Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Attitudes to emotional expression, social support and postnatal adjustment in new parents

The study investigated whether perceived antenatal social support and attitudes to emotional expression are associated with postnatal distress in new parents and whether attitudes to emotional expression are themselves linked with perceptions of social support. Eighty‐six women and 66 men expecting their first baby completed the DUKE‐UNC Functional Social Support Questionnaire (FSSQ) and the Attitudes Towards Emotional Expression (AEE) both antenatally and postnatally. Depressive symptoms and well‐being were measured using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and the Well‐being Questionnaire (WBQ), respectively, in the third trimester and at 6 weeks postnatally. The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) was also used to measure depressive symptoms in the postnatal period. Both mothers and fathers reporting higher perceived social support in pregnancy reported significantly lower levels of distress 6 weeks postnatally. Perceptions of emotional support for fathers and both practical and emotional social support for mothers decreased between pregnancy and the postnatal period. Parents with more positive attitudes towards emotional expression reported significantly higher social support. Attitude towards emotional expression was not associated with distress postnatally. Perceived social support may be protective for new fathers as well as mothers. Further research regarding the link between the psychological health of new fathers, and the transition of the couple to a family is needed.
Cell-Autonomous Cytokinin-Independent Growth of Tobacco Cells Transformed by Agrobacterium tumefaciens Strains Lacking the Cytokinin Biosynthesis Gene

Mutations at the cytokinin biosynthesis locus (tmr) of Agrobacterium tumefaciens usually result in strains that induce tumors exhibiting the rooty phenotype associated with high auxin-to-cytokinin ratios. However, tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum cv Havana 425) leaf disc explants responded to tmr- mutant strain A356 by producing rapidly growing, unorganized tumors, indicating that these lines can grow in a cytokinin-independent fashion despite the absence of a functional tmr gene. Several methods have been used to characterize the physiological and cellular basis of this phenotype. The results indicate that tmr- tumors have a physiologically distinct mechanism for cytokinin-independent growth in comparison to tumors induced by wild-type bacteria. The cytokinin-independent phenotype of the tmr- transformants appears to be cell autonomous in nature: only the transformed cells and their progeny were capable of cytokinin-independent growth. Specifically, the tmr- tumors did not accumulate cytokinin, and clonal analysis indicated the tmr--transformed cells were not capable of stimulating the growth of neighboring nontransformed cells. Finally, the cytokinin-independent phenotype of the tmr- transformants was shown to be cold sensitive, whereas the wild-type tumors exhibited a cold-resistant cytokinin-independent phenotype. Potential mechanisms for this novel form of cytokinin-independent growth, including the role of the dehydrodiconiferyl alcohol glucosides found in both tumor types, are discussed.
A rare cause of dysphagia: compression of the esophagus by an anterior cervical osteophyte due to ankylosing spondylitis

Ankylosing spondylitis (AS) is a chronic inflammatory rheumatological disease affecting the axial skeleton with various extra-articular complications. Dysphagia due to a giant anterior osteophyte of the cervical spine in AS is extremely rare. We present a 48-year-old male with AS suffering from progressive dysphagia to soft foods and liquids. Esophagography showed an anterior osteophyte at C5-C6 resulting in esophageal compression. The patient refused surgical resection of the osteophyte and received conservative therapy. However, after 6 months there was no improvement in dysphagia. This case illustrates that a large cervical osteophyte may be the cause of dysphagia in patients with AS and should be included in the diagnostic workup in early stages of the disease.
Genetic population structure and gene flow in the Atlantic cod Gadus morhua: a comparison of allozyme and nuclear RFLP loci.

High levels of gene flow have been implicated in producing uniform patterns of allozyme variation among populations of many marine fish species. We have examined whether gene flow is responsible for the limited population structure in the Atlantic cod, Gadus morhua L. , by comparing the previously published patterns of variation at 10 allozyme loci to 17 nuclear restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) loci scored by 11 anonymous cDNA clones. Unlike the allozyme loci, highly significant differences were observed among all populations at the DNA markers in a pattern consistent with an isolation-by-distance model of population structure. The magnitude of allele frequency variation at the nuclear RFLP loci significantly exceeded that observed at the protein loci (chi 2 = 24.6, d.f. = 5, P < 0.001). Estimates of gene flow from the private alleles method were similar for the allozymes and nuclear RFLPs. From the infinite island model, however, estimates of gene flow from the DNA markers were fivefold lower than indicated by the proteins. The discrepancy between gene flow estimates, combined with the observation of a large excess of rare RFLP alleles, suggests that the Atlantic cod has undergone a recent expansion in population size and that populations are significantly displaced from equilibrium. Because gene flow is a process that affects all loci equally, the heterogeneity observed among populations at the DNA level eliminates gene flow as the explanation for the homogeneous allozyme patterns. Our results suggest that a recent origin of cod populations has acted to constrain the extent of population differentiation observed at weakly polymorphic loci and implicate a role for selection in affecting the distribution of protein variation among natural populations in this species.
Image Retrieval and Classification of Carotid Plaque Ultrasound Images

The extraction of multiple features from high-resolution ultrasound images of atherosclerotic carotid plaques, characterizing the plaque morphology and structure can be used for the classification and retrieval of similar plaques and the identification of individuals with asymptomatic carotid stenosis at risk of stroke. The objective of this work was to de- velop an automated image retrieval and classification system for the retrieval of similar carotid plaque ultrasound images, which will assist the physician in making his diagnostic decision based on similar previous cases. The neural self- organizing map (SOM) and the statistical K-nearest neighbor (KNN) classifiers were used for the retrieval and the classi- fication of the carotid plaques into symptomatic or asymptomatic. Twenty different feature sets including texture, shape, morphological, histogram and correlogram features were extracted from the carotid plaque images and the classification results were further combined in order to improve the success rate. The results on a dataset of 274 carotid plaque ultra- sound images show that image retrieval and classification for carotid plaque image are feasible and that features like multi-region histogram or texture can be used successfully for the identification of cases with similar symptoms output.
Fat Politics in Europe: Theorizing on the Premises and Outcomes of European Anti-“Obesity-Epidemic” Policies

The author discusses the discursive premises that were necessary for fatness to evolve as a political problem in Europe. He presents three possible conditions for this discursive reformulation, including the internationalization of the “obesity-epidemic” narrative, the emergence of healthism as a global trend in culture and science, and the appearance of activating social policies in a variety of European countries. On that theoretical basis, the author discusses the specific outcomes of anti-“obesity-epidemic” policies in Great Britain and Germany. Finally, the author contraposes two ideal-typical lines of criticism toward the current policies against (body) fat, indicating their particular shortcomings and proposing fat-accepting alternatives.
A new xanthone from the bark of Calophyllum thorelii

A new xanthone, calothorexanthone, together with five known compounds, garbogiol, 1,4,8-trihydroxyxanthone, δ-tocotrienol, 1,7-dihydroxyxanthone and globuxanthone, was isolated from a petroleum ether extract of the bark of Calophyllum thorelii. Their structures were established on the basis of spectroscopic methods, mainly one- and two-dimensional NMR. Antioxidant activity of the isolated compounds was tested using DPPH free radical scavenging assay and some exhibited remarkable effects with IC50 of 13.63–17.46 µg mL−1.
Self-similarity based action recognition using Conditional Random Fields

An extensive amount of research is being undertaken to gracefully solve the Human action recognition problem. To this end, in this paper, we introduce the application of self- similarity surfaces for human action recognition. These surfaces were introduced by Shechtman & Irani (CVPR'07) in the context of matching similarities between images or videos. These surfaces are obtained by matching a small patch, centered at a pixel, to its larger surroundings, aim- ing to capture similarities of a patch to its neighborhood. Once these surfaces are computed, we propose to transform these surfaces into Histograms of Oriented Gradients (HoG), which are then used to train Conditional Random Fields (CRFs). Our novelty lies in recognizing the utility of these selfsimilarity surfaces for human action recognition. In addition, in contrast to Shechtman & Irani (CVPR'07), we compute only a few of these surfaces (two per frame) for our task. The proposed method does not rely on the structure recovery nor on the correspondence estimation, but makes only mild assumptions about the rough localization of a per- son in the frame. We demonstrate good results on a publicly available dataset and show that our results are comparable to other well known works in this area.
Secretion of Transforming Growth Factor-α (TGFα) by Postnatal Rabbit Alveolar Macrophages

ABSTRACT: Transforming growth factor-α (TGFα) is a cytokine secreted by stimulated alveolar macrophages (AM) in vitro and after in vivo particulate or hyperoxia exposure and has been implicated in the processes of postnatal lung development. It is unknown if AM TGFα secretion changes during normal postnatal lung development. After sacrifice of New Zealand white rabbits on postnatal d 0–2, 5–7, 9–10, 14, 21, and 28 and > 4 mo (adult), AM were isolated by discontinuous density centrifugation and placed in culture in the presence or absence of concanavalin A (ConA) for 24 h. Media were collected, and the concentration and isoforms of TGFα in AM media samples were determined by an epidermal growth factor/TGFα radioreceptor assay and Western immunodetection, respectively. TGFα was present in media of AM from the 1.06 and 1.08 g/dL Percoll densities, but not in the 1.10 g/dL density. Statistically significant differences in TGFα secretion by unstimulated and ConA-stimulated AM at the various ages were not detected until d 14 (p < 0.02). Western blot analysis of unstimulated AM media samples from d 0–7 rabbits demonstrated the presence of TGFα isoforms at 46, 30, and 14.3 kD. At later postnatal ages (≥ d 9), a single 14.3-kD isoform was present. In contrast, analysis of ConA-stimulated AM media samples showed TGFα isoforms at 46, 30, and 14.3 kD for all ages; however, the 6-kD mature isoform was present only in juvenile (d 28) and adult media. These results demonstrate an age-dependent effect on AM TGFα secretion and biochemical isoforms.
Continuous Design of Free / Open Source Software

The PIs received an NSF research grant (IIS-#0350754) for a collaborative project and workshop focused on identifying research directions for Continuous (Re)Design of Free/Open Source Software. This report presents the preliminary results from a workshop held in two locations (UCI, 23 Sept 03 and UIUC, 8-9 Oct 03). The aim of this distributed workshop was to explore and organize the sense of the community in this research area, in relation to establishing a new "Science of Design. " A total of 46 academic scientists and industrial researchers from across the U.S. came together in the workshop (18 at UCI, 28 at UIUC) to discuss, debate, and identify the critical issues and research directions. This preliminary report summarizes the findings of the workshop in five areas: motivations; areas/topics needing research; needed research collaborations and shared research infrastructure/testbeds; required investment; and other recommendations for action. As critical research in this area proceeds, it will have significant scientific, technological, educational, social, and economic benefits to the U.S.
Qualitative research methods in cross-national settings

This paper analyses the central concerns of selection and execution of cross-national qualitative research. Discussion is issue-driven, incorporating relevant publications on the basis of good practice. An assessment is made of the potential of the qualitative approach in cross-national settings, as well as its pitfalls. Questions of sampling and the attributes of specific methods are then addressed. The paper concludes with a brief review of the added value of qualitative data software packages.
On the Potential of IGCTs in HVDC

In today's voltage source converter HVDC solutions, insulated-gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs) are used exclusively, generally in module form where the modular multilevel converter is concerned; this entails a number of protective measures that increase complexity and cost. As we move to higher transmitted powers, the use of integrated gate-commutated thyristors (IGCTs) would allow both higher voltages and currents while simultaneously reducing losses, failure rates, and costs, as this paper tries to demonstrate by comparing current production IGCTs with both current module and press-pack IGBTs.
Establishing a population-based patient-reported outcomes study (PROMs) using national cancer registries across two jurisdictions: the Prostate Cancer Treatment, your experience (PiCTure) study

Objective To establish an international patient-reported outcomes (PROMs) study among prostate cancer survivors, up to 18 years postdiagnosis, in two countries with different healthcare systems and ethical frameworks. Design A cross-sectional, postal survey of prostate cancer survivors sampled and recruited via two population-based cancer registries. Healthcare professionals (HCPs) evaluated patients for eligibility to participate. Questionnaires contained validated instruments to assess health-related quality of life and psychological well-being, including QLQ-C30, QLQ-PR25, EQ-5D-5L, 21-question Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21) and the Decisional Regret Scale. Setting Republic of Ireland (RoI) and Northern Ireland (NI). Primary outcome measures Registration completeness, predictors of eligibility and response, data missingness, unweighted and weighted PROMs. Results Prostate cancer registration was 80% (95% CI 75% to 84%) and 91% (95% CI 89% to 93%) complete 2 years postdiagnosis in NI and RoI, respectively. Of 12 322 survivors sampled from registries, 53% (n=6559) were classified as eligible following HCP screening. In the multivariate analysis, significant predictors of eligibility were: being ≤59 years of age at diagnosis (p<0.001), short-term survivor (<5 years postdiagnosis; p<0.001) and from RoI (p<0.001). 3348 completed the questionnaire, yielding a 54% adjusted response rate. 13% of men or their families called the study freephone with queries for assistance with questionnaire completion or to talk about their experience. Significant predictors of response in multivariate analysis were: being ≤59 years at diagnosis (p<0.001) and from RoI (p=0.016). Mean number of missing questions in validated instruments ranged from 0.12 (SD 0.71; EQ-5D-5L) to 3.72 (SD 6.30; QLQ-PR25). Weighted and unweighted mean EQ-5D-5L, QLQ-C30 and QLQ-PR25 scores were similar, as were the weighted and unweighted prevalences of depression, anxiety and distress. Conclusions It was feasible to perform PROMs studies across jurisdictions, using cancer registries as sampling frames; we amassed one of the largest, international, population-based data set of prostate cancer survivors. We highlight improvements which could inform future PROMs studies, including utilising general practitioners to assess eligibility and providing a freephone service.
Bioinformatic Characterization of Mosquito Viromes within the Eastern United States and Puerto Rico: Discovery of Novel Viruses

Mosquitoes are efficient, militarily relevant vectors of infectious disease pathogens, including many RNA viruses. The vast majority of all viruses are thought to be undiscovered. Accordingly, recent studies have shown that viruses discovered in insects are very divergent from known pathogens and that many of them lack appropriate reference sequences in the public databases. Given that the majority of viruses are likely still undiscovered, environmental sampling stands to provide much needed reference samples as well as genetic sequences for comparison. In this study, we sought to determine whether samples of mosquitoes collected from different sites (the Caribbean and locations on the US East Coast) could be differentiated using metagenomic analysis of the RNA viral fraction. We report here distinct virome profiles, even from samples collected short distances apart. In addition to profiling the previously known viruses from these samples, we detected a number of viruses that have been previously undiscovered.
The positions of reporting clauses of speech presentation with special reference to the Lancaster Speech , Thought and Writing Presentation Corpus

This paper reports the corpus findings on the positions of reporting clauses of speech presentation. In direct speech, the preferred positions of reporting clauses vary according to text types, and the results are compared with those of Biber et al. (1999). In indirect speech, more than 90% of reporting clauses are found in the initial position. Although fronted reported clauses of indirect speech in fictional texts have been treated as an intermediate form between indirect and free indirect speech, the corpus data from news reports shows textual/contextual conditions where reported clauses tend to be fronted. This phenomenon in the press data seems to have different motivations from the one in fiction which often manipulates shift of viewpoints.
Defamiliarizing the Mundane Roadscape

It is a popular and academic notion that routine driving along motorways signifies contemporary alienation through a kind of serial “non-space. ”The author counters these dystopian assumptions about the character of this everyday pursuit by exploring his own experience of driving along England’s M6 motorway, showing how roads are enmeshed within unpredictable, multiple flows of ideas, sensations, other spaces and times, narratives, and socialities. By critiquing notions that autospace is inherently linear and featureless, that driving is asocial and desensitizing, and that the quotidian is a realm of unthinking and automatic behavior, he shows how it is precisely in the realm of mundane space-time that both homely familiarities and imaginative connections can be fostered.
Combined nonlinear visualization and classification: ELMVIS++C

This paper presents an improvement of the ELMVIS+ method that is proposed for fast nonlinear dimensionality reduction. The ELMVIS++C has an additional supervised learning component compared to ELMVIS+, which is originally an unsupervised method as like the majority of the other dimensionality reduction method. This component prevents samples under the same class being separated apart from each other. In this improved method, the importance of the supervised component can be further tuned to have different level of influence. The test results on four datasets indicate that the proposed improvement not only maintains the performance of ELMVIS+, but also is extremely beneficial for certain applications where the visualization of the data in relation with the class becomes an important issue.
Change in endothelial nitric oxide synthase in the rat retina following transient ischemia

Patterns of endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) expression in retinal ischemia were studied utilizing a transient high intraocular pressure (HIOP) model. We investigated neuronal cell damage and changes in eNOS immunoreactive expression in the ischemic retina, and its relationship to the neuroprotection of betaxolol treatment after ischemic injury. Immunohistochemical staining for eNOS was performed at 3, 7, 14 and 28 days after ischemia/reperfusion. In controls, eNOS immunoreactivity was detected in retinal vessels, but was not detected in neurons. After ischemia/reperfusion, the intensity of eNOS immunoreactivity increased in both retinal vessels and the ganglion cell layer (GCL) compared with controls. eNOS-positive neurons were induced first in the inner nuclear layer (INL) 7 days after reperfusion. However, when experiments were carried out on animals that had been treated with betaxolol after ischemia/reperfusion, the intensity of eNOS immunoreactivity decreased compared to the untreated ischemic retinas. These results suggest that an increase in eNOS expression could be associated with the degenerative changes in the ischemic retina, and that betaxolol treatment appears to protect retinal tissue from ischemic damage.
Factoring Polynomials over Finite Fields using Drinfeld Modules with Complex Multiplication

We present novel algorithms to factor polynomials over a finite field $\F_q$ of odd characteristic using rank $2$ Drinfeld modules with complex multiplication. The main idea is to compute a lift of the Hasse invariant (modulo the polynomial $f(x) \in \F_q[x]$ to be factored) with respect to a Drinfeld module $\phi$ with complex multiplication. Factors of $f(x)$ supported on prime ideals with supersingular reduction at $\phi$ have vanishing Hasse invariant and can be separated from the rest. A Drinfeld module analogue of Deligne's congruence plays a key role in computing the Hasse invariant lift. We present two algorithms based on this idea. The first algorithm chooses Drinfeld modules with complex multiplication at random and has a quadratic expected run time. The second is a deterministic algorithm with $O(\sqrt{p})$ run time dependence on the characteristic $p$ of $\F_q$.