Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A classification algorithm based on spectral features from nocturnal oximetry and support vector machines to assist in the diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnea

The aim of this study is to develop and evaluate an algorithm to help in the diagnosis of the obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS). Arterial oxygen saturation (SaO2) signals from nocturnal pulse oximetry were used to identify OSAS patients. A total of 149 SaO2 recordings from subjects suspected of OSAS were available. The initial population was divided into a training set (74 subjects) and a test set (75 subjects) to optimize and evaluate our algorithm. Support vector machines (SVM) with Gaussian kernel were used to classify spectral features from SaO2 signals. Several configurations of SVM were assessed by varying the regularization (C) and the kernel width (σ) parameters. Finally, the selected SVM classifier (C = 3D 235 and σ = 3D 0.4) provided an accuracy of 88.00% (84.44% sensitivity and 93.33% specificity) and an AROC of 0.921. Our results suggest that the proposed algorithm could be useful for OSAS screening.
The p65/RelA subunit of NF-kappaB interacts with actin-containing structures.

Nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-kappaB) is a universal transcription factor that participates in induction of a wide variety of cellular genes. In nonstimulated cells, NF-kappaB is sequestered in the cytoplasm. However, little is known about where NF-kappaB is located. We have studied the effect of inducing a reorganization of the actin filament system on NF-kappaB distribution, using normal and E1A+cHa-ras-transformed rat fibroblasts. This paper demonstrates that the p65/RelA subunit of NF-kappaB interacts with actin-containing structures. Immunofluorescence reveals that p65 is concentrated in focal contacts and along stress fibers in normal fibroblasts. Restoration of actin stress fibers in transformants spread on fibronectin is followed by reallocation of p65 to focal contacts and stress fibers, as in normal cells. The p65 is accumulated at the edge of leading lamellae in transformants spread on laminin and is redistributed to cell-to-cell contacts after a prolonged cultivation. Treatment of cells with Cytochalasin D leads to redistribution of p65 into the actin-containing aggregates. Affinity chromatography on matrix-bound F-actin confirms that p65 can bind to filamentous actin. Taken together, these data indicate that distribution of p65 in the cytoplasm depends on the state of the actin cytoskeleton and suggest an additional, yet unknown, function of the NF-kappaB in the cytoplasm.
An anatomically based mathematical model of the gastroesophageal junction

In this study the construction of an initial three-dimensional anatomically based mathematical model of the esophagus is presented. The aim of this model is to provide a framework with which to examine the functional behavior of the esophagus and the lower esophageal sphincter during swallowing. Anatomical data from the Visible Human Project was used to provide the outlines of the regions of interest. A C/sup 1/ continuous cubic Hermite finite element mesh was then created using an iterative finite element linear fitting process to an RMS error less than 1 mm. Muscular fiber information was embedded within the model using data from published literature. There is a current lack of detailed microstructural data on the gastroesophageal junction. We describe the specialist measurement rig that we propose to use to obtain the microstructural information in our experimental studies.
Self-Employment in the United Kingdom During the 1980s and 1990s

Data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS)are used to study recent developments in self-employment in the United Kingdom,including the determinants of entry to and exit fromself-employment.Aggregate trends in self-employment arediscussed.Examples of such trends include the rapid growth ofself-employment rates in the 1980s and the unusually high self-employment rateamong people past the average retirement age. The BHPS data are supplemented with retrospective information onrespondents' employment histories.Findings suggest that deregulation offinancial markets and easy access to capital led to the self-employment upsurgein the 1980s.Many of that decade's trends, including the increases ofself-employment among women and young people, have dwindled. There isevidence, however, of ongoing changes in self-employment rates. Today, U.K.self-employment is concentrated in the service sectors.Also, femaleself-employment is rarer and less stable than male self-employment. Generally, entry propensities increase with age, while exit propensitiesdecrease. After a certain age, however, entry propensities plateau anddecline.Finally, there is a very strong relationship between anindividual's prior occupational status and his or her self-employment status. (SAA)
Images of a set via two channels and their role in multi-user communication

A technique is presented to determine the region of achievable rates for some source and channel networks. This technique is applied to the solution of a source:network problem that seems to be the simplest illustration of a new typical difficulty in coding for source networks: namely, when the same encoding of a source is required to meet the conflicting demands of 1) supplying side-information to the decoder of another source, and 2) providing direct-information to its own decoder in company with other side-information.
Nonlinear feedback design for observer-based neural adaptive dynamic surface control of MIMO uncertain nonlinear systems

This talk presents an observer-based neural adaptive dynamic surface control for MIMO uncertain nonlinear systems based on a nonlinear feedback technique, which tries to combine the merits of high gain feedback and low gain feedback in an easily manner. The core idea of such technique is that the feedback gain holds nonlinear mapping relationship with system states, which is achieved by a continuous differentiable nonlinear gain function. Caused by the compound property of nonlinear gain feedback, a non-quadratic Lyapunov function is designed to prove the closed-loop stability. Comparative results are shown to verify the effectiveness.
Morphological and Molecular Identification ofTrichoderma Isolates on North American Mushroom Farms

ABSTRACT Green mold disease (causal agent, Trichoderma) has resulted in severe crop losses on mushroom farms worldwide in recent years. We analyzed 160 isolates of Trichoderma from mushroom farms for morphological, cultural, and molecular characteristics and classified these isolates into phenotypic groups. The most common group comprised approximately 40% of the isolates and was identified as a strain of Trichoderma harzianum. This group was consistently recovered from farms with severe green mold disease but not from farms with little or no problem. In addition, the strain identified as the major cause of green mold disease in Ireland and the United Kingdom grouped with these North American isolates in having very similar randomly amplified polymorphic DNA patterns.
Examining the moderating role of prior knowledge in the relationship between destination experiences and tourist satisfaction

This study investigated the moderating role of tourist prior knowledge in the relationship between major destination experience components (i.e. attraction, infrastructure, restaurants and service performance) and tourist satisfaction. Data were collected from international tourists visiting Shiraz, Iran, via a questionnaire survey. Partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was applied to analyse the data, and the multi-group comparison approach was adopted to test the moderating role of prior knowledge. Findings reveal that tourist prior knowledge moderated the effects of destination experience components on tourist satisfaction in a differentiated way. The effects of service performance and restaurants on tourist satisfaction were more significantly moderated by tourist prior knowledge than the effects of attraction and infrastructure on tourist satisfaction. This study suggests that destination experiences enabled by human performance are more important in contributing to tourist satisfaction for those tourists with little knowledge about the destination. Destination marketing implications are discussed.
LHCSR Expression under HSP70/RBCS2 Promoter as a Strategy to Increase Productivity in Microalgae

Microalgae are unicellular photosynthetic organisms considered as potential alternative sources for biomass, biofuels or high value products. However, limited biomass productivity is commonly experienced in their cultivating system despite their high potential. One of the reasons for this limitation is the high thermal dissipation of the light absorbed by the outer layers of the cultures exposed to high light caused by the activation of a photoprotective mechanism called non-photochemical quenching (NPQ). In the model organism for green algae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, NPQ is triggered by pigment binding proteins called light-harvesting-complexes-stress-related (LHCSRs), which are over-accumulated in high light. It was recently reported that biomass productivity can be increased both in microalgae and higher plants by properly tuning NPQ induction. In this work increased light use efficiency is reported by introducing in C. reinhardtii a LHCSR3 gene under the control of Heat Shock Protein 70/RUBISCO small chain 2 promoter in a npq4 lhcsr1 background, a mutant strain knockout for all LHCSR genes. This complementation strategy leads to a low expression of LHCSR3, causing a strong reduction of NPQ induction but is still capable of protecting from photodamage at high irradiance, resulting in an improved photosynthetic efficiency and higher biomass accumulation.
Effect of asymmetric dimethylarginine on osteoblastic differentiation.

BACKGROUND Asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA) is an endogenous inhibitor of nitric oxide synthase (NOS) that accumulates in renal insufficiency and may be a uremic toxin. To determine whether ADMA inhibits bone metabolism, we investigated the in vitro effect of ADMA on osteoblastic differentiation in mouse bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs). METHODS The effect of ADMA on nitric oxide (NO) production was determined by measuring the stable end product of NO, nitrite, in the culture medium using commercial NO kit. The temporal sequence of osteoblastic differentiation in BMSCs was assessed in the presence and absence of ADMA by measuring alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity, mineralization, and osteoblast gene expression at 0, 4, 8, 12 days of culture. RESULTS ADMA (5, 50, 500 micromol. L-1) resulted in a dose-dependent decrease in nitrite formation in conditioned media of BMCS cultures, consistent with inhibition of NOS. ADMA treatment was associated with reduced ALP activity, calcium deposition and osteoblast-related gene expression in BMSCs cultures. Concurrent treatment with l-arginine (3600 micromol. L-1) reversed the ADMA (500 micromol. L-1)-mediated decrease in NO production, restored the differentiation potential of BMSCs, and significantly attenuated the down-regulation of Cbfa1 and osteocalcin gene expression by ADMA. CONCLUSIONS ADMA inhibition of the NO-NOS pathway in BMSCs impairs osteoblastic differentiation of mouse BMSC cultures. These studies further support a role of NO in the local regulation of bone metabolism and the possibility that ADMA may act as uremic toxin on bone through its effect to inhibit NO actions in osteoblasts.
The Economic Impact of Recentralization : A Quasi-Experiment on Abolishing Elected Councils in Vietnam

Comparative political economy offers a wealth of intriguing hypotheses connecting political decentralization to better public service delivery, improved governance, and reduced corruption. Although highly influential, recent formal and experimental work has begun to question the underlying theory and empirical analyses of previous findings. At the same time, many countries have grown dissatisfied with the results of their decentralization efforts and have begun to reverse them. Vietnam is particularly intriguing for researchers, because of the unique way it initiated its recentralization – piloting a removal of elected People’s Councils in ninety-nine districts throughout the country, and stratifying the selection by region, type of province, and urban versus rural settings. We take advantage of the opportunity provided by this quasiexperiment to test the core hypotheses beyond the decision to shift political and fiscal authority to local governments. We find that recentralization significantly improved a spectrum of public services, ranging from quality of roads to healthcare to agricultural extension. Surprisingly, however, recentralization also dramatically improved the quality of governance, especially impacting the amount of corruption experienced by Vietnamese citizens. These treatment effects offer a useful corrective to the extant literature and point to new avenues for research and policy interventions. _____________________ * We thank Jairo Acuna-Alfaro, Don Green, Yuki Ijima, Yotam Margalit, Craig McIntosh, Erik Wibbels, and seminar participants at Columbia University and Freiburg University for helpful comments
Metabolic precursors of surfactant disaturated-phosphatidylcholine in preterms with respiratory distress

Our objective was to study the metabolic precursors of surfactant disaturated-phosphatidylcholine (DSPC) in preterm infants with respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) on mechanical ventilation. We performed 46 DSPC kinetic studies in 23 preterms on fat-free parenteral nutrition and mechanical ventilation (birth weight = 1167 ± 451 g, gestational age = 28.5 ± 2.0 weeks). Eight infants received a simultaneous intravenous infusion of U13C-glucose and [16,16,16]2H-palmitate, eight infants received U13C-glucose and 2H2O, and seven received U13C-palmitate and 2H2O. Surfactant DSPC kinetics were calculated from the isotopic enrichments of DSPC-palmitate from sequential tracheal aspirates and its metabolic precursors in plasma or urine. DSPC fractional synthesis rate (FSR) was 17 ± 11, 21 ± 16, and 15 ± 6%/day from glucose, palmitate, and body water, respectively (P = 0.36). DSPC-FSR from U13C-glucose and 2H2O were significantly correlated and yielded similar estimates (difference of –0.1 ± 3%) (P = 0.91). The difference in the 15 infants receiving palmitate versus 2H2O or palmitate versus glucose was +6.0 ± 12%/day (P = 0.21). There was a significant correlation between DSPC-FSRs from plasma glucose and plasma FFA. The contribution of glucose versus palmitate to DSPC-FSR was 49 ± 20% versus 51 ± 20%, respectively. Plasma glucose and FFA showed similar contributions to DSPC-FSR in infants with RDS and fat-free parenteral nutrition. FSRs from 2H2O or glucose were highly correlated.
La tassazione verde in Italia: l’analisi di una carbon tax sui trasporti

The Europe 2020 strategy commits Italy to reduce emissions by about 16 per cent by 2020, compared with 2005. In the case of transport, the sector that has contributed most to the growth of total emissions between 1990 and 2008, the 2020 target could be achieved by introducing a carbon tax (CT). A CT would significantly reduce households’ demand for private transportation, lowering their emissions. CT proceedings could pay for the reduction of more distortive levies (e.g. labour taxation) or recycled to finance the deploying of renewable energy, replacing the existing charges on electricity consumption, thus alleviating the cost burden of less-affluent households. The CT would also be consistent with the polluter-pays principle, since the largest reduction in emissions would be financed to a proportionally larger extent by those with higher emissions.
Multilocus Sequence Types of Environmental Campylobacter jejuni Isolates and their Similarities to those of Human, Poultry and Bovine C. jejuni Isolates

In this study, we investigated the multilocus sequence type (MLST) diversity and population genetics of Campylobacter jejuni isolates collected from the natural waters (n = 57), wild birds (n = 37) and zoo animals (n = 19) in southern Finland, the Helsinki area and the Helsinki Zoo, respectively. On average, we found C. jejuni in 20%, 10.4% or 11.5% of the samples collected from natural waters, wild birds and zoo animals, respectively. High ST diversity was detected in all three sources and 41.2% of the STs were novel, but the multi‐host adapted ST‐45 was the most common ST detected. The MLST data, supplemented with C. jejuni isolates from domestically acquired human infections (n = 454), poultry (n = 208) and bovines (n = 120), were utilized in a population structure study. The results indicate four groups of strains with varying ecological associations, demonstrating presence of genetically distinct lineages within each of the studied sources. We discovered that the greatest ST overlap occurs between human isolates and isolates from natural waters and poultry, which suggests that the latter two are the most important sources of C. jejuni among domestically acquired infections in Finland.
Responding to Crises

Crises are situations that threaten organizations' continued existence. Organizations encounter crises largely because they did not adapt sufficiently to changes in their social or technological environments. When organizations do face crises, their responses have a series of phases. At first, the organizations try to ignore the threatening situation -- perhaps it will go away. Next, they try to hide the problems by distorting reports of their performance. Through both phases their executives make public statements that all is well.Then the organizations try to address their problems by replacing top executives, but when they replace only one or two, the remaining executives continue to operate as they did in the past, so adaptations are inadequate. Finally, there is a realization that serious changes must take place, but by this time, workers have lost confidence in their bosses, many of the most skilled workers have left, and financial resources have been depleted.
Deep Network Analyzer (DNA): A Big Data Analytics Platform for Cellular Networks

In this paper, we present deep network analyzer (DNA), a big data analytics platform for anomaly detection (AD) and root cause analysis (RCA) in mobile wireless networks. DNA is motivated by the growing scale and complexity of cellular networks along with the lack of advanced big data analytics tools for effective network management. It abstracts the RCA process into two modules, namely rule (fingerprint) learning and the module of AD and fingerprint matching. We first develop a rare association rule mining method to learn the symptoms of network anomalies and to build a fingerprint knowledge database from the historic data. Then a statistical machine learning approach is employed to identify the anomalies within the incoming dataset collected via various probes in the network and map the fingerprints of the detected anomalies to the rules in the knowledge database. The DNA platform has been tested using the real production data from the field and has been shown to be a highly effective platform for AD and RCA for large-scale cellular systems serving tens of millions of mobile users.
Gabapentin reduces alcohol consumption and craving: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial.

OBJECTIVE This study examined the efficacy of a 28-day gabapentin treatment in reducing alcohol consumption and craving. METHOD A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial was performed in a Brazilian public outpatient drug treatment center, with 60 male alcohol-dependent subjects with a mean age of 44 years and an average of 27 years of alcohol use, who consumed 17 drinks per day (165-170 g/day) over the past 90 days before baseline and had no other significant medical or psychiatric condition. Subjects were recruited between July 8, 2004, and February 24, 2005. Following screening, 60 subjects were selected and received diazepam and vitamins as treatment for acute withdrawal for at least 7 days. After the detoxification treatment, 30 subjects were randomly assigned to receive gabapentin (300 mg twice daily) for 4 weeks, and 30 subjects, with similar baseline characteristics, were randomly assigned to receive matching placebo tablets for the same period. RESULTS After 28 days of treatment, the gabapentin group showed a significant reduction in both number of drinks per day and mean percentage of heavy drinking days (p = .02 for both), and an increase in the percentage of days of abstinence (p = .008), compared to the placebo group. Additionally, some improvement in obsessive-compulsive symptoms was noted in both groups after the treatment, but it resulted in a more pronounced decrease in automaticity of drinking and aspects of craving in the gabapentin group than in the placebo group. CONCLUSION Gabapentin reduces alcohol consumption and craving, which may help patients to maintain abstinence. These results, together with the virtual absence of side effects and a favorable safety profile, support gabapentin as a potential drug for the treatment of alcohol withdrawal and dependence.
Enhanced Indoor Location Tracking Through Body Shadowing Compensation

This paper presents a radio frequency (RF)-based location tracking system that improves its performance by eliminating the shadowing caused by the human body of the user being tracked. The presence of such a user will influence the RF signal paths between a body-worn node and the receiving nodes. This influence will vary with the user's location and orientation and, as a result, will deteriorate the performance regarding location tracking. By using multiple mobile nodes, placed on different parts of a human body, we exploit the fact that the combination of multiple measured signal strengths will show less variation caused by the user's body. Another method is to compensate explicitly for the influence of the body by using the user's orientation toward the fixed infrastructure nodes. Both approaches can be independently combined and reduce the influence caused by body shadowing, hereby improving the tracking accuracy. The overall system performance is extensively verified on a building-wide testbed for sensor experiments. The results show a significant improvement in tracking accuracy. The total improvement in mean accuracy is 38.1% when using three mobile nodes instead of one and simultaneously compensating for the user's orientation.
The basic region of Fos mediates specific DNA binding.

The DNA‐binding domains of the members of the Fos and Jun families of proteins consist of a basic region followed by a dimerizing segment with heptad repeats of leucine. Fos‐Jun heterodimers and Jun alone, but not Fos alone, bind to the symmetrical sequences TGACTCA (AP‐1 site) or TGACGTCA (cAMP response element or CRE). We set out to test the hypothesis that in the Fos‐Jun heterodimer the basic region of Fos confers specific DNA‐binding properties equivalent to the contribution of the basic region of Jun. Fos‐Jun chimeric proteins were prepared consisting of the basic region of one protein joined to the leucine repeat of the other. Heterodimers with mixed Fos and Jun leucine repeat segments showed high affinity binding to the AP‐1 site or CRE whether they contained two basic regions from Jun, two basic regions from Fos, or one from each source. Heterodimers with two Fos basic regions showed somewhat greater affinity for the CRE and AP‐1 site than the heterodimer with two Jun basic regions. The DNA sequence specificity and the purine and phosphate DNA contact sites for each heterodimer were similar. We conclude that in the Fos‐Jun heterodimer the basic region of Fos contributes specific DNA‐binding properties equivalent to those of Jun. Our results support a model in which the Fos and Jun basic regions of the Fos‐Jun heterodimer each interact with symmetrical DNA half sites.