Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Infrared and polarization anomalies in the optical spectra of modulation-doped semiconductor quantum-well structures.

We investigate the physical processes which determine the optical spectra of modulation-doped semiconductor quantum-well structures as a function of doping. We argue that even at low doping concentrations, excitons are heavily dressed by charge- and spin-density excitations of the Fermi sea, implying, already in that limit, a Stokes shift between emission and absorption. For all doping concentrations, the charge and spin polarization of the Fermi sea due to many-body effects leads to an enhancement of the symmetry breaking in quantum-well structures, which may explain polarization anomalies observed in luminescence.
Spatial and Temporal Correlates of Vesicular Release at Hippocampal Synapses

We develop a spatially explicit biophysical model of the hippocampal CA3-CA1 presynaptic bouton to study local calcium dynamics leading to vesicle fusion. A kinetic model with two calcium sensors is formulated specifically for the CA3-CA1 synapse. The model includes a sensor for fast synchronous release that lasts a few tens of milliseconds and a sensor for slow asynchronous release that lasts a few hundred milliseconds. We show that a variety of extant data on CA3-CA1 synapse can be accounted for consistently only when a refractory period of the order of few milliseconds between releases is introduced. Including a second sensor for asynchronous release that has a slow unbinding site and therefore an embedded long memory, is shown to play a role in short-term plasticity by facilitating release. For synchronous release mediated by Synaptotagmin II a third time scale is revealed in addition to the fast and slow release. This third time scale corresponds to "stimulus-correlated super-fast" neurotransmitter release. Our detailed spatial simulation indicates that all three-time scales of neurotransmitter release are an emergent property of the calcium sensor and independent of synaptic ultrastructure. Furthermore, it allows us to identify features of synaptic transmission that are universal and those that are modulated by structure.
A research agenda for emergency general surgery: health policy and basic science.

A care surgery encompasses the fields of trauma, burn and surgical critical care, and now emergency general surgery (EGS). The EGS patient is defined by the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma (AAST) Severity Assessment Committee as any patient (inpatient or emergency department) requiring an emergency surgical evaluation (operative or nonoperative) for a disease generally considered within the realm of general surgery. In an accompanying article, Shafi present the technical definition of EGS using DRG International Classification of DiseasesV9th Rev. codes and identified 260 conditions as primary EGS diagnosis codes. Eachyear in theUnitedStates,more than3million patients present with acute conditions requiring timely surgical interventions. The acuity spectrum ranges from appendectomy to necrotizing fasciitis. In fact, more patients present with general surgical emergencies than are diagnosed with diabetes each year. Today, health care is in a period of great changemanifested by the following: 1. The creation of integrated health care networks; 2. The consolidation of hospitals and physician practices; 3. An explosion in information technology; and 4. The development of accountable care organizations.
Philosophic Perspective: A Comparative Study of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Western Medicine

This paper at first makes a comparative study of the two different paradigms of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Western medicine. The author holds that there are four essential differences between the two paradigms: the theory of Yin and Yang as well as five phases vs. modern natural science, experienced "black box" vs. objective anatomy, overall synthesis vs. concrete analysis, and "thought experiment" vs. scientific experiment. Next, from a dynamic view of theoretic development, the author deeply discusses TCM's defensive method, which influenced upon its evolution. This paper concludes that TCM will go on enlightening modern medicine with its traditional experiences and thinking methods; yet as a research programme which lacks evolutionary capacity, it will meet more challenges of Western medicine.
Phosphatidylinositol 3-Kinase/Akt Signaling Controls Endothelial Cell Sensitivity to Fas-Mediated Apoptosis via Regulation of FLICE-Inhibitory Protein (FLIP)

Abstract— Fas is constitutively expressed on endothelial cells, but in contrast to smooth muscle and other cell types, endothelial cells are highly resistant to Fas-mediated apoptosis. In this study, we examined the role of the serine/threonine kinase Akt/PKB in controlling the sensitivity of endothelial cells to Fas-mediated apoptosis. Serum deprivation inhibited expression of the caspase-8 inhibitor FLICE-inhibitory protein (FLIP), which functions downstream from Fas. FLIP expression levels were restored when serum-depleted cells were treated with vascular endothelial growth factor. Treatment with the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI 3-kinase) inhibitors wortmannin or LY294002 or infection of the adenoviral construct expressing dominant-negative Akt (Adeno-dnAkt) also inhibited the expression of FLIP in endothelial cells, whereas the MEK inhibitor PD98059 had no effect. Conversely, adenovirus-mediated transfection of a constitutively-active Akt gene abolished the wortmannin- and LY294002-mediated downregulation of FLIP. Suppression of PI 3-kinase signaling sensitized endothelial cells to Fas-mediated apoptosis. Under conditions of suppressed PI 3-kinase signaling, restoration of FLIP expression reversed the induced sensitivity of endothelial cells to Fas-mediated apoptosis. These data suggest that inhibition of Fas-mediated apoptosis, via promotion of FLIP expression, is a mechanism through which Akt signaling can promote endothelial cell survival.
Characterizing the intra-warp address distribution and bandwidth demands of GPGPUs

Holic, Calvin R. M.S.E.C. E. , Purdue University, May 2014. Characterizing the Intrawarp Address Distribution and Bandwidth Demands of GPGPUs. Major Professor: Mithuna S. Thottethodi. General-purpose Graphics Processing Units (GPGPUs) are an important class of architectures that o↵er energy-e cient, high performance computation for dataparallel workloads. GPGPUs use single-instruction, multiple-data (SIMD) hardware as the core execution engines with (typically) 32 to 64 lanes of data width. Such SIMD operation is key to achieving high-performance; however, if memory demands of the di↵erent lanes in the “warp” cannot be satisfied, overall system performance can su↵er. There are two challenges in handling such heavy demand for memory bandwidth. First, the hardware necessary to coalesce multiple accesses to the same cache block— a key function necessary to reduce the demand for memory bandwidth—can be a source of delay complexity. Ideally, all duplicate accesses must be coalesced into a single access. Memory coalescing hardware, if designed for the worst-case, can result in either high area and delay overheads, or wasted bandwidth. Second, bandwidth demands can vary significantly. Ideally, all memory accesses of a warp must proceed in parallel. Unfortunately, it is prohibitively expensive to design a memory subsystem for the worst-case bandwidth demand where each lane accesses a di↵erent cache block. The goal of this thesis is to characterize the memory-access behavior of GPGPU workloads within warps to inform memory subsystem designs. The goal is not to propose and evaluate hardware optimizations based on this characterization. I leave such optimizations for future work with my collaborator Hector Enrique RodŕiguezSimmonds. Specifically, I characterize two properties which have the potential to lead
Compliance in experience sampling methodology: the role of demographic and clinical characteristics

Objective: Experience sampling (ES) involves participants rating ambulant phenomena at unpredictable intervals. Despite its perceived benefits, there is little published research evaluating the limitations of this method. Method: Predictors of compliance were investigated across three studies using ES in psychotic populations. Results: Regression analyses indicated that none of the demographic or clinical variables significantly (p .05) predicted the number of valid reports or compliance as defined by traditionally used cut-off points ( 33%). Conclusions: We conclude that it is difficult to predict compliance in ES research, which is likely to be an accessible methodology, even for people experiencing distressing symptoms.
The two visual system hypothesis loses a supporter

ago, it is almost certainly a constant and useful capacity of the' human (or nonhuman, for that matter) organism. I further object vigorously to Campion et al.'s (probably careless) remark that consciousness "cannot be investigated scientifically. " What in the world cannot be investigated scientifically? Only something supernatural, by definition. I trust it was only laziness or contempt for philosophy that led them to take such a heavy philosophical position against the very conception of the world that legitimates scientific investigation.
A DSP multiprocessor architecture for live camera calibration

This paper presents a system for real-time calibration of moving and zooming video cameras. In order to satisfy the real-time constraints, the calibration of each video frame has to be computed before the acquisition of the next frame is completed (40 milliseconds for PAL standard). Because of such time requirements, the proposed system is based on a multi-DSP processor architecture: the digitized video signal is processed by a DSP system hosted in a standard PC. The computed calibration parameters are transferred to the application running on the host, which uses the camera parameters for real time digital video effects, such as live mixing of the acquired video stream with synthetic sequences. Compared to existing systems, the proposed technique represents a low-cost solution, as it is based on a simple hardware architecture. Moreover, differently from most existing systems, the proposed technique does not need additional hardware for camera calibration, such as mechanical encoders or auxiliary cameras, but just needs some markers arbitrarily placed in the scene. The proposed tracking and calibration technique has been implemented and optimized for running in parallel on a multiple-DSP architecture. Experimental tests show that the overall computing time has never been greater than 13 milliseconds, thus satisfying the required real-time constraints.
The Dynamics of Family Dinner Talk: Cultural Contexts for Children's Passages to Adult Discourse.

The Dynamics of Family Dinner Talk: Cultural Contexts for Children's Passages to Adult Discourse Shoshana Blum-Kulka To cite this article: Shoshana Blum-Kulka (1994) The Dynamics of Family Dinner Talk: Cultural Contexts for Children's Passages to Adult Discourse, Research on Language and Social Interaction, 27:1, 1-50, DOI: 10.1207/s15327973rlsi2701_1 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327973rlsi2701_1
Toward an understanding of the interaction between filarial parasites and host antigen‐presenting cells

Summary: Lymphatic filarial infection, from an immunologic point of view, is one of the most complex parasite infections. Not only are there different clinical manifestations that reflect differing immune responses, but the parasite's multiple stages, each with distinct anatomic tropism, add a compartmental layer of complexity to an already complicated process. Moreover, these parasites have finely tuned immune evasion strategies that enable escape from the innate immune system. As different stages of the parasite interact with different types of antigen‐presenting cells that, in turn, may play a significant role in shaping the subsequent adaptive immune response, the focus of this review is to provide insight into the interaction between filarial parasites and antigen‐presenting cells with an eye toward understanding how they influence parasite antigen‐driven T‐cell responses.
In vivo response of GsdmA3Dfl/+ mice to topically applied anti‐psoriatic agents: effects on epidermal thickness, as determined by optical coherence tomography and H&E staining

Abstract: This study evaluated in vivo the potential of optical coherence tomography (OCT) to determine changes in thickness of the epidermis in response to the topically applied anti‐psoriatics betamethasone dipropionate (BD), salicylic acid (SA) and also fish oil (FO). GsdmA3Dfl/+ mice have an inflammatory hair loss phenotype that includes hyperproliferation and epidermal thickening, hence a potential psoriasis model. Changes in epidermal thickness were evaluated over a period of 10 days, with the mice treated with combined BD + SA, FO + SA and BD + FO + SA. The data were validated with conventional measurement using H&E staining coupled with microscopy. Initial baseline measurement revealed an average epidermal thickness of 26.92 ± 1.17 μm. After 10 days of treatment with BD, the average epidermal thickness was reduced by 38.8% (P = 0.0001), and inversely, treatment with FO resulted in an unexpected 105% increase (P = 0.0001) in epidermal thickness. Combined BD + FO treatment did not cause any significant change (P = 0.3755) and may further indicate opposing effects on keratinocyte proliferation. The data obtained using OCT were statistically the same as those obtained by H&E/microscopy (P = 0.4325), supporting a greater role for OCT in dermatological studies, while also allowing a reduction in the number of animals used in such studies as sacrifice at individual timepoints is not necessary.
Using Gait Features for Improving Walking People Detection

In this paper, we explore a new approach for enriching the HoG method for pedestrian detection in an unconstrained outdoor environment. The proposed algorithm is based on using gait motion since the rhythmic footprint pattern for walking people is considered the stable and characteristic feature for the detection of walking people. The novelty of our approach is motivated by the latest research for people identification using gait. The experimental results confirmed the robustness of our method to enhance HoG to detect walking people as well as to discriminate between single walking subject, groups of people and vehicles with a detection rate of 100%. Furthermore, the results revealed the potential of our method to be used in visual surveillance systems for identity tracking over different camera views.
On Log Canonical Models of the Moduli Space of Stable Pointed Curves

We study the log canonical models of the moduli space MBar_{0,n} of pointed stable genus zero curves with respect to the standard log canonical divisors K+aD, where D denotes the boundary. In particular we show that, as a formal consequence of a conjecture by Fulton regarding the ample cone of MBar_{0,n}, these log canonical models are equal to certain of Hassett's weighted pointed curve spaces.
Comparative modeling of CCRL1, a key protein in masked immune diseases and virtual screening for finding inhibitor of this protein

Human CCRL1 belongs to the family of silent chemokine receptors. This transmembrane protein plays a role in blunting function of chemokines through binding to them. This will attenuate immune responses. Interaction between CCRL1 and CCL21 determines this immune extinction. Thus inhibiting the action of this atypical chemokine seems to stimulate immune responses especially in the case of suppressed and immune deficient conditions. In this study we predicted 3D structure of CCRL1 using comparative modeling and Hiddebn Markov Model algorithm. Final predicted model optimized by Modeller v9.8 and minimized regarding energy level using UCSF chimera candidate version1.5. 3. ClasPro webserver was used to find interacting residues between CCRL1 and CCL21. Interacting residues were used as target for chemical inhibitors by simulated docking study. For finding potential inhibitors, library of KEGG compounds screened and 97 obtained chemicals docked against interacting residues between CCRL1- CCL21 and MolDock was used as docking scoring function. Results indicated that Hexadecanal is a potential inhibitor of CCRL1- CCL21 interaction. Inhibition of this interaction will increase intercellular level of CCl21 and interaction between CCL21 and CCR7 causes immune potentiaiton.
Impact of atrial fibrillation on the risk of death: the Framingham Heart Study.

BACKGROUND Atrial fibrillation (AF) causes substantial morbidity. It is uncertain whether AF is associated with excess mortality independent of associated cardiac conditions and risk factors. METHODS AND RESULTS We examined the mortality of subjects 55 to 94 years of age who developed AF during 40 years of follow-up of the original Framingham Heart Study cohort. Of the original 5209 subjects, 296 men and 325 women (mean ages, 74 and 76 years, respectively) developed AF and met eligibility criteria. By pooled logistic regression, after adjustment for age, hypertension, smoking, diabetes, left ventricular hypertrophy, myocardial infarction, congestive heart failure, valvular heart disease, and stroke or transient ischemic attack, AF was associated with an OR for death of 1.5 (95% CI, 1.2 to 1.8) in men and 1.9 (95% CI, 1.5 to 2.2) in women. The risk of mortality conferred by AF did not significantly vary by age. However, there was a significant AF-sex interaction: AF diminished the female advantage in survival. In secondary multivariate analyses, in subjects free of valvular heart disease and preexisting cardiovascular disease, AF remained significantly associated with excess mortality, with about a doubling of mortality in both sexes. CONCLUSIONS In subjects from the original cohort of the Framingham Heart Study, AF was associated with a 1.5- to 1.9-fold mortality risk after adjustment for the preexisting cardiovascular conditions with which AF was related. The decreased survival seen with AF was present in men and women and across a wide range of ages.
Neuronal plasticity and seasonal reproduction in sheep

Seasonal reproduction represents a naturally occurring example of functional plasticity in the adult brain as it reflects changes in neuroendocrine pathways controlling gonadotropin‐releasing hormone (GnRH) secretion and, in particular, the responsiveness of GnRH neurons to estradiol negative feedback. Structural plasticity within this neural circuitry may, in part, be responsible for seasonal switches in the negative feedback control of GnRH secretion that underlie annual reproductive transitions. We review evidence for structural changes in the circuitry responsible for seasonal inhibition of GnRH secretion in sheep. These include changes in synaptic inputs onto GnRH neurons, as well as onto dopamine neurons in the A15 cell group, a nucleus that plays a key role in estradiol negative feedback. We also present preliminary data suggesting a role for neurotrophins and neurotrophin receptors as an early mechanistic step in the plasticity that accompanies seasonal reproductive transitions in sheep. Finally, we review recent evidence suggesting that kisspeptin cells of the arcuate nucleus constitute a critical intermediary in the control of seasonal reproduction. Although a majority of the data for a role of neuronal plasticity in seasonal reproduction has come from the sheep model, the players and principles are likely to have relevance for reproduction in a wide variety of vertebrates, including humans, and in both health and disease.
The use of the Beck Depression Inventory as a geriatric assessment instrument

ABSTRACT The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) is a standard assessment tool for measuring depression in both clinical and research settings. This study adds to the growing literature addressing the use of the BDI for geriatric populations by focusing exclusively on a community resident sample. For this sample of 107 persons over the age of 65, the BDI demonstrated sufficient validity and reliability to warrant its use as a research measure. Further, there appeared to be no relationship between age and depression scores although there was a relationship between reported health conditions and depression.
Measurement of the Type a Behavior Pattern by Self-Report Questionnaires: Several Perspectives on Validity

The overall aim of this study was to evaluate the validity of the Type A behavior pattern as measured by paper-and-pencil questionnaires. Booklets containing the Jenkins Activity Survey, Framingham Type A Scale, Thurstone Activity Scale, a newly constructed bipolar adjective Type A measure, and measures of the needs for achievement and nurturance were completed by 418 students. Convergent and discriminant validity were evaluated using LISREL VI. Convergent validity was supported by a common Type A construct represented by the covariation among different measures. Although all Type A measures shared common variance, there was consistent evidence that each measure reflects a unique aspect of the construct. Regarding discriminant validity, Type A was distinguished from the needs for achievement and nurturance. Regression analysis indicated that each of the three component factors of the Jenkins Activity Survey accounted for unique variance in Type A scores on this instrument. Results, generally, were comparable for both males and females.
Health status measurement in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Health status measurement is a common feature of studies in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). This review assesses recent evidence for the validity of these measurements and their role as measures of the overall impact of the disease on the patient's daily life and wellbeing. It reviews the mostly widely used COPD specific questionnaires and examines the contribution that they make to an assessment of the overall effect of treatment. Finally, it addresses the question of how symptomatic benefit may be assessed in individual patients in routine practice.
A risk model for prediction of lung cancer.

BACKGROUND Reliable risk prediction tools for estimating individual probability of lung cancer have important public health implications. We constructed and validated a comprehensive clinical tool for lung cancer risk prediction by smoking status. METHODS Epidemiologic data from 1851 lung cancer patients and 2001 matched control subjects were randomly divided into separate training (75% of the data) and validation (25% of the data) sets for never, former, and current smokers, and multivariable models were constructed from the training sets. The discriminatory ability of the models was assessed in the validation sets by examining the areas under the receiver operating characteristic curves and with concordance statistics. Absolute 1-year risks of lung cancer were computed using national incidence and mortality data. An ordinal risk index was constructed for each smoking status category by summing the odds ratios from the multivariable regression analyses for each risk factor. RESULTS All variables that had a statistically significant association with lung cancer (environmental tobacco smoke, family history of cancer, dust exposure, prior respiratory disease, and smoking history variables) have strong biologically plausible etiologic roles in the disease. The concordance statistics in the validation sets for the never, former, and current smoker models were 0.57, 0.63, and 0.58, respectively. The computed 1-year absolute risk of lung cancer for a hypothetical male current smoker with an estimated relative risk close to 9 was 8.68%. The ordinal risk index performed well in that true-positive rates in the designated high-risk categories were 69% and 70% for current and former smokers, respectively. CONCLUSIONS If confirmed in other studies, this risk assessment procedure could use easily obtained clinical information to identify individuals who may benefit from increased screening surveillance for lung cancer. Although the concordance statistics were modest, they are consistent with those from other risk prediction models.