Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reduction of serum cholesterol in postmenopausal women with previous myocardial infarction and cholesterol malabsorption induced by dietary sitostanol ester margarine: women and dietary sitostanol.

BACKGROUND Reduction of serum cholesterol decreases mortality in primary and especially in secondary prevention. We investigated how effectively postmenopausal women with a previous myocardial infarction reduced their serum cholesterol with dietary means by using sitostanol ester rapeseed oil margarine, alone and in combination with statins, and to what extent cholesterol metabolism was affected. METHODS AND RESULTS The first study group consisted of 22 randomly chosen women with angiographically documented coronary artery disease. Baseline studies on home diet were followed by double-blind, randomized, cross-over studies on margarine without and with sitostanol (3 g/d) ester for 7 weeks in random order. A second group of 10 women on simvastatin consumed sitostanol ester margarine for 12 weeks. Sitostanol ester margarine lowered serum total cholesterol by 13% (P<.05) and LDL cholesterol by 20% (P<.01). Sitostanol ester margarine reduced total cholesterol in all patients, LDL cholesterol <2.6 mmol/L (<100 mg/dL) in 32%, and <3.4 mmol/L (<133 mg/dL) in 73% versus none and 27% during the home diet (P<.01 for both). Combined with simvastatin, sitostanol still reduced total and LDL cholesterol by 11+/-3% and 16+/-5% (P<.01 for both). Sitostanol reduced absorption (-45%), increased fecal elimination (+45% as neutral sterols), and stimulated synthesis (+39%) of cholesterol. High cholestanol and plant sterol (high cholesterol absorption) and low baseline precursor sterol proportions (low cholesterol synthesis) predicted high decreases in serum cholesterol. CONCLUSIONS Dietary use of sitostanol ester margarine normalizes LDL cholesterol in about one third of women with previous myocardial infarction, especially in those with high baseline absorption and low synthesis of cholesterol, and in combination with statins reduces the needed drug dose.
Kouzes and Posner's transformational leadership model in practice

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the degree to which Kouzes and Posner's Transformational Leadership Model is being practised by Jordanian school principals. Currently, there are both internally and externally increasing pressures on Jordanian schools to enact reform. The empirical literature on leadership has shown that transformational leadership is positively associated with principals' effectiveness in implementing reform agenda. Kouzes and Posner's Transformational Leadership Model provides school principals in Jordon with practical guidance on how to lead, as well as practical suggestions on how to act during reform agenda.Design/methodology/approach – The research paper is quantitative in nature and was conducted using a survey design. Means, standard deviations, t‐test, and one‐way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were utilized to analyze gained data.Findings – The findings indicated that Kouzes and Posner's model is being moderately practised by Jordanian school principals. Female te.
The 'Interpreter Effect': Rendering Interpreters Visible in Cross-Cultural Research and Methodology

Social science literature dealing with cross-cul tural research tends to discuss 'language' as a methodological problem. One focus is hereby on testing the equivalence of concepts in dif ferent languages, usually in relation to one survey carried out in various countries. However, what hardly seems to feature are ex periences and thoughts on the social process of conducting interviews with a party of a differ ent linguistic background from that of the in terviewer, and the possible role of interpreters. It is in clinical interviewing in the mental health services where such issues have received considerable attention. This article is based mainly on two sources of knowledge and experience: first, on litera ture about the methodological issues gener ated by mainly clinical interviews conducted with interpreters; second, on experiences re lated to my thesis fieldwork in Budapest, which comprised 26 interviews with labour and management representatives, carried out with the assistance of interpreters. On this basis, the following issues are addressed: the possible interview bias arising due to the inter preter's background characteristics; the poten tial difficulties which are likely to occur, in particular when lay interpreters are involved; the possible lack of control over the interview process. Finally, the role of the interpreter as providing the non-native interviewer with a cultural context is explored.
Modeling Financial Time Series With S—Plus

asymmetric queues, approximation algorithms for networks, an introduction to performance analysis software PEPSY (Performance Evaluation Prediction SYstem), SPNP (Stochastic Petri Net Package), MOSEL-2 (MOdeling, Specification, and Evaluation Language), and SHARPE (Symbolic Hierarchical Automated Reliability Performance Evaluator). No queueing book can cover everything, but this book covers most of the important topics within queueing theory. As always, if one is planning on learning or teaching a specific topic, it would be wise to check the Table of
Object-Based Superresolution Land-Cover Mapping From Remotely Sensed Imagery

Superresolution mapping (SRM) is a widely used technique to address the mixed pixel problem in pixel-based classification. Advanced object-based classification will face a similar mixed phenomenon—a mixed object that contains different land-cover classes. Currently, most SRM approaches focus on estimating the spatial location of classes within mixed pixels in pixel-based classification. Little if any consideration has been given to predicting where classes spatially distribute within mixed objects. This paper, therefore, proposes a new object-based SRM strategy (OSRM) to deal with mixed objects in object-based classification. First, it uses the deconvolution technique to estimate the semivariograms at target subpixel scale from the class proportions of irregular objects. Then, an area-to-point kriging method is applied to predict the soft class values of subpixels within each object according to the estimated semivariograms and the class proportions of objects. Finally, a linear optimization model at object level is built to determine the optimal class labels of subpixels within each object. Two synthetic images and a real remote sensing image were used to evaluate the performance of OSRM. The experimental results demonstrated that OSRM generated more land-cover details within mixed objects than did the traditional object-based hard classification and performed better than an existing pixel-based SRM method. Hence, OSRM provides a valuable solution to mixed objects in object-based classification.
Efficient channel assignment and routing in wireless mesh network

The wireless mesh network is an emerging technology that provides high quality service to end users as the “last mile” of the Internet. Multicast communication is a key technology for wireless mesh networks. Multicast provides efficient data distribution among a group of nodes. Wireless mesh networks need to maximize throughput. Heuristic Channel Assignment algorithm that is Multichannel Multicast (MCM) algorithm to improve throughput for the multichannel mesh networks is proposed. Also a new path weight which captures the available path bandwidth information is also proposed to provide efficient routing. The available path bandwidth is defined as the maximum additional rate a flow can push before saturating its path. Therefore, if the traffic rate of a new flow on a path is no greater than the available bandwidth of this path, accepting the new traffic will not violate the bandwidth guaranteed of the existing flows. The consistency property guarantees that each node makes a proper packet forwarding decision, so that a data packet does traverse over the intended path. The extensive simulation experiments also show that the proposed Heuristic Channel Assignment with Routing provides high-throughput paths.
Interrater reliability of computer-assisted scoring of breathing during sleep.

Twenty-six records of sleep and breathing obtained with a portable monitoring system from elderly subjects were scored by three raters with computer assistance to examine interrater reliability of scoring. Raters were a medical student, a nurse practitioner, and a family physician, all of whom had at least one month's experience with the equipment. Agreement among raters was measured with the unweighted kappa statistic. Significant agreement was observed for all variables, although agreement was better for variables describing breathing (range of kappa 0.71-0.87) than for those describing sleep (range of kappa 0.34-0.57). Complete agreement among the three raters on diagnostic classification occurred in 17 cases. In the remaining 9 cases, 2 raters agreed, whereas the third differed by not more than one category for type of disturbance (e.g., normal versus hypopnea, hypopnea versus apnea) or severity (e.g., mild versus moderate). There was only one disagreement among raters for the 9 subjects with severe respiratory disturbance. We conclude that interrater reliability of identifying and characterizing breathing disturbance during sleep as recorded by portable monitoring is high among trained raters using computer assistance.
Iterative big data clustering algorithms: a review

Enterprises today are dealing with the massive size of data, which have been explosively increasing. The key requirements to address this challenge are to extract, analyze, and process data in a timely manner. Clustering is an essential data mining tool that plays an important role for analyzing big data. However, large‐scale data clustering has become a challenging task because of the large amount of information that emerges from technological progress in many areas, including finance and business informatics. Accordingly, researchers have dealt with parallel clustering algorithms using parallel programming models to address this issue. MapReduce is one of the most famous frameworks, and it has attracted great attention because of its flexibility, ease of programming, and fault tolerance. However, the framework has evident performance limitations, especially for iterative programs. This study will first review the proposed iterative frameworks that extended MapReduce to support iterative algorithms. We summarize these techniques, discuss their uniqueness and limitations, and explain how they address the challenging issues of iterative programs. We also perform an in‐depth review to understand the problems and the solving techniques for parallel clustering algorithms. Hence, we believe that no well‐rounded review provides a significant comparison among parallel clustering algorithms using MapReduce. This work aims to serve as a stepping stone for researchers who are studying big data clustering algorithms. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Characterization and interstrain transfer of prophage pp3 of Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Prophages are major contributors to horizontal gene transfer and drive the evolution and diversification of bacteria. Here, we describe the characterization of a prophage element designated pp3 in the clinical Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolate PA1. pp3 spontaneously excises from the PA1 genome and circularizes at a very high frequency of 25%. pp3 is likely to be a defective prophage due to its inability to form plaques on P. aeruginosa indicator strains, and no phage particles could be detected in PA1 supernatants. The pp3-encoded integrase is essential for excision by mediating site-specific recombination at the 26-bp attachment sequence. Using a filter mating experiment, we demonstrated that pp3 can transfer into P. aeruginosa recipient strains that do not possess this element naturally. Upon transfer, pp3 integrates into the same attachment site as in PA1 and maintains the ability to excise and circularize. Furthermore, pp3 significantly promotes biofilm formation in the recipient. Sequence alignment reveals that the 26-bp attachment site recognized by pp3 is conserved in all P. aeruginosa strains sequenced to date, making it possible that pp3 could be extensively disseminated in P. aeruginosa. This work improves our understanding of the ways in which prophages influence bacterial behavior and evolution.
Roles of Trm9- and ALKBH8-like proteins in the formation of modified wobble uridines in Arabidopsis tRNA

Uridine at the wobble position of tRNA is usually modified, and modification is required for accurate and efficient protein translation. In eukaryotes, wobble uridines are modified into 5-methoxycarbonylmethyluridine (mcm5U), 5-carbamoylmethyluridine (ncm5U) or derivatives thereof. Here, we demonstrate, both by in vitro and in vivo studies, that the Arabidopsis thaliana methyltransferase AT1G31600, denoted by us AtTRM9, is responsible for the final step in mcm5U formation, thus representing a functional homologue of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae Trm9 protein. We also show that the enzymatic activity of AtTRM9 depends on either one of two closely related proteins, AtTRM112a and AtTRM112b. Moreover, we demonstrate that AT1G36310, denoted AtALKBH8, is required for hydroxylation of mcm5U to (S)-mchm5U in tRNAGlyUCC, and has a function similar to the mammalian dioxygenase ALKBH8. Interestingly, atalkbh8 mutant plants displayed strongly increased levels of mcm5U, and also of mcm5Um, its 2′-O-ribose methylated derivative. This suggests that accumulated mcm5U is prone to further ribose methylation by a non-specialized mechanism, and may challenge the notion that the existence of mcm5U- and mcm5Um-containing forms of the selenocysteine-specific tRNASec in mammals reflects an important regulatory process. The present study reveals a role in for several hitherto uncharacterized Arabidopsis proteins in the formation of modified wobble uridines.
Mean-field treatment of the hybridization influence on narrow-band superconductivity.

We study the effect of hybridization on superconductivity within a two-band model, in the framework of an extended BCS theory. We describe interband effects through a one-body mixing term differently from the standard many-body approach. We use a Green's-function method to obtain the energies of the quasiparticles, the critical temperature, and the order parameter as functions of hybridization. We show that, in general, one should distinguish between the BCS order parameter and the gap in the quasiparticle spectrum. Finally, we discuss the application of our results for transition metals and high-${\mathit{T}}_{\mathit{c}}$ superconductors.
Mothering, Crime, And Incarceration

This article examines the relationships between mothering, crime, and incarceration through the narratives of thirty women incarcerated in a southwestern county jail. The responsibilities of child care, combined with the burdens of economic marginality and domestic violence, led some women to choose economic crimes or drug dealing as an alternative to hunger and homelessness. Other women, arrested for drug- or alcohol-related crimes, related their offenses to the psychological pain and despair resulting from loss of custody of their children. Many women were incarcerated for minor probation violations that often related to the conflict between work, child care, and probation requirements. For all women with children, mothering represented both the burdens of an unequal sexual division of labor and opportunities for resistance to marginalization and hopelessness.
Promoting Functional Literacy through Cooperative Learning

The effects of cooperative learning strategy manipulations on the enactment and recall of a medical procedure were explored. One hundred and twenty-three college students completed the experiment. During training, participants were randomly assigned to a dyad in one of four conditions: (a) no-strategy, (b) baseline strategy, (c) prompting strategy, and (d) planning strategy. During testing, participants both performed and produced written recalls of the procedure instructions. Test order was counterbalanced within dyad. Training and test performances were videotaped. The planning group produced the best recalls and recalled more conditions of the procedure. The prompting group performed best. Recall of the procedure in all groups was enhanced by prior performance. However, performance was enhanced by prior recall in only two groups. The groups differed also in the nature of the transition from training to testing. Theoretical and applied implications of these findings are discussed.
Resilient Asymptotic Consensus in Robust Networks

This paper addresses the problem of resilient in-network consensus in the presence of misbehaving nodes. Secure and fault-tolerant consensus algorithms typically assume knowledge of nonlocal information; however, this assumption is not suitable for large-scale dynamic networks. To remedy this, we focus on local strategies that provide resilience to faults and compromised nodes. We design a consensus protocol based on local information that is resilient to worst-case security breaches, assuming the compromised nodes have full knowledge of the network and the intentions of the other nodes. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the normal nodes to reach asymptotic consensus despite the influence of the misbehaving nodes under different threat assumptions. We show that traditional metrics such as connectivity are not adequate to characterize the behavior of such algorithms, and develop a novel graph-theoretic property referred to as network robustness. Network robustness formalizes the notion of redundancy of direct information exchange between subsets of nodes in the network, and is a fundamental property for analyzing the behavior of certain distributed algorithms that use only local information.
Characterization and Structure of the Aquifex aeolicus Protein DUF752

Background: Escherichia coli encodes a bifunctional oxidase/methyltransferase catalyzing the final steps of methylaminomethyluridine (mnm5U) formation in tRNA wobble positions. Results: Aquifex aeolicus encodes only a monofunctional aminomethyluridine-dependent methyltransferase, lacking the oxidase domain. Conclusion: An alternative pathway exists for mnm5U biogenesis. Significance: Information about how an organism modifies the wobble base of its tRNA is important for understanding the emergence of the genetic code. Post-transcriptional modifications of the wobble uridine (U34) of tRNAs play a critical role in reading NNA/G codons belonging to split codon boxes. In a subset of Escherichia coli tRNA, this wobble uridine is modified to 5-methylaminomethyluridine (mnm5U34) through sequential enzymatic reactions. Uridine 34 is first converted to 5-carboxymethylaminomethyluridine (cmnm5U34) by the MnmE-MnmG enzyme complex. The cmnm5U34 is further modified to mnm5U by the bifunctional MnmC protein. In the first reaction, the FAD-dependent oxidase domain (MnmC1) converts cmnm5U into 5-aminomethyluridine (nm5U34), and this reaction is immediately followed by the methylation of the free amino group into mnm5U34 by the S-adenosylmethionine-dependent domain (MnmC2). Aquifex aeolicus lacks a bifunctional MnmC protein fusion and instead encodes the Rossmann-fold protein DUF752, which is homologous to the methyltransferase MnmC2 domain of Escherichia coli MnmC (26% identity). Here, we determined the crystal structure of the A. aeolicus DUF752 protein at 2.5 Å resolution, which revealed that it catalyzes the S-adenosylmethionine-dependent methylation of nm5U in vitro, to form mnm5U34 in tRNA. We also showed that naturally occurring tRNA from A. aeolicus contains the 5-mnm group attached to the C5 atom of U34. Taken together, these results support the recent proposal of an alternative MnmC1-independent shortcut pathway for producing mnm5U34 in tRNAs.
Retrospective application of Program to Access and Review Trending iNformation and Evaluate coRrelation to Symptoms in patients with Heart Failure criteria for the remote management of patients with cardiac resynchronisation therapy

Aim The Program to Access and Review Trending iNformation and Evaluate coRrelation to Symptoms in patients with Heart Failure (PARTNERS HF) trial elaborated a multiparametric model for prediction of acute decompensation in advanced heart failure patients, based on periodical in office data download from cardiac resynchronisation devices. In this study, we evaluated the ability of the PARTNERS HF criteria to detect initial decompensation in a population of moderate heart failure patients under remote monitoring. Methods We retrospectively applied the PARTNERS HF criteria to 1860 transmissions from 104 patients (median follow up 21 months; range 1–67 months), who were enrolled in our programme of telemedicine after cardiac resynchronisation therapy. We tested the ability of a score based on these criteria to predict any acute clinical decompensation occurring in the 15 days following a transmission. Results In 441 cases, acute heart failure was diagnosed after the index transmission. The area under the curve (AUC) of the score for the diagnosis of acute decompensation was 0.752 (confidence interval (CI) 95% 0.728–0.777). The best score cut-off was consistent with the results of PARTNERS HF: with a score ≥2, sensitivity was 75% and specificity 68%. The odds ratio for events was 6.24 (CI 95% 4.90–7.95; p < 0.001). Conclusions When retrospectively applied to remote monitoring transmissions and arranged in a score, PARTNERS HF criteria could identify HF patients who subsequently developed acute decompensation. These results warrant prospective studies applying PARTNERS HF criteria to remote monitoring.
A Procedure for Estimating Cluster Boundaries in Gene Expression Profile Data

Gene expression profile data are rapidly accumulated by the advance of microarray techniques. The abundant data are analyzed by some clustering procedures to extract the useful information on the genes associated with the regulation [1]. In the cluster analyses of profile data, a systematic determination of the boundaries of gene clusters, instead of visual inspection and biological knowledge, remains a challenge. Here, we make an attempt to statistically estimating the number of gene clusters in the hierarchical clustering. Although a general procedure for the determination of cluster number is not known [3], the characteristics of the profile data serve to estimate the cluster boundaries. On the basis of the hierarchical clustering, the criterion for the cluster boundaries is derived from a data-driven value in the multiple regression analysis. The performance is illustrated on the previous expression profile data of yeast genes, which is available at a web site.