Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Significantly enhanced and precisely modeled thermal conductivity in polyimide nanocomposites with chemically modified graphene via in situ polymerization and electrospinning-hot press technology

Both aminopropylisobutyl polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (NH2-POSS) and hydrazine monohydrate were utilized to functionalize graphene oxide (GO), and to obtain chemically modified graphene (CMG), which was then used for preparing thermally conductive CMG/polyimide (CMG/PI) nanocomposites via a sequential in situ polymerization and electrospinning-hot press technology. NH2-POSS molecules were grafted on the GO surface, and CMG was obtained by the reaction between NH2-POSS and GO. The thermal conductivity coefficient (λ), glass transition temperature (Tg) and heat resistance index (THRI) of the prepared CMG/PI nanocomposites were all increased with increasing the CMG loading. The λ value of the CMG/PI nanocomposites with 5 wt% CMG was significantly improved to 1.05 W m−1 K−1, about 4 times higher than that of the pristine PI matrix (0.28 W m−1 K−1). The corresponding Tg and THRI values were also increased to 213.0 and 282.3 °C, respectively. Moreover, an improved thermal conductivity model was proposed and predicted the λ values of the nanocomposites more precisely than those obtained from the typical Maxwell, Russell and Bruggemen classical models.
Cord Blood CD8+ T Cells Have a Natural Propensity to Express IL-4 in a Fatty Acid Metabolism and Caspase Activation-Dependent Manner

How T cells differentiate in the neonate may critically determine the ability of the infant to cope with infections, respond to vaccines and avert allergies. Previously, we found that naïve cord blood CD4+ T cells differentiated toward an IL-4-expressing phenotype when activated in the presence of TGF-β and monocyte-derived inflammatory cytokines, the latter are more highly secreted by infants who developed food allergy. Here, we show that in the absence of IL-2 or IL-12, naïve cord blood CD8+ T cells have a natural propensity to differentiate into IL-4-producing non-classic TC2 cells when they are activated alone, or in the presence of TGF-β and/or inflammatory cytokines. Mechanistically, non-classic TC2 development is associated with decreased expression of IL-2 receptor alpha (CD25) and glycolysis, and increased fatty acid metabolism and caspase-dependent cell death. Consequently, the short chain fatty acid, sodium propionate (NaPo), enhanced IL-4 expression, but exogenous IL-2 or pan-caspase inhibition prevented IL-4 expression. In children with endoscopically and histologically confirmed non-inflammatory bowel disease and non-infectious pediatric idiopathic colitis, the presence of TGF-β, NaPo, and IL-1β or TNF-α promoted TC2 differentiation in vitro. In vivo, colonic mucosa of children with colitis had significantly increased expression of IL-4 in CD8+ T cells compared with controls. In addition, activated caspase-3 and IL-4 were co-expressed in CD8+ T cells in the colonic mucosa of children with colitis. Thus, in the context of colonic inflammation and limited IL-2 signaling, CD8+ T cells differentiate into non-classic TC2 that may contribute to the pathology of inflammatory/allergic diseases in children.
Performance and perceptual responses of collegiate female soccer players to a practical external and internal cooling protocol

International Journal of Exercise Science 8(4): 331-340, 2015. This study examined practical preand mid practice cooling interventions on running performance, perceived exertion (RPE), and thermal sensation (TS) during soccer. During two formal pre-season practices female, NCAA Division II soccer players participated in three, 15 min scrimmage bouts followed by a 4th 10 min bout. Following the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd bouts, 8 field position players completed competitive sets of two, 30 yard sprints against other team members with time recorded between 5 and 30 yards. After the 4th bout, players completed an indoor shuttle running beep test (BT). In the treatment group (COOL) ice towels (IT) were applied to the head and neck regions and draped across both legs for 10 min following a standardized warm-up and for 10 min during a 15 min break between the 2nd and 3rd scrimmage sessions. Sport beverage slurries (350 mL; -0.3 °C, ~6% carbohydrate) were also served during IT cooling for COOL; while the control (CON) received no IT and drank the same ,uncooled sport beverage. No main effect was found for sprint performance (COOL = 3.55 ± 0.16 s; CON = 3.51 ± 0.07 s; P = 0.51) or numbers of reps completed in the BT (COOL = 17.6 ± 5.6; CON = 17.3 ± 6.0; P = 0.88). RPE did not differ following any performance test, but TS was lower following the 3rd sprint bout (P = 0.04) and the BT (P = 0.005) for COOL. COOL promoted lower TS, but had no effect on performance.
The relative validity and repeatability of an FFQ for estimating intake of zinc and its absorption modifiers in young and older Saudi adults

Abstract Objective To assess the relative validity and repeatability of a sixty-four-item FFQ for estimating dietary intake of Zn and its absorption modifiers in Saudi adults. In addition, we used the FFQ to investigate the effect of age and gender on these intakes. Design To assess validity, all participants completed the FFQ (FFQ1) and a 3 d food record. After 1 month, the FFQ was administered for a second time (FFQ2) to assess repeatability. Setting Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Subjects One hundred males and females aged 20–30 years and 60–70 years participated. Results Mean intakes of Zn and protein from FFQ1 were significantly higher than those from the food record while there were no detectable differences between tools for measurement of phytic acid intake. Estimated intakes of Zn, protein and phytate by both approaches were strongly correlated (P<0·001). Bland–Altman analysis showed for protein that the difference in intake as measured by the two methods was similar across the range of intakes while for Zn and phytic acid, the difference increased with increasing mean intake. Zn and protein intakes from FFQ1 and FFQ2 were highly correlated (r>0·68, P<0·001) but were significantly lower at the second measurement (FFQ2). Older adults consumed less Zn and protein compared with young adults. Intakes of all dietary components were lower in females than in males. Conclusions The FFQ developed and tested in the current study demonstrated reasonable relative validity and high repeatability and was capable of detecting differences in intakes between age and gender groups.
Religious and Sexual Identities: A Multi-faith Exploration of Young Adults

Presenting qualitative and quantitative findings on the lived experiences of around seven hundred young adults from Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh and mixed-faith backgrounds, Religious and Sexual Identities provides an illuminating and nuanced analysis of young adults' perceptions and negotiations of their religious, sexual, youth and gender identities. It demonstrates how these young adults creatively construct meanings and social connections as they navigate demanding but exciting spaces in which their multiple identities intersect. Accessible quantitative analyses are combined with rich interview and video diary narratives in this theoretically-informed exploration of religious and sexual identities in contemporary society. © Andrew Kam-Tuck Yip and Sarah-Jane Page 2013. All rights reserved.
Factors influencing advance directives among psychiatric inpatiens in

Objectives Advance directives are documents stating treatment preferences in case of future lack of decision making capacity. In India, as in many other countries, legislators advocate Psychiatric Advance Directives (PADs), while evidence on its use is limited. This study examined factors influencing PADs by gathering inpatients perspectives on PADs at discharge and investigating patient characteristics associated with the expression of treatment wishes in PADs.
Aspect-Based Financial Sentiment Analysis using Deep Learning

Aspect based sentiment analysis aims to detect an aspect (i.e. features) in a given text and then perform sentiment analysis of the text with respect to that aspect. This paper aims to give a solution for the FiQA 2018 challenge subtask 1. We perform aspect-based sentiment analysis on the microblogs and headlines of financial domain. We use a multi-channel convolutional neural network for sentiment analysis and a recurrent neural network with bidirectional long short-term memory units to extract aspect from a given headline or microblog. Our proposed model produces a weighted average F1 score of 0.69 for the aspect extraction task and predicts sentiment intensity scores with a mean squared error of 0.112 on 10-fold cross validation. We believe that the developed system has direct applications in the financial domain.
Audit quality indicators: perceptions of junior-level auditors

Purpose - In an effort to develop an audit quality (AQ) framework specific to the US audit market, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) recently issued a concept release proposing 28 audit quality indicators (AQIs) along three dimensions: audit professionals, audit process and audit results. Using AQIs initially proposed by the PCAOB, as well as AQIs suggested by prior literature, the authors solicit perceptions from junior-level (senior and staff) auditors to investigate the current state of practice along many of the AQIs relating to audit professionals and audit process. Design/methodology/approach - In the study, 78 junior-level auditors responded to the survey. Findings - An analysis of the responses suggests auditors engage in activities and audit firms promote conditions that at times improve, and at other times, reduce audit quality. The authors find that individual auditors’ perceptions differ across experience level, gender and audit firm size for certain AQIs. Practical implications - The study is useful to the PCAOB because it provides insights to help assess the value of potential AQIs in differentiating AQ. The study is also useful to other regulators because it describes audit staff and seniors’ perceptions of apparent firm and auditor compliance with accounting and auditing standards. Practitioners should find this information useful in helping to identify possible root causes of audit deficiencies, a challenge put forth to firms by the PCAOB. Originality/value - This study provides academia with evidence on AQ from practicing auditors, which informs existing and future research along. The study complements existing work by showing how individual auditor characteristics (experience and gender) at the junior levels may impact AQ in practice
Development of a Voltammetric Sensor for Theophylline with Sol-Gel Immobilised Molecularly Imprinted Polymer Particles

Application of Molecularly Imprinted Polymers (MIPs) to sensor substrates holds great promise within the field of electrochemical sensing due to their low price, tailored selectivity and facile synthesis protocols. Though MIPs can be synthesised directly onto the surface of sensors via layer or film deposition, this can be difficult due to the high number of interdependent steps involved in their synthesis. For this reason, synthesis of MIP particles is more frequently employed by synthetic and non-specialist laboratories alike. There is, however a lack of immobilisation protocols for these particles. Herein, there is presented a sol-gel based immobilisation method for MIP particles for the development of an electrochemical sensor. The macroporous precipitation-polymerised particles were imprinted with Theophylline, combined with graphite in the sol-gel and deposited on an electrode surface. The sensor was tested using differential pulse voltammetry. A limit of detection of 1μM and a relative standard deviation of 6.85% was observed for the primary analyte. The electrode was regenerated via a thermal washing process with a signal loss of 29.3% following the initial regeneration and 2.35% per subsequent regeneration.
Spatiotemporal dynamics of membrane remodeling and fusion proteins during endocytic transport

Endosomal sorting requires consecutive steps of membrane remodeling and fusion in the course of endosomal maturation. Tracing of cargo relative to machinery reveals similar temporal localization of ESCRT and endosomal fusion machinery, which precedes the retromer complex. However, blocking fusion with the vacuole does not impair maturation.
Improved Differential Evolution with Searching Pioneer for Solving Multi-modal Optimization Problems

The first thing to apply differential evolution (DE) for solving optimization problems is to decide several parameters. These parameters' setting will influence its solution searching ability directly. Thus, how to decide suitable parameters for current solution searching stage is an issue for DE. In this study, the searching pioneer is proposed. The vector which performed best performance in previous iteration will share its parameters information to other vectors for guiding them toward to potential solution space. Also, the elitist crossover is also involved to combine useful information to generate potential vectors. In order to compare the proposed method with other DE variants, in experiments, five multi-modal test functions of CEC 2005 are adopted. The experiments showing clear proof that the proposed method performs better than other related works on most test functions.
The high glycemic index diet was an independent predictor to explain changes in agouti-related protein in obese adolescents.

BACKGROUND & AIMS The role of diet glycemic index (GI) in the control of orexigenic and anorexigenic factors of the energy balance is still not clear. The present study aimed to assess whether the habitual diet, according to different GI foods, exerts influence on regulation of energy balance markers and the effects of interdisciplinary intervention in obese adolescents. METHODS A total of 55 obese adolescents, aged from 14 to 19 years, were submited to one year of interdisciplinary therapy and were divided in two groups, according to the predominant dietary pattern of food intake: high-GI group (H-GI; n = 29) and moderate/low-GI group (M/L-GI; n = 26). RESULTS The concentration of orexigenic factor AgRP (p < 0.01), visceral fat (p=0.04) and visceral/subcutaneous ratio (p = 0.03) were higher in the group of H-GI when compared with M/L-GI group. Moreover, the habitual consumption of H-GI foods was an independent predictor to explain changes in AgRP concentrations. After one year of interdisciplinary therapy, the adolescents presented significant reductions in body weight, total body fat (%), visceral and subcutaneous fat and HOMA-IR, as well as a significant increase of fat free mass (%). CONCLUSIONS Our results may suggest that habitual H-GI diet could upregulate orexigenic pathways, contributing to vicious cycle between undesirable diets, deregulates energy balance and predispose to obesity. One the other hand, one year of interdisciplinary therapy can significant improves metabolic profile and central obesity in adolescents.
Co-Administration of Cholesterol-Lowering Probiotics and Anthraquinone from Cassia obtusifolia L. Ameliorate Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) has become a common liver disease in recent decades. No effective treatment is currently available. Probiotics and natural functional food may be promising therapeutic approaches to this disease. The present study aims to investigate the efficiency of the anthraquinone from Cassia obtusifolia L. (AC) together with cholesterol-lowering probiotics (P) to improve high-fat diet (HFD)-induced NAFLD in rat models and elucidate the underlying mechanism. Cholesterol-lowering probiotics were screened out by MRS-cholesterol broth with ammonium ferric sulfate method. Male Sprague–Dawley rats were fed with HFD and subsequently administered with AC and/or P. Lipid metabolism parameters and fat synthesis related genes in rat liver, as well as the diversity of gut microbiota were evaluated. The results demonstrated that, compared with the NAFLD rat, the serum lipid levels of treated rats were reduced effectively. Besides, cholesterol 7α-hydroxylase (CYP7A1), low density lipoprotein receptor (LDL-R) and farnesoid X receptor (FXR) were up-regulated while the expression of 3-hydroxy-3-methyl glutaryl coenzyme A reductase (HMGCR) was reduced. The expression of peroxisome proliferator activated receptor (PPAR)-α protein was significantly increased while the expression of PPAR-γ and sterol regulatory element binding protein-1c (SREBP-1c) was down-regulated. In addition, compared with HFD group, in AC, P and AC+P group, the expression of intestinal tight-junction protein occludin and zonula occluden-1 (ZO-1) were up-regulated. Furthermore, altered gut microbiota diversity after the treatment of probiotics and AC were analysed. The combination of cholesterol-lowering probiotics and AC possesses a therapeutic effect on NAFLD in rats by up-regulating CYP7A1, LDL-R, FXR mRNA and PPAR-α protein produced in the process of fat metabolism while down-regulating the expression of HMGCR, PPAR-γ and SREBP-1c, and through normalizing the intestinal dysbiosis and improving the intestinal mucosal barrier function.
Bayesian Piecewise Linear Mixed Models With a Random Change Point

Background: Body mass index (BMI) rebound refers to the beginning of the second rise in BMI during childhood. Accurate estimation of an individual’s timing of BMI rebound is important because it is associated with health outcomes in later life. Methods: We estimated BMI trajectories for 6545 children from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. We used a novel Bayesian two-phase piecewise linear mixed model where the “change point” was an individual-level random effect corresponding to the individual-specific timing of BMI rebound. The model’s individual-level random effects (intercept, prechange slope, postchange slope, change point) were multivariate normally distributed with an unstructured variance–covariance matrix, thereby, allowing for correlation between all random effects. Results: Average age at BMI rebound (mean change point) was 6.5 (95% credible interval: 6.4 to 6.6) years. The standard deviation of the individual-specific timing of BMI rebound (random effects) was 2.0 years for females and 1.6 years for males. Correlation between the prechange slope and change point was 0.57, suggesting that faster rates of decline in BMI prior to rebound were associated with rebound occurring at an earlier age. Simulations showed that estimates from the model were less biased than those from models, assuming a common change point for all individuals or a nonlinear trajectory based on fractional polynomials. Conclusions: Our model flexibly estimated the individual-specific timing of BMI rebound, while retaining parameters that are meaningful and easy to interpret. It is applicable in any situation where one wishes to estimate a change-point process which varies between individuals.
Improving weakly-supervised lesion localization with iterative saliency map refinement

Interpretability of deep neural networks in medical imaging is becoming an important technique to understand network classification decisions and increase doctors’ trust. Available methods for visual interpretation, though, tend to highlight only the most discriminant areas, which is suboptimal for clinical output. We propose a novel deep visualization framework for improving weakly-supervised lesion localization. The framework applies an iterative approach where, in each step, the interpretation maps focus on different, less discriminative areas of the images, but still important for the final classification, reaching a more refined localization of abnormalities. We evaluate the performance of the method for the localization of diabetic retinopathy lesions in color fundus images. The results show the obtained visualization maps are able to detect more lesions after the iterative procedure in the case of more severely affected retinas.
Evidências de validade da Escala de Orientação para a Comparação Social (INCOM) para o contexto de adolescentes portugueses

The aim of this study was to translate and search for validity evidence of Iowa-Netherlands Comparison Orientation Scale for adolescents’ Portuguese context. This scale assesses levels of social comparison orientation. Participants were 238 adolescents, with ages between 13 and 18 years (M = 15.43, SD = 1.76). We verified that scale structure was in line with the original instrument version. Two dimensions emerged: Opinions and Abilities, both with satisfactory internal consistency indices. The dimension Opinions correlated positively with Self-esteem and Materialism; Abilities showed positive correlations with Self-compared, Materialism and Impulse buying. Regarding sex differences, girls showed higher mean for Opinions; boys higher mean for Abilities. Our results strengthen the Portuguese scale version adequacy to assess a tendency towards social comparison in adolescents.doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.17575/rpsicol.v30i1. 1034
Incremental Machine Learning to Reduce Biochemistry Lab Costs in the Search for Drug Discovery

This paper promotes the use of supervised machine learning in laboratory settings where chemists have a large number of samples to test for some property, and are interested in identifying as many positive instances for the least laboratory testing effort. Rather than traditional supervised learning where the chemists would first develop a large training set and then train a classifier, the paper promotes incrementally re-training from each lab test as it completes and then predicting the next best sample to test, as in the field of reinforcement learning. The method outperformed the 2001 KDD Cup thrombin competition winner, partly due to its reduced risk to concept drift from training set to test set.
ClickNP: Highly Flexible and High Performance Network Processing with Reconfigurable Hardware

Highly flexible software network functions (NFs) are crucial components to enable multi-tenancy in the clouds. However, software packet processing on a commodity server has limited capacity and induces high latency. While software NFs could scale out using more servers, doing so adds significant cost. This paper focuses on accelerating NFs with programmable hardware, i.e., FPGA, which is now a mature technology and inexpensive for datacenters. However, FPGA is predominately programmed using low-level hardware description languages (HDLs), which are hard to code and difficult to debug. More importantly, HDLs are almost inaccessible for most software programmers. This paper presents ClickNP, a FPGA-accelerated platform for highly flexible and high-performance NFs with commodity servers. ClickNP is highly flexible as it is completely programmable using high-level C-like languages, and exposes a modular programming abstraction that resembles Click Modular Router. ClickNP is also high performance. Our prototype NFs show that they can process traffic at up to 200 million packets per second with ultra-low latency ($< 2\mu$s). Compared to existing software counterparts, with FPGA, ClickNP improves throughput by 10x, while reducing latency by 10x. To the best of our knowledge, ClickNP is the first FPGA-accelerated platform for NFs, written completely in high-level language and achieving 40 Gbps line rate at any packet size.