Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Regional variations in the relationship between macular thickness measurements and myopia.

PURPOSE To investigate the relationship between myopia and macular thickness, as measured by optical coherence tomography. METHODS A total of 143 normal subjects comprising 80 eyes with high myopia (spherical equivalent [SE] < -6.0 D), 37 eyes with low to moderate myopia (SE between -6.0 and -0.5 D), and 26 nonmyopic eyes (SE > -0.5 D) were analyzed in this cross-sectional study. Total average, foveal, and inner and outer average macular thicknesses measured by the StratusOCT (Carl Zeiss Meditec Inc., Dublin, CA) were compared among the three diagnostic groups. Associations between macular thickness and refractive error/axial length were evaluated by linear regression analysis. RESULTS The minimum foveal and average foveal (1-mm ring on the OCT retinal thickness map) thicknesses were significantly greater, and the outer ring macular (3-6-mm) thicknesses significantly lower in the high myopic eyes than in the low to moderate myopic and nonmyopic eyes. No significant difference was found in the inner ring (1-3-mm) macular thickness measurements among the groups. There was a positive correlation between the axial length and the average foveal thickness (r = 0.374, P < 0.001). Negative correlations were found between axial length and the average outer ring macular thickness (r= -0.471, P < 0.001) and total average macular thickness (r= -0.311, P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS Retinal thickness is related to refractive error/axial length in normal subjects with regional variations in correlation within the 6-mm macular region. Analysis of macular thickness in the evaluation of macular diseases and glaucoma should be interpreted only in the context of refractive errors and the location of measurement.
3-D Finite Element Analysis for Molten Metal Shape in electromagnetic Melting System

A novel 3-D finite-element method (FEM) has been developed for determining the 3-D shape of the molten metal in an electromagnetic melting system. The advantage of this method is that the shape, which is produced by electromagnetic forces, can be obtained directly. The validity of the method is confirmed by experiments on a high-frequency induction heater. The method is used to obtain the molten metal shape in a cold crucible. >
Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the “Postsocialist” Condition Nancy Fraser New York: Routledge, 1997, pp. ix, 241

textes. On aurait pu assurer une plus grande uniformite dans la longueur. On comprend mal aussi pourquoi certains textes sont suivis de commentaires et d'autres non. L'origine des textes n'est d'ailleurs pas claire, seuls quelques auteurs mentionnant qu'ils ont ete presentes au colloque de Lyon. Le livre montre par ailleurs des defauts sur le plan de la presentation physique. Avec l'avenement des moyens informatiques, les maisons d'edition ne font plus de travail de composition et ont tendance a devenir de simples intermediates entre auteurs et imprimeurs. Or les auteurs ne sont pas des professionnels de la fabrication de livres. Dans ce cas-ci, le lecteur est agace par des erreurs et incongruites typographiques, telles qu'une utilisation erratique et beaucoup trop frequente des italiques, des marges trop etroites, des espacements variables entre les paragraphes. La presentation des notes de bas de page laisse aussi a desirer. Les modalites de reference varient entre les textes, et parfois a l'interieur du meme texte. Comme il y a une bibliographic generate, elle-meme deficiente, a la fin de l'ouvrage, on aurait grandement allege et simplifie le texte en s'y referant par la methode auteur-annee plutot qu'en repetant parfois pres de 10 fois la meme reference en bas d'une page. Soulignons, en ce qui concerne la bibliographie anglaise de Polanyi, qu'on a oublie Trade and Market in the Early Empires (New York: Free Press, 1957), pourtant une de ses deux oeuvres majeures, tout en attribuant la date de ce livre a The Great Transformation. Deux autres metiers qui semblent disparaitre avec le temps sont ceux de correcteur linguistique et de correcteur d'epreuves. On rencontre ainsi, au detour de certaines pages, des fautes d'orthographe et de grammaire inacceptables dans des livres de ce niveau. Ce manque de professionnalisme, malheureusement de plus en plus repandu, devalue quelque peu l'important effort de reflexion qui nous est fourni et la qualite de cet hommage a la memoire de Karl Polanyi.
PACK : Speculative TCP Traffic Redundancy Elimination

Eliminating redundant network traffic became an important task with the volume increase of large files and rich media content. Consequently, many commercial traffic redundancy elimination (TRE) middleboxes, were placed at WAN and Internet access points. However, recent studies have shown that the majority of traffic redundancy results from end-to-end exchanges. Moreover, the penetration of laptops and smart phones has detached clients from specific access middleboxes. Consequently, there is a rising need for a universal, software based, end-to-end transport level TRE. As many central services such as email and streaming video may use these new capabilities, it is important to minimize the overhead and latency increase associated with the TRE operations. We present a novel low latency, low overhead, universal TRE mechanism, termed PACK. PACK is designed as a TCP extension and supports all applications built over TCP. The main idea for reducing the latency and server overheads is PACK’s receiver based speculative operation replacing the common sender based approach. The receiver sends data predictions to the sender which in turn moves to computational expensive actions only when these predictions are correct. Consequently, PACK is best suited for highly loaded servers. Other benefits of PACK are its low latency and buffering requirements.
Using CVL to Support Self-Adaptation of Fault-Tolerant Service Compositions

We present a dynamic software product line to support fault-tolerant service compositions. Architectural variability is specified and resolved by Common Variability Language (CVL). CVL is a generic variability modeling language that enables the transformation of a product line model into a configured, new product model. At runtime, whenever it is necessary to determine a fault tolerance technique more adapted to the context (i.e. a new product) the correspondent product model is dynamically generated by executing CVL model-to-model transformation. Based on the comparison of the reflection model with the target product model, the adaptation process is fully automated.
The tetrapeptide acetyl‐serine‐aspartyl‐lysine‐proline improves skin flap survival and accelerates wound healing

The tetrapeptide acetyl‐serine‐aspartyl‐lysine‐proline (AcSDKP) has recently been recognized as a potent angiogenic factor. Given the importance of vascular blood supply in the process of tissue repair we have investigated the ability of AcSDKP to contribute to the repair of cutaneous injuries by using dorsal and abdominal skin flap models. Postoperative subdermal AcSDKP injections (5 μg/kg/injection twice a day for 3 days following flap elevation) prevented marginally perfused areas from undergoing necrosis. Mean skin survival area of abdominal and dorsal flaps ranged, respectively, from 50.9±19.3 and 53.4±4.2% in the control groups to 66.4±7.5 and 74.7±6.6% in AcSDKP‐treated groups. Furthermore, in an ex vivo assay, AcSDKP applied locally to skin explants at doses from 10−8 to 10−5 M improved survival of the explanted skin exposed to UVB irradiation at 10 J/cm2. Increased reepithelialization, as well as higher levels of expression of basal keratin 14 and increased expression of fibronectin was observed after topical application of AcSDKP. These data provide experimental evidence that AcSDKP can improve the viability of ischemic skin flaps in the rat by promoting angiogenesis. Moreover, it enhances wound healing of injured avascular skin explants. Thus, these findings identify AcSDKP as a new tissue‐repair agent and suggest its potential clinical use for the management of skin wounds.
Development and validation of a food frequency questionnaire in Spain.

To create a suitable instrument to estimate intakes of total calories, protein, carbohydrate, fats (saturated, mono and polyunsaturated), alcohol, cholesterol, fibre, vitamin A and vitamin C in epidemiological studies conducted in Spain, a food frequency questionnaire was developed and tested. In particular, the questionnaire was designed to be used in a large population-based case-control study of dietary factors in relation to breast and colorectal cancer among women from different Spanish regions. After identifying the most important food sources of the relevant nutrients in the study population, the final version of the questionnaire asked about consumption of 118 food items. Its reproducibility and validity were tested among 147 Spanish women aged 18-74 years. These subjects were asked to complete the questionnaire before and after completing four 4-day food records. The records were obtained at 3-month intervals designed to represent daily and seasonal changes (between 1990 and 1991). Using the information available from standard Spanish food composition tables, an ad hoc computer program was created to translate food consumption into nutrient intake. The reproducibility of the questionnaire was assessed by means of estimating correlations between nutrient scores measured with the same instrument twice, with a period of 1 year between estimates. Pearson correlation coefficients ranged from 0.51 for saturated fat to 0.88 for alcohol. In the validity study, correlation coefficients between diet records and the first and second questionnaires ranged between r = 0.20 for vitamin A and r = 0.88 for alcohol. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Evaluating mesenchymal stem cell therapy for sepsis with preclinical meta-analyses prior to initiating a first-in-human trial

Evaluation of preclinical evidence prior to initiating early-phase clinical studies has typically been performed by selecting individual studies in a non-systematic process that may introduce bias. Thus, in preparation for a first-in-human trial of mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) for septic shock, we applied systematic review methodology to evaluate all published preclinical evidence. We identified 20 controlled comparison experiments (980 animals from 18 publications) of in vivo sepsis models. Meta-analysis demonstrated that MSC treatment of preclinical sepsis significantly reduced mortality over a range of experimental conditions (odds ratio 0.27, 95% confidence interval 0.18–0.40, latest timepoint reported for each study). Risk of bias was unclear as few studies described elements such as randomization and no studies included an appropriately calculated sample size. Moreover, the presence of publication bias resulted in a ~30% overestimate of effect and threats to validity limit the strength of our conclusions. This novel prospective application of systematic review methodology serves as a template to evaluate preclinical evidence prior to initiating first-in-human clinical studies. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.7554/eLife.17850. 001
Arbeitszeitrestriktion als Methode der Behandlung von Prokrastination

Prokrastination (pathologisches Aufschieben) ist eine klinisch bedeutsame Störung der Selbststeuerung, bei der die Betroffenen persönlich wichtige Arbeiten nicht oder nicht rechtzeitig und nur unter großem Druck erledigen. In üblichen Behandlungsansätzen werden vielfältige psychoedukative und kognitiv-behaviorale Methoden verwendet. Alternativ dazu stellen wir hier die Arbeitszeitrestriktion als Methode zur Behandlung von Prokrastination vor: Patienten dürfen nur zu bestimmten Zeiten und nur für eine begrenzte Dauer arbeiten. Erst nach einer Erhöhung ihrer Arbeitseffizienz, d.h. durch eine möglichst gute Ausnutzung der zuvor geplanten Arbeitszeiten, können sie sich zusätzliche Arbeitszeit verdienen. Die Verknappung der Arbeitszeit bewirkt einen Perspektivwechsel von «Ich muss (eigentlich dauernd) lernen» zu «Ich darf (nur jetzt) lernen». Die kurze Intervention im Umfang von nur 5 Sitzungen ist sowohl im Gruppensetting als auch im Einzelsetting durchführbar; wir beschreiben hier die Anwendung im Gruppenformat. Die Evaluation der Arbeitszeitbegrenzung im Gruppensetting erbrachte überzeugende Effektstärken in den Selbstbeurteilungsinstrumenten und im täglich in einem Online-Arbeitstagebuch protokollierten Lern- und Arbeitsverhalten.
Modifying weber fraction law to postprocessing and edge detection applications

A postprocessing scheme is proposed to enhance compressed images. The main objective is to obtain improvements that are pertinent to the properties of human visual system. The proposed scheme implements Weber fraction (also called contrast sensitivity) to enhance the appearance of the current block by incorporating information from adjacent blocks. The ratio DeltaI/I is found between the mean of a line of pixels in the current block and two points, each resides on the boundary of an adjacent block, that are the continuation of the chosen line. To avoid biasing toward low intensity values and to preserve the symmetry of the sensitivity curve, I was replaced by the maximum of the actual mean value and the corresponding value of the negative image or simply max(mean, 255-mean). If DeltaI/I is less than a threshold, the chosen line is replaced with a one fitting the original data and the two boundary points. Although PSNR improvement is <0.3 dB, the resultant image is visually more pleasing as will be demonstrated experimentally. The algorithm can be easily modified to perform as an edge detection scheme by finding DeltaI/I between any pixel and its 8 neighbours. The maximum is then taken. A new histogram thresholding is then applied to discriminate the edge pixels. Experimental results indicate a superior capability of the proposed scheme to detect edges of objects that are close in intensity to their background. Some comparisons with Sobel operator are also demonstrated.
More Than Mindfulness: When You Have a Tiger by the Tail, Let It Eat You

Baumeister, R. F. , Gailliot, M. , DeWall, C. N. , & Oaten, M. (2006). Self-regulation and personality: How interventions increase regulatory success, and how depletion moderates effects of traits on behavior. Journal of Personality, 74, 1773– 1801. Bongers, K. C. A. , Dijksterhuis, A. , & Spears, R. (2007). On the role of consciousness in goal-pursuit. Manuscript submitted for publication. DeWall, C. N. , Baumeister, R. F. , Stillman, T. F. , & Gailliot, M. T. (2007). Violence restrained: Effects of self-regulation and its depletion on aggression. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43, 62–76. Gailliot, M. , Plant, E. A. , Butz, D. A. , & Baumeister, R. F. (2007). Increasing self-regulatory strength via exercise can reduce the depleting effect of suppressing stereotypes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33, 281–294. Hanh, T. N. (1976). Miracle of mindfulness. Boston: Beacon. Martin, L. L. , & Tesser, A. (1996). Some ruminative thoughts. In R. S. Wyer, Jr. (Ed.), Ruminative thoughts: Advances in social cognition (Vol. IX, pp. 1–48). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Martin, L. L. , & Tesser, A. (2006). Extending the goal progress theory of rumination: Goal reevaluation and growth. In L. J. Sanna, & E. C. Chang (Eds.), Judgments over time: The Interplay of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors (pp. 145–162). New York: Oxford University Press. Masicampo, E. J., & Baumeister, R. F. (2007). Primed with the action but failing to act: When goal-discrepant situations disrupt conscious pursuits. Unpublished manuscript. Muraven, M. R. , & Baumeister, R. F. (2000). Self-regulation and depletion of limited resources: Does self-control resemble a muscle? Psychological Bulletin, 126, 247–259. Muraven, M. R. , Baumeister, R. F. , & Tice D. M. (1999). Longitudinal improvement in self-regulation through practice: Building self-control through repeated exercise. Journal of Social Psychology, 139, 446–457. Oaten, M. , & Cheng, K. (2006a). Improved self-control: The benefits of a regular program of academic study. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 28, 1–16. Oaten, M. , & Cheng, K. (2006b). Improvements in self-control from financial monitoring. Submitted for publication. Oaten, M. , & Cheng, K. (2006c). Longitudinal gains in self-control from regular physical exercise. British Journal of Health Psychology, 11, 717–733. Smallwood, J., & Schooler, J. W. (2006). The restless mind. Psychological Bulletin, 132, 946–958. Tangney, J. P., Baumeister, R. F. , & Boone, A. L. (2004). High selfcontrol predicts good adjustment, less pathology, better grades, and interpersonal success. Journal of Personality, 72, 271–324. Wegner, D. M. , Schneider, D. J., Carter, S. R. , & White, T. L. (1987). Paradoxical effects of thought suppression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 5–13.
JAZ Repressors: Potential Involvement in Nutrients Deficiency Response in Rice and Chickpea

Jasmonates (JA) are well-known phytohormones which play important roles in plant development and defense against pathogens. Jasmonate ZIM domain (JAZ) proteins are plant-specific proteins and act as transcriptional repressors of JA-responsive genes. JA regulates both biotic and abiotic stress responses in plants; however, its role in nutrient deficiency responses is very elusive. Although, JA is well-known for root growth inhibition, little is known about behavior of JAZ genes in response to nutrient deficiencies, under which root architectural alteration is an important adaptation. Using protein sequence homology and a conserved-domains approach, here we identify 10 novel JAZ genes from the recently sequenced Chickpea genome, which is one of the most nutrient efficient crops. Both rice and chickpea JAZ genes express in tissue- and stimuli-specific manners. Many of which are preferentially expressed in root. Our analysis further showed differential expression of JAZ genes under macro (NPK) and micronutrients (Zn, Fe) deficiency in rice and chickpea roots. While both rice and chickpea JAZ genes showed a certain level of specificity toward type of nutrient deficiency, generally majority of them showed induction under K deficiency. Generally, JAZ genes showed an induction at early stages of stress and expression declined at later stages of macro-nutrient deficiency. Our results suggest that JAZ genes might play a role in early nutrient deficiency response both in monocot and dicot roots, and information generated here can be further used for understanding the possible roles of JA in root architectural alterations for nutrient deficiency adaptations.
Constitutional Nephrin Deficiency in Conditionally Immortalized Human Podocytes Induced Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition, Supported by β-Catenin/NF-kappa B Activation: A Consequence of Cell Junction Impairment?

The kidney glomerular podocytes are the cellular target of many chronic nephropathies both determined and acquired genetically. Mutations that affected the expression and/or the function of nephrin, a key component of the slit-diaphragm, are often causes of these pathologies. Recent findings showed that murine podocytes could undergo epithelial-mesenchymal transformation (EMT), suggesting new hypotheses about the pathogenesis of glomerular fibrosis. Here, we show that also human podocytes can undergo EMT, but more importantly nephrin ablation itself can trigger this phenotypic transformation. In fact, a model of human podocyte with engineered nephrin deficiency constitutionally expressed high levels of α-SMA, vimentin, fibronectin, and other hallmarks of EMT. Since it is known that cell contact abrogation is one of the triggers of EMT, we reasoned that nephrin loss could account for such cell junction disruption and cause the EMT. Therefore, we demonstrated that also normal podocytes could spontaneously undergo EMT if grown in Ca2+-free medium, which is known to impair cell contacts. The analysis of the main intracellular signal transduction pathways evidenced some major anomalies consequent with the nephrin abrogation. The most intriguing was the activation of β-catenin pathway, which plays a critical role in podocyte ontogenesis as well as in the nephrin expression and EMT regulation. Also other important signaling proteins, like NF-κB, p53, and retinoblastoma protein (RB), showed important activity modifications. Interestingly, most of the above indicated signaling pathway alterations were again reproducible by cell junction rupture, induced by Ca2+ deprivation. Finally, immunofluorescence analysis on kidney sections of patients with NS of Finnish type confirmed the constitutive expression of α-SMA.
An efficient tensor based decomposition of hyperspectral image representation

In this paper, we consider decomposition techniques for hyperspectral images using tensor based methods. Hyperspectral images often contain reflectance information from numerous wavelengths. Thus, efficient decomposition methods are required to compress the data and make it further suitable for other processes such as classification and pattern recognition. We present a simple and efficient multilinear principal component analysis method for hyperspectral image decomposition and compare the performance between the proposed tensor (MPCA) and matrix (PCA) based decomposition methods. Simulation results shows that performance does not degrade when tensor based methods are used for decomposition. Extensive simulation results show that tensor based decomposition of hyperspectral image storage requires reduced memory at reduced computation time.
Professional perceptions of social work and potential impact on developing field

In 2007, a collaborative project was initiated between Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology’s (KNUST’s) Department of Sociology and Social Work (DSSW) and the University of Utah (U of U) College of Social Work (CSW) to establish a Bachelors of Social Work (BSW) Program in Kumasi, Ghana. As part of this initiative, there was a specific need to develop a field education component in the emerging BSW. To assist in establishment of an effective field education program, a research team from the U of U CSW returned to Kumasi, Ghana in 2008 to conduct a qualitative exploratory case study. This article presents initial research findings regarding perceptions of key community stakeholders about the role of social work in this developing country; and their perceptions regarding the necessity of practica for preparing students to practice social work. From evidence sources, themes about professionalism, gender/role of women and community structures emerged concerning perceptions of the role of social work. Themes specific to exposure to vulnerable populations, skill development, understanding the roles and perceptions of social workers in Ghana, and the importance of field education will be presented and implications for future international collaborations will be examined.
First-order focused crawling

This paper reports a new general framework of focused web crawling based on "relational subgroup discovery". Predicates are used explicitly to represent the relevance clues of those unvisited pages in the crawl frontier, and then first-order classification rules are induced using subgroup discovery technique. The learned relational rules with sufficient support and confidence will guide the crawling process afterwards. We present the many interesting features of our proposed first-order focused crawler, together with preliminary promising experimental results.