Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Etiology of diarrhea in Bangladeshi infants in the first year of life analyzed using molecular methods.

BACKGROUND Diarrhea causes enormous morbidity and mortality in developing countries, yet the relative importance of multiple potential enteropathogens has been difficult to ascertain. METHODS We performed a longitudinal cohort study from birth to 1 year of age in 147 infants in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Using multiplex polymerase chain reaction, we analyzed 420 episodes of diarrhea and 1385 monthly surveillance stool specimens for 32 enteropathogen gene targets. For each infant we examined enteropathogen quantities over time to ascribe each positive target as a probable or less-likely contributor to diarrhea. RESULTS Multiple enteropathogens were detected by the first month of life. Diarrhea was associated with a state of overall pathogen excess (mean number of enteropathogen gene targets (± SE), 5.6 ± 0.1 vs 4.3 ± 0.1 in surveillance stool specimens; P < . 05). After a longitudinal, quantitative approach was applied to filter out less-likely contributors, each diarrheal episode still had an average of 3.3 probable or dominant targets. Enteroaggregative Escherichia coli, Campylobacter, enteropathogenic E. coli, rotavirus, and Entamoeba histolytica were the most frequent probable contributors to diarrhea. Rotavirus was enriched in moderate to severe diarrheal episodes. CONCLUSIONS In this community-based study diarrhea seemed to be a multipathogen event and a state of enteropathogen excess above a high carriage baseline.
Na+/K+-ATPase E960 and phospholemman F28 are critical for their functional interaction

Na+-K+-ATPase (NKA) establishes the transmembrane [Na+] gradient in cells. In heart, phospholemman (PLM) inhibits NKA activity by reducing its apparent Na+ affinity, an effect that is relieved by PLM phosphorylation. The NKA crystal structure suggests regions of PLM–NKA interaction, but the sites important for functional effects in live cells are not known. We tested wild type (WT) and CFP–NKA-α1 point mutants (alanine substitution at F956, E960, L964, and F967) for fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) with WT–PLM–YFP in HEK293 cells. NKA–PLM FRET was unaltered with F956A or F967A, reduced with L964A, and nearly abolished with E960A. Mutating the PLM site (F28A) identified by structural analysis to interact with E960-NKA also nearly abolished NKA–PLM FRET. In contrast, NKA–PLM coimmunoprecipitation was only slightly reduced by E960A–NKA or F28A–PLM mutants, consistent with an additional interaction site. FRET titrations indicate that the additional site has higher affinity than that between E960–NKA and F28–PLM. To test whether the FRET-preventing mutations also prevent PLM functional effects, we measured NKA-mediated Na+-transport in intact cells. For WT–NKA, PLM reduced apparent Na+-affinity of NKA and PLM phosphorylation reversed the effect. In contrast, for E960A–NKA the apparent Na+-affinity was unaltered by either PLM or forskolin-induced PLM phosphorylation. We conclude that E960 on NKA and F28 on PLM are critical for PLM effects on both NKA function and NKA–PLM FRET, but also there is at least one additional site that is critical for tethering PLM to NKA.
Architects' Perceptions on EA Use -- An Empirical Study

Enterprise Architecture (EA) is increasingly being utilized by organizations as an approach to manage the complexity of business processes, information systems and technical infrastructure. Although EA is generally regarded as an effective management tool, its full benefits can be realized only when it is incorporated into day-to-day operations of the organization. In the Finnish public sector, the use of EA has recently been mandated by the newly passed Act on Information Management Governance in Public Administration. The aim of the legislation is to achieve more efficient, integrated and cost-efficient public services. This article describes the results of a survey aimed to identify perceptions on actual EA work among Finnish public sector participants currently undertaking EA initiatives. The results highlight potential issues related to successful EA adoption.
X Chromosome Inversions and Meiosis in Drosophila Melanogaster.

It has been shown above that crossovers between X chromosome segments inverted with respect to one another influence the orientation of the meiotic tetrads in such a way as to eliminate the single crossover chromatids, leaving a normal non-crossover one in the reduced egg nucleus. The more complex results expected from multiple exchange are analyzed and shown to give results in agreement with observation. It seems probable that the scheme outlined in this paper will apply for the case of inversions that do not include the locus of the spindle attachment and for other chromosome aberrations in which crossing-over gives rise to chromatids with two spindle attachments, and where the conditions of meiosis are such that (a) the meiotic spindles are oriented so that the reduced nuclei lie approximately on a single straight line, and (b) only one of the terminal nuclei functions in further development. These conditions obtain in megasporogenesis in most seed plants, as well as in oogenesis in most animals.
Accuracy of using serum D-dimer for diagnosis of acute intestinal ischemia

Objective: The purpose of this meta-analysis is to comprehensively assess the accuracy of serum D-dimer for the diagnosis of acute intestinal ischemia. Methods: Diagnostic studies of D-dimer for accurate diagnosis of acute intestinal ischemia were extracted from 6 databases, and prospective and retrospective studies that provided adequate data on sensitivity and specificity were included here. Sensitivity, positive likelihood ratio (PLR), negative likelihood ratio (NLR), and diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) were calculated. The overall diagnostic performance of D-dimer was assessed by plotting a summary receiver operating characteristic curve (SROC) and calculating the area under the curve (AUC). Results: A total of 1300 patients with suspected acute intestinal ischemia from 12 studies met the inclusion criteria. The combined sensitivity, specificity, PLR, NLR, and DOR were 0.94 (95% CI: 0.87–0.97), 0.50 (95% CI: 0.40–0.61), 1.9 (95% CI: 1.5–2.3), 0.12 (95% CI: 0.05–0.26), and 16 (95% CI: 7–39), respectively. The AUC was 0.81 (95% CI: 0.78–0.84). Conclusion: The results of this meta-analysis suggested that plasma D-dimer detection might be a useful means of identifying patients with acute intestinal ischemia of the abdomen.
Social Participation of Children With Severe and Multiple Disabilities : Parental Questionnaire

children's social participation to personal and environmental variables. Parents of 1,105 students at schools for students who are physically challenged reported their children's social participation during the past year, as well as the students' needs for medical care, their motor function level and communication ability, and characteristics of the family and their use of support services. Some students engaged in a relatively wide range of activities, whereas about 5% were severely restricted in their social
A ciência como sublimação: o desafio da objetividade na sociologia reflexiva de Pierre Bourdieu

O artigo investiga a resposta de Bourdieu a um problema classico na epistemologia das ciencias sociais: como e possivel um conhecimento objetivo do mundo societario se os pontos de vista dos cientistas sociais sao condicionados por seu pertencimento a esse mundo? O texto expoe sua tese de que a sociologia da sociologia, ao revelar os condicionantes sociais do pensamento sobre o social, possibilita uma margem de liberdade em relacao a tais condicionantes. Longe de desembocar no relativismo pluriperspectivista, portanto, a sociologia reflexiva de Bourdieu e voltada a conquista da objetividade. O trabalho tambem mostra que sua nocao de reflexividade se articula a uma concepcao de objetividade cientifica como efeito “sublimado” da competicao regrada entre agentes interessados que caracteriza o campo da ciencia. Por fim, embora simpatico a proposta de Bourdieu, o artigo e pontuado com consideracoes criticas sobre as tensoes a ela inerentes: a) o reconhecimento do carater “posicionado” das suas intervencoes sociologicas versus a intencao de capturar o espaco inteiro dos pontos de vista sociocientificos; b) a defesa de uma reflexividade sociologica calcada na dialetica racional do campo cientifico versus a admissao de que as ciencias sociais nao possuem suficiente autonomia para levar essa dialetica racional a cabo.
A Virtual Assistant to Help Dysphagia Patients Eat Safely at Home

For millions of people with swallowing disorders, preventing potentially deadly aspiration pneumonia requires following prescribed safe eating strategies. But adherence is poor, and caregivers' ability to encourage adherence is limited by the onerous and socially aversive need to monitoring another's eating. We have developed an early prototype for an intelligent assistant that monitors adherence and provides feedback to the patient, and tested monitoring precision with healthy subjects for one strategy called a "chin tuck. " Results indicate that adaptations of current generation machine vision and personal assistant technologies can effectively monitor chin tuck adherence, and suggest feasibility of a more general assistant that encourages adherence to a range of safe eating strategies.
Multimode interference power divider design optimization using simulation-based surrogate models and space mapping

Fast design of multimode interference (MMI) power dividers for integrated optics circuits is discussed. Our approach exploits surrogate models built from discrete electromagnetic (EM) simulations. These models - after a suitable correction and through proper handling - serve as computationally efficient predictors in simulation driven optimization of high index contrast components. The operation and performance of the proposed technique is demonstrated with design of compact power dividers of different power splitting ratios. The designed power dividers are supposed to operate equally well for two polarizations.
Performance Analysis Using the MIPS R10000 Performance Counters

Tuning supercomputer application performance often requires analyzing the interaction of the application and the underlying architecture. In this paper, we describe support in the MIPS R10000 for non-intrusively monitoring a variety of processor events - support that is particularly useful for characterizing the dynamic behavior of multi-level memory hierarchies, hardware-based cache coherence, and speculative execution. We first explain how performance data is collected using an integrated set of hardware mechanisms, operating system abstractions, and performance tools. We then describe several examples drawn from scientific applications, which illustrate how the counters and profiling tools provide information that helps developers analyze and tune applications.
Association of Matrix Metalloproteinase-9 Gene −1562C/T Polymorphism with Essential Hypertension: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Article

Background: Matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9) gene −1562C/T polymorphism could regulate its expression level and thus affected people’s predisposition to essential hypertension. However, related studies yielded inconsistent or contradictory results. Methods: To evaluate the association of MMP-9 −1562C/T polymorphism with essential hypertension, we performed a meta-analysis by combining all available independent case-control studies (n=6). A systematic literature search of PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus and CNKI (Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure) databases was conducted by two researchers independently for all relevant articles published before March 2015. Results: MMP-9 −1562C/T polymorphism was associated with essential hypertension under the allelic model (T vs.C, OR=1.36, 95% CI=1.17–1.59, P<0.0001). Subsequent sensitivity analysis confirmed the stability of the results. Such association was also observed in the dominant (TT+CT vs. CC, OR=1.30, 95% CI=1.10–1.54, P=0.002) and co-dominant (CT vs. TT+CC, OR=1.27, 95% CI=1.05–1.53, P=0.01) models but not in the recessive model (TT vs. CT+CC, OR=1.30, 95% CI=0.50–3.36, P=0.59). Conclusion: MMP-9 −1562C/T polymorphism was associated with the risk of essential hypertension.
Toward automatic generation of SPARQL result set visualizations: A use case in service monitoring

The problem of representing RDF data using charts, dashboards, maps and so on has become pressing, in particular to prove the value of the Semantic Web to enhance the analysis of business data. State of the art solutions focus on mapping query results to a specific chart type or view and then manually writing the procedure that creates the final dashboard, but whenever a different visualization model is required, the mapping process needs to be repeated. In this paper we propose a semi-automatic approach that generates various charts from SPARQL queries over data represented as RDF graphs, we introduce and describe the generic approach and present a use case scenario in the context of service monitoring.
Mobile Gamification for Crowdsourcing Data Collection: Leveraging the Freemium Model

Classic ways of gathering data on human behaviour are time-consuming, costly and are subject to limited participant pools. Crowdsourcing offers a reduction in operating costs and access to a diverse and large participant pool; however issues arise concerning low worker pay and questions about data quality. Gamification provides a motivation to participate, but also requires the development of specialized, research-question specific games that can be costly to produce. Our solution combines gamification and crowdsourcing in a smartphone-based system that emulates the popular Freemium model of play to motivate voluntary participation through in-game rewards, using a robust framework to study multiple unrelated research questions within the same system. We deployed our game on the Android store and compared it to a gamified laboratory version and a non-gamified laboratory version, and found that players who used the in-game rewards were motivated to do experimental tasks. There was no difference between the systems for performance on a motor task; however, performance on the cognitive task was worse for the crowdsourced game. We discuss options for improving performance on tasks requiring attention.
Profiling impulse buyers- Exploring how each facet of UPPS impulsivity traits can lead to different types of impulse buying behaviour

This study argues that impulse buying behaviour (IB) should be multi-faceted and proposes to use urgency-premeditation-perseverance-sensation-seeking (UPPS) as the measurement to examine various types of IB. 414 valid questionnaires were collected from British and Taiwanese respondents. The measurements of the questionnaire include UPPS, IB tendency, and IB choice. This study demonstrates the interactions between the consumption situations and their corresponding impulsivity traits, which illustrates the different types of impulse buying behavioural patterns. The findings provides both practical and social implication for service privders and policy makers.
Design of a secure sum protocol using trusted third party system for Secure Multi-Party Computations

In distributed data mining, secrecy of private data input of parties with similar background, is achieved by Secure Multi Party Computation (SMC). One of the mostly used tool of SMC is secure sum protocol which has been modified by researchers using many techniques to provide utmost security. In this paper, we propose another novel secure sum protocol to provide more data security in an efficient way named Double Random Partitioned Model (DRPM) protocol for multi-party computation that uses the collaboration of data segmentation, value randomization technique and trusted third party for ensuring zero data leakage among participating parties. Proposed method have reduced computational steps noticeably than all other existing protocols. The comparative study shows that the proposed protocol performs much better than the existing protocols in terms of communication complexity and computation complexity, e.g., proposed DRPM protocol improves 85% on computational complexity over the existing best one.
Preventive Product returns Management Systems - a Review and Model

Abstract Intense competition among online retailers and high customer expectations drive product returns, which eat into online retailers’ profits. Thus, online retailers need to find ways to reduce return rates without causing a concomitant decrease in sales. Using a grounded theory approach which combines literature-based insights and in-depth qualitative interviews with managers from major online retailers, the authors propose a framework for understanding the antecedents of the decision to implement a product returns management system (PRMS). In addition, the framework considers three types of preventive instruments online retailers employ to reduce product return rates as well as moderators of the linkage between the decision to implement a PRMS and the chosen instruments type. The authors conclude with a brief discussion of future research directions. Keywords: e-commerce, instruments, product returns management system 1 Introduction Product returns continue to be a challenge for the retailing industry. Both brick-and-mortar and online retailers incur substantial costs through taking back and restocking returned products. European online retailers experience product return rates of 40% or higher in product categories such as fashion (Accenture 2012). Handling each returned item costs online retailers between $6 and $18 (The Economist 2013). While the whole retailing industry is hemorrhaging profits owing to high return rates, this problem is particularly rampant in online retailing. Not surprising, retailers’ product return management systems (hereafter PRMS) remains a pressing issue for online retailers (Bower and Maxham 2012). This is especially true for European Union (EU) online retailers that cannot recoup returns-related expenses by charging product return penalties owing to competitive pressure or legislation reasons. As of 2014 EU law stipulates that online retailers have to offer a no-questions return period of 14 days to their customers (The Economist 2013). Despite the economic relevance of product returns, research on online retailers’ PRMS remains scarce, both within and outside the information systems (IS) field. Especially research on preventive measures remains conspicuously absent from the literature. We believe the topic of product returns is important to IS research, given that IS (e.g., ERP, CRM systems) are involved in most e-commerce transactions, including the procedures for handling the product returns. IS research tends to take a supply chain
Duality and linear programs for stability and performance analysis of queueing networks and scheduling policies

Obtains a variety of linear programs to conduct the performance analysis and stability/instability determination of queueing networks and scheduling policies. The authors exhibit a strong duality relationship between the performance of a system, and its stability analysis via mean drift. A Performance LP bounds the performance of all stationary non-idling scheduling policies. If it is bounded, then its dual, called the Drift LP, has a feasible solution, which is a copositive matrix. The quadratic form associated with this copositive matrix has a negative drift, allowing the authors to conclude that all stationary non-idling scheduling policies are stable in the very strong sense of having a geometrically converging exponential moment. Some systems satisfy an auxiliary set of linear constraints. Their performance is also bounded by a Performance LP, provided that they are stable, i.e., have a finite first moment for the number of parts. If the Performance LP is infeasible, then the system is unstable. Any feasible solution to the dual of the Performance LP provides a quadratic function with a negative drift. If this quadratic form is copositive, then the system is strongly stable as above. If not, the system is either unstable, or else is highly non-robust in that arbitrarily small perturbations can lead to an unstable system. These results carry over to fluid models, allowing the study of networks with non-exponential distributions. Another LP test of stability avoids a copositivity check. If a Monotone LP is bounded, then the system is stable for all smaller arrival rates. Finally, a Finite Time LP provides transient bounds on the performance of the system. <<ETX>>
Combination of content analysis and context features for digital photograph retrieval.

In recent years digital cameras have seen an enormous rise in popularity, leading to a huge increase in the quantity of digital photos being taken. This brings with it the challenge of organising these large collections. The MediAssist project uses date/time and GPS location for the organisation of personal collections. However, this context information is not always sufficient to support retrieval when faced with a large, shared, archive made up of photos from a number of users. We present work in this paper which retrieves photos of known objects (buildings, monuments) using both location information and contentbased retrieval tools from the AceToolbox. We show that for this retrieval scenario, where a user is searching for photos of a known building or monument in a large shared collection, content-based techniques can offer a significant improvement over ranking based on context (specifically location) alone.
Rolling to the tachyon vacuum in string field theory

We argue that the rolling-tachyon solution in cubic OSFT proceeds at late times to precisely the analytic tachyon-vacuum solution constructed by Schnabl. In addition, we demonstrate the relationship between the rolling-tachyon solution and the standard BCFT description by showing that there is a finite gauge transformation which relates the two.
Multimodal studies of brain structure and function in neurodegenerative dementia

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is associated with a prodromal stage of cognitive decline, manifest clinically as mild cognitive impairment (MCI) that progresses ultimately to a stage of dementia. There is an urgent need to recognise AD at its earliest clinical stages, which entails distinguishing AD from other conditions, particularly other neurodegenerative diseases, but at a time when clinical symptoms are non-specific. Investigations such as neuropsychological testing and neuroimaging, using MRI and PET to determine changes in brain structure and metabolism respectively, provide additional useful diagnostic information, the changes associated with these tests now incorporated into diagnostic criteria. These studies aimed to investigate AD and Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) using these investigative tools, with a particular focus on AD in keeping with its central importance as the commonest cause of dementia. Early AD was the focus of the first study. Given the involvement of the hippocampus from the initial stages of AD, and of the role of the hippocampus in spatial memory, the study hypothesis was that a hippocampus-sensitive test of spatial memory would discriminate prodromal AD and mild AD dementia with high sensitivity and specificity. The 4 Mountains Test of spatial memory (4MT) was chosen in view of its potential usability across different cultural settings. The second study focused on dementia due to AD and FTD. Given the diagnostic importance of MRI and PET changes, this study aimed to measure the concordance of atrophy and hypometabolism in six syndromic variants of AD and FTD. The primary hypothesis was that concordance would differ across different AD and FTD syndromes, with a secondary hypothesis that determination of the topographical extent of atrophy and hypometabolism would differ according to the method used to determine imaging changes.