Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Future Extreme Event Risk in the Rural Northeastern United States

Future climate change impacts on humans will be determined by the convergence of evolving physical climate and socioeconomic systems. Rural areas of the northeastern United States have experienced increased temperature and precipitation extremes, especially over the past three decades, and face unique challenges due to their physical isolation, natural-resource–dependent economies, and high poverty rates. To explore the impacts of future extreme events on vulnerable, rural populations in the Northeast, we analyzed future (2046–2075) annual maximum daily maximum temperature, annual minimum daily minimum temperature, annual maximum daily precipitation, and annual minimum two-week summer precipitation for two greenhouse gas emissions scenarios using four global climate models and gridded temperature and precipitation observations. We then combined those projections with estimates of county-level population and relative income for 2060 to calculate changes in extreme person-events compared to a historical period (1976–2005), with a focus on Northeast counties that are rural (less than 250,000 people) and vulnerable (in the bottom income quartile). For all counties and lowest income quartile counties in the rural Northeast, extreme heat person-events increase nineteen-fold and twenty-nine fold, respectively, under the high greenhouse gas emissions scenario, far exceeding the decrease in extreme cold person-events. The number of extreme precipitation and drought person-events does not significantly change across the rural Northeast. For the high greenhouse gas emissions scenario, counties in the bottom two income quartiles experience the 1976–2005 once-per-year daily heat event twenty-three times per year by 2046–2075; the lower greenhouse gas emissions scenario reduces the incidence to eleven times per year. Key Words: climate change, climate impacts, extreme events, northeastern United States, vulnerability.
Security and Privacy Analyses of Internet of Things Toys

This paper investigates the security and privacy of Internet-connected children's smart toys through case studies of three commercially-available products. We conduct network and application vulnerability analyses of each toy using static and dynamic analysis techniques, including application binary decompilation and network monitoring. We discover several publicly undisclosed vulnerabilities that violate the Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA) as well as the toys' individual privacy policies. These vulnerabilities, especially security flaws in network communications with first-party servers, are indicative of a disconnect between many IoT toy developers and security and privacy best practices despite increased attention to Internet-connected toy hacking risks.
The threshold for autoimmune T cell killing is influenced by B7‐1

The concept that naive CD4+ and CD8+ T cells require co‐stimulatory signals for activation and proliferation is well documented. Less clear is the need for co‐stimulation during the effector phase of the T cell response. Here we examined the influence of B7‐1 (CD80) during the effector phase of an autoimmune response to pancreatic islets using transgenic mouse lines which expressed B7‐1 in either all or only some of their β cells ( “confluent” or “patchy” RIP‐B7‐1 mice). Transgenic expression of B7‐1 in normal mouse islets that co‐expressed the pro‐inflammatory cytokine, IL‐2, resulted in early spontaneous autoimmunity. Islets with IL‐2 and “confluent” B7‐1 expression were destroyed whereas islets with IL‐2 and “patchy” B7‐1 expression showed selective killing of the B7‐1+ β cells. Islet‐reactive T cells, circulating in the RIP‐B7‐1/IL‐2 mice, rejected syngeneic islet grafts, but only if these expressed B7‐1. Introduction of the B7‐1 transgene into the nonobese diabetic (NOD) genetic background likewise resulted in early spontaneous autoimmunity, but splenocytes from the diabetic animals could only transfer diabetes to NOD scid recipients that expressed B7‐1 on their β cells. In both these transgenic models, therefore, islet destruction required continuous B7‐1 expression by target β cells. Thus, although the normal repertoire contains T cells with potential islet reactivity, these T cells remain harmless because parenchymal cells like the β cell cannot normally express B7‐1. Our results also have implications for tumor immunotherapy in that the ability of T cells to kill poorly immunogenic targets may be dependent upon B7‐1 expression by the target cell itself.
Clinical Benefit in Response to Palbociclib Treatment in Refractory Uterine Leiomyosarcomas with a Common CDKN2A Alteration.

BACKGROUND Uterine leiomyosarcoma (uLMS) responds poorly to conventional chemotherapeutic agents, and personalized therapies have yet to be systematically explored. Comprehensive genomic profiling (CGP) can identify therapeutic targets and provide insight into the biology of this highly aggressive tumor. We report a case of uLMS treated with the CGP-matched therapy palbociclib, a CDK4/6 inhibitor, with sustained clinical benefit in this rare and deadly malignancy. MATERIALS AND METHODS This study analyzed 279 clinically advanced/recurrent uLMS samples. Median patient age was 54 years (range, 23-83 years). DNA was extracted from 40 µm of formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded sections, and CGP was performed on hybridization-captured, adaptor ligation-based libraries for up to 405 cancer-related genes plus introns from up to 31 genes frequently rearranged in cancer. Sequencing data were analyzed for base pair substitutions, insertions/deletions, copy number alterations, and rearrangements. RESULTS CGP shows that 97.1% of uLMS harbor at least one alteration, and approximately 57% harbor alterations in one or more therapeutically targetable pathways. CDKN2A mutations that inactivate p16INK4a were identified in 11% of uLMS. We report the first demonstration of clinical benefit in response to palbociclib treatment for a uLMS patient with a CDKN2A mutation, resulting in disease stabilization and significant symptom reduction. CONCLUSION A patient with uLMS harboring a CDKN2A mutation experienced clinical benefit from treatment with palbociclib, and genomic analysis of 279 uLMS samples revealed that 19% of patients had mutations affecting the cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) pathway. These observations provide a rationale for a clinical trial investigating treatment with CDK pathway inhibitors for uLMS harboring relevant genomic alterations. The Oncologist 2017;22:416-421Implications for Practice: Comprehensive genomic profiling (CGP) of individuals with uterine leiomyosarcoma (uLMS) indicates that nearly 20% of patients may harbor a mutation affecting the cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) pathway. The case presented demonstrates that a CDK inhibitory drug may provide clinical benefit to such individuals. Given the lack of curative therapies for uLMS, CGP could be performed on all cases of advanced uLMS and a CDK inhibitor could be recommended (preferably as part of a clinical trial) for individuals harboring a mutation in the CDK pathway.
Ankyrin repeat and zinc-finger domain-containing 1 mutations are associated with infantile-onset inflammatory bowel disease

Infantile-onset inflammatory bowel disease (IO IBD) is an invalidating illness with an onset before 2 years of age and has a complex pathophysiology in which genetic factors are important. Homozygosity mapping and whole-exome sequencing in an IO IBD patient and subsequent sequencing of the candidate gene in 12 additional IO IBD patients revealed two patients with two mutated ankyrin repeat and zinc-finger domain-containing 1 (ANKZF1) alleles (homozygous ANKZF1 R585Q mutation and compound heterozygous ANKZF1 E152K and V32_Q87del mutations, respectively) and two patients with one mutated ANKZF1 allele. Although the function of ANKZF1 in mammals had not been previously evaluated, we show that ANKZF1 has an indispensable role in the mitochondrial response to cellular stress. ANKZF1 is located diffusely in the cytoplasm and translocates to the mitochondria upon cellular stress. ANKZF1 depletion reduces mitochondrial integrity and mitochondrial respiration under conditions of cellular stress. The ANKZF1 mutations identified in IO IBD patients with two mutated ANKZF1 alleles result in dysfunctional ANKZF1, as shown by an increased level of apoptosis in patients' lymphocytes, a decrease in mitochondrial respiration in patient fibroblasts with a homozygous ANKZF1 R585Q mutation, and an inability of ANKZF1 R585Q and E152K to rescue the phenotype of yeast deficient in Vms1, the yeast homologue of ANKZF1. These data indicate that loss-of-function mutations in ANKZF1 result in deregulation of mitochondrial integrity, and this may play a pathogenic role in the development of IO IBD.
Interactive comment on “ The CSIRO Mk 3 L climate system model v 1 . 0 coupled to the CABLE land surface scheme v 1 . 4 b : evaluation of the control climatology ” by J .

The CSIRO Mk3L climate system model, a reduced-resolution coupled general circulation model, has previously been described in this journal. The model is configured for millennium scale or multiple century scale simulations. This paper reports the impact of replacing the relatively simple land surface scheme that is the default parameterisation in Mk3L with a sophisticated land surface model that simulates the terrestrial energy, water and carbon balance in a physically and biologically consistent way. An evaluation of the new model’s near-surface climatology highlights strengths and weaknesses, but overall the atmospheric variables, including the near-surface air temperature and precipitation, are simulated well. The impact of the more sophisticated land surface model on existing variables is relatively small, but generally positive. More significantly, the new land surface scheme allows an examination of surface carbon-related quantities including net primary productivity which adds significantly to the capacity of Mk3L. Overall, results demonstrate that this reduced-resolution climate model is a good foundation for exploring long time scale phenomena. The addition of the more sophisticated land surface model enables an exploration of important Earth System questions including land cover change and abrupt changes in terrestrial carbon storage. Correspondence to: S. J. Phipps (s.phipps@unsw.edu.au)
Spy Tool for Your Facebook Account

: “ Facebook”, is a favorite and familiar term in social networking dictionary today. Its popularity among all generations has been burgeoning at a phenomenal rate. Every year more and more people make accounts on Facebook, not only the young generation but every generation is hooked on to this social networking site . In the survey conducted by us , among 115 facebook users , we found that 45% of the users have multiple facebook accounts. Since a person can upload videos, pictures and other personal information, privacy is of utmost concern. People want to share their personal information with some friends and not with public. Now our objective was to find out if these facebook users are concerned about security and privacy of their account . If yes, then are these users familiar with the privacy options already provided by the facebook. During this study and with experience of facebook usage, we observed that anyone can go to anyone’s profile page even if the visitor is not in the friend’s list. Therefore idea of adding more security and privacy to user’s facebook account came up and authors decided to conduct an online survey to find if similar privacy requirements are felt by other users. Therefore an online survey was conducted to find out what kind of a privacy features would the users like to add and if they are concerned about the visitors visiting the user’s profile page. The survey results were analyzed and it was found that people want to know who visited their profile page ,on what date and at what time and how many times the same visitor surfed user’s profile. In this paper, an algorithm has been created and shown through a flowchart also, that will keep track of visitor. A notification procedure is followed to spy the account for its security and increased privacy.
First-Line Palliative HER2-Targeted Therapy in HER2-Positive Metastatic Breast Cancer Is Less Effective After Previous Adjuvant Trastuzumab-Based Therapy.

BACKGROUND Survival of patients with human epidermal growth receptor 2 (HER2)-positive metastatic breast cancer (MBC) has improved dramatically since trastuzumab has become available, although the disease eventually progresses in most patients. This study investigates the outcome (overall survival [OS] and time to next treatment [TNT]) in MBC patients pretreated with trastuzumab in the adjuvant setting (TP-group) compared with trastuzumab-naïve patients (TN-group) in order to investigate the possibility of trastuzumab resistance. PATIENTS AND METHODS Patients treated with first-line HER2-targeted-containing chemotherapy were eligible for the study. A power analysis was performed to estimate the minimum size of the TP-group. OS and TNT were estimated using Kaplan-Meier curves and multivariable Cox proportional hazards models. RESULTS Between January 1, 2000, and June 1, 2014, 469 patients were included, of whom 82 were in the TP-group and 387 were in the TN-group. Median OS and TNT were significantly worse in the TP-group compared with the TN-group (17 vs. 30 months, adjusted hazard ratio [HR] 1.84 [1.15-2.96], p = .01 and 7 vs. 13 months, adjusted HR 1.65 [1.06-2.58], p = .03) after adjustment for age, year of diagnosis, disease-free interval, hormone receptor status, metastatic site, and cytotoxic regimens. CONCLUSION First-line trastuzumab-containing treatment regimens are less effective in patients with failure of adjuvant trastuzumab compared with trastuzumab-naïve patients and might be due to trastuzumab resistance. The impact of trastuzumab resistance on the response on dual HER2 blockade with trastuzumab and pertuzumab and how resistance mechanisms can be used in the optimization of HER2-targeted treatment lines need further investigation. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE Evidence on the efficacy of palliative trastuzumab-based therapy after failure of trastuzumab in the adjuvant setting is limited because of a minority of patients treated with adjuvant trastuzumab in clinical trials. In this study, less clinical benefit of palliative trastuzumab-based therapy was observed in patients relapsing after adjuvant trastuzumab compared with no adjuvant trastuzumab treatment. Subgroup analyses and multivariable analyses revealed that this was independent of possible confounding factors, including adjuvant taxane-treatment. This might suggest a clinically meaningful impaired efficacy of trastuzumab after previous, in this case adjuvant, trastuzumab therapy. These results could have implications for treatment decision-making after short progression-free intervals on trastuzumab-containing regimens in the palliative setting.
Patient-perceived barriers and enablers to adherence to physiotherapist prescribed self-management strategies

The objectives of this study were to describe patient-reported adherence to physiotherapist-prescribed self-management strategies; and the perceived barriers and enablers to adherence to each strategy. Patients attending physiotherapy private practices (n=4) were observed during their consultation. Patients prescribed one or more self-management strategies received a follow-up telephone interview within 10-14 days of the observed consultation and were asked to self-report their level of adherence and their perceived barriers and/or enablers to each prescribed strategy. Results indicated that patients (n=108) reported receiving 177 strategies and being fully adherent to 36% (95% CI: 29-44%) of these strategies. Patient-reported adherence barriers (n=113) and enablers (n=172) were coded using a modified version of the World Health Organisation five dimensions of adherence. Frequently reported barriers included social/economic-related (n=52; 46%) such as being too busy, and patient-related (n=29; 26%) including being too tired/lack of motivation. Frequently reported enablers included therapy-related (n=71; 41%) such as “the strategy was easy to complete”, and condition-related (n=45; 26%) including “that the strategy helped to manage symptoms”. Thus, patient adherence may be aided by ensuring that: the strategy is less complex; it does not cause pain; it isn’t time consuming; and it leads to an improvement in condition-related symptoms. Peek, K. , Carey, M. , Mackenzie, L. , Sanson-Fisher, R. (2018). Patient-perceived barriers and enablers to adherence to physiotherapist prescribed self-management strategies. New Zealand Journal of Physiotherapy 46(3): 105-112. doi:10.15619/NZJP/46.3. 03
A Novel Forwarding Policy under Cloud Radio Access Network with Mobile Edge Computing Architecture

Nowadays, dozens of low-latency required application are emerging, traditional mobile network architecture would not be able to support such applications anymore in the future. Cloud radio access network (C-RAN) combined with Multi-access/mobile edge computing (MEC) seems to be one of the most feasible new RAN architectures to fulfill the requirement. With the assistance of MEC, the computing resource could be allocated more efficiently. In this paper, firstly the advantage of generalized-processor-sharing model (GPS) compared with first-in-first-out (FIFO) and processor-sharing (PS) are discussed in order to figure out the practical queueing behavior in MEC system. Next, the relationship between theoretical traffic intensity factor and realistic system CPU utilization condition is correlated. Finally, based on the discussion, a two threshold forwarding policy (TTFP) algorithm is proposed to dynamically arrange the data traffic according to current system traffic states. The result of the simulation articulates that TTFP algorithm could efficiently fulfill the applications who requires low entire waiting time as possible in high intensity traffic condition.
Disputing the status quo: the role and effect of new parties in Europe

Numerous new parties have arisen across Europe since 1960, those which have passed the 3% threshold of parliamentary representation are studied and an assessment is made of the extent to which they have penetrated 14 European party systems. Differentiating between two types of new party, challengers and mobilisers, it is shown how diverse their experiences have been, particularly highlighting the different trajectories extreme-right-wing and green parties have taken. Despite the level of numerical change that has taken place in most systems, overall the core is shown to be relatively resilient.
Using Rough Set to support Real Time Investment Strategies in Futures Market

Investment strategies in stock market have gained unprecedented popularity in major financial markets around the world. However, it is a very difficult problem because of the fluctuation of the stock market. This study presents usefulness of rough set on the trend based to develop real-time investment strategies using technical analysis in futures market. Central to this paper are four ideas. The first idea is using technical indicators of the technical analysis to predict market prices and movements based on the dynamics of market prices and volumes. The second idea is analyzing rough set to extract trading rules for identification of buy and sell patterns in the stock market. The third idea is to support the investment strategies in unpredictable stock market to apply selected trading rules using case-based reasoning (CBR). The final idea is to apply real-time data to the investment strategies in order to simulate real trading environment and, therefore, to have the most realistic results. The experimental results show profitable investment strategies of the model in the Korean futures market and may provide investors with important information that would affect their investment decisions.
Emerging Biosensing Technologies for Neuroinflammatory and Neurodegenerative Disease Diagnostics

Neuroinflammation plays a critical role in the onset and progression of many neurological disorders, including Multiple Sclerosis, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. In these clinical conditions the underlying neuroinflammatory processes are significantly heterogeneous. Nevertheless, a common link is the chronic activation of innate immune responses and imbalanced secretion of pro and anti-inflammatory mediators. In light of this, the discovery of robust biomarkers is crucial for screening, early diagnosis, and monitoring of neurological diseases. However, the difficulty to investigate biochemical processes directly in the central nervous system (CNS) is challenging. In recent years, biomarkers of CNS inflammatory responses have been identified in different body fluids, such as blood, cerebrospinal fluid, and tears. In addition, progress in micro and nanotechnology has enabled the development of biosensing platforms capable of detecting in real-time, multiple biomarkers in clinically relevant samples. Biosensing technologies are approaching maturity where they will become deployed in community settings, at which point screening programs and personalized medicine will become a reality. In this multidisciplinary review, our goal is to highlight both clinical and recent technological advances toward the development of multiplex-based solutions for effective neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative disease diagnostics and monitoring.
Beyond the self: Intersubjectivity and the social semiotic interpretation of the selfie

As an iconic image of our time, the selfie has attracted much attention in popular media and scholarly writing. The focus so far has been on the representation of the self or subjectivity. We propose a complementary perspective that foregrounds the intersubjective function of the selfie. We argue that the presence of selfhood is often an assumption. What distinguishes the selfie from other photographic genres is its ability to enact intersubjectivity – the possibility for difference of perspectives to be created and this difference to be shared between the image creator and the viewer. Based on a social semiotic analysis of selfies on Instagram, we identify four subtypes of selfie, each deploying a combination of visual resources to represent a distinct form of intersubjectivity. Our analysis suggests that the potential for empowerment is inherent in the visual structure of the selfie, and that, as a genre, it is open for recontextualisation across contexts and social media platforms.
Robot companions: A legal and ethical analysis

ABSTRACT This article addresses some of the most important legal and ethical issues posed by robot companions. Firstly, we clarify that robots are to be deemed objects and more precisely products. This on the one hand excludes the legitimacy of all such considerations involving robots as bearers of own rights and obligations, and forces a functional approach in the analysis. Secondly, pursuant to these methodological considerations we address the most relevant ethical and legal concerns, ranging from the risk of dehumanization and isolation of the user, to privacy and liability concerns, as well as financing of the diffusion of this—still expensive—technology. Solutions are briefly sketched, in order to provide the reader with sufficient indications on what strategies could and should be implemented, already in the design phase, as well as what kind of intervention ought to be favored and expected by national and European legislators. The recent Report with Recommendations to the Commission on Civil Law Rules on Robotics of January 24, 2017 by the European Parliament is specifically taken into account.