Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A comparison of two single-item screeners for hazardous drinking and alcohol use disorder.

BACKGROUND There is increasing interest in and physician support for the use of single-item screeners for problem drinking. METHODS In a representative sample of U.S. adults (n = 43,093) and within selected subgroups, past-year frequency of drinking 5+/4+ drinks and maximum drinks consumed on any day were evaluated as screeners for past-year alcohol dependence, any alcohol use disorder (AUD), and any AUD or hazardous drinking, using standard measures of screening performance. AUDs were defined according to DSM-IV criteria. Hazardous drinking was defined as consuming >14 drinks/wk or 5+ drinks on any day for men and >7 drinks/wk or 4+ drinks on any day for women. RESULTS Optimal cutpoints for both screeners varied across population subgroups, and these variations should be taken into account in order to maximize screening performance. At the optimal cutpoints for the total population, the sensitivity and specificity of maximum drinks were 89% and 82% for dependence at > or =5 drinks, 90% and 79% for any AUD at > or =4 drinks, and 90% and 96% for any AUD or hazardous drinking at > or =4 drinks. Comparable values of sensitivity and specificity for 5+/4+ frequency were 90% and 83% at > or =3 times a year, 87% and 82% at > or =once a year, and 88% and 100% at > or =once a year, respectively. Specificity was lower when only past-year drinkers were considered. The 5+/4+ frequency screener yielded fairly low sensitivity in predicting alcohol problems among the elderly and among Blacks. Results supported a past-year reference period for frequency of 5+/4+ drinks and substantiated gender- and age-specific thresholds for defining risk drinking. CONCLUSIONS Both of the single-item screeners performed nearly on a par with the AUDIT-C and have potential for use in primary and emergency care settings.
Research on Electromagnetic Force of Large Thrust Force PMLSM Used in Space Electromagnetic Launcher

A large thrust force permanent magnet linear synchronous motor that is used in a space electromagnetic launcher is designed. We study the thrust force and the normal force by taking some practical elements into account, including yoke thickness of primary and secondary cores, thickness and width of permanent magnet, air gap length, slot width, and turns of coils. We present an optimized design methodology for the maximum thrust force. The thermal analysis is verified by simulation and test. Also, the test result turns out to fall into correspondence with the theoretical analysis. It then would demonstrate the advantage of our method over some existing ones.
Vascular hypertrophy in borderline hypertension: relationship to blood pressure and sympathetic drive.

While borderline hypertension increases the chance for cardiovascular disease, most with borderline hypertension will not experience problems. Thus, the risk of intervening probably outweighs benefit for the majority. However, those with target organ damage are probably at higher risk and might benefit from more aggressive management. Therefore, we assessed vascular hypertrophy and average home blood pressures in patients with borderline hypertension which might be of value in therapeutic planning. Minimum forearm vascular resistance (mFAVR) was used as an index of vascular hypertrophy. Comparing ten normotensive controls to twenty individuals with borderline hypertension revealed a significant difference in mFAVR (1.7 +/- 0.06 vs 2.1 +/- 0.1, p less than .05). There were obvious differences in blood pressure between normotensives and borderlines which contributed to differences in mFAVR. However, within the group with borderline hypertension, no relationship was apparent between mean blood pressure and mFAVR, r = 0.13, NS. Among the borderline hypertensives, baseline plasma norepinephrine correlated with mFAVR, r = 0.48, p less than . 05, suggesting that the sympathetic nervous system contributes to vascular hypertrophy in this group. In a separate group of individuals with nine normotensives and nine borderline hypertensives we wished to find if average home blood pressure would correlate better with mFAVR than a single laboratory measurement. While both the home (r = 0.56, p less than .05) and laboratory (r = 0.66, p less than .01) MBP correlated significantly with mFAVR, the data did not confirm the hypothesis that the average home blood pressures would better predict the degree of vascular hypertrophy. These data show that a substantial proportion of patients with borderline hypertension have evidence for vascular hypertrophy, sympathetic drive might contribute to vascular hypertrophy in borderline hypertension, average home blood pressures did not aid in separating those with and without evidence for vascular hypertrophy.
Analysis of Phase-Specific Gene Expression at the Single-Cell Level in the White-Opaque Switching System ofCandida albicans

ABSTRACT The opportunistic fungal pathogen Candida albicanscan switch spontaneously and reversibly between different cell forms, a capacity that may enhance adaptation to different host niches and evasion of host defense mechanisms. Phenotypic switching has been studied intensively for the white-opaque switching system of strain WO-1. To facilitate the molecular analysis of phenotypic switching, we have constructed homozygous ura3 mutants from strain WO-1 by targeted gene deletion. The two URA3 alleles were sequentially inactivated using theMPAR-flipping strategy, which is based on the selection of integrative transformants carrying a mycophenolic acid (MPA) resistance marker that is subsequently deleted again by site-specific, FLP-mediated recombination. To investigate a possible cell type-independent switching in the expression of individual phase-specific genes, two different reporter genes that allowed the analysis of gene expression at the single-cell level were integrated into the genome, using URA3 as a selection marker. Fluorescence microscopic analysis of cells in which aGFP reporter gene was placed under the control of phase-specific promoters demonstrated that the opaque-phase-specificSAP1 gene was detectably expressed only in opaque cells and that the white-phase-specific WH11 gene was detectably expressed only in white cells. WhenMPAR was used as a reporter gene, it conferred an MPA-resistant phenotype on opaque but not white cells in strains expressing it from the SAP1 promoter, which was monitored at the level of single cells by a significantly enlarged size of the corresponding colonies on MPA-containing indicator plates. Similarly, white but not opaque cells became MPA resistant whenMPAR was placed under the control of the WH11 promoter. The analysis of these reporter strains showed that cell type-independent phase variation in the expression of the SAP1 and WH11 genes did not occur at a detectable frequency. The expression of these phase-specific genes of C. albicans in vitro, therefore, is tightly linked to the cell type.
Implementing a BNC-Compare-able Web Corpus

This paper details the author’s plans for and progress with compiling and analyzing a new gigaword English corpus from the web to complement his BNC-based online database “Phrases in English”. This new corpus represents the principal English-speaking countries in proportion to their population and will be linguistically annotated with the CLAWS4 tagger using a PoS-tagset comparable to those of the BNC and ANC. Parallel processing on multiple PCs will facilitate reaching the targeted size. This corpus will continue to grow dynamically in response to actual user queries to the author’s various web as corpus interfaces, but “snapshots” of each generation of the corpus will be preserved to ensure replicability of results. This report on work in progress will inspire discussion of the underlying concepts and suggestions for improvement.
Eurographics/siggraph Symposium on Computer Animation (2003) Interactive Control of Component-based Morphing

This paper presents an interactive morphing framework to empower users to conveniently and effectively control the whole morphing process. Although research on mesh morphing has reached a state where most computational problems have been solved in general, the novelty of our framework lies in the integration of global-level and local-level user control through the use of components, and the incorporation of deduction and assistance in user interaction. Given two polygonal meshes, users can choose to specify their requirements either at the global level over components or at the local level within components, whichever is more intuitive. Based on user specifications, the framework proposes several techniques to deduce implied correspondences and add assumed correspondences at both levels. The framework also supports multi-level interpolation control — users can operate on a component as a whole or on its individual vertices to specify trajectories. On the whole, in the multi-level component-based framework, users can choose to specify any number of requirements at each level and the system can complete all other tasks to produce final morphs. Therefore, user control is greatly enhanced and even an amateur can use it to design morphing with ease. 1. Introduction Morphing (or metamorphosis) of polygonal meshes involves the creation of a smooth transition from a source mesh to a target mesh. For two meshes, there are numerous ways to transform one to the other. Algorithms for morphing are mainly evaluated by criteria related to the ease of user control and the visual quality of morphing sequence. Morphing is such an aesthetic problem that fully automatic methods cannot meet all the needs that arise in all applications. Therefore, user interaction is important and unavoidable. A mesh morphing process basically consists of two steps: establishing the correspondence where each vertex of a source mesh is mapped to a vertex of a target mesh, and calculating the interpolation where trajectories are defined for all corresponding vertices. Research on mesh morphing has reached a state where most computational problems in these two steps have been solved in general [2, 14]. However, a similar claim cannot be made for user control. Efficiency of user interaction has not received much attention by previous morphing works; they usually concentrate on the computational issues and overlook the interactive process of specifying and modifying user requirements. There was no good scheme to make user interaction intuitive, flexible and efficient. For example, to specify high-level correspondences, such …
An Inhibitory Effect of Dexamethasone on A549 Cell Adhesion to Neutrophils: Possible Involvement of Nuclear Factor-Kappa B

In order to clarify the effects of dexamethasone on epithelial cells at the transcription factor level, protein synthesis level and functional level, we examined neutrophil adhesion to A549 cells (an immortalized human type II alveolar epithelial cell line), expression of intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1), and translocation of nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-κB) into nuclei. The intranuclear localization of fluorescently stained NF-κB and an adhesion assay between neutrophils and A549 cells was analyzed quantitatively using laser scanning cytometry. ICAM-1 expression on A549 cells was measured by flow cytometric analysis. Stimulation of A549 cells with tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α caused a time- and dose-dependent increase in their adhesiveness for neutrophils. ICAM-1 expression on A549 cells after stimulation with TNF- α for 12 h was significantly up-regulated, compared with unstimulated cells ( P < 0.05). Intranuclear NF-κB was induced 10 min after stimulation with TNF-α and was increased in a TNF-α-dose-dependent manner. Dexamethasone suppressed TNF-α-induced NF-κB translocation in A549 cells by approximately 60%, ICAM-1 expression on A549 cells by approximately 40%, and A549 adhesiveness for neutrophils completely. Therefore, we suggest that the inhibition of A549 adhesiveness for neutrophils by dexamethasone may be due in part to the suppression of NF-κB entry into nuclei and ICAM-1 expression in A549 cells.
Ground Nonmonotonic Modal Logics

In this paper we address ground logics, a family of nonmonotonic modal logics, and their usage in knowledge representation. In such a setting non-modal sentences are used to represent the knowledge of an agent about the world, while an epistemic operator provides the agent with autoepistemic or introspective knowledge. Ground logics are based on the idea of characterizing the knowledge of the agent by allowing it to make nonmonotonic assumptions only with respect to the knowledge about the world, i.e. expressed by nonmodal formulae. They are characterized by a fix-point equation which determines the set of formulae derivable from the agent’s initial knowledge and which can be applied to different normal modal systems to obtain a variety of nonmonotonic modal logics. In the paper we address the semantical, computational and epistemological properties of ground logics. We provide a semantic characterization of ground logics by defining a preference relation on possible-world models based on the minimization of the knowledge expressed by nonmodal formulae. We analyze the computational complexity of reasoning in ground logics, providing both a lower bound through a reduction from quantified boolean formulae and an upper bound through an algorithm for computing logical entailment. We discuss the representational features of ground logics, in particular defaults, and provide a thorough comparison with McDermott and Doyle’s logics.
Putting queer to work: examining empire and education

Using Stuart Hall’s concept of articulation, which sutures seemingly incongruent analytics, this article juxtaposes queer theorizing and postcolonial projects in order to contribute to the examinations of empire, education and decolonization. It foregrounds the queer approaches of working within, through and beyond the framework of sexuality to investigate the themes of exclusion, normalization, and subject position and agency. It offers a review of the scholarly literature in queer, postcolonial and education studies, and engages the author’s initial research formulations on Filipino/a schooling and United States imperialism in the early twentieth century. By interrogating and bringing together theoretical perspectives, empirical findings and political movements, the article aims to open discursive and structural spaces for revolutionary solidarities and interventions.
Alcohol consumption in relation to metabolic regulation, inflammation, and adiponectin in 64-year-old Caucasian women: a population-based study with a focus on impaired glucose regulation.

OBJECTIVE The aims of this study were to examine alcohol drinking patterns in women with type 2 diabetes, impaired glucose tolerance (IGT), and normal glucose tolerance (NGT) and to investigate whether alcohol intake was associated with improved insulin sensitivity, decreased biomarkers of inflammation, and increased adiponectin levels and if these effects were limited to dysmetabolic women. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS From a cohort of 64-year-old Caucasian women, 209 with type 2 diabetes, 205 with IGT, and 186 with NGT were recruited. Alcohol consumption and medication use were assessed by questionnaires. Anthropometric data were collected, and blood glucose, insulin, HDL cholesterol, triglycerides, C-reactive protein, white blood cell count, and serum adiponectin were measured. RESULTS Compared with the NGT group, alcohol consumption was lower in the IGT group and lowest in the diabetes group. Mean alcohol intakes of >9.2 and > or =3-9 g/day were positively associated with adiponectin and insulin sensitivity (homeostasis model assessment [HOMA]), respectively, independently of obesity, metabolic control, and other confounders. Alcohol intake correlated negatively with inflammatory markers, although this did not remain after adjustment for HOMA and waist circumference. The inverse associations between alcohol consumption and factors related to the metabolic syndrome such as HOMA, waist circumference, and inflammatory markers were more obvious among women with diabetes and IGT than in healthy women. CONCLUSIONS In these women, moderate alcohol consumption showed beneficial associations with the prevalence of type 2 diabetes, IGT, insulin sensitivity, and serum adiponectin. There is a need to clarify whether adiponectin may be a mechanistic link and also to clarify the clinical implications of these observations.
The Language of Weblogs: A study of genre and individual differences

This thesis describes a linguistic investigation of individual differences in online personal diaries, or ‘blogs. ’ There is substantial evidence of gender differences in language (Lakoff, 1975), and to a lesser extent linguistic projection of personality (Pennebaker & King, 1999). Recent work has investigated these latter differences in the area of computer-mediated communication (CMC), specifically e-mail (Gill, 2004). This thesis employs a number of analytic techniques, both top-down (dictionarybased) and bottom-up (data-driven), in order to explore personality and gender differences in the language of blogs. A corpus was constructed by asking authors to submit a month of text and complete a sociobiographic questionnaire. The corpus consists of over 400,000 words and five-factor personality data (Buchanan, 2001) for 71 subjects. The thesis begins by framing blogs in the context of other genres, both CMC and traditional, in order to show both the distinctiveness and representativeness of the genre. Top-down content analysis techniques are then employed to investigate the relationship between personality and linguistic features. A number of features correlate with each trait, but upon regression, very little variance is explained. Bottom-up techniques are more successful. The corpus was stratified into high, low and neutral personality groups to identify distinctive collocations for each. Returning to the raw personality scores, it becomes clear that even a small amount of n-gram context helps account for much more variance in personality. A measure of contextuality (Heylighen & Dewaele, 2002) shows that authors considered high in Agreeableness pay more attention to differences between their extra-linguistic context and that of their audience. Attention turns to gender, where similar methods are applied to investigate gender differences in language. Many previous findings are confirmed in the blog corpus. In addition, women are found to write more in their blogs than men. More generally, using the British National Corpus, it is shown that women are more contextual, except in the least contextual of genres (academic writing) where there is no difference. The study concludes by confirming that both gender and personality are projected by language in blogs; furthermore, approaches which take the context of language features into account can be used to detect more variation than those which do not.
Basis sets for the evaluation of van der Waals complex interaction energies: Ne–N2 intermolecular potential and microwave spectrum

In order to obtain efficient basis sets for the evaluation of van der Waals complex intermolecular potentials, we carry out systematic basis set studies. For this, interaction energies at representative geometries on the potential energy surfaces are evaluated using the CCSD(T) correlation method and large polarized LPol‐n and augmented polarization‐consistent aug‐pc‐2 basis sets extended with different sets of midbond functions. On the basis of the root mean square errors calculated with respect to the values for the most accurate potentials available, basis sets are selected for fitting the corresponding interaction energies and getting analytical potentials. In this work, we study the Ne–N2 van der Waals complex and after the above procedure, the aug‐pc‐2–3321 and the LPol‐ds‐33221 basis set results are fitted. The obtained potentials are characterized by T‐shaped global minima at distances between the Ne atom and the N2 center of mass of 3.39 Å, with interaction energies of −49.36 cm−1 for the aug‐pc‐2–3321 surface and −50.28 cm−1 for the LPol‐ds‐33221 surface. Both sets of results are in excellent agreement with the reference surface. To check the potentials further microwave transition frequencies are calculated that agree well with the experimental and the aV5Z‐33221 values. The success of this study suggests that it is feasible to carry out similar accurate calculations of interaction energies and ro‐vibrational spectra at reduced cost for larger complexes than has been possible hitherto. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Enhanced thermal management for future processors

An enhanced thermal management mechanism that reduces power by scaling frequency and voltage in response to excessive temperatures is presented. The voltage transition process is done transparently to the execution of applications. The enhanced mechanism achieves an /spl sim/50% power reduction while limiting the performance impact to only /spl sim/20% for the duration of the thermal event. The approach allows the processor to meet its performance and reliability goals without additional thermal solution costs.
Comparison of CID versus ETD-based MS/MS fragmentation for the analysis of doubly derivatized steroids.

Electrospray ionization coupled with collision-induced dissociation (CID) and tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) is a commonly used technique to analyze the chemical composition of steroids. However, steroids are structurally similar compounds, making it difficult to interpret their product-ion spectra. Electron transfer dissociation (ETD), a relatively new technique for protein and peptide fragmentation, has been shown to provide more detailed structural information. In this study, we compared the ability of CID with that of ETD to differentiate between eight 3,20-dioxosteroids that had been derivatizated with a quaternary ammonium salt, Girard reagent P (GirP), at room temperature or after exposure to microwave irradiation to generate doubly charged ions. We found that the derivatization of steroid with GirP hydrazine occurred in less than 10 min when the reaction was carried out in the presence of microwave irradiation compared to 30 min when the reaction was carried out at room temperature. According to the MS/MS spectra, CID provided rich, structurally informative ions; however, the spectra were complex, thereby complicating the peak assignment. In contrast, ETD generated simpler spectra, making it easier to recognize individual peaks. Remarkably, both CID and ETD were allowed to differentiate of steroid isomers, 17α-hydroxyprogesterone (17OHP) and deoxycorticosterone (DOC), but the signature ions obtained from CID were less intense than those generated by ETD, which generated much clearer spectra. These results indicate that ETD in conjunction with CID can provide more structural information for precise characterization of steroids.
3D-NoC: Reconfigurable 3D photonic on-chip interconnect for multicores

The power dissipation of metallic interconnects in future multicore architectures is projected to be a major bottleneck as we scale to sub-nanometer regime. This has motivated researchers to develop alternate power-efficient technology solutions to the performance limitations of future multicores. Nanophotonic interconnects (NIs) is a disruptive technology solution that is capable of delivering the communication bandwidth at low power dissipation when the number of cores is scaled to large numbers. Similarly, 3D stacking is another interconnect technology solution that can lead to low energy/bit for communication. In this paper, we propose to combine NIs with with 3D stacking to develop a scalable, reconfigurable, power-efficient and high-performance interconnect for future many-core systems called 3D-NoC. We propose to develop a multi-layer NIs that can dynamically reconfigure without system intervention and allocate channel bandwidth from less utilized links to more utilized communication links. Our simulation results indicate that the performance can be further improved by 10%-25% for Splash-2, PARSEC and SPEC CPU2006 benchmarks.