Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Use of clinical prediction rules in detecting osteoporosis in a population-based sample of postmenopausal women.

BACKGROUND Osteoporosis clinical prediction rules attempt to identify the postmenopausal women in whom, on the basis of individual risk factors, bone densitometry will detect low bone mass. We assessed and compared the diagnostic properties of the following 3 osteoporosis clinical prediction rules: the Simple Calculated Osteoporosis Risk Estimation, Osteoporosis Risk Assessment Instrument, and National Osteoporosis Foundation practice guidelines. METHODS Secondary data analysis of an existing population-based sample of postmenopausal women 45 years or older (N = 202) in Rochester, Minn. RESULTS Sensitivity, specificity, positive (PPV) and negative (NPV) predictive values, and positive (LR+) and negative (LR-) likelihood ratios were calculated using the World Health Organization diagnosis of osteoporosis as the reference standard. The Simple Calculated Osteoporosis Risk Estimation had a sensitivity of 100%, specificity of 29%, PPV of 27%, NPV of 100%, LR+ of 1.4, and LR- of 0. The Osteoporosis Risk Assessment Instrument had a sensitivity of 98%, specificity of 40%, PPV of 29%, NPV of 77%, LR+ of 1.4, and LR- of 0.4. The National Osteoporosis Foundation practice guidelines had a sensitivity of 100%, specificity of 10%, PPV of 27%, NPV of 100%, LR+ of 1.1, and LR- of 0. The Simple Calculated Osteoporosis Risk Estimation and Osteoporosis Risk Assessment Instrument were much more specific in postmenopausal women younger than 65 years compared with those 65 years or older. CONCLUSIONS Our results suggest that these clinical prediction rules do not perform well as a general screening method to identify postmenopausal women who are more likely to have osteoporosis; however, the Osteoporosis Risk Assessment Instrument and Simple Calculated Osteoporosis Risk Estimation may be useful in identifying some women who need not undergo testing, especially younger postmenopausal women.
Controlling water transport through artificial polymer/protein hybrid membranes

Simply speaking, living organisms are nothing but self-assembled, nanometer- to micrometer- to meter-sized aggregates. Every one of these organisms is able to perform certain tasks; often, these tasks are highly sophisticated, such as eliminating intruders via an immune system or regenerating injured organs like skin. This shows that even the simplest organisms are in fact complex assemblies of functional subunits that interact specifically and reliably. The realization that nature is able to construct highly efficient self-assembled “biomachines” with clearly defined functions has in the recent past led to the development of a new research field, synthetic biology, which aims at combining science and engineering to design and build innovative materials for many branches of technology.
The chirp z-transform algorithm-a lesson in serendipity

t was the fall of 1968. I had finished my Ph.D. degree on speech synthesis at MIT Iin May of 1967 and started working as a member of the technical staff in Jim Flanagan’s group at AT&T Bell Laboratories in May of 1967. My initial assign­ ment was working on problems of speech analysis and synthesis using a serial formant speech synthesizer. Ron Schafer joined Jim Flanagan’s group at Bell Laboratories in the spring of 1968, having completed his Ph.D. at MIT in the area of homomorphic signal processing and its applications to speech process­ ing. Ron and I started working together almost immediately on the problem of formant estimation using homomorphic methods. The goal was to compute a smooth speech spectrum using homomor­ phic filtering methods and then to estimate the relevant formant fre­ quencies by peak picking the homo­ morphically smoothed spectrum. Most of the time this algorithm worked well; however once in awhile the formants were either too close to each other to resolve reli­ ably or had bandwidths that were just too high to find from simple peak picking methods. Ron and I investigated a number of speech enhancement methods with the goal of making formant estimation be more reliable and robust. None of the proposed methods worked as well as we would have liked. Next came the role of serendipity. I was attending an IEEE conference in New York City in the fall of 1968 when I ran into Charlie Rader from MIT Lincoln Laboratory. Charlie had become a good friend through our joint association with Ben Gold of Lincoln Laboratory and through our joint membership in the IEEE Signal Processing Group, a subgroup of IEEE’s group on audio and elec­ troacoustics. Charlie asked me what problems I was working on, and I brought up the issue of formant esti­ mation from homomorphically smoothed spectra and the problems that Ron and I faced as we tried to enhance the speech signal by appro­ priate signal weighting to reduce the formant bandwidth. Charlie asked me to define what I would consider to be the ideal solution to this prob­ lem, and after a bit of thought I told him that what we needed was a sig­ nal enhancement method that changed the unit circle in the z-plane (the usual curve for evaluating the spectrum of a real signal) into a spiral curve that increased gradually from the origin of the unit circle to a circle that curved gradually into the inside of the unit circle. Charlie told me that he had just heard a lecture at Sylvania Labs where Leo Bluestein had been working with chirp signals to convert a discrete Fourier trans­ form (DFT) for nonpower of two signals into an efficient convolution that could be computed using power of two DFTs. Charlie realized imme-
Is social capital a determinant of oral health among older adults? : an analysis of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA)

Background: A growing body of evidence shows that social capital may affect the health and well-being of older adults. A number of studies also suggest that social capital is a determinant of oral health. However, the evidence for these claims is weak in terms of causal inference criteria such as temporality because previous studies are mostly based on cross-sectional analysis. Aims: The aims of this thesis were to examine whether social capital is a determinant of oral health among older adults, and whether this association is explained by socio-demographic, socio-economic, health and behavioural factors. Methods: Secondary data from waves 3 (2006-07) and 5 (2010-11) of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) were analysed with 6,977 adults aged 50 and over in the cross-sectional analysis, and 5,385 and 5,114 older adults in the longitudinal and modelling of change analyses respectively. Four measures of social capital were derived from the ELSA study, reflecting structural (membership in organisations and volunteering) and functional (number of close ties and social support) dimensions of the concept. Oral health outcomes were assessed using measures of self-rated oral health, oral health-related quality of life and edentulousness. Binary and multinomial logistic regression models were used to estimate the odds of poor oral health for different levels of social capital, sequentially adjusted for socio-demographic, socio-economic, health and behavioural factors. Results: There was some evidence that lower levels of social capital were associated with poorer oral health among older adults in the cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses. The size of the statistically significant associations ranged from odds ratios of 1.21 (95%CI:1.01-1.46) to 2.14 (95%CI:1.62-2.84) independent of other dimensions of social capital and several measures of oral health. Poor oral health at baseline (2006-07) also predicted lower levels of social capital 4 years later. There was weaker evidence that positive/negative changes in social capital were associated with improving/worsening oral health. The only consistent finding was the association between low social support and poor self-rated oral health, with odds ratios of 1.36 (95%CI:1.11-1.66) in the cross-sectional analysis, 1.27 (95%CI:1.01-1.60) in the longitudinal analysis, and 1.46 (95%CI:1.13-1.90) in the modelling of change analysis. Conclusions: Overall, the results of the thesis found weak evidence that low social capital is a determinant of poor oral health among older adults. There was some evidence of longitudinal associations between functional dimensions of social capital and subjective oral health, but little evidence for other measures of social capital and oral health. One key area of further research is the mechanisms and interventions by which older adults are able to generate and maintain social support and close ties in later life.
A 79dB 80 MHz 8X-OSR hybrid delta-sigma/pipeline ADC

A new delta-sigma modulator architecture is presented. The proposed implementation employs a pipeline ADC as the quantizer of a single-loop delta-sigma modulator and makes use of inherent delays of pipeline ADC stages to enhance overall noise shaping properties. With a 5MHz bandwidth and 80MHz clock, the measured dynamic range and SNDR of this prototype IC are 79dB and 75.4dB. The prototype chip is implemented in a 0. 18µm CMOS process.
Magnesium and Calcium Aluminate Liquids: In Situ High-Temperature 27Al NMR Spectroscopy

The use of high-temperature nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy provides a means of investigating the structure of refractory aluminate liquids at temperatures up to 2500 K. Time-averaged structural information indicates that the average aluminum coordination for magnesium aluminate (MgAl2O4) liquid is slightly greater than for calcium aluminate (CaAl2O4) liquid and that in both liquids it is close to four. Ion dynamics simulations for these liquids suggest the presence of four-, five-, and six-coordinated aluminate species, in agreement with NMR experiments on fast-quenched glasses. These species undergo rapid chemical exchange in the high-temperature liquids, which is evidenced by a single Lorentzian NMR line.
The Triple Articulation of Media Technologies in Audiovisual Media Consumption

This article departs from the concept of “double articulation” within domestication theory, which views media as both objects and texts. Unfortunately, its empirical application has been problematic because researchers tend to concentrate on the contextual, losing sight of specific meanings of objects and texts. Therefore, we subscribe to the concept of “triple articulation,” viewing the immediate sociospatial context of consumption as a specific articulation. Still, the practical relevance of this concept has been questioned. Therefore, we develop and test a methodology that explicitly incorporates this triple articulation in the field of convergent audiovisual media consumption. The results indicate that audiovisual media technologies are meaningfully articulated as objects, texts, and contexts. Moreover, the devised method, which allows the uncovering of articulation interactions, points out that each articulation is able to contribute independently to consumption meanings. Hence, the variation within objects, texts, and contexts raises questions about what we consider “television. ”
Transcriptional Control of the Iron-ResponsivefxbA Gene by the Mycobacterial Regulator IdeR

ABSTRACT Exochelin is the primary extracellular siderophore ofMycobacterium smegmatis, and the iron-regulatedfxbA gene encodes a putative formyltransferase, an essential enzyme in the exochelin biosynthetic pathway (E. H. Fiss, Y. Yu, and W. R. Jacobs, Jr., Mol. Microbiol. 14:557–569, 1994). We investigated the regulation of fxbA by the mycobacterial IdeR, a homolog of the Corynebacterium diphtheriae iron regulator DtxR (M. P. Schmitt, M. Predich, L. Doukhan, I. Smith, and R. K. Holmes, Infect. Immun. 63:4284–4289, 1995). Gel mobility shift experiments showed that IdeR binds to the fxbA regulatory region in the presence of divalent metals. DNase I footprinting assays indicated that IdeR binding protects a 28-bp region containing a palindromic sequence of the fxbA promoter that was identified in primer extension assays. fxbA regulation was measured in M. smegmatis wild-type and ideR mutant strains containing fxbA promoter-lacZ fusions. These experiments confirmed that fxbA expression is negatively regulated by iron and showed that inactivation of ideRresults in iron-independent expression of fxbA. However, the levels of its expression in the ideR mutant were approximately 50% lower than those in the wild-type strain under iron limitation, indicating an undefined positive role of IdeR in the regulation of fxbA.
Can Education Change Society

Acknowledgements 1. Can Education Change Society? 2. Paulo Freire and the Tasks of the Critical Scholar/Activist in Education 3. George Counts and the Politics of Radical Change 4. Du Bois, Woodson, and the Politics of Transformation 5. Keeping Transformations Alive: Learning from the "South" (Luis Armando Gandin and Michael W. Apple) 6. Wal-Marting America: Social Change and Educational Action 7. Critical Education, Speaking the Truth, and Acting Back 8. Answering the Question: Education and Social Transformation Bibliography Index
Dyneins Have Run Their Course in Plant Lineage

Flowering plant genomes lack flagellar and cytoplasmic dyneins as well as the proteins that make up the dynactin complex. The mechanisms for organizing the Golgi apparatus, establishing spindle poles, and moving nuclei, vesicles, and chromosomes in flowering plants must be fundamentally different from those in other systems where these processes are dependent upon dynein and dynactin.
Brassinolide Induces IAA5, IAA19, and DR5, a Synthetic Auxin Response Element in Arabidopsis, Implying a Cross Talk Point of Brassinosteroid and Auxin Signaling

Despite numerous physiological studies addressing the interactions between brassinosteroids (BRs) and auxins, little is known about the underlying molecular mechanisms. We studied the expression of IAA5 and IAA19 in response to treatment with indole acetic acid (IAA) or brassinolide (BL), the most active BR. Exogenous IAA induced these genes quickly and transiently, whereas exogenous BL induced them gradually and continuously. We also found that a fusion of DR5, a synthetic auxin response element, with the GUS (β-glucuronidase) gene was induced with similar kinetics to those of the IAA5 and IAA19 genes in response to both IAA and BL treatment of transgenic plants. These results suggest that the IAA genes are induced by BL, at least in part, via the activation of the auxin response element. Endogenous IAA levels per gram fresh weight did not increase when seedlings of Arabidopsis wild type (WT) or the BR-deficient mutant det2 were treated with BL. Furthermore, the levels of IAA transcripts were lower in the det2 mutant than in the WT, even though endogenous IAA levels per gram fresh weight were higher in the det2 mutant than in the WT. In conclusion, the lack of evidence for auxin-mediated activation of early auxin-inducible genes in response to BL suggests that the BR and auxin signaling pathways independently activate the transcriptional system of the IAA and DR5-GUS genes.
Peer Mentoring in an Accounting Setting: A Case Study of Mentor Skill Development1

This paper provides the background to the adoption of a peer mentoring program including the preparation of mentors and the classroom role of mentors. The paper also includes a discussion of alternative models of peer mentoring and an examination of factors to be considered in adopting mentoring as a teaching and learning resource. Using a case study of third-year undergraduate accounting students who were employed to mentor fellow students in a second-year accounting unit at an Australian university, the paper examines peer mentoring as a classroom resource in the teaching of accounting concepts. The study includes an evaluation of the perceptions of generic skill development by peer mentors illustrating how mentoring can be a reciprocal process, in that the mentor's skills can be enhanced while fulfilling a supporting role to junior students. The programme evaluation also demonstrated that accounting educators could contribute to the development of students' generic skills outside the traditional classroom setting.
Absorption and Metabolism of Xanthophylls

Dietary carotenoids, especially xanthophylls, have attracted significant attention because of their characteristic biological activities, including anti-allergic, anti-cancer, and anti-obese actions. Although no less than forty carotenoids are ingested under usual dietary habits, only six carotenoids and their metabolites have been found in human tissues, suggesting selectivity in the intestinal absorption of carotenoids. Recently, facilitated diffusion in addition to simple diffusion has been reported to mediate the intestinal absorption of carotenoids in mammals. The selective absorption of carotenoids may be caused by uptake to the intestinal epithelia by the facilitated diffusion and an unknown excretion to intestinal lumen. It is well known that β-carotene can be metabolized to vitamin A after intestinal absorption of carotenoids, but little is known about the metabolic transformation of non provitamin A xanthophylls. The enzymatic oxidation of the secondary hydroxyl group leading to keto-carotenoids would occur as a common pathway of xanthophyll metabolism in mammals. This paper reviews the absorption and metabolism of xanthophylls by introducing recent advances in this field.
A protocol issue for the malicious case of Yao's garbled circuit construction

We present a protocol issue that arises with the use of oblivious transfer in the malicious case of several two-party computation protocols based on Yao’s garbled circuit. We describe this issue for a protocol by Pinkas (Eurocrypt 2003) and for the Fairplay protocol, and we discuss why this issue still persists for a recently suggested modification of the Fairplay protocol. We propose a solution using committed oblivious transfer instead of (plain) oblivious transfer. We also introduce the notion of committing oblivious transfer, which leads to an alternative, potentially more ecient solution.
Generating Familiarity by Robot Behavior toward a Human Being

A new method to generate familiar behavior of a robot is proposed and verified. Familiar behavior of a robot is important under human-robot symbiosis in order to make a user feel comfortable and to avoid putting stress on a user. The method described is based upon a hypothesis that passive reactions produce familiar and comfortable impression in human beings. The results of psychological experiments verifies the validity of the method. A stuffed robot is made for the experiments. Impressions produced by the behaviors of the robot are analyzed quantitatively using the semantic differential method. Utilizing the robot behavior for generation familiarity will facilitate human-robot symbiosis.
Advanced Atherogenic Index for the Assessment of Consolidated Lipid Risk in Premature Coronary Artery Disease Patients in India

Introduction: The high prevalence, severity, and prematurity of coronary artery disease (CAD) in the Indian population cannot be completely explained by the conventional lipid parameters and the existing lipid indices. Aims and Objectives: To calculate newly defined advanced atherogenic index (AAI) in premature CAD patients and compare it between cases and controls and Correlate its values with the existing indices. Material and Methods: One hundred and twenty premature CAD patients and an equal number of age and sex matched healthy individuals were included in this study. Lipid profile and nonconventional lipid parameters like oxidized Low density lipoprotein (OX LDL), small dense LDL (SD LDL), lipoprotein (a) apolipoprotein B (Apo B), and apolipoprotein A1 (Apo A1) were estimated and their values were used to define AAI and existing lipid indices like AI, lipid tetrad index (LTI) and lipid pentad index (LPI). Results: The mean age of cases and controls was 37.29 + 4.50 and 36.13 + 3.53 years, respectively. The value of AAI was highly significant in cases (3461.22 ± 45.20) as compared to controls (305.84 ± 21.80). AAI has shown better statistical significance and correlation (P < 0.0001, r = 0.737) as compared to the earlier indices such as AI (P < 0.01, r = 0.52), LTI (P < 0.001, r = 0.677) and LPI (P < 0.001, r = 0.622) in premature CAD. Kolmogorov D statistic and cumulative distribution function plot has shown that AAI can discriminate cases and controls more accurately as compared to the earlier indices. Conclusion: Statistically AAI appears to be a better marker of consolidated lipid risk in premature CAD patients as compared to the earlier indices.
Comentário : The reversible catalytic model and the mathematical theory of epidemics O modelo catalítico reversível e a teoria matemática de epidemias

In the early XX century, mathematical models were introduced into infectious disease epidemiology with the hope that formal procedures so successfully applied to physics and chemistry would be helpful in untangling complex causal relationships in epidemic systems. This hope is clearly stated by Kermack & McKendrick (1927) at the start of one of their papers on the mathematical theory of epidemics: “One of the most striking features in the study of epidemics is the difficulty of finding a causal factor which appears to be adequate to account for the magnitude of the frequent epidemics of diseases which visit almost every population. ”
Drug Use and Drug Policy in a Prohibition Regime

Psychoactive drugs are an especially rich topic for criminological scholarship. The topic is inherently multidisciplinary, involving neuroscience, psychology, cultural anthropology, history, microeconomics, and moral philosophy. And drug policy instruments extend beyond the usual arsenal (special and general deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation, retribution, and persuasion) to include social work, medicine, psychotherapy, social support groups, drug maintenance clinics, and mass media campaigns. In order to cover such a vast topic in a limited space, it is necessary to be selective, making some general observations and pointing the reader to good secondary sources. We focus primarily on the currently illicit psychoactives, giving little attention to alcohol or tobacco. We trust that every educated reader will be familiar with the arguments for analyzing licits and illicits together, and we assure skeptics that we will not neglect the core question of how prohibition shapes drug behavior and drug outcomes.