Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Are you willing to risk it? The relationship between risk, regret, and vaccination intent

Medically unsupported concerns pertaining to the safety and necessity of childhood vaccines may have contributed to a proportion of American parents opting against measles, mumps, and rubella vaccinations. Given this, the present investigation sought to explore the influence of perceived severity, perceived likelihood, and anticipated regret on surrogate vaccination decision-making among parents of young children. An online survey was distributed to 110 parents with unvaccinated children between 0 and 23 months of age. Significant correlations were found among focal study constructs. Anticipated regret was found to fully mediate the link between risk perceptions and vaccination intentions. The practical and theoretical implications of these findings were discussed.
Natural Convection Flow and Heat Transfer Enhancement of a Nanofluid past a Truncated Cone with Magnetic Field Effect

A nonsimilarity analysis is performed to investigate the laminar, free convection boundary layer flow over a permeable isothermal truncated cone in the presence of a transverse magnetic field effect. A suitable set of dimensionless variables is used and non-similar equations governing the problem are obtained. Fourth order Runge-Kutta with shooting technique is employed for the numerical solution of the obtained equations. Different water-based nanofluids containing Cu, Ag, CuO, Al2O3, and TiO2 are taken into consideration. The effects of pertinent parameters such as the solid volume fraction of nanoparticles, and magnetic field parameter have been investigated. Furthermore, different models of nanofluid based on different formulas for thermal conductivity and dynamic viscosity on the flow and heat transfer characteristics are discussed. Various comparisons with previously published work for the case of a vertical plate are performed and the results are found to be in excellent agreement.
Study on 3D reconstruction of the elastin second harmonic generation image

3D reconstruction of image sequences is an important application in computer graphics and image processing, especially in biomedical engineering. 3D reconstruction of elastin second harmonic generation (SHG) sequences images can offer much more spatial structure information to improve the diagnostic accuracy significantly. In the paper, we designed a reconstruction pipeline of normal scar samples based on three reconstruction algorithms including Marching cubes, Ray casting volume rendering and Contours algorithm and compared their results. The results show that contours algorithm is more effective and has better performance than the other two methods.
Optimized Purification of a Heterodimeric ABC Transporter in a Highly Stable Form Amenable to 2-D Crystallization

Optimized protocols for achieving high-yield expression, purification and reconstitution of membrane proteins are required to study their structure and function. We previously reported high-level expression in Escherichia coli of active BmrC and BmrD proteins from Bacillus subtilis, previously named YheI and YheH. These proteins are half-transporters which belong to the ABC (ATP-Binding Cassette) superfamily and associate in vivo to form a functional transporter able to efflux drugs. In this report, high-yield purification and functional reconstitution were achieved for the heterodimer BmrC/BmrD. In contrast to other detergents more efficient for solubilizing the transporter, dodecyl-ß-D-maltoside (DDM) maintained it in a drug-sensitive and vanadate-sensitive ATPase-competent state after purification by affinity chromatography. High amounts of pure proteins were obtained which were shown either by analytical ultracentrifugation or gel filtration to form a monodisperse heterodimer in solution, which was notably stable for more than one month at 4°C. Functional reconstitution using different lipid compositions induced an 8-fold increase of the ATPase activity (k cat∼5 s−1). We further validated that the quality of the purified BmrC/BmrD heterodimer is suitable for structural analyses, as its reconstitution at high protein densities led to the formation of 2-D crystals. Electron microscopy of negatively stained crystals allowed the calculation of a projection map at 20 Å resolution revealing that BmrC/BmrD might assemble into oligomers in a lipidic environment.
The Influence of a Physician's Use of a Diagnostic Decision Aid on the Malpractice Verdicts of Mock Jurors

Background . One reason why physicians may be reluctant to use diagnostic decision aids is that such usage might increase the likelihood of an unfavorable malpractice verdict. The authors tested this hypothesis by sending a DVD of a malpractice trial to a national sample of jury-eligible adults. Methods. There were 3 independent variables: 1) the physician did or did not use a diagnostic aid, 2) the patient's symptoms either were or were not consistent with a diagnosis of probable appendicitis, and 3) the physician's decision to operate or not operate was either concordant or discordant with the severity of the patient's symptoms. Jurors rendered a verdict, and if they deemed the physician not to have met the standard of care, they indicated how punitive they felt toward the physician. Results . Mock jurors were more likely to side with the physician-defendant if he recommended an operation when there were many symptoms and refrained when there were few symptoms compared with a physician who did the converse. The use of a decision aid had no influence on this binary standard-of-care decision. Among those physicians deemed liable by the jurors, defying the aid resulted in heightened punishment compared with heeding it. Conclusion . Contrary to many physicians' fears, use of a diagnostic decision aid did not influence the likelihood of an adverse malpractice verdict. Complying with the aid's recommendation provided a measure of protection against jurors' punitiveness for those physicians deemed liable for malpractice.
A wide-area file system for migrating virtual machines

Improvements in processing power and core bandwidth set against fundamental constraints on wide-area latency increasingly emphasise the position in the network at which services are deployed. The XenoServer project is building a platform for distributed computing that facilitates the migration of services between hosts to minimise client latency and balance load in response to changing patterns of demand. Applications run inside whole-system virtual machines, allowing the secure multiplexing of host resources. Since services are specified in terms of a complete root file system and kernel image, a key component of this architecture is a substrate that provides an abstraction akin to local disks for these virtual machines, whether they are running, migrating or suspended. H owever, the same combination of wide-area latency, constrained bandwidth and global scale that motivates the XenoServer platform itself impedes the location, management and rapid transfer of storage between deployment sites. This dissertation describes X est, a novel wide-area file system that aims to address these challenges. I examine X est's design, centred on the abstraction of virtual disk s, volumes that allow only a single writer yet are transparently available despite migration. Virtual disks support the creation of snapshots and may be rapidly forked into copies that can be modified independently. This encourages an architectural separation into node-local file system and global content distribution framework and reduces the dependence of local operations on wide-area interactions. I then describe how X est addresses the dual problem of latency and scale by managing, caching, advertising and retrieving storage on the basis of groups, sets of files that correspond to portions of inferred working sets of client applications. Coarsening the granularity of these interfaces further decouples local and global activity: fewer units can lead to fewer interactions and the maintenance of less addressing state. The precision of these interfaces is retained by clustering according to observed access patterns and, in response to evidence of poor clusterings, selectively degrading groups into their constituent elements. I evaluate a real deployment of X est over a wide-area testbed. Doing so entails developing new tools for capturing and replaying traces to simulate virtual machine workloads. M y results demonstrate the practicality and high performance of my design and illustrate the trade-offs involved in modifying the granularity of established storage interfaces.
Atypical developmental trajectory of functionally significant cortical areas in children with chromosome 22q11.2 deletion syndrome

Chromosome 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11.2DS) is a neurogenetic disorder associated with neurocognitive impairments. This article focuses on the cortical gyrification changes that are associated with the genetic disorder in 6–15‐year‐old children with 22q11.2DS, when compared with a group of age‐matched typically developing (TD) children. Local gyrification index (lGI; Schaer et al. [2008]: IEEE Trans Med Imaging 27:161–170) was used to characterize the cortical gyrification at each vertex of the pial surface. Vertex‐wise statistical analysis of lGI differences between the two groups revealed cortical areas of significant reduction in cortical gyrification in children with 22q11.2DS, which were mainly distributed along the medial aspect of each hemisphere. To gain further insight into the developmental trajectory of the cortical gyrification, we examined age as a factor in lGI changes over the 6–15 years of development, within and across the two groups of children. Our primary results pertaining to the developmental trajectory of cortical gyrification revealed cortical regions where the change in lGI over the 6–15 years of age was significantly modulated by diagnosis, implying an atypical development of cortical gyrification in children with 22q11.2DS, when compared with the TD children. Significantly, these cortical areas included parietal structures that are associated, in typical individuals, with visuospatial, attentional, and numerical cognition tasks in which children with 22q11.2DS show impairments. Hum Brain Mapp, 2012. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
A VOP generation tool: automatic segmentation of moving objects in image sequences based on spatio-temporal information

The new MPEG-4 video coding standard enables content-based functionalities. In order to support the philosophy of the MPEG-4 visual standard, each frame of video sequences should be represented in terms of video object planes (VOPs). In other words, video objects to be encoded in still pictures or video sequences should be prepared before the encoding process starts. Therefore, it requires a prior decomposition of sequences into VOPs so that each VOP represents a moving object. This paper addresses an image segmentation method for separating moving objects from the background in image sequences. The proposed method utilizes the following spatio-temporal information. (1) For localization of moving objects in the image sequence, two consecutive image frames in the temporal direction are examined and a hypothesis testing is performed by comparing two variance estimates from two consecutive difference images, which results in an F-test. (2) Spatial segmentation is performed to divide each image into semantic regions and to find precise object boundaries of the moving objects. The temporal segmentation yields a change detection mask that indicates moving areas (foreground) and nonmoving areas (background), and spatial segmentation produces spatial segmentation masks. A combination of the spatial and temporal segmentation masks produces VOPs faithfully. This paper presents various experimental results.
A Comparative Analysis of Viral Peptides Presented by Contemporary Human and Chimpanzee MHC Class I Molecules

Genetic factors such as the MHC influence the immunocompetence of an individual. MHC genes are the most polymorphic genes in primates, which is often interpreted as an adaptation to establish good T cell responses to a wide range of (evolving) pathogens. Chimpanzee MHC (Patr) genes are less polymorphic than human MHC (HLA) genes, which is surprising because chimpanzee is the older species of the two and is therefore expected to display more variation. To quantify the effect of the reduced polymorphism, we compared the peptide binding repertoire of human and chimpanzee MHC molecules. Using a peptide-MHC binding predictor and proteomes of >900 mammalian viruses, we show that, at the population level, the total peptide binding repertoire of Patr-A molecules is ∼36% lower than that of their human counterparts, whereas the reduction of the peptide binding repertoire of the Patr-B locus is only 15%. In line with these results, different Patr-A molecules turn out to have largely overlapping peptide binding repertoires, whereas the Patr-B molecules are more distinct from each other. This difference is somewhat less apparent at the individual level, where we found that only 25% of the viruses are significantly better presented by “simulated” humans with heterozygous HLA-A and -B loci. Taken together, our results indicate that the Patr-B molecules recovered more after the selective sweep, whereas the Patr-A locus shows the most signs of the selective sweep with regard to its peptide binding repertoire.
Analytical Methods for Metformin Estimation

ABSTRACT Metformin is a widely prescribed oral anti-hyperglycemic agent used in the management of non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM) or type II diabetes. This article accentuates various analytical methods viz. HPLC, HPTLC, spectrophotometric, electrochemical, capillary electrophoresis and LC–MS for the estimation of metformin in pharmaceutical formulations and in biological matrices.
BLADES: an artificial intelligence approach to analog circuit design

An expert-systems-based automated design approach for analog circuits is presented. The approach uses both formal and intuitive knowledge in the design process. A prototype design environment, BLADES, which uses a divide and conquer solution strategy, has been successfully implemented and is currently capable of designing a wide range of subcircuit functional blocks as well as a limited class of integrated bipolar operational amplifiers. BLADES is believed to be the first successful design expert system in the analog design domain. It uses different levels of abstraction depending on the complexity of the design task under consideration. The importance of the abstraction level lies in the fact that once design primitives are defined, the problem of extracting the knowledge (design rules) become less complex. Two design examples are given to demonstrate the viability and versatility of the knowledge-based design technique as an analog design tool. None of the circuits designed and tested using BLADES were unstable. >
Examining the parent-adolescent bond and parent-offspring marijuana communication on marijuana use and problems: A test of primary socialization theory

EXAMINING THE PARENT-ADOLESCENT BOND AND PARENT-OFFSPRING MARIJUANA COMMUNICATION ON MARIJUANA USE AND PROBLEMS: A TEST OF PRIMARY SOCIALIZATION THEORY By Nikola Zaharakis, M. S. A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2015 Director: Wendy Kliewer, Ph.D. Chair and Professor of Psychology Department of Psychology Marijuana use among American young adults is rising, and perceptions of harm are declining. Individual states continue to enact more lenient marijuana use and possession laws. Marijuana use is associated with many serious negative outcomes. Thus, marijuana use among this age group has become a public health concern. According to Primary Socialization Theory, parents exert their influence on youth behavior through the parent-adolescent bond and through communication. Previous researchers have identified parent-offspring communication about alcohol and tobacco as a potentially important target of prevention efforts. Little research has yet explored marijuana communication and its potential influence on use-related outcomes. This study sought to model the influence of the parent-adolescent bond and parent-offspring communication about marijuana on marijuana use and problems related to use. In order to model this influence, the Communication about Marijuana (CAM) measure first was developed. In
Robust and incremental stitching and calibration with known rotation on pan-tilt-zoom camera

In this paper, we suggest a robust incremental image mosaicing and camera calibration method using rotation information of PTZ camera. In calibration step, we calculate multiple homographies between the image at reference position and the images at differently rotated position, and then we calculate camera matrix with those homographies and rotation matrixes in proposed single linear equation. For image mosacing, we transform the input image with estimated homography calculated with the camera matrix from previous step and rotation angle, and then we calculate more accurate homography using corresponding points between reference image and the transformed input image. By using the rotation information, we can achieve as good result as state-of-the-art trchnology with bundle adjustment even though we use incremental approach.
VMmark: A Scalable Benchmark for Virtualized Systems

The increasing speed of computing resources coupled with the rise of robust and flexible virtual machine technology creates opportunities for consolidating multiple, variably loaded systems onto a single physical server. Traditional server benchmarks, which focus on a single workload, do not capture the system behavior induced by multiple virtual machines. An appropriate virtual machine benchmark should employ realistic, diverse workloads running on multiple operating systems. The benchmark should generate an easily understandable metric that scales with underlying system capacity using a controlled strategy based on a combination of increased individual workload scores and running an increasing number of workloads. This paper presents a tile-based benchmark consisting of several familiar workloads running simultaneously in separate virtual machines. Each workload component is based upon a single-system benchmark running at less than full utilization. This collection of different workloads is aggregated into a unit of work referred to as a tile. The performance of each workload is measured and used to form an aggregate score for the tile. The scores generated when running multiple tiles simultaneously may be summed to increase the overall benchmark score.
A Software Architecture for Adapating Virtual Reality Content to Mobile Devices

This paper presents a proposal of software architecture to assist in the development of Virtual Reality applications for mobile devices based on context adaptation techniques. The aim of this solution is to offer support to Virtual Reality context appropriateness to be used by different mobile devices in accordance with their individual limitations. This adaptation is dynamically performed by the proposed solution without the need for user interaction, providing Virtual Reality content portability for mobile applications
Intensity inhomogeneity correction for the breast sonogram: constrained fuzzy cell-based bipartitioning and polynomial surface modeling.

PURPOSE To develop an intensity inhomogeneity algorithm for breast sonograms in order to assist visual identification and automatic delineation of lesion boundaries. METHODS The proposed algorithm was composed of two essential ideas. One was decomposing the region of interest (ROI) into foreground and background regions by a cell-based segmentation algorithm, called constrained fuzzy cell-based bipartition-EM (CFCB-EM) algorithm. The CFCB-EM algorithm deformed the contour in a fuzzy cell-based deformation fashion with the cell structures derived by the fuzzy cell competition (FCC) algorithm as the deformation unit and the boundary estimated by the normalized cut (NC) algorithm as the reference contour. The other was modeling the intensity inhomogeneity in an ROI as a spatially variant normal distribution with a constant variance and spatially variant means, which formed a polynomial surface of order n. The proposed algorithm was formulated as a nested EM algorithm comprising the outer-layer EM algorithm, i.e., the intensity inhomogeneity correction-EM (IIC-EM) algorithm, and the inner-layer EM algorithm, i.e., the CFCB-EM algorithm. The E step of the IIC-EM algorithm was to provide a reasonably good bipartition separating the ROI into foreground and background regions, which included three major component algorithms, namely, the FCC, the NC, and the CFCB-EM. The M step of the IIC-EM algorithm was to estimate and correct the intensity inhomogeneity field by least-squared fitting the intensity inhomogeneity to an nth order polynomial surface. Forty-nine breast sonograms with intensity inhomogeneity, each from a different subject, were randomly selected for performance analysis. Three assessments were carried out to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. RESULTS Based on the visual evaluation of two experienced radiologists, in the first assessment, 46 out of 49 breast lesions were considered to have better contrasts on the inhomogeneity-corrected images by both radiologists. The interrater reliability for the radiologists was found to be kappa = 0.479 (p = 0.001). In the second assessment, the mean gradients of the low-gradient boundary points before and after correction of the intensity inhomogeneity were compared by the paired t-test, yielding a p-value of 0.000, which suggested the proposed intensity inhomogeneity algorithm may enhance the mean gradient of the low-gradient boundary points. By using the paired t-test, the third assessment further showed that the Chan and Vese level set method could derive a much better lesion boundary on the inhomogeneity-corrected image than on the original image (p = 0.000). CONCLUSIONS The proposed intensity inhomogeneity correction algorithm could not only augment the visibility of lesion boundary but also improve the segmentation result on a breast sonogram.
Speech-language pathology students' approaches to learning in a problem-based learning curriculum

Problem-based learning (PBL) is hypothesized to enhance the development of deep learning. Most previous studies, however, have focused on outcomes (knowledge and skills) rather than students' approaches to learning, or how learning approach correlates with learning outcomes. Undergraduates in a speech-language pathology program (n = 114) completed the revised 2-factor Study Process Questionnaire (R-SPQ-2F) twice in an academic year to identify their approaches to learning and to compare these results with academic outcomes. Two findings emerged. Although the mean of scores for the deep approach (DA) to learning was consistently higher than the mean of scores for the surface approach (SA) to learning, exposure to PBL led to significant increase in DA and SA to learning during an academic year for students in Years 1 to 3. Students who did well in a PBL examination showed a much stronger DA than SA to learning, while students who performed less well showed a smaller difference between DA and SA to learning. Possible explanations for these findings are evaluated and implications for further studies are discussed.