Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Correlation Persistence in Financial Markets: A Network Theory Approach

I propose a persuasion model to show the correlation of stock price can substantially vary over time in a general network economy in which investors update their own information following by the Bayesian rules and evolving in the social network effect. To describe the mutual interconnections and model the financial network, an empirical strategy, Granger-Causality network, is proposed based on the multivariate vector autoregression (MVAR) models. The empirical study is conducted by examining the unique dataset that consists of all brokers' daily trading information for a decade in Taiwan. The empirical results show the density of brokers' financial network can be positively correlated to the market realized volatility. Moreover, the density can also be viewed as an indicator to the systemic risk of market. The empirical evidence shed new light not only on providing an explanation to the phenomenon of correlation persistence but also measuring the systemic risk of the market from the perspective of network.
Long-term declines in dietary nutritional quality for North American cattle

With over 1 billion cattle in the world as well as over 2 billion sheep, goats and buffalo, these animals contribute approximately 15% of the global human protein supply while producing a significant proportion of anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases and global nutrient fluxes. Despite increasing reliance on grazers for protein production globally, the future of grazers in a changing world is uncertain. Factors such as increased prevalence of drought, rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations, and sustained nutrient export all have the potential to reduce cattle performance by reducing the nutritional quality of forage. However, there are no analyses to quantify changes in diet quality, subsequent impact on cattle performance and cost of supplementation necessary to mitigate any predicted protein deficiency. To quantify the trajectory of nutritional stress in cattle, we examined more than 36 000 measurements of dietary quality taken over 22 yr for US cattle. Here, we show that standardizing for spatial and temporal variation in drought and its effects on forage quality, cattle have been becoming increasingly stressed for protein over the past two decades, likely reducing cattle weight gain. In economic terms, the replacement costs of reduced protein provision to US cattle are estimated to be the equivalent of $1.9 billion annually. Given these trends, nitrogen enrichment of grasslands might be necessary if further reduction in protein content of forages is to be prevented.
A High Power Density Single-Phase PWM Rectifier With Active Ripple Energy Storage

It is well known that single-phase pulse width modulation rectifiers have second-order harmonic currents and corresponding ripple voltages on the dc bus. The low-frequency harmonic current is normally filtered using a bulk capacitor in the bus, which results in low power density. However, pursuing high power density in converter design is a very important goal in the aerospace applications. This paper studies methods for reducing the energy storage capacitor for single-phase rectifiers. The minimum ripple energy storage requirement is derived independently of a specific topology. Based on the minimum ripple energy requirement, the feasibility of the active capacitor's reduction schemes is verified. Then, we propose a bidirectional buck-boost converter as the ripple energy storage circuit, which can effectively reduce the energy storage capacitance. The analysis and design are validated by simulation and experimental results.
The Low Keratin Affinity of Efinaconazole Contributes to Its Nail Penetration and Fungicidal Activity in Topical Onychomycosis Treatment

ABSTRACT Onychomycosis is a common fungal nail disease that is difficult to treat topically due to the deep location of the infection under the densely keratinized nail plate. Keratin affinity of topical drugs is an important physicochemical property impacting therapeutic efficacy. To be effective, topical drugs must penetrate the nail bed and retain their antifungal activity within the nail matrix, both of which are adversely affected by keratin binding. We investigated these properties for efinaconazole, a new topical antifungal for onychomycosis, compared with those of the existing topical drugs ciclopirox and amorolfine. The efinaconazole free-drug concentration in keratin suspensions was 14.3%, significantly higher than the concentrations of ciclopirox and amorolfine, which were 0.7% and 1.9%, respectively (P < 0.001). Efinaconazole was released from keratin at a higher proportion than in the reference drugs, with about half of the remaining keratin-bound efinaconazole removed after washing. In single-dose in vitro studies, efinaconazole penetrated full-thickness human nails into the receptor phase and also inhibited the growth of Trichophyton rubrum under the nail. In the presence of keratin, efinaconazole exhibited fungicidal activity against Trichophyton mentagrophytes comparable to that of amorolfine and superior to that of ciclopirox. In a guinea pig onychomycosis model with T. mentagrophytes infection, an efinaconazole solution significantly decreased nail fungal burden compared to that of ciclopirox and amorolfine lacquers (P < 0.01). These results suggest that the high nail permeability of efinaconazole and its potent fungicidal activity in the presence of keratin are related to its low keratin affinity, which may contribute to its efficacy in onychomycosis.
The evaluation of Mothers’ participation project in children's growth and development process: Using the CIPP evaluation model

Background: Assessment of national children's growth indicated a high prevalence of growth failure among them. Many previous projects have studied the children's growth and nutrition status; but most of them leave it without evaluation. The aim of this study was to evaluate Mothers’ Participation Project that carried out in Isfahan after passing two years. Materials and Methods: In this descriptive and summative evaluation study, 90 mother and child pairs were enrolled. They were studied in two case and control groups. We used CIPP Evaluation Model (Context, Input, Process, Product). Data collected using children growth chart and questionnaire was used in the project. Obtained data were analyzed by nonparametric statistical tests. Results: The results showed significant differences between the two groups in following items; mean of maternal self-esteem (P < 0.001), maternal performance in training others (P = 0.006), weekly study time (P = 0.004), frequency of mothers participation in education programs (P = 0.002), their knowledge about the growth monitoring card (P = 0.03), their ability in drawing growth curves (P < 0.001), mothers knowledge about types of growth curves (P = 0.001) and the objectives of growth monitoring (P < 0.001). Conclusion: Considering the sustained improvement of maternal knowledge and function regarding children's growth and development after two years of participation in the project, the performance of CIPP model was confirmed in this field.
An Efficient Adaptive Minor Subspace Extraction Using Exact Nested Orthogonal Complement Structure

This paper presents a new adaptive minor subspace extraction algorithm based on an idea of Peng and Yi ('07) for approximating the single minor eigenvector of a covariance matrix. By utilizing the idea inductively in the nested orthogonal complement subspaces, the proposed algorithm succeeds to relax the numerical sensitivity which has been annoying conventional adaptive minor subspace extraction algorithms for example, Oja algorithm ('82) and its stabilized version: O-Oja algorithm ('02). Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm realizes more stable convergence than O-Oja algorithm.
Leukocytosis and risk stratification assessment in essential thrombocythemia.

PURPOSE Established risk factors for thrombosis in essential thrombocythemia (ET) include age and previous vascular events. We aimed to refine this risk stratification by adding baseline leukocytosis. PATIENTS AND METHODS We enrolled 657 patients with ET followed for a median of 4.5 years who developed 72 major thrombosis. Cox proportional hazard model was performed to analyze the thrombotic risk and to discriminate ET patients with or without thrombosis, multivariable C statistic index was used. We searched for leukocytes cutoff with the best sensitivity and specificity by a receiver operating characteristic curve. RESULTS Results confirmed that age and prior events are independent risk factors for thrombosis and showed a gradient between baseline leukocytosis and thrombosis. On the contrary, no significant association was found either for JAK2(V617F) allele burden and for other laboratory parameters, including platelet number. In the model with conventional risk factors alone, C statistic ratio for total thrombosis was 0.63 and when leukocytosis was added, the change was small (C = 0.67). In contrast, in younger and asymptomatic patients (low-risk category), C statistic value indicated an high risk for thrombosis in patients with leukocytosis, similar to that calculated in conventionally defined high-risk group (C = 0.65). The best leukocyte cutoff values for predicting the events was found to be 9.4 (x 10(9)/L). CONCLUSION We suggest to include baseline leukocytosis in the risk stratification of ET patients enrolled in clinical trials.
A theory of term importance in automatic text analysis

Most existing automatic content analysis and indexing techniques are based on word frequency characteristics applied largely in an ad hoc manner. Contradictory requirements arise in this connection, in that terms exhibiting high occurence frequencies in individual documents are often useful for high recall performance (to retrieve many relevant items), whereas terms with low frequency in the whole collection are useful for high precision (to reject nonrelevant items).
Changes in greening in the high Arctic: insights from a 30 year AVHRR max NDVI dataset for Svalbard

Satellite-aided studies of vegetation cover, biomass and productivity are becoming increasingly important for monitoring the effects of a changing climate on the biosphere. With their large spatial coverage and good temporal resolution, space-borne instruments are ideal to observe remote areas over extended time periods. However, long time series datasets with global coverage have in many cases too low spatial resolution for sparsely vegetated high latitude areas. This study has made use of a newly developed 30 year 1 km spatial resolution dataset from 1986 to 2015, provided by the NOAA AVHRR series of satellites, in order to calculate the annual maximum NDVI over parts of Svalbard (78°N). This parameter is indicative of vegetation productivity and has therefore enabled us to study long-term changes in greening within the Inner Fjord Zone on Svalbard. In addition, local meteorological data are available to link maximum NDVI values to the temporal behavior of the mean growing season (summer) temperature for the study area. Over the 30 year period, we find positive trends in both maximum NDVI (average increase of 29%) and mean summer temperature (59%), which were significantly positively correlated with each other. This suggests a temporal greening trend mediated by summer warming. However, as also recently reported for lower latitudes, the strength of the year-to-year correlation between maximum NDVI and mean summer temperature decreased, suggesting that the response of vegetation to summer warming has not remained the same over the entire study period.
Mapping and analysis of HPV16 integration sites in a head and neck cancer cell line

Human papillomavirus (HPV) is a circular double‐stranded DNA virus implicated in at least 90% of cervical and anogenital cancers and has been observed in approximately 20% of squamous cell carcinomas of the head and neck (SCCHN). Transcription of the viral oncogenes E6 and E7 is regulated by expression of the E2 protein. Disruption of the E2 gene sequence due to viral integration results in upregulation of E6 and E7, which promote tumorigenesis by abrogating p53 and pRb functions. HPV integration sites in cervical and anogenital cancers have been mapped primarily to chromosomal fragile sites and in some cases have been shown to integrate within tumor suppressor genes or other cancer‐related genes. To study viral integration sites in SCCHN, we examined an HPV16‐infected SCCHN cell line cultured from a tongue‐base tumor. HPV fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) revealed multiple integrated viral DNA copies in blocks throughout the genome. Sequential FISH and spectral karyotyping identified integration sites on chromosomes 3, 6, 9q, 13q and t(1;8)(q;? ). Restriction site‐polymerase chain reaction (RS‐PCR) was performed to identify the viral‐cellular junctions. Sequence analyses confirmed integration sites at 9q31.1 and 6p21 and revealed a novel junction at 16p12.3. Subsequent chromosome breakage studies suggested that the observed viral‐cellular integration sites may have occurred within common fragile sites. Additional studies using RT‐PCR for E6∧E7 viral transcripts showed oncoprotein expression from episomal and integrated viral sequences. Our results suggest that viral integration of HPV in SCCHN appears to occur nonrandomly through targeting specific chromosomal sequences prone to breakage. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
EXPRESSION PROFILING: TOWARD AN APPLICATION IN SEPSIS DIAGNOSTICS

Sepsis is a common and serious health problem whereby improvements in diagnosis are crucial in increasing survival rates. To test whether profiling transcription is applicable to sepsis diagnosis, we analyzed whole blood using a microarray containing probes for 340 genes relevant to inflammation. The patient’s gene expression pattern was highly homogenous, resulting in 69% of differentially expressed genes. With a positive predictive value of 98%, a list of 50 differentially expressed genes was compiled, and randomly chosen transcripts were confirmed by PCR. Here, we present the first evidence that microarrays can identify typical gene expression profiles in the blood of patients with severe sepsis. Regardless of the heterogeneity of the patients, we observed a striking correlation between the conventional diagnostic classification and our approach. The unity of responses suggests that the principle of this multiparameter approach can be adapted to early stage sepsis diagnosis.
Monitoring Working Memory Load during Computer-Based Tasks with EEG Pattern Recognition Methods

We assessed working memory load during computer use with neural network pattern recognition applied to EEG spectral features. Eight participants performed high-, moderate-, and low-load working memory tasks. Frontal theta EEG activity increased and alpha activity decreased with increasing load. These changes probably reflect task difficulty-related increases in mental effort and the proportion of cortical resources allocated to task performance. In network analyses, test data segments from high and low load levels were discriminated with better than 95% accuracy. More than 80% of test data segments associated with a moderate load could be discriminated from high- or low-load data segments. Statistically significant classification was also achieved when applying networks trained with data from one day to data from another day, when applying networks trained with data from one task to data from another task, and when applying networks trained with data from a group of participants to data from new participants. These results support the feasibility of using EEG-based methods for monitoring cognitive load during human-computer interaction.
Impact of migration and remittances on household welfare among rural households in Northern and Central Malawi

Rural households employ migration as a major investment and livelihood strategy to mitigate the effects of adverse economic conditions, climate variability and food insecurity. While this is the case in most developing countries, the linkages between migration, remittances, and household welfare have not been adequately studied. This paper examines the effect of migration and remittances on the food security and asset wealth levels in rural communities in Northern and Central Malawi. Data is from a sample of 1000 rural households, collected using face-to-face structured surveys. The Household Food Insecurity Access Scale was used to evaluate the food security status of households. Results indicate that households with migrant members were (β = −0.157, p = 0.01) less likely to be food insecure and has an average treatment effect of (β = 0.151, p = 0.01) on household asset levels, indicating a positive effect on household asset accumulation. Remittance receipt had similar effects on household welfare. However, the effects of migration and remittance receipt on food security were greater than their effects on wealth. The study concludes by making relevant policy recommendations.
Effect of Genetic Variants of CCR2 and CCL2 on the Natural History of HIV-1 Infection: CCL2-2518GG Is Overrepresented in a Cohort of Spanish HIV-1-Infected Subjects

Background and Objectives:Polymorphisms in the genes that encode for the CCR2 chemokine receptor and its natural ligand CCL2 have been shown to influence the natural history of HIV-1 infection, although data are inconsistent. Our aim was to determine whether functionally active CCR2 and CCL2 genetic variants influence the risk of infection and disease progression in a cohort of white Spaniards. Patients and Methods:This was a multicenter genetic association case-control study. Two single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), V64I (G > A) of the CCR2 gene and −2518 (A > G) of the CCL2 gene, were assessed in 318 individuals: 73 HIV-1-infected long-term nonprogressors (LTNPs) of >16 years duration, 109 HIV-1-infected usual progressors (UPs), 36 heavily exposed to HIV-1 but uninfected individuals (EUs), and 100 control subjects. The distribution of the CCR5Δ32 allele was also assessed. Genotyping was performed using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) restriction fragment length polymorphisms (RFLPs) or PCR and automatic sequencing analysis methods on white blood cell DNA. Genotype and allele frequencies were compared by the χ2 test and the Fisher exact test. Results:CCR2 genotype distribution and allele frequencies showed nonsignificant differences between groups. The distribution of CCL2 alleles showed no significant differences between groups. HIV-1-infected individuals had, however, a significantly higher prevalence of the variant homozygous CCL2 GG genotype compared with EUs (P = 0.02). This result persisted when we studied only individuals with wild-type CCR5. Genotype and allele distribution of CCL2 was similar in HIV-1-infected UPs and LTNPs. Conclusions:In our cohort of white Spaniards, homozygosity for the variant CCL2-2518GG genotype is overrepresented in HIV-1-infected subjects.
Quantitative assessment of bandage soft contact lens wear immediately after LASIK.

PURPOSE To evaluate the efficacy and tolerability of overnight bandage soft contact lenses applied immediately after LASIK. METHODS Bandage soft contact lenses were applied immediately following bilateral simultaneous LASIK in 161 consecutive patients. Signs and symptoms associated with contact lens wear were prospectively recorded at 1 hour, 4 hours, and the following morning, using a standardized questionnaire. Contact lenses were removed at 1 hour if patients were symptomatic of intolerance. If no signs of contact lens intolerance appeared at 1 hour, the lenses were removed the following morning. No contact lenses were applied in 61 patients after LASIK. RESULTS One hour after the procedure, contact lenses were removed from 47 patients due to intolerance. In these patients, contact lens removal was associated with a significant decrease of the total score the next morning (0.31±0.55) compared to 1 hour (5.65±1.60, P<.0001). A similar decrease of the total score was noted in those patients who tolerated the contact lenses (0.20±0.52 vs 1.30±1.78) and those in whom the contact lenses were not applied (0.76±1.19 vs 3.24±1.93). Mucoid discharge at the lid margins was noted in 52.6% of patients and mild corneal edema was noted in 28.8% of patients with bandage soft contact lenses at 12 to 18 hours. CONCLUSIONS Bandage soft contact lens application after LASIK is associated with significant reduction of symptoms during the immediate postoperative period. However, removal of these lenses may be necessary shortly after the procedure.
Persistent increases of BAL neutrophils as a predictor of mortality following lung transplant.

STUDY OBJECTIVES To evaluate whether findings from surveillance bronchoscopy predict survival following lung transplantation. DESIGN Retrospective review and analysis of 498 bronchoscopies with transbronchial biopsy (TBB) and BAL performed in 34 patients after lung transplantation. SETTING University-based, tertiary referral medical center. PATIENTS Thirty-four patients after lung transplantation. The mean age at transplantation was 49+/-9 years; 20 (59%) were female. Twenty-four (71%) underwent single and 10 (29%) underwent bilateral lung transplantation. The most common pretransplantation diagnostic groups were emphysema/COPD without concomitant alpha1-antiprotease deficiency (n = 13) and other obstructive disease processes (n = 10). INTERVENTIONS Over follow-up, subjects underwent multiple bronchoscopies with TBB and BAL. The median number per subject was 15 (25 to 75% range 13 to 17). MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS We calculated the overall median BAL WBCs and median percent neutrophils (polymorphonuclear leukocytes [PMNs]) among all of the BALs performed for each subject. We then calculated the mean +/- SD of those median values. We used Cox proportionate hazards to assess mortality risk. The median overall follow-up observation period for the cohort was 560 days. There were 11 deaths during this period. Twenty-four subjects (71%) had acute rejection (AR) grades 2 to 4 (mild to severe), and nine (27%) had obliterative bronchiolitis (OB) diagnosed by TBB at any point. The mean value for BAL WBCs was 366+/-145 x 10(3) per milliliter; for percentage PMNs, the mean was 7+/-10%. Adjusting for age, gender, single vs bilateral lung transplantation, pretransplantation diagnostic group, presence of AR, presence of OB, BAL WBC concentration, and lymphocyte CD4/CD8 ratio, PMN percent was a significant predictor of mortality (p = 0.02). CONCLUSIONS Ongoing inflammation manifested by an increased percentage PMNs over repeated bronchoscopies predicts mortality following lung transplantation. Biopsy data alone may be insufficient to identify posttransplantation patients at risk of poor outcome.