Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Aspect-Based Patterns for Grid Programming

The development of grid algorithms is frequently hampered by limited means to describe topologies and lack of support for the invasive composition of legacy components in order to pass data between them. In this paper we present a solution to overcome these limitations using the notion of invasive patterns for the construction of distributed algorithms, a recent extension of well-known computation and communication patterns. Concretely, we present two contributions. First, based on a study of how patterns are instantiated in NAS grid, a well-known benchmark used for evaluating performance of computational grids, we show how invasive patterns can be used for the declarative definition of large-scale grid topologies and checkpointing algorithms. Second, we qualitatively and quantitatively evaluate how our approach can be used to implement the checkpointing on top of grid applications.
Experimental glaucoma and cell size, density, and number in the primate lateral geniculate nucleus.

PURPOSE To examine the effects that elevated intraocular pressure (IOP), a glaucoma risk factor, has on the size, density, and number of neurons in the primate lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN). METHODS The monkey model of experimental glaucoma was combined with standard histologic staining and analysis techniques. Fourteen animals were examined. RESULTS Mean IOPs higher than 40 mm Hg for 2.5, 4, 8, and 24 weeks resulted in reductions of 10% to 58% in the cross-sectional areas of LGN neurons receiving input from the glaucomatous eye. Reductions for animals with lower mean IOPs (37 and 28 mm Hg) for 16 and 27 weeks were 16% and 30%, respectively. Neurons receiving input from the normal eye also were reduced in size (4 -26%). No differential effect in cell size was seen for magnocellular versus parvocellular neurons. Elevation of IOP resulted in an increase in cell density in all layers of the LGN. The increase was approximately two times greater in parvocellular (59%) than magnocellular (31%) layers. When corrected for volumetric shrinkage of the LGN, the estimated loss of neurons was approximately four times greater in the magnocellular than parvocellular layers (38% versus 10%). CONCLUSIONS Elevation of IOP affects the size, density, and number of neurons in the LGN, and the volume of the nucleus itself. Although higher mean pressures (more than 40 mm Hg) reduce the period during which these changes occur, comparable damage can be achieved by even moderate (28 -37 mm Hg) levels of elevated IOP. On the basis of cell loss, elevation of IOP appears to have a more profound degenerative effect on the magnocellular than on the parvocellular regions of the LGN.
Continuity and Change in Transnational Italian Families: The Caring Practices of Second-Generation Women

This article deals with continuity and change in immigrant families, focusing on the caring practices of the adult children of Italian migrants in the UK. Looking at motherhood, care for the elderly and the management of kin relations at a distance, the paper explores how values and norms get transmitted and transformed across the generations. The article shows both continuity and change in norms and values about care, and argues that change occurring in immigrant families is not necessarily a move from ‘tradition’ to ‘modernity’ or from ‘ethnic’ to ‘mainstream’. Motherhood is changing and acquiring a renewed value for second-generation women who are now putting it before paid work, contrary to first-generation women who tended to combine it with full-time work. In terms of intergenerational relations, the analysis shows that, despite the tensions sometimes occurring between parents and children, reciprocal bonds across the generations remain very strong, with children providing care for their ageing parents while at the same time receiving various forms of support from them. Finally, the paper shows how, as a result of their upbringing and their personal choices, second-generation women continue to be involved, as were their parents, in having to manage kin relationships at a distance.
Lysine‐specific demethylase 1 activation by vitamin B2 attenuates efficacy of apatinib for proliferation and migration of gastric cancer cell MGC‐803

B vitamins play an essential role in the biosynthesis of nucleotides, replication of DNA, supply of methyl‐groups, growth and repair of cells, aberrancies of which have all been implicated in carcinogenesis. Although the potential role of vitamin B in relation to the risk of cancer, including breast, and colorectal cancer, has been investigated in several observational studies, the mechanism of action is still unclear. In this study, vitamin B2 exhibited efficient activation of LSD1 by occupying the active sites where FAD stands. Interestingly, vitamin B2 significantly downregulated expression of CD86, a sensitive surrogate biomarker of LSD1 inhibition, and showed marked activation of gastric cancer cell migration and invasion. Meanwhile, vitamin B2 induced activation of LSD1 may attenuate the proliferation inhibition, and anti‐migration effects of apatinib in gastric cancer cells. These findings suggested that vitamin B supplementation may interfere with the efficacy of apatinib in patients with gastric cancer.
Comparison of Topic Organization in Finnish, Swedish-Finnish, and Swedish Family Discourse

The purpose of this study was to examine whether there are cultural differences in topic organization and role-related topic control in dinner conversations; such differences may function as a means for socialization into communicative styles. The research was designed as a comparative study of two geographically close but linguistically very different ethnic groups: Swedes and Finns, including Finns in Sweden as an intermediate group. Previous research has shown Swedes to generate more talk and to produce considerably shorter pauses than Finns. Furthermore, previous studies have indicated that lengthy pauses often precede topic changes. Empirical data were collected by video recording conversations in each of the three cultural groups: 11 Finnish families in Finland, 11 Finnish immigrant families in Sweden, and 11 Swedish families in Sweden. Due to the shared setting, the conversations displayed many similarities, but there were also some intercultural differences. The main result was that the Swedish family dinner discourse was significantly more encyclopedic and coherent than the Finnish and Swedish-Finnish one. The findings support the hypothesized connection between pausing and topic organization. The mothers in each group were most active in controlling topic development.
A trust evaluation framework using in a vehicular social environment

The development of mobile industry promotes a deep progress of mobile applications, such as vehicular social networks (VSNs), which afford large scale data sharing between vehicles. However, trustworthiness has still been a potential security issue. Traditional public key infrastructure (PKI) cannot restrain malicious users as they are authorized in VSNs. For the reason, this paper proposes a trust evaluation framework for VSNs, and designs a cloud-based network architecture to implement the trust framework. Moreover, performance evaluation is conducted through a novel compositional formal method — PEPA (Performance Evaluation Process Algebra).
Typing of Staphylococcus aureus by PCR for DNA sequences flanked by transposon Tn916 target region and ribosomal binding site

The continuous intra- and interhospital spread of multiresistant Staphylococcus aureus demands a rapid molecular typing system. This study describes the fingerprinting of S. aureus by PCR amplification of DNA sequences flanked by the target site for transposon Tn916 and the ribosomal binding site and neighboring nucleotides (target 916-Shine-Dalgarno PCR [tar 916-shida PCR]). Both starting points for PCR are known to be randomly distributed on the S. aureus chromosome. By use of SmaI-macrorestriction patterns as the reference method it was shown that this PCR genotyping discriminates among strains of the major clonal groups of the species S. aureus (strains with phage patterns 29, +, 94, 96, and 95 as well as group II and group III patterns) and identifies the six epidemic methicillin-resistant S. aureus strains prevalent in German hospitals. All of the investigated strains including methicillin-sensitive. S. aureus were typeable. Tar 916-shida patterns are stable during the dissemination of epidemic methicillin-resistant S. aureus among different hospitals.
Generalized Self Efficacy As a Mediator and Moderator Between Control and Complexity at Work and Personal Initiative: A Longitudinal Field Study in East Germany

Personal initiative is one aspect of contextual performance. Combining the perspec- tive of occupational socialization with the concept of self-efficacy, a general model is proposed and tested that views generalized work-related self-efficacy as an intervening variable in the relation between control and complexity at work and personal initiative. As part of a longitudinal study (N = 463 to 543) in East Germany, two different functions of self-efficacy as an intervening variable were examined: (a) self-efficacy as a mediator and (b) self-efficacy as a moderator. It was found that the relation between control and complexity and concurrent initiative is partly mediated by self-efficacy. In addition, self-efficacy functions as a moderator of the relation between control at work and retrospective initiative. Implications for the general discussion of self-efficacy and contextual performance are suggested.
Reduction of Electrical Energy Consumed by Feed-Drive Systems Using Sliding-Mode Control With a Nonlinear Sliding Surface

The large amount of energy consumed in machining by feed-drive systems has become an important issue in recent years because machine tools are extensively used worldwide. This paper presents a novel sliding-mode controller with a nonlinear sliding surface (NLSS) to improve the machining accuracy of ball-screw feed-drive systems. Unlike the conventional sliding-mode control design, the proposed NLSS varies according to the output (controlled variable) so that the damping ratio of the system changes from its initial low value to its final high value as the output changes from its initial value to the reference point. Hence, the proposed algorithm allows a closed-loop system to simultaneously achieve low overshoot and a small settling time, resulting in a smaller error. Experiments to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach are carried out for a ball-screw feed-drive system for two perspectives. The first perspective is to show the effectiveness of the proposed NLSS in reducing the tracking error, while the second one is to verify the ability of the proposed approach to reduce the consumed energy and control input variation. For the first case, sliding-mode controllers with and without the nonlinear term are compared under the same parameters. The mean of the tracking error magnitude was reduced by 35% without additional electrical energy or control input variation in the controller with NLSS. In the second case, the linear gain is increased for the controller with the linear surface to obtain similar tracking performance. By using the controller with an NLSS, the consumed energy and control input variation were reduced by about 12.9% and 19.1%, respectively.
Measures of obesity and age-related eye diseases

OBJECTIVE. To compare body mass index with waist-to-hip ratio as correlates of age-related eye disease. DESIGN. Population-based cross-sectional study. PARTICIPANTS. Participants of the Beaver Dam Eye Study at 5-year follow-up examinations. METHODS. Body mass index was computed from weight and height, and waist-to-hip ratio was computed from measurements all done at the 5-year examination. Presence of ocular lesions was based on gradings of standard photographs of the retina and lens. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES. Presence of early and late age-related maculopathy and nuclear, cortical, and posterior subcapsular cataracts. RESULTS. In women, early age-related maculopathy was significantly associated with both body mass index and waist-to-hip ratio. The relationship between waist-to-hip ratio and late age-related maculopathy was of borderline significance. When analyzed as continuous measures, waist-to-hip ratio was more strongly associated with nearly every outcome compared to body mass index. In men, there was little difference between body mass index and waist-to-hip ratio as correlates of age-related eye diseases. The reason for differences between men and women is not clear, but is unlikely to be due to current exposure to estrogen. CONCLUSIONS. In women in our analyses, waist-to-hip ratio is more strongly associated with age-related eye disease than is body mass index. When adiposity is considered as a risk factor itself, or as a confounder of risk factors for age-related ocular disease, waist-to-hip ratio may be the better measure to use in women.
Challenging the official approach to health care through reflective practice: a case study of a community health NGO in Bolivia

The community health non‐governmental organisation (NGO), CODÍGO Bolivia aims to foster two forms of critical reflective practice in its staff and trainees – critical practical reflectivity (perspective transformation) and critical political reflectivity (conscientisation). Reflective practice is seen as an integral aspect of the organisation’s aim to counter a narrow biomedical view of health with what is termed ‘integrated health’. This paper will analyse CODÍGO’s ability to achieve its aims through using Yip’s four levels of reflective practice (0 = absence of reflectivity, 1 = basic practical reflectivity, 2 = reflectivity in action, and 3 = critical practical reflectivity – perception transformation) and four categories of interlocking factors: philosophical/ideological, politico‐economic, sociocultural and practical/pragmatic. A tool based on the four categories of factors is also discussed as a means of making explicit and mitigating against some of the potential difficulties surrounding CODÍGO’s approach.
Neuroimage: Clinical Depressive Symptoms and Neuroanatomical Structures in Community-dwelling Women: a Combined Voxel-based Morphometry and Diffusion Tensor Imaging Study with Tract-based Spatial Statistics

Depressive symptoms, even at a subclinical level, have been associated with structural brain abnormalities. However, previous studies have used regions of interest or small sample sizes, limiting the ability to generalize the results. In this study, we examined neuroanatomical structures of both gray matter and white matter associated with depressive symptoms across the whole brain in a large sample. A total of 810 community-dwelling adult participants underwent measurement of depressive symptoms with the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). The participants were not demented and had no neurological or psychiatric history. To examine the gray and white matter volume, we used structural MRI scans and voxel-based morphometry (VBM); to examine the white matter integrity, we used diffusion tensor imaging with tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS). In female participants, VBM revealed a negative correlation between bilateral anterior cingulate gray matter volume and the CES-D score. TBSS showed a CES-D-related decrease in fractional anisotropy and increase in radial and mean diffusivity in several white matter regions, including the right anterior cingulum. In male participants, there was no significant correlation between gray or white matter volume or white matter integrity and the CES-D score. Our results indicate that the reduction in gray matter volume and differences in white matter integrity in specific brain regions, including the anterior cingulate, are associated with depressive symptoms in women.
Women in Positions of Authority: A Case Study of Changing Sex Roles

This paper aims to contribute to the study of women in positions of authority. By examining the dynamics of patriarchal relations, sex roles, and sex-role behavior among the staff of an American university in a stressed situation, it attempts to go beyond traditional sociological explanations of the way men and women behave in small groups. Most of the sociological literature on women in positions of authority focuses on the successful woman, all-female organizations, or women in traditional positions of authority.1 Work on women in small groups, where it exists, tends to ignore women as leaders in groups where there are male subordinates and the respective interactions with subordinates by men and women in the same positions of authority.2 Many re-
GraphTinker: Outlier rejection and inlier injection for pose graph SLAM

In pose graph Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) systems, incorrect loop closures can seriously hinder optimizers from converging to correct solutions, significantly degrading both localization accuracy and map consistency. Therefore, it is crucial to enhance their robustness in the presence of numerous false-positive loop closures. Existing approaches tend to fail when working with very unreliable front-end systems, where the majority of inferred loop closures are incorrect. In this paper, we propose a novel middle layer, seamlessly embedded between front and back ends, to boost the robustness of the whole SLAM system. The main contributions of this paper are two-fold: 1) the proposed middle layer offers a new mechanism to reliably detect and remove false-positive loop closures, even if they form the overwhelming majority; 2) artificial loop closures are automatically reconstructed and injected into pose graphs in the framework of an Extended Rauch-Tung-Striebel smoother, reinforcing reliable loop closures. The proposed algorithm alters the graph generated by the front-end and can then be optimized by any back-end system. Extensive experiments are conducted to demonstrate significantly improved accuracy and robustness compared with state-of-the-art methods and various back-ends, verifying the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.
Emerging evidence of the physical activity transition in Kenya.

BACKGROUND Comparable data to examine the physical activity (PA) transition in African countries such as Kenya are lacking. METHODS We assessed PA levels from urban (UKEN) and rural (RKEN) environments to examine any evidence of a PA transition. Nine- to twelve-year-old children participated in the study: n = 96 and n = 73 children from UKEN and RKEN, respectively. Pedometers were used to estimate children's daily step count. Parental perception regarding their child's PA patterns was collected via questionnaire (n = 172). RESULTS RKEN children were more physically active than their UKEN counterparts with a mean average steps per day (± SE) of 14,700 ± 521 vs. 11,717 ± 561 (P < .0001) for RKEN vs. UKEN children respectively. 62.5% of the UKEN children spent 0 hours per week playing screen games compared with 13.1% of UKEN children who spent more than 11 hours per week playing screen games. Seventy percent of UKEN and 34% of RKEN parents reported being more active during childhood than their children respectively. CONCLUSIONS Results of this study are indicative of a PA transition in Kenya. Further research is needed to gather national data on the PA patterns of Kenyan children to minimize the likelihood of a public health problem due to physical inactivity.
Inhibition of return is unimpressed by emotional cues

Inhibition of return (IOR) is a phenomenon observed when a target unexpectedly appears in the place of a preceding cue: With long cue–target stimulus onset asynchronies, reaction times are longer than for targets that appear in an alternative location. Cognitive theories of anxiety suppose that the IOR effect diminishes with threatening, biologically relevant cues because these catch and hold attention. To test this hypothesis, we conducted three experiments, in which emotional valence of cues (animals or facial expressions) had no influence on the strength of the IOR effect, neither in an unselected sample of students nor in highly spider-fearful or socially anxious participants. Inhibition of return appears to be a robust effect, blind to cue valence.
Lattice code design criterion for MIMO wiretap channels

We consider the MIMO wiretap channel, where a legitimate transmitter (Alice) wishes to communicate a confidential message to the legitimate receiver (Bob) over a MIMO channel, while its messages are being eavesdropped by Eve through another MIMO channel. Supposing that Alice uses the nested lattice code proposed in [8], we characterize the expected value of amount of information leakage to Eve, and from minimizing this expected value, we derive a code design criterion for MIMO lattice wiretap codes. The special cases of block and fast fading channels are also studied. We also illustrate our lattice code design criterion using the Alamouti Code as the simplest MIMO code available in the literature.
Elevated homocysteine levels in young male patients with schizophrenia.

OBJECTIVE Elevated plasma homocysteine has been found to be a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease as well as cerebral vascular disease, suggesting that some risk factors can accelerate or increase the severity of several CNS disease processes. The authors measured plasma homocysteine levels in patients with chronic schizophrenia in their catchment area. METHOD A one-way analysis of covariance with age and sex as covariates was performed on the total plasma homocysteine levels of 193 patients with schizophrenia compared with 762 subjects without the diagnosis of schizophrenia who were evaluated in a screening program for employee health. RESULTS The effect of schizophrenia was marked: the mean homocysteine level was 16.3 micro M (SD=11.8) in patients with schizophrenia compared with 10.6 micro M (SD=3.6) in healthy comparison subjects. The difference between groups was almost entirely attributable to the homocysteine levels of young male patients with schizophrenia. CONCLUSIONS Elevated levels of homocysteine in young male patients with schizophrenia could be related to the pathophysiology of aspects of this illness.
Early-Onset Alcohol Use among Native American Youth: Examining Female Caretaker Influence.

This article investigates the influence of female care taker substance use on early-onset youth drinking among Native American families in the Northern Midwest. Data include 603 Native American families, with reports from female caretakers and youths aged 10–13 years. Two potential caretaker influences are taken into account: adolescent modeling of caretaker behaviors and the effects of caretaker substance abuse on parenting. Results of bivariate and path analysis provide support for the influence of care taker substance use on adolescent drinking from both perspectives; these effects vary, however, depending on the type or degree of adult substance use, or both.