Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Role of Medical Language in Changing Public Perceptions of Illness

This study was designed to investigate the impact of medical terminology on perceptions of disease. Specifically, we look at the changing public perceptions of newly medicalized disorders with accompanying newly medicalized terms (e.g. impotence has become erectile dysfunction disorder). Does using “medicalese” to label a recently medicalized disorder lead to a change in the perception of that condition? Undergraduate students (n = 52) rated either the medical or lay label for recently medicalized disorders (such as erectile dysfunction disorder vs. impotence) and established medical conditions (such as a myocardial infarction vs. heart attack) for their perceived seriousness, disease representativeness and prevalence. Students considered the medical label of the recently medicalized disease to be more serious (mean = 4.95 (SE = .27) vs. mean = 3.77 (SE = .24) on a ten point scale), more representative of a disease (mean = 2.47 (SE = .09) vs. mean = 1.83 (SE = .09) on a four point scale), and have lower prevalence (mean = 68 (SE = 12.6) vs. mean = 122 (SE = 18.1) out of 1,000) than the same disease described using common language. A similar pattern was not seen in the established medical conditions, even when controlled for severity. This study demonstrates that the use of medical language in communication can induce bias in perception; a simple switch in terminology results in a disease being perceived as more serious, more likely to be a disease, and more likely to be a rare condition. These findings regarding the conceptualization of disease have implications for many areas, including medical communication with the public, advertising, and public policy.
The Relationship of DNA Methylation with Age, Gender and Genotype in Twins and Healthy Controls

Cytosine-5 methylation within CpG dinucleotides is a potentially important mechanism of epigenetic influence on human traits and disease. In addition to influences of age and gender, genetic control of DNA methylation levels has recently been described. We used whole blood genomic DNA in a twin set (23 MZ twin-pairs and 23 DZ twin-pairs, N = 92) as well as healthy controls (N = 96) to investigate heritability and relationship with age and gender of selected DNA methylation profiles using readily commercially available GoldenGate bead array technology. Despite the inability to detect meaningful methylation differences in the majority of CpG loci due to tissue type and locus selection issues, we found replicable significant associations of DNA methylation with age and gender. We identified associations of genetically heritable single nucleotide polymorphisms with large differences in DNA methylation levels near the polymorphism (cis effects) as well as associations with much smaller differences in DNA methylation levels elsewhere in the human genome (trans effects). Our results demonstrate the feasibility of array-based approaches in studies of DNA methylation and highlight the vast differences between individual loci. The identification of CpG loci of which DNA methylation levels are under genetic control or are related to age or gender will facilitate further studies into the role of DNA methylation and disease.
Laser-aided navigation with loop closure capabilities for Micro Aerial Vehicles in indoor and urban environments

This paper presents a laser-aided navigation system for Micro Aerial Vehicles. It is based on a Kalman filter so that GNSS measurements can be incorporated if available. For GNSS-denied areas, the Kalman filter also processes relative pose measurements extracted from laser data. A novel approach for laser-aided Kalman filter navigation is presented which allows using multiple reference scans simultaneously. Furthermore, an addition to avoid growth of the heading angle error is described. Because this Kalman filter based system is a relative navigation system, its position error grows with time. To avoid such an error growth in GNSS denied environments, the Kalman filter is augmented with loop closure detection. A technique is proposed to represent such information in a pose graph and to calculate an improved navigation solution including an error covariance based on covariance intersection. The successful operation of the presented system is validated in several experiments including real flight data, large loops and an outdoor-indoor-outdoor transition.
Designing a graphical user interface for healthcare workers in rural India

This paper describes the research and development of an interface for a mobile computing device to be used by Auxiliary Nurse Midwives (ANMs) in rural India. We describe the insights of the team from Apple Research Lab (ARL), who have had the privilege of working in a very different culture from the ones they are used to. We show how our observations of the healthcare workers performing their caring and administrative functions informed the design of the user interface. We illustrate how we developed the graphical language, navigational structure and data entry techniques. We provide a summary of the feedback we received from early field trials and some thoughts on the appropriateness of our approach to design in this environment.
Hierarchical feature selection for ranking

Ranking is an essential part of information retrieval(IR) tasks such as Web search. Nowadays there are hundreds of features for ranking. So learning to rank(LTR), an interdisciplinary field of IR and machine learning(ML), has attracted increasing attention. Those features used in the IR are not always independent from each other, hence the feature selection, an important issue in ML, should be paid attention to for LTR. However, the state-of-the-art LTR approaches merely analyze the connection among the features from the aspects of feature selection. In this paper, we propose a hierarchical feature selection strategy containing 2 phases for ranking and learn ranking functions. The experimental results show that ranking functions based on the selected feature subset significantly outperform the ones based on all features.
Migraine and Biomarkers of Endothelial Activation in Young Women

Background and Purpose— There is mounting evidence of endothelial activation and dysfunction in migraine. Our objectives were to determine in a population of premenopausal women whether endothelial activation markers are associated with migraine. Methods— Women (18 to 50 years) with and without migraine and free from cardiovascular disease were evaluated with tests of coagulation (von Willebrand factor activity, prothrombin fragment), fibrinolysis (tissue-type plasminogen activator antigen), inflammation (high-sensitivity C-reactive protein), and oxidative stress (homocysteine, total nitrate/nitrite concentrations, thiobarbituric acid–reactive substances). Results— Sixty-one participants had migraine with aura (MA), 64 had migraine without aura (MO), and 50 were controls. Compared with controls, women with migraine had higher adjusted odds ratios for elevated von Willebrand factor activity of 6.51 (95% CI, 1.94 to 21.83) in those with MA and of 4.59 (95% CI, 1.37 to 15.38) in those with MO, elevated high-sensitivity C-reactive protein of 7.99 (95% CI, 2.32 to 27.61) in those with MA and of 2.63 (95% CI, 0.73 to 9.45) in those with MO, and for lower nitrate/nitrite levels of 6.60 (95% CI, 2.06 to 21.16) in those with MA and of 3.03 (95% CI, 0.90 to 10.15) in those with MO. Within the migraine group, von Willebrand factor activity was correlated with tissue-type plasminogen activator antigen (P=0.035) and nitrate/nitrite (P=0.024). There was a trend with high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (P=0.09). Conclusions— In premenopausal women with migraine, particularly in those with MA, there is evidence of increased endothelial activation, a component of endothelial dysfunction.
Software fault tolerance in distributed systems using controlled re-execution

Distributed applications are particularly vulnerable to synchronization faults. An important approach to tolerating synchronization faults is rollback recovery, which involves restoring a previous state and re-executing. Existing rollback recovery methods depend on chance and cannot guarantee that synchronization faults do not recur during re-execution. We propose a new rollback recovery method, controlled re-execution, based on selectively adding synchronizations during re-execution to ensure that synchronization faults do not recur. The controlled re-execution method gives rise to three interesting questions: How do we determine the synchronizations that ensure a safe re-execution? How do we monitor an application to detect faulty global conditions? How well does controlled re-execution perform in practice? The first part of the dissertation addresses the predicate control problem which takes a computation and a global property and adds synchronizations to the computation to maintain the property. We design efficient algorithms to solve the problem for many useful predicates, including disjunctive predicates and various types of mutual exclusion predicates. These predicates correspond to commonly encountered synchronization faults such as races. The second part of the dissertation investigates the predicate detection problem which involves determining whether a global property occurs in a computation. We address the problem for the useful class of conjunctive predicates and in the context of an extended model of computation that allows improved predicate detection over the conventional model. We show that, in general, the problem is NP-Complete. However, an efficient solution is demonstrated for the useful cases of receive-ordered and send-ordered computations. Further, this solution can be used to achieve an improved, though exponential, solution for the general problem. The third part of the dissertation involves an experimental study of the controlled re-execution method. We evaluate the controlled re-execution method in tolerating race faults and find that the extra tracing costs imposed are within tolerable limits and that it greatly enhanced the likelihood of recovery. We conclude that controlled re-execution is an effective and desirable method for tolerating races in long-running non-interactive distributed applications.
A paclitaxel-containing chemotherapy does not cause central nervous adverse effects: a prospective study in patients with ovarian cancer.

BACKGROUND The objective of this study was to evaluate the possible effects of a paclitaxel containing chemotherapy on different neuropsychological parameters in women with ovarian cancer. MATERIALS AND METHODS Twenty-eight women with histologically documented epithelial ovarian carcinoma and treated with a combination chemotherapy consisting of paclitaxel and carboplatin entered the study. The patients were tested with a battery of different neuropsychological tests before, after 3 cycles and at the end of the chemotherapy. RESULTS Twenty of the 28 patients responded to the chemotherapy (71%). Eleven patients (39%) developed peripheral neurotoxicity. The median values of 6 tests performed before the first chemotherapy cycle scored out of the normal range. These patients with deviant test results at the beginning of the paclitaxel/carboplatin infusions did not deteriorate during chemotherapy. We found a statistically significant improvement of the alphabetical cross out test from the first to the third measurement (mean increase = 4.07; 95% confidence interval = [0.99; 7.15]) (p < 0.05), indicating an improvement of the short-term attention, the concentration and the constancy of working during chemotherapy. The other tests failed to show statistically significant changes during chemotherapy (p > 0.05). CONCLUSION According to our results, a chemotherapy consisting of paclitaxel/carboplatin caused no signs of acute central nervous toxicity or neuropsychological deterioration.
The CNGL-DCU-Prompsit Translation Systems for WMT13

This paper presents the experiments conducted by the Machine Translation group at DCU and Prompsit Language Engineering for the WMT13 translation task. Three language pairs are considered: SpanishEnglish and French-English in both directions and German-English in that direction. For the Spanish-English pair, the use of linguistic information to select parallel data is investigated. For the FrenchEnglish pair, the usefulness of the small indomain parallel corpus is evaluated, compared to an out-of-domain parallel data sub-sampling method. Finally, for the German-English system, we describe our work in addressing the long distance reordering problem and a system combination strategy.
Decreased tumstatin‐mRNA is associated with poor outcome in patients with NSCLC

Tumstatin is a candidate tumor suppressor that plays an important role in tumor growth and angiogenesis. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the correlation between tumstatin‐mRNA expression and the clinicopathologic characteristics, tumor angiogenesis, outcome of patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Specimens from 68 patients with NSCLC were recruited in this study. Tumstatin‐mRNA expression and protein level in tumor tissues were quantified respectively by quantitative RT‐PCR and ELISA. Microvessel density (MVD) was determined by CD34 immunostaining. The correlation of tumstatin‐mRNA expression levels with clinicopathologic variables, tumor angiogenesis, and prognosis was analyzed. Tumstatin‐mRNA expression levels were decreased in tumor. Tumstatin‐mRNA expression level was significantly correlated with its protein level in tumor (r = 0.562; P = 0.001). Tumstatin‐mRNA expression levels in poorly differentiated tumor tissues were significantly lower than in well‐differentiated tumor tissues (P < 0.004). Furthermore, tumor tumstatin‐mRNA expression were also significantly related to tumor pathologic stage (P = 0.032) and MVD (r = −0.77, P < 0.0001). Overall survival (OS) and disease‐free survival (DFS) analysis indicated that NSCLC patients with low tumstatin‐mRNA expression had poorer OS and DFS than those with high expression (P = 0.015 and 0.037; respectively). Multivariable Cox regression analysis revealed that the tumstatin‐mRNA expression could be an independent prognostic indicators in both DFS and OS. Tumstatin‐mRNA expression levels are down‐regulated in NSCLC tissues. Tumstatin‐mRNA expression level correlates with prognosis, which suggests that tumstatin‐mRNA is a new potential independent marker of favorable prognosis in NSCLC. 2012 IUBMB IUBMB Life, 2012
Temperature dependence of human muscle ClC‐1 chloride channel

1 In the present work we investigated the dependence on temperature of the ionic conductance and gating of human muscle ClC‐1 chloride channels, transiently expressed in human embryonic kidney (HEK 293) cells. 2 At normal pH, ClC‐1 currents deactivated at negative potentials with a double‐exponential time course. The time constants of the exponential components, corresponding to the relaxations of the fast and slow gates, were temperature dependent with Q10 values of ≈3 and ≈4, respectively. Current amplitude increased with increasing temperature with a Q10 of ≈1.6. 3 The voltage dependence of the two gating processes was shifted towards more positive potentials with increasing temperature. The half‐saturation voltage (V1/2) of the steady‐state open probability (Po) was shifted by ≈23 and ≈34 mV per 10 °C increase in temperature, for the fast and slow gate, respectively. 4 At low pH, the voltage dependence of ClC‐1 was reversed and currents were activated by hyperpolarisation with a single‐exponential time course. This type of gating in ClC‐1 resembled the slow gating of the Torpedo ClC‐0 homologue, but differed with respect to its kinetics and temperature dependence, with a Q10 of gating relaxations at negative potentials of ≈5. The Arrhenius plot of ClC‐1 conductance at low pH had a clear break point at ≈25 °C, with higher Q10 values at lower temperatures. 5 The temperature sensitivity of relaxation and open probability of the slow gate, which in both ClC‐0 and ClC‐1 controls two pores simultaneously, implies that the slow gating of ClC‐1 is mechanistically different from that of ClC‐0.
Journal of Geophysical Research : Atmospheres The Impact of Boreal Summer ENSO Events on Tropical Lower Stratospheric Ozone

The interannual variability of tropical lower stratosphere ozone and its connections to sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific are examined using a combination of chemistry climate model simulations, satellite observations, and reanalyses. The model simulations and observations show large differences in the magnitude of interannual variability in ozone between northern tropic (NT; EQ-18∘ N) and southern tropic (EQ-18∘ S) during boreal summer but small differences in winter. The interannual variability during boreal summer is highly correlated with summer sea surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific Ocean and El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events. Larger variability in NT ozone is primarily due to meridional advection, connected to the changes in the onset date and strength of the Asian summer monsoon anticyclone. The Asian summer monsoon anticyclone forms earlier in a season and tends to be stronger during cold (La Niña) events leading to more isentropic transport of ozone from the extratropics into the NT, with the reverse for warm (El Niño) events.
A Database of On-Line Handwritten Mixed Objects Named "Kondate"

This paper describes a database of on-line handwritten patterns mixed of text, figures, tables, maps, diagrams and so on. Now, pen-based and touch-based interfaces are spreading into people and their surfaces are getting large. People can write and draw mixed objects without paying attention on the difference of objects or the mode change. Moreover, they may write text in any direction in combination with non-text objects on large surfaces. This is clearly one of the largest advantages of pen or touch interfaces but poses a challenging problem of object classification and recognition. The proposed database is made and now being enlarged to study such subjects more extensively. So far, 100 Japanese writers, approximately 25 English and 45 Thai writers have participated. The database stores on-line handwritten (digital ink) patterns with ground-truth tags in InkML.
A Comparison of Dimensionality Reduction Techniques for Unstructured Clinical Text

Much of clinical data is free text, which is challenging to use together with machine learning, visualization tools, and clinical decision rules. In this paper, we compare supervised and unsupervised dimensionality reduction techniques, including the recently proposed sLDA and MedLDA algorithms, on clinical texts. We evaluate each dimensionality reduction method by using them as features for two important prediction problems that arise in emergency departments: predicting whether a patient has an infection, which can progress to sepsis, and predicting the likelihood of a patient being admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (used for risk stratification). We find that, on this data, existing supervised dimensionality reduction techniques perform better than unsupervised techniques only for very low dimensional representations.
Engineering ultimate self-protection in autonomic agents for space exploration missions

NASA's Exploration Initiative (EI) will push space exploration missions to the limit. Future missions will be required to be self-managing as well as self-directed, in order to meet the challenges of human and robotic space exploration. We discuss security and self-protection in autonomic agent based-systems, and propose the ultimate self-protection mechanism for such systems - self-destruction. Like other metaphors in autonomic computing, this is inspired by biological systems, and is the analog of biological apoptosis. Finally, we discuss the role it might play in future NASA space exploration missions.
Surveying Data for Patchy Structure

The term “data surveying” refers to the preliminary examination of a dataset to assess its overall character, and this process typically involves simple descriptive statistics to characterize the available variables, along with detection of data anomalies (e.g., outliers or incomplete records) and possibly other “interesting” or “unusual” features that may be worthy of careful scrutiny. In the survey sampling literature, an important distinction is made between responses that are missing at random, the simplest form of ignorable missing data, and non-random alternatives that can lead to non-ignorable missing data. The distinction is practically important because non-ignorable missing data can cause severe biases in analytical results, while ignorable missing data typically causes an undesirable but less serious increase in the variability of these results. Analogous distinctions can also be usefully made for other types of data anomalies (e.g., i.i.d. vs. correlated outliers) or other unusual data subsets of potential interest. In particular, the observation of systematic behavior with respect to time, position, or other ordered index sequences (e.g., primary key in a database) can often give insight into the nature or generation mechanism of these data subsets. Motivated by these observations, this paper considers the problem of detecting structure in distinguished subsets of data records, including missing data, outliers and other “interesting data records. ” Depending on the nature of the dependences considered, this problem is closely related to a number of others, including the detection of “streaks” in athletic performance records, the quantification of association between variables, or binary classification.
Low Grade Neuroendocrine Tumors of the Lung

The lung is the second most common site of neuroendocrine tumors (NETs). Typical and atypical carcinoids are low-grade NETs of the lung. They present a favorable prognosis comported to the more common high-grade NETs. The low- and high-grade NETs require different treatment strategies; effective management of these tumors is essential to prolong survival and to manage the symptoms in patients with secretory or functional tumors. These rare tumors have received little attention and education is needed for treating physicians. This mini-review will concentrate mainly on advanced low-grade lung NETs. The article describes the classification of lung NETs and the diagnostic work-up. Different treatment methods including somatostatin analogs, peptide receptor radioligand therapy, and biologic systemic therapy are discussed. Promising results from recent trials are presented and discussed in the context of the lung primary site.
Retrieving Leaf Area Index (LAI) Using Remote Sensing: Theories, Methods and Sensors

The ability to accurately and rapidly acquire leaf area index (LAI) is an indispensable component of process-based ecological research facilitating the understanding of gas-vegetation exchange phenomenon at an array of spatial scales from the leaf to the landscape. However, LAI is difficult to directly acquire for large spatial extents due to its time consuming and work intensive nature. Such efforts have been significantly improved by the emergence of optical and active remote sensing techniques. This paper reviews the definitions and theories of LAI measurement with respect to direct and indirect methods. Then, the methodologies for LAI retrieval with regard to the characteristics of a range of remotely sensed datasets are discussed. Remote sensing indirect methods are subdivided into two categories of passive and active remote sensing, which are further categorized as terrestrial, aerial and satellite-born platforms. Due to a wide variety in spatial resolution of remotely sensed data and the requirements of ecological modeling, the scaling issue of LAI is discussed and special consideration is given to extrapolation of measurement to landscape and regional levels.