Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Structural diversity in social contagion

The concept of contagion has steadily expanded from its original grounding in epidemic disease to describe a vast array of processes that spread across networks, notably social phenomena such as fads, political opinions, the adoption of new technologies, and financial decisions. Traditional models of social contagion have been based on physical analogies with biological contagion, in which the probability that an individual is affected by the contagion grows monotonically with the size of his or her “contact neighborhood”—the number of affected individuals with whom he or she is in contact. Whereas this contact neighborhood hypothesis has formed the underpinning of essentially all current models, it has been challenging to evaluate it due to the difficulty in obtaining detailed data on individual network neighborhoods during the course of a large-scale contagion process. Here we study this question by analyzing the growth of Facebook, a rare example of a social process with genuinely global adoption. We find that the probability of contagion is tightly controlled by the number of connected components in an individual's contact neighborhood, rather than by the actual size of the neighborhood. Surprisingly, once this “structural diversity” is controlled for, the size of the contact neighborhood is in fact generally a negative predictor of contagion. More broadly, our analysis shows how data at the size and resolution of the Facebook network make possible the identification of subtle structural signals that go undetected at smaller scales yet hold pivotal predictive roles for the outcomes of social processes.
Immunocytochemical Characterization of Disseminated Tumour Cells from Bone Marrow of Breast Cancer Patients.

BACKGROUND The occurrence of disseminated tumour cells in bone marrow of patients with breast cancer is linked to a worse prognosis. We present a method for DTC detection from bone marrow samples based on immunocytochemistry, using breast cancer-associated glycosylation molecules as markers for detection and characterization. MATERIALS AND METHODS A double immunofluorescence staining of a pan-cytokeratin (CK) marker and either Tn or O-Acetyl-GD3 was carried out in artificial and patient bone marrow samples. RESULTS The sample in which most cells stained positive for CK/Tn and CK/O-AC-GD3, was obtained from a patient who certainly had remote metastases. All other bone marrow samples showed heterogenous staining, so no correlation to tumour characteristics could be revealed. CONCLUSION A certain characterization of tumour cells can be achieved by a double staining of bone marrow samples with CK and a glycosylation marker. For future studies, analysis should be extended to a larger patient collective and further examination of more glycosylation markers should be carried out.
Bilingualism in the Education of the Hearing Impaired in Zimbabwe: Is this the Answer?

Education for the hearing impaired worldwide is fraught with communication philosophy controverises. Whereas the oralphilosophy has dominated die education of the hearing impaired in Zimbabwe for decades* debate on use of alternative methods of communication opened up recently. This article highlights die merits and demerits of the key communication philosophies in the education of die hearing impaired in the Zimbabwean context. It observes Sign Language as particularly important for grasping new information and for concept formation and oralism as. critical for integration. It is against this background that a new philosophy of bilingualism is proposed for the education of hearing-impaired children in Zimbabwe.
Control Capabilities of Myoelectric Robotic Prostheses by Hand Amputees: A Scientific Research and Market Overview

Hand amputation can dramatically affect the capabilities of a person. Cortical reorganization occurs in the brain, but the motor and somatosensorial cortex can interact with the remnant muscles of the missing hand even many years after the amputation, leading to the possibility to restore the capabilities of hand amputees through myoelectric prostheses. Myoelectric hand prostheses with many degrees of freedom are commercially available and recent advances in rehabilitation robotics suggest that their natural control can be performed in real life. The first commercial products exploiting pattern recognition to recognize the movements have recently been released, however the most common control systems are still usually unnatural and must be learned through long training. Dexterous and naturally controlled robotic prostheses can become reality in the everyday life of amputees but the path still requires many steps. This mini-review aims to improve the situation by giving an overview of the advancements in the commercial and scientific domains in order to outline the current and future chances in this field and to foster the integration between market and scientific research.
Cocoa intake, blood pressure, and cardiovascular mortality: the Zutphen Elderly Study.

BACKGROUND Small, short-term, intervention studies indicate that cocoa-containing foods improve endothelial function and reduce blood pressure. We studied whether habitual cocoa intake was cross-sectionally related to blood pressure and prospectively related with cardiovascular mortality. METHODS Data used were of 470 elderly men participating in the Zutphen Elderly Study and free of chronic diseases at baseline. Blood pressure was measured at baseline and 5 years later, and causes of death were ascertained during 15 years of follow-up. Habitual food consumption was assessed by the cross-check dietary history method in 1985, 1990, and 1995. Cocoa intake was estimated from the consumption of cocoa-containing foods. RESULTS One third of the men did not use cocoa at baseline. The median cocoa intake among users was 2.11 g/d. After adjustment, the mean systolic blood pressure in the highest tertile of cocoa intake was 3.7 mm Hg lower (95% confidence interval [CI], -7.1 to -0.3 mm Hg; P = .03 for trend) and the mean diastolic blood pressure was 2.1 mm Hg lower (95% CI, -4.0 to -0.2 mm Hg; P = .03 for trend) compared with the lowest tertile. During follow-up, 314 men died, 152 of cardiovascular diseases. Compared with the lowest tertile of cocoa intake, the adjusted relative risk for men in the highest tertile was 0.50 (95% CI, 0.32-0.78; P = .004 for trend) for cardiovascular mortality and 0.53 (95% CI, 0.39-0.72; P < .001) for all-cause mortality. CONCLUSION In a cohort of elderly men, cocoa intake is inversely associated with blood pressure and 15-year cardiovascular and all-cause mortality.
Risk-Based Transmission Expansion

In this paper, a systematic risk-based transmission line expansion approach is studied. The approach addresses three objectives: load-driven expansion, security-enhancement expansion and risk-based expansion. The first problem identifies transmission expansions necessary to correct inadequacy; the second problem identifies transmission expansion necessary to correct insecurity; the third problem balances economic investment and expected post-contingency consequences. The three problems are addressed using a generalized Benders decomposition algorithm. The approach is illustrated on a six-bus test system.
Rutin Inhibits Ovariectomy‐Induced Osteopenia in Rats

Several studies suggest that polyphenols might exert a protective effect against osteopenia. The present experiment was conducted to observe the effects of rutin (quercetin‐3‐O‐glucose rhamnose) on bone metabolism in ovariectomized (OVX) rats. Thirty 3‐month‐old Wistar rats were used. Twenty were OVX while the 10 controls were sham‐operated (SH). Among the 20 OVX, for 90 days after surgery 10 were fed the same synthetic diet as the SH or OVX ones, but 0. 25% rutin (OVX + R) was added. At necropsy, the decrease in uterine weight was not different in OVX and OVX + R rats. Ovariectomy also induced a significant decrease in both total and distal metaphyseal femoral mineral density, which was prevented by rutin consumption. Moreover, femoral failure load, which was not different in OVX and SH rats, was even higher in OVX + R rats than in OVX or SH rats. In the same way, on day 90, both urinary deoxypyridinoline (DPD) excretion (a marker for bone resorption) and calciuria were higher in OVX rats than in OVX + R or SH rats. Simultaneously, plasma osteocalcin (OC) concentration (a marker for osteoblastic activity) was higher in OVX + R rats than in SH rats. High‐performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) profiles of plasma samples from OVX + R rats revealed that mean plasma concentration of active metabolites (quercetin and isorhamnetin) from rutin was 9.46 + 1 μM, whereas it was undetectable in SH and OVX rats. These results indicate that rutin (and/or its metabolites), which appeared devoid of any uterotrophic activity, inhibits ovariectomy‐induced trabecular bone loss in rats, both by slowing down resorption and increasing osteoblastic activity.
Measurements of Precipitable Water Vapor by GPS, Radiosondes, and a Microwave Water Vapor Radiometer

Results from the Westford WAter Vapor Experiment (WWAVE) will be discussed. This experiment was designed to measure the temporal and spatial variability of the total precipitable water vapor (PWV) over an area of roughly 25 km radius around the Haystack Observatory in Westford, MA. The main experiment was conducted from August 15 to August 30, 1995, and a variety of techniques were used to measure the water vapor, including radiosondes launched two to three times daily from the Westford site; a water vapor radiometer (WVR) located at the site; and eleven GPS receivers arranged within a 25 km radius around the site (with three receivers located within one km of each other at the site). Surface meteorological monitoring units were collocated at eight of the GPS sites. In add ition, estimates of the precipitable water vapor were obtained with the Westford VLBI antenna as part of a 6-station network which included antennas in Alaska, Hawaii, Germany, Sweden, and Norway. Discrepancies on the order of 10-30 mm of zenith wet delay (1-5 mm of PWV) are seen in the measurements of precipitable water vapor by the Haystack radiosonde launches as compared to those from the nearby NWS radiosonde sites (Grey, Maine, Chatham, Massachusetts, and Albany, New York). Possible explanations are differences in geographical locations, in humidity sensors, and/or in the processing algorithms. A comparison of the collocated Haystack WVR and radiosonde estimates of the precipitable water vapor also indicates differences on the order of 10 mm zenith delay (1-2 mm of PWV). Finally, systematic differences in the GPS determination of PWV are observed that depend on the elevation cutoff used in the GPS analysis. These differences are not related to the type of GPS antenna and receiver, and are not seen at all sites. The discrepancies are consistent with the effects of near field scattering seen in geodetic GPS measurements and indicate that GPS antenna mounts should be considered in designing water vapor retrieval systems based on GPS.
VirVarSeq: a low-frequency virus variant detection pipeline for Illumina sequencing using adaptive base-calling accuracy filtering

MOTIVATION In virology, massively parallel sequencing (MPS) opens many opportunities for studying viral quasi-species, e.g. in HIV-1- and HCV-infected patients. This is essential for understanding pathways to resistance, which can substantially improve treatment. Although MPS platforms allow in-depth characterization of sequence variation, their measurements still involve substantial technical noise. For Illumina sequencing, single base substitutions are the main error source and impede powerful assessment of low-frequency mutations. Fortunately, base calls are complemented with quality scores (Qs) that are useful for differentiating errors from the real low-frequency mutations. RESULTS A variant calling tool, Q-cpileup, is proposed, which exploits the Qs of nucleotides in a filtering strategy to increase specificity. The tool is imbedded in an open-source pipeline, VirVarSeq, which allows variant calling starting from fastq files. Using both plasmid mixtures and clinical samples, we show that Q-cpileup is able to reduce the number of false-positive findings. The filtering strategy is adaptive and provides an optimized threshold for individual samples in each sequencing run. Additionally, linkage information is kept between single-nucleotide polymorphisms as variants are called at the codon level. This enables virologists to have an immediate biological interpretation of the reported variants with respect to their antiviral drug responses. A comparison with existing SNP caller tools reveals that calling variants at the codon level with Q-cpileup results in an outstanding sensitivity while maintaining a good specificity for variants with frequencies down to 0.5%. AVAILABILITY The VirVarSeq is available, together with a user's guide and test data, at sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/virtools/? source=directory.
Association of Iron Depletion with Menstruation and Dietary Intake Indices in Pubertal Girls: The Healthy Growth Study

The aim of the present study was to investigate the associations of iron depletion (ID) with menstrual blood losses, lifestyle, and dietary habits, in pubertal girls. The study sample comprised 1222 girls aged 9–13 years old. Biochemical, anthropometrical, dietary, clinical, and physical activity data were collected. Out of 274 adolescent girls with menses, 33.5% were found to be iron depleted (defined as serum ferritin < 12 μg/L) compared to 15.9% out of 948 girls without menses. Iron-depleted girls without menses were found to have lower consumption of poultry (P = 0.017) and higher consumption of fruits (P = 0.044) and fast food (P = 0.041) compared to their peers having normal iron status. Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that girls with menses were 2.57 (95% CI: 1.37, 4.81) times more likely of being iron depleted compared to girls with no menses. Iron depletion was found to be associated with high calcium intake, high consumption of fast foods, and low consumption of poultry and fruits. Menses was the only factor that was found to significantly increase the likelihood of ID in these girls. More future research is probably needed in order to better understand the role of diet and menses in iron depletion.
The Biochemistry of n-3 Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids* 210

have effectson diverse physiological processes impacting normal health andchronic disease, such as the regulation of plasma lipid levels (1–4),cardiovascular (5–7) and immune function (8), insulin action (9,10), and neuronal development and visual function (11) (see TableI, supplemental material). Ingestion of
Multimodal student interaction online: an ecological perspective

Abstract This article describes the influence of tool and task design on student interaction in language learning at a distance. Interaction in a multimodal desktop video conferencing environment, FlashMeeting, is analyzed from an ecological perspective with two main foci: participation rates and conversational feedback strategies. The quantitative analysis of participation rates shows that as far as verbal interaction is concerned, multimodality did not have an equalizing effect in this context, contradicting previous research on multimodal student interaction. Additionally, the qualitative analysis of conversational feedback strategies shows that whereas some multimodal strategies were employed, the students did not manage to fully act upon the communicative affordances of the tool, as the feedback ratio during and after the often long broadcasts was relatively low. These findings are related to task and tool design and the article discusses how design improvements in these areas might result in a more constructive language learning ecology.
Review on Keyword Searchable Public Key Cipher Text with Hidden Structure

Now a days a security over internet problem is increases day by day . Existing system get search time large with the whole no of cipher texts. That makes recovery from comprehensive database unreasonable. To improve this problem, this paper propose searchable public key cipher texts with unseen structure for keyword explore as fast as feasible lacking sacrificing semantic security of the encrypted keywords. In SPCHS, every one keyword searchable cipher text are planned by unseen relative, and with the search trapdoor subsequent to a keyword, the smallest amount in sequence of the relations is relate to a look for algorithm as the supervision to discover all corresponding cipher text capably. We build a SPCHS idea from scrape in which the cipher text contains a concealed star like structure. We demonstrate our system to be semantically secure in the Random Oracle (RO) model. The search complexity of the proposed scheme depended upon the actual no of cipher text rather than the no of all cipher text. Lastly we present a generic SPCHS construction from unidentified identity based encryption and clash free full identity malleable identity based key encapsulation mechanism with anonymity.
Fast Discovery of Interesting Collections of Web Services

Web services are beginning to play a major role in future Web architectures and software applications. One of the most important research directions in the area of Web services is the development of techniques for automatically discovering collections of services that satisfy a set of interestingness constraints. Discovery of interesting collections of Web services is a challenging problem, however, due to the high complexity involved. In this paper, we present a new method for discovery of interesting collections of Web services, according to user specified cost constraints. We show that this task is closely related to the well-known problem of computing the transversals of a hypergraph. We experimentally evaluate our approach and show that pruning and partitioning techniques can significantly improve running time
Program Development to Prevent Complications of Diabetes: Assessment of barriers in an urban clinic

With the rising incidence and increased prevalence of diabetes in minority populations (1), characterization of the quality of diabetes care for these groups becomes imperative. Standards of medical care developed by the American Diabetes Association (2) form the basis for quality assurance in diabetes care. This commentary describes our intervention experience in an urban primary care clinic that is federally funded to provide care for the medically underserved in Bronx, New York. We previously reported on the characteristics of care provided to diabetes patients in seven such clinics in the New York City area. Chart audits revealed that although the majority of diabetes patients had six or more clinic visits per year and frequent laboratory tests for blood glucose, they had not received recommended screening for chronic complications of diabetes or nutritional assessment (3,4). This 1-year intervention was designed to facilitate screening for chronic diabetes complications and to identify the barriers to implementing standards of diabetes care in an urban clinic serving minority populations. One intervention clinic and two control clinics (designated clinics A and B) were randomly assigned. Over 60% of the diabetes patients at each clinic were of Hispanic origin and over 60% were female. Chart audits were performed at baseline and at 1 year postintervention. Qualitative data were collected through interviews at all three clinics at baseline and again at the 1-year follow-up for the intervention clinic only. Common strategies for evaluation of medical care include audits of medical records, direct observation, individual interviews, and group discussions; however, each strategy has limitations. Chart audits reflect provider documentation rates as well as actual service, while direct observation or interviews may be reactive and provide biased estimates (5). We used multiple methodologies to explore the same problem, known as method "tri-
Rapid Activation of Ras by Fluid Flow Is Mediated by G&agr;q and G&bgr;&ggr; Subunits of Heterotrimeric G Proteins in Human Endothelial Cells

Objective—Temporal gradients in fluid shear stress have been shown to induce a proatherogenic phenotype in endothelial cells. The biomechanical mechanism(s) that enables the endothelium to respond to fluid shear stress requires rapid activation and signal transduction. The small G protein Ras has been identified as an early link between rapid mechanotransduction events and the effects of shear stress on downstream signal-transduction cascades. The aim of this study was to elucidate the upstream mechanotransduction signaling events mediating the rapid activation of Ras by fluid shear stress in human endothelial cells. Methods and Results—Direct measurement of Ras-bound GTP and GDP showed that fluid-flow activation of Ras was rapid (10-fold within 5 seconds) and dose dependent on shear stress magnitude. Treatment with protein tyrosine kinase inhibitors or pertussis toxin did not significantly affect flow-induced Ras activation. However, activation was inhibited by transient transfection with antisense to G&agr;q or the G&bgr;&ggr; scavenger &bgr;-adrenergic receptor kinase carboxy terminus. Transfection with several G&bgr;&ggr; subunit isoforms revealed flow-induced Ras activation was most effectively enhanced by G&bgr;1&ggr;2. Conclusions—These results suggest that the rapid, shear-induced activation of Ras is mediated by G&agr;q through the activity of G&bgr;&ggr; subunits in human vascular endothelial cells.
Impaired activation-induced cell death promotes spontaneous arthritis in antigen (cartilage proteoglycan)-specific T cell receptor-transgenic mice.

OBJECTIVE To investigate whether genetic preponderance of a T cell receptor (TCR) recognizing an arthritogenic peptide of human cartilage proteoglycan (PG) is sufficient for development of arthritis. METHODS We performed a longitudinal study using BALB/c mice expressing a TCR that recognizes the arthritogenic ATEGRVRVNSAYQDK peptide of human cartilage PG. PG-specific TCR-transgenic (PG-TCR-Tg) mice were inspected weekly for peripheral arthritis until 12 months of age. Peripheral joints were examined histologically, and T cell responses, T cell activation markers, serum cytokines, and autoantibodies were measured. Apoptosis and signaling studies were performed in vitro on T cells from aged PG-TCR-Tg mice. RESULTS Spontaneous arthritis developed as early as 5-6 months of age, and the incidence increased to 40-50% by 12 months of age. Progressive inflammation began with cartilage and bone erosions in the interphalangeal joints, and later expanded to the proximal joints of the front and hind paws. Spontaneous arthritis was associated with a high proportion of activated CD4+ T cells, enhanced interferon-γ and interleukin-17 (IL-17) production, and elevated levels of serum autoantibodies. PG-TCR-Tg mice lacking IL-4 developed arthritis earlier and at a higher incidence than IL-4-sufficient mice. Antigen-specific activation-induced cell death was diminished in vitro in CD4+ T cells of PG-TCR-Tg mice with spontaneous arthritis, especially in those lacking IL-4. CONCLUSION The presence of CD4+ T cells expressing a TCR specific for an arthritogenic PG epitope is sufficient to trigger spontaneous autoimmune inflammation in the joints of BALB/c mice. IL-4 appears to be a negative regulator of this disease, through attenuation of activation-induced cell death.