Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Self controlled case series methods: an alternative to standard epidemiological study designs

The self controlled case series (SCCS) method is an epidemiological study design for which individuals act as their own control—ie, comparisons are made within individuals. Hence, only individuals who have experienced an event are included and all time invariant confounding is eliminated. The temporal association between a transient exposure and an event is estimated. SCCS was originally developed for evaluation of vaccine safety, but has since been applied in a range of settings where exact information on the size of the population at risk is lacking or identification of an appropriate comparison group is difficult—eg, for studies of adverse effects of drug treatments. We provide an overview of the SCCS method, with examples of its use, discuss limitations, assumptions, and potential biases that can arise where assumptions are not met, and provide solutions and examples of good practice.
An ab initio study of intermolecular interactions of nitromethane dimer and nitromethane trimer

Different geometries of nitromethane dimer and nitromethane trimer have been fully optimized employing the density functional theory B3LYP method and the 6‐31++G** basis set. Three‐body interaction energy has been obtained with the ab initio supermolecular approach at the levels of MP2/6‐31++G**//B3LYP/6‐31++G** and MP2/aug‐cc‐pVDZ//B3LYP/6‐31++G**. The internal rotation of methyl group induced by intermolecular interaction has been observed theoretically. For the optimized structures of nitromethane dimer, the strength of CH…ON H‐bond ranges from −9.0 to −12.4 kJ mol−1 at the MP2/aug‐cc‐pVDZ//B3LYP/6‐31++G** level, and the B3LYP method underestimates the interaction strength compared with the MP2 method, while MP2/6‐31++G**//B3LYP/6‐31++G** calculated ΔEC is within 2.5 kJ mol−1 of the corresponding value at the MP4(SDTQ)/6‐31G**//B3LYP/6‐31++G** level. The analytic atom–atom intermolecular potential has been successfully regressed by using the MP2/6‐31++G**//B3LYP/6‐31++G** calculated interaction energies of nitromethane dimer. For the optimized structures of nitromethane trimer the three‐body interaction energies occupy small percentage of corresponding total binding energies, but become important for the compressed nitromethane explosive. In addition, it has been discovered that the three‐body interaction energy in the cyclic nitromethane trimer is more and more negative as intermolecular distances decrease from 2.2 to 1.7 Å. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Comput Chem 24: 345–352, 2003
British guidelines on managing hypertension

Education and debate p 630 This issue of the BMJ includes a summary of the new British Hypertension Society guidelines for managing hypertension.1 Recently, one of the authors of these guidelines commented on the strengths of the fifth and sixth reports of the Joint National Committee on Prevention, Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Pressure (JNC): “The JNC reports score highly on two counts—they took note of important new evidence, and unlike the others, delivered a clear message. ”2 The same can be said of this version of the British guidelines, which represent an outstanding summary of the existing evidence about the diagnosis and treatment of hypertension. In contrast to the World Health Organisation-International Society of Hypertension3 and the Joint National Committee VI guidelines,4 the brevity of this version will make the British Hypertension Society guidelines especially usefulto clinicians. The authors aimed to produce an evidence based document, and in the full version (reference 1 in 1) they applied the North of England Group criteria to grade the evidence for most recommendations. For instance, a low dose thiazide diuretic is listed as the first line treatment for patients with uncomplicated hypertension. This evidence based recommendation, appropriately, received a grade A rating, which signifies evidence from at least one …
ANOSVA: a statistical method for detecting splice variation from expression data

MOTIVATION Many or most mammalian genes undergo alternative splicing, generating a variety of transcripts from a single gene. New information on splice variation is becoming available through technology for measuring expression levels of several exons or splice junctions per gene. We have developed a statistical method, ANalysis Of Splice VAriation (ANOSVA) to detect alternative splicing from expression data. Since ANOSVA requires no transcript information, it can be applied when the level of annotation is poor. When validated against spiked clone data, it generated no false positives and few false negatives. We demonstrated ANOSVA with data from a prototype mouse alternative splicing array, run against normal adult tissues, yielding a set of genes with evidence of tissue-specific splice variation. AVAILABILITY The results are available at the supplementary information site. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION The results are available at the supplementary information site https://bioinfo.affymetrix. com/Papers/ANOSVA/
Public Understanding of, and Attitudes toward, Scientific Research: What We Know and What We Need to Know

Over the last four decades, a substantial body of national survey material has been collected in the US concerning the public understanding of science and technology. Using this body of research, this analysis outlines the major trends from 1957 to 1999 and discusses their implications for public understanding of, and attitudes toward, scientific research. The analysis found that although the rate of civic scientific literacy in the US is only now approaching 20 percent, there is a strong and continuing public belief in the value of scientific research for economic prosperity and for the quality of life. Even though there are some continuing reservations about the pace of change engendered by science and technology and the relationship between science and faith, the public consistently reconciles these differing perceptions in favor of science.
Shared Sub-Path Protection Algorithm with Recovery Time Constraint in WDM Networks

This paper proposes a new heuristic algorithm called Traffic recovery time Constrained Shared Sub-Path Protection (TC_SSPP) to provide survivability in WDM networks with Shared-Risk-Link-Group (SRLG). By properly setting the delay parameter of each link and running the Delay Constrained Shortest Path Algorithm (DCSPA) to compute the backup sub-paths, TC_SSPP can effectively guarantee the traffic recovery time for connection requests. Simulation results show that TC_SSPP outperforms the traditional algorithms.
Clinical impact of prandial state, exercise, and site preparation on the equivalence of alternative-site blood glucose testing.

OBJECTIVE To determine whether clinically significant differences exist in fasting blood glucose (BG) at the forearm, palm, and thigh relative to the fingertip; to assess the impact of prandial status by comparing BG between alternative sites and the fingertip at several time intervals after carbohydrate intake; to assess the effects of moderate brief exercise on site-to-site differences in BG; to evaluate the impact of site preparation by local rubbing on alternative-site testing (AST) equivalence; and to determine levels of perceived pain and satisfaction associated with AST. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Fasting BG was measured using the One Touch Ultra (LifeScan, Milpitas, CA) at the fingertip, palm, thigh, and each forearm (with local rubbing) in 86 patients with type 2 diabetes. A 40-g carbohydrate meal was consumed and BG was again measured from each site at 60, 90, and 120 min postmeal, with an additional forearm test at 90 min without local rubbing. Patients then exercised for 15 min with repeat BG at each site. Differences in BG between sites were assessed using repeated-measures ANOVA and regression analyses. RESULTS Significant differences in BG at alternative sites were found 60 min postmeal (P = 0.0003) and postexercise (P = 0.037). Specifically, clinically significant differences (expressed as percent difference from the fingertip) at 60 min include -8.8 +/- 10.8% at the forearm and -13.7 +/- 10.7% at the thigh, and postexercise +19.1 +/- 19.1% at the forearm and +15.6 +/- 22.6% at the thigh. However, no significant differences were observed between sites in either the fasting state or at 90 and 120 min postmeal. The dynamic results suggest a time lag in equilibration of forearm and thigh BG during periods of rapid glucose change. Palm and fingertip BG test results were similar at all time points. CONCLUSIONS AST results are consistent with fingertip BG results in both the fasting state and 2 h postmeal; no benefit from site preparation by local rubbing was noted. However, testing at sites other than the hand cannot be recommended 1 h postmeal or immediately after exercise. AST is equivalent and appropriate for use at testing times commonly used in clinical practice.
Design of allpass-based non-uniform oversampled DFT filter banks

In this paper we address design and properties of an oversampled non-uniform DFT filter bank derived by an allpass frequency transform from its uniform version. The novel synthesis bank utilizes only stable FIR filters, which can be designed via closed-form expressions. The overall analysis-synthesis system leads to a near-perfect-reconstruction solution, where the phase compensation error can be made arbitrarily small at the expense of additional system delay. Furthermore, we also address the case of different sub-sampling factors in the subbands. The filter bank design is carried out by utilizing a lifting factorization for the prototypes, which has the advantage that the overall system delay can be controlled in an efficient way.
Places for Children – Children’s Places

In their everyday lives, children largely stay within and relate to three settings – their homes, schools and recreational institutions. These environments have been created by adults and designated by them as ‘places for children’. A more differentiated picture of children’s spatial culture emerges when children discuss and take photographs of settings that are meaningful to them. This article applies the concept ‘children’s places’ to explain the fact that children relate not only to official places provided by adults, but also to informal places, often unnoticed by adults. The analysis sheds light on interfaces and discontinuities between ‘places for children’ and ‘children’s places’ and argues that the concept should not be underestimated in the sociology of childhood.
Biologically Inspired Control System for 3-D Locomotion of a Humanoid Biped Robot

This paper proposes the control system for 3-D locomotion of a humanoid biped robot based on a biological approach. The muscular system in the human body and the neural oscillator for generating locomotion signals are adapted in this paper. We extend the neuro-locomotion system for modeling a multiple neuron system, where motoric neurons represent the muscular system and sensoric neurons represent the sensor system inside the human body. The output signals from coupled neurons representing the angle joint level are controlled by gain neurons that represent the energy burst for driving the joint in each motor. The direction and the length of step in robot locomotion can be adjusted by command neurons. In order to form the locomotion pattern, we apply multiobjective evolutionary computation to solve the multiobjective problem when optimizing synapse weights between the motoric neurons. We use recurrent neural network (RNN) for the stabilization system required for supporting locomotion. RNN generates a dynamic weight synapse value between the sensoric neuron and the motoric neuron. The effectiveness of our system is demonstrated in open dynamic engine computer simulation and in a real robot application that has 12 degrees of freedom (DoFs) in legs and four DoFs in hands.
Boolean Programs: A Model and Process for Software Analysis

A fundamental issue in model checking of software is the choice of a model for software. We present a model called boolean programs that is expressive enough to represent features in common programming languages and is amenable to model checking. We present a model checking algorithm for boolean programs using context-free-language reachability. The model checking algorithm allows procedure calls with unbounded recursion, exploits locality of variable scopes, and gives short error traces. Furthermore, we give a process for incrementally re ning an initial skeletal boolean program B (representing a source program P ) with respect to a particular reachability query in P . The presence of infeasible paths in P may lead to the model checker reporting false positive errors in B. We show how to re ne B by introducing boolean variables to rule out the infeasible paths. The process uses ideas from model checking, symbolic execution, and program slicing.
An Image-Based Hair Modeling and Dynamic Simulation Method

In the past years, significant progress has been made in image-based hair modeling, thus producing abundant 3-D hair models. However, on the one hand, the reconstructed hair models could not preserve the structural details of hairstyle. On the other hand, there exists little research on these modeling results. Currently, hair geometry is mostly represented as mass chains of 3-D points. It is difficult to simulate hair directly from this representation. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to convert hair geometry model into helices, which could be easily plugged into dynamic hair simulation. We construct a hair model from a hybrid orientation field, which is generated from four fields. We extract a representative guide hair strand model from this hair geometry. Then, we use adaptive floating tangents fitting algorithm to convert this hair geometry into a physics-based hair model. To initialize this hair model, we calculate a corresponding static equilibrium configuration under external forces, including gravity, frictional contacts, and viscous drag from ambient air. We simulate dynamic hair by the Euler–Lagrange equations. Our approach can preserve structural details of 3-D hair models, and can be applied to simulate various hair geometries.
Variation in motivations by running ability: using the theory of reasoned action to predict attitudes about running 5K races

In the past several years, the 5K race has become the most prevalent distance run in the USA. Though 5K races are so prevalent in society, there is a lack of understanding about the motivation of the participants in these events. This study aims to fill the gap by examining the motivations of 5K runners. Using Fishbein and Ajzen's (2010) theory of reasoned action as a conceptual framework, the researchers assess whether variances existed in the attitudinal motivations of running 5K races by levels of ability. The current study sampled 512 runners of 5K races in Pennsylvania. The results show that altruism, competition, and past participation influenced the attitudes of runners with high ability. Altruism, social affiliation, competition, and health influenced the attitudes of runners with medium ability. Similarly, health, social affiliation, and altruism influenced the attitudes of runners with low ability. Finally, results show that runners with higher ability are more likely to participate in 5Ks. The results of this study are particularly pertinent to race directors and event planners. The results provide novel insights into the motivations of 5K race runners, thus highlighting ways for race directors to develop 5K events that appeal to participants.
Coalescence-Time Distributions in a Serial Founder Model of Human Evolutionary History

Simulation studies have demonstrated that a variety of patterns in worldwide genetic variation are compatible with the trends predicted by a serial founder model, in which populations expand outward from an initial source via a process in which new populations contain only subsets of the genetic diversity present in their parental populations. Here, we provide analytical results for key quantities under the serial founder model, deriving distributions of coalescence times for pairs of lineages sampled either from the same population or from different populations. We use these distributions to obtain expectations for coalescence times and for homozygosity and heterozygosity values. A predicted approximate linear decline in expected heterozygosity with increasing distance from the source population reproduces a pattern that has been observed both in human genetic data and in simulations. Our formulas predict that populations close to the source location have lower between-population gene identity than populations far from the source, also mirroring results obtained from data and simulations. We show that different models that produce similar declining patterns in heterozygosity generate quite distinct patterns in coalescence-time distributions and gene identity measures, thereby providing a basis for distinguishing these models. We interpret the theoretical results in relation to their implications for human population genetics.
Reminiscences and discoveries: The Blackett-Eckersley-Lovell correspondence of World War II and the origin of Jodrell Bank

1. Introduction During the transference of my papers to the archive of the John Ry lands University Library of Manchester, I discovered a letter from T. L. Eckersley to P. M. S. Blackett that had a vital bearing on the early development of Jodrell Bank. Blackett had shown me this letter shortly after the end of the war but I had believed that he had just received it. In fact, the letter is dated 12 March 1941 and concerns a paper by Blackett and myself published in the Proceedings o f the Royal Society in 1941. Eckersley suggested that we had omitted a factor in the calculations which might influence our conclusions. Indeed, when I investigated this, I discovered to my dismay that, by omission, we had introduced an error of many orders of magnitude which invalidated our proposed research. Evidently if we had been able to give attention to Eckersley’s letter in 1941, the incentive for the proposed post-war research would have vanished and Jodrell Bank would not exist today.
Energy-efficient base station control with dynamic clustering in cellular network

Due to increasing awareness of environmental and economic issues for network operators, energy-efficiency has received much attention lately and becomes one of the major design goals in wireless networks. Since the power consumption of base stations (BS) occupies most energy cost of entire cellular networks, in this paper, we propose a novel power saving method denoted as clustering BS-off (CBSO) scheme that all the cells are cooperated and dynamically adjusted to switch on/off along with space and time. Instead of adopting a unified and consistent BS-off scheme all over the network, the proposed CBSO schemes adaptively group BSs in several clusters based on the user traffic load fluctuations and runs novel BS-off matching scheme in order to find the optimal BS on/off mechanism in each cluster separately. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of both proposed centralized and distributed CBSO algorithms in energy saving.
The Home Environments of Christian College Freshmen: Behind Closed Doors

This study provides a descriptive snapshot of high school students’ home lives from their perspective as first-year college students as they attended a Bible college or Christian liberal arts college. The sample of over 2,300 surveys was collected annually for 14 years through selected freshmen courses, and the data reports on the frequencies of particular practices found in the home environment, such as illegal drugs, tobacco products, the frequency of attending religious services, and family prayers. A data comparison is made from other research, particularly the Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE) and the National Study of Youth and Religions (NSYR). Implications for church workers and faculty at Bible colleges, Christian liberal arts colleges, and seminaries are also discussed.
Motility and adhesive properties of high- and low-metastatic murine neoplastic cells.

Randomly chosen clones of the murine K-1735 melanoma tumor were used by Raz and Geiger to address the question of whether variations in actin organization in these cells may be related to their lung colonization capability in syngeneic hosts (Cancer Res., 42: 5183-5190, 1982). In 14 of 15 clones tested, we found that the degree of actin organization was inversely correlated to their metastatic capability. We have further shown that remarkable variations exist in the adhesive properties and locomotor activity of four K-1735 melanoma cell variants that exhibit distinct metastatic properties. The low-metastatic cell variants displayed large focal adhesion plaques, tightly packed actin bundles, elaborate extracellular networks of fibronectin, and restricted motility. In contrast, the high-metastatic variants were poorly attached with only few distinct actin bundles, were unable to reorganize extracellular fibronectin into cables, and exhibited high motile activity. Electron microscopic examination of local s.c. tumors of the high- and low-metastatic lines indicated that the former formed loose tumor masses with very few intercellular connections, while the low-metastatic line developed into a considerably more compact tumor with numerous intercellular contacts, in line with the in vitro findings. It is proposed that the differences in cellular properties manifested by these cell lines may be related to their metastatic properties. Specifically, the highly metastatic cells of this tumor system may easily detach from the primary tumor mass, form weak and transient connections with surrounding connective tissue, and actively migrate through it. Furthermore, these results point to the close interrelationships between different mechanochemical features in cells, including specific cell adhesiveness, cytoskeletal organization, locomotion, and rearrangement of extracellular fibronectin. The possible nature of these interrelationships is discussed.
Working memory capacity predicts workload capacity

Bays, P. M. , Catalao, R. F. , & Husain, M. (2009). The precision of visual working memory is set by allocation of a shared resource. Journal of Vision, 9(10), 1–11. doi:10.1167/9.10. 7 Deubel, H. , Schneider, W. X. , & Bridgeman, B. (1996). Post-saccadic target blanking prevents saccadic suppression of image displacement. Vision Research, 36, 985–996. doi:10.1016/S00426989(98)00048-0 Golomb, J. D. , L’Heureux, Z. E. , & Kanwisher, N. (2014). Feature-binding errors after eye movements and shifts of attention. Psychological Science, 25(5), 1067–1078. doi:10.1177/0956 797614522068 Tas, A. C. , Moore, C. M. , & Hollingworth, A. (2012). An object-mediated updating account of insensitivity to transsaccadic change. Journal of Vision, 12(11), 1–13. doi:10.1167/12.11. 18