Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The evolving pattern of avoidable mortality in Russia.

BACKGROUND Life expectancy at birth in Russia is over 12 years less than in western Europe. This study explores the possible role of medical care in explaining this gap by examining the evolving pattern of mortality amenable to timely and effective medical care in Russia compared with Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and the UK. METHODS Analysis of standardized death rates from causes amenable to health care (treatable) or inter-sectoral health policies (preventable) in all regions and decomposition of differences in life expectancy between Russia and the UK by age, sex, and cause of death for the period 1965-1999/2000. RESULTS Death rates from treatable causes remained stable between the mid-1960s and mid-1980s in Russia and the Baltic republics while steadily falling in the UK to less than half the rate in Russia. In the 1990s, rates increased in the former Soviet republics, reaching a peak in 1994 but reversing again in Russia in 1998. Deaths from causes amenable to inter-sectoral health interventions were higher in the UK in 1965 than in the Soviet Union but subsequently fell steadily while they increased in the East. Between 1965 and 1999, the male life expectancy gap between Russia and the UK rose from 3.6 to 15.1 years (women: 1.6 and 7.4 years). Treatable causes became an increasingly important contributor to this gap, accounting for almost 3 years by the end of the 1990s in men and 2 years in women. In Russia, elimination of treatable causes of death would have increased life expectancy by 2.9 years in men in 1995/99 compared with 1.2 years in the UK (women: 3.3 and 1.8 years), suggesting that, were the outcomes of health care achieved in the UK to be obtained in Russia, life expectancy for men might improve by about 1.7 years and for women by about 1.5 years. CONCLUSIONS Our findings suggest that the Soviet health care system has failed to match the achievements of the West over the past three decades, highlighting the need to establish a system that provides effective and equitable care for the Russian population.
Statistical language modeling for personalizing information retrieval

This paper reviews the application of statistical language modeling in information retrieval to make web search process as efficient as possible. IR systems have been widely used for the task of ranking documents accurately for a given keyword query from the vast collection. Typically, web search engines are required to satisfy diverse information needs of user i.e. different users may have different search intention when they submit the same query to a search engine. Since there is a huge amount of user data available, it becomes possible to build user model so as to identify the more relevant documents based on individual users interest. This paper focuses on such a model suitable for IR especially for web search. It requires very less effort from the user side. The proposed user modeling would be helpful when the keyword query issued by the user is short and ambiguous i.e. most of the users provide inaccurate keyword query which is imprecise and they often under-specify their exact information needs. Thus query becomes ambiguous which needs to be understood by the retrieval system. Hence, personalization strategy needs to be adopted in order to solve these problems faced by the retrieval system. In order to personalize web search, the user profile model is formulated by using users browsing history. In the same way, past queries and clicks made by the user can also be used for building user search model. This approach is implemented and tested using real time user data.
Determining the Site of Origin of Mucinous Adenocarcinoma: An Immunohistochemical Study of 175 Cases

Mucinous adenocarcinomas (MAs) of various origins may have a similar histologic appearance and frequently metastasize to distant sites, which often causes diagnostic problems in surgical pathology practice. The immunohistochemical profiles of MAs of various origins have not been well studied. We investigated the expression of 10 immunohistochemical markers (CK7, CK20, CDX-2, &bgr;-catenin, MUC-1, MUC-2, MUC-6, ER, WT-1, and PAX-8) in 175 cases of MA, including 69 cases from the lower gastrointestinal (GI) tract, 41 from the upper GI tract, 27 from gynecologic organs, 4 from the urinary bladder, 18 from the breast, and 16 from the lung. We found that lower GI MAs (colon, rectum, and anus) frequently expressed CDX-2 (42 of 42, 100%; 33 of 42 with homogenous positivity, 79%), MUC-2 (42 of 42; 100%), CK20 (41 of 42; 98%), and &bgr;-catenin (nuclear) (27 of 42; 64%) and rarely expressed MUC-6 (2 of 42; 5%) and CK7 (8 of 42; 19%). Most of the CK7-positive cases were from the rectum and anus (7 of 8; 88%). The expression of these markers in appendiceal MAs was similar to that of low GI tract MAs, except for a lower percentage of homogenous CDX-2 (3 of 27; 11%) and nuclear &bgr;-catenin (3 of 27; 11%) expression. Unlike their lower GI tract counterparts, the upper GI tract MAs (ampulla, pancreas/biliary tree, and stomach/esophagus) frequently expressed CK7 (38 of 41; 93%) and MUC-6 (31 of 41; 76%) and were rarely homogenously positive for CDX-2 (4 of 41; 10%) and nuclear positive for &bgr;-catenin (8 of 41; 19%). Breast MAs were frequently positive for CK7 (18 of 18; 100%), MUC-1 (18 of 18; 100%), MUC-2 (18 of 18; 100%), ER (16 of 18; 89%), MUC-6 (9 of 18; 50%), and WT-1 (9 of 18; 50%). Lung MAs were frequently positive for CK7 (16 of 16; 100%) and MUC-1 (15 of 16; 94%). Gynecologic MAs were positive for CK7 (25 of 27; 93%) and PAX-8 (13 of 27; 48%). We conclude that homogenous CDX-2 and nuclear &bgr;-catenin expressions are commonly seen in lower GI tract MAs. In contrast, appendiceal MAs are usually heterogenously positive for CDX-2 and show cytoplasmic positivity for &bgr;-catenin. Unlike lower GI tract MAs, upper GI tract MAs are frequently positive for CK7 and MUC-6. As is the case in appendiceal MAs, the upper GI tract MAs may also be heterogenously positive for CDX-2. Breast MAs are positive for ER and WT-1, whereas gynecologic MAs are positive for PAX-8 and negative for WT-1.
HIV-Specific Antibodies Capable of ADCC Are Common in Breastmilk and Are Associated with Reduced Risk of Transmission in Women with High Viral Loads

There are limited data describing the functional characteristics of HIV-1 specific antibodies in breast milk (BM) and their role in breastfeeding transmission. The ability of BM antibodies to bind HIV-1 envelope, neutralize heterologous and autologous viruses and direct antibody-dependent cell cytotoxicity (ADCC) were analyzed in BM and plasma obtained soon after delivery from 10 non-transmitting and 9 transmitting women with high systemic viral loads and plasma neutralizing antibodies (NAbs). Because subtype A is the dominant subtype in this cohort, a subtype A envelope variant that was sensitive to plasma NAbs was used to assess the different antibody activities. We found that NAbs against the subtype A heterologous virus and/or the woman's autologous viruses were rare in IgG and IgA purified from breast milk supernatant (BMS) – only 4 of 19 women had any detectable NAb activity against either virus. Detected NAbs were of low potency (median IC50 value of 10 versus 647 for the corresponding plasma) and were not associated with infant infection (p = 0.58). The low NAb activity in BMS versus plasma was reflected in binding antibody levels: HIV-1 envelope specific IgG titers were 2.2 log10 lower (compared to 0.59 log10 lower for IgA) in BMS versus plasma. In contrast, antibodies capable of ADCC were common and could be detected in the BMS from all 19 women. BMS envelope-specific IgG titers were associated with both detection of IgG NAbs (p = 0.0001)and BMS ADCC activity (p = 0.014). Importantly, BMS ADCC capacity was inversely associated with infant infection risk (p = 0.039). Our findings indicate that BMS has low levels of envelope specific IgG and IgA with limited neutralizing activity. However, this small study of women with high plasma viral loads suggests that breastmilk ADCC activity is a correlate of transmission that may impact infant infection risk.
Automatic Nuclei Detection Based on Generalized Laplacian of Gaussian Filters

Efficient and accurate detection of cell nuclei is an important step toward automatic analysis in histopathology. In this work, we present an automatic technique based on generalized Laplacian of Gaussian (gLoG) filter for nuclei detection in digitized histological images. The proposed technique first generates a bank of gLoG kernels with different scales and orientations and then performs convolution between directional gLoG kernels and the candidate image to obtain a set of response maps. The local maxima of response maps are detected and clustered into different groups by mean-shift algorithm based on their geometrical closeness. The point which has the maximum response in each group is finally selected as the nucleus seed. Experimental results on two datasets show that the proposed technique provides a superior performance in nuclei detection compared to existing techniques.
Towards Increasing the Robustness of Image Watermarking Scheme Against JPEG Compression

A switching device, capable of being applied to the steering column of an autovehicle is described. The device comprises a sleeve which is provided with a front seat for housing one of the releasing pawls. The releasing pawl is capable of engaging with a shaped sector formed in an annular body operable by means of a radial lever connected to the steering wheel. The shaped sector presents a substantially concave central portion delimitated by two tooth raised portions and two nearly flat side portions. The annular body supports a resiliently biased contact plate and is provided with a cylindrical seat in which is housed a resilient pin. Near the annular body is located a disc structure on which are arranged three fixed contacts having suitably sized contacting surfaces. The fixed contacts are connected to the contact plate by slightly rotating the annular body. The device permits to avoid a double operation for each signalling maneuver.
Hallin and Mancini Revisited: Four Empirical Types of Western Media Systems

The analysis of media systems has become a cornerstone in the field of comparative communication research. Ten years after its publication, we revisit the landmark study in the field, Hallin and Mancini's “Comparing Media Systems”, and operationalize its framework for standardized measurement. The study at hand is, to the best of our knowledge, the first to comprehensively validate the original dimensions and models using aggregated data from the same sample of Western countries. Three out of four dimensions of media systems show relatively high levels of internal consistency, but “role of the state” should be disaggregated into 3 subdimensions. A cluster analysis reveals 4 empirical types of media systems that differentiate and extend the original typology.
SCARECROW Has a SHORT-ROOT-Independent Role in Modulating the Sugar Response1[W][OA]

Sugar is essential for all cellular activities, but at high levels it inhibits growth and development. How plants balance the tradeoffs between the need for sugars and their growth inhibitory effects is poorly understood. SHORT-ROOT (SHR) and SCARECROW (SCR) are key regulators of stem cell renewal and radial patterning in the root of Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana). Recently, we identified direct targets of SHR at the genome scale. Intriguingly, among the top-ranked list, we found a number of genes that are involved in stress responses. By chromatin immunoprecipitation-polymerase chain reaction (PCR), we showed that SHR and SCR regulate a similar but not identical set of stress response genes. Consistent with this, scr and shr were found to be hypersensitive to abscisic acid (ABA). We further showed that both mutants were hypersensitive to high levels of glucose (Glc) but responded normally to high salinity and osmoticum. The endogenous levels of sucrose, Glc, and fructose were also elevated in shr and scr. Intriguingly, although shr had sugar content and developmental defects similar to those of scr, it was much less sensitive to Glc. Chromatin immunoprecipitation-PCR and reverse transcription-PCR assays as well as transgenic studies with an ABA-INSENSITIVE2 (ABI4)-β-glucuronidase reporter construct revealed that in root, SCR, but not SHR, repressed ABI4 and ABI5 directly and specifically in the apical meristem. When combined with abi4, scr became much more tolerant of high Glc. Finally, transgenic plants expressing ABI4 under the control of the SCR promoter manifested a short-root phenotype. These results together suggest that SCR has a SHR-independent role in mitigating the sugar response and that this role of SCR is important for root growth.
Proarrhythmic Potential of Mesenchymal Stem Cell Transplantation Revealed in an In Vitro Coculture Model

Background— Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are bone marrow stromal cells that are in phase 1 clinical studies of cellular cardiomyoplasty. However, the electrophysiological effects of MSC transplantation have not been studied. Although improvement of ventricular function would represent a positive outcome of MSC transplantation, focal application of stem cells has the potential downside of creating inhomogeneities that may predispose the heart to reentrant arrhythmias. In the present study we use an MSC and neonatal rat ventricular myocyte (NRVM) coculture system to investigate potential proarrhythmic consequences of MSC transplantation into the heart. Methods and Results— Human MSCs were cocultured with NRVMs in ratios of 1:99, 1:9, and 1:4 and optically mapped. We found that conduction velocity was decreased in cocultures compared with controls, but action potential duration (APD80) was not affected. Reentrant arrhythmias were induced in 86% of cocultures containing 10% and 20% MSCs (n=36) but not in controls (n=7) or cocultures containing only 1% MSCs (n=4). Immunostaining, Western blot, and dye transfer revealed the presence of functional gap junctions involving MSCs. Conclusions— Our results suggest that mixtures of MSCs and NRVMs can produce an arrhythmogenic substrate. The mechanism of reentry is probably increased tissue heterogeneity resulting from electric coupling of inexcitable MSCs with myocytes.
Neural network-based gait assessment using measurements of a wearable sensor system

A wearable gait analysis system has been developed for ambulatory measurement of gait in long-term experiments and daily life applications. Based on the measurement results of the developed system in a dynamic validation experiment, we trained neural networks for the estimation of joint angle, joint force, and joint moment using the ground reaction forces (GRFs) and moments in the gait analysis. These kinetic and kinematic parameters can be estimated through the neural networks trained especially for one person, but the possibility of building a universal model for most people should be studied in further research.
Detecting laughter and filled pauses using syllable-based features

Identifying laughter and filled pauses is important to understanding spontaneous human speech. These are two common vocal expressions that are non-lexical and incredibly communicative. In this paper, we use a two-tiered system for identifying laughter and filled pauses. We first generate frame level hypotheses and subsequently rescore these based on features derived from acoustic syllable segmentation. Using Interspeech 2013 ComParE challenge corpus, SVC, we find that these rescoring experiments and inclusion of syllable based acoustic/prosodic features allow for the detection of laughter and filled pauses by at 89.3% UAAUC on the development set, an improvement of 1.7% over the challenge baseline.
Identification of the KDM2/7 Histone Lysine Demethylase Subfamily Inhibitor and its Antiproliferative Activity

Histone Nε-methyl lysine demethylases KDM2/7 have been identified as potential targets for cancer therapies. On the basis of the crystal structure of KDM7B, we designed and prepared a series of hydroxamate analogues bearing an alkyl chain. Enzyme assays revealed that compound 9 potently inhibits KDM2A, KDM7A, and KDM7B, with IC50s of 6.8, 0.2, and 1.2 μM, respectively. While inhibitors of KDM4s did not show any effect on cancer cells tested, the KDM2/7-subfamily inhibitor 9 exerted antiproliferative activity, indicating the potential for KDM2/7 inhibitors as anticancer agents.
Simulation Modeling of Weak-Consistency Protocols

Weak-consistency replication protocols can be used to build wide-area services that are scalable, fault-tolerant, and useful for mobile computer systems. We have evaluated the timestamped anti-entropy protocol to determine how well it meets these goals. In this protocol, pairs of replicas periodically exchange update messages; in this way updates eventually propagate to all replicas. In this paper we present results from a detailed simulation analysis of the fault tolerance and the consistency provided by this protocol. The protocol is extremely robust in the face of site and network failure, and it scales well to large numbers of replicas.
A scar is born: Origins of fibrotic skin tissue

A fibroblast lineage is characterized by an inherent ability to form scar tissue in skin [Also see Research Article by Rinkevich et al.] Tissues rely on fibroblasts to produce and distribute extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins that provide crucial structure and organization for other resident cells. Although their presence is imperative to normal tissue morphogenesis and maintenance, these mesenchymal cells are frequently overlooked as “merely” ubiquitous supportive cells or uniformly vilified because of their role in aberrant connective tissue deposition that can occur during wound healing or reactive fibrosis. Consequently, the study by Rinkevich et al. on page 302 of this issue (1), teasing apart the embryonic origins, molecular profiles, and functional capacities of discrete fibroblast lineages within adult skin, turns a thought-provoking spotlight on these unassuming cells and paves the way for future studies with potentially important clinical implications.
Emerging Roles of Presynaptic Proteins in Ca++-Triggered Exocytosis

Molecules involved in late steps of neurotransmitter release at the synapse can be examined by noting the two speeds of the components of the exocytotic burst that are triggered by an increase in free Ca++. From studies of Ca++-dependent exocytosis of large dense-core vesicles in chromaffin cells, it seems that initiation of the SNARE complex is the molecular event underlying the priming process and that Munc13 acts as a priming factor by opening syntaxin. If synaptic mechanisms are similar, much could be learned from the molecular and kinetic studies that can be performed in chromaffin cells. The twinning of techiques from biophysics and molecular biology has led to remarkable progress in understanding the molecular mechanisms of synaptic transmission. Here we review the current picture of Ca++-triggered exocytosis, which has emerged from studies of a simple cellular model, the adrenal chromaffin cell. We discuss the molecular players that have been assigned a specific role in a particular step of this process and give a brief outlook on what these insights might tell us about mechanisms of short-term plasticity at classical synapses.
IL-7 Promotes the Transition of CD4 Effectors to Persistent Memory Cells

After transfer to adoptive hosts, in vitro–generated CD4 effectors can become long-lived memory cells, but the factors regulating this transition are unknown. We find that low doses of interleukin (IL) 7 enhance survival of effectors in vitro without driving their division. When in vitro–generated effectors are transferred to normal intact adoptive hosts, they survive and rapidly become small resting cells with a memory phenotype. CD4 effectors generated from wild-type versus IL-7 receptor−/− mice were transferred to adoptive hosts, including intact mice and those deficient in IL-7. In each case, the response to IL-7 was critical for good recovery of donor cells after 5–7 d. Recovery was also IL-7–dependent in Class II hosts where division was minimal. Blocking antibodies to IL-7 dramatically decreased short-term recovery of transferred effectors in vivo without affecting their division. These data indicate that IL-7 plays a critical role in promoting memory CD4 T cell generation by providing survival signals, which allow effectors to successfully become resting memory cells.
Clustering novel intents in a conversational interaction system with semantic parsing

Spoken language understanding (SLU) in today’s conversational systems focuses on recognizing a set of domains, intents, and associated arguments, that are determined by application developers. User requests that are not covered by these are usually directed to search engines, and may remain unhandled. We propose a method that aims to find common user intents amongst these uncovered, out-of-domain utterances, with the goal of supporting future phases of dialog system design. Our approach relies on finding common semantic patterns in uncovered user utterances using an Abstract Meaning Representation based semantic parser. We represent the corpus as a graph and find subgraphs that represent clusters, by pruning the corpus graph according to frequency and entropy. We employ crowd-workers to select and label the resulting clusters and compare resulting clusters with two baselines. Experimental analyses show that we obtain higher coverage and accuracy with the semantic parsing based clustering method. Furthermore, since the intents and candidate slots are already induced, these utterances can also be used in unsupervised SLU modeling. In intent classification experiments, we show that the statistical model trained using the clusters formed by this approach results in higher classification F-measure (showing about 25% relative improvement) in comparison to the alternatives.
Central coherence in typically developing preschoolers: does it cohere and does it relate to mindreading and executive control?

BACKGROUND Frith and Happé (1994) describe central coherence (CC) as the normal tendency to integrate individual elements into a coherent whole, a cognitive style which varies in the general population. Individuals with autism are at the extreme (weak) end of the continuum of coherence. There has been debate over whether CC is independent from other psychological functions such as theory of mind and executive control. METHODS We examined the validity of the CC construct in 76 typically developing 4- and 5-year-old children using four visuospatial coherence tasks. We also investigated the extent to which individual differences in performance on CC measures were associated with individual differences on measures of mindreading and executive functioning (EF). RESULTS Unexpectedly, the CC variables were not highly intercorrelated and did not form a single coherence factor. Instead, the results revealed a two-factor structure, one of which corresponded to visuospatial constructional ability. Correlations between the emerging factors of coherence and mindreading ability were weak, even when developmental differences in age and verbal and nonverbal ability were taken into account. In contrast, visuospatial constructional ability was reliably related to measures of EF, whilst correlations between EF and the second CC factor were very weak. CONCLUSIONS CC in typically developing preschoolers is not a unitary construct. Whilst there is little relationship between CC and mindreading abilities in these young children, executive control appears to be associated with one aspect of coherence: visuospatial construction.