Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prevalence of refractive error in the United States, 1999-2004.

OBJECTIVE To describe the prevalence of refractive error in the United States. METHODS The 1999-2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) used an autorefractor to obtain refractive error data on a nationally representative sample of the US noninstitutionalized, civilian population 12 years and older. Using data from the eye with a greater absolute spherical equivalent (SphEq) value, we defined clinically important refractive error as follows: hyperopia, SphEq value of 3.0 diopters (D) or greater; myopia, SphEq value of -1.0 D or less; and astigmatism, cylinder of 1.0 D or greater in either eye. RESULTS Of 14,213 participants 20 years or older who completed the NHANES, refractive error data were obtained for 12,010 (84.5%). The age-standardized prevalences of hyperopia, myopia, and astigmatism were 3.6% (95% confidence interval [CI], 3.2%-4.0%), 33.1% (95% CI, 31.5%-34.7%), and 36.2% (95% CI, 34.9%-37.5%), respectively. Myopia was more prevalent in women (39.9%) than in men (32.6%) (P < .001) among 20- to 39-year-old participants. Persons 60 years or older were less likely to have myopia and more likely to have hyperopia and/or astigmatism than younger persons. Myopia was more common in non-Hispanic whites (35.2%) than in non-Hispanic blacks (28.6%) or Mexican Americans (25.1%) (P < .001 for both). CONCLUSION Estimates based on the 1999-2004 NHANES vision examination data indicate that clinically important refractive error affects half of the US population 20 years or older.
Highly Stable and Flexible Pressure Sensors with Modified Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotube/Polymer Composites for Human Monitoring

A facile method for preparing an easy processing, repeatable and flexible pressure sensor was presented via the synthesis of modified multi-walled carbon nanotubes (m-MWNTs) and polyurethane (PU) films. The surface modification of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) simultaneously used a silane coupling agent (KH550) and sodium dodecyl benzene sulfonate (SDBS) to improve the dispersibility and compatibility of the MWNTs in a polymer matrix. The electrical property and piezoresistive behavior of the m-MWNT/PU composites were compared with raw multi-walled carbon nanotube (raw MWNT)/PU composites. Under linear uniaxial pressure, the m-MWNT/PU composite exhibited 4.282%kPa−1 sensitivity within the pressure of 1 kPa. The nonlinear error, hysteresis error and repeatability error of the piezoresistivity of m-MWNT/PU decreased 9%, 16.72% and 54.95% relative to raw MWNT/PU respectively. Therefore, the piezoresistive response of m-MWNT/PU had better stability than that of raw MWNT/PU composites. The m-MWNT/PU sensors could be utilized in wearable devices for body movement detection, monitoring of respiration and pressure detection in garments.
Evolutionary ecology of virus emergence

The cross‐species transmission of viruses into new host populations, termed virus emergence, is a significant issue in public health, agriculture, wildlife management, and related fields. Virus emergence requires overlap between host populations, alterations in virus genetics to permit infection of new hosts, and adaptation to novel hosts such that between‐host transmission is sustainable, all of which are the purview of the fields of ecology and evolution. A firm understanding of the ecology of viruses and how they evolve is required for understanding how and why viruses emerge. In this paper, I address the evolutionary mechanisms of virus emergence and how they relate to virus ecology. I argue that, while virus acquisition of the ability to infect new hosts is not difficult, limited evolutionary trajectories to sustained virus between‐host transmission and the combined effects of mutational meltdown, bottlenecking, demographic stochasticity, density dependence, and genetic erosion in ecological sinks limit most emergence events to dead‐end spillover infections. Despite the relative rarity of pandemic emerging viruses, the potential of viruses to search evolutionary space and find means to spread epidemically and the consequences of pandemic viruses that do emerge necessitate sustained attention to virus research, surveillance, prophylaxis, and treatment.
Cytomegalovirus infection and HIV-1 disease progression in infants born to HIV-1-infected women. Pediatric Pulmonary and Cardiovascular Complications of Vertically Transmitted HIV Infection Study Group.

BACKGROUND AND METHODS Cytomegalovirus (CMV) has been implicated as a cofactor in the progression of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) disease. We assessed 440 infants (75 of whom were HIV-1-infected and 365 of whom were not) who had known CMV status and were born to HIV-1-infected women and who were followed prospectively. HIV-1 disease progression was defined as the presence of class C symptoms (according to the criteria of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC]) or CD4 counts of less than 750 cells per cubic millimeter by 1 year of age and less than 500 cells per cubic millimeter by 18 months of age. RESULTS At birth the frequency of CMV infection was similar in the HIV-1-infected and HIV-1-uninfected infants (4.3 percent and 4.5 percent, respectively), but the HIV-1-infected infants had a higher rate of CMV infection at six months of age (39.9 percent vs. 15.3 percent, P=0.001) and continued to have a higher rate of CMV infection through four years of age (P=0.04). By 18 months of age, the infants with both infections had higher rates of HIV-1 disease progression (70.0 percent vs. 30.4 percent, P=0.001), CDC class C symptoms or death (52.5 percent vs. 21.7 percent, P=0.008), and impaired brain growth or progressive motor deficits (35.6 percent vs. 8.7 percent, P=0.005) than infants infected only with HIV-1. In a Cox regression analysis, CMV infection was associated with an increased risk of HIV-1 disease progression (relative risk, 2.59; 95 percent confidence interval, 1.13 to 5.95). Among children infected with HIV-1 alone, but not among those infected with both viruses, children with rapid progression of HIV-1 disease had higher mean levels of HIV-1 RNA than those with slower or no progression of disease. CONCLUSIONS HIV-1-infected infants who acquire CMV infection in the first 18 months of life have a significantly higher rate of disease progression and central nervous system disease than those infected with HIV-1 alone.
Relations between plasma oxytocin, depressive symptoms and coping strategies in response to a stressor: the impact of social support

ABSTRACT Background: Social support can serve as a protective factor against the negative impacts of stressors and may thereby promote well-being. As well, exogenous administration of oxytocin has been tied to diminished stress responses and might also enhance the effects of social support. Methods/Results: In the current study, conducted among female undergraduate students (N = 67), higher depressive symptoms were related to lower endorsements of problem-focused coping in response to a psychosocial stressor comprising the Trier Social Stress test (TSST). However, the relation between depressive symptoms and problem-focused coping was absent among participants who had a close female friend present serving as social support prior to the stressor experience. Additionally, endogenous plasma oxytocin levels were related to certain coping strategies being favored (e.g., problem-solving, humor, cognitive distraction, self-blame and support seeking) in response to the psychosocial stressor. However, the strength of these relations varied as a function of whether individuals had social support present or not. Conclusion: These findings confirm the positive impact of social support in attenuating the relation between depressive symptoms and specific coping methods. The results of this study are consistent with view that oxytocin levels are accompanied by particular stress responses, possibly through the promotion of coping methods endorsed.
Estrogen Metabolism and Mammographic Density in Postmenopausal Women: A Cross-Sectional Study

Background: Prospective studies have consistently found that postmenopausal breast cancer risk increases with circulating estrogens; however, findings from studies of estrogens and mammographic density (MD), an intermediate marker of breast cancer risk, have been inconsistent. We investigated the cross-sectional associations of urinary estrogens, and their 2-, 4-, and 16-hydroxylated metabolites with MD. Methods: Postmenopausal women without breast cancer (n = 194), ages 48 to 82 years, and reporting no current menopausal hormone therapy use were enrolled at a clinic in Western NY in 2005. Urinary estrogens and estrogen metabolites were measured using mass spectrometry. Percent MD and dense area (cm2) were measured using computer-assisted analyses of digitized films. Linear regression models were used to estimate associations of log-transformed estrogen measures with MD while adjusting for age, body mass index (BMI), parity, and past hormone therapy use. Results: Urinary concentrations of most individual estrogens and metabolites were not associated with MD; however, across the interdecile range of the ratio of parent estrogens (estrone and estradiol) to their metabolites, MD increased by 6.8 percentage points (P = 0.02) and dense area increased by 10.3 cm2 (P = 0.03). Across the interdecile ranges of the ratios of 2-, 4-, and 16-hydroxylation pathways to the parent estrogens, MD declined by 6.2 (P = 0.03), 6.4 (P = 0.04), and 5.7 (P = 0.05) percentage points, respectively. All associations remained apparent in models without adjustment for BMI. Conclusion: In this study of postmenopausal women, less extensive hydroxylation of parent estrogens was associated with higher MD. Impact: Hydroxylation of estrogens may modulate postmenopausal breast cancer risk through a pathway involving MD. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 21(9); 1582–91. ©2012 AACR.
Delineating responsibility, decisions and compromises: a frame analysis of the fast food industry’s online CSR communication

ABSTRACT This paper uses a frame analysis method to highlight the ways in which the quick-service restaurant (QSR) industry – or fast food restaurant industry – uses official websites to communicate messages about nutrition and health to consumers and other relevant publics, especially using the language of corporate social responsibility. In the context of the increasing association of QSR industry food to the obesity epidemic in the U.S.A. , several large fast-food chains have developed elaborate communication strategies to address the health concerns among the general public of their foods. Using a frame analysis method, I demonstrate that the industry consistently draws on metaphors of ‘individual responsibility’ and ‘personal choice’ in choosing healthy food, while establishing the primary role of moderation and exercise in preventing obesity. As a contribution to the field of PR, this emic frame analysis features an integrative approach that combines both message features in context with message intention. I also discuss practical applications of the study findings.
Joint Iterative Interference Alignment and SCMA Technique for MIMO-OFDM Systems

Interference alignment (IA) is a well-known transmission strategy for interference channels, with which the sum rate can linearly scale with the number of users at high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). However, most existing works on IA considered only the maximization of the sum rate without taking into account the bit error rates (BER) performance. In this work, we firstly propose a novel IA algorithm to improve the BER performance for MIMO-OFDM interference channels on a per-subcarrier basis. The proposed IA algorithm is then combined with the sparse code multiple access (SCMA) technique to further enhance the BER performance by exploiting the inherent frequency diversity in the MIMO-OFDM systems. At the receiver, a linear filter is first used to mitigate the inter-user aligned interference and separate the spatial streams, and then an iterative frequency-domain message passing algorithm (MPA) is applied to efficiently separate the overlapped multiple codewords. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed joint IA and SCMA strategy can provide significant BER gain compared to the existing IA algorithms.
Dynamic Resource Provisioning in Grid Environments

Batch schedulers commonly used to manage access to parallel computing clusters are not typically configured to enable easy configuration of application-specific scheduling policies. In addition, their sophisticated scheduling algorithms can be relatively expensive to execute. Thus, for example, applications that require the rapid execution of many small tasks often do not perform well. It has been proposed that these problems be overcome by separating the two tasks of provisioning and scheduling. This paper focuses on resource provisioning, the various allocation and de-allocation policies, and how dynamic and adaptive provisioning can be in light of varying workloads. We couple the proposed dynamic resource provisioning (DRP) with an existing system, Falkon, which is used for the scheduling of tasks to the provisioned resources. We describe the DRP architecture and implementation, and present performance results for both microbenchmarks and applications. Microbenchmarks show that DRP can allocate resources on the order of 10s of seconds across multiple Grid sites and can reduce average queue wait times by up to 95% (effectively yielding queue wait times within 3% of ideal); furthermore, applications (executed by the Swift parallel programming system) reduce end-to-end run time of up to 90% for large-scale astronomy and medical applications, relative to versions that execute tasks via separate scheduler submissions.
Association of low-dose exposure to persistent organic pollutants with E-cadherin promoter methylation in healthy Koreans

Abstract Background: Persistent organic pollutants (POPs), despite their considerably low levels in humans, are an increasing concern for the general populations given their various adverse health problems, including metabolic and carcinogenic effects. DNA methylation deregulation is thought to be a key mechanism in the development of human chronic diseases including cancer. Methods: In an attempt to identify biomarkers monitoring low-dose exposure and hazard, we explored whether organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) may influence the methylation of tumour suppressor gene E-cadherin (CDH1) using peripheral blood cells from 364 healthy Korean subjects. Results: CDH1 methylation was observed in 78.3% of study subjects. Serum concentrations of OCPs or PCBs compounds were higher in CDH1 methylation-positive subjects than in methylation-negative ones. After adjusting for various covariates, the odds ratio of CDH1 methylation of the summary measure of PCBs were 1.0, 2.5 (95% confidence interval: 1.2–5.3), 3.6 (1.6–8.1), 3.6 (1.4–8.6), and 2.5 (1.1–5.7) across quintiles of PCBs (Ptrend = 0.01). The values of OCPs were 1.0, 0.9, 1.2, 2.4 (1.0–5.9), and 1.7 (Ptrend = 0.05). Conclusions: In this exploratory study with a small sample, CDH1 methylation might be served as the epigenetic biomarker associated with POPs exposure and adverse health effect.
Brexit and the UK chemical supply chain: A commentary on potential effects

Businesses assume that in the developed countries, political stability is guaranteed. However, the result of the British referendum (June 2016) has shifty altered the political arena and introduced an era of uncertainty and volatility, referred to as ‘Brexit’. The UK chemical industry and its supply chain need to respond and changes might be in order. The routes to market could well be changing and there appears to be a shift towards chemical distribution; particularly towards official and appointed chemical distributors rather than direct business and/or non-exclusive distributors/agents. The newly-emerging market conditions also demand flexibility and adaptability, pointing in the direction of small businesses (SMEs) rather than their larger counterparts. Nevertheless, as these are the early stages of this process/phenomenon, it is difficult to ascertain whether the initial effects would be of a permanent or temporary nature until a state of equilibrium is reached in the market.
Monte Carlo Evaluations of Common State Dependence Estimators

This thesis represents an attempt to provide a deeper knowledge of the finite sample properties of some econometric methods used to estimate the magnitude of state dependence in binary choice dynamic panel models. These models are often applied in labor economics. The models I evaluate are the Heckman method, Wooldridge method and the linear probability model using Arellano-Bond instruments (Heckman, 1981a,b; Wooldridge, 2005; Arellano and Bond, 1991). By carefully designing appropriate Monte Carlo experiments I test the models’ performance under different assumptions and different distributions of the error term, individual-specific fixed effects and explanatory variables. The results indicate that the Heckman method is the most precise estimator in most cases, followed by the linear probability model. The Wooldridge method, while seldom the most accurate, is shown to be robust to violated assumptions. The linear probability model breaks down when the process includes an age-trended variable and the Heckman method breaks down when the explanatory variable is correlated with the individual-specific fixed effects. In most cases the three estimation methods display satisfactory performance. There are only modest performance gains from increasing the number of observed time periods.
Análisis crítico del trabajo grupal y las mejores estrategias de employer branding en empresas multinacionales

With this report I hope to show what I have learned on my Master ́s final project that I have done for the Masters in Human Resources in ICADE Business School, as well as a critical analysis of our group consultancy project in Telepizza. In the second part of this report, I will go into further detail on one of the subjects that most caught my attention during the consultancy project, Employer Branding, and what are nowadays some of the best practices of Employer Branding in multinational companies around the world.
Structural polymorphism of homopurine–homopyrimidine sequences: the secondary DNA structure adopted by a d(GA.CT)22 sequence in the presence of zinc ions.

In this paper, we have analysed the conformational behaviour shown by the homopurine–homopyrimidine alternating d(GA.CT)22 sequence cloned into SV40. Our results show that, in the presence of zinc ions, the d(GA.CT)22 sequence adopts an altered secondary DNA structure (*H‐DNA) which differs from either B‐DNA or H‐DNA. Formation of *H‐DNA is facilitated by negative supercoiling and does not appear to require base protonation, since it is induced at neutral pH by approximately 0.4 mM ZnCl2. The patterns of OsO4 and DEPC modification obtained in the presence of zinc are compatible with a homopurine–homopurine–homopyridimine triplex, though other structural models for *H‐DNA are also possible. The hypersensitivity to S1‐cleavage of the d(GA.CT)22 sequence is reinterpreted in terms of the equilibria between the B‐, H‐ and *H‐forms of the sequence. These results reveal the high degree of structural polymorphism shown by homopurine‐homopyrimidine sequences. Its biological relevance is discussed.
Ethnic variations in pathways to and use of specialist mental health services in the UK

Background Inequalities of service use across ethnic groups are important to policy makers, service providers and service users. Aims To identify ethnic variations in pathways to specialist mental health care, continuity of contact, voluntary and compulsory psychiatric in-patient admissions; to assess the methodological strength of the findings. Method A systematic review of all quantitative studies comparing use of mental health services by more than one ethnic group in the UK. Narrative analysis supplemented by meta-analysis, where appropriate. Results Most studies compared Black and White patients, finding higher rates of in-patient admission among Black patients. The pooled odds ratio for compulsory admission, Black patients compared with White patients, was 4.31 (95% CI 3.33–5.58). Black patients had more complex pathways to specialist care, with some evidence of ethnic variations in primary care assessments. Conclusions There is strong evidence of variation between ethnic groups for voluntary and compulsory admissions, and some evidence of variation in pathways to specialist care.
Using Bounded Fairness to Specify and Verify Ordered Asynchronous Multi-agent Systems

Asynchronous multi-agent systems (AMAS) are multi-agent systems with asynchronous updates and communications. They are often designed from the point of view of local computations and the interactions of autonomous agents. However, often some functionality of the system is proposed from the global point of view. It is not always possible to verify such global functionality under total, random, asynchrony and such asynchrony is unrealistic in most cases. Several non-functional factors such as the variance of local clocks of the agents and the message delays play essential roles in implementing ordered asynchrony in practice and should be taken into account in the specification and verification. In this paper, we present a specification framework for AMAS using Object-Z and bounded fairness constraints. The bounded fairness constraints are used to specify required non-functional factors. We demonstrate that under these constraints the system's functionality can be guaranteed by the local behaviour of the agents.
Modelling the P2Y purinoceptor using rhodopsin as template.

The P2Y1 purinoceptor cloned from chick brain (Webb, T. et al (1993) FEBS Lett. , 324, 219-225) is a 362 amino acid, 41 kDa protein. To locate residues tentatively involved in ligand recognition a molecular model of the P2Y purinoceptor has been constructed. The model was based on the primary sequence and structural homology with the G-protein coupled photoreceptor rhodopsin, in analogy to the method proposed by Ballesteros and Weinstein ((1995) Meth. Neurosci. 25, 366-428). Transmembrane helices were constructed from the amino acid sequence, minimized individually, and positioned in a helical bundle. The helical bundle was then minimized using the Amber forcefield in Discover (BIOSYM Technologies) to obtain the final model. Several residues that have been shown to be critical in ligand binding in other GPCRs are conserved in the P2Y1 purinoceptor. According to our model the side chains of these conserved residues are facing the internal cleft in which ligand binding likely occurs. The model also suggests four basic residues (H121 in TM3, H266 and K269 in TM6 and R299 in TM7) near the extracellular surface that might be involved in ligand binding. These basic residues might be essential in coordinating the triphosphate chain of the endogenous ligand adenosine 5'-triphosphate (ATP). Potential binding sites for agonists have been explored by docking several derivatives (including newly synthesized N6-derivatives) into the model. The N6-phenylethyl substituent is tolerated pharmacologically, and in our model this substituent occupies a region predominantly defined by aromatic residues such as F51 (TM1), Y100 (TM2) and F120 (TM3). The dimethylated analogue of ATP, N6,N6-dimethyl-adenosine 5'-triphosphate, is less well tolerated pharmacologically, and our model predicts that the attenuated activity is due to interference with hydrogen bonding capacity to Q296 (TM7).