Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Resting and Post-Exercise Ankle-Brachial Index Measurements to Diagnose Asymptomatic Peripheral Arterial Disease in Middle Aged and Elderly Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Patients: A Pilot Study

Background Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients are at risk for asymptomatic peripheral arterial disease (PAD) because smoking is a risk factor for COPD and PAD. The objectives of this study were to determine the proportion of COPD patients with asymptomatic PAD and to investigate whether the estimated risk of asymptomatic PAD in subjects with COPD differs using resting and exercise ankle-brachial index (ABI) in smokers. Methods Using a cross-sectional study design, consecutive smokers > 50 years old were recruited over 2 months from the inpatient units and the outpatient clinics. Subjects previously diagnosed with PAD, unstable angina, recent (< 3 months) myocardial infarction or abdominal, intracranial, eye or lung surgery, and palliative care patients were excluded. Vascular risk factors, ABI (supine and post-3-minute walk supine), self-reported PAD symptoms, and spirometry were obtained. Two measurements of systolic blood pressure on all limbs were obtained using a sphygmomanometer and a Doppler ultrasound, and the ABI was calculated. Data were expressed as means ± standard deviation (SD). Dichotomous outcomes were assessed using Chi-square statistics; P-values of < 0.05 were considered significant. Results Thirty patients with no previous diagnosis of PAD were recruited. Mean age was 67.7 years (SD: 10.5). Overall, 21 subjects (70%) had spirometry-proven COPD. Significant ABI for PAD (< 0.9) was seen in 7/21 COPD (33.5%) and 0/9 non-COPD subjects in the supine resting position (P = 0.07), and in 9/21 COPD (42.9%) vs. 0/9 non-COPD subjects after exercise (P = 0.03). Conclusions A significant proportion of patients with spirometry-proven COPD screened positive for asymptomatic PAD after exercise. Resting ABI may not be very sensitive to diagnose asymptomatic PAD in COPD subjects. ABI may be a reliable, sensitive and practical screening tool to assess cardiovascular risk in COPD patients. Future large-scale studies are required to confirm this finding.
The Role of Lexical Frequency in the Weakening of Syllable-Final Lexical /s/ in the Spanish of Barranquilla, Colombia

This article reports on a quantitative analysis of /s/ in words of different lexical frequencies in a cohesive speech community. Speakers from Barranquilla, Colombia between 20―26 years of age read approximately 100 sentences, containing words with s + consonant sequences. These productions were submitted to auditory acoustical analysis; visual inspection of spectrograms was carried out for ambiguous cases wherein the strong sibilance that characterizes /s/ was not clear. Multivariate analysis of factors conditioning s-realization reveals that the single most important factor is lexical frequency. Speakers tend towards full articulation of /s/ in low-frequency words, while weakening it in high-frequency words. The importance of this factor becomes more apparent when one examines a wider range of the frequency scale than what is attested in conversational speech. These findings support models of language which incorporate lexical frequency as a central component in explaining variations across words in both individual and communal grammars.
In Vivo Imaging of Hierarchical Spatiotemporal Activation of Caspase-8 during Apoptosis

Background Activation of caspases is crucial for the execution of apoptosis. Although the caspase cascade associated with activation of the initiator caspase-8 (CASP8) has been investigated in molecular and biochemical detail, the dynamics of CASP8 activation are not fully understood. Methodology/Principal Findings We have established a biosensor based on fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) for visualizing apoptotic signals associated with CASP8 activation at the single-cell level. Our dual FRET (dual-FRET) system, comprising a triple fusion fluorescent protein, enabled us to simultaneously monitor the activation of CASP8 and its downstream effector, caspase-3 (CASP3) in single live cells. With the dual-FRET-based biosensor, we detected distinct activation patterns of CASP8 and CASP3 in response to various apoptotic stimuli in mammalian cells, resulting in the positive feedback amplification of CASP8 activation. We reproduced these observations by in vitro reconstitution of the cascade, with a recombinant protein mixture that included procaspases. Furthermore, using a plasma membrane-bound FRET-based biosensor, we captured the spatiotemporal dynamics of CASP8 activation by the diffusion process, suggesting the focal activation of CASP8 is sufficient to propagate apoptotic signals through death receptors. Conclusions Our new FRET-based system visualized the activation process of both initiator and effector caspases in a single apoptotic cell and also elucidated the necessity of an amplification loop for full activation of CASP8.
Entropy-based High Performance Computation of Boolean SNP-SNP Interactions Using GPUs

It is being increasingly accepted that traditional statistical Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) analysis of Genome-Wide Asso- ciation Studies (GWAS) reveals just a small part of the heritability in complex diseases. Study of SNPs interactions identify additional SNPs that contribute to disease but that do not reach genome-wide signicance or exhibit only epistatic eects. We have introduced a methodology for genome-wide screening of epistatic interactions which is feasible to be handled by state-of-art high performance computing technology. Unlike standard software (1), our method computes all boolean binary interac- tions between SNPs across the whole genome without assuming a par- ticular model of interaction. Our extensive search for epistasis comes at the expense of higher computational complexity, which we tackled using graphics processors (GPUs) to reduce the computational time from sev- eral months in a cluster of CPUs to 3-4 days on a multi-GPU platform (2). Here, we contribute with a new entropy-based function to evaluate the interaction between SNPs which does not compromise ndings about the most signicant SNP interactions, but is more than 4000 times lighter in terms of computational time when running on GPUs and provides more than 100x faster code than a CPU of similar cost. We deploy a number of optimization techniques to tune the implementation of this function using CUDA and show the way to enhance scalability on larger data sets.
Linoleate-Rich High-Fat Diet Decreases Mortality in Hypertensive Heart Failure Rats Compared With Lard and Low-Fat Diets

Recent studies indicate that high-fat diets may attenuate cardiac hypertrophy and contractile dysfunction in chronic hypertension. However, it is unclear whether consuming a high-fat diet improves prognosis in aged individuals with advanced hypertensive heart disease or the extent to which differences in its fatty acid composition modulate its effects in this setting. In this study, aged spontaneously hypertensive heart failure rats were administered a standard high-carbohydrate diet or high-fat diet (42% of kilocalories) supplemented with high-linoleate safflower oil or lard until death to determine their effects on disease progression and mortality. Both high-fat diets attenuated cardiac hypertrophy, left ventricular chamber dilation, and systolic dysfunction observed in rats consuming the high-carbohydrate diet. However, the lard diet significantly hastened heart failure mortality compared with the high-carbohydrate diet, whereas the linoleate diet significantly delayed mortality. Both high-fat diets elicited changes in the myocardial fatty acid profile, but neither had any effect on thromboxane excretion or blood pressure. The prosurvival effect of the linoleate diet was associated with a greater myocardial content and linoleate-enrichment of cardiolipin, an essential mitochondrial phospholipid known to be deficient in the failing heart. This study demonstrates that, despite having favorable effects on cardiac morphology and function in hypertension, a high-fat diet may accelerate or attenuate mortality in advanced hypertensive heart disease depending on its fatty acid composition. The precise mechanisms responsible for the divergent effects of the lard and linoleate-enriched diets merit further investigation but may involve diet-induced changes in the content and/or composition of cardiolipin in the heart.
Speech coding based on sparse linear prediction

This paper describes a novel speech coding concept created by introducing sparsity constraints in a linear prediction scheme both on the residual and on the prediction vector. The residual is efficiently encoded using well known multi-pulse excitation procedures due to its sparsity. A robust statistical method for the joint estimation of the short-term and long-term predictors is also provided by exploiting the sparse characteristics of the predictor. Thus, the main purpose of this work is showing that better statistical modeling in the context of speech analysis creates an output that offers better coding properties. The proposed estimation method leads to a convex optimization problem, which can be solved efficiently using interior-point methods. Its simplicity makes it an attractive alternative to common speech coders based on minimum variance linear prediction.
Yeast Mpk1 Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase Activates Transcription through Swi4/Swi6 by a Noncatalytic Mechanism That Requires Upstream Signal

ABSTRACT The cell wall integrity mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascade of Saccharomyces cerevisiae drives changes in gene expression in response to cell wall stress. We show that the MAPK of this pathway (Mpk1) and its pseudokinase paralog (Mlp1) use a noncatalytic mechanism to activate transcription of the FKS2 gene. Transcriptional activation of FKS2 was dependent on the Swi4/Swi6 (SBF) transcription factor and on an activating signal to Mpk1 but not on protein kinase activity. Activated (phosphorylated) Mpk1 and Mlp1 were detected in a complex with Swi4 and Swi6 at the FKS2 promoter. Mpk1 association with Swi4 in vivo required phosphorylation of Mpk1. Promoter association of Mpk1 and the Swi4 DNA-binding subunit of SBF were codependent but did not require Swi6, indicating that the MAPK confers DNA-binding ability to Swi4. Based on these data, we propose a model in which phosphorylated Mpk1 or Mlp1 forms a dimeric complex with Swi4 that is competent to associate with the FKS2 promoter. This complex then recruits Swi6 to activate transcription. Finally, we show that human ERK5, a functional ortholog of Mpk1, is similarly capable of driving FKS2 expression in the absence of protein kinase activity, suggesting that this mammalian MAPK may also have a noncatalytic function in vivo.
Drops for Stuff: An Analysis of Reshipping Mule Scams

Credit card fraud has seen rampant increase in the past years, as customers use credit cards and similar financial instruments frequently. Both online and brick-and-mortar outfits repeatedly fall victim to cybercriminals who siphon off credit card information in bulk. Despite the many and creative ways that attackers use to steal and trade credit card information, the stolen information can rarely be used to withdraw money directly, due to protection mechanisms such as PINs and cash advance limits. As such, cybercriminals have had to devise more advanced monetization schemes to work around the current restrictions. One monetization scheme that has been steadily gaining traction are reshipping scams. In such scams, cybercriminals purchase high-value or highly-demanded products from online merchants using stolen payment instruments, and then ship the items to a credulous citizen. This person, who has been recruited by the scammer under the guise of "work-from-home" opportunities, then forwards the received products to the cybercriminals, most of whom are located overseas. Once the goods reach the cybercriminals, they are then resold on the black market for an illicit profit. Due to the intricacies of this kind of scam, it is exceedingly difficult to trace, stop, and return shipments, which is why reshipping scams have become a common means for miscreants to turn stolen credit cards into cash. In this paper, we report on the first large-scale analysis of reshipping scams, based on information that we obtained from multiple reshipping scam websites. We provide insights into the underground economy behind reshipping scams, such as the relationships among the various actors involved, the market size of this kind of scam, and the associated operational churn. We find that there exist prolific reshipping scam operations, with one having shipped nearly 6,000 packages in just 9 months of operation, exceeding 7.3 million US dollars in yearly revenue, contributing to an overall reshipping scam revenue of an estimated 1.8 billion US dollars per year. Finally, we propose possible approaches to intervene and disrupt reshipping scam services.
Validity of proxy-based reports of impulsivity and aggression in Chinese research on suicidal behavior.

BACKGROUND In studies about the risk factors for suicidal behavior, the assessment of impulsiveness and aggression often depend on information from proxy informants. AIMS To assess the validity of proxy informants' reports on impulsiveness and aggression in China. METHODS Modified Chinese versions of the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS-CV) and the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire (AQ-CV) were administered to 131 suicide attempters treated at a hospital in rural China, to coresident relatives about the attempters, to 131 matched community controls, and to coresident relatives about the controls. RESULTS BIS-CV and AQ-CV total scores and subscale scores were all significantly higher for suicide attempters than for matched controls. Proxy informants considered subjects slightly more impulsive and aggressive than the subjects reported themselves. Subject-proxy concordance for total BIS-CV and AQ-CV scores were excellent for both attempters and controls (ICCs = 0.76-0.83). Concordance for the three BIS-CV subscales was 0.74-0.81 for attempters and 0.74-0.83 for controls. Concordance for the five AQ-CV subscales was 0.66-0.85 for attempters and 0.56-0.82 for controls. LIMITATIONS Results are based on respondents from a single location in rural China. CONCLUSIONS The results support the validity of the BIS-CV and AQ-CV and of research on suicidal behavior in China that uses proxy-based reports of impulsiveness and aggression.
Towards a Sociology of International Courts

This paper first outlines how classical sociological theories have contributed to the understanding of international courts (ICs) and society. It then explores the original law and society stance on legal institutions, and outlines a recent scholarship, which draws on law and society and contemporary sociology for explaining ICs and their link to global society. The final part of the article identifies a set of key questions with respect to understanding ICs using both classical and contemporary sociology. It considers the question of institutions from a sociological perspective; the place of agency in studies of ICs; and the notion of legitimacy as it is found in both classical and contemporary sociology and its implications for studying ICs.
Unifying the DNA End-processing Roles of the Artemis Nuclease

Background: Artemis is a nuclease that is necessary for hairpin opening in V(D)J recombination. Results: Artemis action on blunt DNA ends is dependent on DNA sequence (breathing) and Ku. Conclusion: Breathing of blunt DNA ends into a transient ss/dsDNA boundary is needed for Artemis action. Significance: Unification of Artemis nuclease action explains the features of NHEJ and V(D)J recombination. Artemis is a member of the metallo-β-lactamase protein family of nucleases. It is essential in vertebrates because, during V(D)J recombination, the RAG complex generates hairpins when it creates the double strand breaks at V, D, and J segments, and Artemis is required to open the hairpins so that they can be joined. Artemis is a diverse endo- and exonuclease, and creating a unified model for its wide range of nuclease properties has been challenging. Here we show that Artemis resects iteratively into blunt DNA ends with an efficiency that reflects the AT-richness of the DNA end. GC-rich ends are not cut by Artemis alone because of a requirement for DNA end breathing (and confirmed using fixed pseudo-Y structures). All DNA ends are cut when both the DNA-dependent protein kinase catalytic subunit and Ku accompany Artemis but not when Ku is omitted. These are the first biochemical data demonstrating a Ku dependence of Artemis action on DNA ends of any configuration. The action of Artemis at blunt DNA ends is slower than at overhangs, consistent with a requirement for a slow DNA end breathing step preceding the cut. The AT sequence dependence, the order of strand cutting, the length of the cuts, and the Ku-dependence of Artemis action at blunt ends can be reconciled with the other nucleolytic properties of both Artemis and Artemis·DNA-PKcs in a model incorporating DNA end breathing of blunt ends to form transient single to double strand boundaries that have structural similarities to hairpins and fixed 5′ and 3′ overhangs.
Social-Cognitive Influences on Students’ Physical Activity Behavior across the First College Year

Background . The purpose of this study was to examine the cross-sectional and longitudinal influence of specific social-cognitive variables on students’ physical activity behavior across the first college year. Methods . First-year college students (N = 406) from a regional higher education institution participated. Email solicitation was sent to students at the beginning of the fall semester with a link to inventories measuring exercise identity (EI), attitude (AT), subjective norm (SN), perceived behavioral control (PBC), and self-report physical activity. The sample was again solicited at the end of the first semester and the end of the first academic year with Pearson r and r2 used to examine relationships between each independent variable and physical activity behavior. Results . Cross-sectional, EI demonstrated a positive, moderately strong relationship with activity behavior at each data collection time period. Attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control also demonstrated positive influences on activity at each time period but the strength of the influence was more moderate than that of EI. Longitudinal, EI, AT, and SN were all positively related to activity behavior, with EI demonstrating the strongest influence. Conclusions . Based on the current findings, it appears that specific social-cognitive variables can provide meaningful psychological bases upon which to promote physical activity behavior. Physical activity intervention ideas for college students are included.
Biophysical and network mechanisms of high frequency extracellular potentials in the rat hippocampus

A fundamental question in neuroscience is how distributed networks of neurons communicate and coordinate dynamically and specifically. Several models propose that oscillating local networks can transiently couple to each other through phase-locked firing. Coherent local field potentials (LFP) between synaptically connected regions is often presented as evidence for such coupling. The physiological correlates of LFP signals depend on many anatomical and physiological factors, however, and how the underlying neural processes collectively generate features of different spatiotemporal scales is poorly understood. High frequency oscillations in the hippocampus, including gamma rhythms (30-100 Hz) that are organized by the theta oscillations (5-10 Hz) during active exploration and REM sleep, as well as sharp wave-ripples (SWRs, 140-200 Hz) during immobility or slow wave sleep, have each been associated with various aspects of learning and memory. Deciphering their physiology and functional consequences is crucial to understanding the operation of the hippocampal network. We investigated the origins and coordination of high frequency LFPs in the hippocampo-entorhinal network using both biophysical models and analyses of large-scale recordings in behaving and sleeping rats. We found that the synchronization of pyramidal cell spikes substantially shapes, or even dominates, the electrical signature of SWRs in area CA1 of the hippocampus. The precise mechanisms coordinating this synchrony are still unresolved, but they appear to also affect CA1 activity during theta oscillations. The input to CA1, which often arrives in the form of gamma-frequency waves of activity from area CA3 and layer 3 of entorhinal cortex (EC3), did not strongly influence the timing of CA1 pyramidal cells. Rather, our data are more consistent with local network interactions governing pyramidal cells' spike timing during the integration of their inputs. Furthermore, the relative timing of input from EC3 and CA3 during the theta cycle matched that found in previous work to engage mechanisms for synapse modification and active dendritic processes. Our work demonstrates how local networks interact with upstream inputs to generate a coordinated hippocampal output during behavior and sleep, in the form of theta-gamma coupling and SWRs.
A bridgeless power factor correction using Cuk converter

In this proposed project a new efficient bridgeless Cuk rectifier is used for Power factor correction (PFC). It has only two semiconductor switches in the current flowing path. During each interval of the switching cycle it result in less conduction losses and an improved thermal management compared to the conventional Cuk PFC rectifier. To achieve almost unity power factor and low total harmonic distortion of input current, the topologies are designed to work in discontinuous conduction mode (DCM). The DCM has additional advantage such as zero-current turn-on in the power switches, zero current turn-off in the output diode.
Mining Control Flow Abnormality for Logic Error Isolation

Analyzing the executions of a buggy program is essentially a data mining process: Tracing the data generated during program executions may disclose important patterns and outliers that could eventually reveal the location of software errors. In this paper, we investigate program logic errors, which rarely incur memory access violations but generate incorrect outputs. We show that through mining program control flow abnormality, we could isolate many logic errors without knowing the program semantics. In order to detect the control abnormality, we propose a hypothesis testing-like approach that statistically contrasts the evaluation probability of condition statements between correct and incorrect executions. Based on this contrast, we develop two algorithms that effectively rank functions with respect to their likelihood of containing the hidden error. We evaluated these two algorithms on a set of standard test programs, and the result clearly indicates their effectiveness.