Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Substance use, childhood traumatic experience, and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in an urban civilian population

Objective: Exposure to traumatic experiences, especially those occurring in childhood, has been linked to substance use disorders (SUDs), including abuse and dependence. SUDs are also highly comorbid with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and other mood‐related psychopathology. Most studies examining the relationship between PTSD and SUDs have examined veteran populations or patients in substance treatment programs. The present study further examines this relationship between childhood trauma, substance use, and PTSD in a sample of urban primary care patients. Method: There were 587 participants included in this study, all recruited from medical and OB/GYN clinic waiting rooms at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, GA. Data were collected through both screening interviews as well as follow‐up interviews. Results: In this highly traumatized population, high rates of lifetime dependence on various substances were found (39% alcohol, 34.1% cocaine, 6.2% heroin/opiates, and 44.8% marijuana). The level of substance use, particularly cocaine, strongly correlated with levels of childhood physical, sexual, and emotional abuse as well as current PTSD symptoms. In particular, there was a significant additive effect of number of types of childhood trauma experienced with history of cocaine dependence in predicting current PTSD symptoms, and this effect was independent of exposure to adult trauma. Conclusions: These data show strong links between childhood traumatization and SUDs, and their joint associations with PTSD outcome. They suggest that enhanced awareness of PTSD and substance abuse comorbidity in high‐risk, impoverished populations is critical to understanding the mechanisms of substance addiction as well as in improving prevention and treatment. Depression and Anxiety, 2010. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Ribonucleotide Reductase Messenger RNA Expression and Survival in Gemcitabine/Cisplatin-Treated Advanced Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Patients

Purpose: No chemotherapy regimen, including the widely used combination of gemcitabine/cisplatin, confers significantly improved survival over any other in metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC); however, the selection of patients according to key genetic characteristics can help to tailor chemotherapy. Ribonucleotide reductase subunit M1 (RRM1) is involved in DNA synthesis and repair and in gemcitabine metabolism, and the excision repair cross-complementing group 1 (ERCC1) gene has been related to cisplatin activity. Experimental Design: Patients were part of a large randomized trial carried out from September 1998 to July 2000, comparing gemcitabine/cisplatin versus gemcitabine/cisplatin/vinorelbine versus gemcitabine/vinorelbine followed by vinorelbine/ifosfamide. We analyzed RRM1 and ERCC1 mRNA expression in paraffin-embedded samples obtained from bronchoscopy by real-time quantitative reverse transcription-PCR. Results were correlated with survival using the Kaplan-Meier method. Results: A total of 100 patients were assessed. There was a strong correlation between RRM1 and ERCC1 mRNA expression levels (Spearman r = 0.410; P < 0.001). In the gemcitabine/cisplatin arm, patients with low RRM1 mRNA expression levels had significantly longer median survival than those with high levels [13.7 versus 3.6 months; 95% confidence interval (CI), 9.6–17.8 months; P = 0.009]. Median survival was also significantly longer among patients with low mRNA expression levels of both RRM1 and ERCC1 (not reached), than among those with high levels of both genes (6.8 months; 95% CI, 2.6–11.1 months; P = 0.016). Conclusions: RRM1 mRNA expression is a crucial predictive marker of survival in gemcitabine/cisplatin-treated patients. Genetic testing of RRM1 mRNA expression levels can and should be used to personalize chemotherapy.
Musical Information Retrieval for Delta and Neumatic Systems

In this paper an alternate to Western Music musical system is presented. This system has flourished for more than 15 centuries in the areas of Byzantine Empire and it implements Neumatic and Delta Interfaces in order to represent musical structures. Recently, a remarkable revival and propagation of this system has been recorded worldwide. The motivation for this paper has been given from a joint effort of the Department of Informatics at the Aristotle University and the Department of Music Science and Art at the University of Macedonia to register the musical content not only of contemporary manuscripts but also to record and correlate morphologically the evolutionary stages from the neumatic origin to the final Delta Analytical method.
Language acquisition and language socialization

This chapter proposes that the ideas of cultural item and cultural system are reconciled by something that they have in common: Neither idea exists without the simpler idea of a functional relation. Functional relations are the interface that joins items and systems together, and one can look to them for a solution to the item/system problem. Culture and language hinge on shared meaning, and so the chapter focuses on semiotic systems. The idea of a semiotic system is well illustrated in Darwin's account of the expression of emotion in animals. The chapter also proposes a minimal causal scheme for biased transmission which has four functionally defined loci at which any transmission bias may contribute to regulating the cumulative transmission of culture. In language, items are structured into conceptual frames, systems of categorization, semplates, conceptual metaphors, structural paradigms, and syntagms.
Salt Sensitivity and the Activities of the H+-ATPases in Cotton Seedlings

Salinity is a major problem confronting agriculture in arid environments. Sensitivity to high levels of salt in plants is associated with an inability to effectively remove Na + ions from the cell cytoplasm. The ability to compartmentalize Na+ may result, in part, from stimulation of the H + -ATPases on the plasma membrane (PM-ATPase) and vacuolar membrane (V-ATPase). These H+ -pumping ATPases may provide the driving force for Na+ transport via Na + -H + exchangers. In a salt-sensitive line of cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.), greater relative reductions in root length and root fresh weight than in hypocotyl length of seedlings grown in 75 mM NaCI indicated that the root was most affected by salt stress. To determine if the H + -ATPases are involved in the response to salt, we compared activities of the PM-and V-ATPases from roots in salt-sensitive cotton seedlings grown with or without 75 mM NaCI. Higher PM-ATPase activity (42%) was observed in seedlings grown in 75 mM NaCI. This stimulation was specific for Na + , was not observed when Na + was added to membrane fractions, and was not due to an increase in PM-ATPase protein levels. V-ATPase protein accumulation was unaffected by growth in the presence of Na+, and activity was unaffected by Na+ in the growth medium or by Na + added to membrane fractions. These studies suggest that although the PM-ATPase responds to increased Na + , activity of the transport proteins on the plasma membrane alone may be insufficient to regulate intracellular Na + levels. In addition, the inability of the V-ATPase to respond to increased levels of Na + indicates that salt sensitivity in cotton seedlings may result, in part, from a lack of effective driving force for compartmentalization of Na + .
Neural Correlates of Concreteness in Semantic Categorization

In some contexts, concrete words (CARROT) are recognized and remembered more readily than abstract words (TRUTH). This concreteness effect has historically been explained by two theories of semantic representation: dual-coding [Paivio, A. Dual coding theory: Retrospect and current status. Canadian Journal of Psychology, 45, 255287, 1991] and context-availability [Schwanenflugel, P. J. Why are abstract concepts hard to understand? In P. J. Schwanenflugel (Ed.), The psychology of word meanings (pp. 223250). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1991]. Past efforts to adjudicate between these theories using functional magnetic resonance imaging have produced mixed results. Using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging, we reexamined this issue with a semantic categorization task that allowed for uniform semantic judgments of concrete and abstract words. The participants were 20 healthy adults. Functional analyses contrasted activation associated with concrete and abstract meanings of ambiguous and unambiguous words. Results showed that for both ambiguous and unambiguous words, abstract meanings were associated with more widespread cortical activation than concrete meanings in numerous regions associated with semantic processing, including temporal, parietal, and frontal cortices. These results are inconsistent with both dual-coding and context-availability theories, as these theories propose that the representations of abstract concepts are relatively impoverished. Our results suggest, instead, that semantic retrieval of abstract concepts involves a network of association areas. We argue that this finding is compatible with a theory of semantic representation such as Barsalou's [Barsalou, L. W. Perceptual symbol systems. Behavioral & Brain Sciences, 22, 577660, 1999] perceptual symbol systems, whereby concrete and abstract concepts are represented by similar mechanisms but with differences in focal content.
Thermal Covert Channels on Multi-core Platforms

Side channels remain a challenge to information flow control and security in modern computing platforms. Resource partitioning techniques that minimise the number of shared resources among processes are often used to address this challenge. In this work, we focus on multicore platforms and we demonstrate that even seemingly strong isolation techniques based on dedicated cores can be circumvented through the use of thermal channels. Specifically, we show that the processor core temperature can be used both as a side channel as well as a covert communication channel even when the system implements strong spatial and temporal partitioning. Our experiments on an Intel Xeon server platform demonstrate covert thermal channels that achieve up to 12.5 bps and weak thermal side channels that can detect processes executed on neighbouring cores. This work therefore shows a limitation in the isolation that can be achieved on existing multi-core systems.
Effect of Ag on ripening growth of Cu6Sn5 grains formed between molten Sn-xAg-0.5Cu solders and Cu

In microelectronic packaging, the reliability of Pb-free solder joint is critically influenced by the interfacial reactions with under bump metallurgies (UBMs), and therefore controlling the intermetallic compound (IMC) formation and growth is recognized as a very important factor for improving the reliability of the solder joints. A silver (Ag) alloying element is broadly used in Pb-free solder alloys since it is beneficially effective on the decrease of melting point, and the improvement of wettability and mechanical properties, such as tensile strength and fatigue. However, the Ag element is often neglected in controlling the IMC growth, because it does not form any IMCs with two common UBMs, such as Cu and Ni(P) UBMs. Actually, in the interfacial reactions between Sn-rich solders and Cu UBMs, Cu<inf>6</inf>Sn<inf>5</inf> IMCs are mainly formed during reflow, and Cu<inf>3</inf>Sn IMCs are additionally formed between Cu<inf>6</inf>Sn<inf>5</inf> IMCs and Cu UBMs during thermal aging. In addition, most of the previous studies have reported that the morphologies and growth of Cu<inf>6</inf>Sn<inf>5</inf> IMCs are controlled by the reflow temperature or time, the cooling rate, the addition of minor alloying elements (e.g. Ni, Co and Zn), and the crystal orientation of Cu UBMs. In this study, the lateral growth (or ripening growth) of Cu<inf>6</inf>Sn<inf>5</inf> grains formed between molten Sn-rich solders and Cu UBMs was investigated with Sn-0.5Cu, Sn-1.0Ag-0.5Cu and Sn-3.0Ag-0.5Cu solders. After reactions with Cu UBMs, the size and morphologies of Cu<inf>6</inf>Sn<inf>5</inf> grains were compared each other through the observation of top views. The Cu<inf>6</inf>Sn<inf>5</inf> IMCs formed at the interface of Sn-3.0Ag-0.5Cu solders exhibited much smaller grains, but their thickness was not much different from those that formed in Sn-0.5Cu and Sn-1.0Ag-0.5Cu solders. In other words, the ripening growth of Cu<inf>6</inf>Sn<inf>5</inf> grains during reflow was reduced in Sn-3.0Ag-0.5Cu solders. To understand the effects of Ag on ripening growth of Cu<inf>6</inf>Sn<inf>5</inf> grains, the angles of two neighboring Cu<inf>6</inf>Sn<inf>5</inf> grains formed at the interface of each solder were compared, and the interfacial energies between Cu<inf>6</inf>Sn<inf>5</inf> grains and molten solders were discussed. In addition, the volume effect of Ag on the ripening growth of Cu<inf>6</inf>Sn<inf>5</inf> grains and the effect of smaller Cu<inf>6</inf>Sn<inf>5</inf> grains on reducing the formation of Cu<inf>3</inf>Sn IMCs during thermal aging were also reported.
Attenuating Regulatory T Cell Induction by TLR Agonists through Inhibition of p38 MAPK Signaling in Dendritic Cells Enhances Their Efficacy as Vaccine Adjuvants and Cancer Immunotherapeutics1

TLR ligands are potent adjuvants and promote Th1 responses to coadministered Ags by inducing innate IL-12 production. We found that TLR ligands also promote the induction of IL-10-secreting regulatory T (Treg) cells through p38 MAPK-induced IL-10 production by dendritic cells (DC). Inhibition of p38 suppressed TLR-induced IL-10 and PGE2 and enhanced IL-12 production in DC. Incubation of Ag-pulsed CpG-stimulated DC with a p38 inhibitor suppressed their ability to generate Treg cells, while enhancing induction of Th1 cells. In addition, inhibition of p38 enhanced the antitumor therapeutic efficacy of DC pulsed with Ag and CpG and this was associated with an enhanced frequency of IFN-γ-secreting T cells and a reduction of Foxp3+ Treg cells infiltrating the tumors. Furthermore, addition of a p38 inhibitor to a pertussis vaccine formulated with CpG enhanced its protective efficacy in a murine respiratory challenge model. These data demonstrate that the adjuvant activity of TLR agonists is compromised by coinduction of Treg cells, but this can be overcome by inhibiting p38 signaling in DC. Our findings suggest that p38 is an important therapeutic target and provides a mechanism to enhance the efficacy of TLR agonists as vaccine adjuvants and cancer immunotherapeutics.
Nonspecific Factors in Alcohol and Unsafe Sex Treatment.

The relationship between the nonspecific factors of therapeutic alliance and motivation with outcome has been demonstrated across treatment modalities, and specifically in the treatment of alcohol dependence. The present study was designed to evaluate the association of these factors with treatment outcome in a preliminary sample of problem drinking men-who-have-sex-with-men and engage in unsafe sex. It hypothesized a positive association between therapeutic alliance and percentage of session attendance; and positive associations between three self reported motivational statements for alcohol, unsafe sex, and session attendance. Fifty-five participants enrolled in a clinical trial to reduce alcohol intake and unsafe sex were included in the study. Contrary to expectations, a positive association was not found between alliance and outcome. Among the motivational statements, only the readiness to change for alcohol was correlated with outcome. The stability of self efficacy and risk assessment across alcohol and sexual behaviors may suggest that these motivational statements represent a more stable trait than can generalize across behaviors. Findings are consistent with the notion that change in one's self efficacy or risk assessment for one behavior may result in changes in motivation for another behavior. (Author/JDM) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. Nonspecific factors 1 Running Head: NONSPECIFIC FACTORS IN TREATMENT Nonspecific factors in alcohol and unsafe sex treatment John J. Cecero, Kursten B. Hensl, Paul M. Russo Fordham University Please address correspondence to: John J. Cecero, Ph.D. Department of Psychology Fordham University 113 W. 60th Street New York, N.Y. 10023 2 BEST COPY AVAILABLE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. O Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY
Tissue specific expression of alternative splice forms of human cyclic nucleotide gated channel subunit CNGA3.

PURPOSE The cyclic nucleotide gated cation channel subunit, CNGA3, (also known as the cone alpha CNG subunit), plays a vital role in signal transduction of human cone cells. Owing to its well established role in vision, the human CNGA3 isoform studied thus far was cloned from retinal tissue. However, non-human homologs of CNGA3 have been cloned from a variety of other tissues including kidney, heart, pineal gland, adrenal gland and testes. Among these, alternative splice forms of CNGA3 have been identified. The objective of this study was to explore alternative splice forms of human CNGA3 and determine their distribution among various human tissues. METHODS RT-PCR was used to amplify full length open reading frames of CNGA3 from human testes RNA and to detect and distinguish among splice forms in 23 tissues. DNA sequencing was used to characterize full length splice forms and to confirm the identity of RT-PCR products from a number of tissues. RESULTS Two new full length alternatively spliced forms of hCNGA3 (referred to as Variant 2 and 3) were isolated. These splice variants are different from the cone hCNGA3 (Variant 1) in that they lack exon 5. In addition, they differ from each other in that Variant 3 contains an extra exon that originates from the intron preceding exon 4. We demonstrate that CNGA3 transcripts are detectable in all 23 human tissues examined. In all tissues, except retina, Variant 2 specific PCR products had the brightest band intensity. In retina, the band from Variant 1 (containing exon 5) was most intense. In fact, among all tissues examined, Variant 1 can only be detected strongly in the retina. CONCLUSIONS The extensive distribution of CNGA3 and the tissue specific expression of alternative splice forms indicate widespread and diverse roles for CNGA3. The unique expression of Variant 1 in the retina implies a significance to the amino acids encoded by exon 5 that may be necessary for the function of CNGA3 in human cone cells.
Comparison of optimization methods for retrofit placement in a non-code conforming reinforce-concrete structure

This paper discusses the suitability of two optimization methods for use in seismic retrofit location selection. The structure for analysis is modelled after a seven story RC structure in California, USA, built according to 1964 Los Angeles City Building Code. The OpenSees parallel computing software package is used to model the dynamic behaviour of a test structure. Past earthquake records are scaled to a seismic hazard level appropriate for the site. MATLAB is used to interface the optimization methods with the model. The optimization methods applied and compared are genetic algorithm and sequential search method. The objective function used accounts for performance-based principles, measured with inter-story drift, and cost, measured by the number of retrofits applied. Results of the optimization methods are compared and discussed with regard to the quality of the solution and the number of simulations required.
The Tyrosine Kinase Activity of the Chicken Insulin Receptor Is Similar to That of the Human Insulin Receptor

The tyrosine kinase activity of a chimeric insulin receptor composed of the extracellular domain of the human insulin receptor (IR) and the intracellular domain of the chicken IR was compared with wild-type human IR. The degrees of autophosphorylation, phosphorylation of IRS-1, and in vitro phosphorylation of an exogenous substrate after stimulation by human insulin were similar to that seen with the human IR. We conclude that the insulin resistance of chickens is not attributable to a lower level of intrinsic tyrosine kinase activity of IR.
Efficient search engine measurements

We address the problem of measuring global quality met-rics of search engines, like corpus size, index freshness, anddensity of duplicates in the corpus. The recently proposedestimators for such metrics [2, 6] suffer from significant biasand/or poor performance, due to inaccurate approximationof the so called . document degrees.We present two new estimators that are able to overcomethe bias introduced by approximate degrees. Our estimatorsare based on a careful implementation of an approximateimportance sampling procedure. Comprehensive theoreti-cal and empirical analysis of the estimators demonstratesthat they have essentially no bias even in situations wheredocument degrees are poorly approximated.Building on an idea from [6], we discuss Rao Blackwelliza-tion as a generic method for reducing variance in searchengine estimators. We show that Rao-Blackwellizing ourestimators results in significant performance improvements,while not compromising accuracy.
Speech enhancement based on a perceptual modification of wiener filtering

A speech denoising technique based on subband noise estimation and a perceptual modification of Wiener filtering is proposed. The noisy speech is first decomposed into critical band signals by an auditory filterbank and the denoising is carried out on the subband signals. The time varying subband noise variance required for denoising is estimated by tracking the minimum variance of the subband noisy signal. Auditory masking is applied to calculate the optimum denoising gain using a Wiener filtering approach to minimize the perceived speech distortion. This denoising technique is suitable for coloured and nonstationary noise environments. It gives natural sounding speech with a very low level of musical noise.
Two Novel Missense Mutations in Nonketotic Hyperglycinemia

Nonketotic hyperglycinemia (OMIM no. 605899) is an autosomal recessively inherited glycine encephalopathy, caused by a deficiency in the mitochondrial glycine cleavage system. Here we report 2 neonates who were admitted to the hospital with complaints of respiratory failure and myoclonic seizures with an elevated cerebrospinal fluid/plasma glycine ratio and diagnosed as nonketotic hyperglycinemia. We report these cases as 2 novel homozygous mutations; a missense mutation c.593A>T (p.D198 V) in the glycine decarboxylase gene and a splicing mutation c.339G>A (Q113Q) in the aminomethyltransferase gene were detected. We would like to emphasize the genetic difference of our region in inherited metabolic diseases once again.
A Viable Alternative to Resorting to Statistical Tables

It is shown in this article that, given the moments of a distribution, any percentage point can be accurately determined from an approximation of the corresponding density function in terms of the product of an appropriate baseline density and a polynomial adjustment. This approach, which is based on a moment-matching technique, is not only conceptually simple but easy to implement. As illustrated by several applications, the percentiles so obtained are in excellent agreement with the tabulated values. Whereas statistical tables, if at all available or accessible, can hardly ever cover all the potentially useful combinations of the parameters associated with a random quantity of interest, the proposed methodology has no such limitation.