Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Genetic diversity among human parainfluenza virus type 2 isolated in Croatia between 2011 and 2014

The dynamics and evolution of the human parainfluenza virus type 2 (HPIV2) in Croatia, and also globally, are largely unknown. Most HPIV2 infections are treated symptomatically outside the hospital setting. Thus, the diagnosis is missing making it difficult to follow the genetic variation and evolution of the HPIV2. This study explores hospitalized HPIV2 cases in Croatia during 4‐year period (2011–2014). Most cases in this period were reported in October or November (68.75%) and most of patients were under 2 years of age (81.25%). For molecular analyses, we used the F and HN gene sequences and showed that although both regions are equally suitable for phylogenetic analyses it would be advantageous to use regions longer than 2 kb for HPIV2 analyses of isolates which are spatially and temporally closely related. We show here that the dominant cluster in this area was cluster G3 while only one strain isolated in this period was positioned in the distant cluster G1a. Further monitoring of the HPIV2 will determine whether cluster G3 will remain dominant or it will be overruled by cluster G1a. This will be important for the surveillance of virus circulation in population and significance of the viral infection. J. Med. Virol. 88:1733–1741, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
A new segmentation algorithm with the fisher criterion function

This paper introduced the image segmentation algorithm based on the Fisher criterion function and developed Genetic Algorithm. We carry out the simulation experiment on the human body blood cell. The simulation results show that the new algorithm not only segment the image satisfactorily with strong anti-noise ability, but also run efficiently. The developed Genetic Algorithm can find the global optimum solution rather than the local solution. The algorithm is one kind of practical, effective segmentation algorithm.
Neurotrophic Factor S100beta in Major Depression

Disturbances in the serotonergic system are considered to be implicated in the pathophysiology of depressive disorders. The possible role of the neurotrophic factor S100 beta, which is suspected to regulate regeneration of serotonergic synapses, has not been investigated in depressive disorders. The S100beta concentration in the cerebrospinal fluid was measured in 11 patients with the current diagnosis of mild or moderate depressive episodes (DSM-IV) and in 11 matched control patients. Using the t test for paired samples, the presence of a depressive episode was significantly associated with an elevation of the cerebrospinal fluid concentration of S100beta (t = 2.6, d.f. = 10, p = 0.024). Replications of this finding in severely depressed patients are necessary to confirm the association between neurotrophic factor S100beta and depressive disorders.
Community-lab: Architecture of a community networking testbed for the future internet

Community networks are an emerging and successful model for the Future Internet across Europe and far beyond. The CONFINE project complements existing FIRE (Future Internet Research and Experimentation) infrastructures by establishing Community-Lab, a new facility for experimentally-driven research built on the federation of existing community IP networks constituted by more than 20,000 nodes and 20,000 Km of links. In this paper we present the benefits of having such testbed for the research community as well as the improvement and evolution of community networks themselves. This paper presents i) the challenges and requirements for Community-Lab, ii) the resulting testbed architecture, iii) the current state of implementation and iv) the integration of the testbed with existing community networks.
Educating the second generation: Determinants of academic achievement among children of immigrants in the United States

Abstract This article examines patterns of educational achievement among immigrant second‐generation youths on the basis of a national sample of the American student population. Three hypotheses are tested in relation to the predicted effects of human capital, social capital, and modes of incorporation of immigrant groups. These effects are examined for the second generation in general and four of its principal national components on the basis of multivariate regressions and hierarchical modelling. The latter method allows an examination of the extent to which school contexts affect second‐generation academic achievement and explains resilient inter‐group differences. Results point to the strong influence of parental socioeconomic status and other human capital factors and to the significant, but much weaker, effects of social capital indicators. Controlling for this array of variables does not eliminate the effect of nationality differences, pointing to the resilient influence of modes of incorporation i.
Leakage-aware SPM management

Increasing use of scratch-pad memories (SPMs) in embedded systems makes it imperative to consider optimizations tailored to their needs. Since these memories are managed by software, they present unique opportunities to the designer/compiler writer as far as energy optimizations are concerned. This paper proposes and quantifies the benefits of a compiler-directed energy optimization scheme for banked SPMs used to store the data manipulated by an application program. In contrast to most of the prior efforts on SPMs, which focus mainly on performance and dynamic energy consumption, the approach proposed in this paper is leakage oriented. Specifically, it tries to reduce the amount of SPM space (the number of banks) used to strike a balance between leakage and dynamic energy savings, with the goal of minimizing the total energy consumption due to data accesses. This paper presents an ILP (integer linear programming)-based formulation of this problem and evaluates the proposed approach using a set of eight embedded application codes
Complete Genome Sequence of Early Passaged Human Herpesvirus 6A (GS Strain) Isolated from North America

ABSTRACT The genome sequence of the original human herpesvirus 6A (HHV-6A) (GS isolate) has never been determined. DNA from a very low passage (<5 times) HHV-6A GS stock was isolated and sequenced, making it the first HHV-6A of U.S. origin to be fully sequenced. Such a sequence will be helpful for comparative analysis with other HHV-6A strains, including the U1102 strain isolated from Uganda.
Multi-Level Canonical Correlation Analysis for Standard-Dose PET Image Estimation

Positron emission tomography (PET) images are widely used in many clinical applications, such as tumor detection and brain disorder diagnosis. To obtain PET images of diagnostic quality, a sufficient amount of radioactive tracer has to be injected into a living body, which will inevitably increase the risk of radiation exposure. On the other hand, if the tracer dose is considerably reduced, the quality of the resulting images would be significantly degraded. It is of great interest to estimate a standard-dose PET (S-PET) image from a low-dose one in order to reduce the risk of radiation exposure and preserve image quality. This may be achieved through mapping both S-PET and low-dose PET data into a common space and then performing patch-based sparse representation. However, a one-size-fits-all common space built from all training patches is unlikely to be optimal for each target S-PET patch, which limits the estimation accuracy. In this paper, we propose a data-driven multi-level canonical correlation analysis scheme to solve this problem. In particular, a subset of training data that is most useful in estimating a target S-PET patch is identified in each level, and then used in the next level to update common space and improve estimation. In addition, we also use multi-modal magnetic resonance images to help improve the estimation with complementary information. Validations on phantom and real human brain data sets show that our method effectively estimates S-PET images and well preserves critical clinical quantification measures, such as standard uptake value.
Evidence for Shear Stress–Mediated Dilation of the Internal Carotid Artery in Humans

Increases in arterial carbon dioxide tension (hypercapnia) elicit potent vasodilation of cerebral arterioles. Recent studies have also reported vasodilation of the internal carotid artery during hypercapnia, but the mechanism(s) mediating this extracranial vasoreactivity are unknown. Hypercapnia increases carotid shear stress, a known stimulus to vasodilation in other conduit arteries. To explore the hypothesis that shear stress contributes to hypercapnic internal carotid dilation in humans, temporal changes in internal and common carotid shear rate and diameter, along with changes in middle cerebral artery velocity, were simultaneously assessed in 18 subjects at rest and during hypercapnia (6% carbon dioxide). Middle cerebral artery velocity increased significantly (69±10–103±17 cm/s; P<0.01) along with shear in both the internal (316±52–518±105 1/s; P<0.01) and common (188±40–275±61 1/s; P<0.01) carotids. Diameter also increased (P<0.01) in both carotid arteries (internal: +6.3±2.9%; common: +5.8±3.0%). Following hypercapnia onset, there was a significant delay between the onset of internal carotid shear (22±12 seconds) and diameter change (85±51 seconds). This time course is associated with shear-mediated dilation of larger conduit arteries in humans. There was a strong association between change in shear and diameter of the internal carotid (r=0.68; P<0.01). These data indicate, for the first time in humans, that shear stress is an important stimulus for hypercapnic vasodilation of the internal carotid artery. The combination of a hypercapnic stimulus and continuous noninvasive, high-resolution assessment of internal carotid shear and dilation may provide novel insights into the function and health of the clinically important extracranial arteries in humans.
Chain Shape Matching for Simulating Complex Hairstyles

Animations of hair dynamics greatly enrich the visual attractiveness of human characters. Traditional simulation techniques handle hair as clumps or continuum for efficiency; however, the visual quality is limited because they cannot represent the fine‐scale motion of individual hair strands. Although a recent mass‐spring approach tackled the problem of simulating the dynamics of every strand of hair, it required a complicated setting of springs and suffered from high computational cost. In this paper, we base the animation of hair on such a fine‐scale on Lattice Shape Matching (LSM), which has been successfully used for simulating deformable objects. Our method regards each strand of hair as a chain of particles, and computes geometrically derived forces for the chain based on shape matching. Each chain of particles is simulated as an individual strand of hair. Our method can easily handle complex hairstyles such as curly or afro styles in a numerically stable way. While our method is not physically based, our GPU‐based simulator achieves visually plausible animations consisting of several tens of thousands of hair strands at interactive rates.
Lunar Shape via the Apollo Laser Altimeter

Data from the Apollo 15 and Apollo 16 laser altimeters reveal the first accurate elevation differences between distant features on both sides of the moon. The large far-side depression observed in the Apollo 15 data is not present in the Apollo 16 data. When the laser results are compared with elevations on maps from the Aeronautical Chart and Information Center, differences of 2 kilometers over a few hundred kilometers are detected in the Mare Nubium and Mare Tranquillitatis regions. The Apollo 16 data alone would put a 2-kilometer bulge toward the earth; however, the combined data are best fit by a sphere of radius 1737.7 kilometers. The offset of the center of gravity from the optical center is about 2 kilometers toward the earth and 1 kilometer eastward. The polar direction parameters are not well determined.
Bridging the Semantic Gap via Functional Brain Imaging

The multimedia content analysis community has made significant efforts to bridge the gaps between low-level features and high-level semantics perceived by humans. Recent advances in brain imaging and neuroscience in exploring the human brain's responses during multimedia comprehension demonstrated the possibility of leveraging cognitive neuroscience knowledge to bridge the semantic gaps. This paper presents our initial effort in this direction by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Specifically, task-based fMRI (T-fMRI) was performed to accurately localize the brain regions involved in video comprehension. Then, natural stimulus fMRI (N-fMRI) data were acquired when subjects watched the multimedia clips selected from the TRECVID datasets. The responses in the localized brain regions were measured and used to extract high-level features as the representation of the brain's comprehension of semantics in the videos. A novel computational framework was developed to learn the most relevant low-level feature sets that best correlate the fMRI-derived semantic features based on the training videos with fMRI scans, and then the learned model was applied to larger scale TRECVID video datasets without fMRI scans for category classification. Our experimental results demonstrate: 1) there are meaningful couplings between brain's fMRI-derived responses and video stimuli, suggesting the validity of linking semantics and low-level features via fMRI and 2) the computationally learned low-level features can significantly (p <; 0.01) improve video classification in comparison with original low-level features and extracted low-level features resulted from well-known feature projection algorithms.
Gender differences of the Internet-related Stereotypes in Russia

Gender stereotypes of Russians toward the Internet were investigated, using multiple identification methodology. The questionnaire (45 items) catalogued various types of Internet-related behaviors. The following characters were evaluated: Typical Russian, Ideal Person, Internet User (all – female and male), and Myself. Respondents (N = 95, 47/48 males/females, mean age 22.9, s.d. 2.8) indicated the degree of likelihood that the characters conduct behavior of each type. Eight scales of the Internet use were selected: (1) profession and business, (2) education of children, (3) entertainment, (4) realization of personal goals, (5) compensatory, (6) cognition, (7) advanced work, (8) communication. Confirmatory factor analysis and nonlinear multiple regression were used to handle data. Results show that men’s and women’s self-stereotypes and gender stereotypes are close, especially on the self-reported upper levels of competence in the Internet use.
Behavior in Organizations: Understanding and Managing the Human Side of Work

Originally published in Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, 1984, Vol 29(9), 756. Reviews the book, Behavior in Organizations: Understanding and Managing the Human Side of Work by Robert A. Baron, Jerald Greenberg, and Angelo S. DeNisi (1983). These sixteen chapters, organized into the gen
Comparison between supraglottic airway devices and endotracheal tubes in patients undergoing laparoscopic surgery

Background: Comparisons between the efficacies of supraglottic airway devices (SGAs) and endotracheal tubes (ETTs) in patients undergoing laparoscopic surgeries have yielded conflicting results. Therefore, in this meta-analysis, we compared the clinical performance and incidence of complications between SGAs and ETT intubation in laparoscopic surgery. Methods: A comprehensive search was conducted using MEDLINE, EMBASE, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, and Google Scholar to identify randomized controlled trials that compared SGAs with ETTs in laparoscopic surgery. Results: In total, 1433 patients from 17 studies were included in the final analysis. SGAs and ETTs showed no difference in insertion success rate on the first attempt (relative risk [RR] 1.01, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.99–1.03), insertion time (standardized mean difference 1.57, 95% CI −3.74 to 0.61), and oropharyngeal leak pressure (OLP) (mean difference −2.54, 95% CI −7.59 to 2.50). The incidence of desaturation (RR 3.65, 95% CI 1.39–9.62), gastric insufflations (RR 0.90, 95% CI 0.48–1.71), regurgitation (RR 0.98, 95% CI 0.02–49.13), and aspiration (RR 0.99, 95% CI 0.01–78.4) also showed no intergroup differences. However, the incidence of laryngospasm (RR 3.12, 95% CI 1.29–7.52), cough at removal (RR 6.68, 95% CI 4.70–9.48), dysphagia (RR 1.47, 95% CI 1.12–1.95) or dysphonia (RR 4.41, 95% CI 1.25–15.55), sore throat (RR 1.60, 95% CI 1.33–1.93), and hoarseness (RR 1.53, 95% CI 1.29–1.81) was higher in the ETT group than in the SGA group. Conclusions: The incidence of laryngospasm, cough at removal, dysphagia or dysphonia, sore throat, and hoarseness were higher in the ETT group than in the SGA group. However, the groups showed no differences in the rate of insertion success on the first attempt, insertion time, OLP, and other complications. Therefore, SGAs might be clinically more useful as effective airways in laparoscopic surgery.
Can there Be Causal Effects on the Macro Level

The comment focuses on a classic controversial issue for methodological individualism, whether there are causal relationships between macro variables. According to analytical sociology and rational choice theory only correlations obtain at the macro level, and suggest mechanisms to explain them. Daniel Little challenges this argument, advancing a “methodological pluralism” that uses a micro-foundation, but allows causality on the macro level. In this comment, some arguments are provided that support the claim of methodological individualism.
Labor Market Dynamics and Technology Adoption: Theory and Empirical Evidence

Using 'search' theory, technology adoption is conceived of as a critical factor in the aftermath of a technological shock, which increases employment in the leading sectors and total output in the economy. These implications are further investigated in the present paper, both formally and empirically. Our attempt to investigate this hypothesis empirically across ten OECD countries, appears to provide various affirmative results.
Teacher Reflection and Race in Cultural Contexts: History, Meanings, and Methods in Teaching

Because reflection around race in cultural contexts and diversity are seldom taught or practiced among teachers, and because an increasingly large number of students of color are not succeeding in P-12 classrooms, this article attempts to advance a concept of race reflection in cultural contexts. Several issues are considered, including (a) the necessity of race reflection in cultural contexts for both White teachers and teachers of color; (b) racial and cultural mismatches between teachers and students, which could stifle learning; and (c) the need for pedagogical tools to enhance discussions and activities around difficult topics such as race. A chart is presented as one tool for race reflective dialogue and activity in teacher education and beyond. Additionally, two methods of race reflection in cultural contexts are provided for personal and group introspection: race reflective journaling and critically engaged racial dialogue.
Exploring the Relationship between Socio-Cultural Issues Discussions and Social Change Behaviors

Title of Document: EXPLORING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOCIO-CULTURAL ISSUES DISCUSSIONS AND SOCIAL CHANGE BEHAVIORS Thomas Christopher Segar, Doctor of Philosophy, 2011 Directed By: Professor Susan R. Komives Department of Counseling, Higher Education, and Special Education The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between student participation socio-cultural issues discussions and student participation in social change behaviors. This study utilized data from the 2009 administration of the MultiInstitutional Study of Leadership (MSL), a national research project designed to explore student experiences and environmental factors that contribute to student leadership development. An internet-based survey was used to collect data from participants at 101 higher education institutions throughout the United States. The usable sample for this study consisted of 94,367 undergraduate students who completed at least 90% of the core survey and scales used for the study. An adapted version of Astin’s college impact model (Astin, 1991; 1993) provided the conceptual framework for the study. In this input-environment-outcome (IEO) model participant demographic characteristics and pre-college experiences represented the inputs. The environment included institutional characteristics, positional leadership experiences, leadership capacity, and socio-cultural issues discussions, which was the main independent variable for the study. Self-reported frequency of participation in social change behaviors was the outcome and dependent variable. Results indicated that the regression model accounted for 46% of the variance in predicting student participation in social change behaviors. Demographic characteristics were a positive but weak predictor of participation in social change behaviors. Institutional characteristics were found to have little influence in predicting student participation social change behaviors. Pre-college leadership experiences and positional leadership experiences were found to be strong predictors of social change behaviors. After accounting for these variables, socio-cultural issues discussions were found to be a positive weak predictor. When matched with other environmental predictors, sociocultural issues discussions contribute to student leadership experiences related to participating in social change behaviors. Implications for practice provide practitioners with strategies to increase the likelihood of student participation in social change behaviors. EXPLORING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOCIO-CULTURAL ISSUES DISCUSSIONS AND SOCIAL CHANGE BEHAVIORS
General trend for pressurized superconducting hydrogen-dense materials

The long-standing prediction that hydrogen can assume a metallic state under high pressure, combined with arguments put forward more recently that this state might even be superconducting up to high temperatures, continues to spur tremendous research activities toward the experimental realization of metallic hydrogen. These efforts have however so far been impeded by the enormous challenges associated with the exceedingly large required pressure. Hydrogen-dense materials, of the MH4 form (where M can be, e.g., Si, Ge, or Sn) or of the MH3 form (with M being, e.g., Al, Sc, Y, or La), allow for the rather exciting opportunity to carry out a proxy study of metallic hydrogen and associated high-temperature superconductivity at pressures within the reach of current techniques. At least one experimental report indicates that a superconducting state might have been observed already in SiH4, and several theoretical studies have predicted superconductivity in pressurized hydrogen-rich materials; however, no systematic dependence on the applied pressure has yet been identified so far. In the present work, we have used first-principles methods in an attempt to predict the superconducting critical temperature (Tc) as a function of pressure (P) for three metal-hydride systems of the MH3 form, namely ScH3, YH3, and LaH3. By comparing the obtained results, we are able to point out a general trend in the Tc-dependence on P. These gained insights presented here are likely to stimulate further theoretical studies of metallic phases of hydrogen-dense materials and should lead to new experimental investigations of their superconducting properties.