Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The changing impact of genes and environment on brain development during childhood and adolescence: Initial findings from a neuroimaging study of pediatric twins

Abstract Human brain development is created through continuing complex interactions of genetic and environmental influences. The challenge of linking specific genetic or environmental risk factors to typical or atypical behaviors has led to interest in using brain structural features as an intermediate phenotype. Twin studies in adults have found that many aspects of brain anatomy are highly heritable, demonstrating that genetic factors provide a significant contribution to variation in brain structures. Less is known about the relative impact of genes and environment while the brain is actively developing. We summarize results from the ongoing National Institute of Mental Health child and adolescent twin study that suggest that heritability of different brain areas changes over the course of development in a regionally specific fashion. Areas associated with more complex reasoning abilities become increasingly heritable with maturation. The potential mechanisms by which gene–environment interactions may affect heritability values during development is discussed.
TRAUMATIC EXPOSURE AND POSTTRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER IN BORDERLINE, SCHIZOTYPAL, AVOIDANT, AND OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE PERSONALITY DISORDERS: FINGINGS FROM THE COLLABORATIVE LONGITUDINAL PERSONALITY DISORDERS STUDY

The association between trauma and personality disorders (PDs), while receiving much attention and debate, has not been comprehensively examined for multiple types of trauma and PDs. The authors examined data from a multisite study of four PD groups: schizotypal, borderline (BPD), avoidant, and obsessive-compulsive, and a major depression comparison group. Rates of traumatic exposure to specific types of trauma, age of first trauma onset, and rates of posttraumatic stress disorder are compared. Results indicate that BPD participants reported the highest rate of traumatic exposure (particularly to sexual traumas, including childhood sexual abuse), the highest rate of posttraumatic stress disorder, and youngest age of first traumatic event. Those with the more severe PDs (schizotypal, BPD) reported more types of traumatic exposure and higher rates of being physically attacked (childhood and adult) when compared to other groups. These results suggest a specific relationship between BPD and sexual trauma (childhood and adult) that does not exist among other PDs. In addition, they support an association between severity of PD and severity of traumatic exposure, as indicated by earlier trauma onset, trauma of an assaultive and personal nature, and more types of traumatic events.
Big Data & Inductive Theory Development: Towards Computational Grounded Theory?

It has been argued that the unprecedented availability of trace data may revolutionize the social sciences. Still, methodological knowledge is scarce as to how this abundance of data can be used to develop novel and important theory. In this essay, we inquire into how the lessons learned from Grounded Theory Method (GTM) can be used to build theory from big data. To do so, we review GTM in light of three key concepts in social analysis: the continuum of induction, the continuum of generalization, and the level of lexicon and theory. Using Habermas’s concept of rational reconstruction we articulate a broader “grounded paradigm” that emphasizes the notion of emergence and provides a pragmatic epistemological foundation for different types of grounded analysis. On this basis, we propose a model that describes the process of theorizing from big data.
Aging in autonomic control by multifractal studies of cardiac interbeat intervals in the VLF band

The heart rate responds dynamically to various intrinsic and environmental stimuli. The autonomic nervous system is said to play a major role in this response. Multifractal analysis offers a novel method to assess the response of cardiac interbeat intervals. Twenty-four hour ECG recordings of RR interbeat intervals (of 48 elderly volunteers (age 65–94), 40 middle-aged persons (age 45–53) and 36 young adults (age 18–26)) were investigated to study the effect of aging on autonomic regulation during normal activity in healthy adults. Heart RR-interval variability in the very low frequency (VLF) band (32–420 RR intervals) was evaluated by multifractal tools. The nocturnal and diurnal signals of 6 h duration were studied separately. For each signal, the analysis was performed twice: for a given signal and for the integrated signal. A multifractal spectrum was quantified by the hmax value at which a multifractal spectrum attained its maximum, width of a spectrum, Hurst exponent, extreme events hleft and distance between the maxima of a signal and its integrated counterpart. The following seven characteristics are suggested as quantifying the age-related decrease in the autonomic function (‘int’ refers to the integrated signal): (a) hsleepmax − hmaxwake > 0.05 for a signal; (b) hintmax > 1.15 for wake; (c) hintmax − hmax > 0.85 for sleep; (d) Hurstwake − Hurstsleep < 0.01; (e) widthwake > 0.07; (f) widthint < 0.30 for sleep; (g) hintleft > 0.75. Eighty-one percent of elderly people had at least four of these properties, and ninety-two percent of young people had three or less. This shows that the multifractal approach offers a concise and reliable index of healthy aging for each individual. Additionally, the applied method yielded insights into dynamical changes in the autonomic regulation due to the circadian cycle and aging. Our observations support the hypothesis that imbalance in the autonomic control due to healthy aging could be related to changes emerging from the vagal function (Struzik et al 2006 IEEE Trans. Biomed. Eng. 53 89–94).
Effect of pacing mode on health-related quality of life in the Canadian Trial of Physiologic Pacing.

BACKGROUND Both "physiologic" (dual-chamber or atrial only) or ventricular-pacing-only permanent pacemakers provide chronotropic competence, with unknown health-related quality of life (QOL) differences between these options. The QOL studies within the Canadian Trial of Physiologic Pacing were performed to assess whether QOL differences exist in patients randomized to these 2 pacing modes. METHODS Two QOL protocols were performed: 1) a substudy of 269 patients with detailed QOL measures (The Medical Outcomes Study, Short-Form [SF-36], the Pacemaker Syndrome Scale, an activity scale, and a pacemaker-specific scale) at baseline and 6 months after implantation; and 2) a parent study assessment of QOL in 1721 patients with a 12-item QOL instrument package (SF-6, "ladder of life," and pacemaker syndrome scale) given 6 months after implantation only. RESULTS In the substudy, pacing was associated with an average significant (P <.05) 0.36 SD unit improvement in QOL across all domains (SF-36: 38 +/- 9 to 41 +/- 11 for physical scores, 47 +/- 11 to 52 +/- 9 for mental health scores, both P <.001). Similar improvements were seen with the pacemaker-specific scales. There were no significant differences in the absolute or relative improvement in QOL between assigned pacing modes. The parent study similarly showed no differences in QOL between pacing modalities. Presyncope occurred in 31% of patients in the physiological pacing group, compared with 38% of the patients in the ventricular pacing group (P <.01). No other symptoms were different between the 2 groups. Pacemaker dependency, defined as an escape heart rate <50 beats per minute, did not influence the lack of difference in QOL scores between the 2 assigned pacing modes. CONCLUSION In this largest randomized assessment of QOL in patients with pacemakers, with the instruments used, there was no significant health-related QOL difference seen between "physiologic" pacing and ventricular pacing.
Quantum Logic of Semantic Space: An Exploratory Investigation of Context Effects in Practical Reasoning

This article is an exploratory account of the the non-monotonic behaviour of conceptual associations in the light of context. Computational approximations of conceptual space are furnished by semantic space models which are emerging from the fields of cognition and computational linguistics. Semantic space models not only provide a cognitively motivated basis to underpin human practical reasoning, but from a mathematical perspective, they are real-valued Hilbert spaces. This introduces the highly speculative prospect of formalizing aspects of human practical reasoning via quantum mechanics. This account focuses on how to formalize context effects in relation to concepts as well as keeping an eye on operational issues.
Outcome in Pancreas Grafts After BK Virus Viremia in Simultaneous Pancreas-Kidney Transplants: A Single-Center Case Report

A of immunosuppression (IS) is clearly the infections that jeopardize graft and patient survival. Reactivation of BK virus and histologically proven BK virus nephropathy (BKVN) after kidney transplantation (KT) are well described, resulting in renal graft loss in up to 15% of such patients. Described risk factors are lymphocyte-depleting agents, tacrolimus (Tac)–based IS, diabetes mellitus, and ureteric stents. In contrast to KT, only few data on BK virus viremia (BKV) after simultaneous pancreas-kidney transplantation (SPK) have been published so far. BKVN treatment consists primarily of reducing IS. However, in these patients, attempts to decrease IS bring clinicians face to facewith the delicate task of preventing kidney graft failure, on one hand, and avoiding rejection of the pancreatic allograft, on the other hand. In this case report, we would like to share our experience with BKVafter SPK.
Ambulatory Blood Pressure Monitoring in Clinical Trials

Monitoring ambulatory blood pressure, instead of taking pressure readings in hospital, avoids the so-called white-coat effect and allows more readings to be obtained over a longer period of time. It improves the accuracy of the blood pressure estimate and increases the statistical power of therapeutic trials for hypertension. Subjects with white-coat or office hypertension can be detected by ambulatory blood pressure monitoring and excluded from clinical trials. In 23 studies, including a total of 3304 normotensive subjects, the 24-h ambulatory blood pressure averaged 118/72 mmHg; the daytime and night-time pressures were 123/76 mmHg and 106/64 mmHg, respectively. If the mean plus two standard deviation (s.d.) interval is considered the upper limit of normal, the meta-analysis suggested that hypertension may be suspected if the 24-h pressure exceeds 129/87 mmHg, or if the daytime or night-time pressures are higher than 146/91 mmHg or 127/79 mmHg, respectively. On balance, most studies suggest that placebo effects on blood pressure are not observed when blood pressure is measured with ambulatory recorders. If confirmed, this observation indicates that it is possible to simplify the design of trials in the field of hypertension. Ambulatory blood pressure readings should be obtained with properly validated monitors. If the recordings are of sufficient quality, editing does not increase the precision of the subsequent statistical analyses. The statistical analyses should account for diurnal rhythms, and subject and treatment effects.
Deep learning of symmetrical discrepancies for computer-aided detection of mammographic masses

When humans identify objects in images, context is an important cue; a cheetah is more likely to be a domestic cat when a television set is recognised in the background. Similar principles apply to the analysis of medical images. The detection of diseases that manifest unilaterally in symmetrical organs or organ pairs can in part be facilitated by a search for symmetrical discrepancies in or between the organs in question. During a mammographic exam, images are recorded of each breast and absence of a certain structure around the same location in the contralateral image will render the area under scrutiny more suspicious and conversely, the presence of similar tissue less so. In this paper, we present a fusion scheme for a deep Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architecture with the goal to optimally capture such asymmetries. The method is applied to the domain of mammography CAD, but can be relevant to other medical image analysis tasks where symmetry is important such as lung, prostate or brain images.
Q-learning-based data replication for highly dynamic distributed hash tables

This paper focuses on data replication in structured peer-to-peer systems over highly dynamic networks. A Q-learning-based replication approach is proposed. Data availability is periodically computed using the Q-learning function. The reward/penalty property of this function attenuates the impact of the network dynamism on the replication overhead. Hence, the departure of a node does not necessarily lead to the addition of a replica in the network. The replication process is triggered according to the overall data availability. Simulation results proved that the proposed approach ensures data availability in dynamic environments with minimum data transfer costs.
A New Deformable Model for Boundary Tracking in Cardiac MRI and Its Application to the Detection of Intra-Ventricular Dyssynchrony

We present a new deformable model technique following a snake-like approach and using a complex Fourier shape descriptors parameterization to efficiently formulate the forces that constrain contour deformation. The method was successfully applied to track the left ventricle’s (LV) endocardial and epicardial boundaries in sequences of shortaxis magnetic resonance images depicting complete cardiac cycles. The extracted shapes show the method’s robustness to weak contrast, noisy edge maps and to papillary muscle anatomy. Our second contribution is a statistical pattern recognition approach for the detection of asynchronous activation of the LV walls. We applied our deformable model method to provide spatio-temporal characterizations of complete cardiac cycles and then designed a linear classifier using the popular combination of Principal Component Analysis and Linear Discriminant Analysis. From a database comprising 33 patients, our approach provided a correct classification performance of 90.9% showing its potential in providing improved dyssynchrony characterization as an adjunct to current criteria for selecting patients for therapy, which provided a classification accuracy of just 62.5% on the same database.
Polymer optical waveguide fabrication using laser ablation

Due to their inherent bandwidth capacity, optical interconnects are replacing copper as bottlenecks begin to appear within the various interconnect levels of electronic systems. Current optical interconnect solutions found in industry are based upon optical fibres and are capable of providing a suitable platform for inter-board applications. However, to allow high bit rate digital interconnects between components and within systems, optically enabled printed circuit boards containing waveguides are essential. One way in which this can be accomplished is through the integration of polymer optical waveguides into traditional printed circuit boards (PCBs). There are a number of routes to accomplish this including photolithography and laser direct imaging, however, this paper explores laser ablation using UV and IR sources namely: 248 nm Excimer, 355 nm UV Nd:YAG and 10.6 µm CO2, to form waveguide structures in optical polymer materials. The paper presents the process route and initial results of trials conducted to fabricate waveguides and indicates the difference between the structures formed by the different lasers. The demonstration of the use of these three lasers for optical waveguide fabrication may provide a route to the rapid deployment of this technology into the PCB industry through the use of existing infrastructure.
Transparent and durable SiO2‐containing superhydrophobic coatings on glass

We fabricated novel superhydrophobic coatings based on SiO2 nanoparticles combined with NH2-terminated silicone (SN2) or SN2-modified polyurethane (SN2-prePU) by alternately spin-coating them onto glass slides. The final fabricated surface contained SN2/SiO2 or SN2-prePU/SiO2 bilayers. The conditions of spin-coating method were also explored. SN2-prePU with different SN2/prePU molar ratios were synthesized to study the influence of SN2 ratio on the water contact angles of ultimate spin-coated surfaces. The surface was found to be tunable from hydrophobic to superhydrophobic by choosing SN2-prePU with different SN2/prePU molar ratios or SN2 content. Water droplets easily rolled off on these superhydrophobic surfaces. Surfaces coated with SN2/SiO2 bilayers showed better transparency, whereas surfaces coated with SN2-prePU(2 : 1)/SiO2 bilayers exhibited better durability. Droplets of varied pH were prepared to test the anti-wettability of the coatings. Results showed that the as-coated surfaces had stable superhydrophobicity to droplets with pH values ranging from 1 to 14. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2015, 132, 41500.
Cellular Scaling Rules of Insectivore Brains

Insectivores represent extremes in mammalian body size and brain size, retaining various “primitive” morphological characteristics, and some species of Insectivora are thought to share similarities with small-bodied ancestral eutherians. This raises the possibility that insectivore brains differ from other taxa, including rodents and primates, in cellular scaling properties. Here we examine the cellular scaling rules for insectivore brains and demonstrate that insectivore scaling rules overlap somewhat with those for rodents and primates such that the insectivore cortex shares scaling rules with rodents (increasing faster in size than in numbers of neurons), but the insectivore cerebellum shares scaling rules with primates (increasing isometrically). Brain structures pooled as “remaining areas” appear to scale similarly across all three mammalian orders with respect to numbers of neurons, and the numbers of non-neurons appear to scale similarly across all brain structures for all three orders. Therefore, common scaling rules exist, to different extents, between insectivore, rodent, and primate brain regions, and it is hypothesized that insectivores represent the common aspects of each order. The olfactory bulbs of insectivores, however, offer a noteworthy exception in that neuronal density increases linearly with increasing structure mass. This implies that the average neuronal cell size decreases with increasing olfactory bulb mass in order to accommodate greater neuronal density, and represents the first documentation of a brain structure gaining neurons at a greater rate than mass. This might allow insectivore brains to concentrate more neurons within the olfactory bulbs without a prohibitively large and metabolically costly increase in structure mass.
Anycast Backpressure Routing: Scalable Mobile Backhaul for Dense Small Cell Deployments

Dense small cell (SC) deployments pose new architectural and transport level requirements. It is expected that they will require local multi-hop wireless backhauls in which some SCs with high capacity links towards the core act as aggregation gateways. To enable scalable deployments, there is the need of routing schemes able to handle dynamicity coming not only from increasing traffic demands and varying wireless link quality, but also from incremental gateway deployment. This letter proposes Anycast Backpressure (AB), a practical distributed anycast routing protocol designed to scale with the number of gateways and to exploit path and gateway diversity. The distinguishing feature of AB is that under increasing traffic demands, it opportunistically exploits uncongested gateways. To distribute traffic among the gateways, AB solely relies on 1-hop neighborhood queue backlog and geographic information. Ns-3 simulations show that, compared to state-of-the-art single-path and multi-path multi-gateway schemes, AB results in up to 40% gains in aggregated throughput and 99% reduction in latency for the evaluated scenarios.
Analysis of near-field power transfer of multi-antenna using multiport scattering parameters

Power transfer efficiency (PTE) of wireless power transfer (WPT) using near-field coupling of multi-antenna is numerically analyzed by using the scattering parameters after modeling the whole multi-antenna WPT system as a multi-port network. Because the multi-port scattering parameters can easily be measured by using a vector network analyzer and calculated by a full-wave numerical analysis, it is convenient to investigate the relationship between the PTE and the geometry of the multi-antenna WPT system, such as the relative position of the transmitting antenna and the receiving antennas, the geometry of antennas and copper loss in the antennas.
Performance Analysis of Nonorthogonal Multiple Access for Relaying Networks Over Nakagami-$m$ Fading Channels

Nonorthogonal multiple access (NOMA), which can improve the spectrum efficiency and system throughput compared with conventional orthogonal multiple access (OMA), has been regarded as a promising technique for the fifth-generation (5G) mobile communication network. In this paper, we consider a NOMA-based relaying networks over Nakagami-$m$ fading channels, where the base station communicates with multiple mobile users simultaneously through the help of an amplify-and-forward (AF) relay. First, we study the system outage behavior, and closed-form expressions for the exact outage probability and simple bounds of the outage probability are obtained, respectively. The analytical results are further evaluated in the high-signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) regime to explicitly characterize the diversity order of the network. Next, the ergodic sum rate achieved by the network is investigated, and expressions for the lower and upper bounds of the ergodic sum rate are derived. Finally, numerical examples are conducted to confirm the validity of our analysis and show a comparison of NOMA against conventional OMA networks. NOMA is reported to outperform conventional OMA and provide better spectral efficiency and user fairness.
Study of the phase transition of Poly(N, N-diethylacrylamide) in water by rheology and dynamic light scattering

Poly(N,N-diethylacrylamide) (PDEA) possesses a lower critical solution temperature (LCST) in aqueous media. The solution properties of PDEA at various temperatures have been characterized with techniques such as rheology and dynamic light scattering. There is a decrease in the coil size before the phase transition due to a coil-to-globule transition. At the LCST, rheological and dynamic light scattering studies have also confirmed an aggregation phenomenon. This aggregation modifies the rheological properties of the polymer solutions. High frequencies hinder the phase-transition process and reduce the LCST of the polymers.