Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
SuperTAG Methylation-specific Digital Karyotyping Reveals Uremia-induced Epigenetic Dysregulation of Atherosclerosis-Related Genes

Background—Accelerated atherosclerosis is a hallmark of chronic kidney disease (CKD). Although the role of epigenetic dysregulation in atherosclerosis is increasingly appreciated, only a few studies focused on epigenetics in CKD-associated cardiovascular disease, virtually all of which assessed epigenetic dysregulation globally. We hypothesized that gene-specific epigenetic dysregulation in CKD exists, affecting genes pertinent to inflammation and atherosclerosis. Methods and Results—Ten clinically stable patients undergoing hemodialysis therapy and 10 healthy age- and sex-matched controls were recruited. Genome-wide analysis of DNA methylation was performed by SuperTAG methylation-specific digital karyotyping, in order to identify genes differentially methylated in CKD. Analysis of 27 043 436 tags revealed 4288 genomic loci with differential DNA methylation (P<10–10) between hemodialysis patients and control subjects. Annotation of UniTags to promoter databases allowed us to identify 52 candidate genes associated with cardiovascular disease and 97 candidate genes associated with immune/infection diseases. These candidate genes could be classified to distinct proatherogenic processes, including lipid metabolism and transport (eg, HMGCR, SREBF1, LRP5, EPHX2, and FDPS), cell proliferation and cell-cycle regulation (eg, MIK67, TP53, and ALOX12), angiogenesis (eg, ANGPT2, ADAMTS10, and FLT4), and inflammation (eg, TNFSF10, LY96, IFNGR1, HSPA1A, and IL12RB1). Conclusions—We provide a comprehensive analysis of genome-wide epigenetic alterations in CKD, identifying candidate genes associated with proatherogenic and inflammatory processes. These results may spur further research in the field of epigenetics in kidney disease and point to new therapeutic strategies in CKD-associated atherosclerotic disease.
Gender, power, and communication in human relationships

Contents: Preface. Part I: Introduction and Overview. P.J. Kalbfleisch, M.J. Cody, Power and Communication in the Relationships of Women and Men. Part II: Gender-Based Expectations and Beliefs. N.M. Henley, Body Politics Revisited: What Do We Know Today? J.K. Burgoon, L. Dillman, Gender, Immediacy, and Nonverbal Communication. A. Mulac, J.J. Bradac, Women's Style in Problem Solving Interaction: Powerless, or Simply Feminine? J.T. Spence, C. Buckner, Masculinity and Femininity: Defining the Undefinable. Part III: Women and Men Together. R.K. Reinholtz, C.L. Muehlenhard, J.L. Phelps, A.T. Satterfield, Sexual Discourse and Sexual Intercourse: How the Way We Communicate Affects the Way We Think About Sexual Coercion. L.C. Miller, D.M. Burns, S. Rothspan, Negotiating Safer Sex: The Dynamics of African-American Relationships. P.J. Kalbfleisch, J. Keyton, Power and Equality in Mentoring Relationships. M.A. Fitzpatrick, A. Mulac, Relating to Spouse and Stranger: Gender Preferential Language Use. W.R. Cupach, D.J. Canary, Managing Conflict and Anger: Investigating the Sex Stereotype Hypothesis. P. Schwartz, D. Patterson, S. Steen, The Dynamics of Power: Money and Sex in Intimate Relationships. Part IV: Women and Men in Society. E.M. Rogers, T.M. Hirata, A.S. Chandran, J.D. Robinson, Television Promotion of Gender Equality in Societies. M.J. Cody, J. Seiter, Y. Montagne-Miller, Men and Women in the Market Place. J.C. Pearson, L. Cooks, Gender and Power.
Current status of software development in industrial practice: Key results of a large-scale questionnaire

The fourth industrial revolution is shaping the development of companies in the automation domain, encompassing several trends such as Cyber-Physical Systems and the Internet of Things. Even though promising new technologies have arisen in the last years, there are still many challenges to overcome, particularly that of generalized acceptance. In this paper, the latest trends related to requirements and adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies are summarized, as well as the associated issues to be solved. Interesting results from a survey that was given to several industrial partners are presented, which illustrate the current adoption status at the software level, and the extent to which the corresponding challenges are being addressed.
Altering the paradigm for theory building and research in human resource development

Organizational life is messy, complex, and characterized by multiple causes and effects. It consists also of routine operations in which predictable cause-and-effect relationships prevail. What paradigms (unified perspectives that underlie practice, theory building, and research) are correct for studying organizational life, especially human resource development? Many theorists in HRD and other areas are reevaluating the ways in which they explain phenomena. In effect, the paradigms are shifting. Victoria Marsick explains for HRD professionals the traditional paradigm—logical positivism (better known as behaviorism or stimulus-response theory)—and alternative paradigms, especially naturalistic inquiry (often illustrated by systems thinking, cybernetics, and the organization described as the brain center). She poses the ultimate question: What is more important for HRD—rigor or relevance? Marsick suggests a focus for HRD on paradigms that place a higher value on the effective interpretation of multiple realities, self-organizing systems for learning that are linked to performance, and the interconnectivity of a learning, working community. Reality is an evolving plan, despite researchers' programmed attempts at predicting and controlling it.
Impaired knowledge of visual and non-visual attributes in a patient with a semantic impairment for living entities: A case of a true category-specific deficit

We report a single case study of a 22-year-old, brain-damaged patient, Jennifer, who showed a semantic deficit affecting living entities (animals and fruit and vegetables) to a greater extent than non-living ones (implements and means of transport). We first show that this category effect was reliable both across time and naming conditions and that it was not an artefact of uncontrolled stimulus factors. We then show that Jennifer had no impairment at the visual or structural processing level and that her deficit was probably located at a semantic processing level. Specific semantic deficits for living entities have usually been explained by damage to the visual semantic system. However, when Jennifer's access to visual and non-visual semantics was assessed through an attribute-verification task, no evidence of an attribute-specific impairment was found: Jennifer was equally impaired in retrieving visual and non-visual attributes of living entities and she was not at all impaired in retrieving visual attributes of non-living entities. Thus, the hypothesis of damage to visual semantics cannot account for the pattern of living things impairment found in this patient. Rather, this pattern seems to require the assumption that the semantic system is organized according to the living/non-living dimension.
The Contributions of Language and Behavioral Synchrony in Developing Affect Regulation in High-Risk Children

Biological vulnerability translates into behavioral risks that often extend beyond the infancy period. Pre-term children born low birth weight are at risk for behavioral and emotional difficulties, however, little is known about how these difficulties manifest and interact with biological risk and environmental factors. This study examined the extent to which children’s language and dyadic relationship factors facilitate affect regulation and behavior problems in low birth weight children (LBW). Sixty-eight preschool-age children and their mothers participated in the study. Children were administered an assessment of cognitive functioning in which verbal ability was examined, and engaged in a laboratory frustration task designed to elicit negative affect to assess emotion regulation. Results revealed correlations among verbal ability, behavior problems, behavioral synchrony, and emotion regulation. Group Differences were found in verbal ability and positive affect in which LBW children demonstrated lower verbal ability scores and less positive affect than full-term children. For the full sample, behavior synchrony moderated the relationship between verbal ability and negative emotion regulation. The results provide evidence of the importance of the functional role of language and dyadic relations in the development of affect regulation and behavior problems. The results also elucidate the importance of integrating social emotional information in developing interventions for pre-term children.
Ideological conflict in education: Western Australia, 1983-1989

Surveys and analyses developments in the Western Australia education system between 1983 and 1989, a period of dramatic and unprecedented change. Demonstrates that patterns of control are underpinned and shaped by ideologies which exist in a wider socio‐political context. The main changes during this period are shown to proceed from two almost opposite ideological strands: a social imperative and an economic imperative. While reconcilable in theory, the attempt in Western Australia at the simultaneous implementation of changes driven by these imperatives resulted in the social imperative being subjugated to the politically‐based economic imperative. Concludes that this outcome occurred through intervening factors associated with patterns of control.
1 Socioeconomic Patterns in Climate Data

To generate a climate data set, temperature data collected at the Earth’s surface must be adjusted to remove non-climatic effects such as urbanization and measurement discontinuities. Some studies have shown that the post-1980 spatial pattern of temperature trends over land in prominent climate data sets is strongly correlated with the spatial pattern of socioeconomic development, implying that the adjustments are inadequate, leaving a residual warm bias. This evidence has been disputed on three grounds: spatial autocorrelation of the temperature field undermines significance of test results; counterfactual experiments using model-generated data suggest such correlations have an innocuous interpretation; and different satellite covariates yield unstable results. Somewhat surprisingly, these claims have not been put into a coherent framework for the purpose of statistical testing. We combine economic and climatological data sets from various teams with trend estimates from global climate models and we use spatial regressions to test the competing hypotheses. Overall we find that the evidence for contamination of climatic data is robust across numerous data sets, it is not undermined by controlling for spatial autocorrelation, and the patterns are not explained by climate models. Consequently we conclude that important data products used for the analysis of climate change over global land surfaces may be contaminated with socioeconomic patterns related to urbanization and other socioeconomic processes.
Newton-like Method with Diagonal Correction for Distributed Optimization

We consider distributed optimization problems where networked nodes cooperatively minimize the sum of their locally known convex costs. A popular class of methods to solve these problems are the distributed gradient methods, which are attractive due to their inexpensive iterations, but have a drawback of slow convergence rates. This motivates the incorporation of second-order information in the distributed methods, but this task is challenging: although the Hessians which arise in the algorithm design respect the sparsity of the network, their inverses are dense, hence rendering distributed implementations difficult. We overcome this challenge and propose a class of distributed Newton-like methods, which we refer to as Distributed Quasi Newton (DQN). The DQN family approximates the Hessian inverse by: 1) splitting the Hessian into its diagonal and off-diagonal part, 2) inverting the diagonal part, and 3) approximating the inverse of the off-diagonal part through a weighted linear function. The approximation is parameterized by the tuning variables which correspond to different splittings of the Hessian and by different weightings of the off-diagonal Hessian part. Specific choices of the tuning variables give rise to different variants of the proposed general DQN method -- dubbed DQN-0, DQN-1 and DQN-2 -- which mutually trade-off communication and computational costs for convergence. Simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed DQN methods.
A multiscale model of thrombus development

A two-dimensional multiscale model is introduced for studying formation of a thrombus (clot) in a blood vessel. It involves components for modelling viscous, incompressible blood plasma; non-activated and activated platelets; blood cells; activating chemicals; fibrinogen; and vessel walls and their interactions. The macroscale dynamics of the blood flow is described by the continuum Navier–Stokes equations. The microscale interactions between the activated platelets, the platelets and fibrinogen and the platelets and vessel wall are described through an extended stochastic discrete cellular Potts model. The model is tested for robustness with respect to fluctuations of basic parameters. Simulation results demonstrate the development of an inhomogeneous internal structure of the thrombus, which is confirmed by the preliminary experimental data. We also make predictions about different stages in thrombus development, which can be tested experimentally and suggest specific experiments. Lastly, we demonstrate that the dependence of the thrombus size on the blood flow rate in simulations is close to the one observed experimentally.
Analysis of the complete DNA sequence of murine cytomegalovirus

The complete DNA sequence of the Smith strain of murine cytomegalovirus (MCMV) was determined from virion DNA by using a whole-genome shotgun approach. The genome has an overall G+C content of 58.7%, consists of 230,278 bp, and is arranged as a single unique sequence with short (31-bp) terminal direct repeats and several short internal repeats. Significant similarity to the genome of the sequenced human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) strain AD169 is evident, particularly for 78 open reading frames encoded by the central part of the genome. There is a very similar distribution of G+C content across the two genomes. Sequences toward the ends of the MCMV genome encode tandem arrays of homologous glycoproteins (gps) arranged as two gene families. The left end encodes 15 gps that represent one family, and the right end encodes a different family of 11 gps. A homolog (m144) of cellular major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I genes is located at the end of the genome opposite the HCMV MHC class I homolog (UL18). G protein-coupled receptor (GCR) homologs (M33 and M78) occur in positions congruent with two (UL33 and UL78) of the four putative HCMV GCR homologs. Counterparts of all of the known enzyme homologs in HCMV are present in the MCMV genome, including the phosphotransferase gene (M97), whose product phosphorylates ganciclovir in HCMV-infected cells, and the assembly protein (M80).
Current Concepts in the Management of Postoperative Nausea and Vomiting

Postoperative nausea and vomiting (PONV) are still common following surgery. This is not only distressing to the patient, but increases costs. The thorough understanding of the mechanism of nausea and vomiting and a careful assessment of risk factors provide a rationale for appropriate management of PONV. Strategy to reduce baseline risk and the adoption of a multimodal approach will most likely ensure success in the management of PONV.
Deciphering Dead-End Docking of Large Dense Core Vesicles in Bovine Chromaffin Cells

Large dense core vesicle (LDCV) exocytosis in chromaffin cells follows a well characterized process consisting of docking, priming, and fusion. Total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy (TIRFM) studies suggest that some LDCVs, although being able to dock, are resistant to calcium-triggered release. This phenomenon termed dead-end docking has not been investigated until now. We characterized dead-end vesicles using a combination of membrane capacitance measurement and visualization of LDCVs with TIRFM. Stimulation of bovine chromaffin cells for 5 min with 6 μm free intracellular Ca2+ induced strong secretion and a large reduction of the LDCV density at the plasma membrane. Approximately 15% of the LDCVs were visible at the plasma membrane throughout experiments, indicating they were permanently docked dead-end vesicles. Overexpression of Munc18-2 or SNAP-25 reduced the fraction of dead-end vesicles. Conversely, expressing open-syntaxin increased the fraction of dead-end vesicles. These results indicate the existence of the unproductive target soluble N-ethylmaleimide-sensitive factor attachment protein receptor acceptor complex composed of 2:1 syntaxin–SNAP-25 in vivo. More importantly, they define a novel function for this acceptor complex in mediating dead-end docking.
Locality-Sensitive Hashing Techniques for Nearest Neighbor Search

When the volume of data grows big, some simple tasks could become a significant concern. Nearest neighbor search is such a task which finds from a data set the k nearest data points to queries. Locality-sensitive hashing techniques have been developed for approximate but fast nearest neighbor search. This paper introduces the notion of locality-sensitive hashing and surveys the locality-sensitive hashing techniques. It categories them based on several criteria, presents their characteristics, and compares their performance.
Efficient approximation for models of multiprogramming with shared domains

Queueing network models of multiprogramming systems with memory constraints and multiple classes of jobs are important in representing large commercial computer systems. Typically, an exact analytical solution of such models is unavailable, and, given the size of their state space, the solution of models of this type is approached through simulation and/or approximation techniques. Recently, a computationally efficient iterative technique has been proposed by Brandwajn, Lazowska and Zahorjan for models of systems in which each job is subject to a separate memory constraint, i.e., has its own memory domain. In some important applications, it is not unusual, however, to have several jobs of different classes share a single memory “domain” (e.g., IBM's Information Management System). We present a simple approximate solution to the shared domain problem. The approach is inspired by the recently proposed technique which is complemented by a few approximations to preserve the conceptual simplicity and computational efficiency of this technique. The accuracy of the results is generally in fair agreement with simulation.
Management Fashion: Lifecycles, Triggers, and Collective Learning Processes

This theory-development case study of the quality circle management fashion focuses on three features of management-knowledge entrepreneurs' discourse promoting or discrediting such fashions: its lifecycle, forces triggering stages in its lifecycle, and the type of collective learning it fostered. Results suggest, first, that variability in when different types of knowledge entrepreneurs begin, continue, and stop promoting fashions explains variability in their lifecycles; second, that historically unique conjunctions of forces, endogenous and exogenous to the management-fashion market, trigger and shape management fashions; and third, that emotionally charged, enthusiastic, and unreasoned discourse characterizes the upswings of management fashion waves, whereas more reasoned, unemotional, and qualified discourse characterizes their downswings, evidencing a pattern of superstitious collective learning.
Social Stratification and the Digital Divide

Whereas recent studies show that the size of the Digital Divide has been shrinking for many groups, this article explores whether social-economic factors explain the racial, geographic, and gender divides. Rural, minority, and female respondents were less likely to have home computers or to be connected to the Internet. Controlling for socioeconomic variables, the effects of rural residence and gender disappeared but African Americans were still less likely to have home computers or Internet access. When public Internet access was examined, rural residence and gender had no effect but African Americans were more likely to know of public facilities in their community even when socioeconomic variables were controlled. Future research needs to better understand the implications of different ways of using new technology (i. e., public vs. private access) and determine if digital technology deepens socioeconomic chasms or provides new opportunities.
Assessing vocational preferences among gifted adolescents adds incremental validity to abilities: A discriminant analysis of educational outcomes over a 10-year interval.

The researchers used the theory of work adjustment (R. V. Dawis & L. H. Lofquist, 1984; L. H. Lofquist & R. V. Dawis, 1991) and C. P. Snow's (1959) conceptualization of two cultures as theoretical frameworks to analyze the incremental validity of above-level preference assessment (relative to abilities) in predicting humanities, math-science, and other college majors completed 10 years later by intellectually gifted adolescents. Scholastic Aptitude Tests and Study of Values assessments of 432 intellectually gifted adolescents (age 13) provided unique and valuable information for predicting the type of college major completed 10 years after initial assessment. These positive findings add to growing support for the applied utility of teaming preference assessments among the gifted with above-level assessments of ability. For intellectually gifted adolescents, these assessments could facilitate educational planning (and counseling).
Directly High-Voltage Measuring System Based on Pockels Effect

To measure high voltage up to ± 450 kV in the dc to GHz range, a new optical high-voltage measuring system using a Pockels crystal in a longitudinal modulation arrangement is developed. The maximum measurable voltage for conventional Pockels sensors has been limited by the half-wavelength voltage Vπ. In the new system, a two-wavelength dual laser system is introduced to expand measurable voltage up to the least common multiple of Vπ for each light. The measured results for dc, ac, lightning impulse, and step voltages by the system are presented and compared with the predicted values.
Litigation Life

In recent decades, large-scale product liability litigation, so-called `mass torts', have become increasingly visible on the US legal and political landscape. Invariably, mass tort litigation incorporates a range of specialist scientific knowledges. Drawing upon fairly conventional images of law and science, most judges and legal commentators attribute the apparent difficulties encountered in addressing the refractory issues involved with scientific evidence in mass torts to uncertainties, jury incomprehension, partisan scientists and the distortion of evidence caused by the adversarial legal system (`sociologies of error'). Adopting a more symmetrical social constructivist approach to scientific evidence, this paper endeavours to account for some of the complexities in the litigation surrounding the anti-nausea drug Bendectin. Rather than interpret the Bendectin litigation as an instance of the judges eventually valuing the scientific evidence properly, and thus resolving the controversy (the truth winning out), this paper explores the manner in which lawyers, scientists and judges together `negotiated' a series of cases and judgments which privileged epidemiology as a means of `resolving' a recurrent socio-legal `problem'