Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Media Multitasking: Issues Posed in Measuring the Effects of Television Sexual Content Exposure

Adolescents who see more sexual content on television are more likely to initiate intercourse over the subsequent year. The present study hypothesized that use of the Internet while watching television would moderate this relationship. A national sample of 1,762 12–17-year-olds completed a telephone survey at baseline and one year later. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to predict intercourse initiation by follow-up among baseline virgins and to test for an interaction between sexual content exposure and self-reported multitasking. The interaction was significant; exposure to sexual content on television was more strongly related to sexual initiation among multitaskers. Divided attention may allow television messages to “slip past the radar” of viewers who would reject these messages if they devoted cognitive resources to critically examining them. Future studies of television-viewing effects may need to assess multitasking to avoid missing effects in this important subgroup of viewers.
Traffic congestion, perceived control, and psychophysiological stress among urban bus drivers.

The operation of public transit vehicles in urban centers is a highly stressful job. There has been, however, little detailed analysis of what specific characteristics of the psychosocial or physical job environmental of public transit operators contribute to the high levels of job stress associated with this occupation. In the present study, we show a high degree of association between exposure to peak traffic conditions and on-the-job elevations of urinary catecholamines. These significant relations remain after incorporating various controls for possible selection factors (e.g., job seniority) and health-relevant parameters (e.g., age, smoking). Furthermore, we show that reductions in perceived control on the job partially account for the linkages between traffic congestion and psychophysiological stress.
Pulmonary Consequences of a Deep Breath Revisited

About two decades ago, a model was proposed for surfactant release by lung distension. This model implies rapid fusion of lamellar bodies (LBs) with the plasma membrane followed by quick release of surfactant into the alveolus, as reflected by immediate facilitation of lung inflation after a single deep breath. Recent experimental evidence indicates that this two-pool model (intracellular versus alveolar surfactant pool) has to be refined by introducing a third pool, which resides in fused but non-released LBs. Here we discuss the implication of this additional pool for strain-induced surfactant secretion and propose a revised model for the sequence of events following a single deep breath.
Performance of three rapid screening methods in the detection of Schistosoma haematobium infection in school-age children in Southeastern Nigeria

Abstract Background: A cross-sectional study of primary school children was conducted to evaluate and compare the performance of some rapid screening methods in the detection of Schistosoma haematobium infection in Nigeria Cement Factory (NigerCem) and Nike Lake areas of Southeastern Nigeria. Methods: Urine samples of school children were examined for macro-haematuria and tested for micro-haematuria and proteinuria using reagent strips followed by egg microscopy. Self-reported haematuria was assessed using simple questionnaire. The performances of these rapid diagnoses singly and in combination were calculated using egg microscopy as gold standard. Results: The prevalence of the infection was 26·6% in NigerCem and 5·1% in Nike Lake area, classifying these areas as moderate- and low-prevalence areas (MPA and LPA); while in the subsample used for self-reported haematuria, the prevalence was 27·2 and 4·2% in MPA and LPA, respectively. The positive predictive value (PPV) of micro-haematuria was comparable in MPA (55·26%) and LPA (57·89%). Overall PPV of macro-haematuria was 87·50% in MPA and 66·70% in LPA while in the detection of heavy infection; PPV was higher in LPA (75%) than in MPA (66·67%). In LPA and MPA, combination of micro-haematuria and proteinuria, and concomitant presence of macro-haematuria, micro-haematuria, and proteinuria had PPV of 83·33 and 63·16%, and 100 versus 66·67%, respectively. Generally, the rapid screening tests had lower negative predictive values (NPVs) in MPA than in LPA. The use of simple questionnaire increased the PPV of heavy infection in MPA (77·78%). This was further increased to 80% when self-reported haematuria was combined with micro-haematuria. Conclusion: The result suggests that in MPA with chronic infections, combination of self-reported haematuria and micro-haematuria may reduce the chance of missing those who should be treated.
The minimal ablative margin of radiofrequency ablation of hepatocellular carcinoma (> 2 and < 5 cm) needed to prevent local tumor progression: 3D quantitative assessment using CT image fusion.

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to elucidate the minimal ablative margin for percutaneous radiofrequency ablation (RFA) of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) (> 2 and < 5 cm) needed to prevent local tumor progression using CT image fusion and a 3D quantitative method. MATERIALS AND METHODS From April 2005 to March 2007, we performed percutaneous RFA for the treatment of 382 HCCs larger than 2 cm and smaller than 5 cm. A total of 110 tumors in 103 patients (77 men and 26 women; mean age, 59.7 years) that were previously untreated and were monitored for at least 1 year were retrospectively enrolled. A 5-mm safety margin was attempted in all cases, and a CT finding of complete replacement of the index tumor by RFA zone was defined as technical success. We constructed fusion images of CT images obtained before and after RFA and performed radial multiplanar reformation with the rotation axis at the center of the tumor to analyze the ablative margin quantitatively. Risk factors for local tumor progression (the thinnest ablative margin, tumor size, and the effect of hepatic vessels) were assessed by multivariate analysis. RESULTS Patients underwent follow-up for 12.9-46.6 months (median, 28.1 months). The tumors were 2.1-4.8 cm (mean +/- SD, 2.7 +/- 0.6 cm) in diameter. The thinnest ablative margins ranged from 0 to 6 mm (1.0 +/- 1.4 mm). A 5-mm safety margin was achieved in only 2.7% (3/110) of cases. In 47.3% (52/110) of cases, vessel-induced indentation of the ablation zone contributed to the thinnest ablative margins. Local tumor progression was detected in 27.3% (30/110) of cases. Concordance between local tumor progression and the thinnest margin was observed in 83.3% (25/30) of cases. The incidence of concordant local tumor progression was 22.7% (25/110), 18.9% (10/53), 5.9% (2/34), and 0% (0/15) in tumors with the thinnest ablative margin of > or = 0, > or = 1, > or = 2, and > or = 3 mm, respectively. An insufficient ablative margin was the sole significant factor associated with local tumor progression. CONCLUSION When the thickness of the ablative margin is evaluated by CT image fusion, a margin of 3 mm or more appears to be associated with a lower rate of local tumor progression after percutaneous RFA of HCC.
Addressing Anniversary Reactions of Trauma Through Group Process: The Hurricane Katrina Anniversary Wellness Workshops

Abstract Natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the Gulf Coast of the United States in the summer of 2005, have highlighted the need to develop effective post-trauma psychotherapeutic intervention strategies, not only to deal with the immediate psychological aftermath of trauma, but also the long-term effects of anniversary reactions. Governmental responses to Hurricane Katrina relief were greatly criticized for disorganization and delay. Both immediately afterwards and in ensuing months, people’s life needs often were not addressed. People-to-people individual and group grassroots efforts, including those provided by mental health professionals, however, did reach local communities to service immediate needs and long-term emotional reactions. The present paper describes one such effort designed to help survivors cope on the occasion of the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Specifically, anniversary reaction group workshops were held to address unresolved emotional issues and to promote healing by encouraging belonging, comfort, security, and resilience. The ultimate goal of these wellness workshops was to assist participants in understanding and resolving their anniversary reactions. Preliminary quantitative and qualitative findings suggested that this workshop format helped participants face their anniversary reactions, address their related psychological sequelae, and deal with their physical displacement. Participants were then able to find the emotional strength to reattach, form new communities, and begin problem solving. These methods, with appropriate cultural modifications, were subsequently used in China, to assist Chinese mental health professionals prepare for the first anniversary of the Sichuan earthquake.
Using temporal distancing to regulate emotion in adolescence: modulation by reactive aggression

ABSTRACT Adopting a temporally distant perspective on stressors reduces distress in adults. Here we investigate whether the extent to which individuals project themselves into the future influences distancing efficacy. We also examined modulating effects of age across adolescence and reactive aggression: factors associated with reduced future-thinking and poor emotion regulation. Participants (N = 83, aged 12–22) read scenarios and rated negative affect when adopting a distant-future perspective, near-future perspective, or when reacting naturally. Self-report data revealed significant downregulation of negative affect during the distant-future condition, with a similar though non-significant skin conductance pattern. Importantly, participants who projected further ahead showed the greatest distress reductions. While temporal distancing efficacy did not vary with age, participants reporting greater reactive aggression showed reduced distancing efficacy, and projected themselves less far into the future. Findings demonstrate the importance of temporal extent in effective temporal distancing; shedding light on a potential mechanism for poor emotional control associated with reactive aggression.
Merging inheritance hierarchies for database integration

Merging inheritance hierarchies with overlapping class extensions and types is an essential task in database design. In the context of view integration and schema integration for federated databases and multidatabases conflicting inheritance hierarchies have to be merged. Inheritance hierarchies often occur explicitly in object-oriented databases as well as implicitly in relational databases. Since a concept lattice can be regarded as an inheritance hierarchy we propose to apply the theory of concept analysis to the problem of merging inheritance hierarchies. After investigating the power and complexity of concept analysis algorithms we provide a new algorithm tailored to our problem. The new algorithm has polynomial complexity and helps to optimize the resulting hierarchy with respect to certain quality criteria, e.g. number of classes and null values. An example demonstrates the practicability of our approach to merge conflicting inheritance hierarchies.
A Viral Spreading Model in Signed Networks

In a business network, a company may be encouraged to utilise a new technique when either its cooperators or its competitors have made their adoption. Nevertheless, its willingness can be reduced as more of its competitors start applying the new technique. Inspired by the this scenario, in this thesis we proposed a viral spreading model in signed networks, in which each link is allocated with a positive or negative sign, representing, e.g. the cooperative or competitive relation between two companies. We introduce a dynamic infection rate to capture the influence of negative links into viral spreadings and explore the performance of our proposed model with respect to the following influential factors: the relative infection rate of negative links with respect to positive links (relative negative-link infection rate), the correlation between positive and negative degrees, and the degree distributions of the positive and negative links respectively. To provide analytical explanations, we develop an Individual-Based Mean Field Approximation (IBMFA) method. We show that IBMFA is a feasible theoretical tool that can well approximate the observations in Monte-Carol simulations. Our results show that, contrary to our intuition, when positive degree and negative degree of nodes are less correlated in scale-free networks, a larger relative negative-link infection rate does not always results in more nodes being infected. In addition, compared to networks with only positive links, viral propagation via negative links can lead to a higher fraction of infected nodes at small infection rate; whereas the overall spreading starts being suppressed in signed networks as the infection rate becomes larger than a certain value. We find that this certain infection rate, at which signed and unsigned networks share the same fraction of infected nodes, is approximately linearly correlated to the relative negative-link infection rate. Corresponding to the scenario mentioned at the beginning, our findings indicate that: (1) Adopting a new technique at a high rate from competitors does not always lead to a larger percentage of adoption among companies; (2) Compared to networks with only cooperative relations, the competitive relations between companies may sometimes facilitate a higher percentage of adoption, especially when every company accepts a new technique at a low rate.
Laser ablation and cryotherapy of melanoma metastases

Both laser therapy and cryotherapy have been used with good results in the ablation of cutaneous melanoma metastases. There is less literature evidence in support of cryotherapy. Carbon dioxide laser therapy is a simple, low cost, patient‐friendly technique, effective for palliation of individual lesions. There is evidence of a more profound regional effect, with unexplained absences of recurrence at treated sites and reported complete remissions, which demands further investigation. J. Surg. Oncol. 2014 109:296–300. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Adaptive Monitoring for Virtual Machine Based Reconfigurable Enterprise Systems

Dynamic monitoring adaptation to system reconfigurations such as server scale-out is required especially for the virtual machine based flexible IT systems. For any states of the systems, the monitoring server must provide fresh information with a stabilized load. In this paper, we propose an adaptive monitoring method that generates the monitoring schedule for each state of the target systems. The schedule regulates the processes for updating information cache to keep the required freshness and to stabilize the monitoring load. Since the problem for schedule generation is classified in NP-hard, we propose an approximation algorithm. Results from experiments with system reconfigurations show that the adaptive monitoring method improves the variation coefficients of CPU usages and network traffics of monitoring server by at most 80%.
Stimulation of Cyclic ADP-ribose Synthesis by Acetylcholine and Its Role in Catecholamine Release in Bovine Adrenal Chromaffin Cells*

Cyclic ADP-ribose (cADPR) is suggested to be a novel messenger of ryanodine receptors in various cellular systems. However, the regulation of its synthesis in response to cell stimulation and its functional roles are still unclear. We examined the physiological relevance of cADPR to the messenger role in stimulation-secretion coupling in cultured bovine adrenal chromaffin cells. Sensitization of Ca2+-induced Ca2+release (CICR) and stimulation of catecholamine release by cADPR in permeabilized cells were demonstrated along with the contribution of CICR to intracellular Ca2+ dynamics and secretory response during stimulation of intact chromaffin cells. ADP-ribosyl cyclase was activated in the membrane preparation from chromaffin cells stimulated with acetylcholine (ACh), excess KCl depolarization, and 8-bromo-cyclic-AMP. ACh-induced activation of ADP-ribosyl cyclase was dependent on the influx of Ca2+ into cells and on the activation of cyclic AMP-dependent protein kinase. These and previous findings that ACh activates adenylate cyclase by Ca2+ influx in chromaffin cells suggested that ACh induces activation of ADP-ribosyl cyclase through Ca2+ influx and cyclic AMP-mediated pathways. These results provide evidence that the synthesis of cADPR is regulated by cell stimulation, and the cADPR/CICR pathway forms a significant signal transduction for secretion.
An Engineering Analysis of Intratracheal Tube Cuffs

HE LOCAL complications of prolonged T intubation with d e d endotracheal and tracheoatomy tubes are dilation, ulceration, hemorrhage, necrosis, rupture, tracheoesophageal fistula, and stenoak These complications, although infrequent, are relatively formidable and tend to negate to a varying degree the lifesaving potential of prolonged artificial ventilation. These complications have been shown to be cuff-induced,1.2 and the pathophysiology of this effect as well as criticisms of cuff design has been the subject of several papers.3. 4 These previous studies have implicated for the most part local ischemia due to high-cuff pressure or asymmetrical cuff inflation or both and have led to proposals for "ideal" cuffs. No attempt has been made to analyze cuffs from a biomedical engineering standpoint. This study attempts to elucidate some of the physical factors involved at the cuff-tracheal wall interface due to cuff design and cuff inflation and introduces a new design for the cuff.
Maximum power point tracker for a multiple-input Ćuk dc-dc converter

Photovoltaic modules require a maximum power point tracker in order to achieve maximum conversion efficiency when the maximum power point changes based on solar irradiance, temperature, cells age, and other factors. The need to track the maximum power point while combining multiple-input sources has stimulated research on maximum power point trackers for multiple input dc-dc converters. When compared to prior work, a multiple-input Ćuk dc-dc converter seems to be an adequate choice when combining PV modules with alternative energy sources, such as fuel cells, because it provides current source interface and is capable of stepping up and down input voltages. This paper proposes a multiple-input Ćuk dc-dc converter topology. Ripple correlation control is used to find the maximum power point of a photovoltaic array.
A genetic study of ADHD and activity level in infancy

It is well known that there are strong genetic influences on attention‐deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), with genetic association studies providing good evidence for the involvement of the dopamine neurotransmitter system in its aetiology. Developmental origins of ADHD represent an interesting area of research to understand the genetics that underlie early appearing individual differences. However, understanding the molecular basis of ADHD requires accurate, unbiased, heritable measures that can be used for molecular genetic association analyses. We take two approaches to examine the genetics of ADHD behaviours in infancy. Using quantitative genetic techniques, we explore the relationship between objective measures of activity level (AL) in both home and laboratory environments as well as with parent ratings of ADHD symptoms in a population sample of 2‐year‐old twins. Molecular association analyses of these measures examine candidate genes previously associated with ADHD. We find that ADHD symptoms, AL in the home and AL in the lab represent heritable phenotypes in 2‐year‐old infants. AL measured in the home has a strong genetic correlation with symptoms of ADHD, whereas AL in the lab correlates only modestly with the same ADHD measure. Genetic correlations suggest that AL in the home is more comparable than AL in the lab to ADHD behaviour and support the separation of all three for molecular analyses. There was modest evidence for association between DAT1, NET1 and ADHD symptom scores, as well as between DAT1 and AL in the lab.
Lipid Rafts in Protein Sorting and Cell Polarity in Budding Yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Abstract Cellular membranes contain many types and species of lipids. One of the most important functional consequences of this heterogeneity is the existence of microdomains within the plane of the membrane. Sphingolipid acyl chains have the ability of forming tightly packed platforms together with sterols. These platforms or lipid rafts constitute segregation and sorting devices into which proteins specifically associate. In budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, lipid rafts serve as sorting platforms for proteins destined to the cell surface. The segregation capacity of rafts also provides the basis for the polarization of proteins at the cell surface during mating. Here we discuss some recent findings that stress the role of lipid rafts as key players in yeast protein sorting and cell polarity.
PAIN: A Passive Web Speed Indicator for ISPs

Understanding the quality of web browsing enjoyed by users is key to optimize services and keep users' loyalty. This is crucial for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to anticipate problems. Quality is subjective, and the complexity of today's pages challenges its measurement. OnLoad time and SpeedIndex are notable attempts to quantify web performance. However, these metrics are computed using browser instrumentation and, thus, are not available to ISPs. PAIN (PAssive INdicator) is an automatic system to observe the performance of web pages at ISPs. It leverages passive flow-level and DNS measurements which are still available in the network despite the deployment of HTTPS. With unsupervised learning, PAIN automatically creates a model from the timeline of requests issued by browsers to render web pages, and uses it to analyze the web performance in real-time. We compare PAIN to indicators based on in-browser instrumentation and find strong correlations between the approaches. It reflects worsening network conditions and provides visibility into web performance for ISPs.
A novel dynamic checkpoint selection strategy for time-constrained massive cloud business workflows

The utilization of cloud computing resources contributes to a fast growth of e-business and e-government where businesses and government agencies often require processing a large volume of service requests in a constrained period of time. In order to achieve on-time completion of a large volume of time-constrained parallel processes, this paper proposes a novel dynamic checkpoint selection strategy (CSSDM) for monitoring cloud business workflows. CSSDM monitors the execution time points rather than activities along the business workflows. The paper also provides some parameters that can track the execution process of each virtual machine. This mechanism significantly increases the efficiency in monitoring large volume processes so as to improve the quality of service in both e-business and e-government sectors. Simulation results show that CSSDM has excellent performance in different scenarios even when certain amounts of noises are added.