Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Association of depression with common carotid artery intima media thickness and augmentation index in a large Urban South Indian population- The Chennai Urban Rural Epidemiology Study (CURES - 138)

Aim: The aim of the study was to assess the relationship of depression with carotid intima media thickness and augmentation index in Asian Indians. Research Design and Methods: For this study, 1505 subjects were randomly selected from a population based study conducted in Chennai, South India. Right common carotid artery intima medial thickness [IMT] was determined using high-resolution B-mode ultrasonography. Augmentation index [AI] was measured using the Sphygmocor apparatus. Depressive symptoms were assessed using a previously validated instrument, the Patient Health Questionnaire -12 (PHQ -12). Results: Of the 1505 subjects included in this study, depressive symptoms were present in 16.6% (n = 250) of the subjects. The mean IMT and AI values among subjects with depression were significantly higher than those without depression [0.83 ± 0.43 mm vs 0.73 ± 0.12 mm, P < 0.001] and IMT was higher in females with depression while AI was higher in males with depression. However, both IMT and AI were higher among those with depression in both genders. In multiple logistic regression model, depressive symptoms were associated with IMT even after adjusting for age, gender, body mass index, fasting plasma glucose, serum cholesterol and hypertension (Odds ratio [OR] =2.17, 95% Confidence intervals [CI]:1.01- 4.63, P = 0.047) but in the case of AI, the significance was lost in the adjusted model (OR = 1.01, 95% CI: 0.991-1.02, P = 0.445). Conclusion: Among Asian Indians, presence of depressive symptoms was associated with carotid intima media thickness and Augmentation index, even after adjusting for potential confounders.
Ensemble of Bayesian Predictors and Decision Trees for Proactive Failure Management in Cloud Computing Systems

In modern cloud computing systems, hundreds and even thousands of cloud servers are interconnected by multi-layer networks. In such large-scale and complex systems, failures are common. Proactive failure management is a crucial technology to characterize system behaviors and forecast failure dynamics in the cloud. To make failure predictions, we need to monitor the system execution and collect health-related runtime performance data. However, in newly deployed or managed cloud systems, these data are usually unlabeled. Supervised learning based approaches are not suitable in this case. In this paper, we present an unsupervised failure detection method using an ensemble of Bayesian models. It characterizes normal execution states of the system and detects anomalous behaviors. After the anomalies are verified by system administrators, labeled data are available. Then, we apply supervised learning based on decision tree classifiers to predict future failure occurrences in the cloud. Experimental results in an institute-wide cloud computing system show that our methods can achieve high true positive rate and low false positive rate for proactive failure management.
Flow‐directed PCA for monitoring networks

Measurements recorded over monitoring networks often possess spatial and temporal correlation inducing redundancies in the information provided. For river water quality monitoring in particular, flow‐connected sites may likely provide similar information. This paper proposes a novel approach to principal components analysis to investigate reducing dimensionality for spatiotemporal flow‐connected network data in order to identify common spatiotemporal patterns. The method is illustrated using monthly observations of total oxidized nitrogen for the Trent catchment area in England. Common patterns are revealed that are hidden when the river network structure and temporal correlation are not accounted for. Such patterns provide valuable information for the design of future sampling strategies.
Stability of macromolecular complexes

Macromolecular interactions are crucial in numerous biologic processes, yet few general principles are available that establish firm expectations for the strength of these interactions or the expected contribution of specific forces. The simplest principle would be a monotonic increase in interactions as the size of the interface grows. The exact relationship might be linear or nonlinear depending on the nature of the forces involved. Simple “linear–free energy” relationships based on atomic properties have been well documented, for example, additivity for the interaction of small molecules with solvent, and, recently, have been explored for ligand–receptor interactions. Horton and Lewis propose such additivity based on buried surface area for protein–protein complexes. We investigated macromolecular interactions and found that the highest‐affinity complexes do not fulfill this simple expectation. Instead, binding free energies of the tightest macromolecular complexes are roughly constant, independent of interface size, with the notable exception of DNA duplexes. By comparing these results to an earlier study of protein–ligand interactions we find that: (1) The maximum affinity is approximately 1.5 kcal/mol per nonhydrogen atom or 120 cal/mol Å2 of buried surface area, comparable to results of our earlier work; (2) the lack of an increase in affinity with interface size is likely due to nonthermodynamic factors, such as functional and evolutionary constraints rather than some fundamental physical limitation. The implication of these results have some importance for molecular design because they suggest that: (1) The stability of any given complex can be increased significantly if desired; (2) small molecule inhibitors of macromolecular interactions are feasible; and (3) different functional classes of protein–protein complexes exhibit differences in maximal stability, perhaps in response to differing evolutionary pressures. These results are consistent with the widespread observation that proteins have not evolved to maximize thermodynamic stability, but are only marginally stable. Proteins 2002;48:645–653. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
What Types of Interactions do Bio-Inspired Robot Swarms and Flocks Afford a Human?

This paper uses simulations to identify what types of human influence are afforded by the flocking and swarming structures that emerge from Couzin’s bio-inspired model [4]. The goal is to allow a human to influence a decentralized agent collective without resorting to centralized human control. Evidence is provided that, when nominal agents use switching-based control to respond to human-guided predators and leaders, the resulting behavior is responsive to human input but is obtained at the cost of causing the dynamic structure of the collective to follow a single flocking structure. Leaders are more effective in influencing coherent flocks, but predators can be used to divide the flock into sub-flocks, yielding higher performance on some problems. Introducing a so-called “stakeholder” leadership style makes it possible for a human to guide the agents while maintaining several different types of structures; doing so requires more than one human-controlled agent. We then demonstrate that it is possible to produce potentially useful emergent dynamics without centralized human control, and identify an important type of emergent dynamics: automatic switches between structure types.
Arterial hyperintensity on fast fluid-attenuated inversion recovery images: a subtle finding for hyperacute stroke undetected by diffusion-weighted MR imaging.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Diffusion-weighted MR imaging is generally acknowledged to be more sensitive in detecting acute stroke than is conventional MR imaging. Our purpose in the present study was to evaluate the utility of fast fluid-attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR) MR imaging compared with that of diffusion-weighted MR imaging for the diagnosis of hyperacute stroke. METHODS We reviewed patient records and cerebral MR images from all patients in a 13-month period from whom diffusion-weighted and fast-FLAIR imaging were obtained within 6 hours after symptom onset (n = 11). Special attention was paid to the presence or absence of arterial hyperintensity on FLAIR images and abnormally high-signal regions on diffusion-weighted images in the affected vascular territories. RESULTS Arterial hyperintensity was found in eight of 11 patients, all of whom had embolic or thrombotic infarctions with middle cerebral arterial (MCA) distribution. Arterial hyperintensity was negative in the remaining three patients; the vascular territories were the posterior circulation region in two of these patients and the MCA region in one, and the types of infarction in these same patients were lacunar in two and embolic in one. Regions with high-signal diffusion abnormalities relevant to the patients' symptoms were found in 10 of 11 patients. One patient showed no diffusion abnormalities but the presence of arterial hyperintensity in the affected MCA territory on the initial MR examination, and manifested embolic infarction along with arterial hyperintensity on the initial FLAIR image. CONCLUSION Although diffusion-weighted MR imaging is highly sensitive to stroke, diffusion-weighted MR imaging alone may not rule out a possible infarction. Arterial hyperintensity on FLAIR images can precede diffusion abnormalities and may provide a clue to the early detection of impending infarction.
Diabetes Surgery: A New Approach to an Old Disease

Since its earliest description several thousand years ago, diabetes has remained a chronic progressive disease (1). The disease now affects ∼200 million people worldwide, and diabetes-related death is expected to increase by >50% in the next 10 years (2). The situation is only getting worse. The prevalence of diabetes among the elderly has increased 63% in the 10 years 1994–2004 (3). This increasing prevalence is a testament to improvement in managing diabetes-related complications, as well as our global “modernization” and the accompanying metabolic derangements. Diabetes is now ranked as the sixth leading cause of death by disease in the U.S. (4). In many places, it ranks far higher. The economic burden in 2007 alone exceeded $174 billion (5). Diet modification and oral hypoglycemic medications have proven inadequate, whereas insulin therapy only solves the problem temporarily. In the U.K. Prospective Diabetes Study, diabetic patients were treated with diet modification, metformin, sulfonylurea, or insulin. Consistent with the progressive nature of diabetes, monotherapy was abandoned in 75% of the patients studied in a follow-up of 9 years (6). Even with the newest pharmaco-therapies, patients continue to develop macro- and microvascular complications. Diabetes is associated with increased cardiac- and stroke-related deaths, kidney failure, blindness, and 60% of nontrauma lower-limb amputations (4). In cardiac surgery, diabetes as a preoperative risk factor confers greater morbidity than a previous myocardial infarction (7,8). While these numbers show that diabetes will be the global health crisis of the next generation, its true pathophysiology has yet to be delineated. Alternative treatments targeting different models of this disease require careful and responsible examination. A large body of evidence now demonstrates surgery for type 2 diabetes can achieve up to complete disease remission, a goal almost unheard of in current diabetes care. Evidence collected over decades of bariatric …
Inventories and mobilization of unsaturated zone sulfate, fluoride, and chloride related to land use change in semiarid regions, southwestern United States and Australia

Unsaturated zone salt reservoirs are potentially mobilized by increased groundwater recharge as semiarid lands are cultivated. This study explores the amounts of pore water sulfate and fluoride relative to chloride in unsaturated zone profiles, evaluates their sources, estimates mobilization due to past land use change, and assesses the impacts on groundwater quality. Inventories of water‐extractable chloride, sulfate, and fluoride were determined from borehole samples of soils and sediments collected beneath natural ecosystems (N = 4), nonirrigated (“rain‐fed”) croplands (N = 18), and irrigated croplands (N = 6) in the southwestern United States and in the Murray Basin, Australia. Natural ecosystems contain generally large sulfate inventories (7800–120,000 kg/ha) and lower fluoride inventories (630–3900 kg/ha) relative to chloride inventories (6600–41,000 kg/ha). Order‐of‐magnitude higher chloride concentrations in precipitation and generally longer accumulation times result in much larger chloride inventories in the Murray Basin than in the southwestern United States. Atmospheric deposition during the current dry interglacial climatic regime accounts for most of the measured sulfate in both U.S. and Australian regions. Fluoride inventories are greater than can be accounted for by atmospheric deposition in most cases, suggesting that fluoride may accumulate across glacial/interglacial climatic cycles. Chemical modeling indicates that fluorite controls fluoride mobility and suggests that water‐extractable fluoride may include some fluoride from mineral dissolution. Increased groundwater drainage/recharge following land use change readily mobilized chloride. Sulfate displacement fronts matched or lagged chloride fronts by up to 4 m. In contrast, fluoride mobilization was minimal in all regions. Understanding linkages between salt inventories, increased recharge, and groundwater quality is important for quantifying impacts of anthropogenic activities on groundwater quality and is required for remediating salinity problems.
Study on the Viscoelasticity of Cancellous Bone Based on Higher-Order Fractional Models

It is well known that human bones are viscoelastic bodies. The theological properties that give rise to viscoelasticity may have a fundamental behavior based on fractional rather than integer calculus. So various constitutive models based on fractional calculus have been put forward, including two higher-order fractional models. In this paper, we recommend two higher-order fractional models (FVMS model and FVMP model), and used the relaxation function of FVMP model and creep function of FVMS model to fit the relaxation experimental data and creep experimental data from Wang et al, respectively. The fitting curves are plotted and show that, the higher-order fractional models are successful and efficient in describing the viscoelasticity of human bone, and may have good potential of applications in research on the property of human bones and tissues, and other biologic viscoelastic materials.
Economic Cost Model for Software Engineering Simulation

: The common software engineering education method of theory presented in lectures along with application of these theories in an associated class project is insufficient, on its own, to effectively communicate the complex, fundamental dynamics underlying real-world software engineering processes. We are constructing a new approach to software engineering education that is based on the use of an educational software engineering simulation environment. However, a major challenge in developing such an environment lies in creating an accurate model of the real world upon which the simulation is based. In order for the simulation to be a successful educational tool, this model must be based on an appropriate economic model, must consist of the correct “fundamental laws” of software engineering, and must encode them quantitatively into accurate mathematical relationships, thereby correctly embodying and portraying all of the various factors, dynamics, and cause and effect relationships present in the real-world software engineering process.
Impact of a type 2 diabetes diagnosis on mental health, quality of life, and social contacts: a longitudinal study

Aims The aim was to examine whether a type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) diagnosis increases the odds of psychological distress, a worsening in overall quality of life, and a potential reduction in social contacts. Method Longitudinal data were obtained from the 45 and Up Study (baseline 2006–2008; 3.4±0.95 years follow-up time). Fixed effects logistic and negative binomial regression models were fitted on a complete case on outcome sample that did not report T2DM at baseline (N=26 344), adjusted for time-varying confounders. The key exposure was doctor-diagnosed T2DM at follow-up. Outcome variables examined included the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale, self-rated quality of life, and four indicators of social contacts. Results A modest increase in the odds of psychological distress associated with T2DM diagnosis (OR=1.30) was not statistically significant (95% CI 0.75 to 2.25). A T2DM diagnosis was associated with a fivefold increase in the odds of a participant reporting that their quality of life had become significantly poorer (OR 5.49, 95% CI 1.26 to 23.88). T2DM diagnosis was also associated with a reduction in times spent with friends and family (RR 0.88, 95% CI 0.82 to 0.95), contacts by telephone (RR 0.95, 95% CI 0.87 to 1.02), attendance at social clubs or religious groups (RR 0.82, 95% CI 0.73 to 0.91), and the number of people nearby but outside the home that participants felt they could rely on (RR 0.92, 95% CI 0.86 to 0.98). Conclusions A T2DM diagnosis can have important impacts on quality of life and on social contacts, which may have negative impacts on mental health and T2DM management in the longer term.
Work-related stressors and psychological strain in the sales force:the role of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation

The contemporary workplace appears rife with psychological strain, which can have considerable deleterious outcomes to the firm and the individual. However, research on strain in the sales force is underdeveloped. This paper reports the results of a study of the antecedents and consequences of psychological strain in the sales force, with particular attention to the roles of role ambiguity, emotional exhaustion, and intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Emotional exhaustion is found to increase strain. Intrinsic motivation reduces strain under conditions of relatively high role ambiguity, but leads to more strain under conditions of low role ambiguity. Strain is found to have a J-shaped relationship with turnover intentions, and is linearly related to lower job satisfaction and lower job performance.
Cancer screening and risk-reducing behaviors of women seeking genetic cancer risk assessment for breast and ovarian cancers.

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES To examine breast and ovarian cancer screening and risk-reducing behaviors of women seeking genetic cancer risk assessment (GCRA). DESIGN Descriptive, cross-sectional. SETTING An insurance-based clinic that serves high-risk patients in a southern California cancer center. SAMPLE 134 women with breast or ovarian cancer (affected group) and 80 women with a family history of breast or ovarian cancer (unaffected group). The mean age of the sample was 48 years (range = 21-86), 79% were Caucasian, 66% were married, 60% were college educated, and 78% had children. Most affected women had early-stage disease. Unaffected women had a family history of breast (86%) or ovarian (14%) cancer. METHODS Mailed surveys assessed pre-GCRA health behaviors and health and family histories. MAIN RESEARCH VARIABLES Breast cancer screening (mammograms, clinical breast examination [CBE], breast self-examination), ovarian cancer screening (CA-125, pelvic ultrasound), and breast and ovarian cancer risk-reducing strategies (tamoxifen, bilateral mastectomy, oral contraceptive pills, bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy). FINDINGS Twenty-one percent of the women who should have been having a mammogram had not had an annual examination as recommended, and 30% of affected women had not had annual CBEs. Few women took tamoxifen or oral contraceptive pills or had a bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy or bilateral mastectomy for cancer risk reduction. Twelve percent likely had unnecessary ovarian cancer screening. About 35% used other means, including herbs and homeopathy, for cancer prevention. CONCLUSIONS Nearly a third of the affected women had not had appropriate breast cancer screening. About 12% used unsubstantiated, potentially harmful cancer "prevention" measures (e.g., herbs). IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING Nurses should assess clients' personal and family breast and ovarian cancer histories and promote cancer screening and risk-reducing behaviors that are appropriate for age and risk level.
Novel Analysis Patterns in the Context of the Managed Investments Instruments

Traditionally, the investment funds market exploits analysis and design concepts based on the procedural programming approach. We propose a set of analysis patterns which describes the financial products using the objectoriented paradigm. Primarily, the goal of our project has been to provide a solution to calculate the limits related of the managed financial investments. Thus the analysis of financial products has been performed from the calculus of limits point of view. The result is a set of design guidelines that include not only the definition of limits and their calculus formulas but also the definition of products, domains, and portfolios. Our aim has been to provide a model that can be further extended with new types of limits and calculus formulas and to be reused in other financial applications. The paper ends by summarizing the most important implementation issues we have addressed.
Performance improvement of connected digit recognition using unsupervised fast speaker adaptation

In this paper, we investigate unsupervised fast speaker adaptation based on eigenvoice to improve the performance of Korean connected digit recognition over the telephone channel. In addition, utterance verification is introduced into speaker adaptation to examine whether input utterance is appropriate to adaptation or not. Performance evaluation showed that the proposed method yielded performance improvements. We obtained 18%-22% string error reduction by the N-best-based fast speaker adaptation method with utterance verification using Support Vector Machine.
Uniqueness and Non-uniqueness in Percolation Theory

This paper is an up-to-date introduction to the problem of uniqueness versus non-uniqueness of infinite clusters for percolation on ${\mathbb{Z}}^d$ and, more generally, on transitive graphs. For iid percolation on ${\mathbb{Z}}^d$, uniqueness of the infinite cluster is a classical result, while on certain other transitive graphs uniqueness may fail. Key properties of the graphs in this context turn out to be amenability and nonamenability. The same problem is considered for certain dependent percolation models -- most prominently the Fortuin--Kasteleyn random-cluster model -- and in situations where the standard connectivity notion is replaced by entanglement or rigidity. So-called simultaneous uniqueness in couplings of percolation processes is also considered. Some of the main results are proved in detail, while for others the proofs are merely sketched, and for yet others they are omitted. Several open problems are discussed.