Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Use of multiple biomarkers to improve the prediction of death from cardiovascular causes.

BACKGROUND The incremental usefulness of adding multiple biomarkers from different disease pathways for predicting the risk of death from cardiovascular causes has not, to our knowledge, been evaluated among the elderly. METHODS We used data from the Uppsala Longitudinal Study of Adult Men (ULSAM), a community-based cohort of elderly men, to investigate whether a combination of biomarkers that reflect myocardial cell damage, left ventricular dysfunction, renal failure, and inflammation (troponin I, N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide, cystatin C, and C-reactive protein, respectively) improved the risk stratification of a person beyond an assessment that was based on the established risk factors for cardiovascular disease (age, systolic blood pressure, use or nonuse of antihypertensive treatment, total cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, use or nonuse of lipid-lowering treatment, presence or absence of diabetes, smoking status, and body-mass index). RESULTS During follow-up (median, 10.0 years), 315 of the 1135 participants in our study (mean age, 71 years at baseline) died; 136 deaths were the result of cardiovascular disease. In Cox proportional-hazards models adjusted for established risk factors, all of the biomarkers significantly predicted the risk of death from cardiovascular causes. The C statistic increased significantly when the four biomarkers were incorporated into a model with established risk factors, both in the whole cohort (C statistic with biomarkers vs. without biomarkers, 0.766 vs. 0.664; P<0.001) and in the group of 661 participants who did not have cardiovascular disease at baseline (0.748 vs. 0.688, P=0.03). The improvement in risk assessment remained strong when it was estimated by other statistical measures of model discrimination, calibration, and global fit. CONCLUSIONS Our data suggest that in elderly men with or without prevalent cardiovascular disease, the simultaneous addition of several biomarkers of cardiovascular and renal abnormalities substantially improves the risk stratification for death from cardiovascular causes beyond that of a model that is based only on established risk factors.
The Total Solar Eclipse of March 2006: overview

This paper provides the overview of an inte- grated, multi-disciplinary effort to study the effects of the 29 March 2006 total solar eclipse on the environment, with special focus on the atmosphere. The eclipse has been visible over the Eastern Mediterranean, and on this occasion several research and academic institutes organised co-ordinated ex- perimental campaigns, at different distances from eclipse to- tality and at various environments in terms of air quality. De- tailed results and findings are presented in a number of com- ponent scientific papers included in a Special Issue of Atmo- spheric Chemistry and Physics. The effects of the eclipse on meteorological parameters, though very clear, were shown to be controlled by local factors rather than the eclipse mag- nitudes, and the turbulence activity near surface was sup- pressed causing a decrease in the Planetary Boundary Layer. In addition to the above, the decrease in solar radiation has caused change to the photochemistry of the atmosphere, with night time chemistry dominating. The abrupt "switch off" of the sun, induced changes also in the ionosphere (140 up to 220 km) and the stratosphere. In the ionosphere, both photochemistry and dynamics resulted to changes in the re- flection heights and the electron concentrations. Among the most important scientific findings from the experiments un- dertaken has been the experimental proof of eclipse induced thermal fluctuations in the ozone layer (Gravity Waves), due to the supersonic movement of the moon's shadow, for the first time with simultaneous measurements at three altitudes namely the troposphere, the stratosphere and the ionosphere.
Using 14 C, 13 C, 18 O and 17 O isotopic variations to provide insights into the high northern latitude surface CO inventory

Abstract. Measurements of the complete isotopic composition of atmospheric CO (3CO, 14CO, C17O, C18O) have been carried out at the high northern latitude stations Spitsbergen, Norway, and Alert, Canada. The annual changes of the isotope signatures reflect the seasonally varying contributions from the individual CO sources and the OH sink. Short-term variability is small at the remote sampling locations. Nevertheless, the interannual variability is considerable, in particular for the summer minimum. The most prominent event was a strong increase in CO in 1998 that persisted for several months. Using the isotope signatures it is possible to clearly identify extraordinarily strong biomass burning during that season as the cause for this large-scale CO anomaly. In 1997, on the other hand, biomass burning emissions were very low, leading to an unusually low summer minimum and corresponding isotope signatures. The results underscore that monitoring of CO and its isotopic composition at remote high latitude stations is a valuable tool to better understand long-term variations of CO that are representative for the whole high northern latitude region.
The capacity of the Hopfield associative memory

Techniques from coding theory are applied to study rigorously the capacity of the Hopfield associative memory. Such a memory stores n -tuple of \pm 1 's. The components change depending on a hard-limited version of linear functions of all other components. With symmetric connections between components, a stable state is ultimately reached. By building up the connection matrix as a sum-of-outer products of m fundamental memories, one hopes to be able to recover a certain one of the m memories by using an initial n -tuple probe vector less than a Hamming distance n/2 away from the fundamental memory. If m fundamental memories are chosen at random, the maximum asympotic value of m in order that most of the m original memories are exactly recoverable is n/(2 \log n) . With the added restriction that every one of the m fundamental memories be recoverable exactly, m can be no more than n/(4 \log n) asymptotically as n approaches infinity. Extensions are also considered, in particular to capacity under quantization of the outer-product connection matrix. This quantized memory capacity problem is closely related to the capacity of the quantized Gaussian channel.
Phylogenetic analysis of a retrotransposon with implications for strong evolutionary constraints on reverse transcriptase.

This study examines the evolutionary dynamics of a retrotransposon in a group of parasitoid wasps. A region containing the reverse transcriptase (RT) domain was sequenced for 43 elements from the genomes of nine different wasp species. Phylogenetic analysis of the elements revealed concordance with taxonomic classification of the host species, and the pattern was consistent with that expected for vertical transmission of a multicopy element during differentiation of the species. Twenty-three of the 43 elements had comparable intact open reading frames in the amplified region, and these were used in an analysis of evolutionary constraint on the amino acid sequence. As previously documented for retroelements, closely related elements exhibited nearly equal substitution rates at nonsynonymous and synonymous sites, but relative nonsynonymous substitution rates decreased as increasingly divergent elements were compared. A statistical test indicated that the decrease was not due to saturation of weakly selected sites. The pattern is most likely caused by a "pseudogene effect. " Individual elements are not subject to purifying selection, and therefore, synonymous and nonsynonymous substitutions accumulate at equal rates. Comparisons among closely related elements are influenced strongly by this pseudogene evolution, whereas comparisons among distantly related elements reveal selection on the actively replicating lineages connecting the elements. These distant comparisons more accurately reflect the constraints on the amino acid sequence, and the comparisons among elements in this study indicated strong constraints on RT.
Topic Detection in Twitter Based on Label Propagation Model

Many kinds of huge amount of tweets about real-world events are generated everyday in Twitter. However, the disorganization messages required to be classified by topics and events are one of challenges to get knowledge effectively. To solve the problem, we propose a novel method that combines the cluster algorithm with label propagation algorithm to detect topics in twitter. First, we use canopy cluster algorithm to cluster tweets, canopy cluster algorithm could divides a tweet into different clusters, and the tweet which only belongs to one cluster will be labeled. Second, the mechanism of label propagation is used to label the tweets that in the overlapping of different clusters. In order to evaluate our algorithm, we use two baseline algorithms, LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) and Single-Pass cluster algorithm. We apply three algorithms on tweet dataset with three topics and some noisy data, and experiment results show our method outperforms other algorithms on precision and recall rate.
Context-aware middleware for mobile multimedia applications

We present a context-aware middleware for mobile multimedia applications. The middleware offers functionality for service discovery, asynchronous messaging, publish/subscribe event management, storing and management of context information, building the user interface, and handling the local and network resources. It supports a wide range of context information including location, time, and user's preferences. Further, it allows controlling the connectivity of the device; the middleware is capable of switching traffic from one network connection to another. It can locate the services and software components as well. It facilitates development of multimedia applications by handling such functions as capture and rendering, storing, retrieving and adapting of media content to various mobile devices. The middleware offers facilities for media alerts, which are multimedia messages that are generated when predefined context is recognized. With these capabilities, it enables development of complex context-aware multimedia applications for mobile devices.
Lessons from Tau-Deficient Mice

Both Alzheimer's disease (AD) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) are characterized by the deposition of hyperphosphorylated forms of the microtubule-associated protein tau in neurons and/or glia. This unifying pathology led to the umbrella term “tauopathies” for these conditions, also emphasizing the central role of tau in AD and FTD. Generation of transgenic mouse models expressing human tau in the brain has contributed to the understanding of the pathomechanistic role of tau in disease. To reveal the physiological functions of tau in vivo, several knockout mouse strains with deletion of the tau-encoding MAPT gene have been established over the past decade, using different gene targeting constructs. Surprisingly, when initially introduced tau knockout mice presented with no overt phenotype or malformations. The number of publications using tau knockout mice has recently markedly increased, and both behavioural changes and motor deficits have been identified in aged mice of certain strains. Moreover, tau knockout mice have been instrumental in identifying novel functions of tau, both in cultured neurons and in vivo. Importantly, tau knockout mice have significantly contributed to the understanding of the pathophysiological interplay between Aβ and tau in AD. Here, we review the literature that involves tau knockout mice to summarize what we have learned so far from depleting tau in vivo.
A Tactile P300 Brain-Computer Interface

In this study, we investigated a Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) based on EEG responses to vibro-tactile stimuli around the waist. P300 BCIs based on tactile stimuli have the advantage of not taxing the visual or auditory system and of being potentially unnoticeable to other people. A tactile BCI could be especially suitable for patients whose vision or eye movements are impaired. In Experiment 1, we investigated its feasibility and the effect of the number of equally spaced tactors. Whereas a large number of tactors is expected to enhance the P300 amplitude since the target will be less frequent, it could also negatively affect the P300 since it will be difficult to identify the target when tactor density increases. Participants were asked to attend to the vibrations of a target tactor, embedded within a stream of distracters. The number of tactors was two, four or six. We demonstrated the feasibility of a tactile P300 BCI. We did not find a difference in SWLDA classification performance between the different numbers of tactors. In a second set of experiments we reduced the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) by shortening the on- and/or off-time of the tactors. The SOA for an optimum performance as measured in our experiments turned out to be close to conventional SOAs of visual P300 BCIs.
Probable Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Psychiatric Co-morbidity among Latino Primary Care Patients in Puerto Rico

Background The present investigation was designed to study PTSD among inner city primary care patients in Puerto Rico. Specifically, we examined the rate of probable PTSD, PTSD co-morbidity with MDD and GAD, and the association of probable PTSD and co-occurring disorders with demographic, treatment, and alcohol related factors. Methods We screened 3,568 patients at primary care practices serving primarily low-income patients. The presence of probable PTSD was assessed with the Primary Care PTSD screen, major depression with the PHQ-9, and generalized anxiety disorder with the GAD Q-IV. Results Fourteen percent of our sample screened positive for probable PTSD. Among this group, 12% met criteria for co-morbid GAD without MDD and 15.9% for co-morbid MDD with/without GAD, whereas 72% of the patients with probable PTSD did not meet criteria for co-morbidity. Over 80% of the patients with probable PTSD indicated they were not receiving mental health treatment. Multiple logistic regression findings show that there were no significant differences in demographic and alcohol related factors by PTSD status. Multinomial logistic regression analysis revealed significant differences in the use of mental health treatment among the subgroups of patients with probable PTSD. As compared to patients with only probable PTSD, the use of mental health services was 4 times higher among patients with probable PTSD and MDD and over 2 1/2 times higher among patients with probable PTSD and GAD. Conclusion The prevalence rate of probable PTSD in our sample was similar to the rates reported for soldiers after returning from deployment and for Latinos after the September 11 attacks. The high prevalence of probable PTSD and low use of mental health treatment among inner city primary care patients in our study, highlight the need of future research to obtain information on how to effectively target and treat Latino primary care patients in need of treatment for PTSD.
Measuring and Troubleshooting Large Operational Multipath Networks with Gray Box Testing

Troubleshooting large operational networks is extremely difficult due to the extensive usage of multipath routing. We present NetSonar, a system that localizes performance problems in such networks. It uses planned tomography, whose input comes from a novel test technique that maximizes component coverage while minimizing probing overhead. Earlier techniques are either white box (assuming complete knowledge of network’s forwarding state) or black box (assuming no knowledge). We argue that the former is infeasible in large networks and the latter is inefficient. We use gray box technique that needs only coarse forwarding information (e.g., multipath configuration without knowledge of router-internal hash functions). NetSonar deals with nondeterminism in multipath by computing probabilistic path covers, and localizes faults accurately with minimal test overhead via diagnosable link covers. We describe our experience deploying NetSonar in a global inter-datacenter network. In a one-month period, NetSonar triggered 66 alerts, of which 56 were independently verified.
Optimized Hybrid Phase Disposition PWM Control Method for Multilevel Inverter

This paper presents a new variation of hybrid phase disposition pulse width modulation technique suitable for cascaded multilevel inverter. A hybrid PDPWM is developed based on low frequency PWM and high frequency Sinusoidal PWM. An optimized sequential switching scheme introduced in this proposed method to equalize electro static and electro magnetic stress among the power devices. It is confirmed that the proposed technique offers significantly lower switching losses and switching transitions. Furthermore, the proposed hybrid PDPWM offers better harmonic performance compared to its conventional PWM counterpart. Simulation results are included in this paper in order to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed technique.
Mechanisms of Rubbing-Related Corneal Trauma in Keratoconus

Purpose: Corneal scarring in keratoconus, which is observed prior to contact lens wear and in association with a chronic habit of abnormal rubbing, suggests a keratocyte change to a repair phenotype in response to rubbing trauma. Methods: This review examines known and putative mechanisms for rubbing-related corneal trauma and cone formation. Results: Responses to eye rubbing (and possible causal links) may include increased corneal temperature, epithelial thinning, increased concentrations of inflammatory mediators in the precorneal tears, abnormal enzyme activity, large intraocular pressure spikes, high hydrostatic tissue pressure, thixotropically reduced ground substance viscosity, temporary displacement of ground substance from the corneal apex, buckling and flexure of fibrils associated with waves of corneal indentation, biomechanically coupled curvature transfer to the cone apex, slippage between collagen fibrils at the cone apex, and changes to keratocytes due to mechanical trauma and/or high hydrostatic pressure, in addition to scar formation. Cone formation appears to depend on a loss of shear strength and may be a consequence of a reduction in ground substance viscosity and glue function, which could allow the cornea to bend and yield to intraocular pressure. Conclusions: For some forms of keratoconus, a reduction in shear strength and cone-forming deformation may be responses to rubbing trauma. Some of the mechanisms for corneal rubbing trauma may be relevant to post-laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis ectasia or complications following other types of corneal surgery. There appear to be indications for the control of chronic habits of abnormal rubbing.
Principles for the design and operation of engineer-to-order supply chains in the construction sector

By integrating the approaches of Forrester and Burbidge [Forrester, J. W. 1961. Industrial Dynamics. Pegasus Communications; Burbidge, J. L. 1961. “The “New Approach” to Production. ” Production Engineer 40: 769–784], a set of five design principles have emerged which provide a foundation for sound supply chain design. The ‘FORRIDGE’ principles have since been shown to be a powerful guide for effective design of make-to-stock supply chains. However, some have questioned the applicability of generic supply chain thinking, arguing for a tailored approach. Hence, the goal here is to investigate how these principles should be adapted for engineer-to-order (ETO) industries, such as construction, capital goods and shipbuilding. The empirical elements draw on an extensive study of 12 suppliers and two large contractors in the construction industry. Supply chain tactics are identified for this range of companies, which are matched with real world problems, and linked with the FORRIDGE principles. This results in an additional ‘Design for X’ principle being proposed. The contributions made are the adaptation of established principles for the ETO sector, and the framework behind these principles.
Perceptual Tests of Rhythmic Similarity: I. Mora Rhythm

Listeners rely on native-language rhythm in segmenting speech; in different languages, stress-, syllable- or mora-based rhythm is exploited. The rhythmic similarity hypothesis holds that where two languages have similar rhythm, listeners of each language should segment their own and the other language similarly. Such similarity in listening was previously observed only for related languages (English-Dutch; French-Spanish). We now report three experiments in which speakers of Telugu, a Dravidian language unrelated to Japanese but similar to it in crucial aspects of rhythmic structure, heard speech in Japanese and in their own language, and Japanese listeners heard Telugu. For the Telugu listeners, detection of target sequences in Japanese speech was harder when target boundaries mismatched mora boundaries, exactly the pattern that Japanese listeners earlier exhibited with Japanese and other languages. The same results appeared when Japanese listeners heard Telugu speech containing only codas permissible in Japanese. Telugu listeners' results with Telugu speech were mixed, but the overall pattern revealed correspondences between the response patterns of the two listener groups, as predicted by the rhythmic similarity hypothesis. Telugu and Japanese listeners appear to command similar procedures for speech segmentation, further bolstering the proposal that aspects of language phonological structure affect listeners' speech segmentation.
The Three-Point Correlation Function of Galaxies Determined from the Two-Degree Field Galaxy Redshift Survey

In a detailed analysis of the three-point correlation function (3PCF) for the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey (2dFGRS), we have accurately measured the 3PCF for galaxies of different luminosities. The 3PCF amplitudes [Qred or Qproj ] of the galaxies generally decrease with increasing triangle size and increase with the shape parameter v, in qualitative agreement with the predictions for the clustering of dark matter (DM) in popular hierarchical cold dark matter (CDM) models. The 2dFGRS results agree well with our results for the Las Campanas Redshift Survey (LCRS), although the measurement accuracy is greatly improved in the present study because the 2dFGRS is much larger in size than the LCRS. The dependence of the 3PCF on luminosity is not significant, but there seems to be a trend for the brightest galaxy sample to have a lower amplitude than the fainter ones. Comparing the measured 3PCF amplitudes [Qred or Qproj ] to the prediction of a WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) concordance model, we find that the measured values are consistently lower than the predicted ones for DM. This is most pronounced for the brightest galaxies (sample I), for which about one-half of the predicted Q-value provides a good description of Qproj for the 2dFGRS data. For the less luminous sample (sample II), the Q-values are also smaller than in the DM model on small scales, but on scales larger than s = 8 h-1 Mpc and rp = 3.25 h-1 Mpc they reach the model values. Therefore, the galaxies of sample II are unbiased tracers on linear scales, but the bright galaxies (sample I) have a linear bias factor of ~1.5. As for the LCRS data, we may state that the best-fit DM model gives higher values for the 3PCF than observed. This indicates that the simple DM models must be refined, by using either more sophisticated bias models or a more sophisticated combination of model parameters.