Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Image in the Mirror and the Number on the Scale

Double jeopardy and health congruency theories suggest that adolescents’ joint experience of their weight and weight perceptions are associated with depressive symptoms, but each theory offers a different prediction about which adolescents are at greatest risk. This study investigates the proposed associations and the applicability of both theoretical perspectives using data from 6,557 male and 6,126 female National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) Wave II participants. Empirically, results indicate that focusing on the intersection of weight and weight perceptions better shows which adolescents are at risk of depressive symptoms than an approach that treats both predictors as independent, unrelated constructs. Weight pessimists are at greatest risk of depressive symptoms. Thus, results support the health congruency framework, its extension to subpopulations outside of older adults, and its extension to optimism and pessimism about specific health conditions.
Revisiting the Heterogeneous IFN-γ Response of Bacille of Calmette-Guérin (BCG)-Revaccinated Healthy Volunteers in a Randomized Controlled Trial: Effect of the Body Mass Index and of the IFNG+874 A/T Polymorphism

In trials evaluating the immune responses to Bacille of Calmette-Guérin (BCG), the genetic background and the nutritional status are host-related factors that could affect the heterogeneity in these parameters. The IFNG+874 A/T (rs 62559044) polymorphism has been reported to influence the IFN-γ production by BCG-vaccinated individuals challenged in vitro with mycobacterial antigens. The body mass index (BMI) is a proxy for the nutritional status and has been associated both with the susceptibility to tuberculosis and with the IFN-γ response. We show that although the IFNG+874 A/T polymorphism was not associated with the heterogeneity of IFN-γ production in a randomized controlled trial that evaluated long-term immune responses to BCG revaccination previously conducted in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, the effect of this polymorphism on the observed increase in IFN-γ production among revaccinated subjects was adjusted in individuals with a low BMI.
Hawthorn Fruit Extract Elevates Expression of Nrf2/HO-1 and Improves Lipid Profiles in Ovariectomized Rats

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of hawthorn (Crataegus pinnatifida Bunge) extract on the lipid profiles and antioxidant properties in ovariectomized (OVX) rats. After ovariectomy, the rats were randomly divided into four groups: the non-OVX control (Sham), the OVX-control (OVX), the OVX + 100 mg/kg b.w. of hawthorn extract (OL), and the OVX + 200 mg/kg b.w. of hawthorn extract (OH). The final body weights of the OVX group were significantly increased, but the increment was significantly decreased in hawthorn groups (p < 0.05). The serum total and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels were significantly elevated in the OVX group, whereas the hawthorn groups showed a significant decrease in these levels (p < 0.05). The hepatic triglyceride (TG) and malondialdehyde (MDA) levels were significantly reduced in the hawthorn groups compared with the OVX group (p < 0.05). The mRNA expression of nuclear factor erythroid 2–related factor (Nrf2), heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1), and glutathione peroxidase (GPx) were significantly decreased in the OVX group, whereas the hawthorn groups exhibited a significant increase in expression (p < 0.05). The protein expressions of Nrf2, HO-1, and GPx were lower in the OVX group than the Sham group (p < 0.05). The oral administration of hawthorn extract reversed the suppression of protein levels. These results suggest that hawthorn extract could have protective effects in OVX rats by improving lipid profiles, decreasing oxidative stress, and improving the antioxidant defense system.
The Channel Capacity Problem with Input Cost

This tutorial introduces the application of optimization techniques in information theory. We revisit channel capacity problem from the convex optimization perspective and show that the Lagrange dual problem of the channel capacity problem with input cost is a simple geometric problem, which can be efficiently solved using numerical algorithms such primal-dual interior point method. Upper bound on the channel capacity can be efficiently generated. This tutorial assumes the reader has some background in optimization theory, especially in convex optimization and geometric optimization techniques. 1 The Channel Capacity Problem with Input Cost First we are going to formulate the channel capacity problem with input cost into a standard optimization problem. Consider the problem of data transmission over a discrete memoryless channel with input X ∈ X = {1, 2, . N}, outputY ∈ Y = {1, 2, . M}, and the channel law Pij = Prob{Y = j|X = i}, i = 1, 2, . , N, j = 1, 2, . , M. The channel law forms channel matrix P ∈ RN×M , where the (i, j) entry of P is Pij ≥ 0 with P1 = 1. Here 1 represents for the column vector with all entries equal to 1. A distribution p ∈ R1×N on the input, together with a given channel matrix P, induces a distribution q ∈ R1×M on the output by q = pP, and a joint distribution Q on the input output pair by Qij = piPij . We also associate with each input alphabet symbol i an input cost si ≥ 0, forming a column vector s. It is a key result in information theory that the capacity C(S) of a discrete memoryless channel under the input cost constraint Ep[s] = ps ≤ S is C(S) = max p:ps≤S I(X;Y ) (1) where the mutual information between input X and output Y is defined as
Systematic review of the cost-effectiveness of implementing guidelines on low back pain management in primary care: is transferability to other countries possible?

Objective The primary aim is to identify, summarise and quality assess the available literature on the cost-effectiveness of implementing low back pain guidelines in primary care. The secondary aim is to assess the transferability of the results to determine whether the identified studies can be included in a comparison with a Danish implementation study to establish which strategy procures most value for money. Design Systematic review. Data sources The search was conducted in Embase, PubMed, Cochrane Library, NHS Economic Evaluation Database, Scopus, CINAHL and EconLit. No restrictions were made concerning language, year of publication or publication type. The bibliographies of the included studies were searched for any studies not captured in the literature search. Eligibility criteria for selecting studies To be included, a study must be: (1) based on a randomised controlled trial comparing implementation strategies, (2) the guideline must concern treatment of low back pain in primary care and (3) the economic evaluation should contain primary data on cost and cost-effectiveness. Results The title and abstract were assessed for 308 studies; of these, three studies were found eligible for inclusion. The Consensus Health Economic Criteria (CHEC) list showed that the 3 studies were of moderate methodological quality while application of Welte's model showed that cost results from two studies could, with adjustments, be transferred to a Danish setting. It was questionable whether the associated effects could be transferred. Conclusions Despite the resemblance of the implementation strategies, the 3 studies report conflicting results on cost-effectiveness. This review showed that transferring the results from the identified studies is not straightforward and underlines the importance of transparent reporting. Future research should focus on transferability of effects, for example, development of a supplement to Welte's model.
An Investigation into the Equivalence of Three Pictures for Creative Story Writing: ‘Dog Owners’, ‘Lost Dog’, and ‘Overslept’

Alternate pictures that are proven to be equivalent are in high demand to assess creative thinking and language skills. This study aimed to investigate the equivalence of three pictures (‘Dog owners,’ ‘Lost Dog,’ and ‘Overslept’) recently developed for use in a creative writing task. Middle school students (N=183) wrote a story in English based on one of the three prompts distributed randomly. Four writing features (fluency, syntactic complexity, lexical diversity, and temporality) were analyzed with Coh-Metrix and MANCOVA. The three prompts were largely equivalent in their capacity to detect differences among writers in all the features of writing. The difficulty levels of the three prompts, however, were not necessarily the same. Two prompts, Dog Owners and Lost Dog, were verified as equivalent prompts, and therefore, they are recommended as alternate forms to assess creative language skills in repeated measurements. The Overslept prompt had greater facility in eliciting diverse words and more temporal connectives in composing stories. The differential difficulty shown among the prompts suggests that the validity of using different picture versions in repeated assessment remains questionable unless those versions undergo equivalence verification.
Properties of stellar clusters around high-mass young stars

Context. Twenty-six high-luminosity IRAS sources believed to be collection of stars in the early phases of high-mass star formation have been observed in the near-IR ( J , H , K s ) to characterize the clustering properties of their young stellar population and compare them with those of more evolved objects (e.g., Herbig Ae/Be stars) of comparable mass. All the observed sources possess strong continuum and/or line emission in the millimeter, being therefore associated with gas and dust envelopes. Nine sources have far-IR colors characteristic of UCHII regions, while the other 17 are probably experiencing an evolutionary phase that precedes the hot-cores, as suggested by a variety of evidence collected in the past decade. Aims. We attempt to gain insight into the initial conditions of star formation in these clusters (initial mass function [IMF], star formation history [SFH]), and to determine mean cluster ages. Methods. For each cluster, we complete aperture photometry. We derive stellar density profiles, color-color and color-magnitude diagrams, and color (HKCF) and luminosity (KLF) functions. These two functions are compared with simulated KLFs and HKCFs from a model that generates populations of synthetic clusters starting from assumptions about the IMF, SFH, and Pre-MS evolution, and using the average properties of the observed clusters as boundary conditions (bolometric luminosity, dust distribution, infrared excess, extinction). Results. Twenty-two sources show evidence of clustering with a stellar richness indicator that varies from a few up to several tens of objects, and a median cluster radius of 0.7 pc. A considerable number of cluster members present an infrared excess characteristic of young pre-main-sequence objects. For a subset of 9 detected clusters, we could perform a statistically significant comparison of the observed KLFs with those resulting from synthetic cluster models; for these clusters, we find that the median stellar age ranges between $2.5\times10^5$ and $5\times10^6$ years, with evidence of an age spread of the same entity within each cluster. We also find evidence that older clusters tend to be smaller in size, in agreement with our clusters being on average larger than those around relatively older Herbig Ae/Be stars. Our models allow us to explore the relationship between the mass of the most massive star in the cluster and both the cluster richness and the total stellar mass. Although these relationships are predicted by several classes of cluster formation models, their detailed analysis suggests that the properties of our modeled clusters may not be consistent with them resulting from random sampling of the IMF. Conclusions. Our results are consistent with star formation having occurred continuously over a period of time longer than the typical crossing time.
Strength and Regulation of Seven rRNA Promoters in Escherichia coli

The model prokaryote Escherichia coli contains seven copies of the rRNA operon in the genome. The presence of multiple rRNA operons is an advantage for increasing the level of ribosome, the key apparatus of translation, in response to environmental conditions. The complete sequence of E. coli genome, however, indicated the micro heterogeneity between seven rRNA operons, raising the possibility in functional heterogeneity and/or differential mode of expression. The aim of this research is to determine the strength and regulation of the promoter of each rRNA operon in E. coli. For this purpose, we used the double-fluorescent protein reporter pBRP system that was developed for accurate and precise determination of the promoter strength of protein-coding genes. For application of this promoter assay vector for measurement of the rRNA operon promoters devoid of the signal for translation, a synthetic SD sequence was added at the initiation codon of the reporter GFP gene, and then approximately 500 bp-sequence upstream each 16S rRNA was inserted in front of this SD sequence. Using this modified pGRS system, the promoter activity of each rrn operon was determined by measuring the rrn promoter-directed GFP and the reference promoter-directed RFP fluorescence, both encoded by a single and the same vector. Results indicated that: the promoter activity was the highest for the rrnE promoter under all growth conditions analyzed, including different growth phases of wild-type E. coli grown in various media; but the promoter strength of other six rrn promoters was various depending on the culture conditions. These findings altogether indicate that seven rRNA operons are different with respect to the regulation mode of expression, conferring an advantage to E. coli through a more fine-tuned control of ribosome formation in a wide range of environmental situations. Possible difference in the functional role of each rRNA operon is also discussed.
Evolutionary D Ynamics of Populations with a Local Interaction Structure Evolutionary D Ynamics of Populations with a Local Interaction Structure

Financial support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Sonderforschungsbere-ich 303 at the University of Bonn is gratefully acknowledged. Part of this work was done while the rst and third authors were visiting the Department of Economics at the University of Bonn and while the third author was visiting the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. We are grateful to both places for their hospitality. 1 Abstract A model of a population with a Local Interaction structure is presented. Individuals interact with others in a given Interaction neighborhood to obtain their payo. Individuals either imitate or else they die and are replaced by one of their neighbors in another neighborhood-the Propagation neighborhood. An individual with a higher payo is more likely to be imitated or to replace his neighbor. An unbeatable strategy can repel the invasion of any m utant. We show that the (unique, if it exists) unbeatable strategy is an ESS of a population game with inclusive tness parameter which depends on the size of the interaction and propagation neighborhoods. We analyze the evolution of altruistic traits in such populations and observe that allowing the players more information eases the development of altruistic behavior.
Information extraction in molecular biology

Information extraction has become a very active field in bioinformatics recently and a number of interesting papers have been published. Most of the efforts have been concentrated on a few specific problems, such as the detection of protein-protein interactions and the analysis of DNA expression arrays, although it is obvious that there are many other interesting areas of potential application (document retrieval, protein functional description, and detection of disease-related genes to name a few). Paradoxically, these exciting developments have not yet crystallised into general agreement on a set of standard evaluation criteria, such as the ones developed in fields such as protein structure prediction, which makes it very difficult to compare performance across these different systems. In this review we introduce the general field of information extraction, we outline the status of the applications in molecular biology, and we then discuss some ideas about possible standards for evaluation that are needed for the future development of the field.
Indonesia and the “conflictual consensus”: a discursive perspective on Indonesian democracy

ABSTRACT In this essay we propose an alternative approach to assessing the state of democracy in Indonesia. We focus not on institutional indicators (as is usually the case) but on manifestations of political discourses in the public sphere. In applying post-Marxist political theory through the work of Slavoj Žižek and Chantal Mouffe, we argue that democracy’s main defining feature is that it allows antagonistic discourses about alternative policies to coexist, yet still manages to coalesce around a minimal consensus on how these discursive conflicts are to be dealt with in a fair way. Applying this approach to democracy analysis to Indonesia, we suggest that the major obstacles to democratic practice do not emerge from institutional problems, but from an overbearing political discourse that imposes broad consensus and harmony on most political issues. Political discourse in Indonesia is generally structured around “Islam” and “the people. ” These themes provide a basis for a political consensus that conceals economic and social contradictions and reveals considerable depoliticization in Indonesian democratic practice.
Development of an Ontology-based Health Information System using Integrated Ontology Management Framework

This paper presents an ontology-based health information system supporting exploration of semantically linked health knowledge. The system was built based on an integrated framework focusing on four major aspects in ontology management: ontology creation, interpretation, manipulation and distribution. Ontology was created using mind-mapping and Web-based ontology editing tools which allowed rapid creation and extension of health concepts. Browsing and searching utilized description logic-based inference for comprehensive and intelligent retrieval. Sharing ontology data was allowed in the standard ontology format in permitting knowledge reuse. The prototype system exemplified ontology management in domain-specific information system conforming to the Semantic Web framework.
A rigorous and efficient GPU implementation of level-set sparse field algorithm

Level-set methods have proven to be powerful and flexible tools in computer vision and medical imaging. Unfortunately, the flexibility of such models has historically resulted in long computational times and therefore limited clinical utility. In this context, we propose the first rigorous GPU implementation of the sparse field algorithm. We show that this model is able to reach high computational efficiency with no reduction in segmentation accuracy compared to its sequential counter-part.
Does Mothers' Employment Conflict with Child Development? Multilevel Analysis of British Mothers born in 1958 Running Title: Mothers' Employment and Child Development Georgia Verropoulou and Heather Joshi * .

Acknowledgements This paper reflects work begun under the ESRC Programme on Children 5-16 (grant L129100268), and developed under a grant from the Smith Institute. We are grateful to colleagues in the ESRC Project, particularly Dick Wiggins and Andrew McCulloch for work on which we have built, to colleagues at the Centre for Longitudinal Studies, particularly Peter Shepherd, for support in using Cohort Study data and to Anna Vignoles, Shirley Dex, Nikos Tzavidis and to referees for their comments. We are also indebted to the members of the NCDS cohort for the time they gave to produce the survey. Responsibility for opinions and any error is our own. Abstract Does maternal employment, while children are very young, affect children's development? We link cognitive and behavioural scores of school-aged children to mothers' employment during preschool years using virtually unique data for two generations in the 1958 British Birth cohort. Our multivariate, multi-level model controls for mothers' own cognitive and behavioural scores in childhood. Results are mixed and minor, confirming other British studies at mid-childhood. Reading is, significantly, slightly poorer where less educated mothers work in the child's first year of life. We found few other interactions with employment, but did detect intergenerational transmission of behavioural as well as cognitive characteristics.
Improving Real-Time Route Suggestions in Automotive Navigation Systems using Vehicle Cluster Behavior

Automotive navigation systems are widely used by drivers to help them reach a particular destination. Mostly, such systems are designed to suggest routes which will help the driver to reach destination by covering less distance or consuming less time. This paper presents a technique that will select least congested path by using a vehicular traffic prediction technique that utilizes Global positioning data paired with Speed and Accelerometer Telemetry provided by a GPS unit, mounted on a vehicle, to improve the results of existing graph search methodologies currently being implemented to provide navigation data to users. Clustering of vehicles is done, based on similar positional and directional behavior. These clusters will have similar congestion levels. Traffic data identified through clustering is used to manipulate the path cost of the corresponding road, on an existing road network graph. It tries to improve real-time route suggestions by selecting less congested routes dynamically.
Sulfated Steroids as Natural Ligands of Mouse Pheromone-Sensing Neurons

Among mice, pheromones and other social odor cues convey information about sex, social status, and identity; however, the molecular nature of these cues is essentially unknown. To identify these cues, we screened chromatographic fractions of female mouse urine for their ability to cause reproducible firing rate increases in the pheromone-detecting vomeronasal sensory neurons (VSNs) using multielectrode array (MEA) recording. Active compounds were found to be remarkably homogenous in their basic properties, with most being of low molecular weight, moderate hydrophobicity, low volatility, and possessing a negative electric charge. Purification and structural analysis of active compounds revealed multiple sulfated steroids, of which two were identified as sulfated glucocorticoids, including corticosterone 21-sulfate. Sulfatase-treated urine extracts lost >80% of their activity, indicating that sulfated compounds are the predominant VSN ligands in female mouse urine. As measured by MEA recording, a collection of 31 synthetic sulfated steroids triggered responses 30-fold more frequently than did a similarly sized stimulus set containing the majority of all previously reported VSN ligands. Collectively, VSNs detected all major classes of sulfated steroids, but individual neurons were sensitive to small variations in chemical structure. VSNs from both males and females detected sulfated steroids, but knock-outs for the sensory transduction channel TRPC2 did not detect these compounds. Urine concentrations of the two sulfated glucocorticoids increased many fold in stressed animals, indicating that information about physiological status is encoded by the urine concentration of particular sulfated steroids. These results provide an unprecedented characterization of the signals available for chemical communication among mice.