Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Efectos de un programa de meditación sobre los niveles de creatividad verbal de un grupo de alumnos/as de Bachillerato

En este estudio se analizaron los efectos de un programa de meditacion sobre los niveles de creatividad verbal (fluidez, flexibilidad y originalidad) de un grupo de alumnos de primer y segundo curso de bachillerato. Para ello se conto con la participacion de un grupo experimental, y con un grupo control que no recibio dicho programa. Los niveles de creatividad de los dos grupos fueron evaluados mediante la bateria verbal del test de pensamiento creativo, de Torrance, encontrandose mejoras significativas en el grupo experimental respecto del de control en las variables estudiadas.
Breaking the plaque: evidence for plaque rupture in animal models of atherosclerosis.

Animal models of disease get a bad press, none more so than models of atherosclerosis. Rodents do not get atherosclerosis, and rabbits and pigs get minimal disease; only a limited range of primates gets significant atherosclerosis that resembles human lesions. The development of genetically engineered mice with disorders of lipid metabolism, such as apolipoprotein E (apoE) and LDL receptor knockout mice, was therefore a major step forward in animal models of atherosclerosis (reviewed by Smith and Breslow1). These mice develop atherosclerosis spontaneously, albeit variable between mouse strains, 2 which can be accelerated on a high cholesterol diet. The plaques that develop are widespread and reproducible and have some architectural features reminiscent of human lesions. These mice have formed the basis for a plethora of studies identifying specific molecules critical to atherosclerosis, in particular, those regulating monocyte adherence/chemotaxis and macrophage differentiation/foam cell development. Still the critics carp. The major dissent has been that lesions occur at sites very different from human lesions–the aortic root and thoracic aorta for instance. Lesions in the aortic root are also foam cell–rich, rather than smooth muscle cell–rich, may not have a single definable fibrous cap, and represent xanthomata rather than clinically important advanced lesions. Most important of all, these mice are models of atherogenesis, not advanced atherosclerosis, and they do not exhibit the single most important event in human atherosclerosis, that of plaque rupture leading to vessel occlusion. See page …
Korean Women’s Breast Cancer Experience

The purpose of this study was to explore cultural meanings of breast cancer among Korean women in South Korea. A descriptive longitudinal study using methodological triangulation was conducted, and only qualitative findings are presented in this article. Ten Korean women who were newly diagnosed with a plan of surgery and subsequent chemotherapy, who did have severe fatigue at the time of recruitment, were recruited through Seoul National University Hospital. Data were collected using in-depth, 2-hour interviews and analyzed using thematic analysis. The themes emerged through the analysis process included: (a) “I did wrong,” (b) “I cannot ask male physicians,” (c) “I don’t want to show the operation site to my husband,” and (d) “I do household tasks by myself. ” The overriding theme was marginalization of the women within the context of their patriarchal culture. The findings suggest that culture is an important context circumscribing women’s health/illness experience.
Multiple Kernel Learning for Quadratically Constrained MAP Classification

SUMMARY Most of the recent classiﬁcation methods require tuning of the hyper-parameters, such as the kernel function parameter and the regularization parameter. Cross-validation or the leave-one-out method is often used for the tuning, however their computational costs are much higher than that of obtaining a classiﬁer. Quadratically constrained maximum a posteriori (QCMAP) classiﬁers, which are based on the Bayes classiﬁcation rule, do not have the regularization parameter, and exhibit higher classiﬁcation accuracy than support vector machine (SVM). In this paper, we propose a multiple kernel learning (MKL) for QCMAP to tune the kernel parameter automatically and improve the classiﬁcation performance. By introducing MKL, QCMAP has no parameter to be tuned. Experiments show that the proposed classiﬁer has comparable or higher classiﬁcation performance than conventional MKL classiﬁers.
Classes and inheritance in actor-oriented design

Actor-oriented components emphasize concurrency and temporal semantics and are used for modeling and designing embedded software and hardware. Actors interact with one another through ports via a messaging schema that can follow any of several concurrent semantics. Domain-specific actor-oriented languages and frameworks are common (Simulink, LabVIEW, SystemC, etc.). However, they lack many modularity and abstraction mechanisms that programmers have become accustomed to in object-oriented components, such as classes, inheritance, interfaces, and polymorphism, except as inherited from the host language. This article shows a form that such mechanisms can take in actor-oriented components, gives a formal structure, and describes a prototype implementation. The mechanisms support actor-oriented class definitions, subclassing, inheritance, and overriding. The formal structure imposes structural constraints on a model (mainly the “derivation invariant”) that lead to a policy to govern inheritance. In particular, the structural constraints permit a disciplined form of multiple inheritance with unambiguous inheritance and overriding behavior. The policy is based formally on a generalized ultrametric space with some remarkable properties. In this space, inheritance is favored when actors are “closer” (in the generalized ultrametric), and we show that when inheritance can occur from multiple sources, one source is always unambiguously closer than the other.
Cost‐sensitive learning and decision making for massachusetts pip claim fraud data

In this article, we investigate the issue of cost‐sensitive classification for a data set of Massachusetts closed personal injury protection (PIP) automobile insurance claims that were previously investigated for suspicion of fraud by domain experts and for which we obtained cost information. After a theoretical exposition on cost‐sensitive learning and decision‐making methods, we then apply these methods to the claims data at hand to contrast the predictive performance of the documented methods for a selection of decision tree and rule learners. We use standard logistic regression and (smoothed) naive Bayes as benchmarks. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Int Syst 19: 1197–1215, 2004.
Impact of Lowland Rainforest Transformation on Diversity and Composition of Soil Prokaryotic Communities in Sumatra (Indonesia)

Prokaryotes are the most abundant and diverse group of microorganisms in soil and mediate virtually all biogeochemical cycles in terrestrial ecosystems. Thereby, they influence aboveground plant productivity and diversity. In this study, the impact of rainforest transformation to intensively managed cash crop systems on soil prokaryotic communities was investigated. The studied managed land use systems comprised rubber agroforests (jungle rubber), rubber plantations and oil palm plantations within two Indonesian landscapes Bukit Duabelas and Harapan. Soil prokaryotic community composition and diversity were assessed by pyrotag sequencing of bacterial and archaeal 16S rRNA genes. The curated dataset contained 16,413 bacterial and 1679 archaeal operational taxonomic units at species level (97% genetic identity). Analysis revealed changes in indigenous taxon-specific patterns of soil prokaryotic communities accompanying lowland rainforest transformation to jungle rubber, and intensively managed rubber and oil palm plantations. Distinct clustering of the rainforest soil communities indicated that these are different from the communities in the studied managed land use systems. The predominant bacterial taxa in all investigated soils were Acidobacteria, Actinobacteria, Alphaproteobacteria, Betaproteobacteria, and Gammaproteobacteria. Overall, the bacterial community shifted from proteobacterial groups in rainforest soils to Acidobacteria in managed soils. The archaeal soil communities were mainly represented by Thaumarchaeota and Euryarchaeota. Members of the Terrestrial Group and South African Gold Mine Group 1 (Thaumarchaeota) dominated in the rainforest and members of Thermoplasmata in the managed land use systems. The alpha and beta diversity of the soil prokaryotic communities was higher in managed land use systems than in rainforest. In the case of bacteria, this was related to soil characteristics such as pH value, exchangeable Ca and Fe content, C to N ratio, and extractable P content. Archaeal community composition and diversity were correlated to pH value, exchangeable Fe content, water content, and total N. The distribution of bacterial and archaeal taxa involved in biological N cycle indicated functional shifts of the cycle during conversion of rainforest to plantations.
The time course of protecting a visual memory representation from perceptual interference

Cueing a remembered item during the delay of a visual memory task leads to enhanced recall of the cued item compared to when an item is not cued. This cueing benefit has been proposed to reflect attention within visual memory being shifted from a distributed mode to a focused mode, thus protecting the cued item against perceptual interference. Here we investigated the dynamics of building up this mnemonic protection against visual interference by systematically varying the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between cue onset and a subsequent visual mask in an orientation memory task. Experiment 1 showed that a cue counteracted the deteriorating effect of pattern masks. Experiment 2 demonstrated that building up this protection is a continuous process that is completed in approximately half a second after cue onset. The similarities between shifting attention in perceptual and remembered space are discussed.
Non-commercial Research and Educational Use including without Limitation Use in Instruction at Your Institution, Sending It to Specific Colleagues That You Know, and Providing a Copy to Your Institution's Administrator. All Other Uses, Reproduction and Distribution, including without Limitation Comm

One of the most difficult tasks in software development is that the programmer must implement a feature going through a laborious and error prone process of modifying the programs of other features. The programs of the different features entangle in the same reusable program units of the programming language, making them also difficult to be verified, maintained and reused. We show that if (C1) the features interact, (C2) they are executed by the same process and (C3) they are implemented in a programming language that requires the programmer to specify execution flows, program entanglement is inevitable and the problem cannot be solved by software design alone. Applications with interacting features are common including those that require exception handling. The feature language extensions (FLX) is a set of programming language constructs designed to enable the programmer to develop interacting features as separate and reusable program modules even though the features interact. The programmer uses FLX to specify non-procedural program units, organize the program units into reusable features and integrate features into executable feature packages. He develops a feature based on a model instead of the code of other features. FLX supports an automatic procedure to detect the interaction condition among features; the programmer then resolve the interaction in a feature package without changing feature code. FLX features and feature packages are reusable; the programmer may package different combinations of them and resolve their interactions differently to meet different user needs. An FLX to Java compiler has been implemented; our experience of using it has been very positive.
Effect of Therapeutic Ultrasound and Maternal Cooling Gel Pad forPerineal Pain Following Vaginal Delivery with Episiotomy

Background and objectives: About 70% of women suffer trauma with or without episiotomy to the perineum during vaginal delivery and this commonly causes pain and discomfort which may persist for months postpartum. The present study was aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of therapeutic ultrasound and cooling maternal gel pads for perineal pain following vaginal delivery. Materials and methods: After obtaining ethical clearance from Institutional Ethical Committee, 30 women who underwent vaginal delivery with episiotomy and complained of perineal pain were recruited and randomly allocated to control (n-15) and interventional group (n-15). A written informed consent was signed by all the participants. Physiotherapy intervention included therapeutic ultrasound, cooling maternal gel pad for experimental group and placebo therapeutic ultrasound for control group twice daily for a period of 3 days. Outcome measures included Visual Analog Scale (VAS) for pain measurement and REEDA (Redness, Edema, Ecchymoisis, Discharge, Approximation) scale for healing process, which were documented on 1st day pre intervention and 3rd day post intervention respectively. Results: The results showed statistically significant reduction in VAS and REEDA scores in experimental groups with p=0.02. Conclusion: Therapeutic ultrasound and maternal cooling gel pad proved to be effective in reducing perineal pain following vaginal delivery with episiotomy.
Multiplicity and early gestational age contribute to an increased risk of cerebral palsy from assisted conception: a population-based cohort study.

BACKGROUND This paper assesses the risk of cerebral palsy (CP) in children born after assisted conception compared with children born after natural conception (NC). METHODS This population based follow-up study included all 588,967 children born in Denmark from 1995 to 2003. Assisted conception was defined as IVF, with or without ICSI, and ovulation induction (OI), with or without subsequent insemination. RESULTS There were 33 139 (5.6%) children born in Denmark from 1995 to 2003 as a result of assisted conception and through to June 2009, 1146 (0.19%) children received a CP diagnosis. Children born after assisted conception had an increased risk of a CP diagnosis, crude hazard rate ratio (HRR) 1.90 (95% CI: 1.57-2.31) compared with NC children. Divided into IVF and OI children compared with NC children, the risk was HRR 2.34 (95% CI: 1.81-3.01) and HRR 1.55 (95% CI: 1.17-2.06), respectively. When we included the intermediate factors multiplicity and gestational age in multivariate models, the risk of CP in assisted conception disappeared. In general, children with CP born after assisted conception had similar CP subtypes and co-morbidities as children with CP born after NC. CONCLUSION The risk of CP is increased after both IVF and OI. The increased risk of CP in children born after assisted conception, and in particular IVF, is strongly associated with the high proportion of multiplicity and preterm delivery in these pregnancies. A more widespread use of single embryo transfer warrants consideration to enhance the long-term health of children born after IVF.
LOB: Bucket Based Index for Range Queries

Database-as-a-service is a promising data management paradigm in which data is encrypted before being sent to the untrusted server. Efficient querying on encrypted data is a performance critical problem which has various solutions, among which bucket based index is an effective and flexible one. In previous research some metrics are proposed to measure security and efficiency. In this paper, we illustrate by example the limitations of these metrics and introduce a new security metric based on probability distribution variance and efficiency metric based on overlapping ratio. Based on these metrics we propose a local overlapping bucket algorithm (LOB) with time complexity of O(nlogn), where n represents the cardinality of the table. Experiments on synthetic and real dataset show that our algorithm can achieve higher security by trading off efficiency.
THE PRONOMINALISATION OF CULTURE. DYADIC AND TRIADIC MODELS OF INTERCULTURALITY

A sense can be given, in qualitative rather than quantitative terms, to the three-part distinction, within the semiotics of culture, of Culture, Non-culture, and Extra-culture, by having recourse to the analysis of pronouns into two binary correlations, personality and subjectivity, originally proposed by Benveniste. The present communication will address two related themes: the possible relationship, which is not straight-forward, to Peirce’s early presentation of his famous trichotomy in terms of personal pronouns, and its parallel, which is not a strict one, in the late work of Cassirer; and, in the second place, the curious opposition between the parts assigned to Ego and Alter, within the correlation of subjectivity, in the theories of Bakhtin and Peirce, respectively. (Less)
A Pneumatic Glove and Immersive Virtual Reality Environment for Hand Rehabilitative Training After Stroke

While a number of devices have recently been developed to facilitate hand rehabilitation after stroke, most place some restrictions on movement of the digits or arm. Thus, a novel glove was developed which can provide independent extension assistance to each digit while still allowing full arm movement. This pneumatic glove, the PneuGlove, can be used for training grasp-and-release movements either with real objects or with virtual objects in a virtual reality environment. Two groups of stroke survivors, with seven subjects in each group, completed a six-week rehabilitation training protocol, consisting of three 1-h sessions held each week. One group wore the PneuGlove during training, performed both within a novel virtual reality environment and outside of it with physical objects, while the other group completed the same training without the device. Across subjects, significant improvements were observed in the Fugl-Meyer Assessment for the upper extremity ( p<;;0.001), the hand/wrist portion of the Fugl-Meyer Assessment ( p<;;0.001), the Box and Blocks test ( p<;;0.05), and palmar pinch strength ( p<;;0.05). While changes in the two groups were not statistically different, the group using the PneuGlove did show greater mean improvement on each of these measures, such as gains of 3.7 versus 2.4 points on the hand/wrist portion of the Fugl-Meyer Assessment and 14 N versus 5 N in palmar pinch.
The effects of 2-methoxyethanol and 2-ethoxyethanol on hematological changes induced by 2-butoxyethanol.

BACKGROUND Alkoxyethanols (ethylene glycol alkyl ethers) are used as mixtures in a variety of industrial and household products. The aim of this study has been to evaluate the effects of 2-methoxyethanol (ME) and 2-ethoxyethanol (EE) on hematological changes induced by 2-butoxyethanol (BE) in rats. MATERIAL AND METHODS Experiments were performed on male Wistar rats treated subcutaneously with BE, ME, and EE alone (in the dose of 0.75 mM/kg/day and 1.25 mM/kg/day) and their mixtures with the molar ratio 1:1, for 4 weeks. Hematological analyses were performed on the day 0, 4, 11, 18, and 29. Hemoglobin (HGB) concentration in the urine was also determined in the rats treated with BE alone and co-exposed to BE and ME and also BE and EE. RESULTS The rats co-exposed to BE and ME or BE and EE demonstrated significantly less pronounced hematological changes in comparison with animals treated with BE alone at the beginning of exposure. At the later period the hematological alterations in the same animals were markedly pronounced and progressing with exposure time. The rats co-exposed to BE and ME or BE and EE did not demonstrate hemoglobinuria. CONCLUSIONS ME or EE co-administered to rats with BE lead to the amelioration in the majority of the hematological parameters at the beginning of the exposure. The hematological changes at the end of the co-exposure to BE and ME or BE and EE were markedly pronounced. The effects observed in this study appear to be related with metabolic interactions of the examined ether. Med Pr 2015;66(3):303-315.
GIRK Channels Modulate Opioid-Induced Motor Activity in a Cell Type- and Subunit-Dependent Manner

G-protein-gated inwardly rectifying K+ (GIRK/Kir3) channel activation underlies key physiological effects of opioids, including analgesia and dependence. GIRK channel activation has also been implicated in the opioid-induced inhibition of midbrain GABA neurons and consequent disinhibition of dopamine (DA) neurons in the ventral tegmental area (VTA). Drug-induced disinhibition of VTA DA neurons has been linked to reward-related behaviors and underlies opioid-induced motor activation. Here, we demonstrate that mouse VTA GABA neurons express a GIRK channel formed by GIRK1 and GIRK2 subunits. Nevertheless, neither constitutive genetic ablation of Girk1 or Girk2, nor the selective ablation of GIRK channels in GABA neurons, diminished morphine-induced motor activity in mice. Moreover, direct activation of GIRK channels in midbrain GABA neurons did not enhance motor activity. In contrast, genetic manipulations that selectively enhanced or suppressed GIRK channel function in midbrain DA neurons correlated with decreased and increased sensitivity, respectively, to the motor-stimulatory effect of systemic morphine. Collectively, these data support the contention that the unique GIRK channel subtype in VTA DA neurons, the GIRK2/GIRK3 heteromer, regulates the sensitivity of the mouse mesolimbic DA system to drugs with addictive potential.
Towards a Multilingual Version of Terminologia Anatomica

OBJECTIVE Terminologia Anatomica (TA) is the new standard in anatomical terminology. This terminology is available only in Latin and English and its worldwide adoption is subdued to the addition of terms from others languages. On the other hand Nomina Anatomica (NA), the previous standard, has been widely translated. Aim of this work was to append foreign terms to TA by using similarity matching algorithm between its Latin terms and those from NA. METHODS A semi-automatic matching of Latin terms from TA with those of NA was performed using a string-to-string distance algorithm and manual assessment. We used a French - Latin version of NA together with TA and we suggested French terms for TA. Coverage was evaluated by the number of exact and approximate matches. A target of 80% was set due to the superior number of terms in TA compared to NA. Relevance was estimated by manually comparing the meanings of the English and French terms related to the same Latin term. The question was whether they refer to the same anatomical structure. RESULTS Exact or approximate matches were found for 5,982 terms (76.5%) of TA. Our results outlined that more than 75% of the terms from TA came from NA, most of them were left unchanged and all were used with the same meaning. CONCLUSION This method produces relevant results, reaching our 80% target. The method is based only on Latin terms and can be used for other languages and for others terminologies including Latin terms.