Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Relation of the perception of airway obstruction to the severity of asthma

BACKGROUND Patients with a poor perception of their symptoms of asthma seem to have an increased risk of an asthma attack. The influence of factors such as airway calibre, bronchial hyperresponsiveness, age and sex on the “perceptiveness” of a patient are poorly understood. It is of clinical importance to identify patients who are likely to have a poor perception of their symptoms. We have studied the perception of bronchoconstriction by asthmatic patients during a histamine provocation test and analysed the influence of bronchial obstruction, hyperresponsiveness, sex, and age. We were particularly interested to establish whether there was any difference in perception between subjects with a greater or lesser severity of asthma (expressed as bronchial obstruction, hyperresponsiveness). METHODS One hundred and thirty four patients with allergic asthma underwent a histamine provocation test. The FEV1 was measured after each inhalation of histamine. Subjects were asked to rate subjective quantification of the sensation of breathlessness on a visual analogue scale (VAS). The relationship between changes in VAS values and the reduction in FEV1 as a percentage of the baseline value was analysed by determining the linear regression slope (α) between the two parameters and indicates the perception of airway obstruction. Multiple regression analysis was performed to investigate the effect of baseline FEV1, bronchial hyperresponsiveness, sex and age on the “perceptiveness” for bronchoconstriction. RESULTS The median value of the slope α (indicating the perception of airway obstruction) was 0.91 (25–75th percentile: 0.48–1.45). Age and sex had no influence on the perception of bronchoconstriction. Both initial bronchial tone (baseline FEV1) and bronchial hyperresponsiveness (PC20) showed a significant correlation with the perception of bronchoconstriction. The regression coefficients for FEV1 and 2log PC20 in the multiple regression model were 0.20 and 0.10. Patients who had a low baseline FEV1 and/or a high bronchial responsiveness to histamine were more likely to show a low perceptiveness for bronchoconstriction during the challenge test. CONCLUSIONS Low baseline FEV1 and high bronchial responsiveness are associated with a low degree of “perceptiveness” for bronchoconstriction. This suggests that patients with a more severe degree of asthma either show adaptation of “perceptiveness” for airway obstruction or that low perceptiveness leads to more severe asthma.
Inhibition of human neutrophil NADPH oxidase by Chlamydia serovars E, K, and L2

The effects of Chlamydia trachomatis (serovars E, K, and L2) on human neutrophil activation were examined with respect to the organisms both as primary agonists and as agents that modulate cell responses to a second stimulus. Unopsonized chlamydiae alone, at ratios of 1.5 to 100 organisms per cell, failed to elicit changes in intracellular calcium or membrane depolarization or to stimulate the respiratory burst or degranulation during 60 min of incubation. Each of these functions except the respiratory burst was also normally activated when chlamydia-infected neutrophils were subsequently stimulated with formylmethionyl leucine phenylalanine or phorbol myristate acetate; the respiratory burst was inhibited 30 to 65%. Inhibition was dependent on live organisms and was maximal within 5 min of incubation. The organisms had no effect on the superoxide (O2-) assay, and the site of chlamydial inhibition was determined at the level of the NADPH oxidase itself, not at an intermediate step in the activation cascade. The mechanism of enzyme inactivation could not be determined. These results show that unopsonized chlamydiae do not elicit responses from infected neutrophils and suggest that microbicidal mechanisms other than those dependent on elaboration of toxic oxygen-derived species are required to inactivate chlamydiae.
Effects of biodiversity strengthen over time as ecosystem functioning declines at low and increases at high biodiversity

Human-caused declines in biodiversity have stimulated intensive research on the consequences of biodiversity loss for ecosystem services and policy initiatives to preserve the functioning of ecosystems. Short-term biodiversity experiments have documented positive effects of plant species richness on many ecosystem functions, and longer-term studies indicate, for some ecosystem functions, that biodiversity effects can become stronger over time. Theoretically, a biodiversity effect can strengthen over time by an increasing performance of high-diversity communities, by a decreasing performance of low-diversity communities, or a combination of both processes. Which of these two mechanisms prevail, and whether the increase in the biodiversity effect over time is a general property of many functions remains currently unclear. These questions are an important knowledge gap as a continuing decline in the performance of low-diversity communities would indicate an ecosystem-service debt resulting from delayed effects of species loss on ecosystem functioning. Conversely, an increased performance of high-diversity communities over time would indicate that the benefits of biodiversity are generally underestimated in short-term studies. Analyzing 50 ecosystem variables over 11 years in the world's largest grassland biodiversity experiment, we show that overall plant diversity effects strengthened over time. Strengthening biodiversity effects were independent of the considered compartment (above- or belowground), organizational level (ecosystem variables associated with the abiotic habitat, primary producers, or higher trophic levels such as herbivores and pollinators), and variable type (measurements of pools or rates). We found evidence that biodiversity effects strengthened because of both a progressive decrease in functioning in species-poor and a progressive increase in functioning in species-rich communities. Our findings provide evidence that negative feedback effects at low biodiversity are as important for biodiversity effects as complementarity among species at high biodiversity. Finally, our results indicate that a current loss of species will result in a future impairment of ecosystem functioning, potentially decades beyond the moment of species extinction.
Towards a Better Diversity of Evolutionary Multi-Criterion Optimization Algorithms using Local Searches

In EMO diversity of the obtained solutions is an important factor, particularly for decision makers. NSGA-III is a recently proposed reference direction based algorithm that was shown to be successful up to as many as 15 objectives. In this study, we propose a diversity enhanced version of NSGA-III. Our algorithm augments NSGA-III with two types of local search. The first aims at finding the true extreme points of the Pareto front, while the second targets internal points. The two local search optimizers are carefully weaved into the fabric of NSGA-III niching procedure. The final algorithm maintains the total number of function evaluations to a minimum, enables using small population sizes, and achieves higher diversity without sacrificing convergence on a number of multi and many-objective problems.
Can we find documents in web archives without knowing their contents?

Recent advances of preservation technologies have led to an increasing number of Web archive systems and collections. These collections are valuable to explore the past of the Web, but their value can only be uncovered with effective access and exploration mechanisms. Ideal search and ranking methods must be robust to the high redundancy and the temporal noise of contents, as well as scalable to the huge amount of data archived. Despite several attempts in Web archive search, facilitating access to Web archive still remains a challenging problem. In this work, we conduct a first analysis on different ranking strategies that exploit evidences from metadata instead of the full content of documents. We perform a first study to compare the usefulness of non-content evidences to Web archive search, where the evidences are mined from the metadata of file headers, links and URL strings only. Based on these findings, we propose a simple yet surprisingly effective learning model that combines multiple evidences to distinguish "good" from "bad" search results. We conduct empirical experiments quantitatively as well as qualitatively to confirm the validity of our proposed method, as a first step towards better ranking in Web archives taking metadata into account.
Nature of the Interactions Among Organizational Commitments: Complementary, Competitive or Synergistic?

Although organizational commitment is a multidimensional construct, researchers have tended to examine the independent effects of its different forms. However, doing so creates potential problems of model misspecification and under-prediction if interactions exist among different commitments. In this paper we discuss theoretically plausible interactions among different commitments, the patterns of which are expected to vary depending on the nature of the criterion and the foci of commitment. We then test these predictions via empirical data. Results revealed a ‘synergistic’ pattern of effects for discretionary outcomes, such that levels of organizational citizenship behaviour and strain were most favourable when employees reported high levels on multiple commitments. Importantly, no evidence was found for competitive effects between commitments, such that high levels on multiple commitments are detrimental. We discuss the implications of our findings for research and practice.
DepAnn - An Annotation Tool for Dependency Treebanks

DepAnn is an interactive annotation tool for dependency treebanks, providing both graphical and text-based annotation interfaces. The tool is aimed for semi-automatic creation of treebanks. It aids the manual inspection and correction of automatically created parses, making the annotation process faster and less error-prone. A novel feature of the tool is that it enables the user to view outputs from several parsers as the basis for creating the final tree to be saved to the treebank. DepAnn uses TIGER-XML, an XML-based general encoding format for both, representing the parser outputs and saving the annotated treebank. The tool includes an automatic consistency checker for sentence structures. In addition, the tool enables users to build structures manually, add comments on the annotations, modify the tagsets, and mark sentences for further revision.
Time course of the renal functional response to partial nephrectomy: measurements in conscious rats

Previous investigations into the functional responses of the surviving nephrons following reductions in renal mass have been performed largely in anaesthetized animals and have taken little account of how the compensatory changes develop with time. The present study has assessed a method for determining glomerular filtration rate (GFR) in unrestrained, uncatheterized, conscious rats (plasma disappearance of 99mTc‐diethylenetriamene pentaacetic acid (DTPA)) and has used this method to document the time course of the changes in GFR over a 32 day period following uninephrectomy or 5/6 nephrectomy. Concurrent measurements of excretion rates and of the clearance of lithium (the latter being an index of end‐proximal fluid delivery) provided information on changes in overall tubular function and segmental reabsorption. After uninephrectomy, the GFR of the remaining kidney (compared with that of a single kidney of sham‐operated animals) increased maximally (by ∼50%) within 8 days; after 5/6 nephrectomy, the increase in the GFR of the remnant kidney was maximal (at ∼300%) within 16 days. Overall excretion rates of sodium and potassium were well maintained in partially nephrectomized animals throughout the period of study, while the excretion of water increased (by ∼30% after uninephrectomy and by ∼120% after 5/6 nephrectomy), partly as a result of the compensatory increases in GFR but mainly as a consequence of moderate (after uninephrectomy) or marked (after 5/6 nephrectomy) reductions in fractional reabsorption. During the early period after 5/6 nephrectomy, potassium excretion sometimes exceeded the filtered load, indicating net secretion. Lithium clearance data indicated that the changes in tubular function after 5/6 nephrectomy include a reduction in fractional reabsorption in the proximal tubule, whereas after uninephrectomy any such effect on the proximal tubule is minor and transient.
The Concepts of the Ventral Striatopallidal System and Extended Amygdala

ABSTRACT: The concepts of the ventral striatopallidal system and extended amygdala have significantly improved our understanding of basal forebrain organization. As a result of these and other advances during the last twenty years, many of the most prominent basal forebrain structures, including the nucleus accumbens, olfactory tubercle, and amygdaloid body, have all but lost their relevance as independent functional anatomical units. In order to appreciate the distinct differences that exist between the ventral striatopallidal system and the extended amygdala, and as a way of explaining the choice of the terms ventral striatopallidal system and extended amygdala, we will review the discovery and subsequent elaboration of these two systems. On the background of these discussions, we will then proceed to dispel some recently published misgivings regarding the usefulness of the extended amygdaloid concept.
Freezing of gait in Parkinson's disease: disturbances in automaticity and control

Recent studies emphasize a key role of controlled operations, such as set-shifting and inhibition, in the occurrence of freezing of gait (FOG) in Parkinson's disease (PD). However, FOG can also be characterized as a de-automatization disorder, showing impairments in both the execution and acquisition of automaticity. The observed deficits in automaticity and executive functioning indicate that both processes are malfunctioning in freezers. Therefore, to explain FOG from a cognitive-based perspective, we present a model describing the pathways involved in automatic and controlled processes prior to a FOG episode. Crucially, we focus on disturbances in automaticity and control, regulated by the frontostriatal circuitry. In complex situations, non-freezing PD patients may compensate for deficits in automaticity by switching to increased cognitive control. However, as both automatic and controlled processes are more severely impaired in freezers, this hampers cognitive compensation in FOG, resulting in a potential breakdown. Future directions for cognitive rehabilitation are proposed, based on the cognitive model we put forward.
Bandwidth Analysis of Multiport Radio-Frequency Systems — Full Version

When multiple radio-frequency sources are connected to multiple loads through a passive multiport matching network, perfect power transfer to the loads across all frequencies is generally impossible. We provide an analysis of bandwidth over which power transfer is possible. Our principal tools include broadband multiport matching upper bounds, presented herein, on the integral over all frequency of the logarithm of a suitably defined power loss ratio. In general, the larger the integral, the wider the bandwidth over which power transfer can be accomplished. We apply these bounds in several ways: We show how the number of sources and loads, and the coupling between loads, affect achievable bandwidth. We analyze the bandwidth of networks constrained to have certain architectures. We characterize systems whose bandwidths scale as the ratio between the numbers of loads and sources. Numerical examples are also presented.
Lung Cell Oxidant Injury ENHANCEMENT OF POLYMORPHONUCLEAR LEUKOCYTE-MEDIATED CYTOTOXICITY IN LUNG CELLS EXPOSED TO SUSTAINED IN VITRO HYPEROXIA

This work was presented in part at the meeting of the Western Society for Clinical Research in Carmel, CA, 1719 February 1982, and published in abstract form in 1982. Clin. Res. 30: 106a. Received for publication 22 December 1981 and in revised form 13 April 1982. on lung cells. This specific manifestation of oxygen damage provides insight into the integration between primary mechanisms (oxygen exposure) and secondary mechanisms (release of oxygen metabolites by neutrophils) with respect to the cellular basis for pulmonary oxygen toxicity.
Wear of polyethylene in artificial hip joints: superolateral wear of the acetabulum.

The bearing couple of a polyethylene acetabular cup and a polished metal or ceramic femoral head has been a successful combination in hip arthroplasty for over 30 years, but it is now recognised that fine micron and submicron polyethylene wear particles can cause adverse cellular reactions which may lead to osteolysis and loosening. In prostheses showing high wear, the penetration of the femoral head into the acetabular cup often exceeds 2 mm after 10 to 15 years. Although the head does not wear through the cup, which may be over 8 mm thick, there is a significant amount of debris, typically over 600 mm. Most of these particles are less than a micron, and therefore in the size range for phagocytosis, resulting in inflammatory reactions and osteolysis. Recent studies of failed Charnley prostheses at 10 to 20 years have estimated that well over one thousand billion wear particles (10) are released into the tissue during this period. There is much interest in the wear of polyethylene since it can lead to the failure of hip arthroplasties. Wear, unlike elastic modulus or hardness, is not a specific property of a material but is a result of the system and conditions in which the materials articulate. The simplest laws of wear state that the volume produced is proportional to the load and the sliding distance, but many other factors dramatically affect the wear rate. These include: 1) Local damage or roughening of the polished femoral head. 2) Oxidative degradation after sterilisation by gamma irradiation in the presence of oxygen (p. 340 and Besong et al). 3) Multidirectional movement. Polyethylene molecules are orientated by the forces of friction in the primary direction concern. Until there is good evidence that the intra-articular procedure alone is as effective as a combined reconstruction there must be doubt about its continued use. In this respect, the longer-term results of the cohort described by Webb et al are of particular interest.
Carbon nanotubes accelerate methane production in pure cultures of methanogens and in a syntrophic coculture

Carbon materials have been reported to facilitate direct interspecies electron transfer (DIET) between bacteria and methanogens improving methane production in anaerobic processes. In this work, the effect of increasing concentrations of carbon nanotubes (CNT) on the activity of pure cultures of methanogens and on typical fatty acid-degrading syntrophic methanogenic coculture was evaluated. CNT affected methane production by methanogenic cultures, although acceleration was higher for hydrogenotrophic methanogens than for acetoclastic methanogens or syntrophic coculture. Interestingly, the initial methane production rate (IMPR) by Methanobacterium formicicum cultures increased 17 times with 5 g·L-1 CNT. Butyrate conversion to methane by Syntrophomonas wolfei and Methanospirillum hungatei was enhanced (∼1.5 times) in the presence of CNT (5 g·L-1 ), but indications of DIET were not obtained. Increasing CNT concentrations resulted in more negative redox potentials in the anaerobic microcosms. Remarkably, without a reducing agent but in the presence of CNT, the IMPR was higher than in incubations with reducing agent. No growth was observed without reducing agent and without CNT. This finding is important to re-frame discussions and re-interpret data on the role of conductive materials as mediators of DIET in anaerobic communities. It also opens new challenges to improve methane production in engineered methanogenic processes.
Concise Review: Polarity in Stem Cells, Disease, and Aging

Adult somatic stem cells are central to homeostasis in tissues that present with a high cellular turnover like the skin, intestine, and the hematopoietic system. It is thought that polarity is particularly important with respect to fate decisions on stem cell division (symmetric or asymmetric) as well as for the maintenance of stem cell adhesion and quiescence (interaction with the niche). Consequently the failure to establish or regulate stem cell polarity might result in disease or tissue attrition. Members of the family of small RhoGTPases are known to exert an important role in regulating cell polarity. We summarize and discuss here recent views on the role of cell polarity in somatic stem cell function, aging, and disease, concluding that targeting cell polarity might be a novel approach to ameliorate or even revert aberrant somatic stem cell function. STEM CELLS 2010; 28:1623–1629.
Optimal placement of PV array in distribution system for power loss minimization considering feeder reconfiguration

This research work presents an effective technique for optimal placement of Photo-voltaic (PV) array and network reconfiguration in Radial Distribution Network (RDN) simultaneously to diminish the total real power loss and enhance the voltage level of the network. The population based Differential Evaluation (DE) Algorithm has been implemented to identify an optimal switching combination, optimal location, size and number of PV module in distribution system. This technique has been demonstrated on 33-bus standard test system for minimizing the total real power loss and fulfills all equality and inequality operating constraint. In this study several cases related to feeder reconfiguration and PV array placement are considered and compared. Among all the combinations, the combination of feeder reconfiguration and PV array placement, PV operating at 0.85 power factor show better results.
Culture Of Honor: The Psychology Of Violence In The South

* Introduction * Violence and Honor in the Southern United States * Homicide Rate Differences Between North and South * Differences Between Northerners and Southerners in Attitudes Toward Violence * Insult, Anger, and Aggression: An Experimental Ethnography of the Culture of Honor * Collective Expressions of the Culture of Honor: Violence, Social Policy, and the Law * Culture of Honor: Manifestations, Explanations, and Destinations
Efficient bandit algorithms for online multiclass prediction

This paper introduces the Banditron, a variant of the Perceptron [Rosenblatt, 1958], for the multiclass bandit setting. The multiclass bandit setting models a wide range of practical supervised learning applications where the learner only receives partial feedback (referred to as "bandit" feedback, in the spirit of multi-armed bandit models) with respect to the true label (e.g. in many web applications users often only provide positive "click" feedback which does not necessarily fully disclose a true label). The Banditron has the ability to learn in a multiclass classification setting with the "bandit" feedback which only reveals whether or not the prediction made by the algorithm was correct or not (but does not necessarily reveal the true label). We provide (relative) mistake bounds which show how the Banditron enjoys favorable performance, and our experiments demonstrate the practicality of the algorithm. Furthermore, this paper pays close attention to the important special case when the data is linearly separable --- a problem which has been exhaustively studied in the full information setting yet is novel in the bandit setting.