Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Arrhythmogenic Right Ventricular Dysplasia/Cardiomyopathy: Pathogenic Desmosome Mutations in Index-Patients Predict Outcome of Family Screening Dutch Arrhythmogenic Right Ventricular Dysplasia/Cardiomyopathy Genotype-Phenotype Follow-Up Study

Background— Arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia/cardiomyopathy (ARVD/C) is an autosomal dominant inherited disease with incomplete penetrance and variable expression. Causative mutations in genes encoding 5 desmosomal proteins are found in ≈50% of ARVD/C index patients. Previous genotype-phenotype relation studies involved mainly overt ARVD/C index patients, so follow-up data on relatives are scarce. Methods and Results— One hundred forty-nine ARVD/C index patients (111 male patients; age, 49±13 years) according to 2010 Task Force criteria and 302 relatives from 93 families (282 asymptomatic; 135 male patients; age, 44±13 years) were clinically and genetically characterized. DNA analysis comprised sequencing of plakophilin-2 (PKP2), desmocollin-2, desmoglein-2, desmoplakin, and plakoglobin and multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification to identify large deletions in PKP2. Pathogenic mutations were found in 87 index patients (58%), mainly truncating PKP2 mutations, including 3 cases with multiple mutations. Multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification revealed 3 PKP2 exon deletions. ARVD/C was diagnosed in 31% of initially asymptomatic mutation-carrying relatives and 5% of initially asymptomatic relatives of index patients without mutation. Prolonged terminal activation duration was observed more than negative T waves in V1 to V3, especially in mutation-carrying relatives <20 years of age. In 45% of screened families, ≥1 affected relatives were identified (90% with mutations). Conclusions— Pathogenic desmosomal gene mutations, mainly truncating PKP2 mutations, underlie ARVD/C in the majority (58%) of Dutch index patients and even 90% of familial cases. Additional multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification analysis contributed to discovering pathogenic mutations underlying ARVD/C. Discovering pathogenic mutations in index patients enables those relatives who have a 6-fold increased risk of ARVD/C diagnosis to be identified. Prolonged terminal activation duration seems to be a first sign of ARVD/C in young asymptomatic relatives.
An investigation of speechreading in profoundly congenitally deaf British adults

Speechreading is the major route through which deaf people access the spoken language of the society in which they live. This thesis investigated speechreading and its correlates in a group of profoundly congenitally deaf British adults, and in a control group of hearing adults. For this purpose, the Test of Adult Speechreading (TAS) was developed. The TAS was designed to be sensitive to the perceptual abilities that underlie speechreading at varying linguistic levels, and to be appropriate, therefore, for use with d/Deaf as well as hearing individuals. The vocabulary and syntax used were selected to be familiar to Deaf adults, and the response mode, using picture choices only, made no demands on written or expressive spoken English. This new test was administered silently to groups of congenitally deaf and hearing adults, with a battery of visual, cognitive and language tasks. The deaf participants differed in their language and educational backgrounds, but all had hearing losses over 90dB. They significantly outperformed the hearing group on the TAS, even when only closely matched pairs of participants were included in the analyses. Adults who are deaf can speechread better than those who are hearing. Multiple factors impact on an individual’s speechreading abilities, and no single factor in isolation results in good speechreading skills. In addition to hearing status, other factors were identified through group comparisons, correlation and regression analyses, cluster analyses and multiple case studies, as being potentially necessary (although not sufficient) for skilled speechreading. These were lexical knowledge, the ability to visually identify sentence focus, and verbal working memory capacity. A range of further factors facilitated skilled speechreading, including hearing aid use, the use of speech at home during childhood, sensitivity to visual motion, personality (risk-taking & impulsiveness), and reading age. It seems there are many ways to become a skilled speechreader.
A Hierarchical Bayesian Model of Chords, Pitches, and Spectrograms for Multipitch Analysis

This paper presents a statistical multipitch analyzer that can simultaneously estimate pitches and chords (typical pitch combinations) from music audio signals in an unsupervised manner. A popular approach to multipitch analysis is to perform nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) for estimating the temporal activations of semitone-level pitches and then execute thresholding for making a piano-roll representation. The major problems of this cascading approach are that an optimal threshold is hard to determine for each musical piece and that musically inappropriate pitch combinations are allowed to appear. To solve these problems, we propose a probabilistic generative model that fuses an acoustic model (NMF) for a music spectrogram with a language model (hidden Markov model; HMM) for pitch locations in a hierarchical Bayesian manner. More speciﬁcally, binary variables indicating the existences of pitches are introduced into the framework of NMF. The latent grammatical structures of those variables are regulated by an HMM that encodes chord progressions and pitch co-occurrences (chord components). Given a music spectro-gram, all the latent variables (pitches and chords) are estimated jointly by using Gibbs sampling. The experimental results showed the great potential of the proposed method for uniﬁed music transcription and grammar induction.
The association between sexual satisfaction and body image in women.

INTRODUCTION Although sexual functioning has been linked to sexual satisfaction, it only partially explains the degree to which women report being sexually satisfied. Other factors include quality of life, relational variables, and individual factors such as body image. Of the few studies that have investigated the link between body image and sexual satisfaction, most have considered body image to be a single construct and have shown mixed results. AIM The present study assessed multiple body image variables in order to better understand which aspects of body image influence multiple domains of sexual satisfaction, including sexual communication, compatibility, contentment, personal concern, and relational concern in a community sample of women. METHODS Women between the ages of 18 and 49 years in sexual relationships (N = 154) participated in an Internet survey that assessed sexual functioning, five domains of sexual satisfaction, and several body image variables. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Body image variables included the sexual attractiveness, weight concern, and physical condition subscales of the Body Esteem Scale, the appearance-based subscale of the Cognitive Distractions During Sexual Activity Scale, and body mass index. Total score of the Sexual Satisfaction Scale for Women was the main outcome measure. Sexual functioning was measured by a modified Female Sexual Function Index. RESULTS Consistent with expectations, correlations indicated significant positive relationships between sexual functioning, sexual satisfaction, and all body image variables. A multiple regression analysis revealed that sexual satisfaction was predicted by high body esteem and low frequency of appearance-based distracting thoughts during sexual activity, even after controlling for sexual functioning status. CONCLUSION Several aspects of body image, including weight concern, physical condition, sexual attractiveness, and thoughts about the body during sexual activity predict sexual satisfaction in women. The findings suggest that women who experience low sexual satisfaction may benefit from treatments that target these specific aspects of body image.
Using Traditional and Paradoxical Imagery Interventions with Reactant Intramural Athletes

This study explored the moderating effect of psychological reactance on the success of traditional and paradoxical mental imagery treatments that were aimed at reducing anxiety in athletes. Intramural college basketball players (N = 73) were recruited through advertisements for a free-throw contest, and their anxiety and free-throw performance were measured following treatment in one of three groups: confidence imagery, paradoxical imagery, or control. As predicted, in the paradoxical condition, high-reactant athletes reported having significantly lower somatic state anxiety and significantly higher state self-confidence than did low-reactant athletes. In contrast, high- and low-reactant athletes did not differ in their anxiety scores in both the confidence imagery and control conditions. Results suggested that reactance does moderate the effect of the success of traditional and paradoxical imagery treatments for reducing athletes’ anxiety.
A peri‐operative statin update for non‐cardiac surgery. Part I: The effects of statin therapy on atherosclerotic disease and lessons learnt from statin therapy in medical (non‐surgical) patients

The utility of peri‐operative statin therapy is currently considered to be inconclusive. To provide a platform for more meaningful peri‐operative statin literature in the future, this is the first of two review articles evaluating peri‐operative statin therapy. This review examines the predictors of cardiovascular outcome and therapeutic targets which are established in medical (non‐surgical) patients. In patients with stable coronary artery disease at least 4–6 weeks of standard statin therapy are required to realise most of the beneficial cellular and metabolic effects of statin therapy. Low‐density lipoprotein‐cholesterol reduction is associated with improved survival in these patients. In comparison, patients who sustain an acute coronary event require high‐dose statin therapy probably initiated within 24 h with a therapeutic target of C‐reactive protein reduction. Withdrawal of statin therapy results in a rapid return to endothelial dysfunction and amplification of the inflammatory process, which may increase cardiovascular risk.
Cooperative Collision Avoidance at Intersections: Algorithms and Experiments

In this paper, we leverage vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication technology to implement computationally efficient decentralized algorithms for two-vehicle cooperative collision avoidance at intersections. Our algorithms employ formal control theoretic methods to guarantee a collision-free (safe) system, whereas overrides are only applied when necessary to prevent a crash. Model uncertainty and communication delays are explicitly accounted for by the model and by the state estimation algorithm. The main contribution of this work is to provide an experimental validation of our method on two instrumented vehicles engaged in an intersection collision avoidance scenario in a test track.
Enhancing effects of indirubin on the arsenic disulfide-induced apoptosis of human diffuse large B-cell lymphoma cells

The aim of the present study was to investigate the indirubin-enhanced effects of arsenic disulfide (As2S2) on the proliferation and apoptosis of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) cells in order to identify an optimum combination therapy. The human DLBCL cells, LY1 and LY8, were treated with different concentrations of indirubin for 24, 48 and 72 h. Next, the cells were treated with 10 μM As2S2 or a combination of 10 μM As2S2 and 20 μM indirubin for 48 h. Cell proliferation inhibition was detected using cell counting kit-8 and cell apoptosis was determined using flow cytometry. The expression levels of Bcl-2, Bcl-2-associated X protein (Bax) and caspase-3 were analyzed by quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) and western blotting. The DLBCL cell viability exhibited no significant changes at 24, 48 or 72 h with increasing indirubin concentration. In addition, the apoptotic rates of the LY1 and LY8 cells demonstrated no noticeable effects at 48 h with increasing indirubin concentration. Following treatment with the combination of indirubin and As2S2, the inhibitory and apoptotic rates of the cells were notably increased compared with those of the As2S2-treated group. The qPCR results revealed that indirubin alone had no enhancing effect upon the Bax/Bcl-2 mRNA expression ratio and caspase-3 mRNA expression. Western blot analysis revealed that indirubin alone had an enhancing effect upon the Bax/Bcl-2 protein ratio and procaspase-3 protein expression. In addition, the results demonstrated that the 21-KDa Bax protein was proteolytically cleaved into an 18-KDa Bax in the DLBCL cells treated with the combination of indirubin and As2S2. Indirubin alone did not inhibit proliferation or induce the apoptosis of the LY1 and LY8 cells. However, the combination of indirubin and As2S2 yielded enhancing effects. Therefore, the results of the present study demonstrated that with regard to antitumor activities, As2S2 served as the principal drug, whereas indirubin served as the adjuvant drug. The enhancing effect was due, in part, to the induction of the mitochondrial apoptotic pathway, which involves the cleavage of Bax.
Event Mining over Distributed Text Streams

This research presents a new set of techniques to deal with event mining from different text sources, a complex set of NLP tasks which aim to extract events of interest and their components including authors, targets, locations, and event categories. Our focus is on distributed text streams, such as tweets from different news agencies, in order to accurately retrieve events and its components by combining such sources in different ways using text stream mining. Therefore this research project aims to fill the gap between batch event mining, text stream mining and distributed data mining which have been used separately to address related learning tasks. We propose a multi-task and multi-stream mining approach to combine information from multiple text streams to accurately extract and categorise events under the assumptions of stream mining. Our approach also combines ontology matching to boost accuracy under imbalanced distributions. In addition, we plan to address two relatively unexplored event mining tasks: event coreference and event synthesis. Preliminary results show the appropriateness of our proposal, which is giving an increase of around 20% on macro prequential metrics for the event classification task.
Cohort Differences in Perceptions of Helpful Counselor Characteristics

The present study examined age cohort differences in older and younger adults as they relate to perceptions of helpful counselor characteristics. The present study also assessed whether previous help-seeking behavior influences perceptions of what counselor characteristics would be helpful. The social influence model is used as basis for predictions. The first research hypothesis for the present study was that there would be an age by cohort interaction in perceptions of helpful counselor characteristics at both Time 1 (1991) and Time 2 (2001). The second research hypothesis was that there would be a main effect for cohort, with more recently born cohorts preferring more interpersonal counselor characteristics. The third research hypothesis was that there would be a main effect for age in endorsement of the social influence model. The fourth research hypothesis was that there would be a significant difference between the perceptions of those individuals who had previously sought help from a mental health professional and those individuals who had not sought help, regardless of age and cohort. A revised Adjective Check List (Gough, 1965; Gough & Heilbrum, 1983) was used to assess perceptions of helpful counselor characteristics. Chi-square analyses, MANOVA/supplementary ANOVAs, and exploratory factor analyses were used to test the research hypotheses. The first and second research hypotheses were supported. The third research hypothesis was not supported. The fourth research hypothesis was supported for Time 1, but not for Time 2. Limitations of the present study and implications of this research are discussed.
The Global Power of Additional Queries to Random Oracles

It is shown that, for every k≥0 and every fixed algorithmically random language B, there is a language that is polynomialtime, truth-table reducible in k+1 queries to B but not truth-table reducible in k queries in any amount of time to any algorithmically random language C. In particular, this yields the separation Pk-tt(RAND) ⫋ P(k+1)-tt(RAND), where RAND is the set of all algorithmically random languages.
Réutilisation d'un corpus pour une nouvelle analyse des réseaux sociaux grâce à l'adaptation de l'outil KSV

Dans le champ de l'analyse des interactions en situation d'apprentissage collaboratif en ligne, nous revisitons un corpus connu et accessible pour en reprendre l'analyse avec un outil qui offre de nouvelles dimensions d'exploration : l'intensite et le temps. Le cadre d'analyse est ici celui des reseaux sociaux. Cette nouvelle exploration des donnees nous permet de proposer de nouveaux indicateurs pour comparer la cohesion des groupes au regard de l'intensite de communication. Cette rencontre entre un corpus et un outil a aussi permis d'etendre les capacites de traitement et de visualisation de l'outil KSV, qui lui offrent de nouvelles perspectives.
MODERN TOTEMS AND TRIBALISM: THE WORSHIPING OF BRANDS IN ASIA

The present paper is going to explore what is nowadays a brand and a logo in the far Asian cultural environment, approaching it both socially and economically, from a socio-psychological and commercial point of view. Moving throughout some very physioeconomical angle and narrowing on consumer’s behavior toward the brands’ values, it proofs how tribes pop up around life styles and logos (Hitmann & Ward 2007; Anderson 1990). The motivation of present paper is the huge importance related to brand and modern (urban) tribalism, especially in the far Asiatic environment, observing the phenomena both like social (Bucci, Cova, Kozinets 2007; Cova 2003) and economical (Badot, Bucci, Cova 2003; Temporal 2012). The paper is analyzing Brand like a catalyzer of different perceptions of syncretized together (Hitman & Ward 2007; Scaini 2012; Fabris 2003, 2008; Conley 2009). To prove the actual importance of behavior of consumer in the Asiatic environments, the paper offers some qualitative result based on a solid limited quantitative research. Offering a theoretical approach (proofed by evidences gathered) about the activities of brands on eastern Asian markets, it states that now brands behave like totemic relics of deity (Conley 2009; Hebdige 198110), that is really the center of the new Asiatic worship replacing disrupted traditional values and replacing with new iconic symbols of social membership (Diamond 2005; Anderson 1990, Mishima 200815).
Biomechanics and load resistance of small-diameter and mini dental implants: a review of literature

Abstract In recent years, the application of small-diameter and mini dental implants to support removable and fixed prosthesis has dramatically increased. However, the success of these implants under functional biting forces and the reaction of the bone around them need to be analyzed. This review was aimed to present studies that deal with the fatigue life of small-diameter and mini dental implants under normal biting force, and their survival rate. The numerical and experimental studies concluded that an increase in the risk of bone damage or implant failure may be assumed in critical clinical situations and implants with <3 mm diameter have a risk of fracture in clinical practice. The survival rate of the small-diameter and mini dental implants over 5 years was 98.3–99.4%.
Reconfiguration and transient recovery in state machine architectures

We consider an architecture for ultra-dependable operation based on synchronized state machine replication, extended to provide transient recovery and reconfiguration in the presence of arbitrary faults. The architecture allows processors suspected of being faulty to be placed on "probation. " Processors in this status cannot disrupt other processors, but those that are nonfaulty or recovering from transient faults are able to remain synchronized with the other processors and with each other, can participate in interactively consistent exchange of data (i.e., Byzantine agreement), and can restore damaged state data by loading majority-voted copies from other processors. The processors that are not on probation are able to coordinate membership of their group and to take processors on and off probation. These properties are achieved even if all the processors on probation and some of the others exhibit Byzantine faults, provided a majority of all processors are nonfaulty. Key elements of the architecture are modified treatments for the problems of interactive consistency, clock synchronization, and group membership. Classical algorithms for these problems that tolerate t Byzantine faults among n processors are extended to tolerate t+p faults among n+p processors, partitioned into n "core members" and p "probationers," provided no more than t faults occur among the core members.
Immunopathology and cytokine responses in commercial broiler chickens with gangrenous dermatitis

Gangrenous dermatitis (GD) is an emerging disease of increasing economic importance in poultry resulting from infection by Clostridium septicum and Clostridium perfringens type A. Lack of a reproducible disease model has been a major obstacle in understanding the immunopathology of GD. To gain better understanding of host–pathogen interactions in GD infection, we evaluated various immune parameters in two groups of birds from a recent commercial outbreak of GD, the first showing typical disease signs and pathological lesions (GD-like birds) and the second lacking clinical signs (GD-free birds). Our results revealed that GD-like birds showed: reduced T-cell and B-cell mitogen-stimulated lymphoproliferation; higher levels of serum nitric oxide and α-1-acid glycoprotein; greater numbers of K55+, K1+, CD8+, and MHC class II+ intradermal lymphocytes, and increased K55+, K1+, CD8+, TCR1+, TCR2+, Bu1+, and MHC class II+ intestinal intraepithelial lymphocytes; and increased levels of mRNAs encoding proinflammatory cytokines and chemokines in skin compared with GD-free chickens. These results provide the first evidence of altered systemic and local (skin and intestine) immune responses in GD pathogenesis in chickens.
A genetic model for pricing in cloud computing markets

Cloud Computing markets arise as an efficient way to allocate resources for the execution of tasks and services within a set of geographically dispersed providers from different organisations. Client applications and service providers meet in a market and negotiate for the sales of services by means of the signature of a Service Level Agreement. Depending on the status of the demand, the provider is able to offer higher or lower prices for maximising its profit. It is difficult to establish a profitable pricing function in competitive markets, because there are several factors that can influence in the prices. This paper deals with the problem of offering competitive prices in the negotiation of services in Cloud Computing markets. A Genetic Algorithms approach is proposed, in which a naive pricing function evolves to a pricing function that offers suitable prices in function of the system status. Its results are compared with other pricing strategies, demonstrating its validity.