Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Nicotine Dependence and Cost-Effectiveness of Individualized Support for Smoking Cessation: Evidence from Practice at a Worksite in Japan

Given the lack of economic studies evaluating the outcomes of smoking cessation programs from the viewpoint of program sponsors, we conducted a case study to provide relevant information for worksites. The present study was carried out between 2006 and 2008 at a manufacturing factory in the Toyama Prefecture of Japan and included subjects who voluntarily entered a smoking cessation program. The program included face-to-face counselling followed by weekly contact to provide encouragement over six months using e-mail or inter-office mail. Nicotine patches were available if required. All 151 participants stopped smoking immediately. Over the 24-month study period, self-report showed 49.7% abstained continuously from smoking. The rate of 24-month consecutive abstinence was higher in participants with lower Fagerström Test scores for Nicotine Dependence at baseline than in those with higher scores (63.6% for 0–2 points vs. 46.5% for 3–6 points vs. 43.8% for 7–10 points; chi-square test p = 0.19). A logistic regression model showed a significant linear trend for the association between the score and abstinence status after adjustment for possible confounding factors (p = 0.03). The crude incremental cost for one individual to successfully quit smoking due to the support program was ¥46,379 (i.e., ¥100 = $1.28, £0.83, or €1.03 at foreign exchange rates). The corresponding costs for the three categories of the Fagerström Test score for Nicotine Dependence were ¥31,953, ¥47,450 and ¥64,956, respectively. When a sensitivity analysis was conducted based on the 95% confidence interval of the success rate, the variance in the corresponding costs was ¥25,514–45,034 for 0–2 points, ¥38,344–61,824 for 3–6 points, and ¥45,698–108,260 for 7–10 points. The degree of nicotine dependence may therefore be an important determinant of the cost-effectiveness of smoking cessation programs.
Perspectives on Mucosal Vaccines: Is Mucosal Tolerance a Barrier?1

Mucosal administration of Ags induces specific Abs in external secretions and systemic unresponsiveness termed oral or mucosal tolerance. The dominant response depends on the species studied, the nature, dose, frequency, route of Ag application, and the use of adjuvants. The temporal sequence of Ag exposure determines the quality of the ensuing immune response; although initial mucosal Ag exposure results in systemic T cell hyporesponsiveness, pre-existing systemic responses are refractory to the tolerizing effects of mucosal Ag encounter. Mucosal and systemic humoral responses may be induced concomitantly with diminished systemic T cell responses, thereby permitting Ab-mediated containment of mucosal Ags without stimulation of the systemic immune compartment. B cell Ig isotype switching and differentiation toward IgA production share common regulatory mechanisms with the suppression of T cells. Optimization of mucosal vaccination strategies has the potential for enhancing protective immune responses and suppressing systemic responses to autoantigens desirable for the treatment of autoimmune diseases.
Using Sampling-based Tracing Method

Reconstruction of fingerprint ridge lines is a critical pre-processing step in the identification of poor quality fingerprint images. This paper presents a new fingerprint ridge line reconstruction approach by way of ridge line tracing. In our research, the fingerprint ridge line in a gray scale image is viewed as a track of a ridge segment moving along the ridge. The curve tracing problem is solved by the target tracking technique in computer vision. We first formulate the model of fingerprint ridge line segments and then apply a target tracking method to trace each of the ridge lines. In addition, a feedback technique is adopted to correct the fingerprint directional image in each tracing step in order to improve tracing accuracy. By connecting all the traced ridge line segments, a polyline reconstruction of the ridge line can be obtained. We objectively assess the performance of this approach by using NIST fingerprint images.
Cerebrospinal Fluid Aβ43 Is Reduced in Early-Onset Compared to Late-Onset Alzheimer’s Disease, But Has Similar Diagnostic Accuracy to Aβ42

Background: Amyloid beta 1–43 (Aβ43) may be a useful additional biomarker for diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease (AD). We have investigated cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) levels of Aβ43 in patients with early-onset AD in contrast to levels in late-onset AD. For comparison, in addition to the ‘core’ biomarkers, several other analytes were also determined [YKL-40, neurofilament light (NF-L), glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP), and progranulin]. Material and Methods: Cerebrospinal fluid samples were obtained from patients with early-onset AD (age ≤ 62, n = 66), late-onset AD (age ≥ 68, n = 25), and groups of cognitively intact individuals (age ≤ 62, n = 41, age ≥ 68, n = 39). Core CSF AD biomarkers [amyloid beta 1–42 (Aβ42), total tau, phosphorylated tau] were analyzed, as well as levels of Aβ43 and other analytes, using commercially available enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays. Results: Cerebrospinal fluid Aβ43 was significantly reduced in early-onset AD compared to late-onset AD (14.8 ± 7.3 vs. 21.8 ± 9.4 pg/ml, respectively), whereas the levels of Aβ42 in the two AD groups were not significantly different (474.9 ± 142.0 vs. 539.6 ± 159.9 pg/ml, respectively). Aβ43 and all core biomarkers were significantly altered in patients with AD compared to corresponding controls. NF-L was significantly increased in early-onset AD compared to younger controls, an effect not found between the older groups. Relationships between the Aβ peptides and tau proteins, YKL-40, NF-L, GFAP and progranulin were also investigated without finding marked associations. However, age-associated increases in levels of tau proteins, YKL-40, NF-L and GFAP were found with respect to age in healthy controls. Results for these other analytes were similar to previously published data. Aβ43 did not improve diagnostic accuracy in either AD group compared to Aβ42. Discussion: Cerebrospinal fluid Aβ43, but not Aβ42 levels, varied significantly with age in patients with AD. If CSF levels of Aβ peptides reflect amyloid deposition in brain, the possibility arises that there is a difference between Aβ43 and Aβ42 deposition in younger compared to older brain. However, the level of Aβ43 in CSF shows no improvement over Aβ42 regarding diagnostic accuracy.
The Robustness of GMM-SVM in Real World Applied to Speaker Verification

Gaussian mixture models (GMMs) have proven extremely successful for textindependent speaker verification. The standard training method for GMM models is to use MAP adaptation of the means of the mixture components based on speech from a target speaker. In this work we look into the various models (GMM-UBM and GMM-SVM) and their application to speaker verification. In this paper, features vectors, constituted by the Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) extracted from the speech signal are used to train the Gaussian mixture model (GMM) and mean vectors issued from GMM-UBM to train SVM. To fit the data around their average the cepstral mean subtraction (CMS) are applied on the MFCC. For both, GMM-UBM and GMM-SVM systems, 2048-mixture UBM is used. The verification phase was tested with Aurora database at different Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) and under three noisy conditions. The experimental results showed the outperformance of GMM-SVM against GMM-UBM in speaker verification especially in noisy environment. MOTS-CLÉS : Vérification du locuteur, Milieu bruité, MFCC, GMM-UBM, GMM-SVM, Fonctions à noyaux, Aurora.
A Computationally Secure Quantum Oblivious Transfer Scheme

Oblivious transfer is an important primitive in modern cryptography and is widely utilized in designing more complex protocols. In a one-out-of-two oblivious transfer, a party Alice has two messages x <sub>0</sub>, x<sub>1</sub> send to another party Bob in such a way that he can decide to obtain one of them at his choice but not both. In the literature (A. Kawachi et al., EUROCRYPT 2005, 268-284), the quantum states p<sub>pi</sub> <sup>+</sup> and p<sub>pi</sub> <sup>-</sup> are used as public keys to construct an encryption algorithm. In the paper, we further demonstrate that, for pi ne thetas, the quantum states p<sub>pi</sub> <sup>plusmn</sup> and p<sub>thetas</sub> <sup>plusmn</sup> can't been distinguished by quantum computers. Using this result, we devise a one-out-of-two oblivious transfer scheme, in which any cheating of the entities are detected at the end of the protocol. Correctness and privacy of this protocol are analyzed and results show that the proposed scheme is computationally secured
Tükenmişlik Ölçeğinin Türkçe Uyarlaması: Geçerlik ve Güvenirlik Çalışması

Bu calismanin amaci, yalnizca insanlarla yuz yuze calisan meslek dallarinda degil, tum meslek dallarinda calisanlarin tukenmislik duzeylerini olcmek amaciyla gelistirilmis olan Tukenmislik Olcegi’nin (TO) (Pines ve Aronson, 1988) Turkce uyarlama calismasini yapmaktir. Arastirmanin calisma grubu, Mersin Ili Belediye sinirlari icinde cesitli meslek gruplarinda calismakta olan 876 calisandan olusmaktadir. Olcegin yapi gecerligi icin yapilan faktor analizi sonucunda, orijinal olcege benzer sonuclar elde edilmistir. Olcegin guvenirligini belirlemek icin hesaplanan Cronbach alfa ic tutarlik katsayisi α=0,93 olarak bulunmustur. Test tekrar test guvenirlik katsayisi ise tekstil atolyesi grubu icin 0,85, ogretmen grubu icin 0,83 olarak bulunmustur. Olcegin olcut bagintili gecerligini incelemek amaciyla Maslach ve Jackson (1981) tarafindan gelistirilen ve Ergin (1992) tarafindan Turkce’ye uyarlanan Maslach Tukenmislik Envanteri-Egitimci Formu (MTE-EF) uygulanmistir. Tukenmislik Olcegi toplam puanlari ve Maslach Tukenmislik Envanteri-Egitimci Formu (MTE-EF) alt olcek puanlari arasindaki korelasyonlar sirasiyla 0,57, 0,30 ve -0,22 olarak hesaplanmistir. Bulgular literatur isiginda tartisilmistir.
Fatigue Induced by Repeated Maximal Efforts is Specific to the Rugby Task Performed

The aim of this study was to analyze fatigue occurrence during the repetition of rugby union specific tasks. Eight high-level rugby players (age 23 ± 1.1 y; body mass 90.9 ± 9.8 kg; height 1.83 ± 7.3m) performed three sessions, in a random order, to investigate specific rugby union tasks (Scrum, Maul and Running sprints). Each session consisted in 5 repetitions of 5-s maximal exertion interspersed with 20-s passive recoveries. The scrums were performed into a fixed yoke, while the mauls were realized into a moving yoke. Forces were recorded during the scrums and speeds were monitored during both mauls and sprints. Performance decrease was calculated and complemented by EMG recordings of the vastus lateralis, blood lactate accumulation and rating of perceived exertion (RPE) were also obtained. The repetition of Scrums, Mauls and Sprints induced a decrease in the performance of respectively 23.3 ± 5.3%, 12.6 ± 2.5 % and 7.3 ± 0.9 %. The EMG level decreased only after Scrums and Mauls (respectively 20.8 ± 3.2 % and 12.6 ± 2.5 %; p < 0.0001) while blood lactate accumulation was significantly higher for Sprints (9.2 ± 1.1 mmol. L−1; p = 0.0061) and Maul (8.8 ± 0.8 mmol. L−1; p = 0.0028) compared to Scrum (2.9 ± 1.2 mmol. L−1). Average RPE was higher during the repetition of Scrums (7.8 ± 0.6) compared to Mauls (7.2 ± 0.6; p = 0.0086) and Sprints (7.1 ± 0.5; p = 0.001). The repetition of scrums led to a greater fatigue linked to activation perturbation while during sprints the fatigue was lower and associated with a great metabolic activity. The mauling task showed intermediate characteristics: the fatigue was moderate and both EMG losses and lactate accumulation were substantial. This confirms that conditioning, testing and substitutions should differ according to the players' position in modern rugby.
Multi-lingual author identification and linguistic feature extraction — A machine learning approach

Internet based services have emerged as one of the most effective platform to express and exchange views. Most of these services allow anonymous postings. Lately, it has been observed that anonymous postings responsible to instigate violence or cause panic. Some studies have been made to identify authors for such blogs, mostly target to English postings. Current author identification systems do not employ rich morphological features for languages such as Arabic (Modern Standard Arabic). In this study we develop a novel semantic feature to aid author identification system for Arabic. To completely exploit rich morphology of Arabic, we used parse tree intelligently as features. The overall approach uses language-specific NLP parsers, lexicons, semantic processing, thematic role assignment, semantic heuristics, and machine learning techniques to rapidly train systems for the subtleties mentioned above for Arabic. Our system identifies authors on the basis of stylistic and linguistic similarities between the author's existing works and the unidentified text in the form of online blogs and articles. We use support vector machine (SVM) to identify authors based on these novel features. Our approach yields accuracy of 98% in law and order and terrorism related Arabic blogs.
Mindfulness och tillämpad avslappning – En studie av hälsoeffekter vid kort daglig träning under en månad

Studiens syfte var att undersoka den paverkan 15 minuters sjalvstandig daglig traning i mindfulness har pa upplevd medveten narvaro, ohalsa och valbefinnande. Undersokningen utfordes under 30 dagar pa 28 psykologstudenter. En experimentgrupp utan teoretisk introduktion till begreppet medveten narvaro genomforde ovningar som fokuserade pa att anvanda sin uppmarksamhet avsiktligt, nyfiket och icke-domande i nuet. Denna grupp jamfordes med en andra grupp som enbart fick avslappningstraning och en kontrollgrupp utan nagon intervention. Studien fann en korrelation mellan traning i medveten narvaro och okad upplevd medveten narvaro. Dock kunde studien inte replikera tidigare studier vilka visat effekter av traning i medveten narvaro pa halsa och valbefinnande samt samband mellan traningsmangd och relativ forandring i minskad ohalsa och okat valbefinnande. Forklaringar till studiens utfall kan vara att traningsmangden var for liten, att deltagarna undanholls teoretisk forstaelse, att antalet deltagare var for fa eller att resultaten stordes av en ojamn ohalsoprofil mellan grupperna. En alternativ analys utan de individer som under perioden upplevt extraordinart negativa handelser visade indikationer pa minskad ohalsa for bada traningstyper och att avslappningstraning aven kunde relateras till storre valbefinnande genom minskade negativa affekter och okad livstillfredsstallelse.
Hypertrophy of Neurons Within Cardiac Ganglia in Human, Canine, and Rat Heart Failure: The Potential Role of Nerve Growth Factor

Background Autonomic imbalances including parasympathetic withdrawal and sympathetic overactivity are cardinal features of heart failure regardless of etiology; however, mechanisms underlying these imbalances remain unknown. Animal model studies of heart and visceral organ hypertrophy predict that nerve growth factor levels should be elevated in heart failure; whether this is so in human heart failure, though, remains unclear. We tested the hypotheses that neurons in cardiac ganglia are hypertrophied in human, canine, and rat heart failure and that nerve growth factor, which we hypothesize is elevated in the failing heart, contributes to this neuronal hypertrophy. Methods and Results Somal morphology of neurons from human (579.54±14.34 versus 327.45±9.17 μm2; P<0.01) and canine hearts (767.80±18.37 versus 650.23±9.84 μm2; P<0.01) failing secondary to ischemia and neurons from spontaneously hypertensive rat hearts (327.98±3.15 versus 271.29±2.79 μm2; P<0.01) failing secondary to hypertension reveal significant hypertrophy of neurons in cardiac ganglia compared with controls. Western blot analysis shows that nerve growth factor levels in the explanted, failing human heart are 250% greater than levels in healthy donor hearts. Neurons from cardiac ganglia cultured with nerve growth factor are significantly larger and have greater dendritic arborization than neurons in control cultures. Conclusions Hypertrophied neurons are significantly less excitable than smaller ones; thus, hypertrophy of vagal postganglionic neurons in cardiac ganglia would help to explain the parasympathetic withdrawal that accompanies heart failure. Furthermore, our observations suggest that nerve growth factor, which is elevated in the failing human heart, causes hypertrophy of neurons in cardiac ganglia.
Random Access with Massive-Antenna Arrays

Recently massive multi-input multi-output (MIMO) techniques have attracted growing research interest. However, most existing works assume centralized control, which may involve a heavy overhead as the number of users also becomes massive. In this paper, we focus on random-access massive MIMO systems. We first analyze the performances of two conventional schemes widely used in massive MIMO, and derive their closed-form expressions in the asymptotic case. Building on the latter, we maximize the system throughput through transmission control. To further exploit the potential benefit of massive MIMO techniques, we propose a novel multi-level transmission and grouped inter-ference cancellation (MLT-GIC) scheme, which can obtain a higher system throughput and provide a flexible tradeoff between throughput and complexity. Numerical results demonstrate the merits of the proposed scheme.
LSU Digital Commons LSU Digital Commons Chromosomal inversions and the reproductive isolation of Chromosomal inversions and the reproductive isolation of species species

Recent genetic studies have suggested that many genes contribute to differences between closely related species that prevent gene exchange, particularly hybrid male sterility and female species preferences. We have examined the genetic basis of hybrid sterility and female species preferences in Drosophila pseudoobscura and Drosophilapersimilis ,twooccasionallyhybridizingNorthAmerican species. Contrary to ﬁndings in other species groups, very few regions of the genome were associated with these characters, and these regions are associated also with ﬁxed arrangement differences (inversions) between these species. From our results, we propose a preliminary genic model whereby inversions may contribute to the speciation process, thereby explaining the abundance of arrangement differences between closely related species that co-occur geographically. We suggest that inversions create linkage groups that cause sterility to persist between hybridizing taxa. The maintenance of this sterility allows the species to persist in the face of gene ﬂow longer than without such inversions, and natural selection will have a greater opportunity to decrease the frequency of interspecies matings.
Three level risk assessment for pancreatic fistula formation after distal pancreatectomy with a strategy for prevention.

BACKGROUND Distal pancreatectomy (DP) has a high post-operative morbidity predominantly due to pancreatic fistula though the mortality is very low. Data on distal pancreatectomy was reviewed to analyse the risk factors that contribute to this morbidity. METHODS Thirty three patients underwent distal pancreatectomy with sutured closure of the remnant, over a 5-year period between May 2006 and April 2011. Pancreatic fistula (PF) was defined according to the International Study Group on Pancreatic Fistula definition. Patient and surgical risk factors were subdivided as those reflecting a poorer pre-morbid status, those associated with increased complexity of surgery and those related to pancreas gland and were analyzed for incidence of pancreatic fistula. RESULTS Indications for DP included 16 (51.5%) pancreatic tumours, 13 (39.4%) chronic pancreatitis and 3 (9.1%) trauma. Spleen was preserved in 12 patients (36.4%). There was no mortality while the morbidity rate was 45.5% (n = 15). Incidence of pancreatic fistula was 30.3% (n = 10); eight were grade A (80%) and two were grade C (20%). Incidence of clinically significant pancreatic fistulae was 6.1%. PF was significantly more common if the pancreatic duct was not identified (p = 0.024) was significantly less with extensive peri-pancreatic adhesions (p = 0.036). CONCLUSIONS Identification and ligation of main pancreatic duct can help reduce the incidence of pancreatic fistulae. The identification of patients at high risk of developing a PF helps to implement prevention strategies.
Role of Gene 46 in Bacteriophage T4 Deoxyribonucleic Acid Synthesis

In an attempt to establish whether Escherichia coli B infected with N130 (an amber mutant defective in gene 46) is recombination-deficient, the postinfection fate of 14C-labeled N130 parental deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) was followed, its amount in complex with the host cell membrane being determined in sucrose gradients after mild lysis of the infected cells. The parental DNA was found to undergo gradual detachment from the membrane during infection. Pulse-chase experiments similarly showed that newly synthesized DNA is normally attached to the host cell membrane and is detached by endonucleolytic breakage at a late stage of infection. The conclusion is that only attached DNA molecules are replicated by membrane-bound replicase, whereas those detached by endonucleolytic breakage are not. It thus seems that the gene 46 product controls the activity of a nuclease whose main function is recombination of DNA nicked by endonuclease, thereby attaching it to the host cell membrane. The rate of T4 DNA synthesis is apparently governed by the efficiency of recombination. Supporting evidence was found in experiments with the double mutant N130 × N134 (genes 46, 33).
Understanding Work-to-Family Conflict among Self-employed Workers: Utilising a Cognitive Appraisal Framework

Acknowledging that there is diversity in the nature of work arrangements among the ranks of the self-employed, the authors sought to achieve a better understanding of work–family conflict among self-employed workers by using cognitive appraisal theory as a framework (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984) to consider the roles that both situation (work arrangement and number of hours worked) and person (preferred number of hours worked) factors play in predicting work-to-family conflict. Empirical data drawn from the 1997 and 2002 versions of the National Study of the Changing Workforce was used to test hypotheses. Results from both datasets indicated that small business owners (SBOs) were found to work significantly more hours than self-employed independents (SEIs) and that increased work hours were related to an increase in reported work-to-family conflict. In addition, preferred number of hours worked moderated the negative affect that number of work hours had on work-to-family conflict, although the form of the moderation differed between datasets. Theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed in light of the clear differences that were found amongst members of the self-employed workforce.