Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Costs of Stroke in Sweden A National Perspective

Cost-effectiveness analyses of stroke management are hampered by paucity of economic data. We made an update of the direct and indirect costs of stroke in Sweden (population, 8.5 million). Methods Direct costs (ie, the costs for hospital and outpatient care and social services) were estimated on the basis of two prospective population-based studies of stroke and of two nationwide cross-sectional inventories of bed-days and diagnoses. Indirect costs (ie, the costs for loss of productivity and early retirement) were based on official statistics. Results The direct annual costs of care for stroke patients in 1991 equaled 7836 million Swedish krona (SKr) ($1306 million in US dollars), and the indirect costs, 2430 million SKr ($ 405 million). The cost of stroke care was 1208 SKr ($201) per inhabitant in Sweden. The expected direct costs per patient from first stroke to death were 440 000 SKr ($73 333). When prestroke costs for other diseases and advanced age were subtracted, the sum was reduced to 180 000 SKr ($30 000). Conclusions Costs for hospital and outpatient care and social services accounted for 76% of Swedish stroke costs and for 24% of costs for loss of production and early retirement. Only 41% of direct costs were stroke-related.
Who will be your next friend: the bonding role of linkage influence in social networks

To develop a general mathematical model for social networks is one of the fundamental tasks currently on demand within social network research. Ignoring the strength of the relationships, existing social network models simply use a Boolean value to describe the existence of relationships between peers. This shortage can be overcome by importing repeated social interactions into the model and building the model on a path-based link analysis. In doing this, the authors developed a new semi-random graph model, which offers a general description of the evolution of social networks, with substantial power, to the well accepted hypothesis of preferential attachment in social networks. In addition to these theoretical results, the authors created a quantitative description of the bonding role of social relationship in networks, a parameter within the model denoted as V. Empirical results indicate that the presented model has a degree of distribution in line with those of real-world networks, which is superior to those of major existing models, and the parameter V, which essentially represents the cohesiveness of social networks, makes an ideal indicator for the cohesion in social networks.
Golden bananas in the field: elevated fruit pro‐vitamin A from the expression of a single banana transgene

Summary Vitamin A deficiency remains one of the world's major public health problems despite food fortification and supplements strategies. Biofortification of staple crops with enhanced levels of pro‐vitamin A (PVA) offers a sustainable alternative strategy to both food fortification and supplementation. As a proof of concept, PVA‐biofortified transgenic Cavendish bananas were generated and field trialed in Australia with the aim of achieving a target level of 20 μg/g of dry weight (dw) β‐carotene equivalent (β‐CE) in the fruit. Expression of a Fe'i banana‐derived phytoene synthase 2a (MtPsy2a) gene resulted in the generation of lines with PVA levels exceeding the target level with one line reaching 55 μg/g dw β‐CE . Expression of the maize phytoene synthase 1 (ZmPsy1) gene, used to develop ‘Golden Rice 2’, also resulted in increased fruit PVA levels although many lines displayed undesirable phenotypes. Constitutive expression of either transgene with the maize polyubiquitin promoter increased PVA accumulation from the earliest stage of fruit development. In contrast, PVA accumulation was restricted to the late stages of fruit development when either the banana 1‐aminocyclopropane‐1‐carboxylate oxidase or the expansin 1 promoters were used to drive the same transgenes. Wild‐type plants with the longest fruit development time had also the highest fruit PVA concentrations. The results from this study suggest that early activation of the rate‐limiting enzyme in the carotenoid biosynthetic pathway and extended fruit maturation time are essential factors to achieve optimal PVA concentrations in banana fruit.
Early-Life Exposure to Bisphenol A Induces Liver Injury in Rats Involvement of Mitochondria-Mediated Apoptosis

Exposure to bisphenol A (BPA), a monomer widely used to manufacture polycarbonate plastics, has been reported to be associated with abnormalities of liver function and hepatic damage. However, the molecular mechanism under the pathogenesis of hepatic injury is unclear. In this study, the effect of perinatal exposure to BPA at the reference dose of 50 µg/kg/day on the apoptotic index in the liver of rat offspring was investigated. Increased levels of ALT and enhanced cell apoptosis were observed in the liver of rat offspring at 15 and 21 weeks, and significantly increased activity of caspase-3 and caspase-9 and elevated levels of cytochrome c were also confirmed. In addition, significant change in the expression levels of Bcl-2 and Bax were found in BPA-treated offspring at 21 weeks. For in vitro experiments, liver mitochondria were isolated from neonatal rats and were treated with BPA. BPA treatment led to a significant increase in mitochondrial permeability transition. Moreover, the supernatant from BPA-treated mitochondria significantly increased apoptotic changes in nuclei isolated from liver tissue. In conclusion, the study demonstrates that BPA induces mitochondria-mediated apoptosis in hepatic cells, which may contribute to long-term hepatotoxicity induced by early-life exposure to BPA.
What makes people want to make changes to their sleep? Assessment of perceived risks of insufficient sleep as a predictor of intent to improve sleep.

OBJECTIVES The objective of the present study is to identify which underlying beliefs about the impact of sleep on health may motivate change in sleep behavior. DESIGN A cross-sectional study conducted between 2012 and 2014. SETTING Data were from the Sleep and Healthy Activity, Diet, Environment, and Socialization (SHADES) study conducted in Philadelphia, PA, and its surrounding regions. PARTICIPANTS Participants consisted of N = 1007 community-dwelling adults age 22-60. MEASUREMENTS Respondents indicated behaviors they could improve on to facilitate sleep and their corresponding readiness to change. They were also asked items from the Sleep Practices and Attitudes Questionnaire (SPAQ) regarding the degree to which they agree with whether "not getting enough sleep" can impact a variety of health factors. RESULTS In adjusted analyses, stage of change was associated with degree of agreement that insufficient sleep can cause sleepiness (odds ratio [OR] = 1.17, P = .035), weight gain (OR = 1.20, P < .0005), heart disease (OR = 1.21, P = .001), cholesterol (OR = 1.13, P = .047), hypertension (OR = 1.16, P = .014), moodiness (OR = 1.42, P < .0005), decreased energy (OR = 1.30, P = .002), absenteeism (OR = 1.13, P = .007), decreased performance (OR = 1.20, P = .003), concentration/memory problems (OR = 1.23, P = .004), diabetes (OR = 1.14, P = .042), and feeling tired (OR = 1.39, P < .0005). When sleep duration was added to the model, significant associations remained for all except cholesterol. When accounting for insomnia, significant associations were maintained for only weight, moodiness, performance, diabetes, and tiredness. CONCLUSIONS Degree of belief that insufficient sleep can cause outcomes such as moodiness, occupational problems, and health problems may impact whether an individual is contemplating/attempting to change their sleep-related behaviors. Targeting these key messages about the associations between sleep health with moodiness and weight gain in informational material may enhance education/outreach efforts aimed at adults.
Systemic Lipopolysaccharide Protects the Brain from Ischemic Injury by Reprogramming the Response of the Brain to Stroke: A Critical Role for IRF3

Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) preconditioning provides neuroprotection against subsequent cerebral ischemic injury through activation of its receptor, Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4). Paradoxically, TLR activation by endogenous ligands after ischemia worsens stroke damage. Here, we define a novel, protective role for TLRs after ischemia in the context of LPS preconditioning. Microarray analysis of brains collected 24 h after stroke revealed a unique set of upregulated genes in LPS-pretreated animals. Promoter analysis of the unique gene set identified an overrepresentation of type I interferon (IFN)-associated transcriptional regulatory elements. This finding suggested the presence of type I IFNs or interferon regulatory factors (IRFs), which upregulate interferon-stimulated genes. Upregulation of IFNβ was confirmed by real-time reverse transcription-PCR. Direct administration of IFNβ intracerebroventricularly at the time of stroke was sufficient for neuroprotection. TLR4 can induce both IFNβ and interferon-stimulated genes through its adapter molecule Toll/interleukin receptor domain-containing adaptor-inducing IFNβ (TRIF) and the IRF3 transcription factor. We show in oxygen glucose deprivation of cortical neurons, an in vitro model of stroke, that activation of TRIF after stroke reduces neuronal death. Furthermore, mice lacking IRF3 were not protected by LPS preconditioning in our in vivo model. Our studies constitute the first demonstration of the neuroprotective capacity of TRIF/IRF3 signaling and suggest that interferon-stimulated genes, whether induced by IFNβ or by enhanced TLR signaling to IRF3, are a potent means of protecting the brain against ischemic damage.
Exclusion of introduced deer increases size and seed production success in an island‐endemic plant species

Abstract The presence of extra‐local invaders, such as the southern California mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) on Santa Catalina Island, may contribute to more selective and insidious effects within the unique ecosystems that have evolved in their absence. Studies at the species level may detect effects not noticed in broader, community level vegetation monitoring or help tease apart differences in the level of effect among the various ecological components of an invaded system. In this initial study, we measured the impacts of herbivory by mule deer, a species native to analogous habitats on the adjacent mainland, on size and seed production success for Crocanthemum greenei (island rush‐rose), a federally listed sub‐shrub that is not present on mainland California. We found deer exclusion resulted in an overall increase in stem measurement of 18.8 cm. Exclosure populations exhibited complete seed production success, whereas control populations showed significantly reduced success and exhibited complete failure within 58% of populations. These results show that the introduced mule deer on Santa Catalina Island are negatively affecting a federally threatened plant species. This strongly implies that the current deer management strategy is insufficient, if one of its goals is biodiversity and endemic species conservation.
Perceived stress and coping strategies among post graduate students of a medical college in Thrissur, Kerala

Background: Medical education is inherently demanding and stressful. Stress is an external constraint which upsets an individual both mentally and physically. The postgraduate students suffer from higher stress that definitely affects the mental wellbeing of these students. Stressors faced by post graduate students include time pressure to meet deadlines, large amount of content to be learnt, work overload, unfair assessment by superior, fears of making mistakes that can lead to serious consequences, work demands affecting personal and home life. Objectives of the study were to assess the perception of stress amongst post graduate medical students and to assess various coping strategies employed by them.Methods: Predesigned, pretested, validated, self-administered, structured questionnaires were used for data collection over a period of two months. The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) was used for measuring the perception of stress. Brief COPE inventory was used to assess the various coping strategies medical students use to deal with the stresses in their life.Results: One fourths of the study subjects (25%) were under high stress while 68.3% of the students were under moderate stress. Use of emotional support, self-distraction and venting were the common coping strategies employed.Conclusions: The prevalence of perceived stress seems to be high among post graduate medical students. Review of academics and exam schedules, more leisure time activities, advisory services and peer counseling at the campus could do a lot to reduce the stress.
Beating the Artificial Chaos: Fighting OSN Spam Using Its Own Templates

Online social networks (OSNs) are extremely popular among Internet users. However, spam originating from friends and acquaintances not only reduces the joy of Internet surfing but also causes damage to less security-savvy users. Prior countermeasures combat OSN spam from different angles. Due to the diversity of spam, there is hardly any existing method that can independently detect the majority or most of OSN spam. In this paper, we empirically analyze the textual pattern of a large collection of OSN spam. An inspiring finding is that the majority (e.g., 76.4% in 2015) of the collected spam is generated with underlying templates. Based on the analysis, we propose tangram, an OSN spam filtering system that performs online inspection on the stream of user-generated messages. Tangram extracts the templates of spam detected by existing methods and then matching messages against the templates toward the accurate and the fast spam detection. It automatically divides the OSN spam into segments and uses the segments to construct templates to filter future spam. Experimental results on Twitter and Facebook data sets show that tangram is highly accurate and can rapidly generate templates to throttle newly emerged campaigns. Furthermore, we analyze the behavior of detected OSN spammers. We find a series of spammer properties-such as spamming accounts are created in bursts and a single active organization orchestrates more spam than all other spammers combined-that promise more comprehensive spam countermeasures.
Distributed Construction of a Multi-level Topology with Unpredictable Metric Values for Wireless Networks

Large ad hoc networks greatly benefit from hierarchical topologies in terms of scalability and robustness. Previous research has explored the construction of such hierarchies by ranking the nodes according to general performance metrics. However, these approaches have been mostly confined to two levels with just predictable metric values, considering the multi-level case only by recursive application of the two-level approach. In this paper, we show that this methodology yields only suboptimal results in many cases. Hence, we present a distributed algorithm to construct a multi-metric multi-level independent dominating set topology for unpredictable metric values, which overcomes the constraints of suboptimality faced previously. Further, our algorithm is also easily parameterizable in order to balance the tradeoff between performance optimality and message complexity which is particularly desirable in dynamic networks. We substantiate the performance of our algorithm by extensive simulations.
Setting up and Running a Sharing Service: an Organisational Perspective

Enabled by web and mobile technologies, there has been an explosion of interest in the sharing economy and peer-to-peer exchange, with much high profile attention given to monetised exchanges such as in AirBnB and Uber. However there are also many other sharing initiatives, such as time banking, that focus on smaller, more local communities and do not involve monetisation of exchanges. While there is a growing body of literature elaborating participation and motivation in sharing services as well as analysing organisers’ roles, little is discussed about the work involved in the day-to-day organisation and management of such services. In this paper we report on an interview study with ten participants discussing five different sharing systems from three different countries. A qualitative thematic analysis of the data points to significant on-going effort reported by all to establish, maintain and grow a service, not only focussing on its practical aspects but also on growing a community and building trust. How they engaged in this practical work though was not so much shaped by the service model (time banking, LETS and so on) but on a complex relationship between their funding model, the service goal and whether it was a top-down or bottom-up initiative. These findings have implications for the design of technical platforms to support services, not just in elaborating a range of possible tasks to be supported but also in where and how it needs to be tailorable to certain needs, how adaptive it is to different service models and how it facilitates monitoring and reporting duties for organisers.
The Challenges of Regulation Using Real Options

The regulation of infrastructure by the ACCC and other economic regulators in Australia is based around net present value estimation techniques. Recently, Monkhouse (2007), suggested that real options valuation would provide better incentives for investment in infrastructure, but did not elucidate how a regulatory system based on real options valuation should operate. This paper endeavours to sketch the outlines of such a system, and finds that it has considerable promise as an alternative to the status quo, provided an appropriate technique for addressing monopoly rents can be developed.
Chromatin signature of widespread monoallelic expression

In mammals, numerous autosomal genes are subject to mitotically stable monoallelic expression (MAE), including genes that play critical roles in a variety of human diseases. Due to challenges posed by the clonal nature of MAE, very little is known about its regulation; in particular, no molecular features have been specifically linked to MAE. In this study, we report an approach that distinguishes MAE genes in human cells with great accuracy: a chromatin signature consisting of chromatin marks associated with active transcription (H3K36me3) and silencing (H3K27me3) simultaneously occurring in the gene body. The MAE signature is present in ∼20% of ubiquitously expressed genes and over 30% of tissue-specific genes across cell types. Notably, it is enriched among key developmental genes that have bivalent chromatin structure in pluripotent cells. Our results open a new approach to the study of MAE that is independent of polymorphisms, and suggest that MAE is linked to cell differentiation. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.7554/eLife.01256. 001
KAJIAN KESIAPAN KOMPETENSI GURU BAHASA INGGRIS SMP UNTUK MENDUKUNG IMPLEMENTASI KURIKULUM 2013 (K-13)

Abstrak Tujuan kajian ini adalah memetakan kompetensi pedagogik dan profesional guru Bahasa Inggris SMP yang dapat menjadi masukan bagi pembuat kebijakan dalam merancang pendidikan dan pelatihan bagi guru yang mengajar mata pelajaran ini. Untuk mencapainya kajian ini memetakan kompetensi guru berdasarkan capaian guru untuk setiap indikator kompetensi pedagogik dan profesional yang telah diteskan dalam Uji Kompetensi Guru (UKG). Pendekatan kajian adalah kuantitatif. Data yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah data sekunder tentang nilai UKG yang diperoleh dari Direktorat Jenderal Guru dan Tenaga Kependidikan (Ditjen GTK) Kementerian Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan (Kemendikbud). Data dianalisis dengan teknik statistik deskriptif menggunakan tabel frekuensi. Kajian menyimpulkan bahwa hasil UKG guru Bahasa Inggris SMP rendah karena rata-rata nasionalnya hanya 56,02 dalam skala 100, sehingga menjadi faktor yang dapat menghambat implementasi K-13. Sedangkan analisis UKG per indikator penentu kompetensi menunjukkan bahwa hanya 17 persen indikator kompetensi pedagogik dan 32 persen indikator kompetensi profesional yang dikuasai oleh guru, dengan kriteria penguasaan indikator adalah 75 persen peserta ujian menjawab benar untuk indikator kompetensi tersebut. Abstract The purpose of this study is to map the pedagogical and professional competence of English teachers at unior secondary school that can be used as an input for policy makers in designing education and training for English teachers. To achieve this purpose the study will map the competence of teachers based on performance test of teachers for each indicator of pedagogical and professional competence. The approach of the study is quantitative. Data used in this study is the secondary data about the result of the test of teacher’s competences done by The Directorate General of Teachers and Education Personnel Ministry of Education and Culture. The data will be analized descriptively using table frequencies. The study concludes that the results of teachers’ competence test for the English teachers is low because the mean value of the test is just 56,02 on a scale of 100. This result can become a factor that could impede the implementation of K-13. While the analysis of the test for each determining indicator of competence shows that only 17 percent of pedagogical indicators and 32 percent of professional indicators is mastered by the teachers, with the mastery criterion indicator is 75 percent of examinees answered the questions for that indicator correctly.
Books as a Knowledge Translation Mechanism: citation Analysis and Author Survey

The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate whether books serve as effective knowledge distribution agents and whether the body of knowledge published in peer-reviewed sources is used in the development of book content. The results of citation analysis in 40 authored and 9 edited books, followed by the survey of 35 book authors, demonstrate that peerreviewed sources, such as refereed journals, book chapters and conference proceedings, are used to develop the content of knowledge management and intellectual capital (KM/IC) books. Edited books contain twice as many references from refereed journals as authored books. The major source of references in KM/IC books are other books. Personal research is the major non-citable source of book content. The study concludes that the indirect knowledge distribution channel plays a key role in the process of dissemination of scholarly findings to practitioners.
Exploring Fine-grained Entity Type Constraints for Distantly Supervised Relation Extraction

Distantly supervised relation extraction, which can automatically generate training data by aligning facts in the existing knowledge bases to text, has gained much attention. Previous work used conjunction features with coarse entity types consisting of only four types to train their models. Entity types are important indicators for a specific relation, for example, if the types of two entities are “PERSON” and “FILM” respectively, then there is more likely a “DirectorOf” relation between the two entities. However, the coarse entity types are not sufficient to capture the constraints of a relation between entities. In this paper, we propose a novel method to explore fine-grained entity type constraints, and we study a series of methods to integrate the constraints with the relation extracting model. Experimental results show that our methods achieve better precision/recall curves in sentential extraction with smoother curves in aggregated extraction which mean more stable models.