Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The price of whole-genome sequencing may be decreasing, but who will be sequenced?

AIM Since whole-genome sequencing (WGS) information can have positive and negative personal utility for individuals, we examined predictors of willingness to pay (WTP) for WGS. PATIENTS & METHODS We surveyed two independent populations: adult patients (n = 203) and college seniors (n = 980). Ordinal logistic regression models were used to characterize the relationship between predictors and WTP. RESULTS Sex, age, education, income, genomic knowledge and knowing someone who had genetic testing or having had genetic testing done personally were associated with significantly higher WTP for WGS. After controlling for income and education, males were willing to pay more for WGS than females. CONCLUSION Differences in WTP may impact equity, coverage, affordability and access, and should be anticipated by public dialog about related health policy.
A simple technique for heart sound detection and real time analysis

Usually physicians use acoustic stethoscope to detect abnormalities in the heart sound and predict abnormal conditions of human heart. As the frequency range and intensity of heart sound is very low, doctors are facing problems while detecting the cardiac sound and its abnormalities. To eradicate these severe problems it is required to design and develop an electronic stethoscope which would assist the doctor to analyze heart sound and to detect disease of the heart. Here an acoustic stethoscope along with microphone and preamplifier module is used in order to increase amplitude of the input sound signal received by the stethoscope. Soft scope of MATLAB program has also been used for analyzing the continuous set of cardiac sound and to detect its various characteristics like frequency, amplitude etc. It is aimed to design an electronic stethoscope which would assist the doctors to analyze heart sound and detect a disease condition of heart, but preliminarily we have achieved to detect different segments of the heart sound. Finally the sound signal received from the heart in the MATLAB program after filtering the noise out of it also has been plotted and analyzed in frequency domain.
Correlates of Perceived Social Support and Equality of Interpersonal Relationships at Mid-Life

An investigation into the correlates of perceived social support and the equality of interpersonal relationships at mid-life was conducted using a sample of 3954 adults from the University of North Carolina Alumni Heart Study (UNCAHS). Participants ranged in age from forty to fifty years. Results suggested that while the number of family roles and social activities are the same for men and women, women perceive a greater availability of social support and report they give more than they take in relationships with family. There was no association found between the perceived availability of social support and global indices of equality of interpersonal relationships; suggesting an independence between these two psychological aspects of social support. Further, multiple regression correlational analyses indicated gender, level of social activity, and self-esteem as significant predictors of perceived social support; with self-esteem being the best single predictor. Relatedly, gender and number of children were found to be significant predictors of the perceived equality of relationships with family. These findings suggest differences in mid-life men and women's psychological perception of the availability of social support, and the give and take of relationships with family.
Evolution of the Modified Rankin Scale and Its Use in Future Stroke Trials.

Who would have guessed that a scale introduced by Dr John Rankin in 1957 would become the primary outcome scale for almost all acute stroke trials? 1 The Rankin Scale was modified to its current form by Charles Warlow and others as part of the UK-TIA (United Kingdom Transient Ischaemic Attack) trial in the 1980s,2 and its reproducibility was first examined by van Swieten et al, in 1988 (Table 1). 3 View this table: Table 1. The Modified Rankin Scale (mRS) There is no perfect stroke outcome scale. Regardless, the 7-level, modified Rankin Scale (mRS) has several major strengths: it covers the entire range of functional outcomes from no symptoms to death, its categories are intuitive and easily grasped by both clinicians and patients, its concurrent validity is demonstrated by strong correlation with measures of stroke pathology (eg, infarct volumes) and agreement with other stroke scales,4 and its use has demarcated effective and ineffective acute stroke therapies in trials with appropriately powered sample sizes. With a limited number of levels, the mRS may be less responsive to change than some other stroke scales; however, a single-point change on the mRS is clinically relevant.4 A limitation of the mRS has been the subjective determination between categories and the reproducibility of the score by examiners and patients.4 A systematic review and meta-analysis of studies describing interobserver variability of the mRS reports pooled reliability across 10 published studies (n=587 patients) of a κ=0.46 and a weighted κ of 0.90. 5 Multimedia training and certification of examiners in the use of the mRS (http://rankinscale.org/), structured interviews and questionnaires,6–10 and centralized review of videotape assessments11 have sought to address these issues, but reproducibility remains a concern. But the challenge for a trialist designing a new acute stroke trial is not whether …
Does race/ethnicity moderate the association between job strain and leisure time physical activity?

Background: Racial/ethnic minorities report myriad barriers to regular leisure time physical activity (LTPA), including the stress and fatigue resulting from their occupational activities.Purpose: We sought to investigate whether an association exists between job strain and LTPA, and whether it is modified by race or ethnicity.Methods: Data were collected from 1,740 adults employed in 26 small manufacturing businesses in eastern Massachusetts. LTPA and job strain data were self-reported. Adjusted mean hours of LTPA per week are reported.Results: In age and gender adjusted analyses, reports of job strain were associated with LTPA. There was a significant interaction between job strain and race or ethnicity (p = .04). Whites experiencing job strain reported 1 less hr of LTPA per week compared to Whites not reporting job strain. Collectively, racial/ethnic minorities reporting job strain exhibited comparatively higher levels of LTPA compared to their counterparts with no job strain, although patterns for individual groups did not significantly differ.Conclusions: Job strain was associated with LTPA in a lower income, multiethnic population of healthy adult men and women. The association between job strain and LTPA was modified by race or ethnicity, highlighting the importance of investigating the differential effects of psychosocial occupational factors on LTPA levels by race or ethnicity.
Crowdsourcing energy-efficient participants to ensure quality-of-information

Crowdsourcing systems, by using smart devices like smartphones and iPad, have been widely used in various domains, but are currently facing new challenges. On one hand, different tasks offer different amount of incentive budgets in multitask systems, thus those tasks pay more should be satisfied preferentially. On the other hand, even if there are not enough budget for a sensing task, the system should also try to provide as much sensory data as possible to obtain potential clients. Furthermore, it is challenging to select an “optimal” set of participants as data contributors due to the above two points. In this paper, first, we introduce a metric to describe how the collected sensory data can quantify task's the multi-dimensional data requirements, in terms of data distribution in spatiotemporal domains. Second, we propose a “task priority model” based on incentive budget, to explicitly quantify the relationship between the incentive budget usage and task priority. Then, we present a quality of information (QoI) aware participant selection approach as a suboptimal solution to the defined optimization problem. Finally, we compare our proposed scheme with existing methods via extensive simulations based on the real movement traces of ordinary citizens in Beijing. Extensive simulation results well justify the effectiveness and robustness of our approach.
Predicting Prognosis in Thermal Burns With Associated Inhalational Injury: A Systematic Review of Prognostic Factors in Adult Burn Victims

Burn injuries are a significant problem with high associated morbidity and mortality. Those associated with inhalational trauma (IHT) may be associated with higher mortality, but studies on prognosis are small and underpowered. This study was designed to identify prognostic factors that increase the risk of death, to quantify this risk, and to identify existing prognostic models. An electronic search of English-language publications that identify prognostic risk factors in thermal burns including IHT was carried out. Each article was reviewed systematically, and data extraction, quality assessment, and summarization of the articles were performed. Thirteen articles that met the inclusion/exclusion criteria of this study were reviewed. Overall, the mortality rate among burn patients in this review was 13.9% (4–28.3%), with the mortality rate among those with IHT being 27.6% (7.8–28.3%). Those studies with multivariate analyses identified increasing %TBSA, presence of IHT, and increasing age as the strongest predictors for mortality in this patient population. It seems that %TBSA, presence of IHT, and age are the best predictors of mortality among the current published literature on burn prognosis.
Multidisciplinary applications of detached-eddy simulation to separated flows at high Reynolds numbers (challenge 92)

The current effort develops and demonstrates the application of high resolution turbulence modeling to flight mechanics and aeroelasticity of air vehicles at flight conditions where the vehicle is experiencing massively separated flow fields. The effort has both a basic research component to aid in developing the method and an applied component where the method is used to demonstrate an ability to simulate current DoD aircraft issues in flight mechanics and aeroelasticity. The high resolution turbulence method is a hybrid Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS)-large eddy-simulation (LES) method introduced by Spalart et al. in 1997 called detached-eddy simulation (DES) implemented in an unstructured Navier-Stokes solver, Cobalt. In the basic research component, DES has been applied to an Aerospatiale-A airfoil at an angle of attack of 13.3 degrees and a Reynolds number of 2 million. The project is called DESFOIL and simulates laminar-to-turbulent transition, adverse pressure gradients, streamline curvature, and boundary layer separation of a 3D airfoil strip. This study is in the early stages of developing a baseline for RANS and DES computations. DES has also been applied to flight mechanic and aeroelasticity problems of DoD air vehicles to demonstrate the utility of DES and also discover some of the nonlinear mechanisms causing these flight issues. The applications studied include the F/A-18E forced motion about the roll axis and one degree of freedom simulation of abrupt wing stall (AWS), the F/A-18C at conditions of tail buffet, and the ARGUS missile at conditions where it experiences coning motion.
Myanmarorchestia victoria sp. nov. (Crustacea, Amphipoda, Talitridae), a new species of landhopper from the high altitude forests in Myanmar

Myanmarorchestia victoria sp. nov. is described from high altitude habitats in Myanmar. The new species differs morphologically from its congeners by palp of maxilliped narrow; sexually dimorphic gnathopod Ⅱ, propodus of male chelate and propodus of female mitten-shaped; and dimorphic uropod Ⅱ, outer ramus of male with small teeth distally, outer ramus of female with three distal spines. Analysis of DNA barcode sequences and niche distinctiveness support recognition of the new species.
End-to-End Passwords

Passwords continue to be an important means for users to authenticate themselves to applications, websites, and backend services. However, password theft continues to be a significant issue, due in large part to the significant attack surface for passwords, including the operating system (e.g., key loggers), application (e.g., phishing websites in browsers), during transmission (e.g., TLS man-in-the-middle proxies), and at password verification services (e.g., theft of passwords stored at a server). Relatedly, even though there is a large body of research on improving passwords, the massive number of application verification services that use passwords stymie the diffusion of improvements---i.e., it does not scale for each improvement to require an update to every application and verification service. To address these problems, we propose a new end-to-end password paradigm that transfers password functionality to two end-points, the operating system (entry, management, storage, and verification) and the password verification service (verification, and verification token storage). In this paradigm, passwords are never shared with applications or transmitted over the network, but are instead verified using zero-knowledge protocols. There are five key benefits of this approach that are not possible with the current password paradigm: (a) a minimal attack surface, (b) protection from password phishing, (c) protection from malware, (d) consistent password policies, and (e) the ability to more rapidly diffuse improvements from password research.
Optimal Design for Informative Protocols in Xenograft Tumor Growth Inhibition Experiments in Mice

Tumor growth inhibition (TGI) models are increasingly used during preclinical drug development in oncology for the in vivo evaluation of antitumor effect. Tumor sizes are measured in xenografted mice, often only during and shortly after treatment, thus preventing correct identification of some TGI model parameters. Our aims were (i) to evaluate the importance of including measurements during tumor regrowth and (ii) to investigate the proportions of mice included in each arm. For these purposes, optimal design theory based on the Fisher information matrix implemented in PFIM4.0 was applied. Published xenograft experiments, involving different drugs, schedules, and cell lines, were used to help optimize experimental settings and parameters using the Simeoni TGI model. For each experiment, a two-arm design, i.e., control versus treatment, was optimized with or without the constraint of not sampling during tumor regrowth, i.e., “short” and “long” studies, respectively. In long studies, measurements could be taken up to 6 g of tumor weight, whereas in short studies the experiment was stopped 3 days after the end of treatment. Predicted relative standard errors were smaller in long studies than in corresponding short studies. Some optimal measurement times were located in the regrowth phase, highlighting the importance of continuing the experiment after the end of treatment. In the four-arm designs, the results showed that the proportions of control and treated mice can differ. To conclude, making measurements during tumor regrowth should become a general rule for informative preclinical studies in oncology, especially when a delayed drug effect is suspected.
Fine‐tuning light sensitivity in the starry flounder (Platichthys stellatus) retina: Regional variation in photoreceptor cell morphology and opsin gene expression

Vertebrate color vision relies on the differential expression of visual pigment proteins (opsins) in cone photoreceptors of the retina. The diversity of opsins and their retinal expression patterns appear greatest for animals that experience variable light habitats, as is the case with flatfishes. Yet, opsin repertoires and expression patterns in this group of fishes are poorly described. Here, we unveil the visual opsin expression patterns of juvenile starry flounder (Platichthys stellatus) and describe the localization of cone types, their visual pigments and opsin expression. Juvenile starry flounder express eight opsins (Rh1, Sws1, Sws2A1, Sws2A2, Sws2B, Rh2A1, Rh2A2, Lws) and possess a corresponding number of photoreceptor visual pigments, with peak absorbance ranging from 369 to 557 nm. Retinal (vitamin A1) was the only chromophore detected in the retina. Intraretinal variation in opsin abundance consisted of greater expression of both RH2, and lesser expression of SWS1 and both SWS2A, opsin transcripts in the dorsal compared to the ventral retina. Overall cone density was greater in the dorsal retina which was also characterized by a larger proportion of unequal double cones compared with the ventral retina. Together, our results suggest that large opsin repertoires serve to optimize visual function under variable light environments by differential expression of opsin subsets with retinal location.
Novel design based Internet of Things to counter lone wolf, part B-Berlin attack

This paper proposes a new design approach for Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) to counter the lone wolf threats. The design uses the existing techniques in ITS based Internet of Things (IoT) and Electroencephalogram (EEG), to detect the irregularity in driver's behavior, which can be categorized into threatened or violated behaviors. In threaten behaviors like deliberate run-over accidents and/or vehicle hijacking, the system will stop the vehicle as soon as possible and inform the security agency to ensure a speed response. In violated behavior like driver drowsiness, the system will alert the driver or inform the responding authorities and stop the vehicle, depending on the level of danger. The proposed system can be attached to vehicles as an embedded system. To minimize the consequences of the vehicle fast stopping, it is proposed to green the next traffic light signs. By applying this system in vehicles, a lot of accidents can be avoided, in particular those caused by lone wolves like deliberate run-over accidents or hijacking of vehicles.
Proactive approaches to identifying dementia and dementia risk; a qualitative study of public attitudes and preferences

Objectives The aim of this study was to critically explore the views of the public about the acceptability and feasibility of proactive approaches to earlier dementia diagnosis and also identification of people at high risk of dementia. Design Qualitative study using task group methodology and thematic data analysis. Setting Task groups were held either at the university (n=5) or at a carers’ centre (n=1). Participants: A convenience sample of 31 of 54 participants identified by local non-statutory agencies took part in a task group. All were aged between 40 years and 80 years, 21 were women and 10men participated. Results Despite the use of task group methodology, participants expressed limited understandings of dementia and confusion between proactive approaches. Nevertheless, they highlighted a range of potential benefits and limitations of proactive approaches and the ethical issues raised. There was a preference to embed risk assessment within routine health checks, which focused on achieving a healthier lifestyle, rather than specifically on dementia. Participants emphasised the need to ensure informed consent prior to use of proactive approaches and to provide appropriate support. They also suggested alternative approaches that could potentially facilitate the early detection of dementia or reduce risk at a population level. Conclusions As international policy on dementia shifts towards a prevention agenda there is growing interest in identifying those at risk of developing dementia. This study provides useful insights into the acceptability of the use of such proactive approaches among the public. The introduction of proactive approaches to dementia identification raises complex practical and ethical issues, particularly in the context of low public understanding of dementia. The importance of better quality information about dementia (and the likelihood of developing dementia) and provision of psychological support for those undergoing risk assessment were highlighted.
Relationships between green anoles ( Anolis carolinensis ) and shrub-level vegetation in fire-maintained longleaf pine ( Pinus palustris ) forests of eastern Texas.

Abstract We examined habitat use by Anolis carolinensis (Green Anole) at perch heights ≤5 m, particularly in relation to woody shrub-level vegetation, in fire-maintained Pinus palustris (Longleaf Pine) forest stands on the Angelina National Forest in eastern Texas. We surveyed Green Anoles in 2 stands, within 20 established plots per stand with varying shrub densities, during June (breeding season) and August (post-breeding season) for 3 years. An unforeseen prescribed fire in 1 stand provided an opportunity to examine the effects of fire on anoles and their habitat. Only adults were found during June. Adult detections decreased substantially, and juveniles predominated during August. The number of Green Anole detections was positively correlated with the number and volume (m3) of shrub-level plants. Also, anoles selected shrub-level plants with greater than average width, height, and volume. Larger shrubs provide more display perches and escape routes as well as greater protective cover from predators, a.
Event-Based Sensing and Control for Remote Robot Guidance: An Experimental Case

This paper describes the theoretical and practical foundations for remote control of a mobile robot for nonlinear trajectory tracking using an external localisation sensor. It constitutes a classical networked control system, whereby event-based techniques for both control and state estimation contribute to efficient use of communications and reduce sensor activity. Measurement requests are dictated by an event-based state estimator by setting an upper bound to the estimation error covariance matrix. The rest of the time, state prediction is carried out with the Unscented transformation. This prediction method makes it possible to select the appropriate instants at which to perform actuations on the robot so that guidance performance does not degrade below a certain threshold. Ultimately, we obtained a combined event-based control and estimation solution that drastically reduces communication accesses. The magnitude of this reduction is set according to the tracking error margin of a P3-DX robot following a nonlinear trajectory, remotely controlled with a mini PC and whose pose is detected by a camera sensor.
Structural and Optical Properties of Sulphurised Ag 2 S Thin Films

Thin films of silver (Ag) were thermally evaporated onto glass substrates. The films were then sulphurised using a simple chemical sulphurisation method with sulphurisation temperatures in the range 300 o C to 350 o C. The sulphurised films were then annealed using annealing temperatures in the range 250 o C to 350 o C. X-ray Diffractometer (XRD) and optical data are given for the as-sulphurised and the annealed layers. The structural and optical properties of the as-sulphurised layers show a poor crystallinity and weak transmission. However, annealing improved the crystallinity of the layers such that sharp X-ray diffraction peaks belonging to the acanthite phase was observed from X-ray diffractometry analysis. The annealed films had direct energy bandgap with energy bandgap in the range 2.10 eV to 2.20 eV