Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Roles of Agency and Artifacts in Assembling Open Data Complementarities

Strong claims are made about the potential of opening government data to drive service innovation. Yet little is known about the detailed processes of how hackers create or reshape services out of new releases of public datasets, and the conditions for the move from data release to service innovation. We argue the utility of open data is accrued through the creation of new artifacts with enhanced performativity transformed by human and material agency. In a multimethod study of the open data hackers in the UK we identified a series of interlocking processes involved in the conversion of public data into services of public value. We found that few of the ‘rapid prototypes’ developed through hack day events are maintained or sustained as service innovations beyond those events. Five artifacts provided the value stack of complementarities: cleaned data available through APIs or bulk downloads, linkable data, shared source code and configuration, source code repositories, and web technologies. Our findings also suggest that only a few open datasets induce the process of change, and that initial contributions are driven by the use values but can only be sustained through an open innovative approach to induce further collaboration within a wider open data community.
Diagnostic accuracy of a portable recording device (MESAM IV) in suspected obstructive sleep apnoea.

This study evaluated the accuracy of a portable recording device (MESAM IV) in identifying obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA). The MESAM IV system measures arterial oxygen saturation (Sa,O2), heart rate, snoring sounds and body position, and allows both automatic and manual scoring of the recordings. Nocturnal polysomnography and MESAM IV recordings were performed simultaneously in 150 patients with suspected OSA, and were analysed blindly by a different observer. Patients with an apnoea-hypopnoea index (AHI) greater than or equal to 10 were diagnosed as having OSA. In the evaluation of the discriminatory ability of MESAM IV scores, the cut-off point was set to minimize first the exclusion of truly diseased patients (i.e. false-negative interpretations), and then confirmation of nondiseased subjects (i.e. false-positives). When used as an exclusion test, the portable device reached a sensitivity of 0.98 and a specificity of 0.78; as a confirmation test, these values were 0.69 and 0.97, respectively. These results were achieved with manual scoring, which was superior to automatic scoring. Manual scoring was also better than automatic scoring when OSA was defined according to other threshold values (> or = 5, 15 and 20) for the AHI. The combination of MESAM IV manual scores could reduce the need for diagnostic polysomnography in three quarters of the patients clinically suspected of having obstructive sleep apnoea, substantially reducing costs associated with diagnostic procedures.
The Impact of College Residence on the Development of Critical Thinking Skills in College Freshmen. ASHE Annual Meeting Paper.

This study examined the critical thinking skills of resident and commuter students during the freshmen year, controlled for precollege background and ability. Differences in commuter and resident students' experience, particularly aspects of academic and social integration were also considered. The study sample was a subset taken from a national longitudinal study of factors influencing learning and cognitive development in college (sponsored by the National Center on Postsecondary Teaching, Learning, and Assessment). The sample consisted of 326 resident students and 316 commuter students attending 6 of the 18 institutions reported in the data. A precollege survey gathered information on student demographic and background characteristics. Students were tested on college entry using the Collegiate Assessment of Academic Proficiency (CAAP), and at the end of the freshman year with the CAAP reading comprehension, mathematics, and critical thinking modules. Additionally, measures of students' freshman-year experiences were derived from the College Student Experiences Questionnaire. No differences in critical thinking skill development were found between resident and commuter students during the first year of college. Findings suggest that students' out-of-classroom experiences and interactions can influence cognitive development during college. (Contains 50 references). (SW) ******************************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ******************************************************************************** THE IMPACT OF COLLEGE RESIDENCE ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS IN COLLEGE FRESHMEN
Multi-dimensional incremental loop fusion for data locality

Affine loop transformations have often been used for program optimization. Usually their focus lies on single loop nests. A few recent approaches also handle global programs with multiple loop nests but they are not really scalable towards realistic applications with dozens of nests. To reduce complexity, we split affine transformations into a linear transformation step and a translation step. This translation step can be used to perform general multidimensional loop fusion. We show that loop fusion can be performed incrementally and provide a greedy algorithm, which we illustrate on a simple example. Finally, we present a heuristic for data locality and provide some experimental results.
Training-specific muscle architecture adaptation after 5-wk training in athletes.

PURPOSE This study examined changes in the muscle size, muscle architecture, strength, and sprint/jump performances of concurrently training athletes during 5 wk of "altered" resistance training (RT). METHODS Eight female and 15 male athletes performed 4 wk of sprint, jump, and resistance training in addition to their sports training (standardization) before adopting one of three different programs for 5 wk: 1) squat lift training (SQ, N = 8) with sprint/jump training; 2) forward hack squat training (FHS, N = 7) with sprint/jump training; or 3) sprint/jump training only (SJ, N = 8). Muscle size, fascicle angle, and fascicle length of the vastus lateralis (VL) and rectus femoris (RF) muscles (using ultrasound procedures) as well as 20-m sprint run, vertical jump, and strength performance changes were examined. RESULTS A small increase in VL fascicle angle in SQ and FHS was statistically different to the decrease in SJ subjects (P < 0.05 at distal, P < 0.1 at proximal). VL fascicle length increased for SJ only (P < 0.05 at distal, P < 0.1 at proximal) and increased in RF in SQ subjects (P < 0.05). Muscle thickness of VL and RF increased in all training groups (P < 0.05) but only at proximal sites. There were no between-group differences in squat, forward hack squat, or isokinetic strength performances, or in sprint or jump performances, despite improvements in some of the tests across the groups. CONCLUSIONS Significant muscle size and architectural adaptations can occur in concurrently training athletes in response to a 5-wk training program. These adaptations were possibly associated with the force and velocity characteristics of the training exercises but not the movement patterns. Factors other than, or in addition to, muscle architecture must mediate changes in strength, sprint, and jump performance.
Interference of the Histone Deacetylase Inhibits Pollen Germination and Pollen Tube Growth in Picea wilsonii Mast

Histone deacetylase (HDAC) is a crucial component in the regulation of gene expression in various cellular processes in animal and plant cells. HDAC has been reported to play a role in embryogenesis. However, the effect of HDAC on androgamete development remains unclear, especially in gymnosperms. In this study, we used the HDAC inhibitors trichostatin A (TSA) and sodium butyrate (NaB) to examine the role of HDAC in Picea wilsonii pollen germination and pollen tube elongation. Measurements of the tip-focused Ca2+ gradient revealed that TSA and NaB influenced this gradient. Immunofluorescence showed that actin filaments were disrupted into disorganized fragments. As a result, the vesicle trafficking was disturbed, as determined by FM4-64 labeling. Moreover, the distribution of pectins and callose in cell walls was significantly altered in response to TSA and NaB. Our results suggest that HDAC affects pollen germination and polarized pollen tube growth in Picea wilsonii by affecting the intracellular Ca2+ concentration gradient, actin organization patterns, vesicle trafficking, as well as the deposition and configuration of cell wall components.
Calcineurin Controls Hyphal Growth, Virulence, and Drug Tolerance of Candida tropicalis

ABSTRACT Candida tropicalis, a species closely related to Candida albicans, is an emerging fungal pathogen associated with high mortality rates of 40 to 70%. Like C. albicans and Candida dubliniensis, C. tropicalis is able to form germ tubes, pseudohyphae, and hyphae, but the genes involved in hyphal growth machinery and virulence remain unclear in C. tropicalis. Recently, echinocandin- and azole-resistant C. tropicalis isolates have frequently been isolated from various patients around the world, making treatment difficult. However, studies of the C. tropicalis genes involved in drug tolerance are limited. Here, we investigated the roles of calcineurin and its potential target, Crz1, for core stress responses and pathogenesis in C. tropicalis. We demonstrate that calcineurin and Crz1 are required for hyphal growth, micafungin tolerance, and virulence in a murine systemic infection model, while calcineurin but not Crz1 is essential for tolerance of azoles, caspofungin, anidulafungin, and cell wall-perturbing agents, suggesting that calcineurin has both Crz1-dependent and -independent functions in C. tropicalis. In addition, we found that calcineurin and Crz1 have opposite roles in controlling calcium tolerance. Calcineurin serves as a negative regulator, while Crz1 plays a positive role for calcium tolerance in C. tropicalis.
The Role of Quality Health Services and Discussion about Birth Spacing in Postpartum Contraceptive Use in Sindh, Pakistan: A Multilevel Analysis

Introduction Rapid population growth, stagnant contraceptive prevalence, and high unmet need for family planning present significant challenges for meeting Pakistan’s national and international development goals. Although health behaviors are shaped by multiple social and environmental factors, research on contraceptive uptake in Pakistan has focused on individual and household determinants, and little attention has been given to community characteristics that may affect access to services and reproductive behavior. Methods Individual and community determinants of contraceptive use were identified using multivariable multilevel logistic regression to analyze data from a 2014 cross-sectional survey of 6,200 mothers in 503 communities in Sindh, Pakistan. Results Only 27% of women who had given birth in the two years before the study reported using contraceptives. After adjusting for individual and community characteristics, there was no difference in the odds of contraceptive use between urban and rural women. Women who had delivered at a health facility had 1.4 times higher odds of contraceptive use than women who delivered at home. Those who received information about birth spacing from a doctor or relatives/friends had 1.81 and 1.38 times higher odds of contraceptive use, respectively, than those who did not. Living in a community where a higher proportion of women received quality antenatal care and where discussion of birth spacing was more common was significantly associated with contraceptive use. Community-wide poverty lowered contraceptive use. Conclusions Quality of care at the community level has strong effects on contraceptive use, independent of the characteristics of individual households or women. These findings suggest that powerful gains in contraceptive use may be realized by improving the quality of antenatal care in Pakistan. Community health workers should focus on generating discussion of birth spacing in the community. Outreach efforts should target communities where the demand for contraception appears to be depressed due to high levels of poverty.
Precision Targeted Mutagenesis via Cas9 Paired Nickases in Rice

Recent reports of CRISPR- (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats)/Cas9 (CRISPR-associated protein 9) mediated heritable mutagenesis in plants highlight the need for accuracy of the mutagenesis directed by this system. Off-target mutations are an important issue when considering functional gene analysis, as well as the molecular breeding of crop plants with large genome size, i.e. with many duplicated genes, and where the whole-genome sequence is still lacking. In mammals, off-target mutations can be suppressed by using Cas9 paired nickases together with paired guide RNAs (gRNAs). However, the performance of Cas9 paired nickases has not yet been fully assessed in plants. Here, we analyzed on- and off-target mutation frequency in rice calli and regenerated plants using Cas9 nuclease or Cas9 nickase with paired gRNAs. When Cas9 paired nickases were used, off-target mutations were fully suppressed in rice calli and regenerated plants. However, on-target mutation frequency also decreased compared with that induced by the Cas9 paired nucleases system. Since the gRNA sequence determines specific binding of Cas9 protein–gRNA ribonucleoproteins at the targeted sequence, the on-target mutation frequency of Cas9 paired nickases depends on the design of paired gRNAs. Our results suggest that a combination of gRNAs that can induce mutations at high efficiency with Cas9 nuclease should be used together with Cas9 nickase. Furthermore, we confirmed that a combination of gRNAs containing a one nucleotide (1 nt) mismatch toward the target sequence could not induce mutations when expressed with Cas9 nickase. Our results clearly show the effectiveness of Cas9 paired nickases in delivering on-target specific mutations.
Mutations in Ribosomal Protein L3 Are Associated with Oxazolidinone Resistance in Staphylococci of Clinical Origin

ABSTRACT Following recent reports of ribosomal protein L3 mutations in laboratory-derived linezolid-resistant (LZDr) Staphylococcus aureus, we investigated whether similar mutations were present in LZDr staphylococci of clinical origin. Sequence analysis of a variety of LZDr isolates revealed two L3 mutations, ΔSer145 (S. aureus NRS127) and Ala157Arg (Staphylococcus epidermidis 1653059), both occurring proximal to the oxazolidinone binding site in the peptidyl transferase center. The oxazolidinone torezolid maintained a ≥8-fold potency advantage over linezolid for both strains.
Fundamental components for the realization of a federated Integrated Electronic Health Record environment

The Integrated Electronic Health Record (I-EHR) is a term used to describe the whole set of information that exists in electronic form and is related to the personal health of an individual. Any approach towards I-EHR focuses on the needs of professionals or citizens who want a uniform way of accessing parts of personal health record information that is physically located in disparate information sources. Any I-EHR end-user environment must provide fast, secure and authorized access to the distributed fragments of the electronic patient record (EPR) originating at multiple clinical information systems, and to deliver them in a multitude of formats. The importance of such an environment becomes apparent when used in conjunction with a number of advanced telematic services, such as medical collaboration, home care monitoring, and/or health emergency services, to provide seamless care without visible organizational boundaries.
Signal Processing Strategies for Cochlear Implants Using Current Steering

In contemporary cochlear implant systems, the audio signal is decomposed into different frequency bands, each assigned to one electrode. Thus, pitch perception is limited by the number of physical electrodes implanted into the cochlea and by the wide bandwidth assigned to each electrode. The Harmony HiResolution bionic ear (Advanced Bionics LLC, Valencia, CA, USA) has the capability of creating virtual spectral channels through simultaneous delivery of current to pairs of adjacent electrodes. By steering the locus of stimulation to sites between the electrodes, additional pitch percepts can be generated. Two new sound processing strategies based on current steering have been designed, SpecRes and SineEx. In a chronic trial, speech intelligibility, pitch perception, and subjective appreciation of sound were compared between the two current steering strategies and standard HiRes strategy in 9 adult Harmony users. There was considerable variability in benefit, and the mean results show similar performance with all three strategies.
Effective Classification of Microcalcification Clusters Using Improved Support Vector Machine with Optimised Decision Making

Classification of micro calcification clusters is very essential for early detection of breast cancer from mammograms. In this paper, an improved support vector machine (SVM) scheme is proposed, where optimized decision making is introduced for effective and more accurate data classification. Experimental results on the well-known DDSM database have shown that the proposed method can significantly increase the performance in terms of F1 and Az measurements for the successful classification of clustered micro calcifications.
Placebo-controlled phase 3 study of oral BG-12 for relapsing multiple sclerosis.

BACKGROUND BG-12 (dimethyl fumarate) was shown to have antiinflammatory and cytoprotective properties in preclinical experiments and to result in significant reductions in disease activity on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in a phase 2, placebo-controlled study involving patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis. METHODS We conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled phase 3 study involving patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis. Patients were randomly assigned to receive oral BG-12 at a dose of 240 mg twice daily, BG-12 at a dose of 240 mg three times daily, or placebo. The primary end point was the proportion of patients who had a relapse by 2 years. Other end points included the annualized relapse rate, the time to confirmed progression of disability, and findings on MRI. RESULTS The estimated proportion of patients who had a relapse was significantly lower in the two BG-12 groups than in the placebo group (27% with BG-12 twice daily and 26% with BG-12 thrice daily vs. 46% with placebo, P<0.001 for both comparisons). The annualized relapse rate at 2 years was 0.17 in the twice-daily BG-12 group and 0.19 in the thrice-daily BG-12 group, as compared with 0.36 in the placebo group, representing relative reductions of 53% and 48% with the two BG-12 regimens, respectively (P<0.001 for the comparison of each BG-12 regimen with placebo). The estimated proportion of patients with confirmed progression of disability was 16% in the twice-daily BG-12 group, 18% in the thrice-daily BG-12 group, and 27% in the placebo group, with significant relative risk reductions of 38% with BG-12 twice daily (P=0.005) and 34% with BG-12 thrice daily (P=0.01). BG-12 also significantly reduced the number of gadolinium-enhancing lesions and of new or enlarging T(2)-weighted hyperintense lesions (P<0.001 for the comparison of each BG-12 regimen with placebo). Adverse events associated with BG-12 included flushing and gastrointestinal events, such as diarrhea, nausea, and upper abdominal pain, as well as decreased lymphocyte counts and elevated liver aminotransferase levels. CONCLUSIONS In patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis, both BG-12 regimens, as compared with placebo, significantly reduced the proportion of patients who had a relapse, the annualized relapse rate, the rate of disability progression, and the number of lesions on MRI. (Funded by Biogen Idec; DEFINE ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00420212.).
Effect of synaptic charge convergence on path planning over a neural network

Signal representation and computational principles discovered in biological neural networks have long challenged our assumptions on how to build artificial robotic systems. In the context of spatial navigation, this work assumes that ‘place’ cells, found in the mammalian hippocampus, are involved in providing directions to a distant, but previously visited goal. This work uses a sparse topological map representation of the environment using synaptically-linked place cells, a more biologically-plausible representation than dense occupancy grids. Previous work has shown the plausibility of using spike-propagation in this network to perform path planning. In this work, we show that biologically-realistic addition of coincident spikes can speed up propagation that favors paths that provide redundancy. This preference can be interpreted as risk aversion, offering a lower average cost of travel, when sections of the planned path are discovered to be non-traversable. We demonstrate some of these properties on our model neuromorphic VLSI system.
Relationships of Osteoporosis Health Beliefs to Calcium Intake of Women

RELATIONSHIPS OF OSTEOPOROSIS HEALTH BELIEFS TO CALCIUM INTAKE OF WOMEN By Mary C. Peterson The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships of health beliefs to calcium intake of women. There were two hypotheses tested. Hypothesis one: there is a positive relationship between the strength of health beliefs related to susceptibility, seriousness, benefits and motivation and the level of calcium intake. Hypothesis two: there is a negative relationship between the strength of health beliefs related to barriers and calcium intake. The study was conducted using a descriptive correlational design. The sample included 201 women recruited from senior centers and apartment complexes, and clients from an outpatient mammography clinic. The study used the Osteoporosis Health Belief Calcium Scale to measure health beliefs about osteoporosis, and a 24-hour dietary recall and calcium supplement sheet to measure calcium intake. A statistically significant relationship was demonstrated between calcium intake and the health belief variables health motivation, perceived benefits, and perceived barriers. In addition to testing the hypotheses, stepwise multiple regression was used to examine which health beliefs account for the greatest proportion of variance in calcium intake. Health motivation explained 4.1% of the variance in calcium intake.
Reliability Analysis of Rock Wedge Stability: Knowledge-Based Clustered Partitioning Approach

In this paper a knowledge-based clustered partitioning technique is developed for determining reliability index and failure probability of rock wedge. Here, the a reliability index is analyzed and the optimization is carried out using a knowledge-based clustered partitioning (KCP) technique. The reliability index computed with this KCP technique is compared with those using other approaches such as the Excel Solver-based method. The new technique for determining the reliability index involves a global search method and is found effective and efficient. Reliability analysis with this KCP technique is then used to examine the influence of parameter uncertainties and correlations among the parameters on the failure probability of rock wedges. Significant findings are derived from the sensitivity and parametric analysis. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)GT.1943-5606.0000618. © 2012 American Society of Civil Engineers. CE Database subject headings: Rocks; Uncertainty principles; Reliability; Safety; Failures; Knowledge-based systems.