Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fiber Bragg grating-based sensor for monitoring respiration and heart activity during magnetic resonance imaging examinations

Abstract. We present a fiber-optic sensor for monitoring respiration and heart activity designed to operate in the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) environment. The sensor employs a Plexiglas springboard, which converts movements of the patient’s body lying on the board (i.e., lung- and heart-induced vibrations) to strain, where a fiber Bragg grating attached to the board is used to measure this strain. Experimental studies are carried out during thoracic spine MRI examinations. The presence of the metal-free sensor construction in the MRI environment does not pose a threat to the patient and has no influence over the quality of imaging, and the signal is identical to that obtained without any electromagnetic interference. The results show that the sensor is able to accurately reflect the ballistocardiographic signal, enabling determinations of the respiration rate (RR) and heart rate (HR). The data delivered by the sensor are normally distributed on the Bland–Altman plot for the characteristic point determination and exhibit clear dependence on the RR and HR values for the RR and HR determinations, respectively. Measurement accuracies are better than 7% of the average values, and thus, with further development, the sensor will be implemented in routine MRI examinations.
Bis[μ-1,2-bis(1H-imidazol-1-ylmethyl)benzene-κ2 N 3:N 3′]disilver(I) bis(4-amino-2,5-dichlorobenzenesulfonate) tetrahydrate

The asymmetric unit of the title compound, [Ag2(C14H14N4)2](C6H4Cl2NO3S)2·4H2O, contains one-half of each of two independent dicationic units, two 4-amino-2,5-dichlorobenzenesulfonate anions and four water molecules. Each centrosymmetric dicationic unit has a dinuclear structure in which two AgI atoms are bridged by two 1,2-bis(1H-imidazol-1-ylmethyl)benzene ligands in a slightly distorted linear coordination geometry. The 4-amino-2,5-dichlorobenzenesulfonate anion does not coordinate with the AgI center, acting only as a counteranion. In the crystal structure, intermolecular O—H⋯O and N—H⋯O hydrogen bonds form a three-dimensional network.
Cichlid Fish Use Coloration as a Cue to Assess the Threat Status of Heterospecific Intruders

The ability to assess the threat posed by competitors, and to respond appropriately, is important for reducing the costs of aggression. In this respect, aggression directed toward heterospecifics is often just as significant as aggression among conspecifics. This is especially true for cichlid fish that share breeding grounds with heterospecifics. Indeed, cichlids are known to differentiate not only between conspecifics that pose different levels of threat but also between heterospecific territorial intruders by directing more aggression toward nonbreeding individuals. To assess whether the ability to make such distinctions could be based on color cues alone, we carried out a field study in which we experimentally presented Amphilophus sagittae cichlid pairs with model intruders of a sympatric congener, Amphilophus xiloaensis, in breeding versus nonbreeding coloration. Consistent with our prediction, we found that A. sagittae exhibited more aggression toward A. xiloaensis models of the latter color type. The results are, to our knowledge, the first to show that territory holders can, based on coloration alone, assess variation among individuals of a species other than their own in the threat posed to offspring survival.
Swedish – An updated school subject?

The focus in this article is the extent to which the school subject of Swedish in the new national curriculum in Sweden introduced in 2011 (compulsory school) has been updated in relation to ways of discussing mother tongue education. Discourse analysis is used to analyse the syllabus for Swedish from 2011. A comparison is made with the previous syllabus from 1994 in order to see if any changes have been made. The main finding is that the syllabus from 2011 is primarily updated with fundamental aspects of the genre approach. This is interpreted as a reason for the observed foregrounding of language and downgrading of literature in the curriculum. Further, two traditions of the teaching of Swedish in school are discussed. The first tradition concerns the focus on the formal aspects of language. The second tradition concerns the invisible socio-political perspective in the lower grades, and this perspective’s low-key character in the upper grades. It is concluded that these traditions are still alive and strongly influencing the curriculum.
Human papillomavirus and breast cancer: no evidence of association in a Spanish set of cases.

BACKGROUND/AIM Great controversy exists about the association between Human Papillomavirus (HPV) and breast tumors. The aim of this study was to explore the presence of HPV DNA in a large set of breast cancer cases. MATERIALS AND METHODS Techniques used followed the standards for an international retrospective survey of HPV-DNA genotyping, coordinated by our own group and the DDL Laboratories in Rijswijk, the Netherlands. Paraffin-embedded samples were used. SPF-10 broad-spectrum primers were applied, followed by deoxyribonucleic acid enzyme immunoassay and genotyping by reverse-line probe assay. RESULTS A total of 78 samples were included in the study, 2 of benign conditions and 76 carcinomas, including different histological subtypes. HPV was not present in any of the specimens studied irrespective of histology, hormonal status and stage of disease. CONCLUSION Our data do not support the involvement of HPV in breast carcinogenesis as no evidence of its presence was found.
Current treatment of severe asthma

Severe asthma is considered a heterogeneous disease in which a variety of clinical, physiological and inflammatory markers determine disease severity. Pivotal studies in the last 5 years have led to substantial progress in many areas, ranging from a more accurate definition of truly severe, refractory asthma, to classification of the disease into distinct clinical phenotypes, and introduction of new therapies. This review focuses on three common clinical phenotypes of severe asthma in adults (early onset severe allergic asthma, late onset non‐atopic eosinophilic asthma, late onset non‐eosinophilic asthma with obesity), and provides an overview of recent developments regarding treatment options that are best suited for each of these phenotypes.
Measuring and modelling body mass index among a cohort of urban children living with disadvantage.

AIM To report on baseline outcomes of body mass index, eating habits and physical activity of a cohort of urban disadvantaged children from a longitudinal evaluation of a school based, health promoting initiative. BACKGROUND The healthy schools programme was developed for implementation in schools located in disadvantaged areas of Dublin, Ireland. DESIGN A prospective, cohort study design was implemented. METHOD A 3-year longitudinal evaluation was conducted in five intervention and two comparison schools between 2009-2011. Data were collected on each participating child to determine their eating habits, levels of physical activity and body mass index at year 1 (baseline), year 2 and year 3. Independent t-tests were used to compare mean values, chi-square and Fishers exact tests were used to compare proportions at baseline. RESULTS Participation rates were over 50%. Older children reported eating on average more fruit and vegetables than younger children; breakfast was often eaten on the way to, or in school and in one age group 16.7% of intervention children reported they did not eat breakfast that day. Levels of physical activity varied with over 70% of younger children stating they never played a sport. In intervention schools over one quarter of all children were either overweight or obese. A comparison was conducted between the proportion of 9-year olds overweight and obese in our disadvantaged cohort and a national random sample of 8500 9-year olds and no important differences were observed. CONCLUSION Baseline results indicate that body mass index rates particularly among pre adolescent, urban disadvantaged girls are of concern.
Mutations in the Thumb Allow Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Reverse Transcriptase To Be Cleaved by Protease in Virions

ABSTRACT Although human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) reverse transcriptase (RT) has been extensively studied, there are still significant questions about the effects of mutations on the maturation and stability of RT. We show here that a significant fraction (>80%) of the single point mutations we generated in the thumb subdomain of HIV-1 (RT) affect the stability of RT in virions. Fragments of the unstable mutant RTs can be detected in Western blots of virion proteins; however, the degree of degradation varies. The titers of the mutants whose virions contain degraded RTs are reduced. Some, but not all, of the unstable RT thumb subdomain mutants we analyzed have a temperature-sensitive phenotype. A preliminary survey of mutations in other subdomains of RT shows that some of these mutations also destabilize RT. The stability of the RT mutants is enhanced by the addition of a protease inhibitor, suggesting that the viral protease plays an important role in the degradation of the mutant RTs. These results confirm and extend earlier reports of mutations that affect the stability of RT in virions. The data suggest that the stability of a mutant RT in virions could be a major factor in determining the virus titer and, by extension, viral fitness, which could affect whether a mutation in RT is acceptable to the virus.
‘Theatre as an eye-opener’: How theatre may contribute to knowledge about living close to persons with dementia

The aim of the study was to show how theatre may yield insight into living close to persons with dementia. Six focus group interviews with health providers and close relatives were conducted. The informants, recruited by the local dementia associations and nursing homes in three Norwegian towns, were invited to see the theatre play Our Wonderful World. Further, they were asked to send written reflections from during and after the play to the project group within one week. Transcripts from the interviews and reflection notes were analysed inspired by a phenomenological approach. After discussion and reflection on each member’s preliminary themes, a common meaning of the informants’ experiences were gained. Informants gave written informed consent and The Norwegian Social Sciences Data Services assessed the project. Data showed that the two groups of informants had different knowledge of the patients’ earlier life and thoughts of the future. They became aware of how different they experienced their responsibility, and they expressed different attitudes as to how open one should be about the illness. Findings are summarised in four themes: Bright memories and sombre views of the future, Life responsibility versus professional responsibility and Shielding versus openness. The drama creates emotional engagement that enabled the informants to transcend their personal experiences and gain new knowledge.
Information Processing Account 1 an Information Processing Account of Implicit Motive Arousal

published their groundbreaking monograph " The achievement motive " in 1953, scientific research on human motives such as the needs for achievement, affiliation, or power was off to a great start as a respectable, promising and flourishing branch of psychology. It generated thousands of published research reports over the next three decades and spilled over into other disciplines such as political science, economics, history, or sociology. Roughly at the beginning of the 1980s, however, the former stream of research output had dwindled down to a trickle, and this development was foreshadowed by earlier reviews critical both of the construct validity of motives and their mode of measurement (e. and its variants as being unreliable motive measures turned out to be largely unfounded and based on methodological artifacts (e. not be further reviewed here. Criticisms leveled at the validity of the motive construct in the McClelland-Atkinson tradition, however, may be more difficult to counter and, to the extent that they reflect the frustrations of many researchers who failed to find meaningful relationships between motives and behavior in their studies, may have contributed substantially to the demise of motive research. For instance, Klinger (1966) noted in a review of studies focusing on achievement motivation that while roughly half of the then published studies obtained significant and meaningful relationships between the achievement motive and performance measures, the other half failed to obtain such relationships. This state of affairs led Klinger to question whether TAT-based achievement motive measures actually measure anything motivational at all. Lazarus (1961) summarized research showing either no or paradoxical relationships between the achievement motive and behavior. Taking an essentially Freudian stance, he concluded that the achievement motive is expressed in primary process-like fantasy (i.e., in TAT stories) only to the extent that it is blocked from behavioral manifestations or not filtered away by ego defenses when it is too strongly aroused. According to this point of view, Information processing account 2 one should not expect to be able to predict performance and behavior from a TAT measure of the achievement motives (or any other motive) in any direct and straightforward way. In the present chapter, I will argue that, contrary to the views of Klinger and Lazarus, motives do have a direct, motivating effect on behavior, and that this effect depends on the type of incentive present in a given situation. My main claim will be that motives are aroused …
Ethylene response factors gene regulation and expression profiles under different stresses in rice

Stresses can cause large yield reductions in cultivated plants. The response to these stresses occurs via a plethora of signalling pathways, where a large number of genes is induced or repressed. Among the environmental stress responsive genes, there are the members of the ethylene response factors (ERF) gene family. The mRNA levels of different ERF are regulated by many hormones and molecules produced under different stress conditions. In this study, with the goal of identifying the response of rice ERF genes to environmental stress, it was analysed the transcriptional expression profile of 114 of these genes under stress by anoxia, salt and Magnaporthe grisea. Also, aiming to characterize how the regulation of ERF genes occurs, the amount of known cis regulatory elements in the promoter region of these genes and their association with the expression profiles under the tested conditions were also assessed. The results indicate that some ERF members present the same specific expression profiles under different environmental stresses, while others do not. Within the ERF family, the regulation of gene expression is complex for some genes which have many cis elements in their promoters, but simple for others, demonstrating high levels of divergence among them. The findings demonstrate the importance of the study of each ERF separately, since it is not possible to establish general rules for regulation and probably for the function of these genes.
The Social Science Research Council's 1940s restudy of Robert Angell's cases fromThe Family Encounters the Depression

At the beginning of the 1940s the Social Science Research Council's Committee on the Appraisal of Research, then chaired by Ernest Burgess, commissioned a restudy of the cases and methods used by Robert Angell in his well-known book The Family Encounters the Depression.1 The restudy involved prominent sociologists. Burgess provided a draft report, but no final report appeared. The interest in and subsequent disappearance of the final report invites investigation. This paper summarizes the history and content of the draft report, and examines its meaning in the context of the methodology of the period. The nature and fate of the report reflect conflicting methodological tendencies at the time.
ON THE OPTIMAL GROWTH OF FUNCTIONS WITH BOUNDED LAPLACIAN

Using a compactness argument, weintroduce a PhragmenLindelof type theoremforfunctionswithboundedLaplacian. Thetechniqueisveryusefulinstudy- ing unbounded free boundary problems near the innity point and also in approxi- mating integrable harmonic functions by those that decrease rapidly at innity. The method isflexible in the sense that it can be applied to any operator which admits the standard elliptic estimate.
Implicit Memory Measures for Web Advertising Effectiveness

Most studies investigating memory for advertisements have relied heavily on examining effects of explicit memory. In the Web advertising environment, however, consumers often try to avoid Web ads during online activities, resulting in poor explicit memory and dismal click-through rates. The study introduces the measure of implicit memory as an alternative to assess the effectiveness of Web advertising. The results of an experiment suggest that implicit memory measures would complement the shortcomings of the current measures (e.g., recall, recognition, and click-through rate), especially in cases where consumers do not actively engage in ad processing.
Efficient Bayesian Nonparametric Modelling of Structured Point Processes

This paper presents a Bayesian generative model for dependent Cox point processes, alongside an efficient inference scheme which scales as if the point processes were modelled independently. We can handle missing data naturally, infer latent structure, and cope with large numbers of observed processes. A further novel contribution enables the model to work effectively in higher dimensional spaces. Using this method, we achieve vastly improved predictive performance on both 2D and 1D real data, validating our structured approach.
Pentablock copolymer dexamethasone nanoformulations elevate MYOC: in vitro liberation, activity and safety in human trabecular meshwork cells.

AIM The aim of this study is to examine the elevation of MYOC in long-term treatment of human trabecular meshwork (HTM) cells using dexamethasone (DEX) encapsulated pentablock (PB) copolymer-based nanoparticles (NPs) (DEX-PB-NPs). MATERIALS & METHODS PB copolymers and DEX-PB-NPs were synthesized and characterized using nuclear magnetic resonance, gel permeation chromatography, and X-ray diffraction analyses. MYOC levels secreted from HTM cells were measured by western blot (WB) analysis. RESULTS DEX-PB-NPs were formulated in the size range of 109 ± 3.77 nm (n = 3). A long term DEX release from the NPs was observed over three months. Cell viability and cytotoxicity were not affected up to 12 weeks of treatment with PB-copolymer or DEX-PB-NPs. WB data from five HTM cell strains showed that MYOC levels increased by 5.2 ± 1.3, 7.4 ± 4.3, and 2.8 ± 1.1-fold in the presence of DEX-PB-NPs compared with 9.2 ± 3.8, 2.2 ± 0.5, and 1.5 ± 0.3-fold at 4, 8 and 12 weeks in control-DEX treatment group, respectively (n = 5). Based on the decline in MYOC levels after withdrawal of DEX from control wells, DEX-PB-NPs released the DEX for at least 10 weeks. CONCLUSION The treatment of HTM cells using DEX-PB-NPs were analyzed in this study. The in vitro cell-based system developed here is a valuable tool for determining the safety and effects of steroids released from polymeric NPs.
Towards ecological validity of research in cognitive ergonomics

Psychology is one of the main disciplines that have been implied in the development of cognitive ergonomics. For a long time, at least from the 1960s, some researchers in psychology have contributed to research in cognitive ergonomics with the aim of elaborating basic psychological knowledge, (a) with high ecological validity, and (b) with clear relevance to application. This paper stresses the value of this perspective for psychology as well as cognitive ergonomics, and evaluates the results of such an enterprise. Ecological validity is considered as a particular aspect of external validity that enables researchers to transfer findings from experimental situations ('artificial' ones or designed for research purpose) to real work situations ('natural' (obviously, in this context 'natural' includes 'cultural') ones or imposed by comprehension needs). This aspect is discussed as regards classical distinctions like basic/applied research and research/practice. Attention is particularly devoted to the necessary (ecological) context needed by expert operators to implement their work expertise, which is the target of the comprehension aim of cognitive ergonomics. Conclusions are drawn in terms of methods to design and evaluate ecological validity, not only to understand cognitive mechanisms, but also to improve cognitive work conditions and the overall performance of human-machine systems.
Energy-Efficient Deployment of Airships for High Altitude Platforms: A Deterministic Annealing Approach

Nowadays, a promising solution to the demand for high capacity wireless services is provided by the high altitude platforms (HAPs), which can exploit the advantages of both satellites and terrestrial networks. However, due to the limited energy of the communication nodes on HAPs, energy-efficient deployment of airships for HAPs becomes increasingly important. In this paper, a heterogeneous network system comprising mission layer, HAP layer and satellite layer is presented. In the system, the mission space is partitioned according to the assumption of one-hop relay which guarantees that all the users are effectively covered by airships in HAP layer. Then, we model an expected energy consumption function of airships, which is minimized using deterministic annealing algorithm. Furthermore, the optimal solution to this approach is analyzed and proved. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method can get the goal of the minimum energy consumption and achieve a near optimal deployment of airships.
LOWER BOUNDS FOR LUCAS CHAINS∗

Lucas chains are a special type of addition chains satisfying an extra condition: for the representation ak = aj + ai of each element ak in the chain, the difference aj − ai must also be contained in the chain. In analogy to the relation between addition chains and exponentiation, Lucas chains yield computation sequences for Lucas functions, a special kind of linear recurrences. We show that the great majority of natural numbers n does not have Lucas chains shorter than (1− ) logφ n for any > 0, where φ is the golden ratio. Peter L. Montgomery was the first to consider Lucas chains, in the early eighties. He discovered a decomposition theorem for Lucas chains and a lower bound on their length in terms of Fibonacci numbers. His work was not published. Therefore several of Montgomery’s original ideas are represented in this paper.