Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Gender, aging and longevity in humans: an update of an intriguing/neglected scenario paving the way to a gender-specific medicine

Data showing a remarkable gender difference in life expectancy and mortality, including survival to extreme age, are reviewed starting from clinical and demographic data and stressing the importance of a comprehensive historical perspective and a gene–environment/lifestyle interaction. Gender difference regarding prevalence and incidence of the most important age-related diseases, such as cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, Type 2 diabetes, disability, autoimmunity and infections, are reviewed and updated with particular attention to the role of the immune system and immunosenescence. On the whole, gender differences appear to be pervasive and still poorly considered and investigated despite their biomedical relevance. The basic biological mechanisms responsible for gender differences in aging and longevity are quite complex and still poorly understood. The present review focuses on centenarians and their offspring as a model of healthy aging and summarizes available knowledge on three basic biological phenomena, i.e. age-related X chromosome inactivation skewing, gut microbiome changes and maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA genetic variants. In conclusion, an appropriate gender-specific medicine approach is urgently needed and should be systematically pursued in studies on healthy aging, longevity and age-related diseases, in a globalized world characterized by great gender differences which have a high impact on health and diseases.
Structuring front office and back office work in service delivery systems: An empirical study of three design decisions

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to investigate how the distinction between contact and non‐contact activities influences the design of service delivery systems and to identify key design decisions for structuring front office and back office work.Design/methodology/approach – Building on current literature, the paper identifies three design decisions and associated performance trade‐offs. The design decisions regard the degree of customer contact in the process, the decoupling of activities and the grouping of employees. The design decisions and the trade‐offs are empirically validated in five case studies of 15 service delivery systems in the financial services sector.Findings – Distinguishing between the three design decisions is more suitable for describing today's practices than traditional front office – back office thinking. For each design decision a trade‐off was observed consisting of several design considerations. However, the trade‐offs do not involve the weighing of one set of performance o.
MetMap Enables Genome-Scale Methyltyping for Determining Methylation States in Populations

The ability to assay genome-scale methylation patterns using high-throughput sequencing makes it possible to carry out association studies to determine the relationship between epigenetic variation and phenotype. While bisulfite sequencing can determine a methylome at high resolution, cost inhibits its use in comparative and population studies. MethylSeq, based on sequencing of fragment ends produced by a methylation-sensitive restriction enzyme, is a method for methyltyping (survey of methylation states) and is a site-specific and cost-effective alternative to whole-genome bisulfite sequencing. Despite its advantages, the use of MethylSeq has been restricted by biases in MethylSeq data that complicate the determination of methyltypes. Here we introduce a statistical method, MetMap, that produces corrected site-specific methylation states from MethylSeq experiments and annotates unmethylated islands across the genome. MetMap integrates genome sequence information with experimental data, in a statistically sound and cohesive Bayesian Network. It infers the extent of methylation at individual CGs and across regions, and serves as a framework for comparative methylation analysis within and among species. We validated MetMap's inferences with direct bisulfite sequencing, showing that the methylation status of sites and islands is accurately inferred. We used MetMap to analyze MethylSeq data from four human neutrophil samples, identifying novel, highly unmethylated islands that are invisible to sequence-based annotation strategies. The combination of MethylSeq and MetMap is a powerful and cost-effective tool for determining genome-scale methyltypes suitable for comparative and association studies.
A Novel Approach of Edge Detection via a Fast and Adaptive Bidimensional Empirical Mode Decomposition Method

A novel approach of edge detection is proposed that utilizes a bidimensional empirical mode decomposition (BEMD) method as the primary tool. For this purpose, a recently developed fast and adaptive BEMD (FABEMD) is used to decompose the given image into several bidimensional intrinsic mode functions (BIMFs). In FABEMD, order statistics filters (OSFs) are employed to get the upper and lower envelopes in the decomposition process, instead of surface interpolation, which enables fast decomposition and well-characterized BIMFs. Binarization and morphological operations are applied to the first BIMF obtained from FABEMD to achieve the desired edges. The proposed approach is compared with several other edge detection methodologies, which include a combination of classical BEMD and morphological processing, the Canny and Sobel edge detectors, as well as combinations of BEMD/FABEMD and Canny/Sobel edge detectors. Simulation results with real images demonstrate the efficacy and potential of the proposed edge detection algorithm employing FABEMD.
Essays on overeducation

This thesis evaluates the efficiency of educational policies, especially those which result in surplus education. In particular, in Chapter 2 we explore whether the positive return of overeducation is due to increases in productivity or due to ability signals. We adopt the methodology proposed by Wolpin (1977) and implemented by Brown and Sessions (1999) to examine our hypothesis. We find significant evidence supporting the strong screening hypothesis which infers that surplus education has purely private returns. Furthermore, in Chapter 3 we test whether our results hold using a panel dataset. Chapter 4 examines the often accepted statement that additional education decreases unemployment. We analyse how educational mismatch, and in particular surplus education, affect the likelihood of job loss and the re-employment rates especially in a period of economic crisis. We employ a pooled data logit model, and examine the partial relationships between the probability of job loss and over, under and adequate education. In addition, we evaluate the effect of surplus education on the re-employment hazard profiles using a discrete time duration model. Finally, in Chapter 5 we use an alternative methodology to test the signalling effects of surplus education. In particular we adopt the employer learning specification which assumes that the longer an individual is in the labour market and gains experience, the more likely it is to reveal his or her true productivities to employers (Farber and Gibbons, 1996). We expect that if the interaction term of required or surplus education with experience has a positive sign then we have evidence of productivity effects. If the coefficient of the interaction term is negative then the model provides evidence of signalling. To my parents, for their enduring love, support, encouragement. To my supervisors who never stopped believing in me. To my best friend and love of my life!
Gender and health care in the United Kingdom : exploring the stereotypes

Researching Gender and Health Care PART ONE: HEALTH CARE IN THE UK An Historical Account An Empirical Overview PART TWO: STEREOTYPES FULFILLED? Gender and Physical Health Marriage is Good for Health Older Women are Most Vulnerable PART THREE: STEREOTYPES REJECTED? Gender and Mental Health Women as the 'Madder' Sex Young Men as Reluctant Help-Seekers PART FOUR: THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY IN FOCUS The Future Bibliography Index
Dynamic Bayesian network based speech recognition with pitch and energy as auxiliary variables

Pitch and energy are two fundamental features describing speech, having importance in human speech recognition. However, when incorporated as features in automatic speech recognition (ASR), they usually result in a significant degradation on recognition performance due to the noise inherent in estimating or modeling them. We show experimentally how this can be corrected by either conditioning the emission distributions upon these features or by marginalizing out these features in recognition. Since to do this is not obvious with standard hidden Markov models (HMMs), this work has been performed in the framework of dynamic Bayesian networks (DBNs), resulting in more flexibility in defining the topology of the emission distributions and in specifying whether variables should be marginalized out.
Review of Lip-Reading Recognition

Lip-reading technology was introduced in this paper, including the development course, technical methods and application direction. Lip-reading technology mainly includes the lip detection and localization, feature extraction and recognition method and fusion method, the classification of the mouth and the corpus. This paper do a detailed comparative analysis for traditional methods and new technology, emphatically introduces the lip feature extraction.
An Incremental Gradient(-Projection) Method with Momentum Term and Adaptive Stepsize Rule

We consider an incremental gradient method with momentum term for minimizing the sum of continuously differentiable functions. This method uses a new adaptive stepsize rule that decreases the stepsize whenever sufficient progress is not made. We show that if the gradients of the functions are bounded and Lipschitz continuous over a certain level set, then every cluster point of the iterates generated by the method is a stationary point. In addition, if the gradient of the functions have a certain growth property, then the method is either linearly convergent in some sense or the stepsizes are bounded away from zero. The new stepsize rule is much in the spirit of heuristic learning rules used in practice for training neural networks via backpropagation. As such, the new stepsize rule may suggest improvements on existing learning rules. Finally, extension of the method and the convergence results to constrained minimization is discussed, as are some implementation issues and numerical experience.
Britain and the European Union

List of boxes List of tables Acknowledgements 1 Introduction Content of the book 2 History and Development of the EU The origins of the European Coal and Steel Community From ECSC to EEC The first enlargement - Britain joins Enlargement to the South The European Union The Northern enlargement The EU grows to the East Who is the 'reluctant European'? 3 Institutions of the EU The Commission The European Council The Council of Ministers COREPER The European Parliament The Court of Justice The Committee of Regions The Economic and Social Committee The European Ombudsman The 'democratic deficit' 4 Common Policies of the EU Why have common policies? The Common Agricultural Policy The Common Fisheries Policy Competition Policy and Trade Policy The Common Foreign and Security Policy The development of the single currency 5 The influence of the EU on Britain The constitutional relationship between Britain and the EU The EU and the UK Parliament The EU and regional government in the UK Local Government and the EU Conclusion 6 Intergovernmentalism versus Supranationalism What is supranationalism? Supranationalism and the EU Supranationalism and the UK - a troubled relationship? What is intergovernmentalism? Intergovernmentalism and the European Union Intergovernmentalism and the UK Conclusion 7 Expansion versus Integration What is integration? How is the EU promoting integration? The UK and integration The expansion of the EU - what are the limits? The UK and enlargement 8 Political Parties and the EU Conservative Party Labour Party Liberal Democrat Party The minor parties 9 Reluctant Europeans - public opinion on the EU British public opinion on the European Union Pressure groups and the EU How do pressure groups lobby the EU Public opinion across the EU Turnout for European Parliamentary elections Conclusion 10 Conclusion - Is Britain still the 'reluctant European'? What is a 'reluctant European'? The case for Britain being a 'reluctant European' The case against Britain being a 'reluctant European' Are any other EU members 'reluctant Europeans'? Conclusion - If Britain is not reluctant, then how can the relationship be labelled? References Index.
Stochastic Trends and Cycles in National Stock Market Indices: Evidence from the U.S., the U.K. and Switzerland

Co-movements of stock market indices in the U.S., the U.K. and Switzerland are analyzed using recent time series procedures. None of the series are found to share common permanent stochastic shocks that drive their long-run fluctuations. In the short run, however, there is evidence of a common serial correlation feature. Further, it is found that the U.S. stock index Granger causes the two other markets. Nevertheless, impulse response functions show little evidence of international spillovers and in a variance decomposition of forecast errors, most of the fluctuations are found to be attributable to shocks from the respective domestic market.
Positive and negative streamers in ambient air: modelling evolution and velocities

We simulate short positive and negative streamers in air at standard temperature and pressure. First, double-headed streamers in homogeneous electric fields of 50 kV cm−1 are briefly studied, and then we analyse streamers that emerge from needle electrodes with voltages of 10–20 kV in more detail. The streamer velocity at a given streamer length depends only weakly on the initial ionization seed, except in the case of negative streamers in homogeneous fields. We characterize the streamer evolution by length, velocity, head radius, head charge and maximal field enhancement. We show that the velocity of positive streamers is determined mainly by their radius and in quantitative agreement with recent experimental results both for radius and velocity. The velocity of negative streamers is dominated by electron drift in the enhanced field; in the low local fields of the present simulations, it is little influenced by photo-ionization. Initially it is puzzling that negative streamers can be slower than positive ones under similar conditions, both in experiment and in simulation, as negative streamer fronts always move at least with the electron drift velocity in the local field. We argue that this drift motion broadens the streamer head, decreases the field enhancement and ultimately leads to slower propagation or even extinction of the negative streamer.
Effect of rate of substitution of processed, urea-treated whole-crop wheat for grass silage on the intake, milk production and diet digestibility in dairy cows and ruminal metabolism in vitro.

The effect of rate of substitution of processed, urea-treated whole-crop wheat (pWCW) for grass silage on intake, performance and whole-tract digestibility was evaluated using 44 dairy cows. Cows received 10.5 kg of concentrates per day and one of the following forage mixtures (dry matter (DM) basis): grass silage alone (W-0); 0.75 grass silage, 0.25 pWCW (W-25); 0.5 grass silage, 0.5 pWCW (W-50) or 0.25 grass silage, 0.75 pWCW (W-75). Forage DM intake increased linearly with inclusion rate of pWCW from 9.7 kg DM per day in cows fed W-0 to 14.6 kg DM per day in W-75. By contrast, milk and protein yield (kg/day) were higher (P < 0.05) in cows receiving W-25 compared with W-0, but there was no effect (P>0.05) of treatment on fat yield (kg/day). From week 11 of the experiment onwards, body condition score increased with rate of inclusion of pWCW (P < 0.05). Whole-tract apparent digestibility of organic matter (OM) and fibre (kg/kg), decreased linearly with rate of inclusion of pWCW. Assuming a constant digestibility of starch in the other diet components, the apparent digestibility of starch in pWCW was 0.95 kg/kg and was not affected by rate of inclusion (P>0.05). Four continuous culture vessels were used to determine the effect of rate of inclusion of pWCW on ruminal metabolism in four periods, each of 14 d duration with sampling conducted on days 9 to 14. Vessel ammonia concentration increased linearly (P < 0.05) with rate of inclusion of pWCW whilst mean pH tended (P = 0.06) to decrease. The ratio of acetate to propionate increased from 2.5 in vessels receiving W-0 to 3.2 in those receiving W-75 (P < 0.001). There was no effect (P>0.05) of treatment on digestibility (g/g) of OM, fibre or starch or microbial protein flow (g/day). It is concluded that forage DM intake increased linearly with rate of inclusion of pWCW, but there was no further improvement in milk yield from inclusion rates above 0.25 of the forage DM, with body condition score increasing instead. Increasing the inclusion rate of pWCW resulted in a more ketogenic volatile fatty acid profile but did not affect the efficiency of microbial protein synthesis when determined in vitro.
Implementation of a Tour-based Microsimulation Regional Travel Demand Model

The Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission (MORPC) has undertaken a project to develop a new set of travel demand models for the central Ohio region. This project combined the travel demand models from two Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPO), MORPC and the Licking County Transportation Study (LCATS). In an effort to update the data needed to develop a new set of travel demand models for the region, MORPC and LCATS conducted a household survey in 1999. In the fall of 2001, MORPC started the effort of building a new set of best practice travel forecasting models. Compared to the previous modeling system, and conventional models in general, the new modeling system features a tour-based approach (as opposed to a tripbased approach) that is implemented using the microsimulation of individual (as opposed to aggregate) activity and travel choices. The principal components of the new model have been estimated with the household survey data as logit discrete choice probability models, and are applied with microsimulation. They include the following principal modules: 1) the Household-Auto Ownership-Daily Activity-Tour (HADT) model, 2) a Tour Mode-Destination Choice Model, with an Attraction Sub-model, and 3) a Sub-Tour/Trip Mode and Secondary Stops model. A particularly innovative aspect of the new MORPC modeling approach is the determination of Joint-Household Travel early in the model stream, explicitly accounting for joint travel between household members in the tour production stage. All highway and transit network processing is done within TP+. Challenges to the development of this model include the coordination between the two MPOs and the reconciliation of the data needed for estimation, which was collected over eight years. MPO coordination efforts include the potential need to accommodate two different sets of socio-economic data and the need for the smaller MPO to be able to run analyses for a sub-set of the model. This paper discusses both the challenges and advantages of developing a tour-based microsimulation model set, the details of the different components and a case study showing the results of the model.
Detecting Tropical Cyclone Structural Change with the TRMM Precipitation Radar ( PR ) and Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit ( AMSU )

One of the most critical parameters to monitor within a tropical cyclone (TC) are temperature anomalies. The maintenance of the thermal structure gives important insight into a TC’s strength and maturity that allow forecasters to warn appropriately for intensity fluctuations. The conversion of a TC’s symmetric warm core into an extratropical cyclone’s asymmetric cold core, a process known as Extratropical Transition (ET), can lead to forecasting difficulties due to the complex nature of TC thermal anomaly maintenance at higher latitudes. The potential for impact variables such as wind field expansion, rainfall enhancement, trapped fetch waves and increased storm translational speeds make forecasting for ET events a rather daunting task. The success of the Cyclone Phase Space (CPS) developed by Hart (2003) for tracking the symmetry and thermal structure of cyclones evolving between the continuum of tropical to extratropical cyclones has led to vast improvements in the forecasting and monitoring of ET systems at operational centers such as the National Hurricane Center and National Weather Service (Hart 2005, personal communication). Cyclones are moved within the phase space as a function of their thermal structure (900-600 hPa thermal wind) and symmetry (900-600 hPa stormrelative thickness symmetry) computed from gridded model analyses (Hart 2003). The regular, three-dimensional spatiotemporal frequency of global model analyses used within the CPS allows for a thorough analysis of cyclone structure by utilizing the isobaric height field produced by each model. However, the CPS suffers from inherent biases within each model such as resolution (finest horizontal resolution of 1.0°), initialization methods and vortex bogusing as well as biases between each model since varying _________________________________________ * Corresponding author address: Stephen R. Guimond, Center for Ocean Atmospheric Prediction Studies, The Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32304. E-mail: guimond@coaps.fsu. edu depictions of the ET process can be realized (Hart 2003). It is hypothesized that a more direct, observational approach to cyclone structure could have the potential to become synthesized with the CPS and would allow for increased accuracy in the monitoring of ET as well as validation of the current model based analyses. This paper presents the first step in an attempt to infer cyclone structural evolution from a satellite perspective by analyzing bright band heights (BBHs) retrieved from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Precipitation Radar (PR) and freezing level heights (FLHs) from the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU).
Identification of PEX7 as the second gene involved in Refsum disease.

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