Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Depression among adolescents, aged 13-19 years, attending secondary schools in Trinidad: prevalence and associated factors.

OBJECTIVE To determine the prevalence of depression and psychosocial factors associated with depression in secondary school students in Trinidad METHODS This was a cross-sectional study of a stratified random sample of public secondary schools utilizing a modified pre-tested self-administered Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) to detect depression in students aged 13-19 years in Trinidad. RESULTS In this study, 1290 students participated, a response rate of 79.6%; 43% were aged 13-15 years; 53.6% were Indo-Trinidadians; 82.5% were attending co-educational schools and 70.6% lived with both parents. The prevalence of depression was 25.3% +/- 2.37%. Chi-square analysis revealed statistically significant associations between depression and the categories of age, gender, living arrangements and school type. Similar findings were observed for respondents who admitted to cigarette and alcohol use or to being afraid of or being injured by their parent (p < 0.05). Logistic regression indicated that females were 1.7 times as likely to be depressed when compared with males; respondents not living with both parents were 1.5 times as likely to be depressed as those who were. Respondents reporting that they were afraid of parents or of being injured by parents were three times as likely to be depressed as respondents who had not had those experiences. CONCLUSIONS One out of every four secondary school students in Trinidad was found to have significant depression. There were strong associations between depression and age, gender, school type and family structure. This study identifies that many adolescents experience violence in the home and those who did were more likely to be depressed.
Effect of Insulin Therapy using Hyper-insulinemic Normoglycemic Clamp on Inflammatory Response in Brain Dead Organ Donors.

BACKGROUND Brain death is a major stress that is associated with a massive inflammatory response and systemic hyperglycemia. Severe inflammation leads to increased graft immunogenicity and risk of graft dysfunction; while acute hyperglycemia aggravates the inflammatory response and increases the risk of morbidity and mortality. Insulin therapy not only controls hyperglycemia but also suppresses inflammation. The present study is to investigate the anti-inflammatory properties and the normoglycemia maintenance of high dose insulin on brain dead organ donors. DESIGN 15 brain dead organ donors were divided into 2 groups, insulin treated (n=6) and controls (n=9). Insulin was provided for a minimum of 6 h using the hyperinsulinemic normoglycemic clamp technique. The changes of serum cytokines, including IL-6, IL-10, IL-1β, IL-8, TNFα, TGFα and MCP-1, were measured by suspension bead array immunoassay and glucose by a glucose monitor. RESULTS Compared to controls, insulin treated donors had a significant lower blood glucose 4.8 (4-6.9) vs. 9 (5.6-11.7) mmol/L, p<0.01); the net decreases of pro-inflammatory cytokines, such as IL-6 and MCP-1, and the net increase of anti-inflammatory cytokine, such as IL-10, reached significant level in insulin treated donors compared with those in controls. CONCLUSION High dose insulin therapy decreases the concentrations of inflammatory cytokines in brain dead donors and preserves normoglycemia. High dose of insulin may have anti-inflammatory effects in brain dead organ donors and therefore, improve the quality of donor organs and potentially improve outcomes.
A monitor unit verification calculation in intensity modulated radiotherapy as a dosimetry quality assurance.

In standard teletherapy, a treatment plan is generated with the aid of a treatment planning system, but it is common to perform an independent monitor unit verification calculation (MUVC). In exact analogy, we propose and demonstrate that a simple and accurate MUVC in intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) is possible. We introduce the concept of modified Clarkson integration (MCI). In MCI, we exploit the rotational symmetry of scattering to simplify the dose calculation. For dose calculation along a central axis (CAX), we first replace the incident IMRT fluence by an azimuthally averaged fluence. Second, the Clarkson integration is carried over annular sectors instead of over pie sectors. We wrote a computer code, implementing the MCI technique, in order to perform a MUVC for IMRT purposes. We applied the code to IMRT plans generated by CORVUS. The input to the code consists of CORVUS plan data (e.g., DMLC files, jaw settings, MU for each IMRT field, depth to isocenter for each IMRT field), and the output is dose contribution by individual IMRTs field to the isocenter. The code uses measured beam data for Sc, Sp, TPR, (D/MU)ref and includes effects from multileaf collimator transmission, and radiation field offset. On a 266 MHz desktop computer, the code takes less than 15 to calculate a dose. The doses calculated with the MCI algorithm agreed within +/-3% with the doses calculated by CORVUS, which uses a 1 cm x 1 cm pencil beam in dose calculation. In the present version of MCI, skin contour variations and inhomogeneities were neglected.
Contraceptive practice of Irish married and single first-time mothers

Summary This study surveys 100 married and 100 unmarried primiparous mothers, attending the National Maternity Hospital, Dublin, with regard to their contraceptive practice, their planning of their pregnancy and the timing of their first antenatal visit. Nineteen per cent of the married women, but 64% of the unmarried women, had never used any contraceptive method. The contraceptive pill was the most popular method for both groups, but while three in five of the married women had at some time used the pill, only a little more than one in five of the unmarried women had ever used it. One quarter of the women who had used contraception reported that their pregnancy was the result of a failure in their contraceptive method. Eighty-nine per cent of the single group and 20% of the married had not planned their pregnancy. None of the married women, but almost a quarter of the single, delayed their first antenatal visit until after they were 20 weeks pregnant.
Streptomyces coelicolor Genes ftsL and divIC Play a Role in Cell Division but Are Dispensable for Colony Formation

ABSTRACT We have characterized homologues of the bacterial cell division genes ftsL and divIC in the gram-positive mycelial bacterium Streptomyces coelicolor A3(2). We show by deletion-insertion mutations that ftsL and divIC are dispensable for growth and viability in S. coelicolor. When mutant strains were grown on a conventional rich medium (R2YE, containing high sucrose), inactivation of either ftsL or divIC resulted in the formation of aerial hyphae with partially constricted division sites but no clear separation of prespore compartments. Surprisingly, this phenotype was largely suppressed when strains were grown on minimal medium or sucrose-free R2YE, where division sites in many aerial hyphae had finished constricting and chains of spores were evident. Thus, osmolarity appears to affect the severity of the division defect. Furthermore, double mutant strains deleted for both ftsL and divIC are viable and have medium-dependent phenotypes similar to that of the single mutant strains, suggesting that functions performed by FtsL and DivIC are not absolutely required for septation during growth and sporulation. Alternatively, another division protein may partially compensate for the loss of both FtsL and DivIC on minimal medium or sucrose-free R2YE. Finally, based on transmission electron microscopy observations, we propose that FtsL and DivIC are involved in coordinating symmetrical annular ingrowth of the invaginating septum.
Endocrinology and Dialysis: Management of Lipid Abnormalities Associated with End‐Stage Renal Disease

The management of lipid abnormalities in patients with end‐stage renal disease (ESRD) remains controversial. Large, well‐designed studies investigating the effects of dyslipidemia on cardiovascular (CV) morbidity and mortality and the role of cholesterol lowering drugs in reducing mortality in ESRD patients are lacking. While it seems reasonable to suspect that dyslipidemia and its treatment in ESRD patients will affect CV morbidity and mortality similar to that in the general population, recent studies have suggested that this may not be the case. Furthermore, the pharmacokinetics of lipid lowering drugs are altered in patients with ESRD and must be considered when treating this group of patients. This article reviews the major classes of drugs used to treat dyslipidemia, emphasizing their role in patients with ESRD.
Isoforms of Jun Kinase Are Differentially Expressed and Activated in Human Monocyte/Macrophage (THP-1) Cells1

Ten isoforms of c-jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) have been described that arise by differential mRNA splicing of three genes. In that the relative expression and function of these different JNK proteins in human monocytic cells is not known, we have examined the JNK isoforms in THP-1 monocyte/macrophage cells. Differentiation of THP-1 cells by exposure to 10−8 M PMA for 42–48 h enhances cellular responses to LPS, including enhanced activation of total JNK activity and increased phosphorylation of p54 JNK as well as p46 JNK. Examination of JNK proteins on Western blots reveals a predominance of p46 JNK1 and p54 JNK2 proteins. Clearing of lysates by immunoprecipitation of JNK1(99% effective) removes 46% of the JNK enzymatic activity (p < 0.01), whereas clearing of JNK1 plus JNK2 (70% effective) depletes the sample of 72% of the JNK activity (p < 0.01). Further analysis, undertaken with real-time RT-PCR, revealed that 98% of the JNK messages code for three isoforms: JNK1β1, JNK2α1, and JNK2α2. The p54 JNK that is phosphorylated in LPS-stimulated, PMA-differentiated THP-1 cells is most likely JNK2α2 because 97% of the p54 JNK-encoding messages code for JNK2α2. By analogous reasoning, the p46 JNKs that are not heavily phosphorylated, but account for approximately half of the N-terminal c-jun kinase enzymatic activity, are most likely either JNK1β1 or JNK2α1 because they account for 98% of the messages that can code for 46kDa JNKs.
Video Content Delivery Enhancement in CDNs Based on Users' Social Information

With the huge growth of multimedia communication and digital content availability, energy efficient content delivery became an important research topic with the goal of reducing energy consumption of the intermediary nodes while providing better services and quality of experiences to the end users. In this paper we focus on the subject of reducing the overall network energy consumption in accessing user generated content over social media platforms. We propose an approach, namely SocialiVideo which enables users to directly share their generated video content among existing social connections. We combine the approaches used in CDNs and P2P networks together with social connections between people in order to shorten the path the data traverses on average, and improve the latency. SocialiVideo places video content in users' premises (e.g., set-top-boxes) and serve others using a P2P connection. To this end, we use users' geolocation information retrieved from their network data (IP address) as well as subscribed social networks (e.g. current city attribute in Facebook) and social characteristics (e.g. friends list, and activities, etc.). In-order to evaluate the performance of the proposed solution, we implement our prototype based on Facebook/Akamai content delivery approach and evaluates the performance with reference to the current solution of the Facebook. Based on the results, SocialiVideo unload the traffic of the network and CDN, thus reduces network energy consumption and provides advantages for multiple entities, including CDNs and ISPs, as well as better QoE for end users. %End user can access content locally and therefore less bandwidth consumption. They can access content faster. ISPs can control network bandwidth and data traffic very efficiently as most popular content may allow to disseminate via SocialiVideo. Most content providers rely on CDN to deliver their content closer to end users. Thus, need to pay huge amount of money for CDN services. SocialiVideo allow content providers such as Facebook to disseminate their content very efficiently and effectively with low cost.
Handling PDDL3.0 State Trajectory Constraints with Temporal Landmarks

Temporal landmarks have been proved to be a helpful mechanism to deal with temporal planning problems, specifically to improve planners performance and handle problems with deadline constraints. In this paper, we show the strength of using temporal landmarks to handle the state trajectory constraints of PDDL3.0. We analyze the formalism of TempLM, a temporal planner particularly aimed at solving planning problems with deadlines, and we present a detailed study that exploits the underlying temporal landmark-based mechanism of TempLM for representing and reasoning with trajectory constraints.
3D photo-crosslinking pattern scaffold for cell application by two-photon laser scanning system

In this study, we fabricated a photo-crosslinking, biocompatible 3D Poly(ethylene) glycol (PEG) hydrogel scaffold with inner fibrin gel for cell adhesion. We tested the material cytocompatibility with 3T3 fibroblasts then processed the cell adhesion motif inside the scaffold at regular and L-shaped 3D structural pattern by two-photon laser scanning system for further cell manipulation and recording. The results show cell could survive under UV irradiation and grew in the inner fibrin gel scaffold. The desired pattern scaffold has potential to apply in cell guided migration and physiological signal recording.
TGF-β Contributes to Impaired Exercise Response by Suppression of Mitochondrial Key Regulators in Skeletal Muscle

A substantial number of people at risk of developing type 2 diabetes could not improve insulin sensitivity by physical training intervention. We studied the mechanisms of this impaired exercise response in 20 middle-aged individuals at high risk of developing type 2 diabetes who performed 8 weeks of controlled cycling and walking training at 80% individual Vo2 peak. Participants identified as nonresponders in insulin sensitivity (based on the Matsuda index) did not differ in preintervention parameters compared with high responders. The failure to increase insulin sensitivity after training correlates with impaired upregulation of mitochondrial fuel oxidation genes in skeletal muscle, and with the suppression of the upstream regulators PGC1α and AMPKα2. The muscle transcriptomes of the nonresponders are further characterized by the activation of transforming growth factor (TGF)-β and TGF-β target genes, which is associated with increases in inflammatory and macrophage markers. TGF-β1 as inhibitor of mitochondrial regulators and insulin signaling is validated in human skeletal muscle cells. Activated TGF-β1 signaling downregulates the abundance of PGC1α, AMPKα2, the mitochondrial transcription factor TFAM, and mitochondrial enzymes. Thus, the data suggest that increased TGF-β activity in skeletal muscle can attenuate the improvement of mitochondrial fuel oxidation after training and contribute to the failure to increase insulin sensitivity.
A characterization of the Lie algebra rank condition by transverse periodic functions

The Lie algebra rank condition plays a central role in nonlinear systems control theory. We show that the satisfaction of this condition by a set of smooth control vector fields is equivalent to the existence of smooth transverse periodic functions. The proof outlined-details can be found in Morin and Samson (2000)-is constructive and provides a method for the determination of such functions. This is illustrated by an example.
Novel assays to assess the functional capacity of the classical, the alternative and the lectin pathways of the complement system

Deficiencies in many of the complement proteins and their regulatory molecules have been described and a variety of diseases, such as recurrent infections, systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and renal diseases, may be linked to deficiency in the complement system. Screening for complement defects is therefore of great importance. In this study, we present novel improved enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assays for the functional assessment of the three individual pathways of the complement system. The method is applicable at high serum concentrations and we demonstrate that it minimizes both false negative as well as false positive results. In particular, for the functional mannose‐binding lectin activity it represents an improvement on the existing assays. In this respect, the present assays represent novel improved diagnostic protocols for patients with suspected immunodeficiencies related to the complement system.
Monitoring students' mobile app coding behavior data analysis based on IDE and browser interaction logs

This paper describes a case study of assessing student's coding behavior and skills in a realistic development setting. Students had to solve typical programming problems in the context of app development for the Android platform using the Eclipse IDE. Data was analyzed using IDE as well as browser interaction logs. In addition, screen recordings of the students' interaction with the IDE provide further insight. In this paper we present the first results of our ongoing work.
Stream-based statistical machine translation

We investigate a new approach for SMT system training within the streaming model of computation. We develop and test incrementally retrainable models which, given an incoming stream of new data, can efficiently incorporate the stream data online. A naive approach using a stream would use an unbounded amount of space. Instead, our online SMT system can incorporate information from unbounded incoming streams and maintain constant space and time. Crucially, we are able to match (or even exceed) translation performance of comparable systems which are batch retrained and use unbounded space. Our approach is particularly suited for situations when there is arbitrarily large amounts of new training material and we wish to incorporate it efficiently and in small space. The novel contributions of this thesis are: 1. An online, randomised language model that can model unbounded input streams in constant space and time. 2. An incrementally retrainable translation model for both phrase-based and grammarbased systems. The model presented is efficient enough to incorporate novel parallel text at the single sentence level. 3. Strategies for updating our stream-based language model and translation model which demonstrate how such components can be successfully used in a streaming translation setting. This operates both within a single streaming environment and also in the novel situation of having to translate multiple streams. 4. Demonstration that recent data from the stream is beneficial to translation performance. Our stream-based SMT system is efficient for tackling massive volumes of new training data and offers-up new ways of thinking about translating web data and dealing with other natural language streams.
Advanced Cophase Traction Power Supply System Based on Three-Phase to Single-Phase Converter

An advanced cophase traction power supply system is proposed to solve the power quality problems of the traditional traction power supply system, such as unbalance, reactive power, and harmonics to three-phase industrial grid. The three-phase to single-phase converter-based substation is adopted in this system, which can transfer active power from three-phase grid to single-phase catenary and compensate reactive power and harmonics of the locomotives. One catenary section could be utilized in the advanced cophase system instead of the multiple split sections in traditional system. The neutral sections and problems caused by them in traditional system could be avoided. In this paper, the characteristics of the advanced cophase system and the automatic current-sharing control algorithm of three-phase to single-phase converter are studied and analyzed. The simulation and experimental results verify the viability and effectiveness of the proposed system.
Identification des unités de mesure dans les textes scientifiques

Le travail présenté dans cet article se situe dans le cadre de l’identification de termes spécialisés (unités de mesure) à partir de données textuelles pour enrichir une Ressource Termino-Ontologique (RTO). La première étape de notre méthode consiste à prédire la localisation des variants d’unités de mesure dans les documents. Nous avons utilisé une méthode reposant sur l’apprentissage supervisé. Cette méthode permet de réduire sensiblement l’espace de recherche des variants tout en restant dans un contexte optimal de recherche (réduction de 86 % de l’espace de recherché sur le corpus étudié). La deuxième étape du processus, une fois l’espace de recherche réduit aux variants d’unités, utilise une nouvelle mesure de similarité permettant d’identifier automatiquement les variants découverts par rapport à un terme d’unité déjà référencé dans la RTO avec un taux de précision de 82 % pour un seuil au dessus de 0.6 sur le corpus étudié.
Light field HEVC-based image coding using locally linear embedding and self-similarity compensated prediction

Light field imaging is a promising new technology that allows the user not only to change the focus and perspective after taking a picture, as well as to generate 3D content, among other applications. However, light field images are characterized by large amounts of data and there is a lack of coding tools to efficiently encode this type of content. Therefore, this paper proposes the addition of two new prediction tools to the HEVC framework, to improve its coding efficiency. The first tool is based on the local linear embedding-based prediction and the second one is based on the self-similarity compensated prediction. Experimental results show improvements over JPEG and HEVC in terms of average bitrate savings of 71.44% and 31.87%, and average PSNR gains of 4.73dB and 0.89dB, respectively.
Introducing Real-Time Collaboration Systems: Development of a Conceptual Scheme and Research Directions

This paper presents Real-Time Collaboration (RTC), a new and emerging type of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) system that has its roots in both the telecommunications and groupware market. The aim of the paper is twofold. First, it outlines the evolution of RTC systems and offers a conceptualization of RTC consisting of usage scenarios and four main building blocks – integration of communication channels, presence information, context integration, and further collaboration features. Second, in order to understand the organizational implications of this complex and socially embedded information system, the paper intends to offer a starting point for future research on RTC by touching upon and systematizing different directions and typical questions for researching RTC and its organizational implications.
Line Art Illustrations of Parametric and Implicit Forms

A technique is presented for line art rendering of scenes composed of freeform surfaces. The line art that is created for parametric surfaces is practically intrinsic and is globally invariant to changes in the surface parameterization. This method is equally applicable for line art rendering of implicit forms, creating a unified line art rendering method for both parametric and implicit forms. This added flexibility exposes a new horizon of special, parameterization independent, line art effects. Moreover, the production of the line art illustrations can be combined with traditional rendering techniques such as transparency and texture mapping. Examples that demonstrate the capabilities of the proposed approach are presented for both the parametric and implicit forms.