Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
To Assess or Not Assess Hypnotic Suggestibility? That is the Question

To assess or not assess hypnotic suggestibility? That is the question. Dr. Howard Sutcher (2008) reports four cases in which the patients he treated profited from treatment yet " differed vastly in their levels of hypnotizability " (p. 61). He uses this observation to support his position that hypnotic suggestibility scores can tell us very little about treatment outcome. If Dr. Sutcher is correct, then it makes little sense to test for hypnotic suggestibility to assist in treatment planning. However, the case for or against suggestibility assessment should not rest on anecdotal observations and a handful of case studies. Anecdotal observations can generate useful hypotheses; however, they often have limited evidential value and are no substitute for well-controlled studies with relatively large numbers of patients. Indeed, the author reported on standardized hypnotic suggestibility assessment in only one of the four cases he described, so it is questionable as to what extent his observations bear on standardized suggestibility assessment. Nevertheless, the case studies reported do constitute a demonstration proof that not everyone who is suggestible will respond to a hypnotic treatment, and some patients who are not very suggestible at all will respond to a treatment that incorporates hypnosis. Accordingly there is not a one-to-one relation between suggestibility and treatment outcome. Yet this is hardly a newsflash. Clinicians who use hypnosis will learn very quickly that not all suggestible individuals respond to treatments that incorporate hypnosis. And this is the way it ought to be. Hypnosis itself is not a stand-alone treatment that depends on achieving an absolute threshold of responsivity for success. Rather, it is an adjunctive method that can be valuable when combined with a variety of interventions. Meta-analyses consistently support the efficacy of hypnosis in psychotherapies ranging from psychodynamic to
Infeasibility driven approach for bi-objective evolutionary optimization

Infeasibility driven approach is proposed in this paper for constrained bi-objective optimization using evolutionary algorithm. The idea is motivated from one of the constraint handling techniques in which infeasible solutions are preserved in the population for focusing the optimal solution lying on the boundary of feasible region. In the proposed approach, extreme solutions of the current non-dominated front are allowed to recombine only with extreme infeasible solutions. This restricted mating is expected to generate offspring towards the “Paretooptimal” front and reduces number of generations required to evolve comparative results against existing multi-objective evolutionary algorithm (MOEA). Although the proposed approach is generic and can be coupled with any MOEA, but for bench-marking purpose it is coupled with NSGA-II (refer as IDMOEA) and is tested on four engineering optimization problems. On an average for 30 different runs, IDMOEA shows quicker convergence than NSGA-II with equivalent quality of solutions assessed by indicator analysis.
Plasmodium parasite detection on Red Blood Cell image for the diagnosis of malaria using double thresholding

Malaria which is caused by Plasmodium parasite is one of the diseases that can cause death in patients. Detection of plasmodium parasites on the Red Blood Cell (RBC) image can help diagnose malaria quickly and accurately, especially in the areas that lacked medical expertise. This research proposes a detection method of plasmodium parasite at RBC using double thresholding for improving accuracy of detection. Our method is able to achieved Predictive Positive Value (PPV) and Sensitivity about 92.85% and 85.52% respectively.
MAP1S Controls Breast Cancer Cell TLR5 Signaling Pathway and Promotes TLR5 Signaling-based Tumor Suppression

Targeting TLR5 signaling in breast cancer represents a novel strategy in cancer immunotherapy. However, the underlying mechanism by which TLR5 signaling inhibits cancer cell proliferation and tumor growth has not been elucidated. In this study, we found TLR5 agonist flagellin inhibited the cell state of activation and induced autophagy, and reported that autophagy protein MAP1S regulated the flagellin/TLR5 signaling pathway in breast cancer cells through enhancement of NF-κB activity and cytokine secretion. Remarkably, MAP1S played a critical role in tumor suppression induced by flagellin, and knockdown of MAP1S almost completely abrogated the suppression of tumor growth and migration by flagellin treatment. In addition, elevated expression of MAP1S in response to flagellin feed-back regulated tumor inflammatory microenvironment in the late stages of TLR5 signaling through degradation of MyD88 in autophagy process. These results indicate a mechanism of antitumor activity that involves MAP1S-controlled TLR5 signaling in breast cancer.
A Performance Anomaly Detection and Analysis Framework for DBMS Development

Detecting performance anomalies and finding their root causes are tedious tasks requiring much manual work. Functionality enhancements in DBMS development as in most software development often introduce performance problems in addition to bugs. To detect the problems as soon as they are introduced, which often happens during the early phases of a development cycle, we adopt performance regression testing early in the process. In this paper, we describe a framework that we developed to manage performance anomalies after establishing a set of conditions for a problem to be considered an anomaly. The framework uses Statistical Process Control (SPC) charts to detect performance anomalies and differential profiling to identify their root causes. By automating the tasks within the framework we were able to remove most of the manual overhead in detecting anomalies and reduce the analysis time for identifying the root causes by about 90 percent in most cases. The tools developed and deployed based on the framework allow us continuous, automated daily monitoring of performance in addition to the usual functionality monitoring in our DBMS development.
I/Q imbalance and loop-back self interference effects in full-duplex OFDM DF relays

We analyze the outage probability of dual-hop full-duplex decode-and-forward relaying for an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing system in the presence of I/Q imbalance. We derive accurate analytical approximations which quantify the outage probability's functional dependence on the I/Q imbalance level and the residual loopback self-interference average power level. In addition, we derive the condition at which direct transmission outperforms full-duplex decode-and-forward relay-assisted transmission in the presence of I/Q imbalance. Furthermore, we propose an opportunistic relaying approach and demonstrate its robustness against the detrimental effects of I/Q imbalance and residual loopback self-interference. Our numerical results confirm the accuracy of our analysis.
Exploiting proximity readers for statistical cleaning of unreliable RFID data

Standard RFID data cleaning provides a smoothing filter that interpolate for lost readings and aggregate data via a sliding-window. Existing cleaning techniques work well under various conditions, but they mainly focus an individual reader and have disregarded the very high cost of cleaning in a real application that have thousands of readers and millions of tags. Given the enormous volume of information, diverse sources of error, and rapid response requirements, setting the window size is still a challenging task. In this paper, we propose to use proximity readers, common in real RFID applications, to enhance adaptive cleaning of massive RFID data sets. Considering the need for effective cleaning with minimum costs, we extend the multi-tag cleaning mechanism of the SMURF. Experiments are also carried out to verify the effectiveness of our algorithm. The promising experimental results reveal that the new adaptive cleaning mechanism is effective for lost readings and redundant RFID data.
Text Mining for Finding Acronym-Definition Pairs from Biomedical Text Using Pattern Matching Method with Space Reduction Heuristics

This paper deals with the problem of mining acronyms and their definitions from biomedical text. We propose an effective text mining system by using pattern matching method. Different stages of the design have been explained with pseudo code. We used space reduction heuristic constraints (D. Nadeau and P. Turney, 2005) which will increase the precision by reducing the number of candidate definitions and will include most of the true cases. The pattern matching method does not require training data to run as in the case of learning techniques. This will make the process simple and fast. Evaluation has been done by using three metrics - recall (measure of how much relevant information the system has extracted from text), precision (measure of how much information returned by the system is actually correct) and f-factor (combined value of recall and precision). Experimental results achieved 92% recall and 97.2% precision.
Overcoming radio link asymmetry in wireless sensor networks

We derive two new energy efficient reliable data transport protocols for overcoming the negative impact of asymmetric radio links in wireless sensor networks. The energy efficiency of these algorithms is explicitly derived using our theoretical model, and validated by results obtained from simulations and field trials. The analytical, simulation and field trials demonstrate that our proposed protocols perform well in networks with asymmetric links and can save energy of up to 27% compared to conventional ARQ schemes.
Mek1 Alters Epidermal Growth and Differentiation

The highly homologous kinases, Mek1 and Mek2, act downstream of Ras and Raf to activate extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) mitogen-activated protein kinases. In epidermis, Ras and Raf promote hyperplasia; however, they act on multiple Mek-independent effectors, and the extent to which Meks can mediate these effects is unknown. To address this, we expressed inducible Meks in transgenic murine and human epidermis. Both Mek1 and Mek2 triggered ERK phosphorylation. Only Mek1, however, recapitulated Ras/Raf effects in increasing proliferation and integrin expression while suppressing differentiation, which are impacts characteristic of epidermal neoplasia. Furthermore, a kinase-dead Mek1 mutant incapable of phosphorylating ERK proteins retained ability to mediate Mek1-driven epidermal proliferation. Mek1 is thus sufficient to promote the proliferative epithelial phenotype in a manner independent of intact kinase function.
TRUST-COMMITMENT IN E-COMMERCE: A CROSS -CULTURAL EXPLORATION

We investigate the issues of online trust and commitment in a cross- cultural setting. We hypothesize trust to be driven by perceived reputation, perceived security control, perceived privacy control, fulfillment and delivery, sensory characteristics and perceived risk. Trust in turn is hypothesized to drive affective and calculative commitment, which in turn drives willingness to buy. We conducted a survey of 1,094 undergraduates in seven countries (both collectivist and individualistic; five Asian and two Western) to collect data. The model we tested is common to all countries. We find broad support for our model across different cultures.
Resting-state connectivity after treatment with the stress hormone cortisol

The effects of the stress hormone cortisol on cognitive function are recognized but not straightforward: impairment as well as enhancement has been reported. How cognitive function is affected by cortisol administration depends on several variables, such as the specific task used. To exclude task influence, we applied resting-state FMRI to study the acute effects of cortisol on human brain activity. In a double blind, randomized placebo-controlled crossover design, twenty healthy male subjects (age 22.6 ± 2.9) received 20 mg cortisol (hydrocortisone, Hoechst). FMRI scans were collected on two occasions, two weeks apart. A tensor probabilistic independent component analysis was performed to analyze the resting-state FMRI data. The resulting components were compared between the two treatment conditions (oral cortisol or placebo). One component with a spatial pattern resembling the 'default-mode' network, showed increased resting-state activity after cortisol administration (p=0.02). Changes in the activity level of the 'default-mode' network have previously been associated with changes in cognitive function. We hypothesize that cortisol may exert some of its effect on cognitive function, as found in previous research, through increased activity of the 'default-mode' network. However more directed hypothesis driven research will be needed to confirm our results and verify this hypothesis. Resting-state connectivity after treatment with the stress hormone cortisol 117
Review of automatic document formatting

We review the literature on automatic document formatting with an emphasis on recent work in the field. One common way to frame document formatting is as a constrained optimization problem where decision variables encode element placement, constraints enforce required geometric relationships, and the objective function measures layout quality. We present existing research using this framework, describing the kind of optimization problem being solved and the basic optimization techniques used to solve it. Our review focuses on the formatting of primarily textual documents, including both micro- and macro-typographic concerns. We also cover techniques for automatic table layout. Related problems such as widget and diagram layout, as well as temporal layout issues that arise in multimedia documents are outside the scope of this review.
Changes of serum omentin-1 levels and relationship between omentin-1 and insulin resistance in chronic hepatitis C patients

Objectives: Omentin-1 is a novel adipokine that has a pivotal role in modulating the insulin sensitivity, immunity and inflammation. The current study was conducted to evaluate the serum omentin-1 level in hepatitis C virus (HCV) infected patients, with or without type 2 diabetes, and to investigate its correlation with liver function parameters and insulin resistance. Methods: Eighty subjects were enrolled in this study divided into four groups: chronic HCV infected patients (n=20), chronic hepatitis C patients with concomitant type 2 diabetes (n=18), type 2 diabetic patients (n=22) and 20 healthy controls. Serum omentin-1 levels were assessed using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Fasting blood glucose, insulin levels, and liver parameters including aminotransferases (ALT and AST) were determined. Results: Serum omentin-1 levels were significantly elevated in HCV infected patients compared to all other groups. Omentin-1 levels were positively correlated with AST and ALT levels (r =0.43, p< 0.001; r =0.423, p<0.001, respectively). Additionally, a significant negative correlation was found between omentin-1 and both fasting insulin levels and homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) (r = -0.238, p<0.05; r = -0.277, p<0.05, respectively). Furthermore, fasting blood glucose, HbA1c and HOMA-β were negatively correlated to serum omentin-1 levels however these correlations were not statistically significant. Conclusion: Serum omentin-1 level is elevated in HCV infected patients and is positively associated with liver enzymes AST and ALT. This suggested that omentin-1 may be implicated in the pathogenesis of hepatitis C and its metabolic complications. However its role needs to be elucidated by further studies.
A Knowledge-Based Method for Protein Structure Refinement and Prediction

The native conformation of a protein, in a given environment, is determined entirely by the various interatomic interactions dictated by the amino acid sequence (1-3). We describe here a knowledge-based approach for protein structure assessment and prediction. Using a well-defined set of high-resolution protein structures, we have derived statistical potentials, in the form of atom-pairwise distance probability density functions. These provide a description of pairwise interatomic interactions of native proteins. When applied to highly randomized and noisy structures of proteins distinct from the basis set, native-like structures were obtained to very high precision (< or = 2A). The examples tested include proteins of all sizes (from 38 up to 461 amino acids long) and diverse topological structures (alpha, beta and alpha-beta classes). The potentials appear to be sensitive enough to recognize subtle distortions from a native packing structure and in optimization of structures drive them consistently to a higher probability. Therefore they provide a powerful tool for refinement of X-ray and NMR derived structures at arbitrary degrees of initial precision.
Angiogenic and Immunomodulatory Properties of Endothelial and Mesenchymal Stem Cells

It has been suggested that the effect of implanted cells on the local environment is important when selecting the appropriate cell type for tissue regeneration. Our aim was to compare the local tissue response to implanted human mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) and human umbilical vein endothelial cells (EC). MSC and EC were cultured in poly(l-lactide-co-1,5-dioxepan-2-one) scaffolds for 1 week in a bioreactor system, after which they were implanted subcutaneously in NOD/SCID mice. After 3 weeks, scaffolds were retrieved, and the mRNA expression of selected genes involved in hypoxia and inflammation was examined by real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction and correlated with immunofluorescent staining for corresponding proteins. The Toll-like receptor signaling pathway was examined by superarray hybridization. The expression of 53 angiogenesis-related proteins was investigated by a proteome profiler angiogenesis antibody array kit. Vascularization was quantified using immunohistochemistry for CD31. The expression of hypoxia-inducible factors and biomarkers for angiogenesis was more strongly upregulated in response to implanted EC than to MSC, suggesting a higher sensitivity to low oxygen tension among EC. Hypoxic signaling was increased after implantation of EC compared with MSC, leading to a prolonged acute inflammatory phase that promoted ingrowth of vascular cells and establishment of the circulation. Inflammatory cytokines were also differently expressed at the gene and protein levels in the two experimental groups, resulting in altered recruitment of acute and chronic inflammatory cells. The end result of these differences was increased vessel formation within the constructs in the EC group.
Elastic Stability Constraint-Based Method for Joint Point Distribution Optimization of the Lattice Boom Head Section

Based on Timoshenko theory, the truss boom can be simplified into Timoshenko beam. The mathematic model based on such simplification has been set up and aims at minimizing buckling strain energy. The optimizing analysis program has been formulated in MATLAB, and the genetic algorithm has been adopted to optimize the joint point distribution of the truss boom head section. Comparison between the overall stability of the optimal and original results is drawn to verify the reasonability of the proposed model. The proposed model can be effectively used for optimizing the joint point distribution of the truss boom head section.
Self-generated thoughts and depression: from daydreaming to depressive symptoms

Human minds often engage in thoughts and feelings that are self-generated rather than stimulus-dependent, such as daydreaming. Recent research suggests that under certain circumstances, daydreaming is associated with adverse effects on cognition and affect. Based on recent literature about the influence of resting mind in relation to rumination and depression, this questionnaire study investigated mechanisms linking daydreaming to depressive symptoms. Specifically, an indirect effect model was tested in which daydreaming influences depressive symptoms through enhancing self-focus and ruminative thought. Results were in line with the hypothesis and several alternative pathways were ruled out. The results provide initial supportive evidence that daydreaming can influence depressive symptoms through influences on self-focus and rumination. Further research should use prospective or experimental designs to further validate and strengthen these conclusions.
A novel family of integrases associated with prophages and genomic islands integrated within the tRNA-dihydrouridine synthase A (dusA) gene

Genomic islands play a key role in prokaryotic genome plasticity. Genomic islands integrate into chromosomal loci such as transfer RNA genes and protein coding genes, whilst retaining various cargo genes that potentially bestow novel functions on the host organism. A gene encoding a putative integrase was identified at a single site within the 5′ end of the dusA gene in the genomes of over 200 bacteria. This integrase was discovered to be a component of numerous genomic islands, which appear to share a target site within the dusA gene. dusA encodes the tRNA-dihydrouridine synthase A enzyme, which catalyses the post-transcriptional reduction of uridine to dihydrouridine in tRNA. Genomic islands encoding homologous dusA-associated integrases were found at a much lower frequency within the related dusB and dusC genes, and non-dus genes. Excision of these dusA-associated islands from the chromosome as circularized intermediates was confirmed by polymerase chain reaction. Analysis of the dusA-associated islands indicated that they were highly diverse, with the integrase gene representing the only universal common feature.
Quantitative metrics for measuring web accessibility

This paper raises the need for quantitative accessibility measurement and proposes three different application scenarios where quantitative accessibility metrics are useful: Quality Assurance within Web Engineering, Information Retrieval and accessibility monitoring. We propose a quantitative metric which is automatically calculated from reports of automatic evaluation tools. In order to prove the reliability of the metric, 15 websites (1363 web pages) are measured based on results yielded by 2 evaluation tools: EvalAccess and LIFT. Statistical analysis of results shows that the metric is dependent on the evaluation tool. However, Spearman's test produces high correlation between results of different tools. Therefore, we conclude that the metric is reliable for ranking purposes in Information Retrieval and accessibility monitoring scenarios and can also be partially applied in a Web Engineering scenario.
Demonstration of a deficiency of glucocerebroside-cleaving enzyme in Gaucher's disease.

The accumulation of abnormal quantities of glucocerebroside in the reticuloendothelial cells of patients with Gaucher's disease is well documented (2-7). Previous studies in this laboratory indicated no abnormality in cerebroside formation in spleen tissue obtained from patients with Gaucher's disease (8). These observations suggested that the biochemical lesion in these patients might be on the pathway of cerebroside catabolism. To pursue such investigations, we chemically synthesized glucocerebroside-14C labeled in carbon atom 1 of the D-glucose portion of the cerebroside molecule (9). With this material, it was possible to demonstrate and partially purify an enzyme in human spleen tissue that catalyzes the hydrolysis of the glycosidic bond of the cerebroside molecule. The products of the reaction catalyzed by the most highly purified enzyme preparation were shown to be glucose and ceramide (N-acylsphingosine) (9). When this information became available, studies were undertaken to determine the level of the glucocerebroside-cleaving enzyme in human spleen tissue obtained from patients with various conditions. The present report describes the results obtained in these experiments and presents evidence of a marked attenuation of glucocerebrosidecleaving activity in the spleen of patients with Gaucher's disease.