Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Using the SF-12 Health Status Measure to Improve Predictions of Medical Expenditures

Background:Relatively few studies have used self-reported health status in models to predict medical expenditures, and many of these have used the SF-36. Objectives:We sought to examine the ability of the briefer SF-12 measure of health status to predict medical expenditures in a nationally representative sample. Methods:We used data from the 2000–2001 panel of the Medical Expenditure Panel Study. Respondents (n = 5542) completed the SF-12 in a questionnaire. Interviews obtained data on demographics and selected chronic conditions. Data on expenditures incurred subsequent to the interview were obtained in part from provider records. We examined different regression model specifications and compared different statistical estimation techniques. Results:Adding the SF-12 to a regression model improved the prediction of subsequent medical expenditures. In a model with only age and gender, adding the SF-12 increased R2 from 0.06 to 0.13. The coefficients for the Physical Component Summary (PCS) and the Mental Component Summary (MCS) of the SF-12 for this model were −0.045 (P < 0.01) and −0.012 (P < 0.01), respectively. In a model including demographic characteristics, chronic conditions, and previous expenditures, adding the SF-12 increased the R2 from 0.26 to 0.29. The coefficients for the PCS and the MCS for this model were −0.025 (P < 0.001) and −0.005 (P = 0.15), respectively. A single general health status question performed almost as well as the full SF-12. Models estimated using ordinary least squares had undesirable properties. In terms of R2, a generalized linear model (GLM) with a Poisson variance function was consistently superior to a GLM with a gamma variance function. Conclusions:Information on self-reported health status is useful in predicting medical expenditures. The extent to which the SF-12 adds predictive power over a comprehensive array of diagnostic data remains to be examined.
The Standardization of Pancreatic Donors for Islet Isolations

Background. Islet transplantation has proven to be a successful treatment for type 1 diabetes mellitus. The aim of this study was to establish an algorithm by which the combination of the donor quality and pancreas quality was given a numerical score from 0 to 100 for use in determining the quality of a pancreas for islet isolation. Methods. We retrospectively analyzed 326 pancreases and the outcomes of their respective isolations. Specific donor variables and physical characteristics were identified and weighted according to their influence on the success of the isolation. For each variable, ranges and point weightings were established based on our laboratory experience and literature review. Results. Analysis of the data showed a strong association of the donor point with isolation outcome. Pancreases with lower donor point scores had lower transplant success rates, whereas higher donor point scores in turn produced higher transplant rates. Conclusions. This scoring system has proven to be useful in guiding the decision process as to whether to accept a particular pancreas for a favorable isolation outcome.
Subject Recruitment and Retention Against Quadruple Challenges in an Intervention Trial of End-of-Life Communication

Studies of end-of-life care face difficulties associated with enrollment and attrition. Information and exemplars can help end-of-life care researchers anticipate such difficulties and customize recruitment and retention strategies to achieve planned sample sizes. We analyzed data on recruitment and retention efforts used in a clinical trial of an end-of-life communication intervention that involved African American dialysis patients and their chosen surrogate decision makers. Despite the challenges the trial faced (eg, recruiting a minority group of patients who were seriously ill, had a surrogate decision maker willing to join the study, and were willing to engage in end-of-life discussions), the planned sample size was met, and nearly 90% of the participants completed the study. Various strategies were used to sustain accrual during the study. Although a total of 16 contacts per dyad had been planned from enrollment to 3-month data collection, 27 contacts were actually needed. The strategies and procedures used in this study may be pertinent to other studies that involve African Americans with serious illness and require dyadic participation.
Thrombotic risk factors in Chinese Budd-Chiari syndrome patients

Summary In Western countries, thrombotic risk factors for Budd-Chiari syndrome (BCS) are very common, including factor V Leiden mutation, prothrombin G20210A mutation, myeloproliferative neoplasms, paroxysmal nocturnal haemoglobinuria, etc. However, the data regarding thrombotic risk factors in Chinese BCS patients are extremely limited. An observational study was conducted to examine this issue. A total of 246 BCS patients who were consecutively admitted to our department between July 1999 and December 2011 were invited to be examined for thrombotic risk factors. Of these, 169 patients were enrolled. Neither factor V Leiden mutation nor prothrombin G20210A mutation was found in any of 136 patients tested. JAK2 V617F mutation was positive in four of 169 patients tested. Neither MPL W515L/K mutation nor JAK2 exon 12 mutation was found in any of 135 patients tested. Overt myeloproliferative neoplasms were diagnosed in five patients (polycythemia vera, n=3; essential thrombocythemia, n=1; idiopathic myelofibrosis, n=1). Two of them had positive JAK2 V617F mutation. Both CD55 and CD59 deficiencies were found in one of 166 patients tested. This patient had a previous history of paroxysmal nocturnal haemoglobinuria before BCS. Anticardiolipin IgG antibodies were positive or weakly positive in six of 166 patients tested. Hyperhomocysteinaemia was found in 64 of 128 patients tested. 5,10-methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase C677T mutation was found in 96 of 135 patients tested. In conclusion, factor V Leiden mutation, prothrombin G20210A mutation, myeloproliferative neoplasms, and paroxysmal nocturnal haemoglobinuria are very rare in Chinese BCS patients, suggesting that the etiological distribution of BCS might be different between Western countries and China.
Phylogeny of 19 indigenous sheep breeds in Xinjiang inferred from Cytochrome b.

Xinjiang has large sheep breeds, but their origins, evolution, genetic diversity of systems are still unclear. In this study, the genetic diversity and phylogeny of 19 indigenous sheep breeds in Xinjiang, China and one western breed, Texel were analyzed. Single-strand conformation polymorphism (SSCP) was used to detect polymorphisms of the sheep mitochondrial DNA fragment and based on SSCP results, individuals from the studied sheep breeds were randomly selected for sequencing entire Cytochrome b gene (Cyt b). Neighbor joining (NJ) and Unweighted Pair Group Method with Arithmetic Averaging (UPGMA) methods were used to constructing the phylogenetic tree. The network analysis and population expansion were carried out with entire sequences of mitochondria Cyt b gene. The length of the Cyt b sequences were considerably variable between 1082 and 1149bp. The phylogenetic analysis revealed that three mtDNA lineages A, B and C were detected in fourteen Xinjiang sheep breeds, except for the absence of lineage C in five breeds. Phylogenetic tree and median joining network were constructed with the sequenced Cyt b gene, and there were three independent clusters with some sequences deviated from cluster A and C based on the phylogenetic tree and network analysis. The genetic distances were showed a multi-maternal originality of the nineteen Xinjiang local sheep breeds, which were clustered with the sheep groups in other parts of China. The genetic diversity of Xinjiang breeds was higher than the other Chinese and foreign sheep breeds. The results of Cyt b sequences analysis revealed that Xinjiang local sheep breeds may have distinct maternal origins than the other sheep breeds of China. These are not only influenced by Mongolian sheep, Tibetan sheep and Kazakh sheep of China, but also had the genetic relationship with the breeds of other neighbor countries. This study will provide valuable information of sophisticated phylogenetic history of Xinjiang local sheep.
The Evolution of Luminous Compact Blue Galaxies: Disks or Spheroids?

Abstract Luminous compact blue galaxies (LCBGs) are a diverse class of galaxies characterized by high luminosity, blue color, and high surface brightness that sit at the critical juncture of galaxies evolving from the blue to the red sequence. As part of our multi-wavelength survey of local LCBGs, we have been studying the HI content of these galaxies using both single-dish telescopes and interferometers. Our goals are to determine if single-dish HI observations represent a true measure of the dynamical mass of LCBGs and to look for signatures of recent interactions that may be triggering star formation in LCBGs. Our data show that while some LCBGs are undergoing interactions, many appear isolated. While all LCBGs contain HI and show signatures of rotation, the population does not lie on the Tully-Fisher relation nor can it evolve onto it. Furthermore, the HI maps of many LCBGs show signatures of dynamically hot components, suggesting that we are seeing the formation of a thick disk or spheroid in at least some LCBGs. There is good agreement between the HI and Hα kinematics for LCBGs, and both are similar in appearance to the Hα kinematics of high redshift star-forming galaxies. Our combined data suggest that star formation in LCBGs is primarily quenched by virial heating, consistent with model predictions.
p38 MAPK Is an Early Determinant of Promiscuous Smad2/3 Signaling in the Aortas of Fibrillin-1 (Fbn1)-null Mice*

Excessive transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) signaling characterizes the progression of aortic aneurysm in mouse models of Marfan syndrome, a systemic disorder of the connective tissue that is caused by mutations in the gene encoding the extracellular matrix protein fibrillin-1. Fibrillin-1 mutations are believed to promote abnormal Smad2/3 signaling by impairing the sequestration of latent TGF-β complexes into the extracellular matrix. Here we report that promiscuous Smad2/3 signaling is the cell-autonomous phenotype of primary cultures of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMC) explanted from the thoracic aortas of Fbn1 mutant mice with either neonatal onset or progressively severe aortic aneurysm. This cellular phenotype was characterized in VSMC isolated from Fbn1-null (mgN/mgN) mice, which recapitulate the most severe form of Marfan syndrome. We found that loss of fibrillin-1 deposition promotes the production of intracellular reactive oxygen species and abnormal accumulation of phosphorylated TGF-β-activated kinase 1 and p38 MAPK, in addition to increasing the levels of endogenous phospho-Smad2. We showed that improper Smad2/3 signaling in Fbn1-null VSMC is in part stimulated by phospho-p38 MAPK, which is in turn activated in response to signals other than those mediated by the kinase activity of the ALK5 receptor. Consistent with these cell culture data, in vivo analyses documented that phospho-p38 MAPK accumulates earlier than phospho-Smad2 in the aortic wall of mgN/mgN mice and that systemic inhibition of phospho-p38 MAPK activity lowers the levels of phospho-Smad2 in this tissue. Collectively, these findings indicate that improper activation of p38 MAPK is a precursor of constitutive Smad2/3 signaling in the aortic wall of a mouse model of neonatal lethal Marfan syndrome.
Augmenting Nearest Neighbor-Based Algorithms With Siamese Neural Networks Gene

While nearest neighbor-based algorithms perform well on low-dimensional datasets with well-defined semantic similarity metrics, they perform poorly on high-dimensional datasets like images. The main reason for this disparity is the lack of semantic meaning in traditional distance measures such as cosine or Jaccard similarity when they are applied to high dimensional data. By learning a distance metric for a specific dataset using Siamese layers in convolutional neural networks (CNNs), we can boost the performance of nearest neighbor algorithms by using the learned distance metric. Due to nearest neighbor-based algorithms’ invariance to the number of classes, we suspected that a boost in the suitability of the similarity metric will vastly improve their performance, even on large datasets where vanilla CNN classifiers may not perform very well. We investigated the trade-offs of using a boosted K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN) classifier with learned distance metric as compared to a KNN classifier with vanilla L2 distance metric on CIFAR-10. We found that the KNN classifier with learned distance metric outperforms the vanilla classifier and scales better with the choice of K.
Usefulness of fecal lactoferrin and hemoglobin in diagnosis of colorectal diseases.

AIM To evaluate prospectively usefulness of fecal lactoferrin (Lf) and fecal hemoglobin (Hb) in the diagnosis of colorectal diseases. METHODS Fecal Lf and Hb were measured using ELISA in 872 patients before they underwent colorectal endoscopy. RESULTS Lf was positive in 18 (50%) of 36 patients with colorectal cancer, 25 (15.9%) of 157 with colorectal polyps, 29 (46.8%) of 62 with ulcerative colitis, and 25 (62.5%) of 40 (62.5%) with Crohn's disease. The Hb-positive rates were 50%, 12.1%, 41.9% and 32.5%, respectively. Of the 318 patients free of abnormalities by colorectal endoscopy, Lf was positive in 29 (9.1%) and Hb was positive in 15 (4.7%). Among patients with Crohn's disease, the Lf-positive rate was significantly higher than the Hb-positive rate. If either high Lf or Hb levels were considered positive, the positive rates rose to 61.1%, 51.6%, and 67.5% in the colorectal cancer group, ulcerative colitis group, and Crohn's disease group, respectively. If both high Lf and Hb levels were rated positive, the positive predictive values (PPV) were 21% for colorectal cancer, 33% for ulcerative colitis, and 17% for Crohn's disease, and PPV of high Hb level alone was 18%, 25% and 13%, respectively. CONCLUSION Fecal Lf and Hb were found useful in the detection of colorectal diseases, and the combination of the two measurements appears to increase the sensitivity and efficacy of diagnosis.
Impact analysis in the software change process: a year 2000 perspective

Software change impact analysis has gained considerable attention with recent challenges of the Year 2000 Date situation. As the software community recognizes the growing need to identify consequences of these changes, impact analysis is making its way into the software process. Dependencies between software life cycle objects are becoming more numerous and complex as many software systems grow beyond a million of lines of code. Software change efforts are plagued with widely varying estimates for implementing software changes, since the impacts of the change are not readily known in advance. The introduction of software change impact analysis into the software process adds more fidelity to software change visibility, enabling more accurate software change estimates. The paper examines where impact analysis is applied during software changes and describes how impact analysis can be addressed in the software process.
Modal logics of ordered trees

This thesis makes a contribution to the area of modal and temporal logics, an important family of non-classical logics that have found numerous applications in computer science and several other disciplines. Temporal logics, in particular, have been applied very successfully in the area of systems specification and verification. However, these logics often do not support the notion of refinement in a natural manner. There is no simple way to extend a given system specification, expressed in a standard temporal logic such as, for instance, propositional linear temporal logic, by the specification of a new subsystem. It is therefore important to extend available formalisms in ways that allow for the representation of complex systems evolving over time in a modular fashion. To this end, we propose to equip propositional linear temporal logics with a ‘zoom feature’ in the following manner. If we extend the class of modal frames of this logic by adding a vertical accessibility relation to connect every time point with a new time line, we obtain a tree-like structure where the children of each node form a linear order. More precisely, we obtain a modal logic with frames that are ordered trees. The horizontal accessibility relation is still given a temporal interpretation, while the vertical allows us to move between different levels of abstraction, that is, between a system and its subsystems. Our logic provides modal operators working both along the branches of a tree and along the order declared over the children of a node. The body of this work is devoted to the theoretical study of this modal logic of ordered trees. In particular, we are concerned with an axiomatic characterisation of our logic complementing its semantics-driven definition and with proving its decidability.
Hybrid concatenated super-orthogonal space-time trellis codes applying iterative decoding

Hybrid concatenated code is a combination of parallel and serial concatenated codes. In this paper, two hybrid concatenated super-orthogonal space-time trellis code (SOSTTC) applying iterative decoding is proposed for flat fading channels. The encoding operation is based on the concatenation of convolutional codes, interleaving and super-orthogonal space-time trellis codes. The first concatenated scheme consists of a serial concatenation of a parallel concatenated convolutional code with a SOSTTC while the second consist of parallel concatenation of two serially concatenated convolutional and SOSTTC codes. The decoding of these two schemes is described and their bit error rate (BER) and frame error rate (FER) performance evaluated by computer simulation in Rayleigh fading channels. The proposed topologies are shown to perform better than existing concatenated schemes with constituent code of convoluntional and space time codes in literatures.
CD46 Activation Regulates miR-150–Mediated Control of GLUT1 Expression and Cytokine Secretion in Human CD4+ T Cells

CD46 is a cell surface complement inhibitor widely expressed in human tissues, in contrast to mice, where expression is limited to the testes. In humans, it has been identified as an important T cell costimulatory receptor, and patients deficient in CD46 or its endogenous ligands are unable to mount effective Th1 T cell responses. Stimulation of human CD4+ T cells with CD3 and CD46 also leads to the differentiation of a “switched” Th1 population, which shuts down IFN-γ secretion and upregulates IL-10 and is thought to be important for negative feedback regulation of the Th1 response. In the present study, we show that CD46 costimulation leads to amplified microRNA (miR) expression changes in human CD4+ T cells, with associated increases in activation more potent than those mediated by the “classic” costimulator CD28. Blockade of cell surface CD46 inhibited CD28-mediated costimulation, identifying autocrine CD46 signaling as downstream of CD28. We also identify a downregulation of miR-150 in CD46-costimulated T cells and identify the glucose transporter 1 encoding transcript SLC2A1 as a target of miR-150 regulation, connecting miR-150 with modulation of glucose uptake. We also investigated microRNA expression profiles of CD46-induced switched IL-10–secreting Th1 T cells and found increased expression of miR-150, compared with IFN-γ–secreting Th1 cells. Knockdown of miR-150 led to a reduction in IL-10 but not IFN-γ. CD46 therefore controls both Th1 activation and regulation via a miR-150–dependent mechanism.
Does Education Help with Complex Health Decisions : Evidence from Cancer Screening

This paper uses data on real and perceived cancer risks and cancer screening behavior to test whether education helps to make better informed health decisions. I propose that if educated individuals are better informed, then they will be more likely to incorporate variation in risk factors when they report their personal cancer risk. As risk varies, they will also react more strongly by adopting preventive behaviors such as cancer screening. I nd support for both predictions. Using data on attitudes surrounding breast health, I explore a possible mechanism: educated women are more receptive to scienti c evidence and hold fewer non-scienti c beliefs.
A Grid-enabled Application for the Simulation of Plant Tissue Culture Experiments

Plant Tissue culture is a method for plant propagation under in vitro conditions. Different types and parts of plants (known as explants) may be cultivated in vitro. These may be organs (roots, stems, shoot tips, leaves and fruit); tissues; cells (suspension cultures) and special tissues and organs such as embryos, anthers, pollen and protoplasts. Plant tissue culture is a laborious and time-consuming technique. Potentially, modeling or computer simulation can provide a useful method for gaining insight into these complex processes by reducing the time needed to screen numerous hormonal combinations. We present a simulation application based on multiple regression models deployed on a grid computing infrastructure. The application simulates the plant tissue culture experiments and predicts the amount and combinations of auxins and cytokinins needed to yield optimal growth of propagules. The results obtained from the simulation showed over 67% prediction accuracy as compared to the laboratory experiments. Key Words
Differences in Torsional Joint Stiffness of the Knee between Genders

Background In many sports, female athletes have a higher incidence of anterior cruciate ligament injury than do male athletes. Among many risk factors, the lower rotatory joint stiffness of female knees has been suggested for the increased rate of anterior cruciate ligament injuries. Hypothesis In response to combined rotatory loads, female knees have significantly lower torsional joint stiffness and higher rotatory joint laxity than do male knees at low flexion angles, despite the fact that no such gender differences would be found in response to an anterior tibial load. Study Design Comparative laboratory study. Methods Joint kinematics of 82 human cadaveric knees (38 female, 44 male) in response to (1) combined rotatory loads of 10 N·m valgus and ±5 N·m internal tibial torques and (2) a 134-N anterior-posterior tibial load were measured using a robotic/universal force-moment sensor testing system. Results In response to combined rotatory loads, female knees had as much as 25% lower torsional joint stiffness (female: 0.79 N·m/deg; 95% confidence interval, 0.67-0.91; male: 1.06 N·m/deg; 95% confidence interval, 0.95-1.17) and up to 35% higher rotatory joint laxity (female: 26.2°; 95% confidence interval, 24.5°-27.9°; male: 20.5°; 95% confidence interval, 18.8°-22.2°) than did male knees (P < .05), whereas there were no gender differences in response to the anterior tibial load (P > .05). Conclusion Female knees had lower torsional joint stiffness and higher rotatory joint laxity than did male knees in response to combined rotatory loads. Clinical Relevance Larger axial rotations of female knees in response to rotatory loads may affect the distribution of forces in soft tissues and the function of muscles that provide knee stability. Control algorithms used during the biomechanical testing of cadaveric knees and computational knee models might need to be gender specific.