Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
BK Large Conductance Ca2+-Activated K+ Channel-Deficient Mice are not Resistant to Hypotension and Display Reduced Survival Benefit Following Polymicrobial Sepsis

Nitric oxide-mediated activation of large conductance calcium-activated potassium (BK) channels is considered an important underlying mechanism of sepsis-induced hypotension. Indeed, the nonselective K-channel inhibitor, tetraethylammonium chloride (TEA), has been proposed as a potential treatment to raise blood pressure in septic shock by virtue of its ability to inhibit BK channels. As experimental evidence has so far relied on pharmacological inhibition, we examined the effects of channel deletion using BK&agr; subunit knockout (&agr;−/−, Slo−/−) mice in two mouse models of polymicrobial sepsis, namely, intraperitoneal fecal slurry and cecal ligation and puncture. Comparison was made against TEA treatment in wild-type (WT) mice. Following slurry, BK&agr;−/− and WT mice developed similar degrees of hypotension over 10 h with no difference in cardiac output as assessed by echocardiography between groups. Tetraethylammonium chloride raised blood pressure significantly in septic WT mice, but had no effect on survival. However, following cecal ligation and puncture, a significantly reduced survival was seen in both BK&agr;−/− mice and (high-dose) TEA-treated WT mice compared with untreated WT animals. In conclusion, the BK channel does not appear to be integral to sepsis-induced hypotension but does affect survival through other mechanisms. The pressor effect of TEA may be related to effects on other potassium channels.
Detecting Series Periodicity with Horizontal Visibility Graphs

The horizontal visibility algorithm was recently introduced as a mapping between time series and networks. The challenge lies in characterizing the structure of time series (and the processes that generated those series) using the powerful tools of graph theory. Recent works have shown that the visibility graphs inherit several degrees of correlations from their associated series, and therefore such graph theoretical characterization is in principle possible. However, both the mathematical grounding of this promising theory and its applications are in its infancy. Following this line, here we address the question of detecting hidden periodicity in series polluted with a certain amount of noise. We first put forward some generic properties of horizontal visibility graphs which allow us to define a (graph theoretical) noise reduction filter. Accordingly, we evaluate its performance for the task of calculating the period of noisy periodic signals, and compare our results with standard time domain (autocorrelation) methods. Finally, potentials, limitations and applications are discussed.
Process of counseling support persons to promote smoker treatment utilization

This qualitative study describes the process of providing a telephone intervention for adult non-smoking support persons to motivate and encourage a smoker to call the QUITPLAN Helpline. The intervention consisted of written materials and three consecutive, weekly, 15–30 min telephone sessions. Themes, issues, and concerns were summarized using content analysis. Participants were 212 support persons (94% female, 93% Caucasian) who completed at least one session. The intervention had a reported positive impact on participants’ understanding of the process of quitting smoking. The concept of readiness to quit including the Contemplation Ladder as a visual aid, education on nicotine dependence, and learning to recognize and reinforce small steps toward quitting or seeking help to quit were valuable tools to help participants understand their smoker's behavior, determine where the smoker was in the process of quitting and to use appropriate support strategies. Common issues and concerns raised are described along with strategies counselors used to address these during sessions. In addition, quantitative data on the types of goals and strategies used by support persons to motivate their smoker toward calling the Helpline and quitting are summarized. The themes of this study, along with counselor responses and suggestions, as well as goals and strategies used by support persons, could help providers to effectively guide and support non-smokers who want to help someone seek treatment to quit smoking.
An overview of security issues in cluster interconnects

Widespread use of cluster systems in diverse set of applications has spurred significant interest in providing high performance cluster interconnects. A major inefficiency in utilizing such interconnects has been the send/receive communication overheads at the sender/receiver hosts. Various techniques such as user-level communication (ULC) have been proposed to mitigate this communication inefficiency. However, due to recent security breaches, focus on cluster communication security research has spurred. Such research is non-trivial due to the high-speed nature of the cluster interconnect. This paper surveys the four most popular cluster interconnects used in Top500 supercomputers and explores possible schemes to ensure secure cluster intra-communication encompassing the host processor, secure coprocessor and the network interface card (NIC) by illustrating its challenges in doing so. We then compare these schemes in terms of host processor offload, end-to-end latency, security transparency and cryptographic processing performance. Then we give an overview of security issues for those cluster interconnects designs
Detection and Recovery Techniques for Database Corruption

Increasingly, for extensibility and performance, special purpose application code is being integrated with database system code. Such application code has direct access to database system buffers, and as a result, the danger of data being corrupted due to inadvertent application writes is increased. Previously proposed hardware techniques to protect from corruption require system calls, and their performance depends on details of the hardware architecture. We investigate an alternative approach which uses codewords associated with regions of data to detect corruption and to prevent corrupted data from being used by subsequent transactions. We develop several such techniques which vary in the level of protection, space overhead, performance, and impact on concurrency. These techniques are implemented in the Dali main-memory storage manager, and the performance impact of each on normal processing is evaluated. Novel techniques are developed to recover when a transaction has read corrupted data caused by a bad write and gone on to write other data in the database. These techniques use limited and relatively low-cost logging of transaction reads to trace the corruption and may also prove useful when resolving problems caused by incorrect data entry and other logical errors.
A Congestion Driven Placement Algorithm for FPGA Synthesis

We introduce a new congestion driven placement algorithm for FPGAs in which the overlapping effect of bounding boxes is taken into consideration. Experimental results show that compared with the linear congestion method (Betz et al., 1999) used in the state-of-the-art FPGA place and route package VPR (Betz and Rose, 1997), our algorithm achieves channel width reduction on 70% of the 20 largest MCNC benchmark circuits (10.1% on average) while keeping the channel width of the remaining 30% benchmarks unchanged. A distinct feature of our algorithm is that the critical path delay is not elongated on average, and in most cases reduced
Yoga and Sexual Functioning: A Review

Yoga is an ancient practice with Eastern roots that involves both physical postures (asanas) and breathing techniques (pranayamas). There is also a cognitive component focusing on meditation and concentration, which aids in achieving the goal of union between the self and the spiritual. Although numerous empirical studies have found a beneficial effect of yoga on different aspects of physical and psychological functioning, claims of yoga's beneficial effects on sexuality derive from a rich but nonempirical literature. The goal of this article is to review the philosophy and forms of yoga, to review the nonempirical and (limited) empirical literatures linking yoga with enhanced sexuality, and to propose some future research avenues focusinging on yoga as a treatment for sexual complaints.
Explanatory factors for the association between depression and long-term physical disability after stroke.

OBJECTIVES To identify explanatory factors for the association between depression at 3 months after stroke and physical disability at 3 years. METHODS Data from the South London Stroke Register (1998-2013) were used. Patients (n = 3,612) were assessed at stroke onset. Follow-up at 3 months included assessment for depression with the Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale (scores ≥ 7 = depression), physical disability (Barthel index) cognitive function, smoking habit, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) use, perception of recovery and social support. Physical disability was reassessed at 3 years. The associations between depression at 3 months and physical disability at 3 years were estimated with multinomial regression adjusting for age, gender, ethnicity, stroke severity and possible explanatory factors for the association (introduced in the models first individually and then sequentially): pre-stroke medical history and physical disability, cognitive function, smoking, SSRIs, perception of recovery and social support at 3 months. RESULTS One thousand three hundred and seven survivors were assessed at 3 months, of which 418 (32.0%) had depression. Survivors with depression had a higher physical disability rate at 3 years. These associations remained significant after adjustment for individual explanatory factors but were not significant after adjustment for combined explanatory factors. Physical disability at 3 months was a relevant explanatory factor for this association. SSRIs were associated with severe, relative risk: 6.62 (2.92-15.02) P < 0.001, and moderate physical disability, relative risk: 3.45 (1.58-7.52) P = 0.002, at 3 years. CONCLUSION The association between depression and physical disability appears to be multifactorial. The use of SSRIs after stroke requires further research.
Automatic Segmentation based Recognition of Handwritten Arabic Words

The world heritage of handwritten Arabic documents is huge however only manual indexing and retrieval techniques of the content of these documents are available. To facilitate an automatic retrieval of such handwritten Arabic document, a number of automatic recognition systems for handwritten Arabic words have been proposed. Nevertheless, these systems suer from low recognition accuracy due to the peculiarities of the handwritten Arabic language. Thus, in this Paper we propose a segmentation based recognition system for handwritten Arabic words. We divide a handwritten word into smaller pieces of a word and then these small pieces are segmented into candidate letters. These candidate letters are converted into their correspondence chain-code representation. Thereafter we extract discrete, statistical and structural features for classication. Additionally, we introduce a novel active contour based feature to increase the recognition accuracy of strongly deformed Arabic letters. We also use a decision tree to reduce the number of potential classes. We then use a neural network to compute weights for all statistical features and use them as input for a k-NN classier. Our experiments show that the extracted features by our technique achieve higher recognition accuracy as compared to other features.
Correlational study of attachment and self-reported levels of urges to self-harm and frequency of self-harming behaviors in dialectical behavioral therapy clients

This research examined the relationships between attachment style and frequency o f suicidal ideation, urges to self-harm, and action to self-harm in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy patients. The Attachment Style Questionnaire served as the attachment measure. The Diary Cards, used in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, served as the measure for suicide ideation, urges to self-harm and action to self-harm averages. Twenty women from the Omaha YWCA and Therapy Resource Associates participated in the study. Results o f the study suggest that there was no relationship between a high score on Avoidant and Anxious/Ambivalent attachment styles and frequency o f suicide ideation, urges to self-harm, and action to self-harm. Comparatively, the study’s results did suggest a high score on the secure attachment style decreased the frequency o f suicide ideation.
An Open Trial of Iloperidone for Mixed Episodes in Bipolar Disorder

Background Mixed mood states in bipolar disorder are difficult to treat and when present indicate worse illness trajectories. Several medications are US Food and Drug Administration approved to treat mixed episodes; however, the clinical trials have been short term and rarely reported depression response. Methods We conducted a 5-month open-label trial examining the tolerability and efficacy of iloperidone for bipolar disorder mixed episodes. Results Mania and depression scores significantly improved over the course of the study for study completers (ie, 60%–68% improvement for manic symptoms and 41%–49% for depression symptoms). Improvements were observed early in the trial and after adjusting for concomitant medication effects. The average daily dose in completers was 15 mg. Thirty-nine percent (12/31) of the eligible sample discontinued early because of adverse effects. The adverse events most commonly associated with withdrawal were increased heart rate/palpitations (n = 5 of 12) and urinary incontinence/intense urge to urinate (n = 3 of 12). Conclusions In a subset of patients, iloperidone provides relief for classic manic, depression, and irritability symptoms associated with mixed episodes in a long-term trial. Adverse effect profiles are likely to be a major factor contributing to individualized medication use.
The Japanese plasma cell dyscrasia syndrome: case report and theory of pathogenesis

A 54-year-old man developed pigmentation, clubbing, weight loss, oedema, hepatomegaly, lymphadenopathy, cold intolerance, hypotonia and hyporeflexia. Dominant laboratory findings were increased marrow plasma cells with IgA lambda paraproteinaemia, hypothyroidism, hyperprolactinaemia, hyperoestrogenaemia and biopsy-proven peripheral neuropathy. The clinical features and dramatic response to corticosteroids are consistent with the syndrome of plasma cell dyscrasia, polyneuropathy and endocrinopathy found predominantly in Japan. In our patient, immunofluorescence of neural tissues revealed paraprotein deposition. Although the pathogenesis is unknown, these multisystemic features may result from antibody activity or tissue deposition of paraprotein. Furthermore, the endocrinopathy may be localized at the hypothalamic level.
Surfing Wavelets on Streams: One-Pass Summaries for Approximate Aggregate Queries

We present techniques for computing small space representations of massive data streams. These are inspired by traditional wavelet-based approximations that consist of specific linear projections of the underlying data. We present general “sketch” based methods for capturing various linear projections of the data and use them to provide pointwise and rangesum estimation of data streams. These methods use small amounts of space and per-item time while streaming through the data, and provide accurate representation as our experiments with real data streams show.
Differential Media Delivering Strategy for Loss Tolerant Streaming

Live peer-to-peer streaming has became a powerful and flexible method for multimedia content delivering. The media content transmission scheme which is responsible for availability information exchanging and data assignment is the key service for media streaming. A differential media delivering strategy proposed in this paper adopts an optimal buffer management and redundant data receiving scheme to cope with network dynamic. It uses a dynamic size multi-element vector to represent buffers for data availability information exchanging. Buffer management scheme based on packet importance and request information is also introduced. In this scheme, those packets which largely determine the quality of the streaming and required by many child peers will be kept in data buffer for a longer time. To address the problem of packet loss, each peer will receive redundant packets at the same time from multiple peers according to the loss rate of data links with low communication load. The proposed content delivering mechanism can increase the continuity index greatly which is demonstrated in the experiment.
GROUP SPARSITY VIA LINEAR-TIME PROJECTION

We present an efficient spectral projected-gradient algorithm for optimization subject to a group `1-norm constraint. Our approach is based on a novel linear-time algorithm for Euclidean projection onto the `1and group `1-norm constraints. Numerical experiments on large data sets suggest that the proposed method is substantially more efficient and scalable than existing methods.
Constructing and Comparing User Mobility Profiles

Nowadays, the accumulation of people's whereabouts due to location-based applications has made it possible to construct their mobility profiles. This access to users' mobility profiles subsequently brings benefits back to location-based applications. For instance, in on-line social networks, friends can be recommended not only based on the similarity between their registered information, for instance, hobbies and professions but also referring to the similarity between their mobility profiles. In this article, we propose a new approach to construct and compare users' mobility profiles. First, we improve and apply frequent sequential pattern mining technologies to extract the sequences of places that a user frequently visits and use them to model his mobility profile. Second, we present a new method to calculate the similarity between two users using their mobility profiles. More specifically, we identify the weaknesses of a similarity metric in the literature, and propose a new one which not only fixes the weaknesses but also provides more precise and effective similarity estimation. Third, we consider the semantics of spatio-temporal information contained in user mobility profiles and add them into the calculation of user similarity. It enables us to measure users' similarity from different perspectives. Two specific types of semantics are explored in this article: location semantics and temporal semantics. Last, we validate our approach by applying it to two real-life datasets collected by Microsoft Research Asia and Yonsei University, respectively. The results show that our approach outperforms the existing works from several aspects.
Integrating Orientation Cue With EOH-OLBP-Based Multilevel Features for Human Detection

Detecting pedestrians efficiently and accurately is a fundamental step for many computer vision applications, such as smart cars and robotics. In this paper, we introduce a pedestrian detection system to extract human objectives using an on-board monocular camera. First of all, we use an experiment to demonstrate that the orientation information is critical in human detection. Secondly, the local binary patterns-based feature, oriented LBP (OLBP), is discussed. The OLBP feature integrates pixel intensity difference with texture orientation information to capture salient object features. Thirdly, a set of edge orientation histogram (EOH) and OLBP-based intrablock and interblock features is presented to describe cell-level and block-level structure information. These multilevel features capture larger-scale structure information which is more informative for pedestrian localization. Experiments on the Institut national de recherche en informatique et en automatique (INRIA) dataset and the Caltech pedestrian detection benchmark demonstrate that the new pedestrian detection system is not only comparable to the existing pedestrian detectors, but also performs at a faster speed.
Goal Contents, Well-being, and Life Context During Transition to University: A Longitudinal Study

To examine the relationships between young adults’ goal contents, their life situation, experienced life events, and subjective well-being, 256 university students filled in the Little’s Personal Project Analysis (PPA), the revised Beck’s Depression Inventory (BDI), Rosenberg’s Self-esteem Scale (RSE), and a background questionnaire at the beginning of their studies. One year later, they also completed a life event scale (LES). Two years later, they again filled in the PPA, BDI, RSE, LES, and a background questionnaire. The results showed that an earlier life situation such as being married and having children was associated with interest in family-related goals, which again predicted subsequent transitions in this life domain. Moreover, goals that concern major age-graded developmental tasks, such as a future family, were found to predict high subjective well-being. In turn, high subjective well-being also predicted interest in these types of goals. By way of contrast, low self-esteem predicted interest in self-related goals, which again were associated with low well-being later on.
MORPHOLOGICAL EVOLUTION MEDIATED BY BEHAVIOR IN THE DAMSELFLIES OF TWO COMMUNITIES

Behavior can play a mediating role in determining the selective pressures that influence the evolution of morphological structures. To examine this, I quantified patterns of morphological variation among larvae of Enallagma damselfly species (Odonata: Coenagrionidae) that use different behaviors to avoid the major predators found in each of two communities, lakes with and without fish. Specifically, I quantified the sizes and shapes of the abdomens and caudal lamellae (used for swimming) and legs for three species from fishless lakes and six species from lakes with fish. A preliminary cladistic analysis indicates that species within each lake type are not members of a single clade, which supports the conclusions of previous odonate taxonomists. Previous studies have shown that species in fishless lakes are very active, running and swimming frequently and at high rates of speed in the absence of predators, and they avoid their primary predators, large dragonflies, by swimming. These species have the widest abdomens, the largest caudal lamellae relative to overall body size, and the longest legs of the species studied, which should make them powerful swimmers and runners. Furthermore, species in fishless lakes are morphologically very similar to one another and differ greatly from fish‐lake species, although each is more closely related to species in fish lakes. In contrast, species from lakes with fish move very slowly and infrequently in the absence of predators and do not attempt to evade attacking predators. However, despite their behavioral similarity, large interspecific variation in morphology exists among the fish‐lake species, and the only morphological patterns were differences associated with membership in the two primary clades identified in the cladistic analysis. A modification of Felsenstein's (1985) method of evolutionary contrasts which allows character change to be isolated along single branches is introduced and is used to reconstruct the evolutionary histories of these characters. This analysis suggests that large increases in caudal lamella size, abdominal segment lengths and widths, and leg length accompany speciation events associated with habitat shifts from fish‐lakes to fishless lakes. Following habitat shifts selection pressures exerted by dragonfly predation apparently favored swimming as an escape tactic, which mediated selection pressures onto morphologies used in swimming to increase swimming performance; morphological patterns in extant species reflect this adaptation to a new environment. Mechanisms by which behaviorally mediated selection could have accelerated evolutionary dynamics following founder events are discussed.