Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Upper arm and cardiac magnetic resonance imaging in Duchenne muscular dystrophy

We analyzed quantitative maps of T1 and T2 relaxation times and muscle fat fraction measurements in magnetic resonance imaging of the upper arm skeletal muscles and heart in ambulatory boys with Duchenne muscular dystrophy and age‐range‐matched healthy volunteer boys. The cardiac‐optimized sequences detected fatty infiltration and edema in the upper arm skeletal muscles but not the myocardium in these Duchenne muscular dystrophy boys who had normal ejection fraction. Imaging the heart and skeletal muscle using the same magnetic resonance imaging methods during a single scan may be useful in assessing relative disease status and therapeutic response in clinical trials of Duchenne muscular dystrophy.
Tributyltin is a potent inducer of the heat shock response in human diploid fibroblasts

Submicromolar concentrations of tributyltin (TBT), a commercially used organotin compound, were found to induce the expression of several stress proteins, most notably HSP89 and HSP70, in IMR‐90 human diploid fibroblats in a time‐ and dose‐dependent manner. This induction can be demonstrated by quantitation of 1) synthesis of the heat shock proteins (HSPs), 2) relative abundance of mRNA of hsp70, and 3) transient expression of a human hsp70 promoter driven reporter gene. TBT also increased the abundance of mRNA of heme oxygenase, whereas heat shock was without effect. Analysis of protein binding to a consensus heat shock element (HSE)by electrophoretic mobility shift assay suggests that the induction of the heat shock response by TBT was attributable to activation of the heat shock transcription factor (HSTF). © 1992 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Long-Term Outcome of Healthy Participants with Atrial Premature Complex: A 15-Year Follow-Up of the NIPPON DATA 90 Cohort

Background Atrial premature complexes (APC) are among the most frequently encountered electrocardiographic abnormalities. However, their prognostic value among healthy individuals is unclear. This study aimed to clarify the role of APC in predicting cardiovascular events in a large Japanese community cohort using long-term follow-up data. Methods National Integrated Project for Prospective Observation of Non-communicable Disease And its Trends in the Aged, 1990-2005, (NIPPON DATA 90) was a large cohort study of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in Japan. A total of 7692 otherwise healthy participants with no history of myocardial infarction, stroke, atrial fibrillation, or atrial flutter were enrolled (men, 41.5%; mean age, 52.5 ± 13.7 years). Results A total of 64 (0.8%) participants had at least one beat of APC on screening 12-lead electrocardiogram. During the follow-up of 14.0 ± 2.9 years (total, 107,474 patient-years), 338 deaths occurred due to CVD. The association between APC and CVD outcome was assessed using Cox proportional hazard models. Cox regression analysis revealed that the presence of APC was an independent predictor for CVD deaths (HR: 2.03, 95% CI: 1.12–3.66, P = 0.019). The association of APC on CVD death was more evident in participants with hypertension (P-value for interaction, 0.03). Conclusions APC recorded during the screening electrocardiogram are significantly associated with an increased risk of CVD deaths in a Japanese community-dwelling population and are a strong prognostic factor for hypertensive participants.
Understanding Emotional Problems: The REBT Perspective

Rational emotive behaviour therapy (REBT) is an approach to counselling and psychotherapy rooted in the CBT tradition and one that has a distinctive perspective on emotional problems. Understanding Emotional Problems provides an accurate understanding of the REBT perspective on eight major emotional problems for which help is sought: anxiety, depression, shame, guilt, unhealthy anger, hurt, unhealthy jealousy and unhealthy envy. Rather than discussing treatment methods, Windy Dryden encourages the reader to accurately understand these problems and suggests that a clear, correct understanding of each disorder will provide a firm foundation for effective treatment. This concise, straightforward text presents each emotional problem in a similar way, allowing the reader to compare and contrast the similarities and differences between problems. Understanding Emotional Problems will be essential reading for therapists both in training and in practice.
Effects of Physical and Social Environments on the Health and Well-Being of Antarctic Winter-Over Personnel

This article examines the influence of physical and social environmental stressors on the short-term and long-term health and well-being of 358 enlisted U.S. Navy personnel who wintered-over in Antarctica between 1964 and 1974. Station size and severity of physical environment were significantly inversely associated with symptomatology of the winter-over syndrome. These characteristics of station environments were also significantly inversely associated with subsequent risk of total first hospital admissions relative to a group of 2,396 enlisted Navy men who volunteered for winter-over duty and were evaluated as medically and psychologically qualified for such duty but who were assigned elsewhere. The results suggest that adaptation to extreme social and physical environments may provide long-term health benefits for certain individuals.
A Scheduling Service Model and a SchedulingArchitecture for an Integrated Services Packet

Integrated Services Packet Networks (ISPN) are designed to integrate the network service requirements of a wide variety of computer-based applications. Some of these services are delivered primarily through the packet scheduling algorithms used in the network switches. This paper addresses two questions related to these scheduling algorithms. The rst question is: what scheduling services should an ISPN ooer? In answer, we propose a scheduling service model for ISPN's which is based on our projections about future application and institutional service requirements. Our service model includes both a delay-related component designed to meet the ergonomic requirements of individual applications, and also a hierarchical link-sharing component designed to meet the economic needs of resource sharing between diierent entities. The second question we address is: what implications does this service model have for the packet scheduling algorithms? We answer this question by constructing a scheduling architecture, and then argue that any scheduling algorithm capable of supporting our scheduling service model must conform to this architecture. The scheduling architecture is derived from the natural precedence ordering of the service model's various scheduling goals.
Modified model for the switch from Sendai virus transcription to replication

RNase mapping was used to estimate the levels of unencapsidated Sendai virus plus-strand RNAs which cross the leader-NP junction relative to NP mRNA. Significant amounts of leader readthrough RNAs were found in Z strain-infected cells, similar to that described for the polR mutant of vesicular stomatitis virus, even though this strain is considered wild type. The levels of the readthrough RNAs detected fell sharply when progressively longer probes were used, unlike that of NP mRNA. These studies suggest that polymerases which read through the first junction terminate shortly afterwards in the absence of concurrent assembly of the nascent chain, whereas those which reinitiate at NP continue efficiently to the next junction. Reinitiation appears to be necessary to convert the polymerase to a mode in which elongation is independent of concurrent assembly. Concurrent assembly appears to be required not only for the polymerase to read through the junction efficiently, but also for it to continue elongation between junctions.
Corpus-driven learning of Event Recognition Rules

In this paper a complex framework for adaptaing IE systems to changing domains and users is described. The proposed methodology is based on the integration of different learning methods over a corpus (i.e. example-driven conceptual clustering, corpusdriven probabilistic learning and terminological reasoning) and on an available general-purpose ontology. First experiments have been carried out on domain-specific corpora (the annotated portion of the PennTree Bank and the Reuters TREVI collection) and used Wordnet [16] as the reference ontology. However, the methodology is independent from the specific domain as well as from the adopted ontology. Early evaluation is promising and first results will be presented and discussed.
Investigation of Metabolomic Blood Biomarkers for Detection of Adenocarcinoma Lung Cancer

Background: Untargeted metabolomics was used in case–control studies of adenocarcinoma (ADC) lung cancer to develop and test metabolite classifiers in serum and plasma as potential biomarkers for diagnosing lung cancer. Methods: Serum and plasma were collected and used in two independent case–control studies (ADC1 and ADC2). Controls were frequency matched for gender, age, and smoking history. There were 52 adenocarcinoma cases and 31 controls in ADC1 and 43 adenocarcinoma cases and 43 controls in ADC2. Metabolomics was conducted using gas chromatography time-of-flight mass spectrometry. Differential analysis was performed on ADC1 and the top candidates (FDR < 0.05) for serum and plasma used to develop individual and multiplex classifiers that were then tested on an independent set of serum and plasma samples (ADC2). Results: Aspartate provided the best accuracy (81.4%) for an individual metabolite classifier in serum, whereas pyrophosphate had the best accuracy (77.9%) in plasma when independently tested. Multiplex classifiers of either 2 or 4 serum metabolites had an accuracy of 72.7% when independently tested. For plasma, a multimetabolite classifier consisting of 8 metabolites gave an accuracy of 77.3% when independently tested. Comparison of overall diagnostic performance between the two blood matrices yielded similar performances. However, serum is most ideal given higher sensitivity for low-abundant metabolites. Conclusion: This study shows the potential of metabolite-based diagnostic tests for detection of lung adenocarcinoma. Further validation in a larger pool of samples is warranted. Impact: These biomarkers could improve early detection and diagnosis of lung cancer. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 24(11); 1716–23. ©2015 AACR.
Evaluating Health Storytelling in Spanish-Language Television from a Communication Infrastructure Theory Perspective

Latinos are at high risk for many health problems, yet they are often missed by traditional health communication campaigns that tend to deploy messages through general audience channels. New immigrant Latinos living in Los Angeles indicate a strong connection to Spanish-language television for health and medical information, but the quantity and quality of health information provided through such programming has not been systematically evaluated. Grounded in communication infrastructure theory, a content analysis of Spanish-language television news and talk shows was conducted to examine the nature of health coverage. As a primary health source for the Los Angeles Latino community, Spanish-language television could serve an important role in helping Latinos overcome health disparities by connecting them to a health storytelling network. However, findings show that the programs analyzed do not adequately connect viewers to other health storytellers or personalize information in such a way that may prompt interpersonal discussion and the dissemination of health information.
Private Investment and Political Institutions

Recent research has demonstrated a negative link between macroeconomic and political uncertainty and levels of private investment across countries. This raises the question whether certain types of government institutions might help reduce this uncertainty. North and Weingast (1989) propose that political institutions characterized by checks and balances can have beneficial effects on investment by allowing governments to credibly commit not to engage in ex post opportunism with respect to investors. In this paper I develop and test a modified version of their hypothesis, suggesting that checks and balances, on average, improve possibilities for commitment, but that they are not a necessary condition for doing so. Results of heteroskedastic regression and quantile regression estimates strongly support this proposition.
Selection of Measures for Sleep Stages Classification

In this work a large amount of features from polysomnographic recordings was tested to find the best set of variables for sleep stages classification. Discriminant analysis was done with Fisher quadratic classifier and forward selection procedure. Resulting set contains 14 measures from EEG, EOG, EMG and ECG signals, some of them are used in this context for the first time (e. g. fractal exponent and entropy of EMG).
Comparison of visual sensitivity to human and object motion in autism spectrum disorder

Successful social behavior requires the accurate detection of other people's movements. Consistent with this, typical observers demonstrate enhanced visual sensitivity to human movement relative to equally complex, nonhuman movement [e.g., Pinto & Shiffrar, 2009 ]. A psychophysical study investigated visual sensitivity to human motion relative to object motion in observers with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Participants viewed point‐light depictions of a moving person and, for comparison, a moving tractor and discriminated between coherent and scrambled versions of these stimuli in unmasked and masked displays. There were three groups of participants: young adults with ASD, typically developing young adults, and typically developing children. Across masking conditions, typical observers showed enhanced visual sensitivity to human movement while observers in the ASD group did not. Because the human body is an inherently social stimulus, this result is consistent with social brain theories [e.g., Pelphrey & Carter, 2008 ; Schultz, 2005 ] and suggests that the visual systems of individuals with ASD may not be tuned for the detection of socially relevant information such as the presence of another person. Reduced visual sensitivity to human movements could compromise important social behaviors including, for example, gesture comprehension.
Focus, Scope, and Practice of Behavioral Consultation to Public Schools

SUMMARY Public school districts frequently seek professional consultation to improve educational services. This article is an overview of the focus, scope, and practice of behavioral consultation to public schools. A four-stage process of consultation is described, followed by a discussion on the expanding role of behavior support intervention. Next, the involvement of consultants in the design of individual-student, classroom-wide, and whole-school programs is considered. Contemporary approaches to consultation are presented such as positive behavior support, functional behavioral assessment, and efficacy evaluation that targets natural data sources. A concluding section sets forth recommendations for the successful practice of public school behavioral consultation.
Long-Term Cortisol Treatment Inhibits Pubertal Development in Male Common Carp, Cyprinus carpio L1

Abstract The onset and regulation of puberty is determined by functional development of the brain-pituitary-gonad (BPG) axis. Stress has been shown to interfere with reproduction and the functioning of the BPG axis. The response to chronic and severe stress may require much energy and force the organism to make adaptive choices. Energy that is normally available for processes like growth, immune response, or reproduction will be channeled into restoration of the disturbed homeostasis. Cortisol plays a key role in the homeostatic adaptation during or after stress. In the present study, immature common carp were fed with cortisol-containing food pellets covering the pubertal period. We showed that cortisol caused an inhibition of pubertal development, by affecting directly or indirectly all components of the BPG axis. The salmon GnRH content of the brain was decreased. Luteinizing hormone- and FSH-encoding mRNA levels in the pituitary and LH plasma levels were diminished by long-term cortisol treatment, as was the testicular androgen secretion. Testicular development, reflected by gonadosomatic index and the first wave of spermatogenesis, was retarded.
Deobfuscator: An Automated Approach to the Identification and Removal of Code Obfuscation

The Deobfuscator is an IDA Pro plug-in that neutralizes anti-disassembly code and transforms obfuscated code to simplified code in the actual binary. This plug-in is used in conjunction with a binary injector to remove obfuscated code and replace it with a simplified, transformed equivalent. We developed this tool in assessing strengths of protections and malware analysis for DoD government entities and commercial companies.
Preferences for a Verb′s Complements and Their Use in Sentence Processing

Abstract We explore how subject′s preferences for complements of particular verbs affect the on-line processing of sentences. We conduct three experiments: The first experiment gathers binary preference choices for several verb types and their complements: the second and third experiments use these preference choices and find that a subject′s preference for a verb′s complements affects an initial parse in sentences that do not contain obvious structural ambiguities. These data are discussed in terms of the lexical entry-driven and phrase structure-driven models of sentence processing. We conclude that lexical information is used during the initial analysis of a sentence to set up possible paths the parser might take; when the structure of the sentence is incongruent with a subject′s preference, sentence processing performance is disrupted and reanalysis must occur
Development of a Bayesian model to estimate health care outcomes in the severely wounded

Background: Graphical probabilistic models have the ability to provide insights as to how clinical factors are conditionally related. These models can be used to help us understand factors influencing health care outcomes and resource utilization, and to estimate morbidity and clinical outcomes in trauma patient populations. Study design: Thirty-two combat casualties with severe extremity injuries enrolled in a prospective observational study were analyzed using step-wise machine-learned Bayesian belief network (BBN) and step-wise logistic regression (LR). Models were evaluated using 10-fold cross-validation to calculate area-under-the-curve (AUC) from receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curves. Results: Our BBN showed important associations between various factors in our data set that could not be developed using standard regression methods. Cross-validated ROC curve analysis showed that our BBN model was a robust representation of our data domain and that LR models trained on these findings were also robust: hospital-acquired infection (AUC: LR, 0.81; BBN, 0.79), intensive care unit length of stay (AUC: LR, 0.97; BBN, 0.81), and wound healing (AUC: LR, 0.91; BBN, 0.72) showed strong AUC. Conclusions: A BBN model can effectively represent clinical outcomes and biomarkers in patients hospitalized after severe wounding, and is confirmed by 10-fold cross-validation and further confirmed through logistic regression modeling. The method warrants further development and independent validation in other, more diverse patient populations.
Adaptive energy-efficient scheduling for hierarchical wireless sensor networks

Most Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) applications require distributed signal and collaborative data processing. One of the critical issues for enabling collaborative processing in WSNs is how to schedule tasks in a systematic way, including assigning tasks to sensor nodes, and determining their execution and communication sequence. Since WSN nodes are very resource constrained, mainly regarding their energy supply, one major concern when scheduling tasks in such environments is to minimize and balance the energy consumption, so that the system operational lifetime is maximized. We propose a heuristic-based three-phase algorithm (TPTS) for allocating tasks to multiple clusters in hierarchical WSNs that aims at finding a scheduling scheme that minimizes the overall energy consumption and balances the workload of the system while meeting the application's deadline. The performance of the proposed algorithm and the effect of several parameters on its behavior were evaluated by simulations, with promising results. The experimental results show that the time and energy performance of TPTS are close to the time and energy of benchmarks in most cases, while load balance is always provided.
Performance Evaluation of the Slotted Ring Multiprocessor

As microprocessor speeds continue to improve at a very fast rate the bandwidth requirements for system level interconnections in multiprocessors may eventually rule out the use of shared buses even for small scale multiprocessors. On the other hand high speed unidirectional links are an emerging technology that has the potential to scale with microprocessor technology and could replace buses as the interconnection fabric for future multiprocessors. We evaluate the performance of the unidirectional slotted ring interconnection for small to medium scale shared memory systems, using a hybrid methodology of analytical models and trace driven simulations. We use memory traces from actual execution of parallel programs to drive detailed event driven simulations of a variety of ring and bus multiprocessors. Snooping and directory coherence protocols for the slotted ring are evaluated in the context of multitasking. Snooping is shown to outperform full map and linked list directory schemes in the unidirectional slotted ring, and it also compares favorably to high performance split transaction bus systems. >
Effects of agroforestry on Phytoseiidae communities (Acari: Mesostigmata) in vineyards. A synthesis of a 10-year period of observations

Several species of the predatory mite family Phytoseiidae are of major economic importance for biological pest control in crops, including grapevines. Plant diversification in agrosystems is reported to enhance useful biodiversity and provide ecosystem services. Thus, agroforestry, which consists in co-planting trees and crops, is assumed to be a possible way to ensure regulation of pest outbreaks by phytoseiid mites. This paper investigates the effect of trees (Pinus pinea and Sorbus domestica) within vineyards on Phytoseiidae communities. Five experimental plots were considered, two where vines were co-planted with P. pinea and S. domestica, and three monoculture plots: vines, P. pinea and S. domestica. Sampling was carried out on vines and trees in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2010 and 2012. A higher Phytoseiidae diversity was observed in agroforestry plots than in monoculture plots. Kampimodromus aberrans (replacing T. [ T.] exhilaratus) seemed to colonize these plots 15 years after its plantation, especially when vines were co-planted with P. pinea. Factors affecting these faunistical changes are discussed. Effects on Phytoseiidae densities differed depending on grape cultivartree species associations. Factors affecting these interactions are discussed; plant diversity does not simply lead to a higher density and diversity of natural enemies.