Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Migraine and risk of incident diabetes in women: A prospective study

Background: Previous cross-sectional studies evaluating the relationship between diabetes prevalence and migraine status have found conflicting results. We examined the relationship between migraine and incident type 2 diabetes (T2D) in a cohort of adult women. Methods: Prospective cohort study conducted among participants in the Women’s Health Study who provided information on migraine and did not have diabetes at baseline. Our four exposure groups were migraine with aura, migraine without aura, past history of migraine and no history of migraine. Cox proportional hazards models were used to determine the hazard ratio for incident T2D. Results: Among the 38,620 women included in this study, 5062 (13.1%) women had migraine, of whom 2014 (39.8%) reported migraine with aura, and 2087 (5.4%) women had a past history of migraine. During a mean of 14.6 years of follow-up, there were 3032 cases of incident T2D. After adjustment for confounders, the hazard ratio (95% confidence interval) for developing diabetes was 1.06 (0.91–1.24) for women with migraine with aura, 1.01 (0.89–1.16) for women with migraine without aura, and 1.13 (0.98–1.30) for women with a past history of migraine compared with women with no history of migraine. Conclusion: Results of this prospective study in women do not support an association between migraine and incident T2D.
Dendrimer-Based Fluorescent Indicators: In Vitro and In Vivo Applications

Background The development of fluorescent proteins and synthetic molecules whose fluorescence properties are controlled by the environment makes it possible to monitor physiological and pathological events in living systems with minimal perturbation. A large number of small organic dyes are available and routinely used to measure biologically relevant parameters. Unfortunately their application is hindered by a number of limitations stemming from the use of these small molecules in the biological environment. Principal Findings We present a novel dendrimer-based architecture leading to multifunctional sensing elements that can overcome many of these problems. Applications in vitro, in living cells and in vivo are reported. In particular, we image for the first time extracellular pH in the brain in a mouse epilepsy model. Conclusion We believe that the proposed architecture can represent a useful and novel tool in fluorescence imaging that can be widely applied in conjunction with a broad range of sensing dyes and experimental setups.
A program logic for concurrent objects under fair scheduling

Existing work on verifying concurrent objects is mostly concerned with safety only, e.g., partial correctness or linearizability. Although there has been recent work verifying lock-freedom of non-blocking objects, much less efforts are focused on deadlock-freedom and starvation-freedom, progress properties of blocking objects. These properties are more challenging to verify than lock-freedom because they allow the progress of one thread to depend on the progress of another, assuming fair scheduling. We propose LiLi, a new rely-guarantee style program logic for verifying linearizability and progress together for concurrent objects under fair scheduling. The rely-guarantee style logic unifies thread-modular reasoning about both starvation-freedom and deadlock-freedom in one framework. It also establishes progress-aware abstraction for concurrent objects, which can be applied when verifying safety and liveness of client code. We have successfully applied the logic to verify starvation-freedom or deadlock-freedom of representative algorithms such as ticket locks, queue locks, lock-coupling lists, optimistic lists and lazy lists.
BRACE: Cloud-Based Software Reliability Assurance

The evolution towards virtualized network functions (VNFs) is expected to enable service agility within the telecommunications industry. To this end, the software (or VNFs) from which such services are composed must be developed and delivered over very short time scales. In order to guarantee the required levels of software quality within such tight schedules, software reliability tools must evolve. In particular, the tools should provide development teams spread across geography and time with reliable and actionable insights regarding the development process. In this paper, we present BRACE - a cloud-based, integrated, one-stop center for software reliability tools. BRACE is home to tools for software reliability modeling, testing, and defect analysis each of which is provided as-a-service to development teams. Initial implementation of BRACE includes a software reliability growth modelling (SRGM) tool. The SRGM tool is currently being used to enable real-time prediction of the total number of defects in software being developed, and for providing the required analytics and metrics to enable managers make informed decisions regarding resource allocation for defect correction so as to meet set deadlines
SEKEBAN (Secure and Efficient Key Exchange for wireless Body Area Network)

Recent technological advances in sensors, low-power microelectronics and miniaturization, and wireless networking enabled the design and proliferation of wireless sensor networks capable of autonomously monitoring and controlling environments. One of the most promising applications of sensor networks is for human health monitoring. A number of tiny wireless sensors, strategically placed on the human body, create a wireless body area network (WBAN) that can monitor various vital signs, providing real-time feedback to the user and medical personnel. The wireless body area networks promise to revolutionize health monitoring. Since the sensors collect personal medical data, security and privacy are important components in this kind of networks (WBAN). It is a challenge to implement traditional security infrastructures in these types of lightweight networks, since they are by design limited in both computational and communication resources. A key enabling technology for secure communications in WBANs has emerged to be biometrics. In this paper, we present an approach which exploits physiological signals (electrocardiogram (ECG)) to address security issues in WBAN: a Secure and Efficient Key Exchange for wireless Body Area Network (SEKEBAN). SEKEBAN manages the generation and distribution of symmetric cryptographic keys to constituent sensors in a WBAN and protect the privacy.
Changing Landscapes: Responding to Domestic Violence in New Zealand

Domestic violence is not a recent phenomenon; rather it is one which has endured. To understand professional social work responses to domestic violence it is necessary to examine theories of causation since these inform ideas about intervention. How social work responds to domestic violence is context dependent. This article examines the causal explanations and contextual factors that have shaped New Zealand's social work response to domestic violence. Suggestions are made for maximising a multifaceted, anti-discriminatory approach to practice.
An exploration of the principles underlying redundancy-based factoid question answering

The so-called “redundancy-based” approach to question answering represents a successful strategy for mining answers to factoid questions such as “Who shot Abraham Lincoln? ” from the World Wide Web. Through contrastive and ablation experiments with Aranea, a system that has performed well in several TREC QA evaluations, this work examines the underlying assumptions and principles behind redundancy-based techniques. Specifically, we develop two theses: that stable characteristics of data redundancy allow factoid systems to rely on external “black box” components, and that despite embodying a data-driven approach, redundancy-based methods encode a substantial amount of knowledge in the form of heuristics. Overall, this work attempts to address the broader question of “what really matters” and to provide guidance for future researchers.
Phytoplankton responses to nitrogen and iron limitation in the tropical and subtropical Pacific Ocean

QIAN LI1,2, LOUIS LEGENDRE3,4 AND NIANZHI JIAO1,2* 1 INSTITUTE OF MARINE MICROBES AND ECOSPHERES (IME), XIAMEN UNIVERSITY, XIAMEN 361102, CHINA, STATE KEY LABORATORY OF MARINE ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE, XIAMEN UNIVERSITY, XIAMEN 361102, CHINA, SORBONNE UNIVERSITES, UNIVERSITE PIERRE ET MARIE CURIE PARIS 6, UMR 7093, LABORATOIRE D’OCEANOGRAPHIE DE VILLEFRANCHE, 06230 VILLEFRANCHE-SUR-MER, FRANCE AND CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE, UMR 7093, LOV, 06230 VILLEFRANCHESUR-MER, FRANCE
Version abrégée de l'inventaire de résolution de problèmes sociaux

Les difficultes de resolution de problemes sont associees a plusieurs troubles emotionnels, incluant le trouble d'anxiete generalisee, l'agoraphobie, le trouble de stress post-traumatique et la depression. Afin d'evaluer ces difficultes, l'Inventaire de Resolution de Problemes Sociaux (IRPS ; D'Zurilla, Nezu, 1990) s'est avere un instrument de choix. Cependant, la longueur de ce questionnaire (70 items) et sa consistance interne tres elevee (.95 pour les deux echelles principales) suggerent la possibilite de developper une version abregee. Cette etude fournit les qualites metriques d'une version abregee comprenant 35 items. A l'aide d'un premier echantillon d'etudiants universitaires (n = 112), les 35 items les moins correles avec leurs echelles ont ete elimines. Les analyses subsequentes demontrent que cette version correle fortement avec la version originale (.91 a.98) et presente d'excellents indices de consistance interne (.81 a.94) et de fidelite test-retest (.59 a.78). Une reprise de ce travail avec un deuxieme echantillon independant (n = 137) confirme la presence de fortes correlations entre les deux versions ainsi que d'excellents indices de consistance interne (.90 a.98 et.69 a.92 respectivement). L'utilisation de l'IRPS-a dans le traitement de plusieurs troubles specifiques est discutee.
How to Compare Apples and Oranges: Poverty Measurement Based on Different Definitions of Consumption

Poverty rates calculated on the basis of household consumption expenditures are routinely compared across countries and time. The surveys which underlie these comparisons typically differ in the types of food and non‐food expenditures included, often in ways which are easily overlooked by analysts. With several examples we demonstrate that these commonly occurring variations in expenditure definitions can give rise to marked differences in poverty rates where there are no real differences in well‐being. We show that one approach to calculating poverty lines, used with the headcount measure of poverty, can allow comparisons based on data with different definitions of consumption. In addition to allowing comparative poverty analysis using existing survey data, the results suggest that poverty monitoring could be done effectively at lower cost by alternating detailed expenditure surveys with far more abbreviated surveys.
Breaking Sticks and Ambiguities with Adaptive Skip-gram

Recently proposed Skip-gram model is a powerful method for learning high-dimensional word representations that capture rich semantic relationships between words. However, Skip-gram as well as most prior work on learning word representations does not take into account word ambiguity and maintain only single representation per word. Although a number of Skip-gram modifications were proposed to overcome this limitation and learn multi-prototype word representations, they either require a known number of word meanings or learn them using greedy heuristic approaches. In this paper we propose the Adaptive Skip-gram model which is a nonparametric Bayesian extension of Skip-gram capable to automatically learn the required number of representations for all words at desired semantic resolution. We derive efficient online variational learning algorithm for the model and empirically demonstrate its efficiency on word-sense induction task.
Model-based parameter estimation for characterizing wave propagation in a homogeneous medium

A model-based algorithm is presented that uses minimal a priori information and assumptions to adaptively estimate parameters associated with propagating waves in a homogeneous medium. These parameters include transmitter and receiver transfer functions, propagation distances, dispersion, and propagation loss. The algorithm is described in a general framework that accommodates direct arrivals from two or more transmitter–receiver pairs and can be readily adapted to handle application-specific model assumptions. Experimental validation is performed with two sets of ultrasonic guided wave data that conform to two different sets of model assumptions, demonstrating the impact of these assumptions and the ability to successfully estimate model parameters in a dispersive medium.
Effects of some design factors on the distribution of similarity indices in cluster analysis

ABSTRACT This article investigates the effects of number of clusters, cluster size, and correction for chance agreement on the distribution of two similarity indices, namely, Jaccard and Rand indices. Skewness and kurtosis are calculated for the two indices and their corrected forms then compared with those of the normal distribution. Three clustering algorithms are implemented: complete linkage, Ward, and K-means. Data were randomly generated from bivariate normal distributions with specified means and variance covariance matrices. Three-way ANOVA is performed to assess the significance of the design factors using skewness and kurtosis of the indices as responses. Test statistics for testing skewness and kurtosis and observed power are calculated. Simulation results showed that independent of the clustering algorithms or the similarity indices used, the interaction effect cluster size x number of clusters and the main effects of cluster size and number of clusters were found always significant for skewness and kurtosis. The three way interaction of cluster size x correction x number of clusters was significant for skewness of Rand and Jaccard indices using all clustering algorithms, but was not significant using Ward's method for both Rand and Jaccard indices, while significant for Jaccard only using complete linkage and K-means algorithms. The correction for chance agreement was significant for skewness and kurtosis using Rand and Jaccard indices when complete linkage method is used. Hence, such design factors must be taken into consideration when studying distribution of such indices.
Distinct roles for DNA-PK, ATM and ATR in RPA phosphorylation and checkpoint activation in response to replication stress

DNA damage encountered by DNA replication forks poses risks of genome destabilization, a precursor to carcinogenesis. Damage checkpoint systems cause cell cycle arrest, promote repair and induce programed cell death when damage is severe. Checkpoints are critical parts of the DNA damage response network that act to suppress cancer. DNA damage and perturbation of replication machinery causes replication stress, characterized by accumulation of single-stranded DNA bound by replication protein A (RPA), which triggers activation of ataxia telangiectasia and Rad3 related (ATR) and phosphorylation of the RPA32, subunit of RPA, leading to Chk1 activation and arrest. DNA-dependent protein kinase catalytic subunit (DNA-PKcs) [a kinase related to ataxia telangiectasia mutated (ATM) and ATR] has well characterized roles in DNA double-strand break repair, but poorly understood roles in replication stress-induced RPA phosphorylation. We show that DNA-PKcs mutant cells fail to arrest replication following stress, and mutations in RPA32 phosphorylation sites targeted by DNA-PKcs increase the proportion of cells in mitosis, impair ATR signaling to Chk1 and confer a G2/M arrest defect. Inhibition of ATR and DNA-PK (but not ATM), mimic the defects observed in cells expressing mutant RPA32. Cells expressing mutant RPA32 or DNA-PKcs show sustained H2AX phosphorylation in response to replication stress that persists in cells entering mitosis, indicating inappropriate mitotic entry with unrepaired damage.
Variant Upstream Regulatory Region Sequences Differentially Regulate Human Papillomavirus Type 16 DNA Replication throughout the Viral Life Cycle

ABSTRACT While the central role of the viral upstream regulatory region (URR) in the human papillomavirus (HPV) life cycle has been well established, its effects on viral replication factor expression and plasmid replication of HPV type 16 (HPV16) remain unclear. Some nonprototypic variants of HPV16 contain altered URR sequences and are considered to increase the oncogenic risk of infections. To determine the relationship between viral replication and variant URRs, hybrid viral genomes were constructed with the replication-competent HPV16 prototype W12 and analyzed in assays which recapitulate the different phases of normal viral replication. The establishment efficiencies of hybrid HPV16 genomes differed about 20-fold among European prototypes and variants from Africa and America. Generally, European and African genomes exhibited the lowest replication efficiencies. The high replication levels observed with American variants were primarily attributable to their efficient expression of the replication factors E1 and E2. The maintenance levels of these viral genomes varied about fivefold, which correlated with their respective establishment phenotypes and published P97 activities. Vegetative DNA amplification could also be observed with replicating HPV16 genomes. These results indicate that efficient E1/E2 expression and elevated plasmid replication levels during the persistent stage of infection may comprise a risk factor in HPV16-mediated oncogenesis.
Component carrier selection for LTE-A systems in diverse coverage carrier aggregation scenario

Each UE can aggregate multiple component carriers (CCs) as a wider band to support the demand of higher data rates in LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) systems with carrier aggregation (CA). An appropriate CC selection is necessary in order to improve the utility of CA, since not all CCs benefit from CA due to bad channel quality of some CCs. Most of existing methods only take one aspect of problems into account like channel quality or traffic load separately. To improve the system capacity under a good load balance condition, a Utility-Balance based CC Selection (UB-CS) strategy is proposed for the non-continuous diverse coverage deployment scenario in LTE-A CA system. Simulation results demonstrate that the given scheme is prior to the traditional ones.
Self-Reported Comprehension Ratings of Dog Behavior by Owners of Adult Dogs

ABSTRACT Previous research has focused on dog owners' actual comprehension of dog behavior, while ignoring the importance of perceived comprehension. However, perceived comprehension is important to study as it is more important than actual comprehension in decision making. The current study examined the responses of 140 participants to a questionnaire asking about demographic details, experience with dogs, and their understanding of dog behavior. The responses were analyzed using ordinal logistic regression, comparing their reported comprehension of dog behavior with reported experience, demographic variables, and the number of behaviors which the owners reported their dogs showing. Most respondents reported comprehension ratings of “somewhat well” to “very well,” which were at the top end of the scale. The only variable found to be related to perceived comprehension was self-reported experience with dogs, despite previous research suggesting that simple experience with dogs does not improve comprehension of dog behavior.
Making consistent contacts to graphene: effect of architecture and growth induced defects

The effects of contact architecture, graphene defect density and metal–semiconductor work function difference on the resistivity of metal–graphene contacts have been investigated. An architecture with metal on the bottom of graphene is found to yield resistivities that are lower, by a factor of four, and most consistent as compared to metal on top of graphene. Growth defects in graphene film were found to further reduce resistivity by a factor of two. Using a combination of method and metal used, the contact resistivity of graphene has been decreased by a factor of 10 to 1200 ± 250 Ω μ m using palladium as the contact metal. While the improved consistency is due to the metal being able to contact uncontaminated graphene in the metal on the bottom architecture, lower contact resistivities observed on defective graphene with the same metal are attributed to the increased number of modes of quantum transport in the channel.
Temporal resolution in fluorescence imaging

Temporal resolution is a key factor for imaging rapidly occurring events in biology. In this feature article, I investigate an approximate estimate for determining the temporal resolution limit. The condition that led to this limit is, the time taken by the ensemble (99.9%) of excited molecules to relax to ground state, assuming all the emitted photons are detected. In a simplistic three-level system, the temporal resolution is, ≈3τp, where τp = (loge10)/(kf + knr) and, kf and knr are respectively the radiative and non-radiative emission rates. This further assumes the ideal condition that, the quantum efficiency of the detector is unity and there are no other loses. We discuss few state-of-art microscopy techniques that are capable of high temporal resolution. This includes techniques such as multifocal multiphoton microscopy (MMM), multifocal plane microscopy, multiple excitation spot optical microscopy (MESO), multiplane microscopy and multiple light-sheet microscopy (MLSM).
Estimation of the proportion of overweight individuals in small areas—a robust extension of the Fay–Herriot model

Hierarchical model such as Fay–Herriot (FH) model is often used in small area estimation. The method might perform well overall but is vulnerable to outliers. We propose a robust extension of the FH model by assuming the area random effects follow a t distribution with an unknown degrees‐of‐freedom parameter. The inferences are constructed using a Bayesian framework. Monte Carlo Markov Chain (MCMC) such as Gibbs sampling and Metropolis–Hastings acceptance and rejection algorithms are used to obtain the joint posterior distribution of model parameters. The procedure is used to estimate the county‐level proportion of overweight individuals from the 2003 public‐use Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) data. We also discuss two approaches for identifying outliers in the context of this application. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.