Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Increased cortisol in the cerebrospinal fluid of women with functional hypothalamic amenorrhea.

CONTEXT The proximate cause of functional hypothalamic amenorrhea (FHA) is reduced GnRH drive. The concomitant increase in circulating cortisol suggests that psychogenic stress plays an etiologic role, but others have argued for a strictly metabolic cause, such as undernutrition or excessive exercise. Indeed, our finding that the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) concentration of CRH was not elevated in FHA cast doubt about the extent of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal activation in FHA and, therefore, we wondered whether central cortisol levels were elevated. OBJECTIVE We tested the null hypothesis that CSF cortisol levels would be comparable in FHA and eumenorrheic women (EW). DESIGN The study is a cross-sectional comparison. SETTING The study was set in a general clinical research center at an academic medical center. PARTICIPANTS Fifteen women with FHA who were of normal body weight and 14 EW participated. INTERVENTION Blood samples were collected at 15-min intervals for 24 h, followed by procurement of 25 ml CSF. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Cortisol, cortisol-binding globulin (CBG), and SHBG levels in blood and CSF were the main outcome measures. RESULTS CSF cortisol concentrations were 30% greater when serum cortisol was 16% higher in FHA compared with EW. Circulating CBG, but not SHBG, was increased in FHA and, thus, the circulating free cortisol index was similar in FHA and EW. Because CBG and SHBG were nil in CSF, the increase in CSF cortisol in FHA was unbound. CONCLUSIONS The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis is activated in FHA. The maintenance of CRH drive despite increased CSF cortisol indicates resistance to cortisol feedback inhibition. The mechanisms mediating feedback resistance likely involve altered hippocampal corticosteroid reception and serotonergic and GABAergic neuromodulation.
Loyalty Theory Flashcards as a Design Tool in a Design Research Project: A Case Study of the Food Delivery App.

In design practice we can find numerous design tools in the form of cards. Their role is to bring an inspiration and innovation to the design process. This case study presents how the application of Loyalty Theory Flashcards facilitated incorporation of theory in design research project conducted for an online food-ordering app. We discuss different roles of cards at consecutive stages of design research project. The paper ends with a discussion on using existing cards vs. self-created cards.
Identification and characterization of an immunogenic outer membrane protein of Campylobacter jejuni

We cloned and expressed in Escherichia coli a gene encoding an 18-kDa outer membrane protein (Omp18) from Campylobacter jejuni ATCC 29428. The nucleotide sequence of the gene encoding Omp18 was determined, and an open reading frame of 165 amino acids was revealed. The amino acid sequence had the typical features of a leader sequence and a signal peptidase II cleavage site at the N-terminal part of Omp18. Moreover, the sequence had a high degree of similarity to the peptidoglycan-associated outer membrane lipoprotein P6 of Haemophilus influenzae and the peptidoglycan-associated lipoprotein PAL of E. coli. Southern blot analysis in which the cloned gene was used as a probe revealed genes similar to that encoding Omp18 in all species of the thermophilic group of campylobacters as well as Campylobacter sputorum. All campylobacters tested expressed a protein with a molecular mass identical to that of Omp18. The protein reacted immunologically with polyclonal antibodies directed against Omp18 from C. jejuni. PCR amplification of the gene encoding Omp18 with specific primers and subsequent restriction enzyme analysis of the amplified DNA fragments showed that the gene for Omp18 is highly conserved in C. jejuni strains isolated from humans, dogs, cats, calves, and chickens but is different in other Campylobacter species. In order to obtain pure recombinant Omp18 protein for serological assays, the cloned gene for Omp18 was genetically modified by replacing the signal sequence with a DNA segment encoding six adjacent histidine residues. Expression of this construct in E. coli allowed purification of the modified protein (Omp18-6xHis) by metal chelation chromatography. Sera from patients with past C. jejuni infection reacted positively with Omp18-6xHis, while sera from healthy blood donors showed no reaction with this antigen. Omp18, which is an outer membrane protein belonging to the family of PALs is well conserved in C. jejuni and is highly immunogenic. It is therefore a good candidate as an antigen for the serological diagnosis of past C. jejuni infections.
Analysis of Users' Health Knowledge Requirement and Health Perception in Senior Online Community Based on Web Text Mining

Purpose/Significance: In order to use the Internet to carry out accurate health education, it is essential to study the health knowledge requirement and health perception of netizens. Method/Process: Selecting 5,296 User-shared health knowledge text as a corpus in the "health, regimen, fitness" section of the Elderly Forum "Home for the Elderly". Applying the method of web text mining to carry out the data cleaning and natural language processing of the text in the corpus. TF-IDF keyword extraction algorithm is used to extract the keywords from each text. The Co-keywords network is established to present the structure, scale, and distribution of community content. Its characteristics are analyzed to reflect the current health knowledge requirement and health perception of users. Results: The senior online community user knowledge requirements can be divided into four types: the principles and methods of traditional Chinese medicine, lifestyle adjustments and changes, disease prevention and coping with aging, nutritive value and efficacy of the food. There are interlaced relationships between different types of knowledge requirement; the demand for health knowledge revealed by the user stays at the level of physical health. The mental health and social adaptability are the potential knowledge requirements. Keywords—online health community, web text mining, health knowledge requirement, health perception, senior
The Role of Teacher Quality in Retention and Hiring: Using Applications-to-Transfer to Uncover Preferences of Teachers and Schools

Many large urban school districts are rethinking their personnel management strategies, often giving increased control to schools in the hiring of teachers, reducing, for example, the importance of seniority. If school hiring authorities are able to make good decisions about whom to hire, these reforms have the potential to benefit schools and students. Prior research on teacher transfers uses career history data, identifying the school in which a teacher teaches in each year. When this data is used to see which teachers transfer, it is unclear the extent to which the patterns are driven by teacher preferences or school preferences, since the matching of teachers to schools is a two-sided choice. This study uses applications-to-transfer data to examine separately which teachers apply for transfer and which get hired and, in so doing, differentiates teacher from school preferences. Holding all else equal, we find that teachers with better pre-service qualifications (certification exam scores; college competitiveness) are more likely to apply for transfer, while teachers whose students demonstrate higher achievement growth are less likely. On the other hand, schools prefer to hire "higher quality" teachers across measures that signal quality. The results suggest not only that more effective teachers prefer to stay in their school, but that when given the opportunity schools are able to identify and hire the best candidates.
Principal Leadership for Developing and Sustaining Highly Successful Middle Level Schools

Throughout the nation there are numerous middle level schools that are meeting the requirements of standards-based reform, highstakes testing, and accountability while still maintaining their commitment to providing learning environments that are developmentally responsive to the needs of young adolescents. Many of these schools and the characteristics that make them successful have been identified by Lipsitz (1984), Jackson and Davis (2000), Wheelock (1998), Norton and Lewis (2000), Felner, Jackson, Kasak, Mulhall, Brand, and Flowers (1997), The National Forum (Schools to Watch, 2004a), and the National Association of Secondary School Principals (Valentine, Clark, Hackmann, & Petzko, in press). Over the years these schools, and others like them, have continued to demonstrate that developmental support and academic rigor are complementary in creating schools where young adolescents are successful learners (Clark & Clark, 2003; Mizell, 2002; Norton, 2000).
Absolute and relative pitch: Global versus local processing of chords

Absolute pitch (AP) is the ability to identify or produce notes without any reference note. An ongoing debate exists regarding the benefits or disadvantages of AP in processing music. One of the main issues in this context is whether the categorical perception of pitch in AP possessors may interfere in processing tasks requiring relative pitch (RP). Previous studies, focusing mainly on melodic and interval perception, have obtained inconsistent results. The aim of the present study was to examine the effect of AP and RP separately, using isolated chords. Seventy-three musicians were categorized into four groups of high and low AP and RP, and were tested on two tasks: identifying chord types (Task 1), and identifying a single note within a chord (Task 2). A main effect of RP on Task 1 and an interaction between AP and RP in reaction times were found. On Task 2 main effects of AP and RP, and an interaction were found, with highest performance in participants with both high AP and RP. Results suggest that AP and RP should be regarded as two different abilities, and that AP may slow down reaction times for tasks requiring global processing.
Dehydroepiandrosterone monotherapy in midlife-onset major and minor depression.

CONTEXT Alternative and over-the-counter medicines have become increasingly popular choices for many patients who prefer not to take traditional antidepressants. The adrenal androgen and neurosteroid dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) is available as over-the-counter hormonal therapy and previously has been reported to have antidepressant-like effects. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the efficacy of DHEA as a monotherapy treatment for midlife-onset depression. DESIGN A double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, crossover treatment study was performed from January 4, 1996, through August 31, 2002. Settings The National Institute of Mental Health Midlife Outpatient Clinic in the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center, Bethesda, Md. Patients Men (n = 23) and women (n = 23) aged 45 to 65 years with midlife-onset major or minor depression participated in this study. None of the subjects received concurrent antidepressant medications. Intervention Six weeks of DHEA therapy, 90 mg/d for 3 weeks and 450 mg/d for 3 weeks, and 6 weeks of placebo. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES The 17-Item Hamilton Depression Rating Scale and Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale. Additional measures included the Derogatis Interview for Sexual Functioning. Results were analyzed by means of repeated-measures analysis of variance and post hoc Bonferroni t tests. RESULTS Six weeks of DHEA administration was associated with a significant improvement in the 17-Item Hamilton Depression Rating Scale and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale ratings compared with both baseline (P<.01) and 6 weeks of placebo treatment (P<.01). A 50% or greater reduction in baseline Hamilton Depression Rating Scale scores was observed in 23 subjects after DHEA and in 13 subjects after placebo treatments. Six weeks of DHEA treatment also was associated with significant improvements in Derogatis Interview for Sexual Functioning scores relative to baseline and placebo conditions. CONCLUSION We find DHEA to be an effective treatment for midlife-onset major and minor depression.
A parallel block implementation of Level-3 BLAS for MIMD vector processors

We describe an implementation of Level-3 BLAS (Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms) based on the use of the matrix-matrix multiplication kernel (GEMM). Blocking techniques are used to express the BLAS in terms of operations involving triangular blocks and calls to GEMM. A principal advantage of this approach is that most manufacturers provide at least an efficient serial version of GEMM so that our implementation can capture a significant percentage of the computer performance. A parameter which controls the blocking allows an efficient exploitation of the memory hierarchy of the various target computers. Furthermore, this blocked version of Level-3 BLAS is naturally parallel. We present results on the ALLIANT FX/80, the CONVEX C220, the CRAY-2, and the IBM 3090/VF. For GEMM, we always use the manufacturer-supplied versions. For the operations dealing with triangular blocks, we use assembler or tuned Fortran (using loop-unrolling) codes, depending on the efficiency of the available libraries.
Doubly Decomposing Nonparametric Tensor Regression

Nonparametric extension of tensor regression is proposed. Nonlinearity in a high-dimensional tensor space is broken into simple local functions by incorporating low-rank tensor decomposition. Compared to naive nonparametric approaches, our formulation considerably improves the convergence rate of estimation while maintaining consistency with the same function class under specific conditions. To estimate local functions, we develop a Bayesian estimator with the Gaussian process prior. Experimental results show its theoretical properties and high performance in terms of predicting a summary statistic of a real complex network.
Nash equilibirum and the Legendre transform in optimal stopping games with one dimensional diffusions

We show that the value function of an optimal stopping game driven by a one-dimensional diusion can be characterised using the extension of the Legendre transform introduced in [19]. It is shown that under certain integrability conditions, a Nash equilibrium of the optimal stopping game can be derived from this extension of the Legendre transform. This result is an analytical complement to the results in [19] where the ‘duality’ between a concave biconjugate which is modied to remain below an upper barrier and a convex biconjugate which is modied to remain above a lower barrier is proven by appealing to the probabilistic result in [18]. The main contribution of this paper is to show that, for optimal stopping games driven by a one-dimensional diusion, the semiharmonic characterisation of the value function may be proven using only results from convex analysis.
Power Consumption Modeling and Characterization of the TI C6201

This new approach characterizes power dissipation on complex dsps. its processor model relies on an initial functional-level power analysis of the target processor together with a characterization that qualifies the more significant architectural and algorithmic parameters for power dissipation. these parameters come from a simple profiling of the assembly code. This functional model accounts for deeply pipelined, superscalar, and hierarchical memory architectures.
2-Hydroxymelatonin, a Predominant Hydroxylated Melatonin Metabolite in Plants, Shows Antitumor Activity against Human Colorectal Cancer Cells

2-Hydroxymelatonin is a predominant hydroxylated melatonin metabolite in plants. To investigate whether it has potent cytotoxic effects on colorectal cancer cells, four colorectal cancer cell lines, Caco2, HCT116, DLD1, and CT26, were treated with 2-hydroxymelatonin and melatonin. 2-Hydroxymelatonin had a much lower IC50 value than melatonin in the 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay. The cytotoxic effect of 2-hydroxymelatonin was much stronger than that of melatonin at high concentrations (1000 or 2000 μM) in HCT116, DLD1, and CT26 cells, but only at intermediate concentrations (250 or 500 μM) in Caco2 cells. The cytotoxicity of 2-hydroxymelatonin was induced through activation of the apoptotic signaling pathway, as confirmed by Hoechst staining and Annexin V-FITC/propidium iodide double labeling of cells treated with a lethal dose (1 mM). However, sub-lethal doses of 2-hydroxymelatonin inhibited the invasive ability of Caco2 cells. Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) markers were significantly regulated by 2-hydroxymelatonin. Overall, the anti-cancer activity of 2-hydroxymelatonin is more potent than that of melatonin. Taken together, 2-hydroxymelatonin exhibits potent anti-cancer activity against human colorectal cancer cells via induction of apoptosis and inhibition of EMT.
Fitness landscape analysis of differential evolution algorithms

Fitness landscape analysis in evolutionary algorithms is commonly done on problems represented as bit strings with Hamming distance based random walks on the landscape. In this study, we aim to do a preliminary fitness landscape analysis of the differential evolution algorithm, which works on continuous search spaces. To the authors' best knowledge, no such fitness landscape analysis has been conducted in literature on continuous problems where search is performed through differential evolution. To achieve this aim, we first propose a suitable neighborhood definition through which a vector-based random walk on the landscape is possible. Then we use this neighborhood definition to conduct a fitness distance correlation and a correlation length analysis on a series of benchmark functions.
SystemC implementation of mat-core: A matrix core extension for general-purpose processors

Technological advances in IC manufacturing provide us with the capability to integrate more and more functionality into a single chip. Today's modern processors have nearly one billion transistors on a single chip. With the increasing complexity of today's system, the designs have to be modeled at a high-level of abstraction before partitioning into hardware and software components for final implementation. This paper explains in detail the implementation of a matrix processor called Mat-Core with SystemC (system level modeling language). Mat-Core is a research processor aiming at exploiting the increasingly number of transistors per IC to improve the performance of a wide range of applications. It extends a general-purpose scalar processor with a matrix core. Like vector architectures, the extended matrix core is organized in parallel lanes. In addition to vector-scalar and vector-vector instructions, the matrix core can execute matrix-vector and matrix-matrix instructions. Furthermore, for controlling the execution of vector/matrix instructions on the matrix core, this paper extends the well known scoreboard technique.
perimenopause: prevalen Perimenopausal syndrome and mood disorders in ce, severity, relationships, and risk factors

Limited information was focused on perimenopausal syndrome andmood disorders (depression and anxiety) in a specific population: perimenopausal women. We aimed to investigate the prevalence and severity of perimenopausal syndrome and mood disorders, and to analyze their relationships and risk factors in perimenopausal women in Shanghai, China. A cross-sectional study was performed on 1062 women aged 40 to 60 years from 3 communities. The general conditions questionnaire, Kupperman index, self-rating depression scale, and self-rating anxiety scale were used. A multivariable logistic regression analysis was performed to identify risk factors for perimenopausal syndrome and mood disorders. The prevalence of perimenopausal syndrome, depression and anxiety, which were primarily associated with mild symptoms, was 10.92%, 25.99%, and 12.62%, respectively. The differences in the prevalence and severity of perimenopausal syndrome, in the prevalence of depression, and in the severity of anxiety in different age groups were statistically significant (P<0.001, P=0.028, P= 0.003, P=0.002, respectively). The relationships between perimenopausal syndrome and mood disorders were strong and positive (P<0.001). It was found that age, employment status, personality characteristics, menstruation, and constipation were risk factors for perimenopausal syndrome, but monthly household income was a protective factor. Also, higher income and better medical insurance were beneficial to depression. However, disharmonious family relationships, irregular menstruation, constipation, and severity of perimenopausal syndrome were harmful to depression. For anxiety, attitudes to children status, cesarean section times, and constipation were risk factors. We concluded that perimenopausal syndrome and mood disorders are common in perimenopausal women in Shanghai, whose associations are strong and positive. Many risk factors are associated with and shared between perimenopausal syndrome and mood disorders. Therefore, appropriate management of perimenopause is needed to alleviate the conditions. Abbreviations: ANOVA = analysis of variance, BMI = body mass index, CI = confidence interval, OR = odds ratio, SAGE = Study on global AGEing and adult health, SAS = self-rating anxiety syndrome, SD = standard deviation, SDS = self-rating depression syndrome, STRAW = stages of reproductive aging workshop, WHO = world health organization.
Development and Application of Low-Carbohydrates and Low-Simple Sugar Nutrition Education Materials for Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease Patients

We developed nutrition education materials for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) patients focusing on low-carbohydrate and low-simple sugar diet and assessed subjective difficulty and compliance for the developed materials. The materials were developed in 2 types, a booklet for face-to-face education and a handout for phone education. The booklet covered 4 topic areas of fatty liver, low-carbohydrate and low-simple sugar diet, weight control, and meal plan. The handout material included several eating behavior tips. To assess practical usability of nutrition education using the developed materials, subjective compliance and difficulty levels were examined in a sample for NAFLD patients. A total of 106 patients recruited from 5 general hospitals were randomly assigned to a low-carbohydrate and low-simple sugar weight control diet group or a general weight control diet group. Each participant received a 6-week nutrition education program consisting of a face-to-face education session and two sessions of phone education. The developed materials were used for the low-carbohydrate and low-simple sugar weight control diet group and general weight control information materials were used for the control group. Subjective difficulty and compliance levels were evaluated three times during the education period. Subjective difficulty level was significantly higher in the low-carbohydrate and low-simple sugar diet group compared to the control group at the end of the second week, but such a discrepancy disappeared afterward. No significant difference was found for subjective compliance between the groups at each time. In conclusion, the developed nutrition education materials for low-carbohydrate and low-simple sugar diet are reasonably applicable to general Korean NAFLD patients.