Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Distribution of myosin heavy chain isoforms in non-weight-bearing rat soleus muscle fibers.

The effects of 14 days of spaceflight (SF) or hindlimb suspension (HS) (Cosmos 2044) on myosin heavy chain (MHC) isoform content of the rat soleus muscle and single muscle fibers were determined. On the basis of electrophoretic analyses, there was a de novo synthesis of type IIx MHC but no change in either type I or IIa MHC isoform proportions after either SF or HS compared with controls. The percentage of fibers containing only type I MHC decreased by 26 and 23%, and the percentage of fibers with multiple MHCs increased from 6% in controls to 32% in HS and 34% in SF rats. Type IIx MHC was always found in combination with another MHC or combination of MHCs; i.e., no fibers contained type IIx MHC exclusively. These data suggest that the expression of the normal complement of MHC isoforms in the adult rat soleus muscle is dependent, in part, on normal weight bearing and that the absence of weight bearing induces a shift toward type IIx MHC protein expression in the preexisting type I and IIa fibers of the soleus.
Comparison of optimized soft‐tissue suppression schemes for ultrashort echo time MRI

Ultrashort echo time (UTE) imaging with soft‐tissue suppression reveals short‐T2 components (typically hundreds of microseconds to milliseconds) ordinarily not captured or obscured by long‐T2 tissue signals on the order of tens of milliseconds or longer. Therefore, the technique enables visualization and quantification of short‐T2 proton signals such as those in highly collagenated connective tissues. This work compares the performance of the three most commonly used long‐T2 suppression UTE sequences, i.e., echo subtraction (dual‐echo UTE), saturation via dual‐band saturation pulses (dual‐band UTE), and inversion by adiabatic inversion pulses (IR‐UTE) at 3 T, via Bloch simulations and experimentally in vivo in the lower extremities of test subjects. For unbiased performance comparison, the acquisition parameters are optimized individually for each sequence to maximize short‐T2 signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR) and contrast‐to‐noise ratio (CNR) between short‐ and long‐T2 components. Results show excellent short‐T2 contrast which is achieved with these optimized sequences. A combination of dual‐band UTE with dual‐echo UTE provides good short‐T2 SNR and CNR with less sensitivity to B1 homogeneity. IR‐UTE has the lowest short‐T2 SNR efficiency but provides highly uniform short‐T2 contrast and is well suited for imaging short‐T2 species with relatively short T1 such as bone water. Magn Reson Med, 2012. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Prevalence of dementia and probable senile dementia of the Alzheimer type in the Framingham Study

We determined the prevalence of dementia and probable senile dementia of the Alzheimer type (SDAT) for biennial Exam 17 of the Framingham cohort (1982/1983). The prevalence of dementia was 30.5/1,000 for men and 48.2/1,000 for women and increased with advancing age. Cases of probable SDAT constituted 55.6% of all dementia cases. The prevalence of SDAT was 11.7/1,000 for men and 30.1/1,000 for women and also increased with advancing age. Prevalence of dementia and orobable SDAT were greater for women than men. The fema1e:male ratio of prevalence for cohort members 75 years of age and older was 1.8 for all cases of dementia and 2.8 for cases of probable SDAT.
Who is Responsible for What Happens Before, During, and After Colonoscopy? Results of a National Survey of Primary Care Physicians

Background and Aims: Primary care providers (PCPs) play a critical role in colon cancer screening by initiating referrals to gastroenterologists for colonoscopy, but little is known about their role in pre-colonoscopy bowel preparation selection and pre-colonoscopy follow-up care. This study aimed to better understand coordination of care between PCPs and gastroenterologists as well as the current availability of “open-access” screening colonoscopy. Methods: A multiple-choice survey was developed to assess PCPs’ experiences with open-access colonoscopy, their involvement in the pre-colonoscopy process, and follow-up after colonoscopy. The survey was distributed electronically to a nationally representative sample of PCPs, via the American College of Physicians (ACP) Research Center’s Internal Medicine Insider Research Panel. Results: Of 442 PCPs invited to participate, 210 responded (response rate, 210/442, 48%), and 29 were ineligible (spent <25% of their time on clinical care or placed no referrals to colonoscopy), yielding 181 completed surveys. A total of 39% reported that open access was “rarely” or “never” available in their practice setting. The majority reported that pre-colonoscopy care was coordinated by gastroenterologists rather than PCPs. For example, 93% reported that gastroenterologists were responsible for bowel preparation selection in their practice setting. Post-colonoscopy, 54% of PCPs reported that they were responsible for ordering subsequent colonoscopies. Conclusions: PCPs frequently coordinate follow-up care postprocedure but play a relatively minor role in the pre-colonoscopy bowel preparation process. Open access availability for screening colonoscopy remains limited in this national sample of PCPs.
TBALL data collection: the making of a young children's speech corpus

In this paper we describe the data collection for the TBALL project (Technology Based Assessment of Language and Literacy) and report the results of our efforts. We focus on aspects of our corpus that distinguish it from currently available corpora. The speakers are children (grades K-4), largely nonnative speakers of English, and from diverse socio-economic backgrounds, who are learning to read. We also describe how we adapted our methodology to accommodate these differences: our recording setup, data collection methodology, and transcription scheme. We also discuss the task this corpus was designed to serve and our research approach.
Managing Service Performance in the Cassandra Distributed Storage System

In this paper we describe the architecture of a quality-of-service (QoS) infrastructure for achieving controlled application performance over the Cassandra distributed storage system. We present an implementation of our architecture and provide results from an evaluation using the Yahoo Cloud Serving Benchmark (YCSB) on the Amazon EC2 Cloud. A key focus of this paper is on a QoS-aware measurement-driven provisioning methodology. Our evaluation provides evidence that the methodology is effective in estimating application resource requirements and thus in achieving the type of controlled performance required by data intensive performance-critical applications. While our architecture is implemented and evaluated in the context of the Cassandra distributed storage system, its principles are general and can be applied to a variety of NoSQL systems.
Siber Zorbalık ve Mağduriyetin Yaygınlığının ve Risk Faktörlerinin İncelenmesi

The aim of this study was to examine risk factors related to cyber bullying and victimization. The study was carried out with 160 adolescents applying to the Child/Adolescent Psychiatry Outpatient Clinic of the Faculty of Medicine of Suleyman Demirel University in Isparta, Turkey. Data was collected through using the Socio-Demographic Information Form, Internet Addiction Scale, and Cyber Victim and Bullying Scale. The results of the study showed that cyber bullying was related to gender, the risk of Internet addiction, the frequency of visiting Internet cafes, adolescents’ perception of their mothers’ Internet skills, the daily duration of visiting social networking sites, usage of the Internet predominantly to play online games, the monthly income of the family, and the mothers’ educational status. Cyber victimization, on the other hand, was found to be related to the risk of Internet addiction, the frequency of visiting Internet cafes, adolescents’ perception of their mothers’ Internet skills, and usage of the Internet predominantly to play online games. The results of the study were discussed in the light of relevant literature.
Depression treatment in primary care.

BACKGROUND Depression costs the United States dollars 40 billion annually. Primary care physicians play a key role in the identification and treatment of depression. This study focused on the treatment options recommended by physicians and whether physicians were following the recommended treatment guidelines. METHODS We recorded treatment recommendations by examining charts for all patients with newly detected depression. The patients were from 44 family medicine practitioners and 23 general internal medicine practitioners in a Midwest university medical center setting. RESULTS For both medical specialties combined, pharmacotherapy was the most widely used intervention (recommended for 52% of patients), whereas psychotherapy alone was the least frequently used intervention (recommended for 4% of patients). Family medicine practitioners recommended combination treatment (pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy) more frequently than did general internal medicine practitioners (P = .022), and female physicians recommended combination treatment more frequently than did male physicians (P = .010). CONCLUSIONS Pharmacotherapy was found to be the most widely used treatment despite current evidence-based recommendations. Barriers to effective treatment plan are discussed. The implications for mental health interventions, combination therapy, and cost offset are also discussed. Further research exploring the negotiation process during the patient-provider encounter would shed light on patient and physician factors influencing treatment decisions.
Ingratiation in the Workplace: The Role of Subordinate and Supervisor Political Skill

Over two decades, social influence researchers have called for a study that would examine how, why, and when influence tactics are effective. Informed by balance theory, the present study proposes that subordinate and supervisor political skill impacts the effectiveness of ingratiation attempts. The results from a survey of 228 supervisor–subordinate dyads in Chinese firms indicated that subordinates with high political skill are less likely to have their exhibited ingratiation behaviour perceived by their supervisors; however, supervisors with high political skill are likely to perceive ingratiation behaviour demonstrated by their subordinates. Moreover, the most successful condition for enabling subordinates to hide ingratiation from their supervisors is when the subordinates are politically astute and the supervisors are not. Furthermore, when supervisors perceive ingratiation behaviour, they rate low on the job performance and promotability of their subordinates; these low ratings are explained by the undermined personal reputation of the subordinates due to their ingratiation detected.
Performance Analysis of Double EWMA Controller Under Dynamic Models With Drift

This paper mainly focuses on the performance of the double exponentially weighted moving average (DEWMA) controller applied to a first-order dynamic input–output model with process drift. Under a general process disturbance, based on Jury test, the necessary and sufficient conditions involving model parameters, the estimated process gain, and weighting factors are established to ensure that the closed-loop system is asymptotically stable. In addition, we explore why we should use the DEWMA controller to adjust the process rather than the single exponentially weighted moving average controller when the process drifts considerably. Later, under the stability condition, the control performance analysis of the closed-loop system is performed in terms of the asymptotical variation and the transient deviation. Then, an optimization model is established to figure out the appropriate weighting factors for reducing the overall variation of the process output during the process of operation. Finally, extensive simulations are carried out to demonstrate the validity of the theoretical analysis in the context of chemical mechanical polishing process.
A geometrical method for the singularity analysis of 3-RRR planar parallel robots with different actuation schemes

A parallel robot, due to its closed-loop structure, normally has two Jacobian matrices: the inverse and forward Jacobian matrices. Conventional methods for singularity analysis of planar parallel robots are based on analysis of the ranks of the two Jacobian matrices. The inverse singularity has been well studied as the inverse Jacobian matrix always has a simple diagonal form. However, the forward singularity analysis is somehow complicated, partially because some essential geometric relations may be occulted in the formulation of the forward Jacobian matrix. This paper focuses on the forward singularity analysis of a class of 3-RRR planar parallel robots with various actuation schemes. A simple geometric approach based on the concept of instantaneous center is proposed. By analyzing the instantaneous mobility of the moving platform when all the active joints are locked, the necessary and sufficient geometrical conditions for the forward singularity configurations are readily identified. It has been shown that this simple geometrical approach can be employed for singularity analysis of various planar parallel robots and mechanisms.
A comparative study of hierarchical routing protocols in wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consist of small nodes with sensing, computation and communications capabilities. Due to the limited processing power, and finite power available to each sensor node, regular ad hoc routing techniques cannot be directly applied to sensor networks domain. Thus, energy-efficient routing algorithms suitable to the inherent characteristics of WSNs are required. The hierarchical routing protocols for WSNs are considered energy efficient. Therefore, in the present paper, a comprehensive survey of hierarchical routing protocols for Wireless sensor networks has been presented. Another striking feature of the present exposition is the inclusion of hierarchical routing protocols for linear sensor networks which is an important subclass of wireless sensor networks.
EMT/MET at the Crossroad of Stemness, Regeneration and Oncogenesis: The Ying-Yang Equilibrium Recapitulated in Cell Spheroids

The epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is an essential trans-differentiation process, which plays a critical role in embryonic development, wound healing, tissue regeneration, organ fibrosis, and cancer progression. It is the fundamental mechanism by which epithelial cells lose many of their characteristics while acquiring features typical of mesenchymal cells, such as migratory capacity and invasiveness. Depending on the contest, EMT is complemented and balanced by the reverse process, the mesenchymal-to-epithelial transition (MET). In the saving economy of the living organisms, the same (Ying-Yang) tool is integrated as a physiological strategy in embryonic development, as well as in the course of reparative or disease processes, prominently fibrosis, tumor invasion and metastasis. These mechanisms and their related signaling (e.g., TGF-β and BMPs) have been effectively studied in vitro by tissue-derived cell spheroids models. These three-dimensional (3D) cell culture systems, whose phenotype has been shown to be strongly dependent on TGF-β-regulated EMT/MET processes, present the advantage of recapitulating in vitro the hypoxic in vivo micro-environment of tissue stem cell niches and their formation. These spheroids, therefore, nicely reproduce the finely regulated Ying-Yang equilibrium, which, together with other mechanisms, can be determinant in cell fate decisions in many pathophysiological scenarios, such as differentiation, fibrosis, regeneration, and oncogenesis. In this review, current progress in the knowledge of signaling pathways affecting EMT/MET and stemness regulation will be outlined by comparing data obtained from cellular spheroids systems, as ex vivo niches of stem cells derived from normal and tumoral tissues. The mechanistic correspondence in vivo and the possible pharmacological perspective will be also explored, focusing especially on the TGF-β-related networks, as well as others, such as SNAI1, PTEN, and EGR1. This latter, in particular, for its ability to convey multiple types of stimuli into relevant changes of the cell transcriptional program, can be regarded as a heterogeneous "stress-sensor" for EMT-related inducers (growth factor, hypoxia, mechano-stress), and thus as a therapeutic target.
Setting an agenda for the development of the next generation of school leaders: a commitment to social justice or simply making up the numbers?

The profile, status and funding of leadership development has risen dramatically both in the UK and internationally over the last decade. This article draws on a decade of study of leadership development programmes in order argue that school leadership training in England has received unprecedented levels of funding but that until very recently leadership development programmes contained only an implicit, rather than an overt, commitment to the enhancement of social justice. The paper concludes that recent government legislation in education has set in train fundamental adjustments to the education system, through the medium of such initiatives as the Every Child Matters agenda, which will require a much more explicit articulation of the role of school leaders in promoting social justice during their training. However, the article goes on to suggest that dangers exist that the increasing challenge of finding sufficient candidates to take up leadership roles in schools will subvert such attempts at societal reconstruction unless the systemic enhancement of leadership capacity itself becomes a key focus for leadership development.
A NEW CONSTRAINT ON THE MOLECULAR OXYGEN ABUNDANCE AT z ∼ 0.886

We report Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) and Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) spectroscopy in the redshifted molecular oxygen (O2) 56.265 and 424.763 GHz transitions from the z = 0.88582 gravitational lens toward PKS 1830−21. The ALMA non-detection of O2 424.763 GHz absorption yields the 3 &sgr; ? > upper limit N ( O 2 ) ≤ 5.8 × 10 17 ? > cm−2 on the O2 column density, assuming that the O2 level populations are thermalized at the gas kinetic temperature of 80 K. The VLA spectrum shows absorption by the CH3CHO 56.185 and 56.265 GHz lines, with the latter strongly blended with the O2 56.265 GHz line. Since the two CH3CHO lines have the same equilibrium strength, we used the known CH3CHO 56.185 GHz line profile to subtract out the CH3CHO 56.265 GHz feature from the VLA spectrum, and then carried out a search for O2 56.265 GHz absorption in the residual spectrum. The non-detection of redshifted O2 56.265 GHz absorption in the CH3CHO-subtracted VLA spectrum yields N ( O 2 ) ≤ 2.3 × 10 17 ? > cm−2. Our 3 &sgr; ? > limits on the O2 abundance relative to H2 are then X ( O 2 ) ≤ 9.1 × 10 − 6 ? > (VLA) and X ( O 2 ) ≤ 2.3 × 10 − 5 ? > (ALMA). These are 5–15 times lower than the best previous constraint on the O2 abundance in an external galaxy. The low O2 abundance in the z = 0.88582 absorber may arise due to its high neutral carbon abundance and the fact that its molecular clouds appear to be diffuse or translucent clouds with low number density and high kinetic temperature.
The Role of the Vagus Nerve in the Migrating Motor Complex and Ghrelin- and Motilin-Induced Gastric Contraction in Suncus

The upper gastrointestinal (GI) tract undergoes a temporally coordinated cyclic motor pattern known as the migrating motor complex (MMC) in both dogs and humans during the fasted state. Feeding results in replacement of the MMC by a pattern of noncyclic, intermittent contractile activity termed as postprandial contractions. Although the MMC is known to be stimulated by motilin, recent studies have shown that ghrelin, which is from the same peptide family as motilin, is also involved in the regulation of the MMC. In the present study, we investigated the role of the vagus nerve on gastric motility using conscious suncus—a motilin- and ghrelin-producing small animal. During the fasted state, cyclic MMC comprising phases I, II, and III was observed in both sham-operated and vagotomized suncus; however, the duration and motility index (MI) of phase II was significantly decreased in vagotomized animals. Motilin infusion (50 ng·kg−1·min−1 for 10 min) during phase I had induced phase III–like contractions in both sham-operated and vagotomized animals. Ghrelin infusion (0.1, 0.3, 1, 3, or 10 µg·kg−1·min−1 for 10 min) enhanced the amplitude of phase II MMC in sham-operated animals, but not in vagotomized animals. After feeding, phase I was replaced by postprandial contractions, and motilin infusion (50 ng·kg−1·min−1 for 10 min) did not induce phase III–like contractions in sham-operated suncus. However, in vagotomized suncus, feeding did not evoke postprandial contractions, but exogenous motilin injection strongly induced phase III–like contractions, as noted during the phase I period. Thus, the results indicate that ghrelin stimulates phase II of the MMC via the vagus nerve in suncus. Furthermore, the vagus nerve is essential for initiating postprandial contractions, and inhibition of the phase III–like contractions induced by motilin is highly dependent on the vagus nerve.
REAL TIME SKIN-TONE DETECTION WITH A SINGLE-CHIP DIGITAL CAMERA

This article describes a 30 frames/second VGA-format CMOS image sensor with an embedded massively parallel processor. The processor is fully programmable and therefore the sensor IC itself is able to run a variety of algorithms within close data vicinity of the sensor. Because of the parallel architecture comprising processor array and parallel memory accesses, high computational performances of up to 5 GOPS are achieved. This high performance allowed us to implement skin tone detection on the camera itself as part of a larger system for face recognition, releasing the host computer of cumbersome pixel processing tasks and minimizing the data transfer between camera and computer.
Analyzing User Requirements by Use Cases: A Goal-Driven Approach

The purpose of requirements engineering is to elicit and evaluate necessary and valuable user needs. Current use-case approaches to requirements acquisition inadequately support use-case formalization and nonfunctional requirements. Based on industry trends and research, the authors have developed a method to structure use-case models with goals. They use a simple meeting planner system to illustrate the benefits of this new approach.
The nanoscale in pulmonary delivery. Part 2: formulation platforms

This article is the second part of a review on the nanoscale in pulmonary drug delivery. Specifically it summarises and analyses the potential of the different inhalation delivery routes: nebulisers, dry powder inhalers, pressurised metered-dose inhalers, for the delivery of nanoparticles or nanodroplets. Few products and experimental studies have managed to fully exploit the nanoscale in inhalation delivery, although some may unknowingly benefit from it. Nebulisers are the most advanced in using the nanoscale, pressurised metered-dose inhalers require further developments to realise its full potential, and dry powder inhalers are specifically in need of a dry solid nanoparticle generation technique to make it a reality.