Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Race and Renal Impairment in Heart Failure: Mortality in Blacks Versus Whites

Background—Renal impairment is an emerging prognostic indicator in heart failure (HF) patients. Despite known racial differences in the progression of both HF and renal disease, it is unclear whether the prognosis for renal impairment in HF patients differs by race. We sought to determine in HF patients the 1-year mortality risks associated with elevated creatinine and impaired estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) and to quantify racial differences in mortality. Methods and Results—We retrospectively evaluated the National Heart Care Project nationally representative cohort of 53 640 Medicare patients hospitalized with HF. Among 5669 black patients, mean creatinine was 1.6±0.9 mg/dL, and 54% had an eGFR ≤60, compared with creatinine 1.5±0.7 mg/dL and 68% eGFR ≤60 in 47 971 white patients. Higher creatinine predicted increased mortality risk, although the magnitude of risk differed by race (interaction P=0.0001). Every increase in creatinine of 0.5 mg/dL was associated with a >10% increased risk in adjusted mortality for blacks, compared with >15% increased risk in whites (interaction P=0.0001), with the most striking racial disparities at the highest levels of renal impairment. Depressed eGFR showed similar racial differences (interaction P=0.0001). Conclusions—Impaired renal function predicts increased mortality in elderly HF patients, although risks are more pronounced in whites. Distinct morbidity and mortality burdens in black versus white patients underscore the importance of improving patient risk-stratification, defining optimal therapies, and exploring physiological underpinnings of racial differences.
Relationship between Insulin Resistance and Coronary Artery Calcium in Young Men and Women

Background The gender disparity in cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk is greatest between young men and women. However, the causes of that are not fully understood. The objective of this study was to evaluate the relationship between insulin resistance and the presence of coronary artery calcium (CAC) to identify risk factors that may predispose young men and women to CVD. Methodology/Principal Findings Insulin resistance and CVD risk factors were examined in 8682 Korean men and 1829 women aged 30–45 years old. Insulin resistance was estimated using the homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR), and CAC was measured using computed tomography. Women were less likely to be insulin resistant (upper quartile of HOMA-IR, 18% vs. 27%, p<0.001) and had a lower prevalence of CAC (1.6% vs. 6.4%, p<0.001). Even when equally insulin resistant men and women were compared, women continued to have lower prevalence of CAC (3.1% vs. 7.2%, p = 0.004) and a more favorable CVD risk profile. Finally, after adjustment for traditional CVD risk factors, insulin resistance remained an independent predictor of CAC only in men (p = 0.03). Conclusions/Significance Young women have a lower risk for CVD and a lower CAC prevalence compared with men. This favorable CVD risk profile in women appears to occur regardless of insulin sensitivity. Unlike men, insulin resistance was not a predictor of CAC in women in this cohort. Therefore, insulin resistance has less impact on CVD risk and CAC in young women compared with men, and insulin resistance alone does not explain the gender disparity in CVD risk that is observed at an early age.
Chomsky and embodied cognition: A sensorimotor interpretation of Minimalist logical form

In this paper I argue that the Minimalist syntactic model of Chomsky (1995) may be a suitable vehicle for expressing an ‘embodied’ model of language, positing that language supervenes strongly on the sensorimotor system. The basic idea is that the principles which define the ‘logical form’ (LF) of concrete sentences, which Minimalists see as reflecting innate knowledge of language, may in fact have their origin in constraints in sensorimotor processing.
Slope Testing for Activity Diagrams and Safety Critical Software

Formal system modeling and rigorous validation techniques have become a corner stone in the development practice for safety critical systems. It is characteristic for model-based approaches that the relationship between the model and its implementation needs to be monitored and ultimately brought to conformance. To bridge the gap between model and implementation, the current paper proposes a new methodology called slope testing where we concretize an abstract test suite covering the model to obtain a corresponding concrete test suite on the implementation. In this way, our method is able to systematically expose the potential deficiencies in the mapping between model and code. Motivated by the avionic certification standard DO-178B, we introduce slope testing in a prototypical process which is based upon UML activity diagrams and ANSI-C as the respective modeling and implementation languages. Our implementation makes use of the test case generator FShell which automatically generates the required test suites for activity diagrams and source code.
Research on semantic-based education resource management

The Semantic Web technologies bring new chances for the traditional education. It is meaningful to research semantic-based education resource management for knowledge representation, information organizing and retrieval in education field. On the basis of the analysis on web education resources, this paper puts forward a semantic-based management model, which constructs domain ontology on traditional database framework, and realizes ontology-based resource integration system and view-based query response. At last the paper compared results with others and argues the feasibility of this model on technology.
Asynchronous team support: Perceptions of the group problem solving process when using a CyberCollaboratory

The research presented studied thirty-three groups of student volunteers over a period of three weeks while the groups performed a series of teamwork tasks. To investigate the viability of Web-based group support tools for asynchronous learning networks, student volunteers from four widely distributed universities were assigned to one of four experimental conditions. The conditions are; 2 modes of communication (asynchronous vs. synchronous)/spl times/2 support conditions (with CyberCollaboratory support or without). The groups assigned to the different conditions reported significant differences in perceptions of the group problem solving process. The face-to-face groups felt the process was more efficient, coordinated, fair, and satisfying. Those with CyberCollaboratory support thought the process was more confusing and less satisfying. Comments from the students suggest the reason for these results may be a combination of insufficient training time (one week) and a short period (two weeks) for using the tools to accomplish a fairly simple group task. Interaction effects showed that both the asynchronous groups with CyberCollaboratory support and the baseline (face-to face) groups found the problem solving process to be more efficient, coordinated, and fair than did either the asynchronous groups without CyberCollaboratory support or the face-to face groups with CyberCollaboratory support.
What information do principals consider when evaluating teachers?

ABSTRACT This exploratory multi-case study investigates the types of teacher performance data principals consider and collect when evaluating teachers. Data come from public school principals (N = 10) in the U.S. state of Michigan and includes: interviews (n = 30), observations (n = 20), and artifacts collected in 2016 and 2017. Additionally, specific teacher evaluation district documents inform this study. Findings show principals collect ongoing observational data of teacher instruction and consider all teacher observations when evaluating teacher performance. Additionally, principals consider teachers’ efforts at improving their practice when evaluating teacher performance. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.
CONVECTIVE INSTABILITY OF A RELATIVISTIC EJECTA DECELERATED BY A SURROUNDING MEDIUM: AN ORIGIN OF MAGNETIC FIELDS IN GAMMA-RAY BURSTS?

Global linear stability analysis of a self-similar solution describing a relativistic shell decelerated by an ambient medium is performed. The system is shown to be subject to the convective Rayleigh–Taylor instability, with a rapid growth of eigenmodes having angular scale much smaller than the causality scale. The growth rate appears to be largest at the interface separating the shocked ejecta and shocked ambient gas. The disturbances produced at the contact interface propagate in the shocked media and cause nonlinear oscillations of the forward and reverse shock fronts. It is speculated that such oscillations may affect the emission from the shocked ejecta in the early afterglow phase of gamma-ray bursts, and may be the origin of the magnetic field in the shocked circum-burst medium.
Two Perspective Systems Using a Route as a Reference Object

This paper discusses the spatial configuration between objectsand aroutewhich an agent follows according to instructions in a navigation task. We claim that a route can be regarded as a reference object and thereby two types of perspective system are defined; the route-centered perspective systemandthe position-centered perspective system. The route-centered perspective system is presented to partition a space by regarding a route as a boundary line. The position-centered perspective system is introduced to determine the spatial configuration between objectsand the positions on the route . These perspective systems can explain the human mental mechanism of the dialogue.
Linking consumer trust perception in constructing an e-commerce trust model

Trust issues is still considered as a main obstacle in the implementation of eCommerce Due to the increasing numbers of cyber crimes committed today, consumers are faced with doubt to engage in online shopping. As a safety precaution, consumers will take certain measures to protect their information by evaluating and assessing these websites trustworthiness before an actual purchase occurs. This paper describes a model that examines the elements related to online consumer behavior and to investigate this behavior towards building and increasing trust. The applicability of the model was tested in attempt to view consumers' acceptance towards the model and its component. The fmdings indicate the respondents are aware of the trust issue surrounding e-Commerce implementation as they accept and agreed with the model and its components.
Universiteit Leiden Opleiding Informatica Authorship Attribution using Compression Distances

Authorship attribution has been a ﬁeld of interest for researchers in the past, especially for forensic purposes. In this thesis, to obtain the degree of Bachelor of Science from the Leiden University, we investigate character n -grams and so-called compression distances to prototypes on several datasets, i.e., the datasets provided by PAN Labs (a benchmarking activity on uncovering plagiarism, authorship and social software misuse). This research was done in cooperation with the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI), who supervised this research as well. Compression distances to randomly selected prototypes from the training-corpus documents are used as feature representation, which has shown to be an elegant and powerful method in authorship attribution on large numbers of training documents. The standard compression distances to prototypes is not applicable to a dataset with a small number of samples and authors. We propose Bootstrapped Authorship Attribution in Compression Space (BAACS), an adaption of the standard compression distances to prototypes, to attribute authorship for datasets with a small number of samples and authors. BAACS is based on bootstrapping, a resampling method, to enrich the distribution of the dataset with more samples trying to generalize error estimation. We draw prototypes without replacement and in order to enrich the dataset with more samples, we draw samples with replacement from the small number of source documents per author. For the open class recognition tasks, we additionally set a threshold for the minimum posterior probability for any of the known classes.
Atrial Contribution to Ventricular Filling in Mitral Stenosis

BackgroundThe importance of the contribution of atrial systole to ventricular filling in mitral stenosis is controversial. The cause of reduced cardiac output following the onset of atrial fibrillation may be due to an increased heart rate, a loss of booster pump function, or both. Methods and ResultsWe studied the atrial contribution to filling under a variety of conditions by combining noninvasive studies of patients with computer modeling. Thirty patients in sinus rhythm with mild-to-severe stenosis were studied with two-dimensional and Doppler echocardiography for measurement of mitral flow velocity and mitral valve area (MVA). The mean ± SD atrial contribution to left ventricular filling volume was 18 ± 10% and varied inversely with mitral resistance. Patients with mild mitral stenosis (MVA, 1.8 ± 0.7 cm2) and severe mitral stenosis (MVA, 0.9 ± 0.2 cm2) had atrial contributions of 29 ± 4% and 9 ± 5%, respectively. The pathophysiological mechanisms responsible for these trends were further investigated by the computer model. In modeled severe mitral stenosis, increasing heart rate from 75 to 150 beats/min caused an increase of 5.2 mm Hg in mean left atrial pressure, whereas loss of atrial contraction at a heart rate of 150 beats/min caused only a 1.3 mm Hg increase. ConclusionsThe atrial booster pump contributes less to ventricular filling in mitral stenosis than in the normal heart, and the loss of atrial pump function is less important than the effect increasing heart rate as the cause of decompensation during atrial fibrillation.
Parameter Estimation With Out-of-Sample Objective

We study parameter estimation from the sample X, when the objective is to maximize the expected value of a criterion function, Q, for a distinct sample, Y. This is the situation that arises when a model is estimated for the purpose of describing other data than those used for estimation. The motivated for much estimation has this form, with forecasting problems being a prime example. A natural estimator is the innate estimator that maximizes Q(X;\theta.) wrt. \theta. While the innate estimator has certain advantages, we show that the asymptotically efficient estimator is defined from a likelihood function in conjunction with Q. The likelihood-based estimator is, however, fragile, as misspecification is harmful in two ways. First, the likelihood-based estimator may be inefficient under misspecification. Second, and more importantly, the likelihood approach requires a parameter transformation that depends on the truth, causing an improper mapping to be used under misspecification. The theoretical results are illustrated with two applications comprising asymmetric loss and multi-step forecasting, respectively.
Histograms of orientation gradient investigation for static hand gestures

In this paper, Histograms of Orientation Gradient (HOG) algorithm is used to identify the static hand gestures. Experimental results show that HOG descriptor is a better shape descriptor than existing feature sets for gesture recognition. The overall algorithm has only three main steps; pre-processing, feature extraction and classification. It completely omits the segmentation phase. SVM is used for recognition of gestures. High recognition accuracy is achieved for 11 hand gestures.
National Systems of Innovation: Evidence from the Industry Level

This study aims to add to the stock of literature devoted to cross-country comparisons of innovative activity. Drawing the theoretical guidance from the topical concept of National Innovation Systems, it endeavors to answer the following research questions: first, is there any evident heterogeneity in terms of innovative performance across manufacturing sectors even within the club of advanced and knowledge-based economies? And second, could those possible differences be explained in terms country-specific factors that manifest themselves in industry-specific innovative efficiency economy-wide? In order to investigate these questions, patent statistics is used to proxy the innovation output at the industry level and a simple research methodology is proposed. As a result of empirical estimation, European technological frontier is built using the estimated “country innovation premiums” in each of 18 manufacturing sectors. The empirical results strongly suggest that the efficiency of innovative performance in manufacturing sectors is by no means randomly distributed across countries, i.e. certain country-specific patterns exist. Three groups of countries can be distinguished in the sample: leaders, followers and laggards, and the leader countries (Sweden, Finland, and Germany) innovatively outperform the laggards in nearly every manufacturing sector. The conclusions are straightforward: evident, but indistinguishable country-specific factors matter for innovation, and this fact brings forward the discussion on the virtuous (or vicious) impact of institutions. The policy implications are in order: first, innovation inputs are necessary, but probably not sufficient ingredients of technological success, and it is institutions that matter as well. Second, as leaders and laggards are found even within the relatively homogenous European Union, there is a place for innovation policy differentiation. Key-words: National Innovation System approach, patent statistics, IPC-ISIC concordance, industry level analysis
Longer Telomere Length in Peripheral White Blood Cells Is Associated with Risk of Lung Cancer and the rs2736100 (CLPTM1L-TERT) Polymorphism in a Prospective Cohort Study among Women in China

A recent genome-wide association study of lung cancer among never-smoking females in Asia demonstrated that the rs2736100 polymorphism in the TERT-CLPTM1L locus on chromosome 5p15.33 was strongly and significantly associated with risk of adenocarcinoma of the lung. The telomerase gene TERT is a reverse transcriptase that is critical for telomere replication and stabilization by controlling telomere length. We previously found that longer telomere length measured in peripheral white blood cell DNA was associated with increased risk of lung cancer in a prospective cohort study of smoking males in Finland. To follow up on this finding, we carried out a nested case-control study of 215 female lung cancer cases and 215 female controls, 94% of whom were never-smokers, in the prospective Shanghai Women’s Health Study cohort. There was a dose-response relationship between tertiles of telomere length and risk of lung cancer (odds ratio (OR), 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.0, 1.4 [0.8–2.5], and 2.2 [1.2–4.0], respectively; P trend = 0.003). Further, the association was unchanged by the length of time from blood collection to case diagnosis. In addition, the rs2736100 G allele, which we previously have shown to be associated with risk of lung cancer in this cohort, was significantly associated with longer telomere length in these same study subjects (P trend = 0.030). Our findings suggest that individuals with longer telomere length in peripheral white blood cells may have an increased risk of lung cancer, but require replication in additional prospective cohorts and populations.
The relationship of principal leadership to organizational learning and sustained academic achievement

The Relationship of Principal Leadership to Organizational Learning and Sustained Academic Achievement. (May 2009) Leonard James Hardoin, B.A., Olivet College; M.A., Sam Houston State University Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. John R. Hoyle Some research suggests that development of professional learning communities might be the organizational strategy that could make school reform more successful. While most schools have not institutionalized the essential components of learning organizations, studies have demonstrated that these attributes must be developed if professional staffs are to realize the full benefit of organizational learning and in the process, create a context of improvement. The primary intent of this study was to learn and understand how principal behaviors influenced the development of shared leadership, shared vision, and supportive conditions; three essential dimensions of professional learning communities. Secondly, this study investigated how these conditions differed among schools which have and have not sustained high levels of student learning. Understanding the influence of principal leadership on conditions for organizational learning can be partially understood through either quantitative or qualitative methods. From this perspective, the mixed methods design utilized in this study allowed both
Memory Hierarchy for MCSoPC Multithreaded Systems

ABSTRACTThanks to advancements in fabrication techniques, it willsoon be possible to place 10’s if not 100’s of cores on asingle hybrid CPU/FPGA reconﬁgurable chip. This haslead to a new ﬁeld of study, namely Multi-Core Systemson a Programmable Chip (MCSoPC). The problems beingstudied with MCSoPC are not unlike the problems stud-ied 20 years ago when multiple CPU parallel processingnetworks were ﬁrst organized to solve computationally in-tensive tasks. With reconﬁgurable computing the prob-lems are more complex as hardware/software co-design en-gineers would like to create hybrid hard, soft, and customcore solutions, all speciﬁed from within a software cen-tric programming model. This paper introduces a new dis-tributed shared memory model that enables the existing Hy-bridthread’s Hardware Thread Interface (HWTI) to providea function call stack and heap for hardware threads. Fea-tures that in turn provide a generalized model for invokingfunctions, support for recursion, and dynamic memory allo-cation. These services were added to the HWTI not onlyto give hardware threads better performance, but providea meaningful and semantic rich target for a HLL to HDLtranslator.1. INTRODUCTIONThe potential beneﬁts of Multi-Core System on a Pro-grammable Chip (MCSoPC) are clear: increased perfor-mance, customizations, and parallelization of tasks. How-ever,thesebeneﬁtsdonotcomewithoutchallenges. InshortMCSoPC are difﬁcult to program. Reasons include unre-alized performance gains, immature programming models[10], undeﬁned targets for hardware tasks, and indetermi-natecommunicationmodelsbetweenhardwareandsoftwaretasks. Ideally programmers would like to specify their MC-SoPC in a known high level language and programmingmodel, and have their design automatically and correctlytranslated to hybrid software and hardware tasks. A numberof research groups have made impressive strides in achiev-ingthisgoal[5,6,16,11,8,14],howevernonethusfarhavebeen able to achieve unaltered high level language to hard-
The Properties of Hydrogen and Helium Under Extreme Conditions

Hydrogen and helium are the most abundant elements in the Universe. They are also, in principle, the most simple. Nonetheless, they display remarkable properties under extreme conditions of pressure and temperature that have fascinated theoreticians and experimentalists for over a century. Advances in computational methods have made it possible to elucidate ever more of their properties. Some of these methods that have been applied in recent years, in particular, those that perform simulations directly from the physical picture of electrons and ions, such as density functional theory and quantum Monte Carlo are reviewed. The predictions from such methods as applied to the phase diagram of hydrogen, with particular focus on the solid phases and the liquid-liquid transition are discussed. The predictions of ordered quantum states, including the possibilities of a lowor zero-temperature quantum fluid and high-temperature superconductivity are also considered. Finally, pure helium and hydrogen-helium mixtures, the latter which has particular relevance to planetary physics, are discussed.