Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Avoidance of Bereavement-Related Stimuli in Chinese Individuals Experiencing Prolonged Grief: Evidence from a Dot-Probe Task

Background: Attentional bias refers to a preference for (e.g., vigilance) or a shifting away (e.g., avoidance) of one’s focus with respect to specific stimuli. Accumulating evidence suggests that an attentional bias toward death/threat-related stimuli exists in bereaved individuals experiencing prolonged grief (PG). Measuring for different processing may reflect different cognitive characteristics. Therefore, this study sought to compare information-processing biases in Chinese individuals with high versus low levels of PG symptomatology at supraliminal and subliminal levels, respectively. Method: A 2 (grief level) × 2 (consciousness level) × 2 (word type) three-factor mixed design with supraliminal and subliminal tasks was utilized in the current study. Based on their Prolonged Grief Questionnaire-13 (PG-13) scores, 38 participants were included in the low-PG group, and 34 individuals were included in the high-PG group. All the participants completed a dot-probe task in which they were primed with death-related and life-related words paired with neutral stimuli. Results: High-PG individuals were slower in reacting to the death-related information in both supraliminal and subliminal tasks. After controlling for other symptoms in the backward deletion regression, PG-13 scores significantly predicted the avoidance tendency to death-related words in the supraliminal task, while anxiety was the best predictor of turning one’s vision away from death-related stimuli in the subliminal trials. Conclusion: The results suggested that high PG is associated with a tendency to avoid death-related words. Future research is needed to explore interventions that address the avoidance of death-related stimuli among individuals with elevated, or diagnosable, levels of PG.
Difference in Symptom Profile between Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Anxiety Secondary to Hyperthyroidism

Objective: The differential diagnosis between subclinical hyperthyroidism and Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is often a difficult problem to solve without laboratory examination. The aim of this pilot study was to assess whether there are differences in the symptom profile between these two disorders. Methods: Fifty patients took part in the study: Twenty-five were hyperthyroid patients, and twenty-five were GAD patients. The diagnosis was based on the TSH values and the DSM-IV criteria, respectively. The Hamilton Anxiety Scale (HAS) and the list of fifty-one symptoms produced by the detailed expansion of HAS items were used to quantify the anxiety symptomatology. The differences in the frequencies between the two diagnostic groups were calculated at each categorical response for every item of both scales. Forward Stepwise Discriminant Function Analysis was performed twice using HAS items and the fifty-one-list items. Results: The symptoms of anxiety in subclinical hyperthyroidism were not identical to those of GAD. Four Hyperthyroid/Anxiety Indices (HAI I-IV) were developed. These indices reach optimum classification of patients (3 of them reach 100% sensitivity and specificity). Conclusion: The results of the current study suggest that it is possible to differentiate between GAD and subclinical cases of hyperthyroidism by the careful study of clinical symptomatology. This may be of particular help in isolated areas without laboratory support, but replication of the indices in other samples is indicated.
Improved HPLC method for carbohydrate-deficient transferrin in serum.

BACKGROUND There is need for a reference method for transferrin glycoforms in serum to which routine immunologic methods for the alcohol marker carbohydrate-deficient transferrin (CDT) can be traceable. We describe an improved HPLC method for transferrin glycoforms. METHODS Transferrin was iron-saturated by mixing the serum with ferric nitrilotriacetic acid, and lipoproteins were precipitated with dextran sulfate and calcium chloride. Separation of glycoforms was performed on a SOURCE 15Q anion-exchange column using salt gradient elution. Quantification relied on selective absorbance of the iron-transferrin complex at 470 nm. The relative amount of each glycoform was calculated as a percentage of the area under the curve, using baseline integration. RESULTS The HPLC system provided reproducible separation and quantification of the asialo-, monosialo-, disialo-, trisialo-, tetrasialo-, pentasialo-, and hexasialotransferrin glycoforms. Most importantly, disialo- and trisialotransferrin were almost baseline separated. The intra- and interassay CV for disialotransferrin were <5%. Serum and the pretreated samples were stable for at least 2 days at 22 or 4 degrees C. Sera from 132 healthy controls contained [mean (SD)] 1.16 (0.25)% disialotransferrin, 4.77 (1.36)% trisialotransferrin, 80.18 (2.01)% tetrasialotransferrin, and 13.88 (1.69)% pentasialo- + hexasialotransferrin. In some cases of a high (>6%) trisialotransferrin, monosialotransferrin was detected at <0.25%. Asialotransferrin was not detected in control sera, but was detected in 57% of chronic heavy drinkers and in 62% of sera with >/=2% disialotransferrin. CONCLUSIONS The HPLC method fulfills the requirements of a preliminary reference method for CDT and should work for any combination of serum transferrin glycoforms. This method could also be useful for confirming positive CDT results by immunoassays in medico-legal cases.
An Accelerated Randomized Proximal Coordinate Gradient Method and its Application to Regularized Empirical Risk Minimization

We consider the problem of minimizing the sum of two convex functions: one is smooth and given by a gradient oracle, and the other is separable over blocks of coordinates and has a simple known structure over each block. We develop an accelerated randomized proximal coordinate gradient (APCG) method for minimizing such convex composite functions. For strongly convex functions, our method achieves faster linear convergence rates than existing randomized proximal coordinate gradient methods. Without strong convexity, our method enjoys accelerated sublinear convergence rates. We show how to apply the APCG method to solve the regularized empirical risk minimization (ERM) problem and devise efficient implementations that avoid full-dimensional vector operations. For ill-conditioned ERM problems, our method obtains improved convergence rates than the state-of-the-art stochastic dual coordinate ascent method.
Profile Scaling Increases the Similarity Search Performance of Molecular Fingerprints Containing Numerical Descriptors and Structural Keys

The concept of compound class-specific profiling and scaling of molecular fingerprints for similarity searching is discussed and applied to newly designed fingerprint representations. The approach is based on the analysis of characteristic patterns of bits in keyed fingerprints that are set on in compounds having equivalent biological activity. Once a fingerprint profile is generated for a particular activity class, scaling factors that are weighted according to observed bit frequencies are applied to signature bit positions when searching for similar compounds. In systematic similarity search calculations over 23 diverse activity classes, profile scaling consistently increased the performance of fingerprints containing property descriptors and/or structural keys. A significant improvement of approximately 15% was observed for a new fingerprint consisting of binary encoded molecular property descriptors and structural keys. Under scaling conditions, this fingerprint, termed MP-MFP, correctly recognized on average close to 60% of all active test compounds, with only a few false positives. MP-MFP outperformed MACCS keys and other reference fingerprints. In general, optimum performance in scaling calculations was achieved at higher threshold values of the Tanimoto coefficient than in nonscaled calculations, thereby increasing the search selectivity. In general, putting relatively high weight on signature bit positions that were always, or almost always, set on was found to be the most effective scaling procedure. Analysis of class-specific search performance revealed that profile scaling of MP-MFP improved the similarity search results for each of the 23 activity classes.
Effect of Estrogen on Fibrinogen Clotting Time in Rabbits

The aim of this study was to examine the effect of estrogen on fibrinogen clotting time in rabbit model experimentally. The study was performed on 14 white New Zealand race female prepubertary rabbits at two months old weighing meanly 1.4±0.3 kg. Blood samples was taken from ear veins of the rabbits and first fibrinogen clotting time levels were measured to obtain control values. Next day, female sex hormone preparate estradiol valerinate at a dose of 0.3 mg/kg were injected to the rabbits IM. In their examinations made on 10 th day of injection, they were evaluated as in oestrus and under the maximal effects of estrogen, and their blood samples were taken again to measure their fibrinogen clotting time levels. Fibrinogen clotting time levels were determined from blood samples taken before and after female sex hormone administration. Samples taken from ear veins of the rabbits were used for measurement of fibrinogen clotting time. In the study, fibrinogen clotting time values were found meanly 18.13±1.00 sec. from blood samples taken before estrogen injection versus 18.87±0.61 sec. from blood samples after 10 days of estrogen injec- tion. In statistical assessment performed, there were not statistically significant differences (t=0.94, p>0.05) between fibrinogen clotting time values before and after estrogen administration. Our data revealed that estrogen administration caused a silghtly but insignificantly increase in fibrinogen clotting time values in the rabbits.
A Framework for the Coordination of Multiple Autonomic Managers in Cloud Environments

One of the main reasons for the wide adoption of Cloud Computing is the flexibility in which resources and software services are provisioned on demand through the concept of elasticity. Implementing elasticity to tackle varying workloads while optimizing infrastructures (e.g. utilization rate) and fulfilling applications' requirements on Quality of Service still remains an open issue and should be addressed by self-adaptation techniques able to manage complexity and dynamism. However, since Cloud systems are organized indifferent but dependent Cloud layers, self-management decisions taken in isolation in a certain layer may indirectly interfere with the decision taken by an other layer and globally affect the performance of the whole Cloud stack. Indeed, non-coordinated managers may lead to conflicting decisions and consequently to non-desired states. This paper proposes a framework for the coordination of multiple autonomic managers in Cloud systems. This framework introduces two kinds of managers: (i) one for each application, and (ii)another for the infrastructure. To tackle the problem of interferences between these Cloud autonomic managers, we propose a coordination protocol based on inter-manager events and actions along with synchronization mechanisms. The goal is to improve the synergy between layers in a loose-coupling manner. We evaluated the approach through an experimental scenario on Grid'5000, a real physical infrastructure testbed. In this use case, we show that our framework improves the synergy between cloud systems while dealing with conflicting objectives and negative interferences.
Biopsychosocial and Retirement Factors Influencing Satisfaction With Life: New Perspectives

Founded on expectation confirmation theory and a resource perspective, this research examines the impact of retiree resources, retirement planning, conditions of work exit, and confirmation of retirement expectations on satisfaction with life in retirement. The study of 543 retirees found significant effects of retiree resources (i.e., self-efficacy, health, and income), confirmation of retirement expectations, ageism, retirement planning, and conditions of exit on retirees’ satisfaction with life. The study also showed that self-efficacy, activity participation, health, income, ageism, and retirement planning significantly impacted confirmation of retirement expectations, although conditions of exit did not significantly affect confirmation of retirement expectations.
Coplanar spiral antenna

A coplanar spiral antenna (CSAT) in free space is analyzed using the finite-difference time-domain method. It is found that the CSAT radiates a circularly polarized wave over a relatively wide frequency range (13%). The gain is found to be an approximately 4.8 dBi. Subsequently, a CSAT with a glass plate is investigated. It is found that impedance matching is achieved by partially removing the conducting areas between the antenna filaments.
A guided oversampling technique to improve the prediction of software fault-proneness for imbalanced data

Fault-proneness is one of the most tackled quality factors in the field of software quality. Predicting the probability of the faulty classes is necessary information to guide developers in their endeavour to improve the software quality and to reduce the costs of testing and maintenance. The performance of the fault prediction models suffers greatly from the imbalance of fault distribution, i.e., the majority of modules are not faulty whereas the minority are only faulty. The imbalanced distribution of faults affects the efficiency of prediction models greatly. In this paper, we discuss many oversampling techniques that are used to improve the performance of prediction models. We propose to guide the oversampling process using the fault content (i.e., the number of faults in a module). This study is conducted on a large object-oriented system – Eclipse. The proposed oversampling is tested on ten classifiers. The results of this work shows that using fault content in sampling has better prediction performance than other traditional oversampling techniques. The decision trees and nearest neighbours have shown outstanding performance whereas other classifiers have shown acceptable performance.
Leitthema : Adipositas : Therapie bei Kindern und Jugendlichen

Childhood obesity is recognized by the World Health Organization as one of the most serious public health challenges of the 21st century. Current treatment recommendations consider the role of pharmacotherapy in the treatment of childhood obesity, as an adjunct to lifestyle modifications. This article focuses on key requirements for paediatric development of medicines for obesity in Europe with reference to the European Medicines Agency guideline and a review of Paediatric Investigation Plans (PIP) submitted for this condition, under Regulation (EC) No. 1901/2006 on medicines for paediatric use. To date the European Medicines Agency (EMA) received four paediatric investigation plans for childhood obesity. Issues encountered during the assessment of paediatric investigation plans were all related to the characteristics of the patient population, trial design, choice of endpoints, and safety aspects. Although the number of paediatric investigation plans submitted to the European Medicines Agency thus far is limited, current experience highlights the need for clinical trial protocols that are in line with the specific European guideline. Divergent approaches should be discussed with regulatory authorities before paediatric trials are initiated and included in paediatric investigation plans.
Cytotoxicity of cigarette smoke condensate is not due to DNA double strand breaks: Comparative studies using radiosensitive mutant and wild-type CHO cells

Purpose: To determine whether cigarette smoke condensate (CSC) without metabolic activation induces direct DNA double strand breaks (DSB) in the G1 phase of various radiosensitive mutants of CHO cells and whether these breaks display collateral hypersensitivity to CSC with respect to cell killing. Materials & methods: We treated the G1-phase cultures of wild-type and DNA repair deficient mutants of CHO cells with various concentrations of CSC and examined the cell survival by colony formation assay and the induction of DNA double strand breaks by constant field gel electrophoresis as well as the phophorylated histone H2-A variant X (γ-H2AX) assay. Results: Gel analysis and γ-H2AX focus assay showed significantly fewer, but still detectable levels of DSB per cell after CSC treatment compared to ionizing radiation (IR) exposures, even when equitoxic radiation exposures were delivered at a low dose rate over the same 8-hour exposure used for CSC treatments. None of the three non-homologous end joining (NHEJ) deficient mutants were remarkably hypersensitive to CSC compared to wild-type cells. In contrast, UV-1 cells that are hypersensitive to several base damage and cross-linking agents showed a higher sensitivity to CSC compared to the other CHO cell lines. Conclusions: DNA DSB produced directly by CSC are not principally responsible for its cytotoxicity. Further, the present study does not rule out the possibility that some of these lesions may secondarily result in DSB, such as may occur during impeded DNA replication and whose repair may require systems other than NHEJ.
Sample size estimation for correlations with pre-specified confidence interval

A common measure of association between two variables x and y is the bivariate Pearson correlation coefficient ρ(x,y) that characterizes the strength and direction of any linear relationship between x and y. This article describes how to determine the optimal sample size for bivariate correlations, reviews available methods, and discusses their different ranges of applicability. A convenient equation is derived to help plan sample size for correlations by confidence interval analysis. In addition, a useful table for planning correlation studies is provided that gives sample sizes needed to achieve 95% confidence intervals (CI) for correlation values ranging from 0.05 to 0.95 and for CI widths ranging from 0.1 to 0.9. Sample size requirements are considered for planning correlation studies.
Notch signal reception is required in vascular smooth muscle cells for ductus arteriosus closure

The ductus arteriosus is an arterial vessel that shunts blood flow away from the lungs during fetal life, but normally occludes after birth to establish the adult circulation pattern. Failure of the ductus arteriosus to close after birth is termed patent ductus arteriosus, and is one of the most common congenital heart defects. Our previous work demonstrated that vascular smooth muscle cell expression of the Jag1 gene, which encodes a ligand for Notch family receptors, is essential for postnatal closure of the ductus arteriosus in mice. However, it was not known what cell population was responsible for receiving the Jag1‐mediated signal. Here we show, using smooth muscle cell‐specific deletion of the Rbpj gene, which encodes a transcription factor that mediates all canonical Notch signaling, that Notch signal reception in the vascular smooth muscle cell compartment is required for ductus arteriosus closure. These data indicate that homotypic vascular smooth muscle cell interactions are required for proper contractile smooth muscle cell differentiation and postnatal closure of the ductus arteriosus in mice. genesis 54:86–90, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
A parametric approach to vocal tract length normalization

Differences in vocal tract size among individual speakers contribute to the variability of speech waveforms. The first-order effect of a difference in vocal tract length is a scaling of the frequency axis; a female speaker, for example, exhibits formants roughly 20% higher than the formants of from a male speaker, with the differences most severe in open vocal tract configurations. We describe a parametric method of normalisation which counteracts the effect of varied vocal tract length. The method is shown to be effective across a wide range of recognition systems and paradigms, but is particularly helpful in the case of a small amount of training data.
Plasticity in host utilization by two host-associated populations of Aphis gossypii Glover

Abstract Biological and morphological plasticity in polyphagous insect herbivores allow them to exploit diverse host plant species. Geographical differences in resource availability can lead to preferential host exploitation and result in inconsistent host specialization. Biological and molecular data provide insights into specialization and plasticity of such herbivore populations. In agricultural landscapes, Aphis gossypii encounters several crop and non-crop hosts, which exist in temporal and spatial proximity. We investigated the host-specialization of two A. gossypii host-associated populations (HAPs), which were field collected from cotton and squash (cotton-associated population and melon-associated population), and later maintained separately in the greenhouse. The two aphid populations were exposed to seven plant species (cotton, okra, watermelon, squash, cucumber, pigweed, and morning glory), and evaluated for their host utilization plasticity by estimating aphid's fitness parameters (nymphal period, adult period, fecundity, and intrinsic rate of increase). Four phenotypical characters (body length, head capsule width, hind tibia length and cornicle length) were also measured from the resulting 14 different HAP × host plant combinations. Phylogenetic analysis of mitochondrial COI sequences showed no genetic variation between the two HAPs. Fitness parameters indicated a significant variation between the two aphid populations, and the variation was influenced by host plants. The performance of melon-aphids was poor (up to 89% reduction in fecundity) on malvaceous hosts, cotton and okra. However, cotton-aphids performed better on cucurbitaceous hosts, squash and watermelon (up to 66% increased fecundity) compared with the natal host, cotton. Both HAPs were able to reproduce on two weed hosts. Cotton-aphids were smaller than melon-aphids irrespective of their host plants. Results from this study suggest that the two HAPs in the study area do not have strict host specialization; rather they exhibit plasticity in utilizing several hosts. In this scenario, it is unlikely that host-associated A. gossypii populations would evolve into host-specific biotypes.
Vector Transport-Free SVRG with General Retraction for Riemannian Optimization: Complexity Analysis and Practical Implementation

In this paper, we propose a vector transport-free stochastic variance reduced gradient (SVRG) method with general retraction for empirical risk minimization over Riemannian manifold. Existing SVRG methods on manifold usually consider a specific retraction operation, and involve additional computational costs such as parallel transport or vector transport. The vector transport-free SVRG with general retraction we propose in this paper handles general retraction operations, and do not need additional computational costs mentioned above. As a result, we name our algorithm S-SVRG, where the first "S" means simple. We analyze the iteration complexity of S-SVRG for obtaining an $\epsilon$-stationary point and its local linear convergence by assuming the \L ojasiewicz inequality, which naturally holds for PCA and holds with high probability for matrix completion problem. We also incorporate the Barzilai-Borwein step size and design a very practical S-SVRG-BB method. Numerical results on PCA and matrix completion problems are reported to demonstrate the efficiency of our methods.