Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A prospective evaluation of plasma phospholipid fatty acids and breast cancer risk in the EPIC study

Background Intakes of specific fatty acids have been postulated to impact breast cancer risk but epidemiological data based on dietary questionnaires remain conflicting. Materials and methods We assessed the association between plasma phospholipid fatty acids and breast cancer risk in a case-control study nested within the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition study. Sixty fatty acids were measured by gas chromatography in pre-diagnostic plasma phospholipids from 2982 incident breast cancer cases matched to 2982 controls. Conditional logistic regression models were used to estimate relative risk of breast cancer by fatty acid level. The false discovery rate (q values) was computed to control for multiple comparisons. Subgroup analyses were carried out by estrogen receptor (ER) and progesterone receptor expression in the tumours. Results A high level of palmitoleic acid [odds ratio (OR) for the highest quartile compared with the lowest OR (Q4-Q1) 1.37; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.14-1.64; P for trend = 0.0001, q value = 0.004] as well as a high desaturation index (DI16) (16:1n-7/16:0) [OR (Q4-Q1), 1.28; 95% C, 1.07-1.54; P for trend = 0.002, q value = 0.037], as biomarkers of de novo lipogenesis, were significantly associated with increased risk of breast cancer. Levels of industrial trans-fatty acids were positively associated with ER-negative tumours [OR for the highest tertile compared with the lowest (T3-T1)=2.01; 95% CI, 1.03-3.90; P for trend = 0.047], whereas no association was found for ER-positive tumours (P-heterogeneity =0.01). No significant association was found between n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids and breast cancer risk, overall or by hormonal receptor. Conclusion These findings suggest that increased de novo lipogenesis, acting through increased synthesis of palmitoleic acid, could be a relevant metabolic pathway for breast tumourigenesis. Dietary trans-fatty acids derived from industrial processes may specifically increase ER-negative breast cancer risk.
Adaptive frequency estimation using iterative DESA with RDFT-based filter

This paper proposes a new approach for estimating fundamental frequency of grid signals. The approach is based on a discrete-time energy separation algorithm (DESA) combined with an adaptive bandpass filter (BPF). The BPF is built using a discrete Fourier transform (DFT) and inverse DFT both used recursively. The technique is computationally efficient and robust to the harmonics and noise in the signal. The method's performance is validated by comparing the results with some existing algorithms.
On key agreement in wireless sensor networks based on radio transmission properties

Recently, several research contributions have justified that wireless communication is not only a security burden. Its unpredictable and erratic nature can also be turned against an adversary and used to augment conventional security protocols, especially key agreement. In this paper, we are inspired by promising studies on such key agreement schemes, yet aim for releasing some of their limiting assumptions. We demonstrate the feasibility of our scheme within performance-limited wireless sensor networks. The central idea is to use the reciprocity of the wireless channel response between two transceivers as a correlated random variable. Doing so over several frequencies results in a random vector from which a shared secret is extracted. By employing error correction techniques, we are able to control the trade-off between the amount of secrecy and the robustness of our key agreement protocol. To evaluate its applicability, the protocol is implemented on MicaZ sensor nodes and analyzed in indoor environments. Further, these experiments provide insights into realistic channel behavior, available information entropy, and show a high rate of successful key agreements, up to 95 %.
The Role of Sequential BMP Signaling in Directing Human Embryonic Stem Cells to Bipotential Gonadal Cells

Context: Human gonads arise as a pair of epithelial ridges on the surface of intermediate mesoderm (IM)‐derived mesonephros. Toxic environmental factors and mutations in various genes are known to disturb normal gonadal development, but because of a lack of suitable in vitro models, detailed studies characterizing the molecular basis of the observed defects have not been performed. Objective: To establish an in vitro method for studying differentiation of bipotential gonadal progenitors by using human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) and to investigate the role of bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) in gonadal differentiation. Design: We tested 17 protocols using activin A, CHIR‐99021, and varying durations of BMP‐7 and the BMP inhibitor dorsomorphin. Activation of activin A, WNT, and BMP pathways was optimized to induce differentiation. Setting: Academic research laboratory. Main Outcomes Measures: Cell differentiation, gene expression, and flow cytometry. Results: The two most efficient protocols consistently upregulated IM markers LHX1, PAX2, and OSR1 at days 2 to 4 and bipotential gonadal markers EMX2, GATA4, WT1, and LHX9 at day 8 of culture. The outcome depended on the combination of the duration, concentration, and type of BMP activation and the length of WNT signaling. Adjusting any of the parameters substantially affected the requirements for other parameters. Conclusions: We have established a reproducible protocol for directed differentiation of hESCs into bipotential gonadal cells. The protocol can be used to model early gonadal development in humans and allows further differentiation to mature gonadal somatic cells.
Development and preliminary evaluation of a group intervention targeting maternal mental health and mother–infant interactions: a combined qualitative and case series report

Abstract Objective and Background: The purpose of this study was to investigate the outcomes of an Emotional Wellbeing Group intervention developed to treat maternal depression and anxiety while concurrently supporting positive development of the mother–infant relationship. Method: Five women diagnosed with depressive and/or anxiety disorders and their infants completed the Emotional Wellbeing Group. The participants completed pre- and post- intervention assessments which included self-report measures of mood and the motherhood experience, and a video-taped, unstructured play session between mothers and their infants. Results: Four of the participants reported a clinically significant decrease in their symptoms of anxiety. All mothers reported more positive perceptions of their infants and their experience of motherhood, and showed enhanced maternal sensitivity and responsiveness towards their infants. Depression levels were not shown to improve consistently. Conclusion: This study provides initial positive evidence to support future research directions and clinical efforts to develop interventions that target both the treatment of perinatal depression and anxiety and the quality of mother–infant interactions. Clinical insights for mental health professionals working with mothers and infants are presented.
Constant-Time Discrete Gaussian Sampling

Sampling from a discrete Gaussian distribution is an indispensable part of lattice-based cryptography. Several recent works have shown that the timing leakage from a non-constant-time implementation of the discrete Gaussian sampling algorithm could be exploited to recover the secret. In this paper, we propose a constant-time implementation of the Knuth-Yao random walk algorithm for performing constant-time discrete Gaussian sampling. Since the random walk is dictated by a set of input random bits, we can express the generated sample as a function of the input random bits. Hence, our constant-time implementation expresses the unique mapping of the input random-bits to the output sample-bits as a Boolean expression of the random-bits. We use bit-slicing to generate multiple samples in batches and thus increase the throughput of our constant-time sampling manifold. Our experiments on an Intel i7-Broadwell processor show that our method can be as much as 2.4 times faster than the constant-time implementation of cumulative distribution table based sampling and consumes exponentially less memory than the Knuth-Yao algorithm with shuffling for a similar level of security.
TEM Analysis of Planar Defects in InGaAsN and GaAs Grown on Ge (001) by MOVPE

InGaAsN on Ge (001) is proposed to be a part of the InGaP(N)/InGaAs/InGaAsN/Ge four-junction solar cell to increase a conversion efficiency over 40%. In this work, InGaAsN lattice-matched film and GaAs buffer layer grown on Ge (001) substrate by metal organic vapor phase epitaxy (MOVPE) were examined by transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Electron diffraction pattern of InGaAsN taken along the [110]-zone axis illustrates single diffracted spots, which represent a layer with a uniformity of alloy composition. Cross-sectional bright field TEM image showed line contrasts generated at the GaAs/Ge interface and propagated to the InGaAsN layer. Dark field TEM images of the same area showed the presence of boundary-like planar defects lying parallel to the growth direction in the InGaAsN film and GaAs buffer layer but not in the Ge substrate. TEM images with the (002) and (00-2) reflections and the four visible {111} planes reflections illustrated planar defects which are expected to attribute to antiphase boundaries (APBs). Moreover, the results observed from atomic force microscopy (AFM) and field emission electron microscopy (FE-SEM) demonstrated the surface morphology of InGaAsN film with submicron-sized domains, which is a characteristic of the APBs.
Forest ecosystem services: Cultural values

How we define “culture” and societal well-being related to culture depends heavily on who is looking at it, but culture can be generally described as “the customs and beliefs of a particular group of people that are used to express their collectively held values” (Soulbury Commission 2012). In the context of forests, culturally derived norms, beliefs, and values help drive preferences for forested landscapes and forest-based benefits such as diversity and identity, justice, education, freedom, and spirituality (Farber and others 2002, Fisher and others 2009, Kellert 1996). Environmental policies and responsible forest management can enhance how forests help give rise to and support cultural ecosystem service values. Likewise, human components (e.g., customs and beliefs) determine how forests are to be culturally valued (fig. 2.1). This is somewhat different when compared to other types of services (e.g., regulating services) because human culture plays a central role in determining how people interact with forests and perceive their associated benefits. In other words, human culture gives important meanings to forests that are recognized as valuable, but the forests themselves do not inherently possess these meanings. Table 2.1 offers a topology of cultural ecosystem services and associated ecosystem and human components. However, our understanding of the many factors that give rise to cultural ecosystem services is still a matter of ongoing investigation.
Comparative Effects of Methylphenidate, Modafinil, and MDMA on Response Inhibition Neural Networks in Healthy Subjects

Abstract Background Psychostimulants such as methylphenidate and modafinil are increasingly used by healthy people for cognitive enhancement purposes, whereas the acute effect of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (ecstasy) on cognitive functioning in healthy subjects remains unclear. This study directly compared the acute effects of methylphenidate, modafinil, and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine on the neural mechanisms underlying response inhibition in healthy subjects. Methods Using a double-blind, within-subject, placebo-controlled, cross-over design, methylphenidate, modafinil, and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine were administrated to 21 healthy subjects while performing a go/no-go event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging task to assess brain activation during motor response inhibition. Results Relative to placebo, methylphenidate and modafinil but not 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine improved inhibitory performance. Methylphenidate significantly increased activation in the right middle frontal gyrus, middle/superior temporal gyrus, inferior parietal lobule, presupplementary motor area, and anterior cingulate cortex compared with placebo. Methylphenidate also induced significantly higher activation in the anterior cingulate cortex and presupplementary motor area and relative to modafinil. Relative to placebo, modafinil significantly increased activation in the right middle frontal gyrus and superior/inferior parietal lobule, while 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine significantly increased activation in the right middle/inferior frontal gyrus and superior parietal lobule. Conclusions Direct comparison of methylphenidate, modafinil, and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine revealed broad recruitment of fronto-parietal regions but specific effects of methylphenidate on middle/superior temporal gyrus, anterior cingulate cortex, and presupplementary motor area activation, suggesting dissociable modulations of response inhibition networks and potentially the superiority of methylphenidate in the enhancement of cognitive performance in healthy subjects.
Regional Brain Dysfunction Associated with Semantic Errors in Comprehension

Abstract Here we illustrate how investigation of individuals acutely after stroke, before structure/function reorganization through recovery or rehabilitation, can be helpful in answering questions about the role of specific brain regions in language functions. Although there is converging evidence from a variety of sources that the left posterior-superior temporal gyrus plays some role in spoken word comprehension, its precise role in this function has not been established. We hypothesized that this region is essential for distinguishing between semantically related words, because it is critical for linking the spoken word to the complete semantic representation. We tested this hypothesis in 127 individuals with 48 hours of acute ischemic stroke, before the opportunity for reorganization or recovery. We identified tissue dysfunction (acute infarct and/or hypoperfusion) in gray and white matter parcels of the left hemisphere, and we evaluated the association between rate of semantic errors in a word-picture verification tasks and extent of tissue dysfunction in each region. We found that after correcting for lesion volume and multiple comparisons, the rate of semantic errors correlated with the extent of tissue dysfunction in left posterior-superior temporal gyrus and retrolenticular white matter.
Who Influenced You? Predicting Retweet via Social Influence Locality

Social influence occurs when one’s opinions, emotions, or behaviors are affected by others in a social network. However, social influence takes many forms, and its underlying mechanism is still unclear. For example, how is one’s behavior influenced by a group of friends who know each other and by the friends from different ego friend circles? In this article, we study the social influence problem in a large microblogging network. Particularly, we consider users’ (re)tweet behaviors and focus on investigating how friends in one’s ego network influence retweet behaviors. We propose a novel notion of social influence locality and develop two instantiation functions based on pairwise influence and structural diversity. The defined influence locality functions have strong predictive power. Without any additional features, we can obtain an F1-score of 71.65% for predicting users’ retweet behaviors by training a logistic regression classifier based on the defined influence locality functions. We incorporate social influence locality into a factor graph model, which can further leverage the network-based correlation. Our experiments on the large microblogging network show that the model significantly improves the precision of retweet prediction. Our analysis also reveals several intriguing discoveries. For example, if you have six friends retweeting a microblog, the average likelihood that you will also retweet it strongly depends on the structure among the six friends: The likelihood will significantly drop (only ⅙) when the six friends do not know each other, compared with the case when the six friends know each other.
A Modified Three-Step Algorithm for TOPS and Sliding Spotlight SAR Data Processing

There are two challenges for efficient processing of both the sliding spotlight and terrain observation by progressive scans (TOPS) data using full-aperture algorithms. First, to overcome the Doppler spectrum aliasing, zero-padding is required for azimuth up sampling, increasing the computation burden; second, the azimuth deramp operation for avoiding synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image folding leads to azimuth time shift along the range dimension, and in turn the appearance of ghost targets and azimuth resolution reduction at the scene edge, especially in the wide-swath case. In this paper, a novel three-step algorithm is proposed for processing the sliding spotlight and TOPS data. In the first step, a modified derotation is derived in detail based on the chirp z-transform (CZT), avoiding zero-padding; then, the chirp scaling algorithm kernel is adopted for precise focusing in the second step; and in the third step, instead of the traditional range-independent deramp, a range-dependent deramp is applied to compensate for the time shift. Moreover, the SAR image geometry distortion caused by range-dependent deramp is corrected by employing a range-dependent CZT. Experimental results based on both simulated data and real data are provided to validate the proposed algorithm.
Brazilian Samba Protocol for Individuals With Parkinson’s Disease: A Clinical Non-Randomized Study

Background In the 10 most populated countries in the world, Parkinson's disease (PD) affects more than 5 million individuals. Despite optimal treatment options already developed for the disease, concomitant involvement of other areas of health care plays an important role in complementing the treatment. From this perspective, dancing can be viewed as a non-drug alternative that can reduce falls by improving some motor skills, such as mobility, balance, gait, and posture, and can also improve the overall quality of life. Brazilian samba promotes improvement in motor and non-motor symptoms in individuals with PD, providing a new treatment option for this population. Objective The main objective of this quasi-experimental study is to provide a 12-week samba protocol (2x/week) for individuals with PD and to compare its effects with the group without intervention. The hypothesis is that the Brazilian samba protocol will promote improvement in primary (motor) and secondary (non-motor) outcomes in individuals with PD. Methods The sample will be selected at random from individuals diagnosed with PD in the city of Florianopolis (SC, Brazil). Sample size calculation was performed with the G*Power 3.1. 9.2 software, with 0.447 effect size, at 5% significance level, power of 0.9, and test and sample loss of 20%. This yielded 60 individuals divided between the intervention and control groups. The questionnaires will be filled out before and after the dance intervention. The data collection for the control group will be held simultaneously to the intervention group. The classes will last for 1 hour, twice a week in the evening for 12 weeks, and all classes will be divided into warm-up, main part, and relaxation. Two-way analysis of variance with repeated measures and Sidak post-hoc comparison test will be used for a comparative analysis of the final results of the control group with the experimental group and of the within-group changes between pre- and postintervention period. Results We expect to complete follow-up in September 2017. Conclusions The major inspiration for this study was to encourage the creation of new rehabilitation programs that do not emphasize doctor involvement. This is a unique protocol for PD and we believe it can be an important tool to alleviate the motor and non-motor symptoms of individuals with PD. Dance is a simple activity depending on little equipment and few financial resources, facilitating its implementation and improving the cost-benefit relationship. In addition, activities that have a cultural aspect for the population in question, and which are pleasant, enable the participants to commit long term. This can enhance patient’s compliance with the therapy, which is often a problem for many rehabilitation programs.
Carotid plaque thickness and carotid plaque burden predict future cardiovascular events in asymptomatic adult Americans

Introduction Prediction of cardiovascular events improves using imaging, i.e. coronary calcium score and ultrasound assessment of carotid plaque. This study analysed the predictive value of two ultrasound measures of carotid plaque size: carotid plaque thickness and carotid and intima-media thickness (IMT). Methods and results A total of 6102 asymptomatic persons underwent assessment of conventional risk factors and imaging by carotid ultrasound. Carotid plaque burden (cPB) and maximum carotid plaque thickness (cPTmax) were measured from 'cross-sectional sweep' video acquisition of the carotid artery. IMT was measured from distal common carotid artery images. All participants were followed up for ∼3 years, and major cardiovascular events (MACE) were collected and adjudicated. All data were available for 5808 participants, in whom 216 first MACE events were observed. Increasing both cPB and cPTmax were associated with increasing the risk of future MACE when compared with participants without carotid atherosclerosis. Fully adjusted for risk factors, hazard ratios for cPTmax were 1.96 [95% confidence interval (CI) 0.91-4.25, P = 0.015] for primary MACE and 3.13 (95% CI 1.80-5.51, P < 0.001) for secondary MACE, similar to that of cPB. IMT did not improve risk prediction significantly. Non-categorical net reclassification index (NRI) for cPTmax was 0.178 (95% CI 0.027-0.299, P = 0.032) for primary MACE and 0.173 (95% CI 0.109-0.243, P < 0.001) for secondary MACE, which is almost similar to cPB. IMT assessment did not result in significant NRI. Conclusion The simpler cPTmax predicted cardiovascular events similarly to the more comprehensive cPB, whereas IMT did not. Awaiting true 3D ultrasound technology cPTmax may be a simple useful measure for prediction of future ASCVD.
Effects of Metal-contaminated Soils on the Accumulation of Heavy Metals in Different Parts of Centella asiatica: A Laboratory Study (Kesan Penimbunan Logam Berat di dalam Pelbagai Bahagian Centella asiatica dari Tanah yang Tercemar dengan Logam Berat: Satu Kajian dalam Makmal)

Centella asiatica is widely used as a medicinal plant in Malaysia and other parts of the world. In the present study, the growth and uptake of heavy metal by C. asiatica were determined based on the plant exposure to different treatment of metal-contaminated soils under laboratory conditions. Heavy metals uptake in different parts of the plants namely roots, stems and leaves were determined. In general, it was found that the metal uptake capacity followed the order: roots > stems > leaves. Since a close positive relationship was established between the concentrations of metal accumulated in different parts of the plant and the metal levels in the most contaminated soil, C. asiatica has the potential of being used as a biomonitoring plant for heavy metal pollution in the polluted soils.