Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Constructing (dis)order : a discourse analysis of constructions of "personality disorder" in British clinical psychology literature.

Objective: Consistent with recommendations made in the National Service Framework for Mental Health (Department of Health, 1999), a programme was developed to improve the interface between primary and secondary care services. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of the programme on the referral pattern of one of the general practitioner (GP) surgeries involved. Design: The study involved a retrospective review of all consecutive referral letters between the periods September 2002 September 2003 (pre programme implementation) and November 2003 November 2004 (post programme implementation). Main outcome measures: The impact of the programme was assessed in terms of the number of referrals formally received by the Community Mental Health Centre (CMHC), the proportion of referrals accepted by the CMHC for an initial assessment and the range of the main presenting problems, as ascertained by the GP. Results: In the year following programme implementation, fewer patients were referred to the CMHC, a great proportion of those referred where accepted for an initial assessment and the main presenting problem was demonstrated as being more varied than in the year preceding programme implementation. Conclusion: Despite the significant associations observed between the changes in the referral pattern and the implementation of the programme, it is not possible, given the data collected, to conclude that the programme was responsible for affecting the change. The influence of extraneous factors can not be ruled out.
Inhaled anticholinergic use and all-cause mortality among elderly Medicare beneficiaries with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Background The purpose of this study was to examine the association between use of inhaled anticholinergics and all-cause mortality among elderly individuals with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), after controlling for demographic, socioeconomic, health, functional status, smoking, and obesity. Methods We used a retrospective longitudinal panel data design. Data were extracted for multiple years (2002–2009) of the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS) linked with fee-for-service Medicare claims. Generic and brand names of inhaled anticholinergics were used to identify inhaled anticholinergic utilization from the self-reported prescription medication files. All-cause mortality was assessed using the vital status variable. Unadjusted group differences in mortality rates were tested using the chi-square statistic. Multivariable logistic regressions with independent variables entered in separate blocks were used to analyze the association between inhaled anticholinergic use and all-cause mortality. All analyses accounted for the complex design of the MCBS. Results Overall, 19.4% of the elderly Medicare beneficiaries used inhaled anticholinergics. Inhaled anticholinergic use was significantly higher (28.5%) among those who reported poor health compared with those reporting excellent or very good health (12.7%). Bivariate analyses indicated that inhaled anticholinergic use was associated with significantly higher rates of all-cause mortality (18.7%) compared with nonusers (13.6%). However, multivariate analyses controlling for risk factors did not suggest an increased likelihood of all-cause mortality (adjusted odds ratio 1.26, 95% confidence interval 0.95–1.67). Conclusion Use of inhaled anticholinergics among elderly individuals with COPD is potentially safe in terms of all-cause mortality when we adjust for baseline risk factors.
Extensive gene conversion at the PMS2 DNA mismatch repair locus

Mutations of the PMS2 DNA repair gene predispose to a characteristic range of malignancies, with either childhood onset (when both alleles are mutated) or a partially penetrant adult onset (if heterozygous). These mutations have been difficult to detect, due to interference from a family of pseudogenes located on chromosome 7. One of these, the PMS2CL pseudogene, lies within a 100‐kb inverted duplication (inv dup), 700 kb centromeric to PMS2 itself on 7p22. Here, we show that the reference genomic sequences cannot be relied upon to distinguish PMS2 from PMS2CL, because of sequence transfer between the two loci. The 7p22 inv dup occurred prior to the divergence of modern ape species (15 million years ago [Mya]), but has undergone extensive sequence homogenization. This process appears to be ongoing, since there is considerable allelic diversity within the duplicated region, much of it derived from sequence exchange between PMS2 and PMS2CL. This sequence diversity can result in both false‐positive and false‐negative mutation analysis at this locus. Great caution is still needed in the design and interpretation of PMS2 mutation screens. Hum Mutat 28(5), 424–430, 2007. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Full wave simulations of lower hybrid wave propagation in tokamaks

Lower hybrid (LH) waves have the attractive property of damping strongly via electron Landau resonance on relatively fast tail electrons at (2.5-3)xv{sub te}, where v{sub te} {identical_to} (2T{sub e}/m{sub e}){sup 1/2} is the electron thermal speed. Consequently these waves are well-suited to driving current in the plasma periphery where the electron temperature is lower, making LH current drive (LHCD) a promising technique for off-axis (r/a{>=}0.60) current profile control in reactor grade plasmas. Established techniques for computing wave propagation and absorption use WKB expansions with non-Maxwellian self-consistent distributions.In typical plasma conditions with electron densities of several 10{sup 19} m{sup -3} and toroidal magnetic fields strengths of 4 Telsa, the perpendicular wavelength is of the order of 1 mm and the parallel wavelength is of the order of 1 cm. Even in a relatively small device such as Alcator C-Mod with a minor radius of 22 cm, the number of wavelengths that must be resolved requires large amounts of computational resources for the full wave treatment. These requirements are met with a massively parallel version of the TORIC full wave code that has been adapted specifically for the simulation of LH waves [J. C. Wright, et al., Commun. Comput. Phys., 4, 545more » (2008), J. C. Wright, et al., Phys. Plasmas 16 July (2009)]. This model accurately represents the effects of focusing and diffraction that occur in LH propagation. It is also coupled with a Fokker-Planck solver, CQL3D, to provide self-consistent distribution functions for the plasma dielectric as well as a synthetic hard X-ray (HXR) diagnostic for direct comparisons with experimental measurements of LH waves.The wave solutions from the TORIC-LH zero FLR model will be compared to the results from ray tracing from the GENRAY/CQL3D code via the synthetic HXR diagnostic and power deposition. « less
A Multisensor Implant for Continuous Monitoring of Intracranial Pressure Dynamics

In humans, intracranial pressure (ICP) is not only influenced by pathology, but also by orientation in space and body movements. Therefore, it is proposed to measure ICP dynamics and body acceleration simultaneously. An algorithm for acceleration analysis was developed to monitor orientation in space and allow more accurate examination of ICP dynamics during quiet periods.
Land-Cover Classification of Hypertemporal Data using Ensemble Systems

This study addresses the problem of multiannual supervised land-cover classification using hypertemporal data from the "Mediterranean Extended Daily One Km AVHRR Data Set" (MEDOKADS) and a decision fusion approach. 10 day NDVI maximum value composite data from the Iberian Peninsula for every year in the observation period (1989 to 2004) were preprocessed using Minimum Noise Fraction (MNF-) transformation. The MNF-scores from each year were then individually pre-classified using support-vector machines (SVM). The continuous outputs from the SVM, which can be interpreted in terms of posterior probabilities, where used to train a second-order SVM classifier to merge the information within consecutive years. The decision fusion strategy significantly increased the classification accuracy compared to pre-classification results. Increasing the temporal range in decision fusion from a two year to five-year period enhanced the total accuracy. The outcomes from the selected approach were compared with another ensemble method (majority voting) and with a single SVM expert that was trained for comparable multiannual periods. The results suggest that decision fusion is superior to the other methods.
Superfluous Neuroscience Information Makes Explanations of Psychological Phenomena More Appealing

Does the presence of irrelevant neuroscience information make explanations of psychological phenomena more appealing? Do fMRI pictures further increase that allure? To help answer these questions, 385 college students in four experiments read brief descriptions of psychological phenomena, each one accompanied by an explanation of varying quality (good vs. circular) and followed by superfluous information of various types. Ancillary measures assessed participants' analytical thinking, beliefs on dualism and free will, and admiration for different sciences. In Experiment 1, superfluous neuroscience information increased the judged quality of the argument for both good and bad explanations, whereas accompanying fMRI pictures had no impact above and beyond the neuroscience text, suggesting a bias that is conceptual rather than pictorial. Superfluous neuroscience information was more alluring than social science information (Experiment 2) and more alluring than information from prestigious “hard sciences” (Experiments 3 and 4). Analytical thinking did not protect against the neuroscience bias, nor did a belief in dualism or free will. We conclude that the “allure of neuroscience” bias is conceptual, specific to neuroscience, and not easily accounted for by the prestige of the discipline. It may stem from the lay belief that the brain is the best explanans for mental phenomena.
Learning to Agglomerate Superpixel Hierarchies

An agglomerative clustering algorithm merges the most similar pair of clusters at every iteration. The function that evaluates similarity is traditionally hand-designed, but there has been recent interest in supervised or semisupervised settings in which ground-truth clustered data is available for training. Here we show how to train a similarity function by regarding it as the action-value function of a reinforcement learning problem. We apply this general method to segment images by clustering superpixels, an application that we call Learning to Agglomerate Superpixel Hierarchies (LASH). When applied to a challenging dataset of brain images from serial electron microscopy, LASH dramatically improved segmentation accuracy when clustering supervoxels generated by state of the boundary detection algorithms. The naive strategy of directly training only supervoxel similarities and applying single linkage clustering produced less improvement.
Whispers in the Hyper-Space: High-Bandwidth and Reliable Covert Channel Attacks Inside the Cloud

Privacy and information security in general are major concerns that impede enterprise adaptation of shared or public cloud computing. Specifically, the concern of virtual machine (VM) physical co-residency stems from the threat that hostile tenants can leverage various forms of side channels (such as cache covert channels) to exfiltrate sensitive information of victims on the same physical system. However, on virtualized x86 systems, covert channel attacks have not yet proven to be practical, and thus the threat is widely considered a “potential risk. ” In this paper, we present a novel covert channel attack that is capable of high-bandwidth and reliable data transmission in the cloud. We first study the application of existing cache channel techniques in a virtualized environment and uncover their major insufficiency and difficulties. We then overcome these obstacles by: (1) redesigning a pure timing-based data transmission scheme, and (2) exploiting the memory bus as a high-bandwidth covert channel medium. We further design and implement a robust communication protocol and demonstrate realistic covert channel attacks on various virtualized x86 systems. Our experimental results show that covert channels do pose serious threats to information security in the cloud. Finally, we discuss our insights on covert channel mitigation in virtualized environments.
Adaptive Hedge

Most methods for decision-theoretic online learning are based on the Hedge algorithm, which takes a parameter called the learning rate. In most previous analyses the learning rate was carefully tuned to obtain optimal worst-case performance, leading to suboptimal performance on easy instances, for example when there exists an action that is significantly better than all others. We propose a new way of setting the learning rate, which adapts to the difficulty of the learning problem: in the worst case our procedure still guarantees optimal performance, but on easy instances it achieves much smaller regret. In particular, our adaptive method achieves constant regret in a probabilistic setting, when there exists an action that on average obtains strictly smaller loss than all other actions. We also provide a simulation study comparing our approach to existing methods.
A rapid and sensitive method to detect siRNA-mediated mRNA cleavage in vivo using 5′ RACE and a molecular beacon probe

Specific detection of mRNA cleavage by 5′RACE is the only method to confirm the knockdown of mRNA by RNA interference, but is rarely reported for in vivo studies. We have combined 5′-RNA-linker-mediated RACE (5′-RLM-RACE) with real-time PCR using a molecular beacon to develop a rapid and specific method termed MBRACE, which we have used to detect small-interfering RNA (siRNA)-induced cleavage of ApoB, RRM1 and YBX1 transcripts in vitro, and ApoB in vivo. When RNA from siRNA-transfected cells was used for 5′-RLM-RACE and a cleavage site-specific molecular beacon probe was included in subsequent real-time PCR analysis, the specific mRNA cleavage product was detected. Detection of siRNA-mediated cleavage was also observed when RNA from mouse liver following administration of ApoB-specific siRNA was analysed, even in cases where ApoB knockdown measured by real-time PCR was <10%. With its sensitivity and specificity, this variation on the 5′RACE method should prove a useful tool to detect mRNA cleavage and corroborate knockdown studies following siRNA use in vivo.
A Comparative Study on the Reliability Eorts in Component-Based Software Systems

Component-based technologies are increasingly proving efficiency in current software applications. The enormous expansion of these applications has increased the demands for reliable component-based technologies. Depending on different viewpoints and assumptions, a component takes various definitions and forms (e.g., class, function, module, agent, architectural component, or model-based component). As a result, numerous reliability works that involve varieties of the underlying strategies, objectives, and parameters are proposed for CBSS reliability. Surveying these reliability efforts is important for creating and selecting potential solutions that handle the reliability of CBSS applications. In this paper, we provide a taxonomy of the reliability efforts in component-based software based on the following reliability means: fault-tolerance, reliability assessment, and reliable design and operational activities. For each of these categories, we provide a comparative study of the proposed approaches, discuss the strengths and weaknesses, and show how do they integrate and contribute towards building dependable component frameworks. We compare and contrast the existing techniques considering their assumptions with respect to component definition and specification details.
Low-frequency noise in submicrometer MOSFETs with HfO/sub 2/, HfO/sub 2//Al/sub 2/O/sub 3/ and HfAlO/sub x/ gate stacks

Low-frequency noise measurements were performed on p- and n-channel MOSFETs with HfO/sub 2/, HfAlO/sub x/ and HfO/sub 2//Al/sub 2/O/sub 3/ as the gate dielectric materials. The gate length varied from 0.135 to 0.36 /spl mu/m with 10.02 /spl mu/m gate width. The equivalent oxide thicknesses were: HfO/sub 2/ 23 /spl Aring/, HfAlO/sub x/ 28.5 /spl Aring/ and HfO/sub 2//Al/sub 2/O/sub 3/ 33 /spl Aring/. In addition to the core structures with only about 10 /spl Aring/ of oxide between the high-K dielectric and silicon substrate, there were "double-gate oxide" structures where an interfacial oxide layer of 40 /spl Aring/ was grown between the high-K dielectric and Si. DC analysis showed low gate leakage currents in the order of 10/sup -12/ A(2-5 /spl times/ 10/sup -5/ A/cm/sup 2/) for the devices and, in general, yielded higher threshold voltages and lower mobility values when compared to the corresponding SiO/sub 2/ devices. The unified number-mobility fluctuation model was used to account for the observed 1/f noise and to extract the oxide trap density, which ranged from 1.8 /spl times/ 10/sup 17/ cm/sup -3/ eV/sup -1/ to 1, 3 /spl times/ 10/sup 19/ cm/sup -3/ eV/sup -1/ somewhat higher compared to conventional SiO/sub 2/ MOSFETs with the similar device dimensions. There was no evidence of single electron switching events or random telegraph signals. The aim of this paper is to present a general discussion on low-frequency noise characteristics of the three different high-K/gate stacks, relative comparison among them and to the Si-SiO/sub 2/ system.
Randomized Algorithms for Isomorphisms of Simple Types

We give the first linear time (yet randomized) algorithm for the first order isomorphism problem, i.e., the isomorphism of non-recursive types involving productand functiontype constructors, under the axioms of commutativity and associativity of products, currying and distributivity of functions over products. This problem can also be thought of as the problem of formal equality-testing of multi-variate expressions involving only multiplications and exponentiation. Previous work gave a deterministic O(n log n) time and O(n) space algorithm for the problem (n being the input size). Our specific contribution includes two randomized algorithms for the problem: (i) an O(n) time Monte Carlo algorithm (i.e., with a small probability it may decide erroneously that the two types are isomorphic), and (ii) an O(n log n) expected time and O(n) space Las Vegas algorithm (i.e., with a small probability it may execute long). The algorithms rely on a preprocessing stage which computes the sequence of the first n primes in O(n log n/ log log n) time and space.
Curcumin Protects Neonatal Rat Cardiomyocytes against High Glucose-Induced Apoptosis via PI3K/Akt Signalling Pathway

The function of curcumin on NADPH oxidase-related ROS production and cardiac apoptosis, together with the modulation of protein signalling pathways, was investigated in cardiomyocytes. Primary cultures of neonatal rat cardiomyocytes were exposed to 30 mmol/L high glucose with or without curcumin. Cell viability, apoptosis, superoxide formation, the expression of NADPH oxidase subunits, and potential regulatory molecules, Akt and GSK-3β, were assessed in cardiomyocytes. Cardiomyocytes exposure to high glucose led to an increase in both cell apoptosis and intracellular ROS levels, which were strongly prevented by curcumin treatment (10 μM). In addition, treatment with curcumin remarkably suppressed the increased activity of Rac1, as well as the enhanced expression of gp91phox and p47phox induced by high glucose. Lipid peroxidation and SOD were reversed in the presence of curcumin. Furthermore, curcumin treatment markedly inhibited the reduced Bcl-2/Bax ratio elicited by high glucose exposure. Moreover, curcumin significantly increased Akt and GSK-3β phosphorylation in cardiomyocytes treated with high glucose. In addition, LY294002 blocked the effects of curcumin on cardiomyocytes exposure to high glucose. In conclusion, these results demonstrated that curcumin attenuated high glucose-induced cardiomyocyte apoptosis by inhibiting NADPH-mediated oxidative stress and this protective effect is most likely mediated by PI3K/Akt-related signalling pathway.
The predictive influence of variables in three different academic learning environments on the intentions of music education majors to leave the degree program.

Attrition rates among students in music teacher training programs have contributed to a shortage of qualified music teachers for the nation's schools. The purpose of this study was to investigate the predictive relationship of academic variables in three different learning environments and the intent of a select population of music education majors to leave the degree program. The study drew upon the work of Tinto, Bean and Astin to form a theoretical foundation for examining variables unique to student withdrawal from the music education degree plan. Variables were examined within the context of three different learning environments: (1) applied lessons, (2) ensembles and (3) non-performance courses. Participants were 95 freshmen and sophomore music education majors at a public university who were enrolled in the music education degree program during the spring semester, 2002. Data included participant responses on the Music Student Inventory (MSI), a questionnaire developed specifically for the study, and grade data from university records. Independent variables in the study included participants' perceptions of (1) Ensemble experiences, (2) Applied lesson experiences, (3) Non-performance music course experiences, (3) Course requirements, and (4) Performance growth. Additional variables included: (1) Ensemble placement, (2) Course grades for music theory, applied lessons and aural skills, and (3) cumulative grade point averages. Gender interactions were also examined. The dependent variable in the study was intent to withdraw from the music education program. Data were analyzed using a binary logistic regression procedure. Results of the analysis indicated that none of the variables tested were statistically significant predictors of subjects' intentions to withdraw from the music education degree program. Gender interactions were not evident among the variables. Although statistically insignificant, the strongest predictor of the variables represented by questionnaire responses was lesson experiences. The ana ysis of course grades for music theory, applied lessons and aural skills failed to produce a statistically significant main effect, but applied lesson grades produced the strongest effect in the model. Results of the study suggest that students' intentions to withdraw from the music education program are related to variables other than those representing the academic component of the music education program.