Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Incidence and late prognosis of cushing's syndrome: a population-based study.

The main purpose was to assess the incidence and late outcome of Cushing's syndrome, particularly in Cushing's disease. Information for all patients diagnosed with Cushing's syndrome during an 11-yr period in Denmark was retrieved. The incidence was 1.2-1.7/million.yr (Cushing's disease), 0.6/million.yr (adrenal adenoma) and 0.2/million.yr (adrenal carcinoma). Other types of Cushing's syndrome were rare. In 139 patients with nonmalignant disease, 11.1% had died during follow-up (median, 8.1 yr; range, 3.1-14.0), yielding a standard mortality ratio (SMR) of 3.68 [95% confidence interval (CI), 2.34-5.33]. The SMR was partly attributable to an increased mortality within the first year after diagnosis. Eight patients died before treatment could be undertaken. The prognosis in patients with malignant disease was very poor. Patients in whom more than 5 yr had elapsed since initial surgery were studied separately, including a questionnaire on their perceived quality of health. In 45 patients with Cushing's disease who had been cured through transsphenoidal neurosurgery, only 1 had died (SMR, 0.31; CI, 0.01-1.72) compared with 6 of 20 patients with persistent hypercortisolism after initial neurosurgery (SMR, 5.06; CI, 1.86-11.0). In patients with adrenal adenoma, SMR was 3.95 (CI, 0.81-11.5). The perceived quality of health was significantly impaired only in patients with Cushing's disease and appeared independent of disease control or presence of hypopituitarism. It is concluded that 1) Cushing's syndrome is rare and is associated with increased mortality, in patients with no concurrent malignancy also; 2) the excess mortality was mainly observed during the first year of disease; and 3) the impaired quality of health in long-term survivors of Cushing's disease is not fully explained.
Distributed termination detection of loosely synchronized computations

An efficient algorithm for termination detection of loosely synchronized computations is proposed. The proposed algorithm is fully symmetric in that all processes are syntactically identical and can detect global termination simultaneously. It is better in terms of the delay for termination detection than other related algorithms, and is optimal in a number of regular structures. For the hypercube structure of any dimension, the proposed algorithm takes two iteration steps to detect termination after global termination has occurred. In the chain, ring, mesh and torus structures, the improvement is about 50% over its principal competitor. The proposed algorithm requires that the graph be edge-colored and that the color-diameter be known to the processes in advance. <<ETX>>
Positive, Negative, or Neutral: Learning an Expanded Opinion Lexicon from Emoticon-Annotated Tweets

We present a supervised framework for expanding an opinion lexicon for tweets. The lexicon contains part-of-speech (POS) disambiguated entries with a three-dimensional probability distribution for positive, negative, and neutral polarities. To obtain this distribution using machine learning, we propose word-level attributes based on POS tags and information calculated from streams of emoticon-annotated tweets. Our experimental results show that our method outperforms the three-dimensional word-level polarity classification performance obtained by semantic orientation, a state-of-the-art measure for establishing world-level sentiment.
One-year outcomes of a drug abuse prevention program for older teens and emerging adults: evaluating a motivational interviewing booster component.

OBJECTIVE The present study tested the efficacy of motivational interviewing-based booster sessions for Project Toward No Drug Abuse (TND), a 12-session school-based curriculum targeting youth at risk for drug abuse. In addition, generalization of effects to risky sexual behavior was assessed. The 1-year outcomes evaluation of the project is presented. METHOD A total of 24 schools were randomized to one of three conditions: standard care control (SCC), TND classroom program only (TND-only), and TND plus motivational interviewing booster (TND + MI). A total of 1186 participants completed baseline and 1-year follow-up surveys. Following the classroom program, youth in the TND + MI condition received up to 3 sessions of MI in person or by telephone. Effects were examined on 30-day cigarette, alcohol, marijuana, and hard drug use, as well as measures of risky sexual behavior (number of sex partners, condom use, having sex while using drugs or alcohol). RESULTS Collapsed across the 2 program conditions, results showed significant reductions in alcohol use, hard drug use, and cigarette smoking relative to controls. These effects held for an overall substance use index. The MI booster component failed to achieve significant incremental effects above and beyond the TND classroom program. No effects were found on risky sexual behavior. CONCLUSIONS While the program effects of previous studies were replicated, the study failed to demonstrate that an adequately implemented MI booster was of incremental value at 1-year follow-up.
Mild hypothermia combined with a scaffold of NgR-silenced neural stem cells/Schwann cells to treat spinal cord injury

Because the inhibition of Nogo proteins can promote neurite growth and nerve cell differentiation, a cell-scaffold complex seeded with Nogo receptor (NgR)-silenced neural stem cells and Schwann cells may be able to improve the microenvironment for spinal cord injury repair. Previous studies have found that mild hypothermia helps to attenuate secondary damage in the spinal cord and exerts a neuroprotective effect. Here, we constructed a cell-scaffold complex consisting of a poly(D,L-lactide-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) scaffold seeded with NgR-silenced neural stem cells and Schwann cells, and determined the effects of mild hypothermia combined with the cell-scaffold complexes on the spinal cord hemi-transection injury in the T9 segment in rats. Compared with the PLGA group and the NgR-silencing cells + PLGA group, hindlimb motor function and nerve electrophysiological function were clearly improved, pathological changes in the injured spinal cord were attenuated, and the number of surviving cells and nerve fibers were increased in the group treated with the NgR-silenced cell scaffold + mild hypothermia at 34°C for 6 hours. Furthermore, fewer pathological changes to the injured spinal cord and more surviving cells and nerve fibers were found after mild hypothermia therapy than in injuries not treated with mild hypothermia. These experimental results indicate that mild hypothermia combined with NgR gene-silenced cells in a PLGA scaffold may be an effective therapy for treating spinal cord injury.
Chapter 1 Hierarchical phrase based Machine Translation : Literature survey

Machine Translation has its roots in cold war which led Russian to English translation. But even after war was over, US government continued its effort in this field. But the research went in vain, when Automatic Language Processing Advisory Committee (ALPAC) report (1966) exposed that the MT project had hardly fulfilled the promises it made ten years back. In the 80s, this field again started to blossom when the computing power of machines had increased. This period was marked by the introduction of very exciting statistical models for MT.
Natural Polymorphisms in Human APOBEC3H and HIV-1 Vif Combine in Primary T Lymphocytes to Affect Viral G-to-A Mutation Levels and Infectivity

The Vif protein of HIV-1 allows virus replication by degrading several members of the host-encoded APOBEC3 family of DNA cytosine deaminases. Polymorphisms in both host APOBEC3 genes and the viral vif gene have the potential to impact the extent of virus replication among individuals. The most genetically diverse of the seven human APOBEC3 genes is APOBEC3H with seven known haplotypes. Overexpression studies have shown that a subset of these variants express stable and active proteins, whereas the others encode proteins with a short half-life and little, if any, antiviral activity. We demonstrate that these stable/unstable phenotypes are an intrinsic property of endogenous APOBEC3H proteins in primary CD4+ T lymphocytes and confer differential resistance to HIV-1 infection in a manner that depends on natural variation in the Vif protein of the infecting virus. HIV-1 with a Vif protein hypo-functional for APOBEC3H degradation, yet fully able to counteract APOBEC3D, APOBEC3F, and APOBEC3G, was susceptible to restriction and hypermutation in stable APOBEC3H expressing lymphocytes, but not in unstable APOBEC3H expressing lymphocytes. In contrast, HIV-1 with hyper-functional Vif counteracted stable APOBEC3H proteins as well as all other endogenous APOBEC3s and replicated to high levels. We also found that APOBEC3H protein levels are induced over 10-fold by infection. Finally, we found that the global distribution of stable/unstable APOBEC3H haplotypes correlates with the distribution a critical hyper/hypo-functional Vif amino acid residue. These data combine to strongly suggest that stable APOBEC3H haplotypes present as in vivo barriers to HIV-1 replication, that Vif is capable of adapting to these restrictive pressures, and that an evolutionary equilibrium has yet to be reached.
MORAL CONCEPTS: SUBSTANCE AND SENTIMENT

Decent people heed morality: They don't kill or steal, or hit people to see them wince. They help others in need. We learn all this young-though even then we, know that life isn't as plain as the maxims. Morality, though, is only part of life, and within its constraints, the moral person has a range of choice. He can decide what he wants in life and how best to pursue it. Moral philosophers widely accept this picture. They see morality as part of the best life, but not all of it by far. Morality may be specially authoritative, overriding in the sphere where it does issue commands-but still, the sphere is limited. This narrow view of morality is not universal: some understand morality as taking in all of how to live.1 But many reject such moral totalitarianism, some with vehemence. To explain these widespread views, we have to say what morality is. What delineates moral precepts from other fine precepts for living? We can ask this as a question of substance: What is the nature of morality, and how does morality, narrowly taken, differ from the rest of living well? Analytic philosophers, though, would think there is a prior difficulty to solve: What does this question mean? What is a person saying if he calls one consideration moral and another not? In my book Wise Choices, Apt Feelings,2 I make a proposal for how to delineate morality. This paper is a partial defense of one part of my proposal. It confines itself to one set of moral concepts: moral right and wrong. Its aim is to develop one chief competitor to my own account of these concepts, and then say why to prefer mine. My criteria must be multiple: First, I want my proposal to fit pretty well our clear judgments of how our terms apply, and what ranges of statements employing those terms we can imagine people accepting. I want also, though, to develop concepts that are coherent, and I am looking for concepts that might be well worth keeping. These goals may compete, but my aim will be to reconcile them. I am exploring whether ordinary thought suggests important, coherent ways of thinking about life and human relations, and if so,
Social computing: an intersection of recommender systems, trust/reputation systems, and social networks

Computational applications now go beyond personal computing, facilitating collaboration and social interactions. Social computing is an area of information technology concerned with the intersection of human and social studies connected by computer networks. The primary goal of this article is to provide a brief survey of three popular social computing services: recommender systems, trust/reputation systems, and social networks. We approach these services from a data representation perspective and discuss two of their main challenges: network sparsity and coldstart problems. We also present a novel graph model, which provides an abstract taxonomy and a common data representation model for the three services. We are mainly motivated by the power of graph theory in data representation and analysis for social computing services. Through this model, we believe that it becomes clearer that data from different contexts can be related such that new solutions can be explored; thus, it may provide illumination for the aforementioned problems and stimulate new research.
Involvement of Fis protein in replication of the Escherichia coli chromosome

We report evidence indicating that Fis protein plays a role in initiation of replication at oriC in vivo. At high temperatures, fis null mutants form filamentous cells, show aberrant nucleoid segregation, and are unable to form single colonies. DNA synthesis is inhibited in these fis mutant strains following upshift to 44 degrees C. The pattern of DNA synthesis inhibition upon temperature upshift and the requirement for RNA synthesis, but not protein synthesis, for resumed DNA synthesis upon downshift to 32 degrees C indicate that synthesis is affected in the initiation phase. fis mutations act synergistically with gyrB alleles known to affect initiation. oriC-dependent plasmids are poorly established and maintained in fis mutant strains. Finally, purified Fis protein interacts in vitro with sites in oriC. These interactions could be involved in mediating the effect of Fis on DNA synthesis in vivo.
Managing telework: risks, fears and rules

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to serve as a reminder that all work arrangements, including the present case of distributed work, have their costs and benefits.Design/methodology/approach – In addition to a literature review, the paper presents concrete recommendations and guidelines for practicing managers about how to avoid pitfalls in distributed work arrangements and how to manage teleworkers.Findings – The diffusion of telework has been a slower process than anticipated, among other reasons because the most vital businesses are largely concentrated in the biggest growth centres. Growth centres can offer a diverse range of both jobs and amenities that outweigh the quiet and safety of rural areas. Apart from geographical realities and regional policy issues, another factor that has decisively contributed to the slow diffusion of telework is the absence of an established contractual framework and “culture” of teleworking.Originality/value – Telework has the best prospects of success if from the .
Identifying IT User Mindsets: Acceptance, Resistance and Ambivalence

Despite the progress that has been made in understanding acceptance and resistance, there remains a need to further investigate the nature of these core IS constructs. Our review and analysis of the literature on acceptance and resistance leads us to suggest that these are multidimensional constructs that are associated with a complex mix of behavioral manifestations. We argue that acceptance and resistance are mindsets comprising three dimensions: emotions, cognition, and attitudes, and that the related behaviors are manifestations of these individuals' mindset. User behaviors are positioned along two dimensions. The first one represents the mindset of the user and the other represents the compliance of user behavior with the IT usage policies. We use our framework as a foundation for proposing a typology of IT user behaviors that comprises five archetypes - engaged, resigned, deviant, dissident, and ambivalent. For each archetype, we derive a theoretical proposition.
Development of a Hybrid Model for Non-Equilibrium High-Energy Plasmas

Abstract : This paper summarizes the current effort at the Air Force Research Laboratory at Edwards AFB in developing a general hybrid model for the studies of multi-scale, non-equilibrium plasmas with high energy density. The software is being designed using Object-Oriented methods for maximal flexibility, portability and easy maintenance. The paper describes the general approach used in the model development, some of the problems to be solved, architecture and parallelization strategies, and some of the methods currently or being implemented. While still a work in progress, the software is rapidly building capabilities and will be applied in fundamental simulations of various plasma discharges.
Scalable Parallel Join for Huge Tables

The parallel join processing which combines tuples from two or more relational tables together in a parallel manner is becoming more and more important and imperative to be solved, since tables may be huge, especially in this big data era. A few algorithms have already been proposed based on the prevailing mapreduce paradigm, while most of them impose both high communication costs and synchronization costs. In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm for scalable parallel join processing for the column-wise stored data analyzing. To cater for the prevailing deployed Hadoop system, we adopt the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) as the file system across over a large set of machines. Tables are projected (i.e., vertical partition), segmented (i.e., horizontal partition), clustered and placed in a column-wise format over the distributed file system based on Gray Code. By effectively fetching the dedicated tuples from other tables on demand based on an optimized bloom filter strategy, each segment (i.e., partition) is capable in accomplishing the join processing individually with dramatically reduced communication cost, and consequently achieves the desired scalable parallelism. Tuples are transmitted in a demand driven manner across the network, rather than the hash-based movement in the mapreduce paradigm. Our extensive performance studies confirm the effectiveness and efficiency of our methods.
Costs of inpatient and emergency department care for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in an elderly Medicare population

Objective: Treatment in the hospital setting accounts for the largest portion of healthcare costs for COPD, but there is little information about components of hospital care that contribute most to these costs. The authors determined the costs and characteristics of COPD-related hospital-based healthcare in a Medicare population. Methods Using administrative data from 602 hospitals, 2008 costs of COPD-related care among Medicare beneficiaries age ≥65 years were calculated for emergency department (ED) visits, simple inpatient admissions and complex admissions (categorized as intubation/no intensive care, intensive care/no intubation, and intensive care/intubation) in a cross-sectional study. Rates of death at discharge and trends in costs, length of stay and readmission rates from 2005 to 2008 also were examined. Main results: There were 45,421 eligible healthcare encounters in 2008. Mean costs were $679 (SD, $399) for ED visits (n = 10,322), $7,544 ($8,049) for simple inpatient admissions (n = 25,560), and $21,098 ($46,160) for complex admissions (n = 2,441). Intensive care/intubation admissions (n = 460) had the highest costs ($45,607, SD $94,794) and greatest length of stay (16.3 days, SD 13.7); intubation/no ICU admissions had the highest inpatient mortality (42.1%). In 2008, 15.4% of patients with a COPD-related ED visit had a repeat ED visit and 15.5–16.5% of those with a COPD-related admission had a readmission within 60 days. From 2005 to 2008, costs of admissions involving intubation increased 10.4–23.5%. Study limitations include the absence of objective clinical data, including spirometry and smoking history, to validate administrative data and permit identification of disease severity. Conclusions: In this Medicare population, COPD exacerbations and related inpatient and emergency department care represented a substantial cost burden. Admissions involving intubation were associated with the highest costs, lengths of stay and inpatient mortality. This population needs to be managed and treated adequately in order to prevent these severe events.
Survey of 12 Strategies to Measure Teaching Effectiveness

Twelve potential sources of evidence to measure teaching effectiveness are critically reviewed: (a) student ratings, (b) peer ratings, (c) self-evaluation, (d) videos, (e) student interviews, (f) alumni ratings, (g) employer ratings, (h) administrator ratings, (i) teaching scholarship, (j) teaching awards, (k) learning outcome measures, and (l) teaching portfolios. National standards are presented to guide the definition and measurement of effective teaching. A unified conceptualization of teaching effectiveness is proposed to use multiple sources of evidence, such as student ratings, peer ratings, and self-evaluation, to provide an accurate and reliable base for formative and summative decisions. Multiple sources build on the strengths of all sources, while compensating for the weaknesses in any single source. This triangulation of sources is recommended in view of the complexity of measuring the act of teaching and the variety of direct and indirect sources and tools used to produce the evidence.
High-mobility group protein HMG-I localizes to G/Q- and C-bands of human and mouse chromosomes

Mammalian metaphase chromosomes can be identified by their characteristic banding pattern when stained with Giemsa dye after brief proteolytic digestion. The resulting G-bands are known to contain regions of DNA enriched in A/T residues and to be the principal location for the L1 (or Kpn 1) family of long interspersed repetitive sequences in human chromosomes. Here we report that antibodies raised against a highly purified and biochemically well characterized nonhistone "High-Mobility Group" protein, HMG-I, specifically localize this protein to the G-bands in mammalian metaphase chromosomes. In some preparations in which chromosomes are highly condensed, HMG-I appears to be located at the centromere and/or telomere regions of mammalian chromosomes as well. To our knowledge, this is the first well- characterized mammalian protein that localizes primarily to G-band regions of chromosomes.
Random waypoint mobility model based performance estimation of On-Demand routing protocols in MANET for CBR applications

A Mobile Ad-Hoc Network (MANET) is formed by a cluster of mobile nodes (hosts) and can be quickly deployed without any predetermined infrastructure. The network topology in MANET may keep changing arbitrarily. A routing protocol is used to discover routes between mobile hosts to facilitate communication inside the network with a minimum of overhead and bandwidth consumption. Various routing protocols have been proposed by researchers for mobile ad-hoc networks in the recent past. This paper presents performance evaluation and comparison of three different On-Demand routing protocols for Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks i.e. Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV), Dynamic Source Routing (DSR), and DYnamic MANET On-demand (DYMO) protocols in variable pause times. We have used random waypoint mobility model to design the network and performed simulations by using QualNet version 5.0 Simulator from Scalable Networks for CBR traffic in MANET. Performance of AODV, DSR and DYMO are evaluated based on Average end-to-end delay, Packet delivery ratio, Throughput and Average Jitter.