Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Development and validation of a questionnaire to assess fear of kidney failure following living donation

Living kidney donors (LKDs) may feel more anxious about kidney failure now that they have only one kidney and the security of a second kidney is gone. The aim of this cross‐sectional study was to develop and empirically validate a self‐report scale for assessing fear of kidney failure in former LKDs. Participants were 364 former LKDs within the past 10 years at five US transplant centers and 219 healthy nondonor controls recruited through Mechanical Turk who completed several questionnaires. Analyses revealed a unidimensional factor structure, excellent internal consistency (α = 0.88), and good convergent validity for the Fear of Kidney Failure questionnaire. Only 13% of former donors reported moderate to high fear of kidney failure. Nonwhite race (OR = 2.9, P = 0.01), genetic relationship with the recipient (OR = 2.46, P = 0.04), and low satisfaction with the donation experience (OR = 0.49, P = 0.002) were significant predictors of higher fear of kidney failure. We conclude that while mild anxiety about kidney failure is common, high anxiety about future renal failure among former LKDs is uncommon. The Fear of Kidney Failure questionnaire is reliable, valid, and easy to use in the clinical setting.
Staining and observing pollen tubes in the style by means of fluorescence.

Pollen tubes in the styles of the tomato and of other flowering plants can be observed by using the following technic. Styles are fixed in formalin-acetic-80% alcohol (1:1:8) and cleared and softened in a strong (8 N) sodium hydroxide solution. Staining is accomplished in a 0.1% solution of water-soluble aniline blue dye dissolved in 0.1 N, K3PO4. The styles are smeared or are observed whole under a conventional or dissecting microscope by direct illumination with ultraviolet light of a wavelength of about 356 m°. Observations are made in a darkened room. Under these conditions callose fluoresces bright yellow-green and contrasts strongly with the bluish or grayish fluorescence of the stylar tissue. The pollen tubes are outlined by a callose lining and irregularly spaced callose plugs.
Image Preprocessing for Improving OCR Accuracy

Digital cameras are convenient image acquisition devices: they are fast, versatile, mobile, do not touch the object, and are relatively cheap. In OCR applications, however, digital cameras suffer from a number of limitations, like geometrical distortions. In this paper, we deal with the preprocessing step before text recognition, specifically with images from a digital camera. Experiments, performed with the FineReader 7.0 software as the back-end recognition tool, confirm importance of image preprocessing in OCR applications.
Body Composition Assessment for Development of an International Growth Standard for Preadolescent and Adolescent Children

General considerations in assessing body composition in children and youths are described. Various methods are explored and recommendations are made for methods to be used in the International Growth Standard for Preadolescent and Adolescent Children Project. Exclusion of under- and overweight participants is recommended, and a method is proposed to assess both underweight and overweight. In addition to height and weight, we recommend waist circumference, selected skinfolds, and dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) as a measure of fat, lean, and bone mineral density. We also propose using both fat mass index and fat-free mass index as an improvement over body-mass index.
User Engagement Engine for Smart City Strategies

The new challenges in the smart city context are mainly related to the stimulation of the city users towards taking more sustainable behaviors, in mobility and energy. The state of the art in this case is mainly focused on classical smart city solution for informing the city users and or for engaging them with specific wired rules toward virtuous models. And not using flexible languages and predictive models, pushing them towards a larger range of virtuous habits. On this regards, the main problems are the computation of user behavior via data analytic (semantic computing, machine learning), as well as the formalization of strategies via simple and well formalized language for producing engagements to the city users, which can be understood by city operators. In this paper, a solution for city users engagement is studied and implemented for Sii-Mobility Smart city national project in Italy has been presented. The solution has been implemented thanks to the exploitation of Km4City model and semantic computing. The paper also presents the validation of results about the effective usage of the solution by providing some statistical evidence about the efficient assessment of user behavior and of engagement rules acceptance rate.
Making argumentation serve design

Documenting argumentation (i.e., design rationale) has great potential for serving design. Despite this potential benefit, our analysis of Horst Rittel's and Donald Schon's design theories and of our own experience has shown that there are the following fundamental obstacles to the effective documentation and use of design rationale: (a) A rationale representation scheme must be found that organizes information according to its relevance to the task at hand; (b) computer support is needed to reduce the burden of recording and using rationale; (c) argumentative and constructive design activities must be linked explicitly by integrated design environments; (d) design rationale must be reusable. In this article, we present the evolution of our conceptual frameworks and systems toward integrated design environments; describe a prototype of an integrated design environment, including its underlying architecture; and discuss some current and future work on extending it.
Increasing Breast Examinations Among Arab Women Using a Tailored Culture-Based Intervention

This study aimed to assess outcomes of a culture-specific intervention devised to reduce barriers to breast cancer screening among Arab women in Israel. Women in intervention (n = 42) and control (n = 24) groups answered breast examination performance and Arab culture–specific barriers and health beliefs questionnaires at pre- and postintervention. Women in the study group received tailored telephone intervention between the 2 interviews. Although the study and control groups did not differ in rate of attending clinical examinations and mammography at pre-intervention, at post-intervention, almost 48% of the intervention group and 12.5% of the control group scheduled or attended a clinical examination, and 38.5% of women in the intervention group and 21.4% of the control group attended or scheduled a mammography. Of the cultural barriers, a significant group x time effect was found for the cultural barriers of exposure, social barriers, and self-uneasiness with body, with a higher decrease in the intervention group. Of the health beliefs, a group x time effect was found for perceived vulnerability and perceived barriers to clinical examination and mammography, which significantly decreased in the intervention group, but not in the control group. The preliminary results showed that the culture-based intervention was effective in reducing barriers and increasing the rate of breast cancer examinations.
A Self-controlled Genetic Algorithm for Reliable Communication Network Design

This paper considers an optimization of a communication network expansion with a reliability constraint. It is one of NP-hard problems. We propose a self-controlled genetic algorithm (scGA) to all-terminal network reliability problem. This scGA adopts fuzzy logic control (FLC) to tune the probabilities of the genetic operators depending on the change of the average fitness. The numerical analysis for various scales of problems shows that the proposed approach has a higher search capability that improve quality of solution and enhanced rate of convergence.
Networks of VTA Neurons Encode Real-Time Information about Uncertain Numbers of Actions Executed to Earn a Reward

Multiple and unpredictable numbers of actions are often required to achieve a goal. In order to organize behavior and allocate effort so that optimal behavioral policies can be selected, it is necessary to continually monitor ongoing actions. Real-time processing of information related to actions and outcomes is typically assigned to the prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia, but also depends on midbrain regions, especially the ventral tegmental area (VTA). We were interested in how individual VTA neurons, as well as networks within the VTA, encode salient events when an unpredictable number of serial actions are required to obtain a reward. We recorded from ensembles of putative dopamine and non-dopamine neurons in the VTA as animals performed multiple cued trials in a recording session where, in each trial, serial actions were randomly rewarded. While averaging population activity did not reveal a response pattern, we observed that different neurons selectively tuned to low, medium, or high numbered actions in a trial. This preferential tuning of putative dopamine and non-dopamine VTA neurons to different subsets of actions in a trial allowed information about binned action number to be decoded from the ensemble activity. At the network level, tuning curve similarity was positively associated with action-evoked noise correlations, suggesting that action number selectivity reflects functional connectivity within these networks. Analysis of phasic responses to cue and reward revealed that the requirement to execute multiple and uncertain numbers of actions weakens both cue-evoked responses and cue-reward response correlation. The functional connectivity and ensemble coding scheme that we observe here may allow VTA neurons to cooperatively provide a real-time account of ongoing behavior. These computations may be critical to cognitive and motivational functions that have long been associated with VTA dopamine neurons.
Characteristics of Biofilm Community Formed in the Chlorinated Biodegradable Organic Matter-Limited Tap Water

The aim of this study was to characterize the influence of free chlorine residual on biofilm formation in a chlorinated system in which the biodegradable organic matter (BOM) was limited. The biofilm community was characterized through a community-level physiological profile (CLPP) that was generated using the Biolog GN microplate-based community-level assay. The chlorinated system was run at chlorine residual concentrations of 0.3, 0.5, and 1.0 mg l−1 with the provision of BOM-limited tap water (0.01 mg l−1 as assimilable organic carbon and 0.06 mg l−1 as biodegradable dissolved organic carbon). For comparison, an unchlorinated system was operated in parallel under the same condition. The number of viable heterotrophic bacteria in the biofilm that formed in the chlorinated system over the 3 months of operation averaged 7.2×103, 4.8×10, and 1.6×10 CFU cm−2 for the chlorine residual concentrations of 0.3, 0.5, and 1.0 mg l&minus1, respectively. In the unchlorinated system, the average bacterial content was 1.1×106 CFU cm−2. Using measures of substrate utilization rate, substrate utilization diversity, and metabolic potential index (MPI), the CLPP patterns demonstrated that the metabolic potentials of the biofilm communities decreased markedly as the chlorine residual levels increased. In particular, the community level of the biofilm that formed in the system with chlorine residual concentration of 1.0 mg l−1 was the lowest of any biofilm under the tested conditions. The results implied that chlorine residual had a positive biocidal effect on the metabolic potential and/or functional potential of the biofilm community, especially when the BOM level was low. In addition, BOM limitation by itself was not sufficient to control biofilm formation.
Re-Programming Photosynthetic Cells of Perennial Ryegrass (Lolium perenne L) for Fructan Biosynthesis through Transgenic Expression of Fructan Biosynthetic Genes under the Control of Photosynthetic Promoters

High molecular weight fructans are the main class of water-soluble carbohydrate used for energy storage in many temperate grass species including perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.). As well as being important readily mobilisable energy reserves for the plant, fructans are also involved in stress tolerance. Fructans are also readily digested by grazing ruminants and hence are a valuable source of energy for sheep, beef and dairy production systems in temperate regions. This paper describes the re-programming of the expression of fructan biosynthesis genes through the transgenic manipulation of 6-glucose fructosyltransferase (6G-FFT) and sucrose:sucrose 1-fructosyl-transferase (1-SST) in perennial ryegrass. Transgenic events were developed with altered fructan accumulation patterns with increases in fructan accumulation and greatly increased accumulation of fructan in leaf blades as opposed to the traditional site of fructan accumulation in the pseudostem. This altered site of fructan accumulation has potential benefits for animal production as leaf blades form the major part of the diet of grazing ruminants. Some of the transgenic events also exhibited enhanced biomass production. This combination of high quality and enhanced yield is of great interest to forage plant breeders and whilst the expression of these phenotypes needs to be confirmed under field conditions, the identification and characterisation of the transgenic events described in this paper validate the potential for the manipulation of fructan biosynthesis in perennial ryegrass.
Preliminary results with a low-cost fiber-optic gyrocompass system

This paper reports results of preliminary numerical simulation studies and preliminary static experimental evaluation of a true-North gyrocompass system employing a commercially available low-cost inertial measurement unit (IMU) comprising a 3-axis fiber optic gyroscope (FOG) with microelectro-mechanical systems (MEMS) accelerometers. Northseeking gyrocompass systems typically employ a microprocessor system to sample the IMUs low-level raw sensor values for angular-rate and linear-acceleration at a high sampling rate, compensate for sensor bias and alignment, and compute a highlevel estimate for true-North heading, pitch, and roll. We report the results of a numerical simulation study to evaluate the potential accuracy of the proposed system, and a numerical sensitivity study to evaluate how this accuracy will change with variation in the sensor measurement noise of the gyroscopes and accelerometers. We report preliminary experimental results for a static benchtop configuration of this system which utilizes 3-axis angular-rate data and 3-axis linear acceleration sensor data to estimate the instrument's 3-degrees of freedom (DOF) attitude (heading, pitch, and roll) without using magnetometry of the Earth's magnetic field. These preliminary results for a static benchtop IMU configuration are promising, and directly applicable to static instrument deployments, but further development, testing, and evaluation is needed for the case of dynamic IMU configuration typically found on moving marine vehicles.
Consensus Machine Learning for Gene Target Selection in Pediatric AML Risk

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a cancer of hematopoietic systems that poses high population burden, especially among pediatric populations. AML presents with high molecular heterogeneity, complicating patient risk stratification and treatment planning. While molecular and cytogenetic subtypes of AML are well described, significance of subtype-specific gene expression patterns is poorly understood and effective modeling of these patterns with individual algorithms is challenging. Using a novel consensus machine learning approach, we analyzed public RNA-seq and clinical data from pediatric AML patients (N = 137 patients) enrolled in the TARGET project. We used a binary risk classifier (Low vs. Not-Low Risk) to study risk-specific expression patterns in pediatric AML. We applied the following workflow to identify important gene targets from RNA-seq data: (1) Reduce data dimensionality by identification of differentially expressed genes for AML risk (N = 1984 loci); (2) Optimize algorithm hyperparameters for each of 4 algorithm types (lasso, XGBoost, random forest, and SVM); (3) Study ablation test results for penalized methods (lasso and XGBoost); (4) Bootstrap Boruta permutations with a novel consensus importance metric. We observed recurrently selected features across hyperparameter optimizations, ablation tests, and Boruta permutation bootstrap iterations, including HOXA9 and putative cofactors including MEIS1. Consensus feature selection from Boruta bootstraps identified a larger gene set than single penalized algorithm runs (lasso or XGBoost), while also including correlated and predictive genes from ablation tests. We present a consensus machine learning approach to identify gene targets of likely importance for pediatric AML risk. The approach identified a moderately sized set of recurrent important genes from across 4 algorithm types, including genes identified across ablation tests with penalized algorithms (HOXA9 and MEIS1). Our approach mitigates exclusion biases of penalized algorithms (lasso and XGBoost) while obviating arbitrary importance cutoffs for other types (SVM and random forest). This approach is readily generalizable for research of other heterogeneous diseases, single-assay experiments, and high-dimensional data. Resources and code to recreate our findings are available online.
From Gulf to Bridge

Much of contemporary American political rhetoric is characterized by liberals and conservatives advancing arguments for the morality of their respective political positions. However, research suggests such moral rhetoric is largely ineffective for persuading those who do not already hold one’s position because advocates advancing these arguments fail to account for the divergent moral commitments that undergird America’s political divisions. Building on this, we hypothesize that (a) political advocates spontaneously make arguments grounded in their own moral values, not the values of those targeted for persuasion, and (b) political arguments reframed to appeal to the moral values of those holding the opposing political position are typically more effective. We find support for these claims across six studies involving diverse political issues, including same-sex marriage, universal health care, military spending, and adopting English as the nation's official langauge. Mediation and moderation analyses further indicated that reframed moral appeals were persuasive because they increased the apparent agreement between the political position and the targeted individuals’ moral values.
On Unicast based Recovery for Multicast Content Distribution considering XOR-FEC

In this paper, we propose a fail-safe and efficient download completion scheme for reliable multicast to which FEC (forward error correction) is applied with practical constraints on multicast transmission time. Recently, erasure codes based on XOR operation have become major FEC candidates for multicast content file distribution over the Internet or mobile networks in terms of their recovery performance and processing overheads. In particular LT (Luby transform) codes are effective in a heterogeneous multicast environment because they can achieve higher reliability by expanding the receiving time at each client. However, multicast transmission time can be restricted due to operational reasons considering multicast resource efficiency. In order to assure all the clients of download completion under such conditions, we newly designed a unicast based recovery mechanism considering LT codes characteristics. We confirmed the efficiency of our proposed mechanism by computer simulation
Thermoelectric power of RAgSb2 (R = Y, La, Ce, and Dy) in zero and applied magnetic fields

We report the experimental results of measurements of the thermoelectric power on the ternary intermetallic compounds RAgSb2 (R = Y, La, Ce, and Dy) over the temperature range from 2 to 300 K and in magnetic fields up to 140 kOe. In this work, we present the thermoelectric transport properties of four materials from the same family with different ground states: a non-moment bearing paramagnetic metallic system (YAgSb2), a non-moment bearing charge density wave system (LaAgSb2), a local moment bearing compound with XY-like antiferromagnetic order in the tetragonal basal plane as well as readily accessible metamagnetism (DyAgSb2), and a Kondo lattice system with ferromagnetic order below TC = 9.7 K (CeAgSb2). The thermoelectric power data from these materials exhibit complex temperature and magnetic field dependences, which are associated with modification of the electronic density of states and changes in magnetic scattering. At low temperatures, quantum oscillations in the thermoelectric power are also observed. These oscillations are associated with the Landau quantization of electronic energy in an applied magnetic field.
Umbilical cord interleukin‐6 levels are elevated in term neonates with perinatal asphyxia

Background A correlation between elevation of pro‐inflammatory cytokines and white matter injury or abnormal neurologic outcome has been established in the preterm infant. In the full‐term neonate, few studies exist linking elevation of cytokines with encephalopathy and poor neurodevelopmental outcome. Our aims were to investigate if serum interleukin‐6 concentrations in delivering mothers and their offspring at birth are associated with perinatal asphyxia, and to examine the relation of interleukin‐6 levels to the severity of hypoxic‐ischemic encephalopathy and to the neurological outcome.
Snail‐associated epithelial–mesenchymal transition promotes oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma motility and progression

The essential contribution of the epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT) to carcinoma progression is the loss of their epithelial characters, gain of mesenchymal marker expression, acquisition of migration, invasive activity and capability to pass through the basement membrane. In this study, we aimed to clarify the role of EMT regulator Snail, a zinc finger transcription factor, in human oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma (OESCC). Most OESCC cell lines expressed epithelial cell–cell adhesion molecules such as E‐cadherin and claudin‐1 and ‐7; however, TE‐8 (Snail‐positive) cells expressed mesenchymal marker vimentin but not E‐cadherin and claudins. Transduction of ectopic Snail in TE‐15 (Snail‐negative) cells diminished expression of these epithelial adhesion molecules with promotion of cell migration, invasion and proliferation as well as the shift from cobblestone‐like appearance to spindle morphology. In OESCC tissue samples, immunohistochemical analyses revealed that the nuclear Snail expression at the invasive front was correlated with the high levels of vimentin expression (p = 0.0061), which was conversely associated with reduced expressions of E‐cadherin (p = 0.023), claudin‐1 (p = 0.0246) and claudin‐7 (p = 0.0161). Interestingly, elevated Snail expression at the invasive front of the OESCC was associated with higher incidence of lymphatic (p = 0.0143) and venous vessels invasion (p = 0.0029), lymph node metastasis (p = 0.0074) and clinicopathological tumour stage (p = 0.0057). According to the expressions of epithelial and mesenchymal markers, the tumours were subclassified into three groups, the epithelial‐type OESCC and the complete or incomplete EMT‐type OESCCs. Snail‐positive tumours were frequently categorized into the complete‐ or incomplete‐type EMT phenotypes. Our present results suggest the significance of Snail‐associated EMT in the progression of OESCC. Snail‐induced EMT at the invasive front of the OESCC can be a novel marker for the prediction of metastasis. Copyright © 2008 Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.