Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Neural correlates of tobacco cue reactivity predict duration to lapse and continuous abstinence in smoking cessation treatment

It has been hypothesized that neural reactivity to drug cues in certain limbic/paralimbic regions of the brain is an indicator of addiction severity and a marker for likelihood of success in treatment. To address this question, in the current study, 32 participants (44 percent female) completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging cigarette cue exposure paradigm 2 hours after smoking, and then enrolled in a 9‐week smoking cessation treatment program. Neural activation to smoking cues was measured in five a priori defined limbic/paralimbic regions previously implicated with cue reactivity across substances. These included regions of the ventral striatum, anterior cingulate cortex and amygdala. Cox proportional hazard modeling was conducted to predict the number of days to first smoking lapse by using neural activation in these regions. Greater neural activation during pre‐treatment exposure to smoking cues in the right ventral striatum, the left amygdala, and the anterior cingulate was associated with longer periods of abstinence following cessation. A similar pattern was present for continuous abstinence for the full duration of treatment. While baseline levels of nicotine dependence were strongly associated with treatment outcome, activation in the right ventral striatum predicted duration of abstinence beyond level of nicotine dependence. These results suggest that pre‐treatment reactivity to smoking cues in areas associated with cue reactivity may be associated with successfully maintaining abstinence during treatment. This is consistent with models that propose that as addiction becomes more severe, motivational processing shifts from regions that subserve reward salience and learning to regions responsible motor behavior and habit learning.
Safety and performance evaluation of a next‐generation antimicrobial dressing in patients with chronic venous leg ulcers

The objective of this study was to investigate the safety and performance of AQUACEL™ Ag+ dressing, a wound dressing containing a combination of anti‐biofilm and antimicrobial agents, in the management of chronic wounds. Patients (n = 42) with venous leg ulcers exhibiting signs of clinical infection were treated for 4 weeks with AQUACEL™ Ag+ dressing, followed by management with AQUACEL™ wound dressings for 4 weeks. Wound progression, wound size, ulcer pain and clinical evolution of the wound were assessed for up to 8 weeks. Adverse events were recorded throughout the study. AQUACEL™ Ag+ dressing had an acceptable safety profile, with only one patient discontinuing from the study, because of a non‐treatment‐related adverse event. After 8 weeks, substantial wound improvements were observed: 5 patients (11·9%) had healed ulcers and 32 patients (76·2%) showed improvement in ulcer condition. The mean ulcer size had reduced by 54·5%. Patients reported less pain as the study progressed. Notable improvements were observed in patients with ulcers that were considered to require treatment with systemic antibiotics or topical antimicrobials at baseline (n = 10), with a mean 70·2% reduction in wound area. These data indicate that AQUACEL™ Ag+ dressing has an acceptable safety profile in the management of venous leg ulcers that may be impeded by biofilm.
City-Hunter: Hunting Smartphones in Urban Areas

The security issue of public WiFi is gaining more and more concern. By listening to probe requests, an adversary can obtain the SSID list of the APs to which a smartphone previously connected, and utilizes this information to trick the smartphone into associating to it. However, with the enhancement of security level, most smartphones now do not proactively disclose their SSID lists, making these attacks obsolete. In this paper, we propose City-Hunter, an attacker that can lure nearby smartphones without knowing their SSID information. City-Hunter establishes and maintains an SSID database by integrating both offline and online information. Meanwhile, it smartly chooses some SSIDs to hit a smartphone according to the past record and freshness. We evaluate the performance of City-Hunter in different public places. The results demonstrate that City-Hunter is able to successfully hit 12% ∼ 18% smartphones without knowing their SSID information, which is about 4 ∼ 8 times improvement compared to the similar attacks like KARMA and MANA.
High pesticide exposure events and DNA methylation among pesticide applicators in the agricultural health study

Pesticide exposure has been associated with acute and chronic adverse health effects. DNA methylation (DNAm) may mediate these effects. We evaluated the association between experiencing unusually high pesticide exposure events (HPEEs) and DNAm among pesticide applicators in the Agricultural Health Study (AHS), a prospective study of applicators from Iowa and North Carolina. DNA was extracted from whole blood from male AHS pesticide applicators (n = 695). Questionnaire data were used to ascertain the occurrence of HPEEs over the participant's lifetime. Pyrosequencing was used to quantify DNAm in CDH1, GSTp1, and MGMT promoters, and in the repetitive element, LINE‐1. Linear and robust regression analyses evaluated adjusted associations between HPEE and DNAm. Ever having an HPEE (n = 142; 24%) was associated with elevated DNAm in the GSTp1 promoter at CpG7 (chr11:67,351,134; P < 0.01) and for the mean across the CpGs measured in the GSTp1 promoter (P < 0.01). In stratified analyses, elevated GSTP1 promoter DNAm associated with HPEE was more pronounced among applicators >59 years and those with plasma folate levels ≤16.56 ng/mL (p‐interaction <0.01); HPEE was associated with reduced MGMT promoter DNAm at CpG2 (chr10:131,265,803; P = 0.03), CpG3 (chr10:131,265,810; P = 0.05), and the mean across CpGs measured in the MGMT promoter (P = 0.03) among applicators >59 years and reduced LINE‐1 DNAm (P = 0.05) among applicators with ≤16.56 ng/mL plasma folate. Non‐specific HPEEs may contribute to increased DNAm in GSTp1, and in some groups, reduced DNAm in MGMT and LINE‐1. The impacts of these alterations on disease development are unclear, but elevated GSTp1 promoter DNAm and subsequent gene inactivation has been consistently associated with prostate cancer. Environ. Mol. Mutagen. 58:19–29, 2017. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Reply to Interactive comment by Anonymous Referee # 1 “ A sprinkling experiment to quantify celerity-velocity differences at the hillslope scale ”

Few studies have quantified tThe difference between celerity and velocity of hillslope water flow, and explained the processes that control these differences is poorly understood. Here wWe assessed these differences by combining a 2415 day hillslope sprinkling experiment with a spatially explicit hydrologic model analysis. We focused our work at Watershed 10 at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest in western Oregon. δ2H label was applied at the start of the sprinkler experiment. Maximum event water (δ2H labeled water) contribution was 26% of lateral subsurface flow at 20 h. Celerities estimated from wetting front arrival times were generally much faster (on the order of 10 – 377 mm h-1) than average vertical velocities of δ2H (on the order of 6 – 17 mm h-1). In the model analysis, this was consistent with an identifiable 20 effective porosity (fraction of total porosity available for mass transfer) parameter, indicating that subsurface mixing was controlled by an immobile soil fraction, resulting in an the attenuationed of the δ2H input signal in lateral subsurface flow. Furthermore In addition to the immobile soil fraction, exfiltrating bedrock deep groundwater that mixed with lateral subsurface flow captured at the experimental hillslope trench caused further reduction in the δ2H input signal. Finally, oOur results suggest that soil depth variability played a significant role in the velocity-celerity responses. Deeper upslope soils 25 damped the δ2H input signal, while a shallow soil near the trench controlled the δ2H peak in lateral subsurface flow response. and played an important role in the generation of the δ2H breakthrough curve. A shallow soil (~ 0.30 m depth) near the trench controlled the δ2H peak in lateral subsurface flow response. Simulated exit time and residence time distributions with the our hillslope hydrologic model were consistent with our empirical analysis and provided additional insights into hydraulic behavior of the hillslope. In particular, it showed that water captured at the trench was not 30 representative for the hydrological and mass transport behavior of the did not represent the entire modeled hillslope domain, that generated total lateral subsurface flow, because of different the exit time distributions for lateral subsurface flow captured at the trench and total lateral subsurface flow. showed more early time weighting.
Mining Information on Bitcoin Network Data

Bitcoin, one major virtual currency, attracts users' attention by its novel mode in recent years. With blockchain as its basic technique, Bitcoin possesses strong security features which anonymizes user's identity to protect their private information. However, some criminals utilize Bitcoin to do several illegal activities bringing in great security threat to the society. Therefore, it is necessary to get knowledge of the current trend of Bitcoin and make effort to de-anonymize. In this paper, we put forward and realize a system to analyze Bitcoin from two aspects: blockchain data and network traffic data. We resolve the blockchain data to analyze Bitcoin from the point of Bitcoin address while simulate Bitcoin P2P protocol to evaluate Bitcoin from the point of IP address. At last, with our system, we finish analyzing its current trends and tracing its transactions by putting some statistics on Bitcoin transactions and addresses, tracing the transaction flow and de-anonymizing some Bitcoin addresses to IPs.
Scene Text Relocation with Guidance

Applying object proposal technique for scene text detection becomes popular for its significant improvement in speed and accuracy for object detection. However, some of the text regions after the proposal classification are overlapped and hard to remove or merge. In this paper, we present a scene text relocation system that refines the detection from text proposals to text. An object proposal-based deep neural network is employed to get the text proposals. To tackle the detection overlapping problem, a refinement deep neural network relocates the overlapped regions by estimating the text probability inside, and locating the accurate text regions by thresholding. Since the spacebetweenwordsindifferenttextlinesarevarious, aguidance mechanism is proposed in text relocation to guide where to extract the text regions in word level. This refinement procedure helps boost the precision after removing multiple overlapped text regions or joint cracked text regions. The experimental results on standard benchmark ICDAR 2013 demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Did you know Medicare does not usually include a dental benefit? Findings from a multisite investigation of oral health literacy

OBJECTIVES Medicare does not usually include a dental benefit. Adults who are unaware of this fact risk unanticipated expenses after retirement. This report will explore the sociodemographic and oral health literacy determinants of this knowledge. METHODS Data came from the Multi-Site Oral Health Literacy Research Study, a survey of patients presenting to two university dental clinics. Sociodemographic descriptors included age, sex, race/ethnicity, education level, and dental insurance status. Oral health literacy was measured by the Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Medicine and Dentistry (REALM-D). RESULTS Only 34 percent of respondents knew the correct answer to the Medicare question. Knowledge was significantly associated with age, race/ethnicity, education level (bivariate only), and REALM-D score. CONCLUSIONS Policymakers and those assisting in Medicare enrollment should ensure information regarding dental coverage is communicated in ways that individuals of varying literacy, language, and culture understand what is necessary to make appropriate decisions.
Métodos de ensaio indiretos e método Chapelle direto para determinação do consumo de cal pelos materiais pozolânicos

In this work, comments are made about indirect methods and direct Chapelle's method applied to the determination of the reactivity of pozzolanic materials. The Chapelle's method is based on the lime-pozzolan reaction and quantifies the pozzolanic reactivity of any material intended to be applied by the cement industry. This lime consumption determination by the pozzolan through this reaction can be made with mass proportions - lime:pozzolan 1:1, as originally proposed by Chapelle or 2:1, as specified in Brazilian and French Standards. Comparative results with both proportions are presented for sugar cane bagasse ash, rice rusk ash, silica fume, fly ash, and metakaolin, commonly studied in our country. Statistical calculations showed that for some materials of similar characteristics to the researched RHA, FA e MK at issue, essays carried out with only 1g of CaO may be underestimating the amounts of CaO consumed per gram of pozzolanic material that can be obtained. Comments were made about the Brazilian and French Standards based on this method and emphasized the expression of lime consumption per mass of the amorphous phase of these materials, as determined by X ray diffraction analysis with the Rietveld refinement method.
Oolong tea prevents cardiomyocyte loss against hypoxia by attenuating p‐JNK mediated hypertrophy and enhancing P‐IGF1R, p‐akt, and p‐Badser136 activity and by fortifying NRF2 antioxidation system

Tea, the most widely consumed natural beverage has been associated with reduced mortality risk from cardiovascular disease. Oolong tea is a partially fermented tea containing high levels of catechins, their degree of oxidation varies between 20%‐80% causing differences in their active metabolites. In this study we examined the effect of oolong tea extract (OTE) obtained by oxidation at low‐temperature for short‐time against hypoxic injury and found that oolong tea provides cyto‐protective effects by suppressing the JNK mediated hypertrophic effects and by enhancing the innate antioxidant mechanisms in neonatal cardiomyocytes and in H9c2 cells. OTE effectively attenuates 24 h hypoxia‐triggered cardiomyocyte loss by suppressing caspase‐3‐cleavage and apoptosis in a dose‐dependent manner. OTE also enhances the IGFIR/p‐Akt associated survival‐mechanism involving the elevation of p‐Badser136 in a dose‐dependent manner to aid cellular adaptations against hypoxic challenge. The results show the effects and mechanism of Oolong tea to provide cardio‐protective benefits during hypoxic conditions.
MDA‐MB‐231 and 8701BC breast cancer lines promote the migration and invasiveness of ECV304 cells on 2D and 3D type‐I collagen matrix

Tumor angiogenesis is a multiphasic process, having the extracellular matrix remodeling as critical step. Different classes of proteolytic enzymes in matrix digestion/remodeling are involved. The role of lytic enzymes and their activation mode have not been completely elucidated. Herein, the crosstalk between endothelia and tumor cells, by realization of bi‐ and three‐dimensional endothelial and breast cancer cells co‐cultures, were studied in vitro. Particularly, the effects of two tumor conditioned media (TCM) were assessed about endothelial proliferation, migration, and invasiveness. An increase in expression of pro‐MMP9 was detected when endothelial cells were cultured in the presence of both TCM; such as an up‐regulation of MMP1 and MMP14 and a down‐regulation of MMP7. Moreover the increased MMP2 gene expression from one of them and the stimulation MMP3 synthesis from the other one were observed; an increases of β3‐integrin, VEGFA, and DPP4 molecules were detected when endothelia cells are cultured with both TCM. The selection/characterization of elements present in conditioned media from breast cancer cells differently affect endothelial cells, make them potential effectors useful in breast cancer treatment.
Corpora amylacea and molluscum contagiosum on a cervical pap smear

When evaluating a Papanicolaou (Pap) smear, the cytology of the squamous epithelial cells is of utmost importance. This is what cytopathologists use to render a diagnosis, ranging from normal to atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance (ASCUS) to high grade squamous intraepithelial lesions, or even squamous cell carcinoma. However, occasionally the pathologist will run into microscopic noncellular material as in our case, such as corpora amylacea on the slides, or even uncommon viral inclusions such as Molluscum contagiosum (MCV). When these less common entities make their way on to a cervical Pap smear, it is important not only to correctly recognize them, but to understand their clinical implications as well. Diagn. Cytopathol. 2017;45:179–181. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Parallel Algorithms for Core Maintenance in Dynamic Graphs

This paper initiates the studies of parallel algorithms for core maintenance in dynamic graphs. The core number is a fundamental index reflecting the cohesiveness of a graph, which are widely used in large-scale graph analytics. The core maintenance problem requires to update the core numbers of vertices after a set of edges and vertices are inserted into or deleted from the graph. We investigate the parallelism in the core update process when multiple edges and vertices are inserted or deleted. Specifically, we discover a structure called superior edge set, the insertion or deletion of edges in which can be processed in parallel. Based on the structure of superior edge set, efficient parallel algorithms are then devised for incremental and decremental core maintenance respectively. To the best of our knowledge, the proposed algorithms are the first parallel ones for the fundamental core maintenance problem. The algorithms show a significant speedup in the processing time compared with previous results that sequentially handle edge and vertex insertions/deletions. Finally, extensive experiments are conducted on different types of real-world and synthetic datasets, and the results illustrate the efficiency, stability and scalability of the proposed algorithms.
Frequency-code domain contention in multi-antenna multicarrier wireless networks

Coordination among users is an inevitable but time-consuming operation in wireless networks. It severely limit the system performance when the data rate is high. We present FC-MAC, a novel MAC protocol that can complete a contention within one contention slot over a joint frequency-code domain. When a node takes part in the contention, it generates randomly a contention vector (CV), which is a binary sequence of length equal to the number of available orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) subcarriers. In FC-MAC, different user is assigned with a distinct signature (i.e., PN sequence). A node sends the signature at specific subcarriers and uses the sequence of the ON/OFF states of all subcarriers to indicate the chosen CV. Meanwhile, every node uses the redundant antennas to detect the CVs of other nodes. The node with the minimum CV becomes the winner. The experimental results show that, the collision probability of FC-MAC is as low as 0.05% when the network has 100 nodes. In comparison with IEEE 802.11, contention time is reduced by 50-80% and the throughput gain is up to 200%.
Semantic-Aware IoT Platforms

IoT paradigm applies to systems composed by numerous devices sharing information and making cooperative decisions with little or no human intervention. The IoT standard defined by oneM2M intiative furnishes a standardised framework for interoperable services that satisfies most of IoT modelling requirements. Prior standards and also oneM2M, while focusing on achieving interoperability at the communication level, do not achieve interoperability at the semantic level. In addition, the oneM2M standard does not address the issue of system adaptations to address system increasing complexity and evolving execution context. In this paper, the OM2M platform is presented as a solution for the interoperability challenge of IoT. An expressive ontology for IoT called IoT-O, making best use of already defined ontologies in specific domains such as sensor, observation, service, quantity kind, units, or time, is described to support semantic data. Finally, FRAMESELF framework is introduced to retrofit self-management capabilities into an IoT system.
Favorable Survival after Aortic Valve Replacement Compared to the General Population.

BACKGROUND A comparison was made between the long-term survival of patients undergoing aortic valve replacement (AVR) for aortic stenosis and of the general Icelandic population, using centralized registries. METHODS A total of 366 AVR patients (231 males, 135 females; mean age 70.1 years) operated on for aortic stenosis in Iceland between 2002 and 2011 was included in the study. Concomitant coronary artery bypass grafting was performed in 54% of cases. Short-term complications and 30-day mortality were analyzed. The patients' overall survival was compared with the survival of Icelanders of the same age and gender. The median follow up was 4.7 years. RESULTS A bioprosthesis was used in 81% of the patients; the median prosthesis size was 25 mm. Atrial fibrillation (68%) and acute kidney injury (23%) were the most common complications, and the 30-day operative mortality was 6%. Overall survival at one year and five years was 92% and 82%, respectively. There was no difference in survival between the surgical cohorts and expected survival of Icelanders of the same age and gender (p = 0.08), except for the first 30 postoperative days. CONCLUSIONS Despite the significant rate of short-term complications, the long-term survival of patients undergoing AVR for aortic stenosis was good compared to the general population of the same age and gender. These results confirmed the value of AVR as an excellent treatment option for aortic stenosis, as it offers a normalization of the patients' life expectancy.
High-resolution crystal structures of Colocasia esculenta tarin lectin

Tarin, the Colocasia esculenta lectin from the superfamily of &agr;-D-mannose-specific plant bulb lectins, is a tetramer of 47 kDa composed of two heterodimers. Each heterodimer possesses homologous monomers of ~11.9 (A chain) and ~12.7 (B chain) kDa. The structures of apo and carbohydrate-bound tarin were solved to 1.7 Å and 1.91 Å, respectively. Each tarin monomer forms a canonical &bgr;-prism II fold, common to all members of Galanthus nivalis agglutinin (GNA) family, which is partially stabilized by a disulfide bond and a conserved hydrophobic core. The heterodimer is formed through domain swapping involving the C-terminal &bgr;-strand and the &bgr;-sheet on face I of the prism. The tetramer is assembled through the dimerization of the B chains from heterodimers involving face II of each prism. The 1.91 Å crystal structure of tarin bound to Man&agr;(1,3)Man&agr;(1,6)Man reveals an expanded carbohydrate-binding sequence (QxDxNxVxYx4/6WX) on face III of the &bgr;-prism. Both monomers possess a similar fold, except for the length of the loop, which begins after the conserved tyrosine and creates the binding pocket for the &agr;(1,6)-terminal mannose. This loop differs in size and amino-acid composition from 10 other &bgr;-prism II domain proteins, and may confer carbohydrate-binding specificity among members of the GNA-related lectin family.