Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Web usability testing with a Hispanic medically underserved population.

OBJECTIVES Skilled website developers value usability testing to assure user needs are met. When the target audience differs substantially from the developers, it becomes essential to tailor both design and evaluation methods. In this study, researchers carried out a multifaceted usability evaluation of a website (Healthy Texas) designed for Hispanic audiences with lower computer literacy and lower health literacy. METHODS METHODS INCLUDED: (1) heuristic evaluation by a usability engineer, (2) remote end-user testing using WebEx software; and (3) face-to-face testing in a community center where use of the website was likely. RESULTS Researchers found standard usability testing methods needed to be modified to provide interpreters, increased flexibility for time on task, presence of a trusted intermediary such as a librarian, and accommodation for family members who accompanied participants. Participants offered recommendations for website redesign, including simplified language, engaging and relevant graphics, culturally relevant examples, and clear navigation. CONCLUSIONS User-centered design is especially important when website developers are not representative of the target audience. Failure to conduct appropriate usability testing with a representative audience can substantially reduce use and value of the website. This thorough course of usability testing identified improvements that benefit all users but become crucial when trying to reach an underserved audience.
A mouse model of Chlamydia pneumoniae strain TWAR pneumonitis

Chlamydia pneumoniae is a common cause of acute respiratory infections in humans. We evaluated mice as experimental animals for C. pneumoniae. Intranasal inoculation of Swiss Webster mice with C. pneumoniae induced a prolonged course of lung infection, as demonstrated by reisolation of organisms from lungs (at 42 days) and persistence of lung pathology (> 60 days). The lung pathology was characterized by patchy interstitial pneumonitis with predominantly polymorphonuclear leukocyte infiltration in the early and mononuclear cell infiltration in the later stages of infection. Inoculated mice developed serum immunoglobulin G antibody responses and partial resistance against rechallenge inoculation. The other mouse strains tested, Icr, BALB/cAnN, C57BL/6N, C3H/HeN, and B6C3F1, were shown to be susceptible to C. pneumoniae. The mouse model should be useful for investigating the immunopathogenesis of C. pneumoniae infections.
Managed Care's Impact on Medicaid Financing for Early Intervention Services

Medicaid has been a major source of financing for early intervention services since the inception of the Infants and Toddlers with Disabilities Program in 1986. In this article, the authors analyze Medicaid financing of early intervention services in 39 States before and after the introduction of managed care. The association between level of Medicaid financing and program characteristics, provider arrangements, managed care carve-out policies, and managed care contract requirements is assessed. The authors discuss the reduction of Medicaid financing after managed care and its implications for State Infants and Toddlers with Disabilities Programs, State Medicaid agencies, and managed care organizations.
Nitric oxide in endothelial dysfunction and vascular remodeling: clinical correlates and experimental links.

The patency of the vascular system is essential to maintain normal tissue function. Fortunately for us, the genetic program of vascular cells (endothelial cells,smooth muscle cells, and fibroblasts) endows them with the capacity to respond to physiological and pathophysiological stimuli and to rearrange their architecture to maintain adequate blood flow according to the metabolic demand of the tissue. Rapid calibration of lumen diameter can occur through vasomotor controlgoverned by the sympathetic nervous sytem and vasoactive factors. Long-term structural adaptation, perhaps reflecting the summation of many short-term vasomotor events, occurs through a process called “vascular remodeling. ” Vascular remodeling is the ability of the vessel wall to reorganize its cellular and extracellular components in response to a chronic stimulus (Gibbons and Dzau 1994). Experimental studies have shown that increases in blood flow due to an arteriovenous shunt will increase vessel diameter; conversely, reductions in blood flow will reduce vascular diameter. On the basis of these findings, it is believed that chronic reduction in blood flow initiates a signaling cascade that leads blood vessels to contract acutely and remodel themselves, creating a smaller vascular lumen. This remodeling reduces the shear stress and the circumferential wall strain imposed by the lower flow rates (Kamiya and Togawa 1980; Langille and O’Donnell 1986). The layered structure of the vascular system facilitates information transfer from the lumen of the vessel into the underlying smooth muscle and then to surrounding tissue. Likewise, the vessel responds to neural input and tissue factors to influence the smooth muscle and the endothelium.Thepositionofthevascular
ACIAL AND BODILY CORRELATES OF FAMILY BACKGROUND

It has been suggested that absence of the father during early childhood has long reaching effects on reproductive strategy and development of offspring. This paper reports two studies designed to investigate the physical characteristics of daughters associated with father absence. Study 1 used a facial averaging method to produce composite images of faces of women whose parents separated during their childhood (who were ‘father absent’), women whose parents remained together but had poor quality relationships, and women whose parents were together and had good quality relationships. Images were then rated by male and female judges. Father absence and poor parental relationships were associated with apparent facial masculinity and reduced attractiveness in daughters. Poor parental relationships were also associated with reduced apparent health. Study 2 compared family background with body measurements and found that father absence or a poor quality relationship between parents were associated with body masculinity (high waist-to-hip ratio), and increased weight-for-height and adiposity. These results highlight the possibility of physical masculinisation being associated with purported father absence ‘effects’.
Diminished bactericidal capacity for group B streptococci of neutrophils from children with chronic granulomatous disease

The bactericidal capacity of neutrophils from healthy adults, male children with chronic granulomatous disease, and obligate heterozygote mothers for type Ic group B streptococci was assessed, using a fluorochrome microassay. Neutrophils from patients with chronic granulomatous disease had impaired bactericidal capacity for group B streptococci when compared with adults (P less than 0.01). Carriers demonstrated intermediate killing capacity.
Constellations for good diversity performance

The case in which there are several channels available for transmission, and the additive noise on each channel may have different power, is treated. A signal constellation, called the coordinated code, for the signal space formed by the different channels is presented. The coordinated code has good performance when the noise powers are equal, while simultaneously providing diversity for good performance when the noise powers are unequal, and is relatively simple. The maximum-likelihood receiver is presented; it extracts information from the coded signal in inverse proportion to each channel's noise power. The minimum distance of the code is found, and the coding gain over a system that transmits independent bit streams on each channel is derived as a function of the noise statistics. The gain of the code is also found relative to symbol splitting diversity, which transmits a copy of the same message on each channel; this gain is as high as 9 dB. The code is considered in detail for use with a high rate digital subscriber line (HDSL) comprised of two pairs of a local loop, each pair having different amounts of near end crosstalk (NEXT). >
How do individual investors trade?

This paper examines how high-frequency trading decisions of individual investors are influenced by past price changes. Specifically, we address the question as to whether decisions to open or close a position are different when investors already hold a position compared with when they do not. Based on a unique data set from an electronic foreign exchange trading platform, OANDA FXTrade, we find that investors’ future order flow is (significantly) driven by past price movements and that these predictive patterns last up to several hours. This observation clearly shows that for high-frequency trading, investors rely on previous price movements in making future investment decisions. We provide clear evidence that market and limit orders flows are much more predictable if those orders are submitted to close an existing position than if they are used to open one. We interpret this finding as evidence for the existence of a monitoring effect, which has implications for theoretical market microstructure models and behavioral finance phenomena, such as the endowment effect.
Treatment intensity and outcome for children with acute lymphocytic leukemia of standard risk. A pediatric oncology group study

Four hundred thirty‐four children, with good‐risk acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL), were assigned randomly to receive intensive or less intensive maintenance therapy with 6‐mercaptopurine and methotrexate, plus vincristine and prednisone pulses in such a way that patients on treatment 1 had their leukocyte counts maintained between 1500 and 3000/mm3. Patients on treatment 2 had leukocyte counts maintained between 3000 and 4500/mm3. Absolute granulocyte counts were maintained above 500/mm3 on both groups. All children received induction treatment with vincristine, prednisone and L‐asparaginase and had central nervous system (CNS) prophylaxis with cranial irradiation and intrathecal methotrexate. The overall remission rate was 94%. Event‐free survival at 8 years was 44% (SE, 5.6%). There was no significant difference in outcome between treatments 1 and 2 (P = 0.83). The incidence of infection was similar overall and not significantly different between treatment arms.
Pattern synthesis with angular mask for leaky-wave antennas

Recently, a method of pattern synthesis for leaky-wave antennas (LWAs) using global optimization has been proposed by the authors. This technique utilizes a lossy transmissionline model for nonuniform continuous-source LWAs, and it was shown that taking into account reflections along the line provides a significant accuracy improvement compared to the traditional formula. In this paper, further application on arbitrary pattern synthesis will be investigated with an example of optimization under a specific pattern mask for a Half-Mode Substrate-Integrated Waveguide LWA. The cost function and optimization setup are adapted accordingly. The obtained results further demonstrate the applicability and flexibility of the method in the optimization of this type of antennas.
Selective Rasterized Ray-traced Reflections on the GPU

Ray-tracing achieves impressive effects such as realistic reflections on complex surfaces but is also more computationally expensive than classic rasterization. Rasterized ray-tracing methods can accelerate ray-tracing by taking advantage of the massive parallelization available in the rasterization pipeline on the GPU. In this paper, we propose a selective rasterized ray-tracing method that optimizes the rasterized ray-tracing by selectively allocating computational resources to reflective regions in the image. Our experiments suggest that the method can speed-up the computation by up to 4 times and also reduce the memory footprint by almost 66% without affecting the image quality. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method using complex scenes and animations.
The Association between Arrhythmia and Helicobacter pylori Infection: A Meta-Analysis of Case-Control Studies

Arrhythmia is a common disease around the world and Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) is a bacterium infecting 28% to 84% of subjects, depending on the population tested. However, the implication of H. pylori in cardiac arrhythmia is poorly understood. We performed this meta-analysis with an aim to identify the association between arrhythmia and H. pylori. We searched PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and the Cochrane library databases to select studies on the association between arrhythmia and H. pylori. In the arrhythmia group, 392 (58.1%) were H. pylori-positive and in the control group 640 (47.8%) were H. pylori-positive. Compared to the controls, the infection rate of H. pylori was higher in patients with arrhythmia than in controls (odds ratio (OR) = 1.797, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.081–2.988, p < 0.05). Subgroup analysis indicated that H. pylori infection was a risk factor for atrial fibrillation in Asia and Africa. Therefore, a correlation between H. pylori infection and arrhythmia may exist and H. pylori eradication may decrease the occurrence of arrhythmia, especially in Asia and Africa.
Fatty Acid Transport Protein 1 Is Required for Nonshivering Thermogenesis in Brown Adipose Tissue

Nonshivering thermogenesis in brown adipose tissue (BAT) generates heat through the uncoupling of mitochondrial β-oxidation from ATP production. The principal energy source for this process is fatty acids that are either synthesized de novo in BAT or are imported from circulation. How uptake of fatty acids is mediated and regulated has remained unclear. Here, we show that fatty acid transport protein (FATP)1 is expressed on the plasma membrane of BAT and is upregulated in response to cold stimuli, concomitant with an increase in the rate of fatty acid uptake. In FATP1-null animals, basal fatty acid uptake is reduced and remains unchanged following cold exposure. As a consequence, FATP1 knockout (KO) animals display smaller lipid droplets in BAT and fail to defend their core body temperature at 4°C, despite elevated serum free fatty acid levels. Similarly, FATP1 is expressed by the BAT-derived cell line HIB-1B upon differentiation, and both fatty acid uptake and FATP1 protein levels are rapidly elevated following isoproterenol stimulation. Stimulation of fatty uptake by isoproterenol required both protein kinase A and mitogen-activated kinase signaling and is completely dependent on FATP1 expression, as small-hairpin RNA–mediated knock down of FATP1 abrogated the effect.
GALAXY CLUSTER PRESSURE PROFILES, AS DETERMINED BY SUNYAEV-ZELDOVICH EFFECT OBSERVATIONS WITH MUSTANG AND BOLOCAM. I. JOINT ANALYSIS TECHNIQUE

We present a technique to constrain galaxy cluster pressure profiles by jointly fitting Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect (SZE) data obtained with MUSTANG and Bolocam for the clusters Abell 1835 and MACS0647. Bolocam and MUSTANG probe different angular scales and are thus highly complementary. We find that the addition of the high-resolution MUSTANG data can improve constraints on pressure profile parameters relative to those derived solely from Bolocam. In Abell 1835 and MACS0647, we find gNFW inner slopes of γ = 0.36 − 0.21 + 0.33 ? > and γ = 0.38 − 0.25 + 0.20 ? > , respectively, when α and β are constrained to 0.86 and 4.67, respectively. The fitted SZE pressure profiles are in good agreement with X-ray derived pressure profiles.
Understanding thermostability in cytochrome P450 by combinatorial mutagenesis

The cytochromes P450 are an important class of mono‐oxygenases involved in xenobiotic metabolism and steroid biosynthesis in a diverse set of life forms. Discovery of CYP‐119, a P450 from the archea Sulfolobus solfataricus has provided a means for understanding nature's method of stabilizing this important protein superfamily. To identify classes of stabilizing interactions used by CYP‐119, we have generated a randomized library of point mutants and screened for mutants that are less thermostable than the wild type by monitoring the characteristic Soret band in the visible region of the cell lysis. The selected mutants were characterized by differential scanning calorimetry to compare the temperatures of the melting transitions of the various mutants. The identified mutations suggested that electrostatic interactions involving salt links and charge–charge interactions, as well as contributions from other interactions such as aromatic stacking, and side chain volume of hydrophobic residues contribute to enhanced thermostability in this cytochrome P450.
Sequential Analysis of Effects of Time Uncertainty on Choice Reaction Time

Forepetiods (FPs) of 0.6, 2, and 4 sec. were used in a 2-choice reaction time (RT) task. Average RT increased with increase in foreperiod. A ‘negative recency RT’ effect was found where repeated RTs were slower than alternated RTs. Analysis of RTs according to position in sequences of runs reveals a similarly shaped curve for all foreperiods. The effect of increased foreperiod is to increase the RTs of all positions in the sequence. A model for this sequential effect is discussed.
The expression of placental soluble fms-like tyrosine kinase 1 in mouse placenta varies significantly across different litters from normal pregnant mice

Objective: Gene expression studies often pool tissues from multiple placentas when using animal models of preeclampsia without accounting for the potential confounders of litter origin or pup sex. We aimed to determine whether placental gene expression differs based on sex or litter. Methods: We examined the differential expression of soluble fms-like tyrosine kinase 1 (Flt-1) using 35 pups from six normal pregnant mice. Results: Expression of sFlt-1 (p = 0.003) was significantly different between litters but not between sexes (p = 0.17). Conclusions: These findings highlight the importance of adequate sampling from multiple litters in expression studies when using animal models in clinical research.
Target localization by a multistatic UWB radar

Moving target localization and tracking are of great interest for rescue, surveillance and security operations. The radar signal processing procedure providing the target position estimation consists of such phases of signal processing as raw radar data pre-processing, background subtraction, detection, time of arrival estimation, localization and tracking. In this paper, we will focus on the localization phase where we assume that for the target localization UWB radar equipped by one transmitting and N receiving antennas is used. Following this intention, the accuracy of the target localization provided by the least-squares method, the spherical-interpolation method and the Taylor series method applied within localization phase will be compared based on processing of radar signals obtained from real target tracking by UWB radar. The acquired results confirm that the Taylor series method can provide the best accuracy of the target positioning.
Synthesis and Characterization of a Long, Rigid Photoswitchable Cross‐Linker for Promoting Peptide and Protein Conformational Change

Azobenzene‐based photoswitchable compounds can be use to photocontrol a variety of biochemical systems. In some cases, their effectiveness may be limited by the size of the conformational change that the switch undergoes. To produce an azobenzene photoswitch that undergoes a large end‐to‐end distance change upon isomerization, we synthesized 3,3′‐diazene‐1,2‐diylbis{6‐[2‐sulfonato‐4‐(chloroacetylamino)phenylethynyl]benzene sulfonic acid} (DDPBA). This long, rigid, water‐soluble, thiol‐reactive cross‐linker undergoes an end‐to‐end distance change of ∼13 Å upon isomerization. DDPBA was successfully cross‐linked to peptides through cysteine side chains. The photoswitch undergoes trans‐to‐cis photoisomerization maximally when irradiated at 400 nm, although the efficiency of production of the cis isomer is lower than for simpler azobenzenes. Under steady‐state illumination conditions, the percentage of cis form produced increases as temperature increases; ∼56 % cis is obtained at 60 °C. Thermal relaxation occurs with a half‐life of approximately 75 min at room temperature. When DDPBA was attached to an α‐helical peptide with two cysteine residues at i and i+14 positions, an increase in helix content was observed after photoirradiation. When cross‐linked to another peptide with two cysteine residues spaced at i and i+21 positions, a decrease in helix content after trans‐to‐cis isomerization was observed. Due to the small percentage of cis form produced under the experimental conditions, the CD signal changes were small. However, the large structural change upon photoisomerization provided by this cross‐linker can potentially be used to photoswitch other biochemical systems.
Comprehension and Recoding-Time of Transformed Sentences

Two groups of subjects, psychiatric patients and normals, were required to demonstrate their comprehension of sentences by reconstructing the situations which the sentences described. Twelve sentence-types were employed which differed in syntactic structure. The recoding-time (T) and the number of propositions correctly translated (C) were taken as primary measures of performance. Another performance-measure called " information correctly translated " (S) was calculated according to four different sets of assumptions (models). The " parenthetical load " of each sentence-type (PL) was calculated in terms of interpolated words per sentence according to four different models and in terms of interpolated semantic information per sentence according to eight different models. The results suggest that S should not be interpreted as a measure of informational work done in recoding a sentence, since it correlates positively with C and negatively with T. The opposite is the case with the PL. The PL of a sentence, however calculated, appears to be an overall measure of its inherent difficulty of recoding and may be likened to " input noise" which interferes with the rapid, accurate recoding of its semantic information content. Informational measures of PL compare well with measures based on counting words. A comparison of the informational models used to calculate PL suggests that in this task, performance is dominated by a " compiling " process in which the sentence is scanned from left to right and its constituent propositions are decoded in the same order as they are extracted from the sentence with the aid of syntactical transformations. As the beginning of each new clause or proposition is encountered in the scan a new " storage location " is opened, which is only closed to further input when the end of the clause or proposition is recognized by encountering a " terminator ", which may be a semantically redundant word. All these conclusions carry more weight for the patients than for the normals, for whom the different variables span a narrower range and yield non-significant correlations in many cases.