Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Interparental Conflict, Parenting Behavior, and Children’s Friendship Quality as Correlates of Peer Aggression and Peer Victimization Among Aggressor/Victim Subgroups in South Korea

The focus of this study was to examine whether interparental conflict, maternal parenting behaviors, and children’s friendship quality varied as a function of peer aggression/victim subgroups among a sample of 227 elementary school children and their mothers in South Korea. Both self-report and peer-report data indicated that the majority of the students were uninvolved in peer aggression situations, and the number of participants in the subgroups (aggressors, victims, and aggressor-victims) varied depending on the source of report. According to the self-report data, victims and aggressor-victims reported a higher level of maternal rejection than uninvolved youth. Aggressors, victims, and aggressor-victims reported higher maternal neglect than uninvolved youth. The highest level of interparental conflict was reported by victims, followed by aggressors. Interestingly, no significant differences were found in positive functioning of friendship quality among the subgroups, although results indicated a significant difference among groups in negative friendship quality.
Higher levels of physical activity are associated with lower hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical axis reactivity to psychosocial stress in children.

CONTEXT Children who undertake more physical activity (PA) not only have more optimal physical health but also enjoy better mental health. However, the pathways by which PA affects well-being remain unclear. OBJECTIVE To address this question, we examined whether objectively measured daytime PA was associated with diurnal hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical axis (HPAA) activity and HPAA responses to psychosocial stress. DESIGN AND SETTING We conducted a cross-sectional study in a birth cohort in Helsinki, Finland. PARTICIPANTS We studied 258 8-year-old children. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES PA was assessed with wrist-worn accelerometers. Overall PA and percentage of time spent in vigorous PA (VPA) were categorized by sex into thirds. Salivary cortisol was measured diurnally and in response to the Trier Social Stress Test for Children. RESULTS The children in different PA groups did not show differences in diurnal salivary cortisol (P > .10 for overall PA and VPA). Children with the highest levels of overall PA or VPA showed no, or only small, increases over time in salivary cortisol after stress (P = .10 and P =.03 for time in analyses of PA and VPA, respectively), whereas children belonging to the lowest and intermediate thirds showed significant increases over time in salivary cortisol after stress (P ≤ .002 for time in the analyses of overall PA and VPA). CONCLUSIONS These results suggest that children with lower levels of daytime PA have higher HPAA activity in response to stress. These findings may offer insight into the pathways of PA on physical and mental well-being.
A multiscale framework for affine invariant pattern recognition and registration

This thesis presents a multiscale framework for the construction of affine invariant pattern recognition and registration methods. The idea in the introduced approach is to extend the given pattern to a set of affine covariant versions, each carrying slightly different information, and then to apply known affine invariants to each of them separately. The key part of the framework is the construction of the affine covariant set, and this is done by combining several scaled representations of the original pattern. The advantages compared to previous approaches include the possibility of many variations and the inclusion of spatial information on the patterns in the features. The application of the multiscale framework is demonstrated by constructing several new affine invariant methods using different preprocessing techniques, combination schemes, and final recognition and registration approaches. The techniques introduced are briefly described from the perspective of the multiscale framework, and further treatment and properties are presented in the corresponding original publications. The theoretical discussion is supported by several experiments where the new methods are compared to existing approaches. In this thesis the patterns are assumed to be gray scale images, since this is the main application where affine relations arise. Nevertheless, multiscale methods can also be applied to other kinds of patterns where an affine relation is present. An additional application of one multiscale based technique in convexity measurements is introduced. The method, called multiscale autoconvolution, can be used to build a convexity measure which is a descriptor of object shape. The proposed measure has two special features compared to existing approaches. It can be applied directly to gray scale images approximating binary objects, and it can be easily modified to produce a number of measures. The new measure is shown to be straightforward to evaluate for a given shape, and it performs well in the applications, as demonstrated by the experiments in the original paper. The layout of this page will be fished by ACTA
New insight in the pathobiology of hepatitis B virus infection

Chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection remains a major health burden and the main risk factor for the development of hepatocellular carcinoma worldwide. However, HBV is not directly cytopathic and liver injury appears to be mostly caused by repeated attempts of the host's immune responses to control the infection. Recent studies have shown that the unique replication strategy adopted by HBV enables it to survive within the infected hepatocyte while complex virus–host interplays ensure the virus is able to fulfil its replication requirements yet is still able to evade important host antiviral innate immune responses. Clearer understanding of the host and viral mechanisms affecting HBV replication and persistence is necessary to design more effective therapeutic strategies aimed at improving the management of patients with chronic HBV infection to eventually achieve viral eradication. This article focuses on summarising the current knowledge of factors influencing the course of HBV infection, giving emphasis on the use of novel assays and quantitative serological and intrahepatic biomarkers as tools for predicting treatment response and disease progression.
Detection of harmful microbes and their metabolites with novel methods in the agri-food production chain

This thesis aimed at developing methods for tracking the environmental origins of microbial contaminants of the food chain. We worked on three targets: i) environmental mycobacteria ii) toxinogenic Bacillus species iii) post-harvest fungi in strawberry jam. Our aim was to develop methods for early detection of the above contaminants, which have the potential to endanger consumer health. We developed a novel method based on 16S rRNA hybridization for tracking the reservoirs of potentially pathogenic environmental mycobacteria in piggeries and soil. From 1010 to 1012 16S rRNA molecules of environmental mycobacteria were found per gram of peat, wood shavings and straw in piggeries with a high prevalence of infections. These beddings may thus be a source of mycobacteria for pigs. We found 1010–1011 of mycobacterial 16S rRNA molecules per gram of Finnish forest soil, indicating that the soil contained 107–109 mycobacteria per gram. These numbers exceed the previous cultivation-based estimates of mycobacterial content in Finnish soils. To elucidate the role of mastitis in the input of toxinogenic Bacillus into the dairy production chain, milks were sampled from mastitic cows. Twenty-three Bacillus isolates were screened for toxins using the sperm cell motility inhibition assay. Four of the six toxinogenic isolates found were identified as Bacillus pumilus and two as Bacillus licheniformis. The isolates produced toxic substances that were heat-stable (100 °C) and soluble in methanol, thus being of non-protein nature. The extracts prepared from the toxin-producing isolates disrupted the plasma membrane of exposed sperm cells at concentrations 1–15 μg ml-1 (B. pumilus) 20–30 μg ml-1 (B. licheniformis). The toxic action of the mastitis-associated B. licheniformis strains was similar to that of the lipopeptide lichenysin A. The genes for lichenysin synthetase were found in these strains by PCR. This study revealed that heat-stable toxin-producing strains of B. pumilus and B. licheniformis occur in milk of mastitic milking cows. They may enter the dairy production chain when milk of clinically healthy cows recovered from mastitis is sent to dairies. Many foodborne contaminant fungi are known to produce volatile organic compounds. We investigated the suitability of such metabolites as early indicators of fungal contamination of strawberry jam. We found that volatile organic compounds commonly produced by the contaminant fungi in strawberry jam were 2-pentanone, styrene, 3-methyl-1-butanol, 1,3pentadiene and ethanol. The results indicate that these compounds could be used to detect fungal contamination of jam.
Renal replacement therapy in Iran.

Corresponding Author: Mitra Mahdavi-Mazdeh, MD Management Center for Transplantation and Special Diseases, Vanak Sq, Tehran, Iran Tel: +98 21 8864 4515 Fax: +98 21 8864 4516 E-mail: mmahdavi@tums.ac. ir Dialysis and kidney transplantation are the only treatment options available for patients suffering from end-stage renal disease (ESRD). More than 1 million patients are on renal replacement therapy (RRT) worldwide, and it is forecasted that their population will be doubled within the next decade. There is a clear direct relationship between a nation’s gross national product and the availability of RRT. Approximately, 90% of patients with ESRD come from developed nations. (1-3) Conversely, for the vast majority of patients who live in developing countries (roughly 85%), dialysis and transplantation are unaffordable. (4) Generally, a series of influencing factors dictate the gross diversity in making decisions about the rates and modalities of the RRT. There are different reported incidences of ESRD in different countries, on the one hand, and significant variations in the culture, socioeconomic status, dialysis costs and quality, reimbursement structures, and discrepancy between the demand and supply of organs for transplantation, on the other hand.
A readout Solution for MEMS Sensors

A new readout circuit for MEMS devices is presented in this paper. A Phase Locked Loop (PLL) has been utilized to convert variations of MEM capacitance to time domain signals. The proposed scheme presents a robust performance against process, power supply and temperature variations due to inherent feedback of PLL systems. Simulation results in Cadence environment using TSMC CMOS 65-nm technology indicate that a measurement resolution of 73 aF can be achieved.
Hypouricemia in NIDDM Patients

I n the epidemiological survey conducted by Herman et al. (1), serum uric acid levels were significantly lower in non-insulin-dependent diabetic (NIDDM) patients than in normal subjects. Gotfredsen et al. (2) also reported a decrease in serum uric acid levels in insulin-dependent diabetic patients, and increases in urinary uric acid excretion and uric acid clearance (Curate). In this study, we investigated the serum and urinary uric acid levels in NIDDM patients and discuss the mechanism of hypouricemia in diabetic patients. Two hundred and four nonnephrotic NIDDM patients (95 men, 109 women) and 44 normal controls (20 men, 24 women) were studied. All participants were admitted to the hospital between January 1984 and September 1987. Diagnosis of diabetes was based on the 1982 Japan Diabetes Society criteria (3). Patients with >25 mg/dl of proteinuria in morning urine samples, measured with a Combistix (Ames-Sankyo, Tokyo), were excluded from the study. Patients whose insulin dosage was >0.6 U/kg of body weight and who were receiving diuretics, antigout or antituberculous agents, antibiotics, aspirin, or anti-inflammatory agents were also excluded. Forty-nine of the diabetic patients were treated with insulin with the mean dosage consisting of 22.7 U/day. Forty-five patients received oral hypoglycemics, and the remainder were treated by diet therapy. Ageand body-weight-matched subjects with no major diseases were used as control subjects. Medical problems were either thyroid adenoma or simple goiter with normal thyroid function. Diabetic patients maintained their prescribed diets containing 25-30 kcal/kg of ideal body weight with 17% protein, 23% fat, and 60% carbohydrate. Control subjects maintained a normal hospital diet containing 2200 kcal/day with the same composition of protein, fat, and carbohydrate as diabetic patients. Blood and urine samples were collected at 0800 after at least 10 h of fasting. A 2-h postprandial plasma glucose level was measured at 1030. In 100 of the diabetic patients (49 men, 51 women) and all the controls, urine samples were collected for 3 days after the blood sampling day. From the 3-day measurements, the average data per 24 h were used for analysis. Serum and urinary uric acid levels were measured by a colorimetric procedure using an enzymatic (uricase) method, and plasma and urinary glucose levels were measured by the glucose oxidase method. Other serum chemicals were analyzed by an autoanalyzer (SMAC, Technicon Japan, Tokyo). Table 1 shows 13 clinical parameters in NIDDM patients and controls. Diabetic patients had a signifi-
Examination of a cut-off score to express the meaningful activity of people with dementia using iPad application (ADOC)

Abstract Purpose: To determine a quantifiable measure to identify patients with dementia who can choose an illustration of meaningful activity using an iPad application, Aid for Decision-making in Occupation Choice (ADOC). Method: We recruited 116 patients from 5 institutions in Japan. Occupational therapists interviewed patients with dementia to determine meaningful activities using ADOC. The most meaningful activity was confirmed by their primary caregivers. The cut-off was estimated from Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE). Results: Receiver operating characteristic analysis indicated that an MMSE score of 8 was the cut-off for choosing meaningful activities using ADOC. Sensitivity and specificity was 91.0% and 74.1%, respectively, and the area under the curve value was 0.89. Conclusion: ADOC can provide individualized information regarding meaningful activities for patients with moderate dementia. Implications for Rehabilitation As dementia progresses, difficulty in expressing needs or desires regarding meaningful activity may increase. The iPad application (Aid for Decision-making in Occupation Choice; ADOC) can be useful to promote shared decision-making through a systematic goal-setting process involving a choice of 95 illustrations describing daily activities. Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) score greater than 8 points is required to use the ADOC to choose most meaningful activities. ADOC provides individual information regarding meaningful activities for patients with moderate dementia.
Phase velocities from seismic noise using beamforming and cross correlation in Costa Rica and Nicaragua

An expression for the cross correlation of noise between seismic stations and the 2D Green's function is derived assuming that noise travels as 2D surface waves. The phase velocity is obtained directly from the noise correlation function with a phase shift of +π/4. Mean phase velocity dispersion curves are calculated for the TUCAN seismic array in Costa Rica and Nicaragua from ambient seismic noise using two independent methods, noise cross correlation and beamforming. The noise cross correlation and beamforming methods are compared and contrasted by evaluating results from the TUCAN array. The results of the two methods as applied to the TUCAN array agree within 1%, giving good confidence in the phase velocities extracted from noise.
Criteria for evaluating evidence on public health interventions

Public health interventions tend to be complex, programmatic, and context dependent. The evidence for their effectiveness must be sufficiently comprehensive to encompass that complexity. This paper asks whether and to what extent evaluative research on public health interventions can be adequately appraised by applying well established criteria for judging the quality of evidence in clinical practice. It is adduced that these criteria are useful in evaluating some aspects of evidence. However, there are other important aspects of evidence on public health interventions that are not covered by the established criteria. The evaluation of evidence must distinguish between the fidelity of the evaluation process in detecting the success or failure of an intervention, and the success or failure of the intervention itself. Moreover, if an intervention is unsuccessful, the evidence should help to determine whether the intervention was inherently faulty (that is, failure of intervention concept or theory), or just badly delivered (failure of implementation). Furthermore, proper interpretation of the evidence depends upon the availability of descriptive information on the intervention and its context, so that the transferability of the evidence can be determined. Study design alone is an inadequate marker of evidence quality in public health intervention evaluation.
Porosity effect on tensile behavior of Ti-6Al-4V specimens produced by laser engineered net shaping technology

Microstructural characteristics of additively manufactured Ti-6Al-4V specimens are analyzed in this study. Laser Engineered Net Shaping technology, a direct energy deposition additive manufacturing process, is used to fabricate specimens. Effects of process parameters including machine head laser power, head write speed, layer height, hatch spacing, and powder flow rate on the morphological features of the material are investigated. A first batch of samples is built with a combination of parameters leading to full density metal parts across each layer and near-zero defects likewise more conventional process techniques (i.e. wrought and casting). A second batch of samples is built with a set of processing parameters aimed to induce defects within the parts like voids and porosity. Samples from both batches were stress-relieved in order to remove internal residual stresses generated by the additive manufacturing process. Optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction were used to characterize the microstructure of all samples. Tensile properties were measured after the stress-relief heat treatment. It was found that Laser Engineered Net Shaping technology parts are strongly sensitive to variations of building process parameters. Different structure morphologies were observed for different incident energies and cooling rates due to the combination of laser power and head write speed. The grain size distribution and shape are influenced by the powder flow rate resulting in either equiaxed or columnar grain microstructures with the development of material defects such as pores, gas entrapment and lack of fusion. Non-porous specimens revealed comparable tensile and ductility properties with the wrought counterpart; however, porous specimens were found to have a reduced strength and ductility.
Prognostic significance of the worst grade in hepatocellular carcinoma with heterogeneous histologic grades of differentiation

Although tumor differentiation is a known prognostic factor after the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), there have not been any studies on the prognostic significance of tumor differentiation in HCC with heterogeneous histologic grades. In this study, we attempted to ascertain whether the major or the worst grade in mixed histologic type HCC determines the prognosis after liver resection.
Usability evaluation of PS using SUMI (Software Usability Measurement Inventory)

Usability is a desired attribute as it helps in identifying how effectively user achieves product goals. In this paper TEIM Model (THE EVOLVED INTEGRATED MODEL of Software Engineering & Human Computer Interaction) designed by author1 & author2 is evaluated for Usability. This paper summarizes results of SUMI (Software Usability Measurement Inventory) questionnaires analysis of product PS designed using TEIM model. PS tool is data management and store system. The analysis gave scale of usability aspects such as efficiency, affect helpfulness, contractibility & learn ability. The results of SUMI identified usability issues of PS.
Constraints on the Small-Scale Power Spectrum of Density Fluctuations from High-Redshift Gamma-Ray Bursts

Cosmological models that include suppression of the power spectrum of density fluctuations on small scales exhibit an exponential reduction of high-redshift, nonlinear structures, including a reduction in the rate of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). Here we quantify the constraints that the detection of distant GRBs would place on structure formation models with reduced small-scale power. We compute the number of GRBs that could be detectable by the Swift satellite at high redshifts (z ≳ 6), assuming that the GRBs trace the cosmic star formation history, which itself traces the formation of nonlinear structures. We calibrate simple models of the intrinsic luminosity function of the bursts to the number and flux distribution of GRBs observed by the Burst and Transient Source Experiment. We find that a discovery of high-z GRBs would imply strong constraints on models with reduced small-scale power. For example, a single GRB at z ≳ 10 or 10 GRBs at z ≳ 5 discovered by Swift during its scheduled 2 year mission would rule out an exponential suppression of the power spectrum on scales below Rc = 0.09 Mpc (exemplified by warm dark matter models with a particle mass of mx = 2 keV). Models with a less sharp suppression of small-scale power, such as those with a red tilt or a running scalar index, ns, are more difficult to constrain, because they are more degenerate with an increase in the power-spectrum normalization, σ8, and with models in which star formation is allowed in low-mass minihalos. We find that a tilt of δns ≈ 0.1 is difficult to detect; however, an observed rate of one GRB yr-1 at z ≳ 12 would yield an upper limit on the running of the spectral index, α ≡ dns/d ln k > -0.05.
A state of art on magneto-rheological materials and their potential applications

Smart materials are kinds of designed materials whose properties are controllable with the application of external stimuli such as the magnetic field, electric field, stress, and heat. Smart materials whose rheological properties are controlled by externally applied magnetic field are known as magneto-rheological materials. Magneto-rheological materials actively used for engineering applications include fluids, foams, grease, elastomers, and plastomers. In the last two decades, magneto-rheological materials have gained great attention of researchers significantly because of their salient controllable properties and potential applications to various fields such as automotive industry, civil environment, and military sector. This article offers a recent progressive review on the magneto-rheological materials technology, especially focusing on numerous application devices and systems utilizing magneto-rheological materials. Conceivable limitations, challenges, and comparable advantages of applying these magneto-rheological materials in various sectors are analyzed critically, which provides a clear pathway to the researchers in selecting and utilizing these materials. The review starts with an introduction to the elementary description of magneto-rheological materials and their significant contribution in various fields. Following this, different types of the magneto-rheological materials, modeling of the magneto-rheological materials, magneto-rheological material–based devices, and their applications have been extensively reviewed to promote practical use of magneto-rheological materials in a wide spectrum of the application from the automobile to medical device.