Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
HbA1c as a marker of prediabetes: a reliable screening tool or not?

Increasing global prevalence of type 2 diabetes (T2D) has resulted in concerted efforts to improve predictors for development of this obesity-related disorder. Establishing markers that identify prediabetes, an intermediary state of glycaemia above that of healthy individuals but below frank T2D, is an important focus. International cut offs have long been based on the 2 h WHO-defined oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT), but more recent use of the quicker and cheaper marker of glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c) has become widespread in clinical practice and public health. The definition of people with prediabetes in turn has expanded from those with impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) to include individuals with impaired fasting glucose (IFG) and/or raised HbA1c. Whilst HbA1c has been recommended since 2010 for both T2D and prediabetes screening, concerns have been raised over validity particularly for identifying those who will later develop T2D. Depending on criteria, HbA1c may identify only 50% with abnormal OGTT or misclassify those with normal physiology. Models predicting average time intervals for progression to T2D from prediabetes are commonly limited by ethnic, racial and gender differences, and different criteria further result in variable estimates of prediabetes prevalence and impact those eligible for lifestyle interventions. Whilst HbA1c may provide a good marker of frank T2D, some recommend its use in prediabetes only in conjunction with fasting plasma glucose (FPG). This review updates current opinion on HbA1c as an effective screening method for categorising high-risk prediabetic individuals and those requiring fast track into lifestyle modification programs.
Understanding the Relationship between Reading and Writing.

Fall 1985 Educators questions are today asking about important reading estions today about re ding and writing relationships: Should reading and writing continue to be perceived and taught as unrelated skills? Should we expect able readers to be competent writers? Should we assume that poor writers are poor readers, or that poor readers are also poor writers? Can schools teach knowledge about how to read and understand that is helpful to learning how to write understandable prose? Can people acquire, through writing, knowledge about text that will help them comprehend more effectively what they read? One of the reasons these questions have become so important is that our knowledge about the processes of both reading and writing have advanced markedly in the past two decades. Also, we are becoming aware that comprehension and composition have not been taught directly. ' Now is the time to study whether new approaches to combining comprehension and writing instruction should and can be advantageous. In this article, I will suggest a broad framework for thinking about relationships between reading and writing growth. This framework is both similar to and different from frameworks presented by other contemporary researchers.2
The Uses of Mass Communications: Current Perspectives on Gratifications Research. Sage Annual Reviews of Communication Research Volume III.

The culmination of a decade of fruitful research on a new way of looking at mass communication effects, one that links the uses and gratifications approach with content analysis, audience research, social and media criticism, and literature on popular culture. Implications for study, methodological and ideological issues, and future research directions are also presented.
The frequency of diagnostic errors in outpatient care: estimations from three large observational studies involving US adult populations

Background The frequency of outpatient diagnostic errors is challenging to determine due to varying error definitions and the need to review data across multiple providers and care settings over time. We estimated the frequency of diagnostic errors in the US adult population by synthesising data from three previous studies of clinic-based populations that used conceptually similar definitions of diagnostic error. Methods Data sources included two previous studies that used electronic triggers, or algorithms, to detect unusual patterns of return visits after an initial primary care visit or lack of follow-up of abnormal clinical findings related to colorectal cancer, both suggestive of diagnostic errors. A third study examined consecutive cases of lung cancer. In all three studies, diagnostic errors were confirmed through chart review and defined as missed opportunities to make a timely or correct diagnosis based on available evidence. We extrapolated the frequency of diagnostic error obtained from our studies to the US adult population, using the primary care study to estimate rates of diagnostic error for acute conditions (and exacerbations of existing conditions) and the two cancer studies to conservatively estimate rates of missed diagnosis of colorectal and lung cancer (as proxies for other serious chronic conditions). Results Combining estimates from the three studies yielded a rate of outpatient diagnostic errors of 5.08%, or approximately 12 million US adults every year. Based upon previous work, we estimate that about half of these errors could potentially be harmful. Conclusions Our population-based estimate suggests that diagnostic errors affect at least 1 in 20 US adults. This foundational evidence should encourage policymakers, healthcare organisations and researchers to start measuring and reducing diagnostic errors.
Autonomic specificity and emotion.

Autonomic specificity refers to the notion that emotions can be distinguished in terms of their associated patterns of autonomic nervous system activity. This idea has a long history in psychology, tracing back at least to James's (1884) writings on the nature of emotion. Moreover, it is an idea that has always been shrouded in controversy, attracting many critics along the way (e.g., Cacioppo, Klein, Berntson, & Hatfield, 1993; Cannon, 1927; Schachter & Singer, 1962; Zajonc & McIntosh, 1992). The controversy has been framed by two immoderate assertions: (1) Every emotion is autonomically unique; and (2) every emotion is autonomically the same. The uniqueness assertion is generally associated with Alexander's (1950) psychosomatic hypotheses. The second assertion of sameness arguably finds its clearest statement in Mandler's (1975) writings. Needless to say, these are both statements in extremis, and it would be difficult to find undiluted, unhedged versions of either in the contemporary literature. Nonetheless, they form the two poles around which participants in the debate over autonomic specificity have aggregated over the decades. In my view, both of these assertions are highly dubious. Regarding the first assertion of uniqueness, as I hope this chapter makes clear, it is highly likely that reliable autonomic differences only exist for a small number of emotions. Moreover, where these differences do exist, they are likely to be "prototypical" in nature, with particular occurrences of a given emotion showing variation around these central tendencies. Similarly, there is ample basis for rejecting the second
Closed form GLM cumulants and GLMM tting with a SQUAR-EM-LA 2 algorithm.

We nd closed form expressions for the standardized cumulants of generalized linear models. This reduces the complexity of their calculation from O(p 6 ) to O(p 2 ) operations which allows ecient construction of second-order saddlepoint approximations to the pdf of sucient statistics. We adapt the result to obtain a closed form expression for the second-order Laplace approximation for a GLMM likelihood. Using this approximation, we develop a computationally highly ecient accelerated EM procedure, SQUAR-EM-LA 2. The procedure is illustrated by tting a GLMM to a well-known data set. Extensive simulations show the phenomenal performance of the approach. Matlab software is provided for implementing the proposed algorithm.
An Investigation of Variables That Influence Teacher Attraction for the Principalship.

In the early 1980s, the National Commission on Excellence in Education called for reforming the recruitment of educational administrators. Today, this call has heightened importance because nearly half of the nation's superintendents report difficulty in filling principal vacancies. This research contributes to the literature about the principalship by examining whether teacher reactions to aspects of the principalship are subject to individual differences among the teachers and by using teachers, rather than administrators, as study participants. Seventy percent (n=139) of the students enrolled in educational administration classes elected to participate. The study sample consisted of nearly equal member of females and males. Multiple-regression analysis was used, in which teacher characteristics, job attributes, and working conditions served as independent variables, and teacher ratings of the principal's job served as the dependent variable. Results showed that most of the participants were highly attracted to the job and attributes of the job "swamped" other variables in terms of job attraction. Internal conditions of the workplace, such as the potential for job-related stress and time requirements, mitigated the positive influence of the job attributes. Female teachers were more likely to be deterred by the undesirable working conditions than were male teachers. Further research is recommended, such as investigating whether community leaders have unilateral power to alter the principal's role. (Contains 19 references and 3 tables.) (RT) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.
Face recognition on mobile environment images using appearance based methods

In this paper, we present face recognition systems, which are performed by using appearance based methods on mobile environment face images, and their comparative performance analysis. In proposed systems, face detection process is performed by using Haar-like features and cascade classifiers on mobile environment face images. Color space transformation, dimensional normalization and histogram equalization operations are performed on detected face images as pre-processing steps. Principal Component Analysis, Fisher's Linear Discriminant Analysis and Local Binary Pattern Histograms methods are used to extract facial features. K-nearest neighbor classifier is employed for the performance analysis of implemented methods. Accuracy, precision, recall and F-measure values are measured and compared in performance evaluations of selected facial recognition methods on various dimensionally normalized face images. Experimental results obtained using MOBIO face database show that Local Binary Pattern Histograms method has high success rates on mobile environment images.
A Computational Approach to Generate a Sensorial Lexicon

While humans are capable of building connections between words and sensorial modalities by using commonsense knowledge, it is not straightforward for machines to interpret sensorial information. To this end, a lexicon associating words with human senses, namely sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch, would be crucial. Nonetheless, to the best of our knowledge, there is no systematic attempt in the literature to build such a resource. In this paper, we propose a computational method based on bootstrapping and corpus statistics to automatically associate English words with senses. To evaluate the quality of the resulting lexicon, we create a gold standard via crowdsourcing and show that a simple classifier relying on the lexicon outperforms two baselines on a sensory classification task, both at word and sentence level. The results confirm the soundness of the proposed approach for the construction of the lexicon and the usefulness of the resource for computational applications.
Opinion Mining in Social Networks versus Electoral Polls

The recent failures of traditional poll models, like the predictions in United Kingdom with the Brexit, or in United States presidential elections with the victory of Donald Trump, have been noteworthy. With the decline of traditional poll models and the growth of the social networks, automatic tools are gaining popularity to make predictions in this context. In this paper we present our approximation and compare it with a real case: the 2017 French presidential election.
Chitinophaga dinghuensis sp. nov., isolated from soil.

A Gram-reaction-negative, aerobic, non-motile bacterial strain, DHOC24T, was isolated from the forest soil of Dinghushan Biosphere Reserve, Guangdong Province, PR China. Strain DHOC24T underwent a shape change during the course of culture from long filamentous cells (10-30 × 0.4-0.5 μm) at 2 days to coccobacilli (0.5-1.0 × 0.7-1.0 μm) at 15 days after inoculation. It grew optimally at 28-33 °C and pH 6.5-7.5. The major quinone of strainDHOC24T was MK-7, the main fatty acids were iso-C15 : 0, C16 : 1ω5c and iso-C17 : 0 3-OH and the DNA G+C content was 43.1 mol%. On the basis of 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis, the strain was found to be affiliated with members of the genus Chitinophaga, but was clearly separated from established species of the genus. Strain DHOC24T was most closely related to Chitinophaga jiangningensis JN53T (98.3 % 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity) and Chitinophaga terrae KP01T (97.9 %). DNA-DNA hybridization study showed relatively low relatedness values (32.1 %) of strain DHOC24T with C. jiangningensis JN53T. The phenotypic, chemotaxonomic and phylogenetic data showed that strain DHOC24T represents a novel species of the genus Chitinophaga, for which the name Chitinophaga dinghuensis sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is DHOC24T ( = CGMCC 1.12995T = DSM 29821T).
Different Effects of Opioid and Cannabinoid Receptor Agonists on C-Fiber-Induced Extracellular Signal-Regulated Kinase Activation in Dorsal Horn Neurons in Normal and Spinal Nerve-Ligated Rats

Nerve injury results in neuropathic pain, a debilitating pain condition. Whereas cannabinoids are consistently shown to attenuate neuropathic pain, the efficacy of opioids is highly controversial. Molecular mechanisms underlying analgesic effects of opioids and cannabinoids are not fully understood. We have shown that the signaling molecule ERK (extracellular signal-regulated kinase) is activated by C-fiber stimulation in dorsal horn neurons and contributes to pain sensitization. In this study, we examined whether opioids and cannabinoids can affect C-fiber-induced ERK phosphorylation (pERK) in dorsal horn neurons in spinal cord slices from normal and spinal nerve-ligated rats. In normal control spinal slices, capsaicin induced a drastic pERK expression in superficial dorsal horn neurons, which was suppressed by morphine (10 μM), the selective μ-opioid receptor agonist DAMGO [[d-Ala2, N-Me-Phe4, Gly5-ol]-enkephalin (1 μM)], and the selective CB1 receptor ACEA agonist [arachidonyl-2′-chloroethylamide (5 μM)]. One week after spinal nerve ligation when neuropathic pain is fully developed, capsaicin induced less pERK expression in the injured L5-spinal segment. This pERK induction was not suppressed by morphine (10 μM) and DAMGO (1 μM) but was enhanced by high concentration of DAMGO (5 μM). In contrast, ACEA (10 μM) was still very effective in inhibiting capsaicin-induced pERK expression. In the adjacent L4 spinal segment, both DAMGO and ACEA significantly suppressed pERK induction by capsaicin. These results indicate that, after nerve injury, opioids lose their capability to suppress C-fiber-induced spinal neuron activation in the injured L5 but not in the intact L4 spinal segment, whereas cannabinoids still maintain their efficacy.
The Law of Defamation and the Internet

* The Law of Defamation and the Internet. Matthew Collins. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. 430 pp. $150 hbk. Is there a need, whether actual or imagined, for "cyberlaw"? The answer to this question depends on whom you ask. Those "cyber-crazies" will likely say, "Absolutely. " To many "cyber-skeptics," however, the question may not deserve a serious response because they are deeply troubled by the very notion of "Internet exceptionalism. " Matthew Collins, a Melbourne, Australia, attorney who specializes in media law, is not a cyber-crazy or a cyber-skeptic in considering the law in the age of the information superhighway. In prefacing his book, "The Law of Defamation and the Internet," Collins notes that the Internet is "neither unregulated nor incapable of being regulated," although "the law has struggled to keep pace with technology" in the past few years. He posits that libel is libel regardless of whether it is in Cyberspace or not. Given the truly revolutionary impact of the Internet on global communication, it is hardly a surprise that Collins characterizes the Internet as "a medium of virtually limitless international defamation. " In this light, Collins' book is a timely effort to identify and examine various key legal issues concerning defamation via the Internet from an international and comparative perspective. The main focus of the book is the statutory and common law on civil defamation on the Internet in the United Kingdom and Australia. According to Collins, the two countries have much in common in their defamation laws, and "decisions of the United Kingdom are treated with high respect in Australia, and vice versa. " Nonetheless, the book is not limited to Anglo-Australian defamation law. It discusses the European Convention on Human Rights and the Directive on Electronic Commerce, issued by the European Parliament and Council in June 2000. The directive, which is incorporated into the domestic U.K. law, protects Internet intermediaries from liability for hosting, caching, or carrying third-party content to a greater extent than the U.K. national law does. Collins also devotes a fifty-page chapter to analyzing the principal U.S. statutory and case law on Internet libel. His succinct discussion of American law reflects his discerning assessment that Internet communication will entail a growing interaction between the United States and other countries including the United Kingdom and Australia. No less important is the widely accepted fact, as Collins points out, that American experience with Internet law serves as a useful framework for the operation of United Kingdom and Australian law on Internet defamation. …
Multi-Criteria Call Admission Control in IEEE 802 . 11 WLAN for Distributed Access Point Selection

Wireless local area networks (WLANs) are the predominant option for broadband wireless access network, and multiple access points (APs) will be much more available for wireless stations (WSTAs). Call admission control (CAC) on AP selection problem over 802.11 WLAN becomes a critical issue. In the existing architecture, Strongest-Signal-First (SSF) is the default AP selection mechanism in 802.11 WLAN which uses the single criterion, received signal strength indicator (RSSI), to select AP. However, this method suffers bandwidth deficiency and unbalanced load among APs due to the user load is often unevenly distributed, thus degrading the throughput in WLAN. We propose a semi-Markov model to predicate the system throughput, which is validated through simulation results. Two distributed multi-criteria AP selection algorithms are proposed based on this analytical model. The criteria considered in order are RSSI, required quality of service (QoS) level, estimated effective bandwidth (EEB), and AP-WSTA distance. The system performance is compared the proposed algorithms with the traditional algorithm SSF in terms of the balance index for AP and the average system throughput. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithms can improve the overall network throughput and achieve better load balancing among APs, especially when the users are distributed unevenly.
Molecular phenotypes that are causal to complex traits can have low heritability and are expected to have small influence

Work on genetic makeup of complex traits has led to some unexpected findings. Molecular trait heritability estimates have consistently been lower than those of common diseases, even though it is intuitively expected that the genotype signal weakens as it becomes more dissociated from DNA. Further, results from very large studies have not been sufficient to explain most of the heritable signal, and suggest hundreds if not thousands of responsible alleles. Here, I demonstrate how trait heritability depends crucially on the definition of the phenotype, and is influenced by the variability of the assay, measurement strategy, and the quantification approach used. For a phenotype downstream of many molecular traits, it is possible that its heritability is larger than for any of its upstream determinants. I also rearticulate via models and data that if a phenotype has many dependencies, a large number of small effect alleles are expected. However, even if these alleles do drive highly heritable causal intermediates that can be modulated, it does not imply that large changes in phenotype can be obtained.
The use of bispectral index during a cardiopulmonary arrest: a potential predictor of cerebral perfusion

A 62‐year‐old male underwent off‐pump coronary artery grafting surgery while cerebral function was monitored with bispectral index (BIS). The BIS monitoring was continued into the immediate postoperative period, during which time the patient experienced a cardiopulmonary arrest. The changes in the BIS values helped the resuscitating team in assessing the cerebral response to the cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
Tumor Classification in Histological Images of Prostate Using Color Texture

We present a wavelet-based color texture approach to tumor classification in the histological images of prostate. We extend our previous work on intensity images to incorporate color information and rotational invariance. Our results on a set of 367 images stained using hematoxylin and eosin indicate that incorporating color and rotational invariance into the features significantly reduces the classification error. We obtained a 5- fold cross-validation error of 8.7% for intensity images and no rotational invariance. Incorporation of color and rotational invariance lowered the error to 4.4%, using the CIELAB space. Both results were obtained using support vector machine classifiers along with the linear kernel. The improvement achieved in classification accuracy corresponds to a significance level of 0.0093.
Childbirth and fertility preservation in childhood and adolescent cancer patients: a second national survey of Japanese pediatric endocrinologists

Abstract. Although existing guidelines recommend long-term follow-up of childhood cancer survivors (CCSs), their fertility has not been fully investigated in Japan. To address this issue, we organized a working panel consisting of medical specialists in foundation hospitals. We conducted questionnaire surveys targeting pediatric endocrinologists regarding reproduction in pediatric and adolescent cancer patients in collaboration with the CCS committee of the Japanese Society for Pediatric Endocrinology (JSPE). The first questionnaire was sent to 178 directors or councilors of the JSPE, and the second was sent to those who had provided answers on their experience with childbirth or fertility preservation. A total of 151 responses (84.8%) were obtained in the first survey. In the second survey, the response rate was 100% (39 respondents). There were 27 answers describing experiences with childbirth (16 from partners of male CCSs, 22 from female CCSs). A few cases of premature birth and low birth weight were reported. There were 25 answers describing experiences with fertility preservation; 21 were from male and 17 from female CCSs. It was mainly physicians who recommended fertility preservation. This nationwide questionnaire survey revealed that a limited number of Japanese pediatric endocrinologists had experience with childbirth and fertility preservation in CCSs. A further long-term follow-up study of their fertility is needed.