and end-points in the direction of the transient Coriolis forces that had been generated during the reaches. Despite the absence of visual and tactile feedback about reaching accuracy, all subjects rapidly regained straight movement trajectories and accurate endpoints. Postrotation, transient errors of opposite sign were present for both trajectories and endpoints. 4. In a second experiment the conditions were identical except that subjects pointed just above the location of the extinguished target so that no surface contact was involved. All subjects showed significant initial perrotation deviations of trajectories and endpoints in the direction of the transient Coriolis forces. With repeated reaches the trajectories, as viewed from above, again became straight, but there was only partial restoration of endpoint accuracy, so that subjects reached in a straight line to the wrong place. Aftereffects of opposite sign were transiently present in the postrotary movements. 5. These observations fail to support current equilibrium point models, both alpha and lambda, of movement control. Such theories would not predict endpoint errors under our experimental conditions, in which the Coriolis force is absent at the beginning and end of a movement. Our results indicate that detailed aspects of movement trajectory are being continuously monitored on the basis of proprioceptive feedback in relation to motor commands. Adaptive compensations can be initiated after one perturbation despite the absence of either visual or tactile feedback about movement trajectory and endpoint error. Moreover, movement trajectory and end-point can be remapped independently. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Investigating how cultural transmission leads to the appearance of design without a designer in human communication systems

Recent work on the emergence and evolution of human communication has focused on getting novel systems to evolve from scratch in the laboratory. Many of these studies have adopted an interactive construction approach, whereby pairs of participants repeatedly interact with one another to gradually develop their own communication system whilst engaged in some shared task. This paper describes four recent studies that take a different approach, showing how adaptive structure can emerge purely as a result of cultural transmission through single chains of learners. By removing elements of interactive communication and focusing only on the way in which language is repeatedly acquired by learners, we hope to gain a better understanding of how useful structural properties of language could have emerged without being intentionally designed or innovated.
Reduced Feedback Designs for SDMA-OFDMA Systems

In SDMA-OFDMA wireless communication systems, the feedback load increases with the number of users, subcarriers and antennas in the cell. In this paper, we propose two efficient reduced feedback algorithms by selecting the clusters at the user side. For each cluster, we select the users according to their norm and their orthogonality. We evaluate the performance of the user selection algorithms considering the quantization effect. We also design a specific codebook design to quantize CSI for the proposed criterion.
Job demands and job control as correlates of early retirement thoughts in Finnish social and health care employees

Given the ageing workforce, there is an increasing interest in understanding the retirement process. This study examined whether early retirement thoughts can be explained by job demands, job control and their interaction, a hypothesis derived from the job demand-control model of Karasek (1979). The moderated hierarchical regression analyses of early retirement thoughts were based on a sample of 274 male and 2798 female employees aged 20 to 65 years in Finnish social and health care. Our results suggest that job demands and job control are independent predictors of early retirement thoughts even when adjusted for age, gender, educational level and self-rated health. Furthermore, our results offered support for the interaction effect of job demands and job control on early retirement thoughts. Among people over 45 years old, these associations were even stronger, compared to the whole sample. This indicates that one way to reduce the number of people taking early retirement would be to put the emphasis on psychosocial factors, such as job control, affecting the older workers.
Finding text in color images

In this paper, we consider the problem of locating and extracting text from WWW images. A previous algorithm based on color clustering and connected components analysis works well as long as the color of each character is relatively uniform and the typography is fairly simple. It breaks down quickly, however, when these assumptions are violated. In this paper, we describe more robust techniques for dealing with this challenging problem. We present an improved color clustering algorithm that measures similarity based on both RGB and spatial proximity. Layout analysis is also incorporated to handle more complex typography. THese changes significantly enhance the performance of our text detection procedure.
Loss of a phosphorylated form of transcription factor CREB/ATF in poliovirus-infected cells

Host cell RNA synthesis is inhibited by poliovirus infection. We have studied the mechanism of poliovirus-induced inhibition of RNA polymerase II-mediated transcription by using the adenovirus early region 3 (E3) promoter. In vitro transcription from the E3 promoter was severely inhibited in extracts prepared from poliovirus-infected HeLa cells. Four regions in the E3 promoter have been shown to serve as binding sites for cellular transcription factors. These regions contain binding sites for transcription factors NF-1 (site IV), AP-1 (site III), CREB/ATF (site II), and the TATA factor (site I). Binding to these four regions was not significantly altered by poliovirus infection as assayed by DNase I footprinting analysis; furthermore, gel retardation assays failed to reveal dramatic differences in the total amount of CREB/ATF-, AP-1-, and NF-1-binding activity present in mock- or poliovirus-infected cell extracts. Gel retardation assays, however, did reveal significant qualitative differences in the DNA-protein complexes formed with a CREB/ATF-binding site in extracts prepared from poliovirus-infected cells as compared to mock-infected cell extracts. Radioimmunoprecipitation reactions performed with antiserum against CREB/ATF revealed a severe reduction in a phosphorylated form of the protein present in poliovirus-infected cell extracts. However, in vitro kinase reactions demonstrated that mock- and poliovirus-infected cell extracts contained similar levels of CREB/ATF. Expression from the E3 promoter was shown to be activated by CREB/ATF in vivo; this induction was dependent upon the phosphorylation of CREB/ATF. Thus, we propose that poliovirus infection inhibits transcription from the E3 promoter, at least in part, through the dephosphorylation of CREB/ATF.
How to Design Experimental Research Studies around Digital Badges

badging is becoming more popular in an assortment of disciplines, both academic and professional. Along with the success of practical badging initiatives, badging research is also moving at a rapid pace, a rate of change that may be intimidating to the uninitiated wishing to study them. However, there is a great need for additional research in light of the complexity of badging and the many contexts in which badging occurs. This paper outlines an approach to designing research studies around digital badges to assist researchers who are new to the field and looking to contribute. It begins by discussing how to form relevant research questions and how to approach the literature review, providing useful references as starting points. It then continues on to experimental design recommendations, discusses useful practices during experimentation, and concludes with recommendations for data analysis. Additionally, this paper describes challenges that are specific to badging and places them in context of the research design process. Multiple examples are provided to clarify these concepts.
Influence of venous drainage and hemofiltration on hypercirculatory instability after high volume crystalloid cardioplegia during coronary artery bypass surgery.

AIM The etiology of hypercirculatory instability following cardiac surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass has not yet been completely investigated and its clinical impact remains unclear. This prospective study was undertaken in order to investigate the impact of the systemic infusion of high volume crystalloid cardioplegia on the incidence of hypercirculatory instability and inflammatory mediator release in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting. METHODS Forty patients with single-atrial cannulation (group A), 40 patients with single-atrial cannulation and intraoperative hemofiltration (group B), and 40 patients with bicaval cannulation and complete removal of the cardioplegic solution from the right atrium (group C) were analyzed for hemodynamic changes and inflammatory mediator release until the postoperative day 2. Myocardial protection was performed using 2,000 mL cold crystalloid cardioplegia. RESULTS A higher incidence of hypercirculatory instability in group A (39.2%) and B (42.8 %) was noted when compared to group C (18%, P = 0.032). Cardiac index was lower in group C when compared with group A (P = 0.001; 95% CI: 4.1, 15.57) and group B (P = 0.02; 95% CI: 1.13, 15.25). Systemic vascular resistance was higher in group C when compared with group A (P = 0.0001; 95% CI: 7108.7, 3131) and group B (P < 0.005; 95% CI 7598.9; 2830.6). High levels of tumor necrosis factor alpha, interleukin-6, interleukin-8, interleukin-10, and intercellular adhesion molecule-1 with no significant differences between the groups were measured early postoperative. CONCLUSIONS High volume crystalloid cardioplegia under use of single-atrial venous cannulation is associated with a higher incidence of hypercirculatory failure. Hemofiltration during cardiopulmonary bypass offers no benefit on the incidence of hypercirculatory instability and to the release of inflammatory mediators.
Psychotherapy, Science, and Spirit: Nonlinear Systems, Hakomi Therapy, and the Tao

This article explores how contemporary science may inform psychotherapies that also allow for concepts of “Spirit. ” Hakomi therapy is used as one example for exploring such an integration. The discussion begins with tenants from the philosophy of science outlined by Bateson and Wilber, and how Hakomi therapy incorporates them into therapeutic principles also influenced by Buddhism and Taoism. These metaprinciples lead into a discussion of the sciences of complex nonlinear systems and to further implications for psychotherapy. The conditions for fostering transformation in a complex adaptive system are discussed in terms of spiritual concerns for raising consciousness in the world.
The Early Career Impact of the Co-op Commitment in Hospitality Curricula

ABSTRACT The purpose of this exploratory research was to quantitatively compare the early professional outcomes of hospitality management alumni from three cooperative education models in post-secondary education. Survey design was used for this comparative, descriptive research. This quantitative survey was sent to 469 potential respondents in the fall of 2006. The overall final response rate was 33% ( N = 155). Industry preparedness, starting and current salaries, industry retention, and career satisfaction were explored for statistical significance among the three experiential models.
Human Herpesvirus 8 Interleukin-6 (vIL-6) Signals through gp130 but Has Structural and Receptor-Binding Properties Distinct from Those of Human IL-6

ABSTRACT Human herpesvirus 8 (HHV-8) has been associated with classical, endemic (African), and AIDS-related Kaposi’s sarcoma (KS), body cavity-based primary effusion lymphomas, and multicentric Castleman’s disease (MCD). HHV-8 encodes a functional homologue of interleukin-6 (IL-6), a cytokine that promotes the growth of KS and myeloma cells and is found at elevated levels in MCD lesions and patient sera. We have previously reported that the viral IL-6 (vIL-6) gene product can support the growth of the IL-6-dependent murine hybridoma cell line, B9, and that the gp80 (IL-6 receptor [IL-6R]) component of the IL-6 receptor-signal transducer (gp180) complex plays a role in mediating this activity. However, it has been shown by others that vIL-6 can function in human cells independently of IL-6R. Here we have extended our functional studies of vIL-6 by identifying transcription factors and pathways used in human Hep3B cells, investigating the utilization of gp130 and IL-6R by vIL-6, and undertaking mutational analyses of vIL-6 and gp130. The data presented here establish that vIL-6, in common with its endogenous counterparts, can mediate signal transduction through gp130 and activate multiple transcription factors, map residues within the vIL-6 protein that are and are not important for vIL-6 signalling, and identify a gp130 mutant that is nonfunctional with respect to vIL-6 signalling in the absence of IL-6R but that retains the ability to mediate vIL-6 and human IL-6 (hIL-6) signal transduction when IL-6R is coexpressed. The data presented demonstrate functional and mechanistic similarities between vIL-6 and endogenous IL-6 proteins but also highlight differences in the structural and receptor-binding properties of vIL-6 relative to its human counterpart.