Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Midlife Risk Factors for Impaired Physical and Cognitive Functioning at Older Ages: A Cohort Study

Background: Previous studies examined midlife risk factors separately for old-age impaired physical and cognitive functioning. We determined the overlap of risk factors for both domains of functioning within the same setting. Methods: Biological and behavioral risk factors at age 50 years and cognitive and physical functioning were assessed 18 (SD = 5) years later in the Whitehall II study (N = 6,316). Impaired physical functioning was defined as ≥1 limitation on the activities of daily living scale. Impaired cognitive functioning was defined as Mini-Mental State Examination score <27. Two statistical analyses were employed: minimally adjusted analysis (for age, sex, and ethnicity) and mutually adjusted analysis (including all risk factors). Missing data on risk factors were imputed. Results: After confounder adjustment, impaired physical and cognitive functioning at older ages were predicted by hypertension (odds ratios [ORs] 1.80 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.39–2.33 and 1.57 95% CI 1.07–2.31, respectively), poor lung function (1.51 95% CI 1.28–1.78 and 1.31 95% CI 1.08–1.59), and physical inactivity, marginally in the case of cognitive function (1.50 95% CI 1.19–1.90 and 1.27 95% CI 0.99–1.62) at age 50 years. Impaired physical functioning but not cognitive functioning was additionally predicted by depression and higher body mass index (1.72 95% CI 1.46–2.03 and 1.29 95% CI 1.16–1.44, respectively). Conclusions: Several midlife risk factors are associated with impaired physical and cognitive functioning in old age, supporting a unified prevention policy. Analysis of 12 risk factors at age 50 suggests that strategies targeting physical inactivity, hypertension, and poor lung function will reduce impairments in both cognitive and physical functioning in old age.
Business process management (BPM) standards: a survey

Purpose – In the last two decades, a proliferation of business process management (BPM) modeling languages, standards and software systems has given rise to much confusion and obstacles to adoption. Since new BPM languages and notation terminologies were not well defined, duplicate features are common. This paper seeks to make sense of the myriad BPM standards, organising them in a classification framework, and to identify key industry trends.Design/methodology/approach – An extensive literature review is conducted and relevant BPM notations, languages and standards are referenced against the proposed BPM Standards Classification Framework, which lists each standard's distinct features, strengths and weaknesses.Findings – The paper is unaware of any classification of BPM languages. An attempt is made to classify BPM languages, standards and notations into four main groups: execution, interchange, graphical, and diagnosis standards. At the present time, there is a lack of established diagnosis standards. I.
Localization of HET-S to the Cell Periphery, Not to [Het-s] Aggregates, Is Associated with [Het-s]–HET-S Toxicity

ABSTRACT Prion diseases are associated with accumulation of the amyloid form of the prion protein, but the mechanisms of toxicity are unknown. Amyloid toxicity is also associated with fungal prions. In Podospora anserina, the simultaneous presence of [Het-s] prion and its allelic protein HET-S causes cell death in a self-/nonself-discrimination process. Here, using the prion form of a fragment of HET-s ([PrD157+]), we show that [Het-s]–HET-S toxicity can be faithfully recapitulated in yeast. Overexpression of Hsp40 chaperone, Sis1, rescues this toxicity by curing cells of [PrD157+]. We find no evidence for toxic [PrD157+] conformers in the presence of HET-S. Instead, [PrD157+] appears to seed HET-S to accumulate at the cell periphery and to form aggregates distinct from visible [PrD157+] aggregates. Furthermore, HET-S mutants that cause HET-S to be sequestered into [PrD157+] prion aggregates are not toxic. The localization of HET-S at the cell periphery and its association with cell death was also observed in the native host Podospora anserina. Thus, upon interaction with [Het-s], HET-S localizes to the cell periphery, and this relocalization, rather than the formation of mixed HET-s/HET-S aggregates, is associated with toxicity.
Does Requiring Continuing Education Units for Professional Licensing Renewal Assure Quality Patient Care?

Although most states in the United States require health care professionals to complete continuing education units (CEUs) for licensure renewal, little evidence to date has established a relationship between completing CEUs and clinical competency. Considering the high cost of health care delivery and services, it would be prudent for both managers and consumers of health care to review the costs and benefits of requiring CEUs for professional licensing renewal. This study features an extensive review of the literature to analyze the supportive as well as the opposing views of mandatory CEUs for professional license renewal. Most of the studies reviewed reported almost no relationship between participation in traditional continuing education courses and improved patient outcomes. Several recommendations evolved out of this study for improving patient outcomes following the attendance of continuing education courses.
Loss of Notch1 Disrupts the Barrier Repair in the Corneal Epithelium

The corneal epithelium is the outermost layer of the cornea that directly faces the outside environment, hence it plays a critical barrier function. Previously, conditional loss of Notch1 on the ocular surface was found to cause inflammation and keratinization of the corneal epithelium. This was in part attributed to impaired vitamin A metabolism, loss of the meibomian glands and recurrent eyelid trauma. We hypothesized that Notch1 plays an essential role in the corneal epithelial barrier function and is a contributing factor in the pathologic changes in these mice. Notch1 was conditionally deleted in adult Notch1flox/flox, K14-Cre-ERT+/- mice using hydroxy-tamoxifen. The results indicated that conditional deletion of Notch1 on the ocular surface leads to progressive impairment of the epithelial barrier function before the onset of corneal opacification and keratinization. Loss of the barrier was demonstrated both by an increase in in vivo corneal fluorescein staining and by enhanced penetration of a small molecule through the epithelium. Corneal epithelial wounding resulted in significant delay in recovery of the barrier function in conditional Notch1-/- mice compared to wild type. Mice with conditional deletion of Notch1 did not demonstrate any evidence of dry eyes based on aqueous tear production and had normal conjunctival goblet cells. In a calcium switch experiment in vitro, Notch1-/- cells demonstrated delayed membrane localization of the tight junction protein ZO-1 consistent with a defect in the epithelial tight junction formation. These findings highlight the role of Notch1 in epithelial differentiation and suggest that intrinsic defects in the corneal epithelial barrier recovery after wounding is an important contributing factor to the development of inflammatory keratinization in Notch1-/- mice.
rSNP_Guide, a database system for analysis of transcription factor binding to DNA with variations: application to genome annotation

The analysis of gene regulatory networks has become one of the most challenging problems of the postgenomic era. Earlier we developed rSNP_Guide (http://util.bionet.nsc.ru/databases/rsnp.html), a computer system and database devoted to prediction of transcription factor (TF) binding sites (TF sites), which can be responsible for disease phenotypes. The prediction results were confirmed by 70 known relationships between TF sites and diseases, as well as by site-directed mutagenesis data. The rSNP_Guide is being investigated as a tool for TF site annotation. Previously analyzed and characterized cases of altered TF sites were used to annotate potential sites of the same type and at the same location in homologous genes. Based on 20 TF sites with known alterations in TF binding to DNA, we localized 245 potential TF sites in homologous genes. For these potential TF sites, rSNP_Guide estimates TF-DNA interaction according to three categories: 'present', 'weak', and 'absent'. The significance of each assignment is statistically measured.
Eliminating voltage emergencies via software-guided code transformations

In recent years, circuit reliability in modern high-performance processors has become increasingly important. Shrinking feature sizes and diminishing supply voltages have made circuits more sensitive to microprocessor supply voltage fluctuations. These fluctuations result from the natural variation of processor activity as workloads execute, but when left unattended, these voltage fluctuations can lead to timing violations or even transistor lifetime issues. In this article, we present a hardware--software collaborative approach to mitigate voltage fluctuations. A checkpoint-recovery mechanism rectifies errors when voltage violates maximum tolerance settings, while a runtime software layer reschedules the program's instruction stream to prevent recurring violations at the same program location. The runtime layer, combined with the proposed code-rescheduling algorithm, removes 60% of all violations with minimal overhead, thereby significantly improving overall performance. Our solution is a radical departure from the ongoing industry-standard approach to circumvent the issue altogether by optimizing for the worst-case voltage flux, which compromises power and performance efficiency severely, especially looking ahead to future technology generations. Existing conservative approaches will have severe implications on the ability to deliver efficient microprocessors. The proposed technique reassembles a traditional reliability problem as a runtime performance optimization problem, thus allowing us to design processors for typical case operation by building intelligent algorithms that can prevent recurring violations.
Sentiment Analysis and Text Mining for Social Media Microblogs using Open Source Tools: An Empirical Study

Social media has arisen not only as a personal communication media, but also, as a media to communicate opinions about products and services or even political and general events among its users. Due to its widespread and popularity, there is a massive amount of user reviews or opinions produced and shared daily. Twitter is one of the most widely used social media micro blogging sites. Mining user opinions from social media data is not a straight forward task; it can be accomplished in different ways. In this work, an open source approach is presented, throughout which, twitter Microblogs data has been collected, pre-processed, analyzed and visualized using open source tools to perform text mining and sentiment analysis for analyzing user contributed online reviews about two giant retail stores in the UK namely Tesco and Asda stores over Christmas period 2014. Collecting customer opinions can be expensive and time consuming task using conventional methods such as surveys. The sentiment analysis of the customer opinions makes it easier for businesses to understand their competitive value in a changing market and to understand their customer views about their products and services, which also provide an insight into future marketing strategies and decision making policies.
Patients’ experiences of support for learning to live with diabetes to promote health and well-being: A lifeworld phenomenological study

Learning to live with diabetes in such a way that the new conditions will be a normal and natural part of life imposes requirements on the person living with diabetes. Previous studies have shown that there is no clear picture of what and how the learning that would allow persons to incorporate the illness into their everyday life will be supported. The aim of this study is to describe the phenomenon of support for learning to live with diabetes to promote health and well-being, from the patient’s perspective. Data were collected by interviews with patients living with type 1 or type 2 diabetes. The interviews were analysed using a reflective lifeworld approach. The results show that reflection plays a central role for patients with diabetes in achieving a new understanding of the health process, and awareness of their own responsibility was found to be the key factor for such a reflection. The constituents are responsibility creating curiosity and willpower, openness enabling support, technology verifying bodily feelings, a permissive climate providing for participation and exchanging experiences with others. The study concludes that the challenge for caregivers is to create interactions in an open learning climate that initiates and supports reflection to promote health and well-being.
Genetic variation in the Cytb gene of human cerebral Taenia solium cysticerci recovered from clinically and radiologically heterogeneous patients with neurocysticercosis

Neurocysticercosis (NC) is a clinically and radiologically heterogeneous parasitic disease caused by the establishment of larval Taenia solium in the human central nervous system. Host and/or parasite variations may be related to this observed heterogeneity. Genetic differences between pig and human-derived T. solium cysticerci have been reported previously. In this study, 28 cysticerci were surgically removed from 12 human NC patients, the mitochondrial gene that encodes cytochrome b was amplified from the cysticerci and genetic variations that may be related to NC heterogeneity were characterised. Nine different haplotypes (Ht), which were clustered in four haplogroups (Hg), were identified. Hg 3 and 4 exhibited a tendency to associate with age and gender, respectively. However, no significant associations were found between NC heterogeneity and the different T. solium cysticerci Ht or Hg. Parasite variants obtained from patients with similar NC clinical or radiological features were genetically closer than those found in groups of patients with a different NC profile when using the Mantel test. Overall, this study establishes the presence of genetic differences in the Cytb gene of T. solium isolated from human cysticerci and suggests that parasite variation could contribute to NC heterogeneity.
Fast Algorithms for Sparse Recovery with Perturbed Dictionary

In this paper, we account for approaches of sparse recovery from large underdetermined linear models with perturbation present in both the measurements and the dictionary matrix. Existing methods have high computation and low efficiency. The total least-squares (TLS) criterion has well-documented merits in solving linear regression problems while FOCal Underdetermined System Solver (FOCUSS) has low-computation complexity in sparse recovery. Based on TLS and FOCUSS methods, the present paper develops more fast and robust algorithms, TLS-FOCUSS and SD-FOCUSS. TLS-FOCUSS algorithm is not only near-optimum but also fast in solving TLS optimization problems under sparsity constraints, and thus fit for large scale computation. In order to reduce the complexity of algorithm further, another suboptimal algorithm named D-FOCUSS is devised. SD-FOCUSS can be applied in MMV (multiple-measurement-vectors) TLS model, which fills the gap of solving linear regression problems under sparsity constraints. The convergence of TLS-FOCUSS algorithm and SD-FOCUSS algorithm is established with mathematical proof. The simulations illustrate the advantage of TLS-FOCUSS and SD-FOCUSS in accuracy and stability, compared with other algorithms.
Monitoring Genetic Variations in Variable Length Evolutionary Algorithms

Initially, Artificial Evolution focuses on Evolutionary Algorithms handling solutions coded in fixed length structures. In this context, the role of crossover is clearly the mixing of information between solutions. The development of Evolutionary Algorithms operating on structures with variable length, of which genetic programming is one of the most representative instances, opens new questions on the effects of crossover. Beside mixing, two new effects are identified : the diffusion of information inside solutions and the variation of the solutions sizes. In this paper, we propose a experimental framework to study these three effects and apply it on three different crossovers for genetic programming : the Standard Crossover, the One-Point Crossover and the Maximum Homologous Crossover. Exceedingly different behaviors are reported leading us to consider the necessary future decoupling of the mixing, the diffusion and the size variation.
Interobserver reliability in musculoskeletal ultrasonography: results from a “Teach the Teachers” rheumatologist course

Objective: To assess the interobserver reliability of the main periarticular and intra-articular ultrasonographic pathologies and to establish the principal disagreements on scanning technique and diagnostic criteria between a group of experts in musculoskeletal ultrasonography. Methods: The shoulder, wrist/hand, ankle/foot, or knee of 24 patients with rheumatic diseases were evaluated by 23 musculoskeletal ultrasound experts from different European countries randomly assigned to six groups. The participants did not reach consensus on scanning method or diagnostic criteria before the investigation. They were unaware of the patients’ clinical and imaging data. The experts from each group undertook a blinded ultrasound examination of the four anatomical regions. The ultrasound investigation included the presence/absence of joint effusion/synovitis, bony cortex abnormalities, tenosynovitis, tendon lesions, bursitis, and power Doppler signal. Afterwards they compared the ultrasound findings and re-examined the patients together while discussing their results. Results: Overall agreements were 91% for joint effusion/synovitis and tendon lesions, 87% for cortical abnormalities, 84% for tenosynovitis, 83.5% for bursitis, and 83% for power Doppler signal; κ values were good for the wrist/hand and knee (0.61 and 0.60) and fair for the shoulder and ankle/foot (0.50 and 0.54). The principal differences in scanning method and diagnostic criteria between experts were related to dynamic examination, definition of tendon lesions, and pathological v physiological fluid within joints, tendon sheaths, and bursae. Conclusions: Musculoskeletal ultrasound has a moderate to good interobserver reliability. Further consensus on standardisation of scanning technique and diagnostic criteria is necessary to improve musculoskeletal ultrasonography reproducibility.
Learning About Other People’s Families

While the call for teacher education students to learn about their students’ family and community lives remains urgent and compelling, educating teachers about the Other is tricky business. In this article I discuss the use of two performed ethnographies, Harriet’s House and Ana’s Shadow, to provide opportunities for teachers to learn about Other people’s families in ways that work against presenting a singular, dominant narrative of the Other’s experiences and positioning Other students as experts. Although the outcomes from educating teachers about Other people’s families are unpredictable and do not always disrupt the prior, potentially harmful, knowledges teachers bring with them to teaching, I argue, along with Kevin Kumashiro, that ongoing labour to stop the repetition of harmful knowledges is important anti-oppressive educational work.
MODELING LONGEVITY RISK WITH GENERALIZED DYNAMIC FACTOR MODELS AND VINE-COPULAE

Abstract We present a methodology to forecast mortality rates and estimate longevity and mortality risks. The methodology uses generalized dynamic factor models fitted to the differences in the log-mortality rates. We compare their prediction performance with that of models previously described in the literature, including the traditional static factor model fitted to log-mortality rates. We also construct risk measures using vine-copula simulations, which take into account the dependence between the idiosyncratic components of the mortality rates. The methodology is applied to forecast mortality rates for a population portfolio for the UK and to estimate longevity and mortality risks.
User scheduling and relay selection with fairness concerns in multi-source cooperative networks

In this paper, we consider user scheduling and relay selection with fairness concerns in a multi-source cooperative network, where sources take turns to deliver their information to the base station and then relays help to forward their corresponding source's message under system scheduling decision. We investigate the maximum achievable rate as the system objective and propose a suboptimal algorithm to solve the optimization problems by distributing source time slots using perfect matching method, and selecting relays to help transmission in appropriate time slots of relay stage using exhaustive or simplified algorithm, respectively. Numerical results show that the proposed scheme can significantly improve the short-term transmission fairness while maintaining comparable system performance with the traditional scheme.
Chapter X: Use of Computers in Educational Research

SINCE Martin and Hall wrote their chapter concerning data processing for the December 1960 REVIEW, the computer field has been kaleidoscopic, with new developments appearing and older trends growing to new levels. Perhaps the most marked change has been in the equipment field. In the previous REVIEW period, the basic computer was the IBM 650, although a few major universities either had built their own large-scale computers or had acquired a large-scale machine returned to the manufacturer by the aerospace industry. A significant change in this pattern has arisen, primarily as a result of the convergence of four factors: (a) availability of the transistorized computer, (b) change in the fiscal point of view within university administrations, (c) substantial educational discounts (up to 60 percent) from the manufacturers, and (d) significant financial support from the National Science Foundation. Because of these four factors, most major universities have installed the newest and most powerful computers available, with Control Data Corporation 1604's and IBM 7090's dominating the large machine field. The holder of the unofficial title of the most powerful computer on a college campus has changed many times during the period under review. The current title holder is the Control Data 3600 at Michigan State University. As of the most recent survey, there were 299 computers either installed or on order for colleges and universities (Datamation, 1962). Unfortunately, many of the professional journals have not reflected this change in equipment and have continued to publish far too many programs for IBM 650's and similar obsolete machines. Accompanying the trend to the large-scale "second generation" computers has been a parallel trend to such small, less expensive computers as the IBM 1620 and the Control Data Corporation 160-A. The wide distribution and relatively low operating costs of these small computers have enabled large numbers of persons to obtain firsthand experience in the use of computers. As a result, a market now exists for textbooks written around the design, operation, and programming of a particular computer. The text by Leeson and Dimitry (1962) for the IBM 1620 is an excellent example of this type of book, and similar efforts based upon the popular large-scale computers are certainly in order. A few years ago, a computer specialist speaking at an educational conference devoted the major portion of his presentation to explaining the characteristics of computers and a minor portion to discussing the relevant