Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Efficacy of an online intervention to reduce alcohol-related risks among community college students

Abstract Problems associated with alcohol use are well-documented among traditional 4-year college students, but less is known about community college students' alcohol use. The few published articles that have investigated alcohol consumption among community college students suggest that risky alcohol consumption is a concern. Online alcohol-related risk reduction programs may be well-suited to community college campuses, due to reduced cost and labour effort, as well as increased accessibility for students. The aim of the current study was to test the efficacy of an online intervention designed to reduce risks associated with alcohol use among community college students. Three hundred and nineteen community college students were randomised to one of two treatment conditions: reviewing the online alcohol-related risk reduction program or reviewing online educational newsletters. Generalised linear mixed models were conducted, testing for mean differences between conditions over time on each outcome (primary analyses: alcohol and other drug use, protective behaviours and consequences of substance use). Exploratory analyses for moderating effects of covariates and user engagement were also conducted. Twelve months after the intervention, students who reviewed the online intervention reported a reduction in the maximum number of drinks consumed on one occasion within the past week and a greater reduction in total drinks consumed within the past week, as compared to students who received educational e-newsletters. Online alcohol-related risk reduction programs for students beginning community college may offer a practical and effective way to reduce alcohol consumption, and may have the potential to increase the wellbeing of a largely underserved population.
Response to Short-Term Cold Storage for Eggs of Agasicles hygrophila (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae), a Biological Control Agent of Alligator Weed Alternanthera philoxeroides (Caryophyllales: Amaranthaceae)

Abstract The alligator weed flea beetle, Agasicles hygrophila Selman & Vogt (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) has been used very successfully for the biological control of the widely-distributed invasive weed Alternanthera philoxeroides (Mart.) Griseb (Caryophyllales: Amaranthaceae). In order to extend the ‘shelf life’ of natural enemies released in biological control programs, cold storage has proven to be a valuable commercial procedure. To determine a suitable low temperature for storage of A. hygrophila, we conducted short-term cold storage treatments of eggs (4°C for 0.5, 1, 2, 5 d, and 7.5, 10, 15°C for 5 d and a control of 25°C; all eggs were returned to 25°C after the treatments). We evaluated the effects of these treatments on the subsequent fitness of the populations based on a demographic analysis using group-reared age-stage two-sex life tables. For 5 d storage, temperatures below 10°C had lethal effects, which were also observed at 4°C for 2 d storage. Storage at 4°C for 0.5 d did not affect the fitness of A. hygrophila, but it did not prolong the developmental time. Storage at 10°C for 5 d significantly decreased rates of population increase compared with 25°C. A. hygrophila stored at 15°C for 5 d had similar age-(stage) specific survival rates, rates of population increase, increased longevity and reproductive capability to the controls at 25°C. It is concluded that there were no significant fitness costs after 5 d storage at 15°C, which is therefore potentially a suitable storage temperature for A. hygrophila eggs.
Decreased expression of CCL17 in the disrupted nasal polyp epithelium and its regulation by IL-4 and IL-5

Background In airway epithelium, thymus and activation-regulated chemokine (CCL17) and macrophage-derived chemokine (CCL22) are induced by defective epithelial barriers such as E-cadherin and attract the effector cells of Th2 immunity. However, the association between the epithelial barrier and CCL17 expression has not been studied in chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyp (CRSwNP). Thus, we aimed to evaluate the expression of CCL17 and its regulation by Th cytokines in nasal polyp (NP) epithelial cells. Methods The expression and distribution of CCL17, CCL22, E-cadherin and/or epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) were measured using real-time PCR, western blot, and immunohistochemistry and compared between normal ethmoid sinus epithelium and NP epithelium. In addition, the expression level of CCL17 was determined in cultured epithelial cells treated with IL-4, IL-5, IL-13, TNF-α, and IFN-γ. Results The expression of CCL17 was decreased in the NP epithelium compared to the epithelium of normal ethmoid sinus, whereas the expression of CCL22 was not decreased. E-cadherin was differentially distributed between the epithelium of normal ethmoid sinus and NP epithelium. EGFR was also decreased in NPs. Interestingly, the stimulation of cultured epithelial cells with Th2 cytokines, IL-4 and IL-5, resulted in an upregulation of CCL17 expression only in NP epithelial cells whereas the expression of CCL17 was increased in both normal epithelial cells and NP epithelial cells by Th1 cytokines. Conclusion Our results suggest that the decreased expression of CCL17 in defective NP epithelium may be closely connected to NP pathogenesis and can be differentially regulated by cytokines in the NP epithelium of patients with CRSwNP.
Relatively robust grasping

In this paper, we present an approach for robustly grasping objects under positional uncertainty. We maintain a belief state (a probability distribution over world states), model the problem as a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP), and select actions with a receding horizon using forward search through the belief space. Our actions are world-relative trajectories, or fixed trajectories expressed relative to the most-likely state of the world. We localize the object, ensure its reachability, and robustly grasp it at a goal position by using information-gathering, reorientation, and goal actions. We choose among candidate actions in a tractable way online by computing and storing the observation models needed for belief update offline. This framework is used to successfully grasp objects (including a powerdrill and a Brita pitcher) despite significant uncertainty, both in simulation and with an actual robot arm.
Disparities in model-based cost-effectiveness analyses of tuberculosis diagnosis: A systematic review

Background Structural approach disparities were minimally addressed in past systematic reviews of model-based cost-effectiveness analyses addressing Tuberculosis management strategies. This review aimed to identify the structural approach disparities in model-based cost-effectiveness analysis studies addressing Tuberculosis diagnosis and describe potential hazards caused by those disparities. Methods A systematic search to identify studies published before October 2015 was performed in five electronic databases. After removal of duplication, studies’ titles and abstracts were screened based on predetermined criteria. The full texts of potentially relevant studies were subsequently screened and excluded when they did not address active pulmonary Tuberculosis diagnosis. Quality of the studies was assessed using the “Philips’ checklist. ” Various data regarding general information, cost-effectiveness results, and disease modeling were extracted using standardized data extraction forms. Data pertaining to models’ structural approaches were compared and analyzed qualitatively for their applicability in various study settings, as well as their potential influence on main outcomes and cost-effectiveness conclusion. Results A total of 27 studies were included in the review. Most studies utilized a static model, which could underestimate the cost-effectiveness of the diagnostic tools strategies, due to the omission of indirect diagnosis effects, i.e. transmission reduction. A few structural assumption disparities were found in the dynamic models. Extensive disparities were found in the static models, consisting of varying structural assumptions regarding treatment outcomes, clinical diagnosis and empirical treatment, inpatient discharge decision, and re-diagnosis of false negative patients. Conclusion In cost-effectiveness analysis studies addressing active pulmonary Tuberculosis diagnosis, models showed numerous disparities in their structural approaches. Several structural approaches could be inapplicable in certain settings. Furthermore, they could contribute to under- or overestimation of the cost-effectiveness of the diagnosis tools or strategies. They could thus lead to ambiguities and difficulties when interpreting a study result. A set of recommendations is proposed to manage issues related to these structural disparities.
Effects of Dietary Calcium Levels on Productive Performance, Eggshell Quality and Overall Calcium Status in Aged Laying Hens

This study was conducted to investigate the effects of diets with varying levels of calcium on egg production, shell quality and overall calcium status in aged laying hens. A total of five hundred 70-wk-old Hy-Line Brown layers were divided five groups and fed one of the five experimental diets with 3.5%, 3.8%, 4.1%, 4.4%, or 4.7% Ca, for 10 weeks. There were no significant differences in feed intake, egg production and egg weight among groups. The cracked eggs were linearly reduced as dietary Ca levels increased to 4.7% (p<0.01). A significant linear improvement for eggshell strength and thickness were determined with increasing dietary Ca levels (p<0.01). The contents of serum Ca and phosphorus were not affected by dietary Ca levels. With increase in dietary Ca levels, the tibial breaking strength slightly increased. There were no significant differences in the tibial contents of ash, Ca and phosphorus among groups. In conclusion, eggshell quality, as measured by appearance, strength and thickness of eggshell, were influenced by dietary Ca content as expected (p<0.05). These results suggested that aged laying hens require relatively higher level of Ca than required levels from current Korean feeding standards for poultry.
Anti-Jamming CDMA Receiver Design for Land-Mobile Satellite Channels Exploiting Low-Dimensionality

This paper considers satellite communication systems under land-mobile satellite channels where the uplink is exposed to land-based jamming attack, and the downlink has weakness in missing data due to deep shadowing and high path-loss. To design an anti-jamming receiver for such systems, we focus on low-dimensionality of the channels and the signals, proposing a robust PCA-based decoding problem.
Transmit Antenna Selection for Massive MIMO Systems

In this paper, particle swarm optimization is employed to carry out transmit antenna subgrouping algorithm for massive multiple input and multiple output (MIMO) system. A minimum number of transmit antenna elements are selected to achieve a similar quality of service (QoS) as that of a single user MIMO system. Simulation results show that our proposed algorithm achieves similar capacity performance as compared to massive MIMO systems when employing exhaustive search for transmit antenna selection.
Adige: an efficient smart water network based on long-range wireless technology

Outworn water distribution infrastructures require real-time monitoring and management of water pressure and flow, together with accurate leak detection and localization techniques. Smart water networks based on wireless sensors offer a huge potential in this domain, but their deployment and maintenance is often costly and labor-intensive. In this paper, we present Adige: an efficient smart water network architecture based on long-range wireless technology that improves the scalability and robustness of water distribution systems. We developed a sensor node prototype using a LoRa radio transceiver and used it to carry out a set of experiments showing the benefits of Adige's approach. Our evaluation shows that, in contrast to previous approaches, the use of long-range wireless technology allows to significantly reduce energy consumption while covering large areas indoors, outdoors, and underground.
Spatiotemporal distribution of glia in and around the developing mouse optic tract

In the developing mouse optic tract, retinal ganglion cell (RGC) axon position is organized by topography and laterality (i.e., eye‐specific or ipsi‐ and contralateral segregation). Our lab previously showed that ipsilaterally projecting RGCs are segregated to the lateral aspect of the developing optic tract and found that ipsilateral axons self‐fasciculate to a greater extent than contralaterally projecting RGC axons in vitro. However, the full complement of axon‐intrinsic and ‐extrinsic factors mediating eye‐specific segregation in the tract remain poorly understood. Glia, which are known to express several guidance cues in the visual system and regulate the navigation of ipsilateral and contralateral RGC axons at the optic chiasm, are natural candidates for contributing to eye‐specific pre‐target axon organization. Here, we investigate the spatiotemporal expression patterns of both putative astrocytes (Aldh1l1+ cells) and microglia (Iba1+ cells) in the embryonic and neonatal optic tract. We quantified the localization of ipsilateral RGC axons to the lateral two‐thirds of the optic tract and analyzed glia position and distribution relative to eye‐specific axon organization. While our results indicate that glial segregation patterns do not strictly align with eye‐specific RGC axon segregation in the tract, we identify distinct spatiotemporal organization of both Aldh1l1+ cells and microglia in and around the developing optic tract. These findings inform future research into molecular mechanisms of glial involvement in RGC axon growth and organization in the developing retinogeniculate pathway.
Equity of Attention: Amortizing Individual Fairness in Rankings

Rankings of people and items are at the heart of selection-making, match-making, and recommender systems, ranging from employment sites to sharing economy platforms. As ranking positions influence the amount of attention the ranked subjects receive, biases in rankings can lead to unfair distribution of opportunities and resources such as jobs or income. This paper proposes new measures and mechanisms to quantify and mitigate unfairness from a bias inherent to all rankings, namely, the position bias which leads to disproportionately less attention being paid to low-ranked subjects. Our approach differs from recent fair ranking approaches in two important ways. First, existing works measure unfairness at the level of subject groups while our measures capture unfairness at the level of individual subjects, and as such subsume group unfairness. Second, as no single ranking can achieve individual attention fairness, we propose a novel mechanism that achieves amortized fairness, where attention accumulated across a series of rankings is proportional to accumulated relevance. We formulate the challenge of achieving amortized individual fairness subject to constraints on ranking quality as an online optimization problem and show that it can be solved as an integer linear program. Our experimental evaluation reveals that unfair attention distribution in rankings can be substantial, and demonstrates that our method can improve individual fairness while retaining high ranking quality.
LMP2 immunoproteasome promotes lymphocyte survival by degrading apoptotic BH3‐only proteins

The role of the immunoproteasome is perceived as confined to adaptive immune responses given its ability to produce peptides ideal for MHC Class‐I binding. Here, we demonstrate that the immunoproteasome subunit, LMP2, has functions beyond its immunomodulatory role. Using LMP2‐deficient mice, we demonstrate that LMP2 is crucial for lymphocyte development and survival in the periphery. Moreover, LMP2‐deficient lymphocytes show impaired degradation of key BH3‐only proteins, resulting in elevated levels of pro‐apoptotic BIM and increased cell death. Interestingly, LMP2 is the sole immunoproteasome subunit required for BIM degradation. Together, our results suggest LMP2 has important housekeeping functions and represents a viable therapeutic target for cancer.
Future Generation Computer Systems

,whiletruthfulbutabnormal mote samples may indicate undergoing phenomena. Therefore, outlier detection in sensor networks is of utmost importance. With limited power supply and communication being by far the main culprit in energy drain, outlier detection techniques in WSNs should achieve appropriate balance between reducing communication and providing real-time, continuously updated outlier reports. Prior works employ probabilistic or best effort approaches to accomplish the task, which either unpredictably compromise outlier detection accuracy or fail to explicitly tune the amount of communicated data. In this work, we introduce an omnibus outlier detection solution over spatiotemporally referenced sensor data that is capable of: (a) directly trading communication reduction for outlier detection quality with predictable accuracy guarantees, (b) accommodating both uni-and multi-dimensional outlier definitions, (c) operating under various streaming window models and (d) incorporating a wide variety of similarity measures to judge outliers.
Are men shortchanged on health? Perspective on life expectancy, morbidity, and mortality in men and women in the United States

Background: Significant gender disparities exist in life expectancy and major disease morbidity. There is an urgent need to understand the major issues related to men’s health that contributes to these significant disparities. It is hypothesized that men have higher and earlier morbidities, in addition to behavioral factors that contribute to their lower life expectancy.
The receptor tyrosine kinase TrkB signals without dimerization at the plasma membrane

Contrary to other receptor tyrosine kinases, TrkB does not appear to dimerize at the plasma membrane in response to ligand. RTKs on a new Trk The conventional mechanism of receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) activation is ligand-induced dimerization in the plasma membrane, upon which one monomer phosphorylates the other to initiate downstream, intracellular signaling and receptor internalization. However, using live-cell fluorescence imaging, Zahavi et al. found that the RTK TrkB in rodent neurons is internalized as a monomer. Only then in endosomes does TrkB dimerize, both independently of and (markedly more so) in response to the presence of its ligand BDNF in the endosome. The same behavior was observed when TrkB was expressed in a human cell line. These findings and future technological advances may challenge the generalized dogma of dimer-initiated RTK signaling. Tropomyosin-related tyrosine kinase B (TrkB) is the receptor for brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and provides critical signaling that supports the development and function of the mammalian nervous system. Like other receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs), TrkB is thought to signal as a dimer. Using cell imaging and biochemical assays, we found that TrkB acted as a monomeric receptor at the plasma membrane regardless of its binding to BDNF and initial activation. Dimerization occurred only after the internalization and accumulation of TrkB monomers within BDNF-containing endosomes. We further showed that dynamin-mediated endocytosis of TrkB-BDNF was required for the effective activation of the kinase AKT but not of the kinase ERK1/2. Thus, we report a previously uncharacterized mode of monomeric signaling for an RTK and a specific role for the endosome in TrkB homodimerization.
Motility and stem cell properties induced by the epithelial-mesenchymal transition require destabilization of lipid rafts

The Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition (EMT) is a developmental program that provides cancer cells with the characteristics necessary for metastasis, including increased motility and stem cell properties. The cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying this process are not yet fully understood, hampering efforts to develop therapeutics. In recent years, it has become apparent that EMT is accompanied by wholesale changes in diverse signaling pathways that are initiated by proteins at the plasma membrane (PM). The PM contains thousands of lipid and protein species that are dynamically and spatially organized into lateral membrane domains, an example of which are lipid rafts. Since one of the major functions of rafts is modulation of signaling originating at the PM, we hypothesized that the signaling changes occurring during an EMT are associated with alterations in PM organization. To test this hypothesis, we used Giant Plasma Membrane Vesicles (GPMVs) to study the organization of intact plasma membranes isolated from live cells. We observed that induction of EMT significantly destabilized lipid raft domains. Further, this reduction in stability was crucial for the maintenance of the stem cell phenotype and EMT-induced remodeling of PM-orchestrated pathways. Exogenously increasing raft stability by feeding cells with ω-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) repressed these phenotypes without altering EMT markers, and inhibited the metastatic capacity of breast cancer cells. Hence, modulating raft properties regulates cell phenotype, suggesting a novel approach for targeting the impact of EMT in cancer.
An Examination of Psychoeducation and its Potential Modifying Influence on Alcohol Use Patterns Among Adults Reporting Co-Occurring Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms and Hazardous Alcohol Consumption

Research has suggested that consumption of alcohol in the presence of elevated posttraumatic stress symptom (PTSS) may serve an av oidant function to cope with negative emotions. These coping-related motives for use are theorized to both maintain PTSS and relate to poorer prognoses in treatment for alcohol use disor ers (AUDs). Treatments utilizing coping skills training, which typically also involves educ ating clients about the negative consequences of drinking alcohol to cope, suggest the utility of targeting coping behaviors to reduce alcohol use. These studies, however, have not attempted to isolate the effects of psychoeducation on alcohol-related factors. The current study investig ated the utility of providing integrated psychoeducation to modify alcohol use outcomes and also examined, on an a priori basis, the potential moderating impact of biological sex on th e effects of psychoeducation. Results demonstrated that psychoeducation addressing PTSS a nd alcohol use specifically was superior to a general health control condition in improving mot ivation to change alcohol use behaviors. Confidence to refrain from alcohol and coping-motiv a ed drinking were not significantly influenced by psychoeducation. Finally, biological sex was not demonstrated to have a moderating influence on psychoeducation. Together, results suggest that educating individuals on the impact of PTSS and hazardous alcohol use on both mental and physical health may facilitate motivation to change their behavior; how ever, an additional component of psychoeducation (e.g., alternative coping strategie s) may be necessary to modify copingmotivated use and enhance one’s confidence to refra in from alcohol in the context of negative
A transfer matrix approach to local field calculations in multiple-scattering problems

We present a new recursive transfer matrix method for calculating local electromagnetic fields in systems of spheres subject to strong dependent scattering. Local field information is often lost or discarded in recursive transfer matrix approaches. In order to preserve the local field information, and to avoid problems associated with the dimensional cut-off of the translation matrices, we calculate the scatterer-centred transfer matrices. Our technique permits systematic studies of local field eiects for all possible incident field directions, and configurations (including orientation averages). Illustrative calculations are presented.