Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Teenage motherhood and risk of premature death: long-term follow-up in the ONS Longitudinal Study

Background Teenage motherhood is relatively common in the UK, but little is known about related health inequalities in this population. We estimated cause-specific mortality risks over three decades in a nationally representative cohort. Method We examined premature mortality in a 1.1% sample of all women who were teenagers in England and Wales during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s using data from the Office for National Statistics Longitudinal Study (ONS LS). Our primary outcome was suicide. Long-term follow-up to 31 December 2006, to a potential maximum age of 49 years, was achieved through near-complete routine linkage to national mortality records. We created a time-dependent exposure variable, with relative risks estimated according to age when women first experienced motherhood versus a reference group of those currently without children. Results Women who were teenage mothers were around 30% more likely to die prematurely by any cause and almost 60% more likely to die unnaturally, whereas first-time motherhood at mature age conferred lower risk compared to women without children. Teenage motherhood was associated with a more than doubled risk of suicide [mortality rate ratio (MRR) 2.23, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.30–3.83], and elevated risks of fatal cancer of the cervix and lung were also found. Changing the reference category to first-time mothers at 20 years and above also revealed a significant elevation in risk of accidental death. Conclusions The complex psychosocial needs of these women require greater attention from clinicians, public health professionals, social services and policymakers. Their elevated risk of poor health outcomes may persist well beyond the actual teenage motherhood years.
Influence of Factors Associated With the Deceased-Donor on Kidney Transplant Outcomes.

OBJECTIVES We analyzed different donor characteristics to determine those that significantly affect patient and graft outcomes after kidney transplant. MATERIALS AND METHODS We conducted a retrospective analysis of patients who had received kidney transplants at our institution between 1990 and 2011 from deceased-donors. We tracked these patients until the end of 2014. Using univariate and multivariate analyses, we analyzed the following outcomes: patient status, graft status, chronic allograft nephropathy, and delayed graft function. RESULTS In 342 recipients, univariate analysis revealed donor-associated predictors of transplant outcomes. Recipients of kidneys from older donors showed longer time to creatinine normalization (P = .047). We found a partial correlation between donor diagnosis and the number of dialyses after surgery (excluding the effect of donor age), with patients receiving kidneys from donors who had cerebrovascular events having higher risk of delayed graft function (P = .03). Donors with shorter stays in intensive care units resulted in longer graft survival (P = .02), and vasopressor use by donors was associated with delayed graft function in recipients (P = .018). Low serum sodium levels in donors predicted worse survival of recipients and transplants (P = .015 and P = .048). The number of hemodialysis procedures after transplant was correlated with the donors ' creatinine level (P = .027). Insufficient daily dieresis of donor predicted worse graft survival (P = .04). Correlation analysis showed that a higher PCO2 level in donors was significantly associated with longer creatinine normalization time after kidney transplant (P = .001). Cox regression analysis detected 2 significant independent predictors of graft outcomes: duration of perfusion of donor kidney (P = .016) and length of intensive care unit stay of donor (P = .032), with improved prognosis associated with longer perfusion time and shorter time in intensive care unit. CONCLUSIONS The kidney donor has a direct effect on patient life expectancy.
Foresighted delayed CSIT feedback for finite rate of innovation channel models and attainable NetDoFs of the MIMO interference channel

Channel State Information at the Transmitter (CSIT) is of utmost importance in multi-user wireless networks, in which transmission rates at high SNR are characterized by Degrees of Freedom (DoF, the rate prelog). In recent years, a number of ingenious techniques have been proposed to deal with delayed and imperfect CSIT. In this paper we consider Finite Rate of Information (FRoI) channel models (CM) introduced earlier, which captures the DoF of the channel coefficient time series. Both the block fading model and the stationary bandlimited channel model are special cases of the FRoI CM. However, the fact that FRoI CMs model stationary channel evolutions allows to exploit one more dimension: arbitrary time shifts. In this way, the FroI CM allows Foresighted Channel Feedback (FCFB) which provides CSIT at all times, even in the presence of CSIT FB delay, by increasing the FB rate. DoF-optimal schemes in the presence of perfect CSIT then maintain optimal DoF when combined with FCFB. This is applicable to any multi-user network. In this paper we analyze NetDoFs, which account for training overhead and FB DoF consumption on the reverse link. We provide attainable NetDoF expressions in the MIMO Interference Channel (IC) with linear transceivers for the DoF-optimal schemes of Interference Alignment (IA) with FCFB and several simpler schemes. Numerical evaluations show that the attainable NetDoF may be far away from the DoF and that simpler schemes may be close to optimal in terms of NetDoF.
Examining Equivalence of Accommodations on a Statewide Elementary-Level Science Test

This study examined the extent to which the underlying factor structure of the 2005 South Carolina Palmetto Achievement Challenge Tests (PACT) in science for grades 3, 4, and 5 was equivalent for students who were administered the test in a regular (standard) or accommodated form. Three accommodation groups were of interest: students who received any testing accommodations, students who received any testing accommodations excluding those for whom setting was the only accommodation provided, and students who received the oral administration accommodation. Each accommodation group was compared to a matched sample of the regular group. It was found that the science test for a given grade level is appropriately described by the factor model for regular and accommodation groups. Results indicated that the factor structure, factor loadings, and error variances of the science test were similar across the regular and accommodation groups.
How safe is preterm operative vaginal delivery and which is the instrument of choice?

Abstract Objective: The objective of this study was to determine neonatal outcomes in preterm operative vaginal delivery given the current paucity of data available to guide clinicians. Study design: A retrospective review of 64 cases was conducted, and neonatal outcomes were compared to spontaneous vaginal deliveries in similar gestations. The primary outcomes studied were death and occurrence of intraventricular haemorrhage. Secondary outcomes included admission to NICU, Apgar <3 at 5 min, ventilation requirement, jaundice requiring treatment, culture-proven sepsis and necrotising enterocolitis. The study was conducted in a stand-alone maternity unit of approximately 9000 deliveries per year. Results and conclusions: We concluded that although vacuum delivery is avoided in preterm infants, outcomes were similar to forceps deliveries of similar gestations.
Stromal Fat4 acts non-autonomously with Dchs1/2 to restrict the nephron progenitor pool

Regulation of the balance between progenitor self-renewal and differentiation is crucial to development. In the mammalian kidney, reciprocal signalling between three lineages (stromal, mesenchymal and ureteric) ensures correct nephron progenitor self-renewal and differentiation. Loss of either the atypical cadherin FAT4 or its ligand Dachsous 1 (DCHS1) results in expansion of the mesenchymal nephron progenitor pool, called the condensing mesenchyme (CM). This has been proposed to be due to misregulation of the Hippo kinase pathway transcriptional co-activator YAP. Here, we use tissue-specific deletions to prove that FAT4 acts non-autonomously in the renal stroma to control nephron progenitors. We show that loss of Yap from the CM in Fat4-null mice does not reduce the expanded CM, indicating that FAT4 regulates the CM independently of YAP. Analysis of Six2−/−;Fat4−/− double mutants demonstrates that excess progenitors in Fat4 mutants are dependent on Six2, a crucial regulator of nephron progenitor self-renewal. Electron microscopy reveals that cell organisation is disrupted in Fat4 mutants. Gene expression analysis demonstrates that the expression of Notch and FGF pathway components are altered in Fat4 mutants. Finally, we show that Dchs1, and its paralogue Dchs2, function in a partially redundant fashion to regulate the number of nephron progenitors. Our data support a model in which FAT4 in the stroma binds to DCHS1/2 in the mouse CM to restrict progenitor self-renewal. Highlighted article: In the mouse kidney, Fat4 interacts with Dchs1 and 2 to regulate nephron progenitor differentiation, independently of YAP and the core PCP Vangl2, but through Six2.
Prognostic factors of idiopathic inflammatory myopathies complicated with interstitial lung disease: protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis

Introduction Idiopathic inflammatory myopathies may be an overlapping disease complex. Although interstitial lung disease affects the mortality and the morbidity of the disease, a clinical course and the prognosis of the disease complicated with interstitial lung disease are diverse among individuals and prognostic factors have yet to be clarified. This article aims to report the rationale and the methodology of a future intended systematic review and meta-analysis of prognostic factors of idiopathic inflammatory myopathies complicated with interstitial lung disease. Methods and analysis Participants are eligible if they are diagnosed as polymyositis/dermatomyositis, clinically amyopathic dermatomyositis or antisynthetase syndrome complicated with interstitial lung disease. Primary outcomes are all-cause and pulmonary-cause mortality and secondary outcomes include a progression of the disease and a deterioration of health-related quality of life. All primary studies of any design aside from case reports or case series are included. 2 reviewers will search electronic databases such as the MEDLINE, the EMBASE and the Science Citation Index Expanded and extract relevant data independently. A risk of bias in individual studies is evaluated based on the Quality in Prognostic Studies tool. Meta-analysis will be conducted if 3 or more studies are available for each outcome and pooled effects will be presented by the odds ratio (OR). Where combining data is inappropriate due to a small number of studies or substantial heterogeneity, the result is reported qualitatively. Subgroup and sensitivity analysis are also considered based on clinical and methodological differences such as clinical manifestations, study designs and the quality of studies. The evidence level is assessed following the Grades of Recommendation, Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) method. Ethics and dissemination This study raises no ethical issues as it is based on the findings of previously published articles. The result will be reported in a peer-reviewed medical journal. Trial registration number CRD42016036999.
Speaker Adaptation in DNN-Based Speech Synthesis Using d-Vectors

The paper presents a mechanism to perform speaker adaptation in speech synthesis based on deep neural networks (DNNs). The mechanism extracts speaker identification vectors, socalled d-vectors, from the training speakers and uses them jointly with the linguistic features to train a multi-speaker DNNbased text-to-speech synthesizer (DNN-TTS). The d-vectors are derived by applying principal component analysis (PCA) on the bottle-neck features of a speaker classifier network. At the adaptation stage, three variants are explored: (1) d-vectors calculated using data from the target speaker, or (2) d-vectors calculated as a weighted sum of d-vectors from training speakers, or (3) d-vectors calculated as an average of the above two approaches. The proposed method of unsupervised adaptation using the d-vector is compared with the commonly used i-vector based approach for speaker adaptation. Listening tests show that: (1) for speech quality, the d-vector based approach is significantly preferred over the i-vector based approach. All the d-vector variants perform similar for speech quality; (2) for speaker similarity, both d-vector and i-vector based adaptation were found to perform similar, except a small significant preference for the d-vector calculated as an average over the i-vector.
Lifestyle in progression from hypertensive disorders of pregnancy to chronic hypertension in Nurses’ Health Study II: observational cohort study

Objectives To study the association between lifestyle risk factors and chronic hypertension by history of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (HDP: gestational hypertension and pre-eclampsia) and investigate the extent to which these risk factors modify the association between HDP and chronic hypertension. Design Prospective cohort study. Setting Nurses’ Health Study II (1991-2013). Participants 54 588 parous women aged 32 to 59 years with data on reproductive history and without previous chronic hypertension, stroke, or myocardial infarction. Main outcome measure Chronic hypertension diagnosed by a physician and indicated through nurse participant self report. Multivariable Cox proportional hazards models were used to investigate the development of chronic hypertension contingent on history of HDP and four lifestyle risk factors: post-pregnancy body mass index, physical activity, adherence to the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet, and dietary sodium/potassium intake. Potential effect modification (interaction) between each lifestyle factor and previous HDP was evaluated with the relative excess risk due to interaction. Results 10% (n=5520) of women had a history of HDP at baseline. 13 971 cases of chronic hypertension occurred during 689 988 person years of follow-up. Being overweight or obese was the only lifestyle factor consistently associated with higher risk of chronic hypertension. Higher body mass index, in particular, also increased the risk of chronic hypertension associated with history of HDP (relative excess risk due to interaction P<0.01 for all age strata). For example, in women aged 40-49 years with previous HDP and obesity class I (body mass index 30.0-34.9), 25% (95% confidence interval 12% to 37%) of the risk of chronic hypertension was attributable to a potential effect of obesity that was specific to women with previous HDP. There was no clear evidence of effect modification by physical activity, DASH diet, or sodium/potassium intake on the association between HDP and chronic hypertension. Conclusion This study suggests that the risk of chronic hypertension after HDP might be markedly reduced by adherence to a beneficial lifestyle. Compared with women without a history of HDP, keeping a healthy weight seems to be especially important with such a history.
Effects of employees’ career competencies development on their organizations

Purpose – This paper examines the effects of the development of employees’ career competencies (knowing-why, knowing-how, and knowing-whom) on the employing organization and assesses the role of career satisfaction in this relationship. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to research on the consequences of employees’ boundaryless careers. Design/methodology/approach – The study involves a two-wave quantitative investigation of alumni of a large public university in the Netherlands. Findings – The results suggest that by investing in the development of their career competencies, employees contribute to organizational culture, capabilities, and connections. However, these contributions depend on employees’ level of perceived career satisfaction. If employees are satisfied with their careers, they contribute more to their organizations. Research limitations/implications – Further longitudinal research, strengthened by an additional, third wave of data collection, is needed to replicate the present fin.
Clinical utility, factor analysis, and further validation of the memorial delirium assessment scale in patients with advanced cancer

Delirium is a common neuropsychiatric complication in patients with advanced cancer. The Memorial Delirium Assessment Scale (MDAS) is a recently developed 10‐item severity rating instrument. The purpose of the current prospective study was to further assess the clinical utility, factor structure, and validity of the MDAS in a relatively homogeneous population of patients with advanced cancer.
Passive Localization of Mixed Near-Field and Far-Field Sources Using Two-stage MUSIC Algorithm

Passive source localization is one of the issues in array signal processing fields. In some practical applications, the signals received by an array are the mixture of near-field and far-field sources, such as speaker localization using microphone arrays and guidance (homing) systems. To localize mixed near-field and far-field sources, this paper develops a two-stage MUSIC algorithm using cumulant. The key points of this paper are: (i) in the first stage, this paper derives one special cumulant matrix, in which the virtual ¿steering vector¿ is the function of the common electric angle in both near-field and far-field signal models so that source direction-of-arrival (DOA) (near-field or far-field one) can be obtained from this electric angle using the conventional high-resolution MUSIC algorithm; (ii) in the second stage, this paper derives another particular cumulant matrix, in which the virtual ¿steering matrix¿ has full column rank no matter whether the received signals are multiple near-field sources or multiple far-field ones or their mixture. What is more important, the virtual ¿steering vector¿ can be separated into two parts, in which the first one is the function of the common electric angle in both signal models, whereas the second part is the function of the electric angle that exists only in near-field signal model. Furthermore, by substituting the common electric angle estimated in the first stage into one special Hermitian matrix formed from another MUSIC spectral function, the range of near-field sources can be obtained from the eigenvector of the Hermitian matrix. The resultant algorithm avoids two- dimensional search and pairing parameters; in addition, it avoids the estimation failure problem and alleviates aperture loss. Simulation results are presented to validate the performance of the proposed method.
Vulnerability to posttraumatic stress disorder

Most individuals will experience a traumatic event during their lives and some will develop subsequent posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD is characterized by symptoms of re-experiencing the traumatic event, avoidance of reminders of the event, and hyperarousal symptoms. The thesis of Miriam Lommen describes six studies related to three different aims. First, two studies aimed to identify individual differences that increase vulnerability to PTSD. Dutch soldiers were tested before and after their deployment to Afghanistan. The results showed reduced fear extinction learning and higher neuroticism scores before deployment predicted PTSD symptom severity after deployment. This suggests that reduced extinction learning and neuroticism are pre-trauma vulnerability factors for PTSD. Second, two studies in the laboratory aimed to understand the mechanisms that contribute to PTSD. Results showed that individuals with high neuroticism scores avoided more ambiguous stimuli than those with low neuroticism scores. This may be the pathogenic mechanism that links neuroticism to PTSD. Third, two studies aimed to test PTSD prevalence in groups that are studied less often, including tsunami survivors in Sri Lanka and patients with schizophrenia. Results showed that PTSD was highly prevalent in these samples. However, PTSD in patients with schizophrenia was often overlooked by clinicians
Gross motor coordination in junior tennis players

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was twofold: (1) to determine the gross motor coordination performance levels of junior tennis players and (2) to analyse the effects of age and gender. Participants were junior male (n = 50) and female (n = 51) tennis players aged 6–14. Körperkoordinationstest für Kinder (KTK) was used to assess the gross motor coordination of the participants. Results revealed that none of the participants performed lower than normal level in motor coordination. Besides, 40.6% of the participants performed above normal level. No gender differences were found on all subtests of KTK and also on total motor quotient. Although older players performed better on each test than their younger counterparts for the raw scores, no significant age effect was observed on motor quotient scores among different age groups.
Communication deficits in the elderly after TBI as a function of age of injury: a systematic analysis of existing literature and survey of estimates of severity of impairment

Communication The elderly are a rapidly growing population in the United States and have the highest rate of TBI-related hospitalization. Across all levels of severity, elderly persons have uniformly poorer outcomes including quality of life, community integration, disability, and mortality, but there is a significant lack of published research regarding communication outcome in the elderly population. The likelihood that speech-language pathologists (SLPs) will clinically treat elderly clients with TBI is great; understanding the effects that age of injury has on communication may inform clinicians’ abilities to accurately and efficiently assess, diagnose, and treat the elderly. The present study examined the relationship between age of onset of injury and severity of communication deficits following traumatic brain injury (TBI); the study included a review of published research and a survey of SLP estimates of severity of impairment. Limitations of the study and directions for further research are discussed.
University of Birmingham Distinguishing between the metabolome and xenobiotic exposome in environmental field samples analysed by direct-infusion mass spectrometry based metabolomics and lipidomics

Environmental metabolomics is increasingly used to investigate organismal responses to complex chemical mixtures, including waste water effluent (WWE). In parallel, increasingly sensitive analytical methods are being used in metabolomics studies, particularly mass spectrometry. This introduces a considerable, yet overlooked, challenge that high analytical sensitivity will not only improve the detection of endogenous metabolites in biological specimens but also exogenous chemicals. If these often unknown xenobiotic features are not removed from the ‘‘biological’’ dataset, they will bias the interpretation and could lead to incorrect conclusions about the biotic response. Here we illustrate and validate a novel workflow classifying the origin of peaks detected in biological samples as: endogenous, xenobiotics, or metabolised xenobiotics. The workflow is demonstrated using direct infusion mass spectrometry-based metabolomic analysis of testes from roach exposed to different concentrations of a complex WWE. We show that xenobiotics and their metabolic products can be detected in roach testes (including triclosan, chloroxylenol and chlorophene), and that these compounds have a disproportionately high level of statistical significance within the total (bio)chemical changes induced by the WWE. Overall we have demonstrated that this workflow extracts more information from an environmental metabolomics study of complex mixture exposures than was possible previously.