Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Enhanced adrenocortical responses to stress in Hypertension-Prone Men and Women

Hypertension risk may be associated with increased adreno-cortical activity, but the extent to which this enhanced activation differs between men and women at rest and in response to psychological stress is not known. This study examined gender differences in adrenocortical responses to an extended public-speaking stressor in persons at high (resting systolic blood pressure > median; n = 21)or low risk (negative parental history and = median systolic blood pressure; n = 26). Salivary cortisol levels were assessed at rest and in response to public speaking in a repeated measure design on two test sessions held on separate days. Heart rate, systolic blood pressure, and diastolic blood pressure were obtained at 3-min intervals before, during, and after the task. High-risk participants showed greater cortisol, blood pressures, and heart rate responses to the public-speaking stressor than the low-risk group (ps < .01). Men showed greater cortisol concentrations than women (p < .05), independent of hypertension risk status. Cardiovascular measures during the acute stressor predicted subsequent cortisol production, but only in the high-risk group. Results suggest that hypertension risk is associated with enhanced physiological reactivity across sympathetic and adrenocortical systems, supporting the possibility that this exaggerated reactivity may represent a marker of risk in hypertension-prone men and women.
Reference pricing systems in Europe: characteristics and consequences

Submitted: 16 May 2012; Revised: 8 August 2012; Accepted: 15 August 2012; Published online first: 17 August 2012 Introduction A reference pricing system is a system that establishes a reimbursement level or reference price for a group of interchangeable medicines. If a medicine is priced above the reference price, the patient pays the difference between the price of the medicine and the reference price, in addition to any other co-payments, e.g. prescription fee, percentage co-payment [1].
Learning Correlative and Personalized Structure for Online Multi-Task Classification

Multi-Task Learning (MTL) can enhance the classifier’s generalization performance by learning multiple related tasks simultaneously. Conventional MTL works under the offline or batch learning setting and suffers from the expensive training cost together with the poor scalability. To address such inefficiency issues, online learning technique has been applied to solve MTL problems. However, most existing algorithms for online MTL constrain task relatedness into a presumed structure via a single weight matrix, a strict restriction that does not always hold in practice. In this paper, we propose a general online MTL framework that overcomes this restriction by decomposing the weight matrix into two components: the first component captures the correlative structure among tasks in a low-rank subspace, and the second component identifies the personalized patterns for the outlier tasks. A projected gradient scheme is devised to learn such components adaptively. Theoretical analysis shows that the proposed algorithm can achieve a sub-linear regret with respect to the best linear model in hindsight. Experimental investigation on a number of real-world datasets also verifies the efficacy of our approach.
On frequency weighted balanced truncation: A constructive counterexample to Enns' conjecture

The concept of frequency weighted balancing, as proposed by Enns, is a generalization of internally balanced model truncation. Internally balanced truncation is simple to apply and additionally attractive because of the existence of an upper _ffœ error bound that is a function of the neglected Hankel singular values. A conjecture on the generalization of this upper error bound for the case of frequency weighted balanced truncation was formulated by Enns, but the proof has not been found. In this paper, Enns' conjecture is refuted and it is shown that there does not exist a frequency weighted upper error bound that depends only on neglected frequency weighted Hankel singular values. It is explained that this is due to cross terms which appear in the frequency weighted error bound. However, these cross terms are inherent in the frequency weighted balancing technique proposed by Enns.
Nutrition and bone health.

Low bone mass leads to fracture risk. Osteoporosis affects over 10% of the population and one of every two women over the age of 50 years. Genetics predicts more than half of bone mass. Diet and weight bearing exercise are two lifestyle choices that can influence the risk of fracture. Nutrients are the structural constituents of bone. As bone is a living tissue and turns over, albeit more slowly than other tissues, there is an obligatory loss of minerals daily that must be replaced through diet. Three servings of dairy products daily are recommended to replace those losses. Alternative sources of nutrients can come from calcium fortified orange juice, plant-based beverages, or tofu to provide many nutrients needed for bone health. Supplements can provide nutrients at risk for being inadequate such as calcium or vitamin D.
A Comparative Analysis of Sepsis Identification Methods in an Electronic Database*

Objectives: To evaluate the relative validity of criteria for the identification of sepsis in an ICU database. Design: Retrospective cohort study of adult ICU admissions from 2008 to 2012. Setting: Tertiary teaching hospital in Boston, MA. Patients: Initial admission of all adult patients to noncardiac surgical ICUs. Interventions: Comparison of five different algorithms for retrospectively identifying sepsis, including the Sepsis-3 criteria. Measurements and Main Results: 11,791 of 23,620 ICU admissions (49.9%) met criteria for the study. Within this subgroup, 59.9% were suspected of infection on ICU admission, 75.2% of admissions had Sequential Organ Failure Assessment greater than or equal to 2, and 49.1% had both suspicion of infection and Sequential Organ Failure Assessment greater than or equal to 2 thereby meeting the Sepsis-3 criteria. The area under the receiver operator characteristic of Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (0.74) for hospital mortality was consistent with previous studies of the Sepsis-3 criteria. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Angus, Martin, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and explicit coding methods for identifying sepsis revealed respective sepsis incidences of 31.9%, 28.6%, 14.7%, 11.0%, and 9.0%. In-hospital mortality increased with decreasing cohort size, ranging from 30.1% (explicit codes) to 14.5% (Sepsis-3 criteria). Agreement among the criteria was acceptable (Cronbach’s alpha, 0.40–0.62). Conclusions: The new organ dysfunction-based Sepsis-3 criteria have been proposed as a clinical method for identifying sepsis. These criteria identified a larger, less severely ill cohort than that identified by previously used administrative definitions. The Sepsis-3 criteria have several advantages over prior methods, including less susceptibility to coding practices changes, provision of temporal context, and possession of high construct validity. However, the Sepsis-3 criteria also present new challenges, especially when calculated retrospectively. Future studies on sepsis should recognize the differences in outcome incidence among identification methods and contextualize their findings according to the different cohorts identified.
Biomonitoring 2.0: a new paradigm in ecosystem assessment made possible by next‐generation DNA sequencing

Biological monitoring has failed to develop from simple binary assessment outcomes of the impacted/unimpacted type, towards more diagnostic frameworks, despite significant scientific effort over the past fifty years. It is our assertion that this is largely because of the limited information content of biological samples processed by traditional morphology‐based taxonomy, which is a slow, imprecise process, focused on restricted groups of organisms. We envision a new paradigm in ecosystem assessment, which we refer to as ‘Biomonitoring 2.0’. This new schema employs DNA‐based identification of taxa, coupled with high‐throughput DNA sequencing on next‐generation sequencing platforms. We discuss the transformational nature of DNA‐based approaches in biodiversity discovery and ecosystem assessment and outline a path forward for their future widespread application.
Mining Co-Change Clusters from Version Repositories

Clusters of software artifacts that are frequently changed together are subsystem candidates, because one of the main goals of software design is to make changes local. The contribution of this paper is a visualization-based method that supports the identification of such clusters. First, we define the co-change graph as a simple but powerful model of common changes of software artifacts, and describe how to extract the graph from version control repositories. Second, we introduce an energy model for computing force-directed layouts of co-change graphs. The resulting layouts have a well-defined interpretation in terms of the structure of the visualized graph, and clearly reveal groups of frequently co-changed artifacts. We evaluate our method by comparing the layouts for three example projects with authoritative subsystem decompositions.
Liquid-crystalline epoxy thermosets as matrices for ordered nanocomposites—a summary of experimental studies

This work focuses on obtaining ordered liquid crystalline epoxy networks and applying them as matrices for nanofillers. The article summarizes research carried out by us on the synthesis and curing of a series of composites based on liquid crystalline epoxy monomers. The authors experimented with several factors which influence the crosslinking reaction and determined curing conditions which are the most favorable for developing liquid crystalline-like molecular order in the final products. New results of curing selected mixtures with the addition of anisotropic fillers are also presented. The crosslinking process was followed by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) measurements and the morphology of liquid crystalline epoxy resin (LCER) composites was investigated by wide-angle X-ray scattering technique (WAXS-2D). The experiments demonstrated that nanorods only have a small impact on the thermal properties of the composite (e.g., the change of Tg is just about 28C) as well as structural ones (diffraction images of the plain matrix and the nanocomposite only differ in a single additional reflection near 0.73 nm 21 which appears in all the studied matrices containing nanorods). In one case monodomain ordering could be achieved in both the matrix alone and that with the nanofiller, when curing was conducted in the presence of a magnetic field. POLYM. COMPOS. , 00:000–000, 2015. V C 2015 Society of Plastics Engineers
Modeling and Analysis of Uncertainty-Based False Information Propagation in Social Networks

To stop or mitigate the dissemination of false information in social networks, many studies have investigated the minimum number of seeding nodes required to significantly reduce the impact of false information. Although a person's confidence level, such as perceived certainty, and/or prior belief towards a given proposition can significantly affect their decision of whether to believe in true or false information, these topics have not been studied to date. In this work, we propose an opinion model based on Subjective Logic (SL), defining an opinion in belief, disbelief, and uncertainty, to study how to eradicate or mitigate the impact of false information by propagating true information to counter it. In the current form of an opinion in SL, when two agents interact with each other and update their opinions based on a consensus operator offered by SL, uncertainty continuously reduces whenever any new information, even conflicting evidence, is received. However, in reality, if a body of evidence is conflicting, with equal amounts supporting opposite positions, people often tend to be confused, leading to higher level of uncertainty. We enhance SL to deal with conflicting information associated with uncertainty. We map agents' opinion composition into each state in the SIR (Susceptible-Infected- Recovered) model to estimate the proportion of recovered agents who believe in true information. Our results show that agents' prior belief unfavoring false information can help guide their decisions towards a belief in true information even under high uncertainty. Further, having more true informers in a network can significantly increase the number of agents who believe in true information and the effect is more pronounced than having more frequent propagation of true information by fewer true informers.
The effect of information technology adoption and design customisation on the success of new product development

The advancement of Internet technology and customisation capability has set off research into their impacts on all business operations including New Product Development (NPD). Despite the heavy investment in research and development, few studies have examined how Information Technology (IT) is adopted; how design customisation capability is built, and whether they reveal close associations with NPD success. This paper aims to investigate into these issues. Using the data from 172 sample high-tech manufacturers, the effects of IT adoption and design customisation on NPD success are investigated. The results support the idea that IT adoption and design customisation have positive impacts on NPD success. Discussions and managerial implications for practitioners are also provided.
Effects of Chronic Exposure to Cobalt Chloride on the Fertility and Testes in Mice

The effect of twelve weeks ingestion of cobalt chloride (CoCl 2 ) was investigated on the fertility of adult male Swiss mice. Sexually mature male mice were exposed to 200, 400 and 800 ppm cobalt chloride dissolved in drinking water. Based on fluid consumption, exposed animals received an average of 25.66 ± 2.34, 46.91 ± 4.78 and 93.01 ± 6.76 mg/kg/day cobalt chloride, respectively. After the exposure period, these males were mated with untreated female mice. Fertility was significantly reduced in males that ingested cobalt chloride. The number of pregnant females and the number of implantation sites were significantly reduced in females mated with males that had ingested CoCl 2 at a concentration of 400 or 800 ppm. The total number of resorptions and the number of females with resorptions were significantly increased in females mated with males that had ingested CoCl 2 at all concentrations. On the other hand, the number of viable fetuses was decreased in females impregnated by exposed males at the three concentrations. Absolute epididimal weight, and the relative or absolute testes weights were significantly reduced in males that ingested cobalt chloride at a concentrations of 400 or 800 ppm. In contrast, absolute and relative weights of the seminal vesicles were significantly increased. Furthermor, epididymal and sperm counts and daily sperm production were significantly decreased in males that ingested CoCl 2. Histological evaluation of the testes revealed several abnormalities including hypertrophy of the interstitial Leydig cells, congested blood vessels, degeneration of the spermatogonial cells and necrosis of both the seminiferous tubules and the interstitial tissue.
Adherent Human Alveolar Macrophages Exhibit a Transient Pro-Inflammatory Profile That Confounds Responses to Innate Immune Stimulation

Alveolar macrophages (AM) are thought to have a key role in the immunopathogenesis of respiratory diseases. We sought to test the hypothesis that human AM exhibit an anti-inflammatory bias by making genome-wide comparisons with monocyte derived macrophages (MDM). Adherent AM obtained by bronchoalveolar lavage of patients under investigation for haemoptysis, but found to have no respiratory pathology, were compared to MDM from healthy volunteers by whole genome transcriptional profiling before and after innate immune stimulation. We found that freshly isolated AM exhibited a marked pro-inflammatory transcriptional signature. High levels of basal pro-inflammatory gene expression gave the impression of attenuated responses to lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and the RNA analogue, poly IC, but in rested cells pro-inflammatory gene expression declined and transcriptional responsiveness to these stimuli was restored. In comparison to MDM, both freshly isolated and rested AM showed upregulation of MHC class II molecules. In most experimental paradigms ex vivo adherent AM are used immediately after isolation. Therefore, the confounding effects of their pro-inflammatory profile at baseline need careful consideration. Moreover, despite the prevailing view that AM have an anti-inflammatory bias, our data clearly show that they can adopt a striking pro-inflammatory phenotype, and may have greater capacity for presentation of exogenous antigens than MDM.
Draft Genome Sequence of Vibrio parahaemolyticus Strain VP14, Isolated from a Penaeus vannamei Culture Farm

ABSTRACT Here, we report the draft genome sequence of an isolate of Vibrio parahaemolyticus, VP14, recovered from the gut of Penaeus vannamei shrimp farmed in southern India. The genome of VP14 comprised 5,224,046 bp with a GC content of 45.3% and contained 5,326 genes, including 4,972 coding sequences.
Emotion during Organizational Transformations

Researchers have begun to incorporate emotion as an explanatory construct in organizational studies. The present study sought to determine how the expressed emotion of top-level managers in a Fortune 500 organization undergoing a major transformation effort was associated with their assessments of change activities and job attitudes. Computer aided text analysis and the Dictionary of Affect in Language were used to assess the emotional content of responses to open-ended questions along two theoretically grounded dimensions of emotion: pleasantness and arousal. Results indicated that a hypothesized interaction between the two emotion dimensions explained significant variance in attitudes dealing directly with the managers’ jobs. Reasons for assessing emotion in transformation contexts are discussed.
A Randomized Controlled Trial to Study the Effects of Breakfast on Energy Intake, Physical Activity, and Body Fat in Women

A Randomized Controlled Trial to Study the Effects of Breakfast on Energy Intake, Physical Activity, and Body Fat in Women Gabrielle Marie LeCheminant Department of Exercise Sciences, BYU Master of Science PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of eating breakfast on energy intake, physical activity, body weight, and body fat in women who were nonhabitual breakfast eaters over a one-month period. METHODS: We tested 49 premenopausal, nonhabitual breakfast-eating women to compare the effects of eating breakfast versus not eating breakfast. Each participant was randomized to one of two conditions: breakfast or no breakfast. Breakfast eaters were required to eat within an hour and a half of awakening and had to be finished eating their breakfast meal by 8:30 A.M. Non-breakfast eaters were defined as not consuming a snack or meal (with the exception of water) until after 11:30 A.M. Participants assigned to the breakfast condition consumed at least 15% of their daily energy requirement for breakfast. Weight and body fat were assessed at the baseline and after one month of intervention. Body fat was measured by dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA). Participants completed seven 24hour recalls to assess dietary intake during the intervention. Physical activity was measured by accelerometry for 32 consecutive days. RESULTS: On average, the participants randomized to eat breakfast consumed 266 ± 496 (F = 12.81; P = 0.0043) more calories per day over the course of the study and weighed 0.6 ± 0.81 kg (F = 7.81; p = 0.0076) more at the end of the intervention. There was no observed caloric compensation at subsequent meals and no change in self-reported hunger or satiety. There was also no physical activity compensation with the addition of breakfast. CONCLUSION: The findings of our study showed that requiring nonbreakfast eaters to eat breakfast resulted in higher caloric intake and weight gain. Future research should evaluate this relationship for a longer period of time to see if adding breakfast to the diet of women who generally do not eat breakfast results in adaptive behavior change over time.
The Three-dimensional Effect and Experimental Study on Material R Curves of 7050 Aluminium Alloy

Material R curves can reflect the true physical process of fatigue crack growth. But only the plane stress and plane strain situations are considered by using present methods to calculate the value of resistance stress intensity factor. While the effect of thickness is not considered when calculating the value of R. Firstly,the present test method the 3-D stress intensity factor expression of center-cracked tension plate is calculated by using 3-D elastic-plastic finite element method,and then the relation model between crack propagation resistance and thickness of plate is established. Then,combining with the relationship between crack propagation resistance and thickness of plate,a new model for calculating crack growth resistance value R of specimen with different thickness is provided based on the relationship between the energy release rate and the stress intensity factor in 3-D state. Finally,based on this model,the R curves of 7050-T7451 aluminum alloy plates with different thickness are determined by test, and the function relationship between the R curve and sample thickness is obtained.
Imaging for Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement

Procedure Appropriateness Category Relative Radiation Level CTA chest with IV contrast Usually Appropriate ☢☢☢ US echocardiography transesophageal May Be Appropriate O MRA chest without IV contrast May Be Appropriate O MRA chest without and with IV contrast May Be Appropriate O CT chest without IV contrast May Be Appropriate ☢☢☢ CT chest with IV contrast Usually Not Appropriate ☢☢☢ Aortography thoracic Usually Not Appropriate ☢☢☢ CT chest without and with IV contrast Usually Not Appropriate ☢☢☢
Effect of High-Intensity Training in Normobaric Hypoxia on Thoroughbred Skeletal Muscle

Hypoxic training is believed to increase endurance capacity in association with hypoxia inducible factor-1α (HIF-1α), a modulator of vascular endothelial growth factor-A (VEGF-A), and to influence activation of satellite cells (SCs). However, the effect of hypoxic training on SC activation and its relation to angiogenesis has not been thoroughly investigated. Eight Thoroughbred horses were subjected to normoxic (FIO2 = 21%) or hypoxic (FIO2 = 15%) training for 3 days/week (100% V˙O2max) for 4 weeks. Incremental exercise tests (IET) were conducted on a treadmill under normoxia and the maximal oxygen consumption (V˙O2max) and running distance were measured before and after each training session. Muscle biopsy samples were obtained from the gluteus medius muscle at 6 scheduled times before, during, and one week after IET for immunohistochemical analysis and real-time RT-PCR analysis. Running distance and V˙O2max, measured during IET, increased significantly after hypoxic training compared with normoxic training. Capillary density and mRNA expression related to SC activation (e.g., myogenin and hepatocyte growth factor) and angiogenesis (VEGF-A) increased only after hypoxic training. These results suggest that increases in mRNA expression after training enhance and prolong SC activation and angiogenesis and that nitric oxide plays an important role in these hypoxia-induced training effects.