Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The transformation of online friendships into a real life context in individuals with social anxiety

Menschen mit Sozialphobie praferieren haufig soziale Online-Interaktion (POSI) gegenuber face-to-face-Interaktion und sind motiviert das Internet als Kompensation fur fehlende enge Sozialkontakte im echten Leben zu benutzen, welche ein wichtiger unterstutzender Faktor fur Menschen mit Angsten sind. Gelegentlich formen sie hochqualitative Freundschaften online. Diese zeigen viele Gemeinsamkeiten mit traditionellen Offline-Freundschaften. Wie auch immer, Offline-Freundschaften zeigen trotzdem eine hohere Qualitat und manchmal fuhren Menschen einen Modalitatenwechsel durch. Die aktuelle Arbeit untersucht den Prozess des Modalitatenwechsels von Menschen mit Sozialphobie mit zwei verschiedenen Studien. Die erste Studie etabliert eine neue Skala, die das Transformationsbedurfnis (NTT) untersucht und die zweite Studie wendet diese Skala dann in einem Strukturgleichungsmodell an. Zusatzlich untersucht die zweite Studie Aspekte von Freundschaften in verschiedenen Bekanntschaftsgraden von Online-Freunden. In der NTT-Skala entstanden drei Subskalen, die die substantielle Motivation Ressourcen in eine Freundschaft zu investieren, mogliche Risiken und Vorteile, messen. In einer Stichprobe von 760 Internet-Nutzern, die berichteten einen Online-Freund zu besitzen, nahmen an der folgenden Studie teil. Die Ergebnisse zeigten, dass Online-Freunde, die sich regelmasig sehen, die hochste Freundschafts-Qualitat in den verschiedenen Bekanntschaftsgraden aufweisen. Das Strukturgleichungsmodell konnte die meisten Hypothesen bestatigen. Sozialphobie hatte einen direkten negativen Einfluss auf den NTT. Hohe Freundschafts-Qualitat war fur weniger Sozialphobie und einen hoheren NTT verantwortlich. POSI hatte nur einen mediierenden Effekt auf den NTT, aber keinen direkten Effekt wie angenommen. Weitere Ergebnisse und Implikationen der Studie werden diskutiert.
Pulse Reflection in a Random Waveguide with a Turning Point

We present an analysis of wave propagation and reflection in an acoustic waveguide with random sound soft boundary and a turning point. The waveguide has slowly bending axis and variable cross section. The variation consists of a slow and monotone change of the width of the waveguide and small and rapid fluctuations of the boundary, on the scale of the wavelength. These fluctuations are modeled as random. The turning point is many wavelengths away from the source, which emits a pulse that propagates toward the turning point, where it is reflected. To focus attention on this reflection, we assume that the waveguide supports a single propagating mode from the source to the turning point, beyond which all the waves are evanescent. We consider a scaling regime where scattering at the random boundary has a significant effect on the reflected pulse. In this regime scattering from the random boundary away from the turning point is negligible, while scattering from the random boundary around the turning point results in a strong, deterministic pulse deformation. The reflected pulse shape is not the same as the emitted one. It is damped, due to scattering at the boundary, and is deformed by dispersion in the waveguide. The reflected pulse also carries a random phase.
Quantification of Cerebrovascular Reactivity by Blood Oxygen Level–Dependent MR Imaging and Correlation with Conventional Angiography in Patients with Moyamoya Disease

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: BOLD MR imaging combined with a technique for precision control of end-tidal pCO2 was used to produce quantitative maps of CVR in patients with Moyamoya disease. The technique was validated against measures of disease severity by using conventional angiography; it then was used to study the relationship between CVR, vascular steal, and disease severity. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A retrospective analysis comparing conventional angiography with BOLD MR imaging was performed on 11 patients with Moyamoya disease. Iso-oxic cycling of end-tidal pCO2 between 2 target values was performed during BOLD MR imaging. CVR was calculated as the BOLD signal difference per ΔpCO2. CVR was correlated with the presence of Moyamoya or pial collaterals and the degree of Moyamaya disease as graded by using a modified Suzuki score. RESULTS: A good correlation between mean CVR and Suzuki score was found for the MCA and ACA territories (Pearson correlation coefficient, −0.7560 and −0.6140, respectively; P < .0001). A similar correlation was found between mean CVR and the presence of pial and Moyamoya collateral vessels for combined MCA and ACA territories (Pearson correlation coefficient, −0.7466; P < .0001). On a voxel-for-voxel basis, there was a greater extent of steal within vascular territories with increasing disease severity (higher modified Suzuki score). Mean CVR was found to scale nonlinearly with the extent of vascular steal. CONCLUSIONS: Quantitative measures of CVR show direct correlation with impaired vascular supply as measured by the modified Suzuki score and enable direct investigation of the physiology of autoregulatory reserve, including steal phenomenon, within a given vascular territory.
Identification of immunoreactive proteins of Chlamydia trachomatis by Western blot analysis of a two‐dimensional electrophoresis map with patient sera

Western blots of two‐dimensional electrophoretic maps of proteins from Chlamydia trachomatis were probed with sera from 17 seropositive patients with genital inflammatory disease. Immunoblot patterns (comprising 28 to 2 spots, average 14.8) were different for each patient; however, antibodies against a spot‐cluster due to the chlamydia‐specific antigen outer membrane protein‐2 (OMP2) were observed in all sera. The next most frequent group of antibodies (15/17; 88%) recognized the hsp60 GroEL‐like protein, described as immunopathogenic in chlamydial infections. Reactivity to the major surface‐exposed and variable antigen major outer membrane protein (MOMP) was observed at a relatively lower frequency (13/17; 76%). The hsp70 DnaK‐like protein was also frequently recognized (11/17; 64.7%) in this patient group. Besides the above confirmatory findings, the study detected several new immunoreactive proteins, with frequencies ranging from 11/17 to 1/17. Some were characterized also by N‐terminal amino acid sequencing and homology searches. Amongst these were a novel outer membrane protein (OmpB) and, interestingly, five conserved bacterial proteins: four (23%) sera reacted with the RNA polymerase alpha‐subunit, five (29%) recognized the ribosomal protein S1, eight (47%) the protein elongation factor EF‐Tu, seven (41%) a putative stress‐induced protease of the HtrA family, and seven sera (41%) the ribosomal protein L7/L12. Homologs of the last two proteins were shown to confer protective immunity in other bacterial infections. The data show that immunological sensitization processes commonly thought to play a role in chlamydial pathogenicity may be sustained not only by the hsp60 GroEl‐like protein, but also by other conserved bacterial antigens, some of which may be also considered as potential vaccine candidates.
Postnatal Changes in Cathepsin D in Rat Neural Tissue

Cathepsin D, an aspartyl endopeptidase, was analyzed in cortex from forebrain and cerebellum, spinal cord, and optic and sciatic nerves, and in the liver of rats from 1 to 120 days of age. Cathepsin D was quantitated in tissue extracts by measurement of enzyme specific activity on a substrate of [methyl‐14C]‐methylated hemoglobin and by radioimmunoassay. Immunocytochemistry was used to ascertain the identity of the mixed cell types that contributed to the cathepsin D detected. As quantitated by radioimmunoassay, immunoreactive cathepsin D varied between 0.2 and 1 ng/μg of total protein. Maximum activity occurred at approximately the 15th postnatal day; the least amount of immunoreactive cathepsin D was found at 30 or 60 days of age. A subsequent increase of varying magnitude occurred at postnatal day 120. There was good correspondence between immunoreactive enzyme and enzyme specific activity, which ranged from 1 to 4 ng/μg of total protein, and the activities determined by the two methods provided similar, but not identical, developmental profiles. Cathepsin D was demonstrated by immunocytochemistry to be present in most neurons, in all choroid plexus epithelium, and in certain oligodendrocytes from the first postnatal day. Cathepsin D was present in oligodendrocytes in cord lateral funiculi and optic nerve by the first postnatal day, and by the sixth postnatal day many oligodendrocytes were abundantly stained. In contrast, oligodendrocytes in the corpus callosum and in the cerebellar white matter did not contain demonstrable cathepsin D until postnatal days 10 and 15, respectively. These results indicate a role for cathepsin D during the postnatal development of rat CNS and suggest that this proteinase may be involved in the steps of myelination.
Embedding optimized trajectory and motor controller into the Szabad(ka)-II hexapod robot

The driving of the Szabad(ka)-II hexapod robot was characterized with its minimal and non-optimized structure during the development of the robot. For this driving algorithm, a simulation environment has been developed, and based on the simulation model and recorded measurement results, the aforementioned algorithm has been validated. In the next step of the development, the optimization of the robot driving algorithm was elaborated in its simulation environment. In order, to implement the optimized controllers and trajectory, the software of the embedded system has to be rewritten, through which the developed fuzzy controllers and the high resolution leg-trajectories could be run on the robot. This paper on the one hand, introduces the essential aspects of the implementation and realization procedures of the optimized driving algorithm, on the other hand, gives a comparison assessment of the old and the new driving algorithms.
Determinants of Profit Efficiency Among Small Scale Rice Farmers in Nigeria: A Profit Function Approach

This study employs a stochastic frontier approach to examine profit efficiency of small scale rice farmers in Nigeria using farm-level survey data collected from 200 farmers in the study area. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics and standard profit function. The result shows that about 60 percent of potential profit is gain due to production efficiency while the remaining can be attributed to both technical and allocative inefficiencies in the study area. Also, the result further revealed that age, educational level, farming experience and household size positively affected profit efficiency. These variables are thus important in policy formulation by government.
Freshwater Methane Emissions Offset the Continental Carbon Sink

Inland freshwaters, which include lakes, reservoirs, streams, and rivers, may emit far more methane than previously thought. Inland waters (lakes, reservoirs, streams, and rivers) are often substantial methane (CH4) sources in the terrestrial landscape. They are, however, not yet well integrated in global greenhouse gas (GHG) budgets. Data from 474 freshwater ecosystems and the most recent global water area estimates indicate that freshwaters emit at least 103 teragrams of CH4 year−1, corresponding to 0.65 petagrams of C as carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalents year−1, offsetting 25% of the estimated land carbon sink. Thus, the continental GHG sink may be considerably overestimated, and freshwaters need to be recognized as important in the global carbon cycle.
Turbidimetric Determination of Proteins with Sulfosalicylic and Trichloracetic Acids

Summary The turbidity produced by addition of sulfosalicylic acid to a solution of a mixture of proteins is correlated with the A/ G ratio. No correlation is apparent when trichloracetic acid is employed. It is suggested, therefore, that trichloracetic acid should supplant sulfosalicylic acid in turbidi-metric methods for the determination of protein.
AlignBucket: a tool to speed up 'all-against-all' protein sequence alignments optimizing length constraints

MOTIVATION The next-generation sequencing era requires reliable, fast and efficient approaches for the accurate annotation of the ever-increasing number of biological sequences and their variations. Transfer of annotation upon similarity search is a standard approach. The procedure of all-against-all protein comparison is a preliminary step of different available methods that annotate sequences based on information already present in databases. Given the actual volume of sequences, methods are necessary to pre-process data to reduce the time of sequence comparison. RESULTS We present an algorithm that optimizes the partition of a large volume of sequences (the whole database) into sets where sequence length values (in residues) are constrained depending on a bounded minimal and expected alignment coverage. The idea is to optimally group protein sequences according to their length, and then computing the all-against-all sequence alignments among sequences that fall in a selected length range. We describe a mathematically optimal solution and we show that our method leads to a 5-fold speed-up in real world cases. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION The software is available for downloading at http://www.biocomp. unibo.it/∼giuseppe/partitioning.html. CONTACT giuseppe.profiti2@unibo.it. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Evaluation of the Diagnostic Performance of Anyplex II MTB/MDR/XDR Detection Assay for Detection and Antimicrobial Susceptibility testing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis from Sputum Specimens

Globally, in 2013, 3.5% of new and 20.5% of previously treated tuberculosis (TB) cases were estimated to have had multidrugresistant (MDR)-Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis); defined as resistance to at least isoniazid (INH) and rifampicin (RIF). On average, an estimated 9% of patients with MDR-TB had extensively drug resistant TB (XDR-TB), defined as MDR-TB with additional resistance to any fluoroquinolone (FLQ) and to at least one of the three injectable secondline drugs: amikacin (AMK), kanamycin (KAN) and/or capreomycin (CAP) (WHO, 2014). Successful treatment outcome for MDR-TB depends on reliable rapid and accurate diagnosis as well as drug susceptibility testing of first-line and ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 4 Number 9 (2015) pp. 657-669 http://www.ijcmas. com
A cluster randomised controlled trial to evaluate a policy of making hip protectors available to residents of nursing homes.

OBJECTIVES to evaluate the effectiveness of a policy of making hip protectors available to residents of nursing homes. DESIGN a cluster randomised controlled trial of the policy in nursing and residential homes, with the home as the unit of randomisation. SETTING 127 nursing and residential homes in the greater Belfast area of Northern Ireland. PARTICIPANTS 40 homes in the intervention group (representing 1,366 occupied beds) and 87 homes in the control group (representing 2,751 occupied beds). INTERVENTIONS a policy of making hip protectors available free of charge to residents of nursing homes and supporting the implementation process by employing a nurse facilitator to encourage staff in the homes to promote their use, over a 72-week period. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES the rate of hip fractures in intervention and control homes, and the level of adherence to use of hip protectors. RESULTS there were 85 hip fractures in the intervention homes and 163 in the control homes. The mean fracture rate per 100 residents was 6.22 in the intervention homes and 5.92 in the control homes, giving an adjusted rate ratio for the intervention group compared to the control group of 1.05 (95% CI 0.77, 1.43, P = 0.76). Initial acceptance of the hip protectors was 37.2% (508/1,366) with adherence falling to 19.9% (272/1,366) at 72 weeks. CONCLUSIONS making hip protectors available to residents of nursing and residential homes did not reduce the rate of hip fracture. This research does not support the introduction of a policy of providing hip protectors to residents of nursing homes.
A Study on the Values of Design Industry from the Perspectives of Consumers' Perceived Quality, Perceived Risks, and Willingness to Pay by Citing Examples from Accessory Design

The academic contribution of this study is the use of contingent valuation method (CVM) in open-ended interviewing to validate the design value through perceived quality and perceived risk. This perspective was used to empirically quantify the consumers' willingness to pay for designer accessories. The research conclusion is that people who value designer content for accessories are willing to pay an additional NTD 1,491 for accessories created by creative designers, which also improves perceived product quality and reduces the perceived risk of accessory products.
Is there a need for keratinized mucosa around implants to maintain health and tissue stability?

AIM The objective of the present review was to analyze the literature with regard to the need for keratinized mucosa around implants to maintain health and tissue stability. METHODS Human and animal studies were identified through electronic and hand searches. Predetermined outcome measures were (i) implant loss, (ii) peri-implant health, (iii) oral hygiene, (iv) soft-tissue recession, (v) change in marginal bone level, and (vi) patient-centered outcomes. With respect to outcome variables, change in "attachment level", soft-tissue recession and change in peri-implant bone level were only retrieved from longitudinal studies. For remaining parameters, cross-sectional studies were also considered. RESULTS Nineteen relevant publications were identified (17 human and 2 animal studies). Due to marked heterogeneity in study design and reported data, no statistical analysis of retrieved data was feasible. Twelve human studies reported plaque scores for sites with "adequate" (≥2 mm) and "inadequate" (<2 mm) width of keratinized mucosa, and in five studies, an "inadequate" width was associated with a significant higher plaque score. Half of the studies showed significantly higher bleeding scores at implants with < 2 mm of keratinized mucosa, while the majority of publications (8 of 10) found no differences for probing depths. Two of three longitudinal studies reporting on recessions described no long-term differences with regard to the amount of keratinized mucosa. Evidence on the effect of keratinized mucosa on bone-level changes or implant loss was scarce, and no conclusions could be drawn. No article reporting patient-centered outcomes could be identified. CONCLUSION Collectively, the findings of this review show that evidence in support of the need for keratinized tissues around implants to maintain health and tissue stability is limited.
Characterization of adrenal masses with chemical shift and gadolinium-enhanced MR imaging.

PURPOSE To assess the potential role of chemical shift and dynamic gadolinium-enhanced magnetic resonance (MR) imaging in the characterization of adrenal masses. MATERIALS AND METHODS Fifty-one adrenal masses (35 adenomas and 16 nonadenomas) in 43 patients were evaluated with chemical shift MR imaging, dynamic gadolinium-enhanced MR imaging, or both. The relative change in the signal intensity (SI) ratio of the adrenal mass to liver and paraspinal muscles was quantitatively and qualitatively assessed. Opposed-phase gradient-echo (GRE) images were compared with in-phase images. RESULTS With qualitative visual inspection, only adenomas showed a decrease in relative SI ratio on opposed-phase chemical shift images (specificity, 100%; sensitivity, 81%). Quantitative ratios corresponding to 100% specificity were also observed, with similar sensitivities. Adenomas could not be differentiated from nonadenomas with visual assessment of maximum SI after contrast material administration or washout. CONCLUSION Characterization of an adrenal mass as an adenoma can be made with high specificity and acceptable sensitivity by visually comparing opposed-phase with in-phase GRE images.
Multiple quantitative trait loci influence intra‐specific variation in genital morphology between phylogenetically distinct lines of Drosophila montana

The evolution of animal genitalia has gained renewed interest because of their potential roles during sexual selection and early stages of species formation. Although central to understanding the evolutionary process, knowledge of the genetic basis of natural variation in genital morphology is limited to a very few species. Using an outbred cross between phylogenetically distinct lines of Drosophila montana, we characterized quantitative trait loci (QTLs) affecting the size and shape of the distiphallus, a prominent part of the male intromittent organ. Our microsatellite‐based linkage analysis shows that intra‐specific variation in the distiphallus involves several QTLs of largely additive effect and that a highly significant QTL co‐localizes with the same inversion where we have earlier localized a large QTL for a sexually selected courtship song trait. The latter indicates that inversions can play an important role in shaping the evolution of rapidly evolving traits with a potential influence on speciation.