Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cognitive function effects of suppressing ovarian hormones in young women

ObjectiveTo evaluate the effect of a pharmacologically induced, temporary suppression of ovarian hormones on healthy young women's cognitive functioning. DesignSixteen healthy women with normal menstrual cycles completed the California Verbal Learning Test, a digit span test, and a verbal fluency test in the follicular phase of a normal menstrual cycle and a second time after four monthly injections of the gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonist. Women were randomly assigned to complete a third testing either after resuming cycles in the follicular phase or after three more injections of the GnRH agonist and while wearing an estradiol patch. The control group consisted of 10 women who were tested three times in the follicular phase of their menstrual cycles. ResultsResults showed no change in cognitive functioning across sessions or groups in women with suppressed ovarian function. Women who had the highest levels of menopausal symptoms when taking the GnRH agonist did not have significantly lower cognitive functioning. ConclusionsThis study did not find any effect of suppression in ovarian hormones on cognitive performance of young women.
Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Lubricant Adsorption and Thermal Depletion Instability

In this work, we incorporated a quartic bond potential into a coarse-grained bead-spring model to study lubricant adsorption on a solid surface as well as depletion instability. The surface tension density and the number density profiles were examined to verify the solid-liquid and liquid-vapor interfaces during heat treatment. It was found that both the liquid-vapor interfacial thickness and the solid-vapor separation increase with the temperatureT when Tis below the phase transition temperature Tc. At high temperatures (T>Tc), the solid-vapor separation decreases gradually as the temperature increases. In addition, we evaluated the lubricant weight and bond loss profiles at different temperatures. It was observed that the lubricant desorption is favored over decomposition and is the main cause of the lubricant failure at the head disk interface in our simulations. Keywords—Depletion instability, Lubricant film, Thermal adsorption, Molecular dynamics (MD).
Studies on verotoxigenic Escherichia coli O 157 in Swedish cattle : From sampling to disease spread modelling

Verotoxigenic Escherichia coli O157:H7 (VTEC O157) is an important zoonotic pathogen capable of causing infections in humans, sometimes with severe symptoms such as hemorrhagic colitis and hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS). Cattle are considered to be the main reservoir of the bacterium. In this thesis, sampling strategies to detect VTEC O157 in a cattle herd, risk factors for the introduction and the spread of VTEC O157 in Swedish cattle herds, as well as options for control, are studied. A spatial data-driven stochastic model was developed to explore the spread of VTEC O157 by livestock movements and local transmission among proximal holdings in the complete Swedish cattle population. Overshoe sampling alone or in combination with dust and/or pooled pat sampling were established to be reliable for identifying cattle herds with animals shedding VTEC O157. Results from field studies and computer simulations show that animal movements and local spread are important for the transmission of VTEC O157 in the Swedish cattle population. However, simulated control measures based on reducing the between-herd VTEC O157 transmission by animal movements and local spread, had marginal effect in decreasing the prevalence. On the other hand, simulated control measures based on reducing the shedding and susceptibility, efficiently decreased the prevalence of VTEC O157 in the Swedish cattle population.
Exploring the Quality of Life of Younger Residents Living in Long-Term Care Facilities

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the characteristics of “quality of life” of younger residents in long-term care facilities. This multimethod study employed in-depth interviews with younger residents, focus groups with staff members and interviews with management team members at two care facilities in British Columbia, Canada. Data analysis revealed three themes: (a) a new chapter in life, (b) experiencing quality of life, and (c) nature of social life. These themes highlight the characteristics of younger residents’ quality of life and provide insights into the salient contributing factors. Findings of this study are useful in better understanding aspects of younger residents’ quality of life and their psychosocial needs and consequently can guide decision making to provide an appropriate care environment for this population segment in long-term care settings.
Image processing system to detect temporal changes in outside environments

This papers deals with the problem of automatic temporal change detection in outside environments. Because of the limitations of conventional approaches, we developed an image processing system based on attributes deduced from the Walsh-Hadamard spatio-frequential transformation. Taking into account perturbations due to the outside environment, image enhancements and a background modelisation were added to guarantee the robustness of the system. Results are provided in the context of an industrial application.
The Need for Standardization: The Benefits to the Core Functions of the Microgrid Control System

As the penetration of Distributed Energy resources (DERs) in distribution systems increases, their integration and interconnection to the grid, and their impact on the grid, need to be addressed in a coherent and structured manner. In the case of a large penetration, DER s can be integrated by aggregating the units using a DER energy management system (DERMS) or can form part of the devices constituting a microgrid, in which case they are managed by the microgrid control system. This article stresses the need for standards to facilitate the large-scale deployment of DER in the distribution system within a microgrid.
Low Drift Zener-based voltage reference

This paper presents an alternative architecture for a Monolithic IC Buried Zener-type voltage reference implemented on a 0. 6μm BICMOS process. Low supply voltage, good power supply rejection, reduced process dependency, low Long Term Drift (LTD) with capability of an easy and effective Temperature Coefficient (TC) trim are all features of the presented architecture. Good simulated performance and very promising silicon results with standard deviation of 9.31mV, a mean value of 4.786V and temperature coefficient after trimming of less than 1.5ppm/°C were obtained for all tested parts.
Speeding Up HAM Learning with Internal Transitions

In the context of hierarchical reinforcement learning, the idea of hierarchies of abstract machines (HAMs) is to write a partial policy as a set of hierarchical finite state machines with unspecified choice states, and use reinforcement learning to learn an optimal completion of this partial policy. Given a HAM with potentially deep hierarchical structure, there often exist many internal transitions where a machine calls another machine with the environment state unchanged. In this paper, we propose a new hierarchical reinforcement learning algorithm that automatically discovers such internal transitions, and shortcircuits them recursively in the computation of Q values. We empirically confirm that the resulting HAMQINT algorithm outperforms the state of the art significantly on the benchmark Taxi domain and a much more complex RoboCup Keepaway domain.
Configurations of germinal vesicle (GV) chromatin in the goat differ from those of other species

Configuration of germinal vesicle (GV) chromatin has been studied and found correlated with the developmental competence of oocytes in several mammalian species. A common feature in the configuration of GV chromatin in the species studied so far is that the diffuse chromatin (the so called “NSN” pattern) condenses into a perinucleolar ring (the so called “SN” configuration) with follicular growth. However, no study has been published on the configuration of GV chromatin in the goat. Nor is it known whether the perinucleolar ring of condensed chromatin (CC) in an oocyte represents a step toward final maturation or atresia. Changes in configurations of GV chromatin and RNA synthesis during goat oocyte growth, atresia and maturation in vivo and in vitro were investigated in this study. Based on both the size of nucleoli and the degree of chromatin condensation, the GV chromatin of goat oocytes was classified into GV1 characterized by large nucleoli and diffuse chromatin, GV2 with medium‐sized nucleoli and condensed net‐like (GV2n) or clumped (GV2c) chromatin, GV3 with small nucleoli and net‐like (GV3n) or clumped (GV3c) chromatin, and GV4 with no nucleolus but clumped chromatin. The results showed that (i) the configurations of GV chromatin in the goat differ from those of other species in that the chromatin did not condense into a perinucleolar ring; (ii) most of the goat oocytes are synchronized at the GV3n configuration before GVBD; (iii) the GVn pattern might represent a healthy state, but the GVc an atretic state; (iv) in both goats and mice, the GC‐specific (Chromomycin A3, CMA3) and the AT‐specific (Hoechst 33342) fluorochromes followed the same pattern of distribution in GV chromatin; (v) the nucleolar size decreased significantly with oocyte growth and maturation in vivo and in vitro; and (vi) goat oocytes began GVBD at 8 hr and had completed it by 20 hr after onset of estrus. The peculiar configuration of GV chromatin of goat oocytes can be a useful model for studies of morphological and functional changes of different nuclear compartments during the cell cycle and cell differentiation, and the functional differentiation between GV3n and GV3c might be used for reference to the question whether the “SN” configuration in other species inclines toward ovulation or atresia. Mol. Reprod. Dev. 71: 227–236, 2005. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
An Annotated German-Language Medical Text Corpus as Language Resource

We describe the structure of a German-language corpus which contains a variety of medical text genres. Clinical documents (discharge summaries, pathology, histology and surgery reports) are distinguished from non-clinical ones (textbook articles and consumer health care documents from a Web portal). After introducing a medical extension of the general-language S TTS tagset which accounts for unique features of the medical sublanguage encountered in these documents, we discuss some of the quantitative properties of the annotations (e.g., distribution patterns of part-of-speech tags).
Exploring the dark matter of the human genome using oligonucleotide-based molecules.

The sequencing of the human genome, initiated with ENCODE project, substantially revolutionized the concept of gene; a catalogue of human transcripts has been obtained and functional elements, defined as discrete segments of the genome possessing a reproducible biochemical signature or encoding for a defined product, have been identified[1]. Very large genetic screens, defined genome wide association studies, further widened the knowledge on the organization and cross-talk between genes, questioning the Mendelian inheritance theory and suggesting for example that is not a single gene, but a large number of them responsible for a biological trait, like the height or a disease. Interestingly, only a small percentage of our genome (about 2-3%) codes for proteins, while the remaining 97-98% , the so-called “dark matter” of the genome, is represented by non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs). Tipically, ncRNAs are classified based on their length in short (19-25 nucleotides) and long (200 or more nucleotides); the first to be identified were the short interfering RNAs (siRNAs) and microRNAs (miRNAs), both derived from the Dicer mediated cleavage of long double stranded RNAs and involved in the regulation of gene expression by different mechanisms [2]. Few information are available on the role of long non coding RNAs (lncRNAs) and, to complicate the situation, more and more lncRNA sequences are discovered every day. Some lncRNA sequences are reported to host the transcripts of small ncRNAs, some are known to control the expression of genes located on the same chromosome (those which act in cis), while other regulate the expression of genes located at independent loci (those which act in trans)[3]. Increasing experimental evidences support the hypothesis that a number of non-coding RNAs is involved in the organization and regulation of human genes; it has been hypothesized that genomic variants associated to diseases affect regulatory properties of non-coding RNAs in mammalian cells[4]. The network of interactions between coding and non-coding genes seems quite puzzling.
The Effect of Flipped Learning in Korea : Meta-Analysis

Since flipped learning has introduced by J. Bergmann and A. Sams, researchers have proven the new method of lectures improves students’ recognition and participation of classes at any level of schools, which included from elementary schools to colleges. This paper analyzed the journals and dissertations of the effect of flipped learning on Korean students. The result is positive to represent the effect of flipped learning and how much the students have improved. Keywords—flipped learning; flipped classroom; inverted class; effect size; meta-analysis;
Multi-Dimensional Manipulation of Yeast Cells Using a LP$_{11}$  Mode Beam

We report a new method for constructing a single fiber optical tweezers, which can realize multi-dimensional manipulation of trapped yeast cells by using a LP11 mode beam excited in a normal communication single core optical fiber. This allows a simple and convenient orientation control on the trapped yeast cells. The LP11 mode beam, both for generating trap and orientation manipulation, has been modulated by using the tension and twisting loaded on the fiber. We present experimental results of controllable deflection and orientation manipulation of the yeast cells. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first report about the trapped yeast cells being driven by the normal single fiber optical tweezers in multi dimensions, and it constitutes a new development for single fiber optical trapping and makes possible of more practical applications in the biomedical research fields.
Performance evaluation of cellular mobile radio systems with successive cancellation of non-identically distributed co-channel interferers in a Rayleigh fading environment

An analytical framework for characterizing the performance of cellular mobile radio systems that employ a smart antenna to suppress a few dominant cochannel interferers (CCI) out of a total of L CCI signals using a fast null steering algorithm is developed. Closed form expressions for the moment generating function, probability density function and the cumulative distribution function of the sum of uncancelled interfering signals subject to independent and non identically distributed Rayleigh fading statistics are derived. Outage probability analysis in the presence of receiver noise is also investigated. Average error probability performance of a multitude of coherent and non-coherent digital modulation schemes is studied while the desired user signal is subject to Nakagami-m fading.
Comparisons of Korsakoff and non-Korsakoff alcoholics on neuropsychological tests of prefrontal brain functioning.

BACKGROUND Evidence suggests that alcoholics exhibit particular deficits in brain systems involving the prefrontal cortex, but few studies have directly compared patients with and without Korsakoff's syndrome on measures of prefrontal integrity. METHODS Neuropsychological tasks sensitive to dysfunction of frontal brain systems were administered, along with standard tests of memory, intelligence, and visuospatial abilities, to 50 healthy, abstinent, nonamnesic alcoholics, 6 patients with alcohol-induced persisting amnestic disorder (Korsakoff's syndrome), 6 brain-damaged controls with right hemisphere lesions, and 82 healthy nonalcoholic controls. RESULTS Korsakoff patients were impaired on tests of memory, fluency, cognitive flexibility, and perseveration. Non-Korsakoff alcoholics showed some frontal system deficits as well, but these were mild. Cognitive deficits in non-Korsakoff alcoholics were related to age, duration of abstinence (less than 5 years), duration of abuse (more than 20 years), and amount of alcohol intake. CONCLUSIONS Abnormalities of frontal system functioning are most apparent in alcoholics with Korsakoff's syndrome. In non-Korsakoff alcoholics, factors contributing to cognitive performance are age, duration of abstinence, duration of alcoholism, and amount of alcohol consumed.
Alternative splicing of a single transcription factor drives selfish reproductive behavior in honeybee workers (Apis mellifera)

In eusocial insects the production of daughters is generally restricted to mated queens, and unmated workers are functionally sterile. The evolution of this worker sterility has been plausibly explained by kin selection theory [Hamilton W (1964) J Theor Biol 7:1–52], and many traits have evolved to prevent conflict over reproduction among the females in an insect colony. In honeybees (Apis mellifera), worker reproduction is regulated by the queen, brood pheromones, and worker policing. However, workers of the Cape honeybee, Apis mellifera capensis, can evade this control and establish themselves as social parasites by activating their ovaries, parthenogenetically producing diploid female offspring (thelytoky) and producing queen-like amounts of queen pheromones. All these traits have been shown to be strongly influenced by a single locus on chromosome 13 [Lattorff HMG, et al. (2007) Biol Lett 3:292–295]. We screened this region for candidate genes and found that alternative splicing of a gene homologous to the gemini transcription factor of Drosophila controls worker sterility. Knocking out the critical exon in a series of RNAi experiments resulted in rapid worker ovary activation—one of the traits characteristic of the social parasites. This genetic switch may be controlled by a short intronic splice enhancer motif of nine nucleotides attached to the alternative splice site. The lack of this motif in parasitic Cape honeybee clones suggests that the removal of nine nucleotides from the altruistic worker genome may be sufficient to turn a honeybee from an altruistic worker into a parasite.
Prehospital Intubation is Associated with Favorable Outcomes and Lower Mortality in ProTECT III

Abstract Objective: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) causes more than 2.5 million emergency department visits, hospitalizations, or deaths annually. Prehospital endotracheal intubation has been associated with poor outcomes in patients with TBI in several retrospective observational studies. We evaluated the relationship between prehospital intubation, functional outcomes, and mortality using high quality data on clinical practice collected prospectively during a randomized multicenter clinical trial. Methods: ProTECT III was a multicenter randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of early administration of progesterone in 882 patients with acute moderate to severe nonpenetrating TBI. Patients were excluded if they had an index GCS of 3 and nonreactive pupils, those with withdrawal of life support on arrival, and if they had documented prolonged hypotension and/or hypoxia. Prehospital intubation was performed as per local clinical protocol in each participating EMS system. Models for favorable outcome and mortality included prehospital intubation, method of transport, index GCS, age, race, and ethnicity as independent variables. Significance was set at α = 0.05. Favorable outcome was defined by a stratified dichotomy of the GOS-E scores in which the definition of favorable outcome depended on the severity of the initial injury. Results: Favorable outcome was more frequent in the 349 subjects with prehospital intubation (57.3%) than in the other 533 patients (46.0%, p = 0.003). Mortality was also lower in the prehospital intubation group (13.8% v. 19.5%, p = 0.03). Logistic regression analysis of prehospital intubation and mortality, adjusted for index GCS, showed that odds of dying for those with prehospital intubation were 47% lower than for those that were not intubated (OR = 0.53, 95% CI = 0.36–0.78). 279 patients with prehospital intubation were transported by air. Modeling transport method and mortality, adjusted for index GCS, showed increased odds of dying in those transported by ground compared to those transported by air (OR = 2.10, 95% CI = 1.40–3.15). Decreased odds of dying trended among those with prehospital intubation adjusted for transport method, index GCS score at randomization, age, and race/ethnicity (OR = 0.70, 95% CI = 0.37–1.31). Conclusions: In this study that excluded moribund patients, prehospital intubation was performed primarily in patients transported by air. Prehospital intubation and air medical transport together were associated with favorable outcomes and lower mortality. Prehospital intubation was not associated with increased morbidity or mortality regardless of transport method or severity of injury.
Testing the reliability and validity of DSM-IV-TR and ICSD-2 insomnia diagnoses. Results of a multitrait-multimethod analysis.

CONTEXT Distinctive diagnostic classification schemes for insomnia diagnoses are available, but the optimal insomnia nosology has yet to be determined. OBJECTIVES To test the reliability and validity of insomnia diagnoses listed in the American Psychiatric Association's DSM-IV-TR and the International Classification of Sleep Disorders, second edition (ICSD-2). DESIGN Multitrait-multimethod correlation design. SETTING Two collaborating university medical centers, with recruitment from January 2004 to February 2009. PARTICIPANTS A total of 352 adult volunteers (235 of whom were women) who met research diagnostic criteria for insomnia disorder. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Goodness-of-fit ratings of 10 DSM-IV-TR and 37 ICSD-2 insomnia diagnoses for each patient. Ratings were provided by 3 clinician pairs who used distinctive assessment methods to derive diagnostic impressions. Correlations computed within and across clinician pairs were used to test reliability and validity of diagnoses. RESULTS Findings suggested that the best-supported DSM-IV-TR insomnia categories were insomnia related to another mental disorder, insomnia due to a general medical condition, breathing-related sleep disorder, and circadian rhythm sleep disorder. The category of primary insomnia appeared to have marginal reliability and validity. The best-supported ICSD-2 categories were the insomnias due to a mental disorder and due to a medical condition, obstructive sleep apnea, restless legs syndrome, idiopathic insomnia, and circadian rhythm sleep disorder-delayed sleep phase type. Psychophysiological insomnia and inadequate sleep hygiene received much more variable support across sites, whereas the diagnosis of paradoxical insomnia was poorly supported. CONCLUSIONS Both the DSM-IV-TR and ICSD-2 provide viable insomnia diagnoses, but findings support selected subtypes from each of the 2 nosologies. Nonetheless, findings regarding the frequently used DSM-IV-TR diagnosis of primary insomnia and its related ICSD-2 subtypes suggest that their poor reliability and validity are perhaps due to significant overlap with comorbid insomnia subtypes. Therefore, alternate diagnostic paradigms should be considered for insomnia classification.