Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Elective induction: an analysis of economic and health consequences.

OBJECTIVE Our purpose was to assess economic and health consequences of elective induction at term. STUDY DESIGN A decision-tree model incorporating a Markov analysis was used to compare the decision either to electively induce labor at term or expectantly manage the pregnancy until 42 weeks' gestation. Main outcome measures, stratified by parity, cervical ripeness, and gestational age at induction, were number of cesarean deliveries and costs to the health care system. RESULTS By use of baseline estimates, induction at any gestational age, regardless of parity and cervical ripeness, required expenditures from the medical system. Although never cost saving, inductions were less expensive at later gestational ages, for multiparous patients, and for those women with a favorable cervix. Sensitivity analysis demonstrated a robust model. CONCLUSIONS Elective induction of labor at term is not cost saving and results in a large excess of cesarean deliveries. Costs are significantly altered by the timing of the induction, parity, and cervical ripeness.
Approximation Theory

Approximation theory is an area of mathematics that has become indispensable to the computational sciences. The approximation of magnitudes and functions describing some physical behavior is an integral part of scientific computing, queueing problems, neural networks, graphics, robotics, network traffic, financial trading, antenna design, floating-point arithmetic, image processing, speech analysis, and video signal filtering, to name just a few areas. The idea of seeking a simple mathematical function that describes some behavior approximately has two sources of motivation. The exact behavior that one is studying may not be able to be expressed in a closed mathematical formula. But even if an exact description is available it may be far too complicated for practical use. In both cases a best and simple approximation is required. What is meant by best and simple depends on the application at hand. The approximation is often used in a computer implementation, and therefore its evaluation needs to be efficient. The simplest and fastest functions for implementation are polynomials, because they use only the fast hardware operations of addition and multiplication. Next come rational functions, which also need the hardware operation division, one or more depending on their representation as a quotient of polynomials or as a continued fraction. Rational functions offer the clear advantage that they can reproduce asymptotic behavior (vertical, horizontal, slant), which is something polynomials are incapable of doing. For periodic phenomena, linear combinations of trigonometric functions make good candidates. For growth models or decaying magnitudes, linear combinations of exponentials can be used. In approximation theory one distinguishes between interpolation and so-called least-squares problems. In the former one wants the approximate model to take exactly the same values as prescribed by data given at precise argument values. In the latter a set of data (not necessarily discrete) is regarded as a trend and approximated by a simple model in one or other best sense. The difference is formalized in the following sections. Besides constructing a good and efficient mathematical model, one should also take the following two issues into account.
Hydrocephalus compacted cortex and hippocampus and altered their output neurons in association with spatial learning and memory deficits in rats

Hydrocephalus is a common neurological disorder in children characterized by abnormal dilation of cerebral ventricles as a result of the impairment of cerebrospinal fluid flow or absorption. Clinical presentation of hydrocephalus varies with chronicity and often shows cognitive dysfunction. Here we used a kaolin‐induction method in rats and studied the effects of hydrocephalus on cerebral cortex and hippocampus, the two regions highly related to cognition. Hydrocephalus impaired rats' performance in Morris water maze task. Serial three‐dimensional reconstruction from sections of the whole brain freshly froze in situ with skull shows that the volumes of both structures were reduced. Morphologically, pyramidal neurons of the somatosensory cortex and hippocampus appear to be distorted. Intracellular dye injection and subsequent three‐dimensional reconstruction and analyses revealed that the dendritic arbors of layer III and V cortical pyramid neurons were reduced. The total dendritic length of CA1, but not CA3, pyramidal neurons was also reduced. Dendritic spine densities on both cortical and hippocampal pyramidal neurons were decreased, consistent with our concomitant findings that the expressions of both synaptophysin and postsynaptic density protein 95 were reduced. These cortical and hippocampal changes suggest reductions of excitatory connectivity, which could underlie the learning and memory deficits in hydrocephalus.
Sources, contents, and students' social learning about persons with a disability

A secondary analysis of survey data of Hong Kong school students (N = 2,865) examines social learning about persons with a (physical) disability (PWDs). Path models, connecting recalled information in communication about PWDs of different sources (media, significant others, and contact) and content (assistance, pity, and fear) with perceptions, general attitude, and behavior inclination toward PWDs, showed content as better predictor than either media channels or interpersonal sources. Interpersonal sources were better predictors than media channels were. The effects were also mediated by perception of PWDs' capabilities, perception of PWDs' inner state, and general attitude toward PWDs. The findings are interpreted and discussed.
Encoding, storage and judgment of experienced frequency and duration

This paper examines conditions that do or do not lead to accurate judgments of frequency (JOF) and judgments of duration (JOD). In three experiments, duration and frequency of visually presented stimuli are varied orthogonally in a within-subjects design. Experiment 1 reveals an asymmetric judgment pattern. JOFs reflected actual presentation frequency quite accurately and were unbiased by exposure duration. Conversely, JODs were almost insensitive to actual exposure duration and were systematically biased by presentation frequency. We show, however, that a tendency towards a symmetric judgment pattern can be obtained by manipulating encoding conditions. Sustaining attention during encoding (Experiment 2) or enhancing richness of the encoded stimuli (Experiment 3) increases judgment sensitivity in JOD and yields biases in both directions (JOF biased by exposure duration, JOD biased by presentation frequency). The implications of these findings for underlying memory mechanisms are discussed.
Verbal processing speed and executive functioning in long-term cochlear implant users.

PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to report how verbal rehearsal speed (VRS), a form of covert speech used to maintain verbal information in working memory, and another verbal processing speed measure, perceptual encoding speed, are related to 3 domains of executive function (EF) at risk in cochlear implant (CI) users: verbal working memory, fluency-speed, and inhibition-concentration. METHOD EF, speech perception, and language outcome measures were obtained from 55 prelingually deaf, long-term CI users and matched controls with normal hearing (NH controls). Correlational analyses were used to assess relations between VRS (articulation rate), perceptual encoding speed (digit and color naming), and the outcomes in each sample. RESULTS CI users displayed slower verbal processing speeds than NH controls. Verbal rehearsal speed was related to 2 EF domains in the NH sample but was unrelated to EF outcomes in CI users. Perceptual encoding speed was related to all EF domains in both groups. CONCLUSIONS Verbal rehearsal speed may be less influential for EF quality in CI users than for NH controls, whereas rapid automatized labeling skills and EF are closely related in both groups. CI users may develop processing strategies in EF tasks that differ from the covert speech strategies routinely employed by NH individuals.
Prevention of Birch Pollen-Related Food Allergy by Mucosal Treatment with Multi-Allergen-Chimers in Mice

Background Among birch pollen allergic patients up to 70% develop allergic reactions to Bet v 1-homologue food allergens such as Api g 1 (celery) or Dau c 1 (carrot), termed as birch pollen-related food allergy. In most cases, specific immunotherapy with birch pollen extracts does not reduce allergic symptoms to the homologue food allergens. We therefore genetically engineered a multi-allergen chimer and tested if mucosal treatment with this construct could represent a novel approach for prevention of birch pollen-related food allergy. Methodology BALB/c mice were poly-sensitized with a mixture of Bet v 1, Api g 1 and Dau c 1 followed by a sublingual challenge with carrot, celery and birch pollen extracts. For prevention of allergy sensitization an allergen chimer composed of immunodominant T cell epitopes of Api g 1 and Dau c 1 linked to the whole Bet v 1 allergen, was intranasally applied prior to sensitization. Results Intranasal pretreatment with the allergen chimer led to significantly decreased antigen-specific IgE-dependent β-hexosaminidase release, but enhanced allergen-specific IgG2a and IgA antibodies. Accordingly, IL-4 levels in spleen cell cultures and IL-5 levels in restimulated spleen and cervical lymph node cell cultures were markedly reduced, while IFN-γ levels were increased. Immunomodulation was associated with increased IL-10, TGF-β and Foxp3 mRNA levels in NALT and Foxp3 in oral mucosal tissues. Treatment with anti-TGF-β, anti-IL10R or anti-CD25 antibodies abrogated the suppression of allergic responses induced by the chimer. Conclusion Our results indicate that mucosal application of the allergen chimer led to decreased Th2 immune responses against Bet v 1 and its homologue food allergens Api g 1 and Dau c 1 by regulatory and Th1-biased immune responses. These data suggest that mucosal treatment with a multi-allergen vaccine could be a promising treatment strategy to prevent birch pollen-related food allergy.
Discrete chaotic calculus and covariance identities

We show that for the binomial process (or Bernoulli random walk) the orthogonal functionals constructed in Kroeker, J.P. (1980) "Wiener analysis of functionals of a Markov chain: application to neural transformations of random signals", Biol. Cybernetics 36 , 243-248, [14] for Markov chains can be expressed using the Krawtchouk polynomials, and by iterated stochastic integrals. This allows to construct a chaotic calculus based on gradient and divergence operators and structure equations, and to establish a Clark representation formula. As an application we obtain simple infinite dimensional proofs of covariance identities on the discrete cube.
Comparison of different staging methods for COPD in predicting outcomes

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is commonly staged according to the percentage of predicted forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1 % pred), but other methods have been proposed. In this study we compared the performance of seven staging methods in predicting outcomes. We retrospectively studied 296 COPD outpatients. For each patient the disease severity was staged by separately applying the following methods: the criteria proposed by the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD), quartiles of FEV1 % pred and z-score of FEV1, quartiles and specified cut-off points of the ratio of FEV1 over height squared ((FEV1·Ht−2)A and (FEV1·Ht−2)B, respectively), and quartiles of the ratio of FEV1 over height cubed (FEV1·Ht−3) and of FEV1 quotient (FEV1Q). We evaluated the performance of these methods in predicting the risks of severe acute exacerbation and all-cause mortality. Overall, staging based on the reference-independent FEV1Q performed best in predicting the risks of severe acute exacerbation (including frequent exacerbation) and mortality, followed by (FEV1·Ht−2)B. The performance of staging methods could also be influenced by the choice of cut-off values. Future work using large and ethnically diverse populations to refine and validate the cut-off values would enhance the prediction of outcomes. Reference-independent methods for staging COPD performed better than the GOLD criteria in predicting outcomes http://ow.ly/W95F30iiMKO
Differential dispersal and the Allee effect create power‐law behaviour: Distribution of spot infestations during mountain pine beetle outbreaks

Mountain pine beetles (MPB, Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins) are aggressive insects attacking Pinus host trees. Pines use defensive resin to overwhelm attackers, creating an Allee effect requiring beetles to attack en masse to successfully reproduce. MPB kill hosts, leaving observable, dying trees with red needles. Landscape patterns of infestation depend on MPB dispersal, which decreases with host density. Away from contiguously impacted patches (low beetle densities), infestations are characterized by apparently random spots (of 1-10 trees). It remains unclear whether the new spots are spatially random eruptions of a locally endemic population or a mode of MPB spread, with spatial distribution determined by beetle motility and the need to overcome the Allee effect. To discriminate between the hypothesis of population spread versus independent eruption, a model of spot formation by dispersing beetles facing a local Allee effect is derived. The model gives rise to an inverse power distribution of travel times from existing outbreaks. Using landscape-level host density maps in three study areas, an independently calibrated model of landscape resistance depending on host density, and aerial detection surveys, we calculated yearly maps of travel time to previous beetle impact. Isolated beetle spots were sorted by travel time and compared with predictions. Random eruption of locally endemic populations was tested using artificially seeded spots. We also evaluated the relationship between number of new spots and length of the perimeter of previously infested areas. Spot distributions conformed strongly to predicted power-law behaviour. The spatially random eruption hypothesis was found to be highly improbable. Spot numbers grew consistently with perimeter of previously infested area, suggesting that MPB spread long distances from infestation boundaries via spots following an inverse power distribution. The Allee effect in MPB therefore accelerates, rather than limits, invasion rates, contributing to recent widespread landscape-scale mortality in western North America.
Psychological and Psychophysiological Effects of Recuperative Music Postexercise

Purpose Few studies have examined the psychological and psychophysiological effects of recuperative music after exhaustive exercise. The main purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of two music conditions compared with a no-music control on psychological and psychophysiological recovery processes after exercise. Methods A randomized, fully counterbalanced, crossover design was used. Core affect, salivary cortisol, heart rate, and blood pressure were measured before exhaustive exercise, immediately after, and in 10-, 20-, and 30-min intervals during passive recovery (21 women and 21 men; 20.9 ± 1.7 yr) over three separate trials (slow, sedative music; fast, stimulative music; no-music control). The exercise task entailed incremental cycle ergometry performed at 75 rpm with an increase in intensity of 22.5 W·min−1 at the end of each minute until exhaustion. Data were analyzed using mixed-model 3 (condition) × 4 (time) × 2 (gender) MANOVA/ANCOVA. Results The largest decline in affective arousal between active and passive recovery phases was evident in the slow, sedative condition (&eegr;p2 = 0.50). Women had a more pronounced reduction in arousal than did men in the slow, sedative music condition. Heart rate measures showed that fast, stimulative music inhibited the return of heart rate toward resting levels (&eegr;p2 = 0.06). Similarly, salivary cortisol levels tended to be lower in response to slow, sedative music (&eegr;p2 = 0.11). There was a main effect of condition for affective valence indicating that the slow, sedative condition elicited more positive affective responses compared with the control and fast, stimulative conditions (&eegr;p2 = 0.12). Conclusions The present findings support the notion that slow, sedative music can expedite the recovery process immediately after strenuous exercise.
Biodegradable Microfluidics

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Representation of Concepts as Frames

Concepts can be represented as frames, i.e., recursive attribute-value structures. Frames assign unique values to attributes. Concepts can be classified into four groups with respect to both relationality and referential uniqueness: sortal, individual, proper relational, and functional concepts. The paper defines frames as directed graphs with labeled nodes and arcs and it discusses the graph structures of frames for sortal and relational concepts. It aims at a classification of frame graphs that reflects the given concept classification. By giving a new definition of type signatures, the status of attributes in frames is clarified and the connection between functional concepts, their sortal uses, and their associated attributes is explained.
Phenotypic plasticity promotes persistence following severe events: physiological and morphological responses of seagrass to flooding

Severe events such as floods or cyclones can have large ecological effects on the structure and functioning of ecosystems. The capacity of an ecosystem to adapt to, or absorb, the effects of a severe event depends on the severity and longevity of the event and the tolerance of the species present. Seagrasses exhibit phenotypic plasticity at the plant to meadow scale through a variety of physiological and morphological acclimations to light stress to enhance photosynthetic capacity. These acclimations provide early warning of the possible risk of larger scale seagrass loss and can therefore be used in predicting how ecosystems might respond to severe events. The physiological and morphological responses of 12 seagrass (Zostera muelleri) meadows to a severe flood were examined to test two main hypotheses: (i) that the physiological and morphological characteristics of seagrass would differ between meadows along the established chronic water quality gradient, in a pattern consistent with prior acclimations which have been shown to enhance photosynthetic capacity and (ii) that physiological and morphological responses to the flood would differ between meadows in a manner consistent with their position along the water quality gradient. Meadows had different physiological and morphological characteristics across the water quality gradient, with meadows subject to chronically poorer water quality exhibiting characteristics consistent with those that maximize photosynthetic capacity. Despite a large discrepancy in impact among meadows, all meadows sampled responded consistently to the flood, exhibiting only physiological changes with no significant reduction in biomass. This suggests that photoacclimation to chronically poor conditions can enable seagrasses to withstand the effects of severe events, such as floods. Synthesis. Phenotypic plasticity in habitat‐forming species can result in a large variation in their responses to severe events, such as floods or cyclones. Acclimation to prior poor environmental conditions can promote persistence in habitat‐forming species, such as seagrasses, following severe events. The measurement of phenotypic characteristics along an impact gradient can therefore provide an indication of the response of habitat‐forming species to severe events.
Ranking Clinical Trials Using Elasticsearch

The clinical trials task of the TREC 2017 Precision Medicine Track was designed to represent the potential for connecting patients with experimental treatments if existing treatments were ineffective. Participants were challenged with the task of retrieving appropriate clinical trials from ClinicalTrials.gov for which a patient is eligible. This paper presents an approach to solving the problem by first preparing an index for the clinical trial descriptions based on specific tags in the XML files and querying them using Elasticsearch. Initial results indicate that our approach performed very well for certain kinds of queries – however, more tuning may be required for ensuring generalizable results from the search.
Finding Heavily-Weighted Features with the Weight-Median Sketch Extended Abstract

We introduce the Weight-Median Sketch, a sub-linear space data structure that captures the most heavily weighted features in linear classifiers trained over data streams. This enables memory-limited execution of several statistical analyses over streams, including online feature selection, streaming data explanation, relative deltoid detection, and streaming estimation of pointwise mutual information. On a standard binary classification benchmark, the WeightMedian Sketch enables estimation of the top-100 weights with 10% relative error using two orders of magnitude less space than an uncompressed classifier.
Alias-Free Shadow Maps

In this paper we abandon the regular structure of shadow maps. Instead, we transform the visible pixels P(x, y, z) from screen space to the image plane of a light source P′(x′, y′, z′). The (x′, y′) are then used as sampling points when the geometry is rasterized into the shadow map. This eliminates the resolution issues that have plagued shadow maps for decades, e.g., jagged shadow boundaries. Incorrect self-shadowing is also greatly reduced, and semi-transparent shadow casters and receivers can be supported. A hierarchical software implementation is outlined
A Friendly Face in the Storm : Self-care Support System Requirements for Individuals with Spinal Cord Injury

Individuals with Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) have to deal with myriad lifestyle changes including significant reductions in physical mobility, physical rehabilitation, and a variety of self-monitoring procedures. They are also at risk of depression and social isolation. We explored the design requirements for an interactive system to best address the needs of people newly diagnosed with SCI through one-on-one interviews and a technology probe. We gathered qualitative information from ten participants with SCI, and identified key themes regarding the challenges the target population faces in their transition to a new lifestyle, and illustrate how technology can address these. We present rationale and design requirements for a conversational agent-based system as an ideal medium to provide health education, self-care management coaching and emotional and social support for persons with SCI.