Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On the Risk-Based Operation of Mobile Attacks in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

In this paper we study the propagation of malicious software in wireless ad hoc networks under a probabilistic framework. We design topology control algorithms for the development of effective attack strategies by a malicious mobile node, based on the risk function metric, which indicates the network's vulnerability. Our approach takes on the attacker's perspective, in order to investigate the extent of its attack potentials, which in turn could be used for the effective design of network countermeasures. Our performance evaluation results demonstrate that the proposed risk-based topology control algorithms and respective attack strategies effectively balance the tradeoffs between the potential network damage and the attacker's lifetime, and as a result significantly outperform any other flat and threshold-based approaches.
Psychological correlates of depression in fathers and mothers in the first postnatal year

This study investigated psychological correlates of depression in fathers and mothers in the first postnatal year, using a mixed, mainly clinically referred sample and a cross-sectional design. The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) was used for depression screening for mothers, and the EPDS, Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) for fathers. A total of 75 mothers (47.5%) had EPDS scores > 12, and 45 fathers (48.9%) exceeded the threshold on one or more of the three screening instruments. Most of the variance in paternal and maternal depression was accounted for by neuroticism. However, while mothers appeared primarily influenced by their own personality, perinatal and infant-related factors, fathers appeared more influenced by mothers' personality difficulties and unresolved past events, and mothers' current mental health and infant-related problems, as well as the state of the marital/ de facto relationship. The BDI and EPDS seemed to measure more severe pervasive forms of paternal depression than the GHQ, and the EPDS appeared to tap some items more specifically associated with perinatal psychological risk than the BDI. Depression in one partner was moderately correlated with depression in the other. High rates of paternal depression and anxiety in mothercraft settings suggest the need to routinely assess the mental state of both parents in these settings, and to include fathers in postnatal depression intervention programmes. The mother's negative perceptions of her infant's temperament are significantly associated with maternal and paternal depression, suggesting an important focus for intervention.
Biocatalytic response of multi-layer assembled collagen/hyaluronic acid nanoengineered capsules

Abstract Biodegradable hollow capsules filled with fluorescently labelled bovine serum albumin (BSA) as a model drug were prepared via layer-by-layer (LbL) self-assembly of type-I collagen (COL) and hyaluronic acid (HA) using calcium carbonate micro-particles and co-precipitation method. Capsules loaded with fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC)-BSA, tetramethylrhodamin isothiocyanate (TRITC)-BSA or Alex-Fluor-488-BSA, respectively, were characterised before and after core removal using Confocal Laser Scanning Microscopy (CLSM), whilst the morphologies of individual hollow capsules were assessed using Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). The sustained release of the encapsulated FITC-BSA protein was attained using enzymatic degradation of the capsule shells by collagenase. The released profile of the fluorescently-labelled BSA indicated that it could be successfully controlled by modulating the number of layers and/or by collagen crosslinking either before or after the capsule’s assembly.
Information Transmission in Hippocampal CA1 Neuron Models in the Presence of Poisson Shot Noise: the Case of Periodic Sub-threshold Spike Trains

This article presents an analysis of the information transmission of periodic sub-threshold spike trains in a hippocampal CA1 neuron model in the presence of a homogeneous Poisson shot noise. In the computer simulation, periodic sub-threshold spike trains were presented repeatedly to the midpoint of the main apical branch, while the homogeneous Poisson shot noise was applied to the mid-point of a basal dendrite in the CA1 neuron model consisting of the soma with one sodium, one calcium, and five potassium channels. From spike firing times recorded at the soma, the inter spike intervals were generated and then the probability, p(T), of the inter-spike interval histogram corresponding to the spike interval, r, of the periodic input spike trains was estimated to obtain an index of information transmission. In the present article, it is shown that at a specific amplitude of the homogeneous Poisson shot noise, p(T) was found to be maximized, as well as the possibility to encode the periodic sub-threshold spike trains became greater. It was implied that setting the amplitude of the homogeneous Poisson shot noise to the specific values which maximize the information transmission might contribute to efficiently encoding the periodic sub-threshold spike trains by utilizing the stochastic resonance
Gene Therapy Applications for Spine Fusion

Objective. This article reviews the potential utilization of various growth factors to enhance spinal fusion and outlines the principles of gene therapy and its application to spinal fusion surgery. Summary of Background Data. Gene therapy offers an exciting new way to potentially deliver growth factors locally in a targeted fashion with physiologic doses. In its current definition, gene therapy is defined as the use of nucleic acid transfer, either RNA or DNA, to treat or prevent a disease. The scope of gene therapy has expanded beyond its initial application as a method of replacing genetic defects, and its potential to facilitate spinal fusions is currently being evaluated. Conclusions. Gene therapy strategies for spine fusion are appealing because the setting is uniquely suited for genetic manipulation. The intervention is locally applied. Only a short duration of transgene response by the cells is necessary to establish a spine fusion, and a variety of osteoinductive growth factors have been identified and are available for use. Attempts at spine fusion using gene therapy in the lower animals have been successful using both in vivo and ex vivo approaches. Before human clinical trials can be established, further testing is required in more challenging animal models of bone induction such as nonhuman primates. Should a successful clinical program of gene therapy for spine fusion be established, the use of autograft and its associated morbidities could be eliminated. In fact, gene therapy offers the potential for minimally invasive applications that could bypass the need for an open procedure altogether. It is likely that gene therapy will be a powerful therapeutic tool for the spine surgeon in the new millennium.
The long-term benefit of surgery on health-related quality of life in patients with inflammatory bowel disease.

HYPOTHESES Health-related quality of life (HRQL) has been shown to improve dramatically shortly after surgery in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Our hypotheses were that (1) improved HRQL would be maintained long term in patients after surgery for ulcerative colitis and (2) the improved HRQL in patients with Crohn disease would decline with long-term follow-up. DESIGN Consecutive series of patients undergoing surgery for IBD between June 1994 and January 2000 prospectively investigated as a cohort outcomes study. PATIENTS Data were obtained in 139 patients. The diagnoses were Crohn disease (n = 56) and ulcerative colitis (n = 83). INTERVENTION Patients with Crohn disease underwent resections with or without stricturoplasties; all but 5 patients with ulcerative colitis underwent ileal pouch-anal anastomoses. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE Health status was measured using the Health Status Questionnaire (HSQ) preoperatively and then every 3 months postoperatively. RESULTS Preoperative HSQ scores were very low in all 8 scales of the HSQ. Postoperatively, HRQL measures improved significantly (P<.05) both in patients with Crohn disease and ulcerative colitis, with scores equal to or better than published scores in the general population. In patients with Crohn disease, the scores improved significantly after surgical resection and steadily increased despite disease recurrence and reoperations. The HRQL at last follow-up was equivalent to the general population. The improvements were statistically significant in patients followed up for more than 1 year in 7 of 8 scales of the HSQ. CONCLUSIONS These results confirm that HRQL is poor in patients with IBD referred for possible operation. Surgical resection resulted in significant improvement in HRQL. More important, the results were durable. With follow-up up to 6 years, the HRQL in this cohort was equal to or better than norms for the general population both in patients with ulcerative colitis and with Crohn disease. We believe these data justify aggressive surgical intervention in many patients with IBD and support the prospective study of HRQL by surgeons treating patients with chronic diseases.
Interaction of Locus of Control, Skill vs Chance Instructions, and Task Difficulty

Previous studies on locus of control and instructions have been interpreted to support the position of either a social learning theory or an anxiety. 144 college students were separated into locus of control categories based on scores on Rotter's I-E Scale and randomly assigned to receive skill or chance instructions and one of three anagram tasks of varying levels of difficulty. Primary dependent variables were number of correct anagrams and latency to the first response. The ratio of typical shifts to the total number of shifts in expectancy of success served as a third dependent variable. A check on the credibility of the instructions was also performed. The results of the moderate task showed that internals given chance instructions responded faster and solved more anagrams correctly than when given skill instructions. When the credibility of instructions was taken into account, significant differences between the groups were found for only those who did not believe the instructions. Assessment of credibility of instructions provided valuable clarification since disbelief of instructions may account for the results found in earlier research as well.
Race, ethnicity, and the relevance of obesity for social integration.

OBJECTIVE To examine race and ethnic differences in the importance of obesity for social integration using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). DESIGN A cross-sectional study utilizing survey-adjusted statistics and multivariate logistic and linear regression models. Models were stratified by sex and included interaction terms capturing race, ethnicity and obesity. SETTING United States of America. PARTICIPANTS A nationally representative sample of 15,355 respondents grades 7 through 12 who participated in both the In-School and In-Home Wave I surveys of Add Health. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Four self-reported and schoolmate-reported indicators of social integration. RESULTS The consequences of obesity for social integration are greatest for White adolescents, who were selected by almost 2 fewer schoolmates as friends and had half the odds of having their friendships reciprocated compared with non-obese White adolescents. The social disadvantage of obesity was lower for non-White adolescents; though they are selected by significantly fewer schoolmates as friends and were less likely to have their friendships reciprocated, they did not face additional discrimination from being both obese and minority. CONCLUSIONS There are significant differences between obese and non-obese adolescents by race and ethnicity in friendships. As friendships are among the most valued assets in adolescence, understanding the impact of obesity on access to friendships for diverse adolescents is a necessary component to understanding the complex motivations that guide health-related behavior at these formative ages.
Workplace learning: the roles of knowledge accessibility and management

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how knowledge management systems have been used by the studied organizations to improve knowledge accessibility and knowledge sharing in order to increase workplace learning.Design/methodology/approach – The study relies on a qualitative multisite case study method. Data were obtained from five organizations at a southern state in the USA. Multiple interviews, onsite observation, and documentation analyses were conducted at each studied organization. Data analysis used open coding and thematic analysis. Results were triangulated based on multiple data sources.Findings – The findings revealed that the learning environment of an organization is important for workplace learning. All studied organizations share a need for a conversion of tacit to explicit knowledge in order to facilitate effective informal learning in the workplace. This research concludes that engineering the learning environment through effective knowledge management should be a cohesive eff.
Perspectives on: Cyclic nucleotide microdomains and signaling specificity: Can we decipher the information content contained within cyclic nucleotide signals?

Second messengers such as Ca2+, cGMP, and cAMP are known to regulate diverse cellular functions including excitability, contraction, movement, proliferation, and gene expression. Our understanding of how Ca2+ signals orchestrate such diverse cellular functions has increased dramatically over the last forty years, due in large part to the development of single-cell methods for measuring intracellular Ca2+ (Tsien, 1992). Our understanding of the subcellular localization, kinetics, and frequency of cyclic nucleotide signals has lagged far behind. Thus, we are only beginning to understand how information is encoded within cyclic nucleotide signals.
Psychosocial changes and psychosocial adjustment with chronic and severe nonfluent aphasia

Abstract Data concerning type and degree of psychological changes resulting from communicative impairment were obtained from close relatives of 20 chronic non-fluent aphasics by means of a structured and standardized interview. Expectations concerning further psychosocial adaptation were assessed with a modified translation of the ‘Code-Muller Scale of Psychosocial Adjustment’ in patients, relatives, and the speech therapists concerned. The data demonstrate that patients and relatives suffer from considerable psychosocial strain. Patients and relatives estimated the probability of an improvement of psychosocial adjustment as being significantly higher than the speech therapists did, a finding which replicated the results obtained by Muller and his colleagues.
Social defences and organisational culture in a local authority child protection setting: challenges for the Munro Review?

The study of social defences against anxiety used within institutions has a long history, beginning with the seminal work of Isobel Menzies Lyth, who examined the reasons for the high rate of nursing students dropping out of their professional training within a large London teaching hospital. She identified a range of social defences used by nursing staff to manage the anxieties inherent within their work, including ritual task performance, reducing the weight of responsibility by checks and counterchecks and reduction of the impact of responsibility by upward delegation. British social work is haunted by the memories of children known to social services who have died. The anxieties experienced by child protection social workers derive from a variety of sources, ranging from daily exposure to powerful emotions within the families and other professionals that they work with to an awareness of a history of public inquiries and media coverage that has influenced public perceptions of their profession. Menzies Lyth's study is over 50 years old and this article will provide a critical analysis of whether this theoretical framework is useful for understanding contemporary child protection social work. Preliminary data from an on-going ethnographic study of local authority childcare teams are used to illustrate the discussion, indicating that similar defences are used within current child protection practice. The implications for the organisational culture in child protection social work and for changes proposed by the Munro Review will be explored, particularly the emotional aspects of organisational change.
Regulation of FLRG expression in rat primary astroglial cells and injured brain tissue by transforming growth factor-beta 1 (TGF-beta 1).

Follistatin-related gene (FLRG) is a member of the follistatin family of proteins and interacts with transforming growth factor (TGF) superfamily proteins like follistatin. To understand the expression level of FLRG in brain tissue, we examined whether primary neurons and glial cells from rat embryos express FLRG mRNA and produce its protein product. FLRG and follistain mRNAs were mainly expressed in astroglial cells, while activin A mRNA was abundant in primary neurons. TGF-beta1 highly enhanced expression levels of FLRG mRNA in astroglial cells, compared with those of follistatin and activin A mRNAs. Particularly, TGF-beta1 facilitated the secretion of FLRG protein from primary astroglial cells in a dose-dependent manner. Moreover, changes in expression levels of FLRG mRNA and protein in brain tissue were also analyzed after a penetrating injury, using quantitative polymerase chain reactin (PCR) and immunohistochemical methods. Expression levels of FLRG mRNA were significantly increased in damaged regions after penetrating injury together with those of activin A and TGF-beta1 mRNAs. Immunohistochemical observations showed that positive signals of FLRG protein were colocalized in glial fibrillary acidic protein-positive reactive astroglial cells located in damaged regions after a penetrating injury. The expression of follistatin mRNA rather decreased in damage regions after the brain injury. These results suggest that FLRG is synthesized in and secreted from astroglial cells. In particular, FLRG, but not follistatin, may play a role in the regulation of activin A in brain wound healing in response to TGF-beta1.
Elementary Teachers' Knowledge and Self-Efficacy for Measurement Concepts

Educational standardized testing impacts millions of children and educational professionals each year. In the current accountability climate, an effective educational system depends on professionals who are literate in assessment and can take the appropriate actions in response to test results. Measurement researchers should begin to focus more attention on how teachers use assessment results, what skills teachers possess, and what teachers believe they can do in working with test results. This study examined elementary teacher knowledge and self-efficacy in measurement concepts through a random sample of teachers in the state of Washington. Teachers had greater success with skills related to basic measurement concepts compared to using test scores for informed decisions. No relationship was found between years of teaching and measurement knowledge or self-efficacy. However, teachers showing interest in resources for communicating test results to parents had lower self-efficacy compared to teachers not interested in resources.
A unified statistical approach for determining significant signals in images of cerebral activation

We present a unified statistical theory for assessing the significance of apparent signal observed in noisy difference images. The results are usable in a wide range of applications, including fMRI, but are discussed with particular reference to PET images which represent changes in cerebral blood flow elicited by a specific cognitive or sensorimotor task. Our main result is an estimate of the P‐value for local maxima of Gaussian, t, χ2 and F fields over search regions of any shape or size in any number of dimensions. This unifies the P‐values for large search areas in 2‐D (Friston et al. [1991]: J Cereb Blood Flow Metab 11:690–699) large search regions in 3‐D (Worsley et al. [1992]: J Cereb Blood Flow Metab 12:900–918) and the usual uncorrected P‐value at a single pixel or voxel. © 1996 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Massive MIMO Combining with Switches

Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) is expected to play a central role in future wireless systems. The deployment of large antenna arrays at the base station and the mobile users offers multiplexing and beamforming gains that boost system spectral efficiency. Unfortunately, the high cost and power consumption of components like analog-to-digital converters makes assigning an RF chain per antenna and applying typical fully digital precoding/combining solutions difficult. In this letter, a novel architecture for massive MIMO receivers, consisting of arrays of switches and constant (non-tunable) phase shifters, is proposed. This architecture applies a quasi-coherent combining in the RF domain to reduce the number of required RF chains. An algorithm that designs the RF combining for this architecture is developed and analyzed. Results show that the proposed massive MIMO combining model can achieve a comparable performance to the fully digital receiver architecture in single-user and multiuser massive MIMO setups.
A Defined O-Antigen Polysaccharide Mutant of Francisella tularensis Live Vaccine Strain Has Attenuated Virulence while Retaining Its Protective Capacity

ABSTRACT Francisella tularensis, the causative agent of tularemia, has been designated a CDC category A select agent because of its low infective dose (<10 CFU), its ready transmission by aerosol, and its ability to produce severe morbidity and high mortality. The identification and characterization of this organism's virulence determinants will facilitate the development of a safe and effective vaccine. We report that inactivation of the wbtA-encoded dehydratase of the O-antigen polysaccharide (O-PS) locus of the still-unlicensed live vaccine strain of F. tularensis (LVS) results in a mutant (the LVS wbtA mutant) with remarkably attenuated virulence. Western blot analysis and immune electron microscopy studies associate this loss of virulence with a complete lack of surface O-PS expression. A likely mechanism for attenuation is shown to be the transformation from serum resistance in the wild-type strain to serum sensitivity in the mutant. Despite this significant attenuation in virulence, the LVS wbtA mutant remains immunogenic and confers protective immunity on mice against challenge with an otherwise lethal dose of either F. tularensis LVS or a fully virulent clinical isolate of F. tularensis type B. Recognition and characterization of the pivotal role of O-PS in the virulence of this intracellular bacterial pathogen may have broad implications for the creation of a safe and efficacious vaccine.
Serological Determination of Hepatitis C Virus Subtypes 1a, 1b, 2a, 2b, 3a, and 4a by a Recombinant Immunoblot Assay

ABSTRACT Serological determination of hepatitis C virus (HCV) subtypes has been hampered by the lack of suitable assays. Therefore, a recombinant immunoblot assay has been established for serological differentiation of HCV subtypes 1a, 1b, 2a, 2b, 3a, and 4a. It consists of recombinant HCV proteins from the NS-4 region propagated in Escherichia coli. To confirm the serotyping assay results, the results were compared with those obtained by nucleotide sequencing of the NS-5 region. Sera from 157 patients with chronic HCV infection were examined by this assay, and specific antibodies could be detected in 86% (n = 135) of them. The HCV genotype was determined correctly in all but one sample, and the subtypes determined by the serotyping assay corresponded to the HCV subtypes detected by nucleotide sequencing for 95% (n = 128) of the samples. These data indicate that HCV subtypes can be distinguished serologically. The assay that is described provides an easier means of identification of infection with different HCV subtypes for wider clinical and epidemiological applications.