Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hidden Structure: Indirect Measurement of Relational Representation

Structured mental representations underlie much of human cognitive ability. However, research has repeatedly found that people are generally quite poor at spontaneously applying structure acquired from one kind of situation to a dissimilar domain. This would seem to present a serious impediment to learning abstract structures experientially. The current study employs a novel approach designed to be more sensitive to the relational learning that is taking place. By using implicit measures of processing fluency, we demonstrate that relational commonalities—even between dissimilar domains—can indeed exert a measurable, if subtle, influence on subsequent processing. Despite having no explicit awareness of the structural commonalities, participants in our study rated a scientific passage to be better understood, better written, and more interesting when it was preceded by an (overtly dissimilar) analogous passage. This finding has important implications for the acquisition of complex knowledge structures.
The Greek implied volatility index: construction and properties

There is a growing literature on implied volatility indices in developed markets. However, no similar research has been conducted in the context of emerging markets. In this paper, an implied volatility index (GVIX) is constructed for the fast developing Greek derivatives market. Next, the properties of GVIX are explored. In line with earlier results, GVIX can be interpreted as a gauge of the investor's sentiment. In addition, it is found that the underlying stock market can forecast the future movements of GVIX. However, the reverse relationship does not hold. Finally, a contemporaneous spillover between GVIX and the US volatility indices VXO and VXN is detected. The results have implications for portfolio management.
Characterization of combinatorial patterns generated by multiple two‐component sensors in E. coli that respond to many stimuli

Two‐component systems enable bacteria to sense changes in their environment and adjust gene expression in response. Multiple two‐component systems could function as a combinatorial sensor to discriminate environmental conditions. A combinatorial sensor is composed of a set of sensors that are non‐specifically activated to different magnitudes by many stimuli, such that their collective activity pattern defines the signal. Using promoter reporters and flow cytometry, we measured the response of three two‐component systems in Escherichia coli that have been previously reported to respond to many environmental stimuli (EnvZ/OmpR, CpxA/CpxR, and RcsC/RcsD/RcsB). A chemical library was screened for the ability to activate the sensors and 13 inducers were identified that produce different patterns of sensor activity. The activities of the three systems are uncorrelated with each other and the osmolarity of the inducing media. Five of the seven possible non‐trivial patterns generated by three sensors are observed. This data demonstrate one mechanism by which bacteria are able to use a limited set of sensors to identify a diverse set of compounds and environmental conditions. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2011; 108:666–675. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Optimal and Acceptable Technical Facilities Involving Risks

Economic cost‐benefit optimization of technical facility requires suitable “life saving cost” and/or an appropriate acceptance criterion if human life and limb are at risk. Traditionally, acceptance criteria implicit in codes of practice, standards, or regulations for well‐defined fields of application are calibrated against past and present practice. This is all but satisfying. It is unclear whether present rules are already optimal. Extrapolations into new fields of application are extremely difficult. Direct cost‐benefit analysis is proposed as an alternative. Based on the recently proposed “life quality index” (LQI), a rational acceptance criterion and so‐called life saving cost are derived. The classical life quality index is reviewed, modified, and imbedded in modern economics theory. The results are then applied to technical facilities. The relation between optimization and the LQI‐based acceptance criterion is discussed. The relevant economics literature is reviewed with respect to discount rates applicable for long‐term investments into risk reduction. They should be as low as possible according to a recent mathematical result. Modern economic growth theory decomposes the output growth rate into the rate of time preference of consumption and the rate of economical growth multiplied by the elasticity of marginal utility of consumption. It is found that the rate of time preference of consumption should be a little larger than the long‐term population growth rate. The public benefit rate (output growth rate) on the other hand should be smaller than the sum of the population growth rate and the long‐term growth rate of a national economy, which is around 2% for most industrial countries. Accordingly, the rate of time preference of consumption is about 1%, which is also intergenerationally acceptable from an ethical point of view. Given a certain output growth rate there is a corresponding maximum financial interest rate in order to maintain nonnegativity of the objective function at the optimum. Finally, a simple demonstration example is added.
Relationship Between Dyslipidemia and Albuminuria in Hypertensive Adults

AbstractThis study aimed to estimate the relationship between various lipid abnormalities and albuminuria in hypertensive Korean adults. Data obtained from the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey in 2011 to 2012 were analyzed. The study included 2330 hypertensive participants. Total cholesterol (TC), triglyceride (TG), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) levels were measured. Dyslipidemia parameters were defined as high TG ≥200 mg/dL, low HDL-C as HDL-C <40 mg/dL, high TC/HDL-C as TC/HDL-C ratio ≥4, high TG/HDL-C as TG/HDL-C ratio ≥3.8, and high LDL-C/HDL-C as LDL-C/HDL-C ratio ≥2.5. Albuminuria was defined as a urine albumin to creatinine ratio (ACR) ≥30 mg/g. Women with albuminuria showed significantly higher levels of TG, TC/HDL-C, and TG/HDL-C and a lower level of HDL-C than women without albuminuria (all P < 0.05). LogTG, TC/HDL-C, and logTG/HDL-C were positively correlated with ACR in both men and women; however, HDL-C was negatively correlated with ACR in women and non-HDL-C was positively correlated with ACR in men. In men, there was no association between ACR and lipid parameters. However, in women, higher values for logTG, TC/HDL-C, and logTG/HDL-C were associated with an increased odds ratio (OR) for albuminuria (OR [95% confidence interval]: 1.53 [1.06–2.21], 1.21 [1.02–1.45], and 1.78 [1.21–2.63], respectively) and HDL-C with a decreased OR for albuminuria (0.78 [0.67–0.92]) after adjusting for all covariates. LogTG, TC/HDL-C, and logTG/HDL-C were associated with an increased prevalence of albuminuria in hypertensive women. Screening and treatment for dyslipidemia may be necessary for hypertensive women to address potential albuminuria.
Multisubject Learning for Common Spatial Patterns in Motor-Imagery BCI

Motor-imagery-based brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) commonly use the common spatial pattern filter (CSP) as preprocessing step before feature extraction and classification. The CSP method is a supervised algorithm and therefore needs subject-specific training data for calibration, which is very time consuming to collect. In order to reduce the amount of calibration data that is needed for a new subject, one can apply multitask (from now on called multisubject) machine learning techniques to the preprocessing phase. Here, the goal of multisubject learning is to learn a spatial filter for a new subject based on its own data and that of other subjects. This paper outlines the details of the multitask CSP algorithm and shows results on two data sets. In certain subjects a clear improvement can be seen, especially when the number of training trials is relatively low.
Changes in Optimism Are Associated With Changes in Health Over Time Among Older Adults

Little is known about how optimism differs by age and changes over time, particularly among older adults. Even less is known about how changes in optimism are related to changes in physical health. We examined age differences and longitudinal changes in optimism in 9,790 older adults over a 4-year period. We found an inverted U-shaped pattern between optimism and age both cross-sectionally and longitudinally, such that optimism generally increased in older adults before decreasing. Increases in optimism over a 4-year period were associated with improvements in self-rated health and fewer chronic illnesses over the same time frame. The findings from the current study are consistent with changes in emotion regulation strategies employed by older adults and age-related changes in well-being.
Classification of Alcoholics and Non-Alcoholics via EEG Using SVM and Neural Networks

The alcoholism is one of psychiatric phenotype, which results from interplay between genetic and environmental factors. Not only it leads to brain defects but also associated cognitive, emotional, and behavioral impairments. It can be detected by analyzing EEG signals. In this research, the power spectrum of the Haar mother wavelet is extracted as features. Then the principle component analysis is applied for dimension reduction of the feature vectors. Finally support vectors machine and neural networks are used for classification. The simulation results show that our proposed method achieves better classification accuracy than the other methods.
Learning from mistakes: a comprehensive study on real world concurrency bug characteristics

The reality of multi-core hardware has made concurrent programs pervasive. Unfortunately, writing correct concurrent programs is difficult. Addressing this challenge requires advances in multiple directions, including concurrency bug detection, concurrent program testing, concurrent programming model design, etc. Designing effective techniques in all these directions will significantly benefit from a deep understanding of real world concurrency bug characteristics. This paper provides the first (to the best of our knowledge) comprehensive real world concurrency bug characteristic study. Specifically, we have carefully examined concurrency bug patterns, manifestation, and fix strategies of 105 randomly selected real world concurrency bugs from 4 representative server and client open-source applications (MySQL, Apache, Mozilla and OpenOffice). Our study reveals several interesting findings and provides useful guidance for concurrency bug detection, testing, and concurrent programming language design. Some of our findings are as follows: (1) Around one third of the examined non-deadlock concurrency bugs are caused by violation to programmers' order intentions, which may not be easily expressed via synchronization primitives like locks and transactional memories; (2) Around 34% of the examined non-deadlock concurrency bugs involve multiple variables, which are not well addressed by existing bug detection tools; (3) About 92% of the examined concurrency bugs canbe reliably triggered by enforcing certain orders among no more than 4 memory accesses. This indicates that testing concurrent programs can target at exploring possible orders among every small groups of memory accesses, instead of among all memory accesses; (4) About 73% of the examinednon-deadlock concurrency bugs were not fixed by simply adding or changing locks, and many of the fixes were not correct at the first try, indicating the difficulty of reasoning concurrent execution by programmers.
In Vivo Anti-Leukemia, Quantum Chemical Calculations and ADMET Investigations of Some Quaternary and Isothiouronium Surfactants

Anti-leukemia screening of previously prepared isothiouronium and quaternary salts was performed, and some salts exhibited promising activity as anticancer agents. Quantum chemical calculations were utilized to explore the electronic structure and stability of these compounds. Computational studies have been carried out at the PM3 semiempirical molecular orbitals level, to establish the HOMO-LUMO, IP and ESP mapping of these compounds. The ADMET properties were also studied to gain a clear view of the potential oral bioavailability of these compounds. The surface properties calculated included critical micelle concentration (CMC), maximum surface excess (Γmax), minimum surface area (Amin), free energy of micellization (ΔGomic) and adsorption (ΔGoads).
Answering Questions in the Genomics Domain

In this paper we describe current efforts aimed at adapting an existing Question Answering system to a new document set, namely research papers in the genomics domain. The system has been originally developed for another restricted domain, however it has already proved its portability. Nevertheless, the process is not painless, and the specific purpose of this paper is to describe the problems encountered.
Cloning, expression, and nucleotide sequence of a mutant glgC gene from Escherichia coli B

A mutant glgC gene contained in a 10.9-kb PstI fragment was cloned from the Escherichia coli B strain SG5 via colony hybridization by using a wild-type glgC probe. The altered allosteric properties of the expressed ADPglucose synthetase were found to result from the conversion of proline to serine at amino acid residue 295.
Meta-analysis of the effectiveness of school substance abuse prevention programs in Spain.

BACKGROUND There has been an increase in adolescent substance use that has led to the development and implementation of prevention programs. New evidence is needed in order to improve them and optimize the resources. The aim of this paper is to use a meta-analysis to analyze the effectiveness of school drug prevention programs in Spain. METHOD Twenty-one studies that evaluated drug abuse prevention programs in schools, were published between 2002 and 2013, and that met the selection criteria were identified. RESULTS Preventive program effectiveness was low ( d = 0.16), although it was higher at the follow-up ( d = 0.30). The programs were most effective in changing attitudes ( d = 0.44) towards drugs. The models of health education ( d = 0.48) and social learning ( d = 0.20) were also very effective, especially in combination with oral, written, and audiovisual support material ( d = 0.21) and the implementation of joint programs by health education professionals and faculty members ( d = 0.25). CONCLUSIONS Is possible to determine the need for more rigorous evaluations of interventions to establish useful programs.
Catalytic activity of Cdk9 is required for nuclear co‐localization of the Cdk9/cyclin T1 (P‐TEFb) complex

Cdk9 and its binding partner cyclin T1 comprise the positive elongation factor b (P‐TEFb). P‐TEFb phosphorylates the RNA polymerase II carboxyl‐terminal‐domain (CTD) allowing efficient transcription elongation. Recent studies showed that Cdk9 is a predominant nuclear protein, and here we investigated the functional requirement for nuclear localization of Cdk9. We found that the catalytic inactive kinase mutant (Cdk9dn) fails to accumulate in the nucleus showing a diffuse sub‐cellular localization. In addition to the catalityc activity, nuclear localization of Cdk9 protein requires the presence of the phospho‐acceptor sites at the C‐terminus tail. Finally, enforced expression of wild‐type cyclinT1, which enhances nuclear localization of Cdk9wt, fails to direct the Cdk9 mutants to the nucleus. Collectively, these findings implicate that nuclear localization of Cdk9 requires auto‐phosphorylation of the kinase, and highlight the presence of a regulatory mechanism underlying the nuclear localization of the P‐TEFb complex. J. Cell. Physiol. 197: 1–7, 2003© 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
BRDF measurement of highly-specular materials using a goniometer

Visually accurate capture of appearance of highly specular surfaces is of a great research interest of the coating industry, who strive to introduce highly reflective products while minimizing their production and quality assessment costs, and avoiding environmental issues related to the production process. An efficient measurement of such surfaces is challenging due to their narrow specular peak of an unknown shape and typically very high dynamic range. Such behavior puts higher requirements on capabilities of a measuring device and has impact on length of the measurement process. In this paper, we rely on a material probes with a predefined curved shape featuring slight local inhomogeneities. This defines a goniometric device as appropriate means of appearance capture. To shorten a typically long measurement time required when using these approaches, we introduce a method of material appearance acquisition by means of the isotropic BRDF using relatively sparse sampling adapted to each measured material individually.
DNA polymerase β deficiency leads to neurodegeneration and exacerbates Alzheimer disease phenotypes

We explore the role of DNA damage processing in the progression of cognitive decline by creating a new mouse model. The new model is a cross of a common Alzheimer's disease (AD) mouse (3xTgAD), with a mouse that is heterozygous for the critical DNA base excision repair enzyme, DNA polymerase β. A reduction of this enzyme causes neurodegeneration and aggravates the AD features of the 3xTgAD mouse, inducing neuronal dysfunction, cell death and impairing memory and synaptic plasticity. Transcriptional profiling revealed remarkable similarities in gene expression alterations in brain tissue of human AD patients and 3xTg/Polβ+/− mice including abnormalities suggestive of impaired cellular bioenergetics. Our findings demonstrate that a modest decrement in base excision repair capacity can render the brain more vulnerable to AD-related molecular and cellular alterations.
Can neutrophil–lymphocyte ratio be independent risk factor for predicting acute kidney injury in patients with severe sepsis?

Abstract Aim: Neutrophil–lymphocyte ratio (NLR) is an easily calculated, sensitive, and accurate marker for prognosis and diagnosing sepsis, cardiovascular disease and cancer. As sepsis and septic shock are main causes of acute kidney injury (AKI) intensive care unit (ICU), we investigated whether NLR is an early predictor of AKI in patients with severe sepsis. We compared NLR's predictive power with that of other inflammation-related variables. Methods: Between December 2011 and November 2013, we enrolled 118 consecutive cases with severe sepsis admitted to ICU in this retrospective study. Levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), NLR, and white blood cell count (WBC) were recorded on admission and patients' renal function was monitored for seven consecutive days. Results: The rate of AKI occurrence 7 days after enrollment was 57.6%. NLR levels were higher in the AKI group (Group 1) than in the non-AKI group (Group 2) on the day of ICU admission (p < 0.001). AKI development was independently associated with NLR, Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II (APACHE II) and duration of invasive mechanical ventilation (MV) in multivariate logistic regression analysis. The area under the receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curve of NLR for predicting AKI was 0.986, which was superior to WBC and CRP (p < 0.05). The cut-off value of 10.15 for NLR had the highest validity for predicting AKI in patients with severe sepsis. The sensitivity, specificity, negative-predictive value (NPV), and positive-predictive value (PPV), for this cut-off value was 90.2%, 92.9%, 90.4%, and 92.7%, respectively. Conclusion: NLR is superior to CRP, and WBC for predicting the development of AKI in patients with severe sepsis.
Stroller Behavior and Road Characteristics on Walking Routes

Research on the behavior of strollers will contribute largely to the creation of high quality walking spaces. It is said that people can discover both the positive and negative aspects of their towns through daily strolls. For this study we selected two research areas, one rural and the other urban, in order to investigate and analyze stroll behavior in detail. The types of strolls, the walking distances, and the characteristics of road preferences selected in walking routes were analyzed based on data of the two areas. In addition, by comparing the analyses of the two areas, both the similarities and differences of stroller behavior between rural and urban areas were clarified.
Is Cholesterol Sulfate Deficiency a Common Factor in Preeclampsia, Autism, and Pernicious Anemia?

In a recent paper, we proposed that a contributing factor in autism is a deficiency in cholesterol sulfate supply. In this paper, we investigate a link between preeclampsia and subsequent autism in the child, and we hypothesize that both conditions can be attributed to a severe depletion of cholesterol sulfate. Through studies on the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database, we demonstrate a strong statistical relationship among the signs and symptoms associated with autism and those associated with preeclampsia, pernicious anemia, and serious adverse reactions to vaccines. We show that VAERS reports associated with symptoms typical of pernicious anemia produce both a set of symptoms that are highly correlated with preeclampsia and another set highly correlated with autism. We explain this observation via an argument that, in a severe reaction, the cascade of events subsequent to vaccination reflects a profuse production of nitric oxide (NO) and consequential destruction of both red blood cells (RBCs) and cobalamin. This may explain the diverse signs and symptoms associated with both preeclampsia and severe vaccine adverse reactions. We argue that excess NO synthesis, induced by the aluminum and antigen in vaccines, results in hemolysis of RBCs, which allows hemoglobin to scavenge the excess NO, converting it to nitrate. The NO is also scavenged by cobalamin, leading to its inactivation and contributing to subsequent pernicious anemia. Finally, we demonstrate that severe adverse reactions to vaccines can be associated with life-threatening conditions related to the heart and brain, as well as
Enhancing Sumerian Lemmatization by Unsupervised Named-Entity Recognition

Lemmatization for the Sumerian language, compared to the modern languages, is much more challenging due to that it is a long dead language, highly skilled language experts are extremely scarce and more and more Sumerian texts are coming out. This paper describes how our unsupervised Sumerian named-entity recognition (NER) system helps to improve the lemmatization of the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI), a specialist database of cuneiform texts, from the Ur III period. Experiments show that a promising improvement in personal name annotation in such texts and a substantial reduction in expert annotation effort can be achieved by leveraging our system with minimal seed annotation.