Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Choose to Lose: Health Plan Choices from a Menu with Dominated Option

We examine the health plan choices that 23,894 employees at a U.S. firm made from a large menu of options that differed only in financial cost-sharing and premium. These decisions provide a clear test of the predictions of the standard economic model of insurance choice in the absence of choice frictions because plans were priced so that nearly every plan with a lower deductible was financially dominated by an otherwise identical plan with a high deductible. We document that the majority of employees chose dominated plans, which resulted in excess spending equivalent to 24% of chosen plan premiums. Low-income employees were significantly more likely to choose dominated plans, and most employees did not switch into more financially efficient plans in the subsequent year. We show that the choice of dominated plans cannot be rationalized by standard risk preference or any expectations about health risk. Testing alternative explanations with a series of hypothetical-choice experiments, we find that the popularity of dominated plans was not primarily driven by the size and complexity of the plan menu, nor informed preferences for avoiding high deductibles, but by employees’ lack of understanding of health insurance. Our findings challenge the standard practice of inferring risk preferences from insurance choices and raise doubts about the welfare benefits of health reforms that expand consumer choice.
Relationship between two different space-vector modulation methods of eight-switch three-phase inverters

In this paper, two different space-vector modulation (SVM) methods based on different basic voltage vectors of eight-switch three-phase inverters (ESTPIs), which are the post-fault reconfigured topologies for the three-level neutral-point-clamped (3L-NPC) inverter with the open-circuit fault in a leg, are analyzed. Based on the pulse-width modulation regular sampling method, the equivalent carrier-based pulse-width modulation (CBPWM) methods of these two different SVM methods are derived, respectively. By comparing these two CBPWM methods, the relationship between the two different SVM methods of ESTPIs is revealed. On the basis of that, the comprehensive relationship between CBPWM methods and SWM methods of ESTPIs is also revealed. Experimental results have shown the validity of the theoretical analysis.
Docosahexaenoic Acid Modulates the Interactions of the Interphotoreceptor Retinoid-binding Protein with 11-cis-Retinal*

Rapid transport of retinoids across the interphotoreceptor matrix is a critical part of the visual cycle, since it serves to replenish bleached rhodopsin with its chromophore 11-cis-retinal. The transport of retinoids in the interphotoreceptor matrix is believed to be mediated by the interphotoreceptor retinoid-binding protein (IRBP), a protein that, in addition to possessing two retinoid-binding sites, associates in vivo with long chain fatty acids. Here, the interrelationships between binding of the two types of ligands to IRBP were studied. The composition of fatty acids associated with IRBP in bovine retina was determined, and it was found that polyunsaturated fatty acids constitute a significant fraction of those. It was further found that docosahexaenoic acid, but not palmitic acid, induced a rapid and specific release of 11-cis-retinal from one of the protein's retinoid-binding sites. Based on these results and on the additional observation that a steep concentration gradient of docosahexaenoic acid exists between photoreceptor and pigment epithelium cells, a model for the mechanism by which IRBP may target 11-cis-retinal to photoreceptor cells is proposed.
Collagen Fibril Organization in the Patellar Tendon Autograft After Posterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction

We replaced the posterior cruciate ligament in 30 skel etally mature sheep with a patellar tendon autograft using the central third of the ipsilateral patellar tendon. The healing autograft was compared with the contralat eral posterior cruciate ligament and the patellar tendons and posterior cruciate ligaments of nonoperated ani mals. The collagen fibril diameters were analyzed using transmission electron photomicrographs of fibril cross sections taken at six periods during the 2 years after surgery. The patellar tendon and posterior cruciate liga ment were characterized by a broad, nongaussian dis tribution of collagen fibril diameters. The autografts shifted to a unimodal distribution by an increase of small-diameter collagen fibrils. The frequency of small- diameter fibrils measuring up to 100 nm was 99% after 2 years. At that time, these small-diameter fibrils rep resented 91.6% of the area covered by collagen fibrils. The mean diameter of the collagen fibrils in the au tografts significantly decreased to 45% of the controls at Week 26 and remained at this level until the end of this study. The percentage of area covered by collagen fibrils per 1 μm2 was 78% of the controls 2 years post operatively. This study suggests that the patellar tendon autograft could not reproduce the collagen fibril orga nization of the posterior cruciate ligament. This may be a biologic factor responsible for inconsistent results in posterior cruciate ligament replacement.
Autoimmunity and Coxsackievirus Infection in Primary Sjögren's Syndrome

Abstract: Exocrine gland epithelial cells are the target of autoimmune pathology in primary Sjögren's syndrome (pSS). Their activated phenotype has incited the notion that they are infected by a virus. We recently presented evidence that coxsackieviruses may persistently infect the salivary glands of pSS patients. We hypothesize that coxsackieviruses may play a permissive role for the perpetuation and possibly the induction of autoimmune disease in pSS.
Gait adaptations by patients who have a deficient anterior cruciate ligament.

Sixteen patients who had unilateral deficiency of the anterior cruciate ligament and ten healthy control subjects were analyzed during level walking, jogging, and ascending and descending stairs. Kinematic and kinetic findings for the right and left hips, knees, and ankles of all of the patients and control subjects were recorded during each activity. Substantial differences from normal function were observed for both limbs of the patients during level walking and during jogging. The magnitude of the maximum moment that tended to flex the knee was reduced the most (140 per cent) during level walking. It was reduced less (30 per cent) during jogging, it was not changed while the patient descended stairs, and it was slightly increased while he or she ascended stairs. The reduction in the magnitude of the flexion moment about the knee was interpreted as the patient's effort to reduce or avoid contraction of the quadriceps. Reduction of the flexion moment reduces any contraction of the quadriceps because there must be a mechanical balance between the external moment (due to body weight and the weight and inertia of the segment of the limb) that tends to flex the knee and an internal moment (generated by contraction of the quadriceps) that tends to extend the knee. This so-called quadriceps-avoidance gait was related to the angle of flexion of the knee when the maximum flexion moment occurred during each activity. This angle of flexion was 20 degrees during walking, 40 degrees during jogging, and approximately 60 degrees during stair-climbing. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Depression management.

Most patients with depression seen in primary care have mild to moderate depression. In trials these patients respond equally well to placebo as to pharmacologically active treatment. We discuss the role of placebo treatment in this situation. An estimated 3 million people in the UK are currently depressed, with winter and the economic situation likely to increase this number. Even without screening for depression in primary care it is likely that more patients with sub-threshold to moderate depressive symptoms will require care. A recent paper by Fournier and colleagues showed that the pharmacological management of mild and moderate depression is based on poor evidence. They, and others, found that for mild to moderate depression placebo is as effective as antidepressant treatment. Fournier and colleagues concluded that ‘there is little evidence to suggest that they produce specific pharmacological benefit for the majority of patients with fewer severe acute depressions. ’ Furthermore, in clinical care, patients with mild to moderate depression can be expected to have a better placebo than in clinical trials and the placebo response has been shown to persist over time. Current NICE guidance recommends sleep hygiene, active monitoring, and lowintensity psychosocial interventions but advises against antidepressants routinely to treat persistent subthreshold depressive symptoms or mild depression because of a poor risk–benefit ratio. Where to from here: sleep hygiene, Depression management
Impact of Organ Donation Education on US Undergraduate Nursing Students

Experts advocate educational programs addressing misinformation regarding donation decisions to increase the potential donor pool. However, few researchers have measured outcomes with nursing students. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of an educational intervention on nursing students' knowledge, attitudes, registering as an organ donor, and family discussions. This quasi-experimental study used a pretest-posttest design with a control group. The research group consisted of 42 volunteers and the control group consisted of 73 volunteers. The written survey included 15 true-false knowledge items and 8 Likert items asking about attitude toward donation, registering as an organ donor, and family discussion. Normally distributed data showed no significant differences between groups on the pretest. The research group had no change in knowledge level 3 months later, but the control group had a significantly decreased knowledge level at that point. More members of the research group than the control group registered as organ donors after the intervention (χ2 = 4.5, P = .03). The control group had no change in registering as an organ donor between the pretest and posttest. Family discussions did not differ significantly from pretest to posttest in either group. One lecture/laboratory experience did make a difference in registering as an organ donor but not in discussing the decision with family members. Students can learn about organ donation from more than one specific class. Recommendations for educators and future research are provided.
BSP-IB: the Foundation of a Well-Balanced, Programmer-Friendly Commodity Supercomputer

The Bulk Synchronous Parallel (BSP) programming model is attractive for parallel programs that proceed in \phases": it is simpler to program than more general message-passing models such as MPI, and facilitates performance forecasting. While restricting overlap of communication and computation, it lends itself to e‐cient communication through aggregation and scheduling, thereby preventing unnecessary endpoint contention. InflniBand is a standard high-speed, low-latency interconnect for clusters. This paper explores the possibility of e‐cient BSP implementation on computer clusters. We present an architecture and prototype implementation of BSP in an InflniBand-connected PC-based cluster, utilizing the unique capabilities of InflniBand for e‐cient implementation of key BSP functions such as barrier synchronization. This enables demanding applications to achieve good speedups. Our commodity BSP-IB cluster forms a well-balanced parallel machine, outperforming custom multiprocessor BSP machines (e.g., IBM SP and Origin 2000) in every respect.
New Media and New Literacies: Reconstructing Education for the New Millennium

As we enter a new millennium, most people are by now aware that we are in the midst of one of the most dramatic technological revolutions in history that is changing everything from the ways that we work, communicate, and spend our leisure time. The technological revolution centers on computer, information, communication, and multimedia technologies, is often interpreted as the beginnings of a knowledge or information society, and therefore ascribes education a central role in every aspect of life. This Great Transformation poses tremendous challenges to educators to rethink their basic tenets, to deploy the media in creative and productive ways, and to restructure schooling to respond constructively and progressively to the technological and social changes that we are now experiencing. At the same time that we are undergoing technological revolution, important demographic and socio-political changes are occurring in the United States and throughout the world. Emigration patterns have brought an explosion of new peoples into the U.S. in recent decades and the country is now more racially and ethnically diverse, more multicultural, than ever before. This creates the challenge of providing people from diverse races, classes, and backgrounds with the tools and competencies to enable them to succeed and participate in an ever more complex and changing world. In this paper, I argue that we need multiple literacies for our multicultural society, that we need to develop new literacies to meet the challenge of new media and technologies, and that literacies of diverse sorts -including a more fundamental importance for print literacy -are of crucial importance in restructuring education for a high tech and multicultural society and global culture. My argument is that in a period of dramatic technological and social change, education needs to cultivate a variety of new types of literacies to make education relevant to the demands of a new millennium. My assumptions are that media are altering every aspect of our society and culture, and that we need to comprehend and make use of them both to understand and transform our worlds. My goal would be to introduce new literacies to empower individuals and groups traditionally excluded and thus to reconstruct education to make it more responsive to the challenges of a democratic and multicultural society.
CYLD and the NEMO Zinc Finger Regulate Tumor Necrosis Factor Signaling and Early Embryogenesis*

Background: Nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) regulates expression of genes responsible for cell survival and immunity. Results: Cylindromatosis (CYLD) protein activated NF-κB through interaction with other pathway proteins. Conclusion: The non-catalytic function of CYLD is important for TNF-induced NF-κB signaling during embryogenesis. Significance: Our findings may explain some of the developmental and immunologic findings in patients with immune deficiency disorders. NF-κB essential modulator (NEMO) and cylindromatosis protein (CYLD) are intracellular proteins that regulate the NF-κB signaling pathway. Although mice with either CYLD deficiency or an alteration in the zinc finger domain of NEMO (K392R) are born healthy, we found that the combination of these two gene defects in double mutant (DM) mice is early embryonic lethal but can be rescued by the absence of TNF receptor 1 (TNFR1). Notably, NEMO was not recruited into the TNFR1 complex of DM cells, and consequently NF-κB induction by TNF was severely impaired and DM cells were sensitized to TNF-induced cell death. Interestingly, the TNF signaling defects can be fully rescued by reconstitution of DM cells with CYLD lacking ubiquitin hydrolase activity but not with CYLD mutated in TNF receptor-associated factor 2 (TRAF2) or NEMO binding sites. Therefore, our data demonstrate an unexpected non-catalytic function for CYLD as an adapter protein between TRAF2 and the NEMO zinc finger that is important for TNF-induced NF-κB signaling during embryogenesis.
The Porcine Chloride Channel Calcium-Activated Family Member pCLCA4a Mirrors Lung Expression of the Human hCLCA4

Pig models of cystic fibrosis (CF) have recently been established that are expected to mimic the human disease closer than mouse models do. The human CLCA (originally named chloride channels, calcium-activated) member hCLCA4 is considered a potential modifier of disease severity in CF, but its murine ortholog, mCLCA6, is not expressed in the mouse lung. Here, we have characterized the genomic structure, protein processing, and tissue expression patterns of the porcine ortholog to hCLCA4, pCLCA4a. The genomic structure and cellular protein processing of pCLCA4a were found to closely mirror those of hCLCA4 and mCLCA6. Similar to human lung, pCLCA4a mRNA was strongly expressed in porcine lungs, and the pCLCA4a protein was immunohistochemically detected on the apical membranes of tracheal and bronchial epithelial cells. This stands in sharp contrast to mouse mCLCA6, which has been detected exclusively in intestinal epithelia but not the murine lung. The results may add to the understanding of species-specific differences in the CF phenotype and support the notion that the CF pig model may be more suitable than murine models to study the role of hCLCA4.
Real-time reconstruction of wavelet encoded meshes for view-dependent transmission and visualization

Wavelet methods for geometry encoding is a recently emerged superset of multiresolution analysis which has proven to be very efficient in term of compression and adaptive transmission of 3D content. The decorrelating power and space/scale localization of wavelets enable efficient compression of arbitrary meshes as well as progressive and local reconstruction. Recent techniques based on zerotree compression have shown to be among the best lossy mesh compression methods, while remaining compatible with selective transmission of geometric data at various level of detail. While some progressive reconstruction schemes have been proposed in the past, we show in this paper that this representation, recently proposed in the MPEG4 standard, can be efficiently used to perform real-time, view-dependent reconstruction of large meshes. The proposed system combines algorithms for local updates, cache management and server/client dialog. The local details management is an improvement of progressive reconstructions built on top of hierarchical structures. It enables fast, homogeneous accommodation and suppression of wavelet coefficients at any level of subdivision, with time complexity independent of the size of the reconstructed mesh. The cache structure wisely exploits the hierarchical character of the received data, in order to avoid redundant information transmission. The whole system enables the client to have total control on the quality of navigation according to its storage and processing capabilities, whatever the size of the mesh.
Running of the scalar spectral index from inflationary models

The scalar spectral index n is an important parameter describing the nature of primordial density perturbations. Recent data, including those from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe satellite, show some evidence that the index runs (changes as a function of the scale k at which it is measured) from $ng1$ (blue) on long scales to $nl1$ (red) on short scales. We investigate the extent to which inflationary models can accommodate such significant running of n. We present several methods for constructing large classes of potentials which yield a running spectral index. We show that within the slow-roll approximation, the fact that $n\ensuremath{-}1$ changes sign from blue to red forces the slope of the potential to reach a minimum at a similar field location. We also briefly survey the running of the index in a wider class of inflationary models, including a subset of those with nonminimal kinetic terms.
Incidence- and mortality-related risk factors of acute kidney injury requiring hemofiltration treatment in patients undergoing cardiac surgery: a single-center 6-year experience.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the incidence and mortality risk factors of severe acute kidney injury (AKI) requiring hemofiltration treatment after cardiac surgery. DESIGN A single-center, retrospective, case-control study. SETTING A post-cardiac-surgical intensive care unit at a university hospital. PARTICIPANTS Nine thousand two hundred twenty-two consecutive adult cardiac surgical patients, among whom 107 developed severe AKI. INTERVENTIONS Continuous venovenous hemofiltration. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS The overall incidence of severe AKI was 1.2%, but it differed with the type of surgical procedure including coronary artery bypass graft surgery, 0.4%; heart valves, 1.7%; aorta surgery, 5.4%; ventricle septum rupture, 52.6%; and other, 6.5%. From 6 predictors of 30-day mortality identified by univariate logistic regression (age, preoperative serum creatinine, New York Heart Association class, resternotomy, postoperative myocardial infarction, and postoperative use of intra-aortic balloon pump [IABP]), only the need for the postoperative use of IABP (odds ratio, 2.9; p = 0.01) and resternotomy (odds ratio, 3.4; p = 0.005) proved stable in multivariate analysis. Kaplan-Meier analysis identified the following overall mortality risk factors: age (p = 0.03), New York Heart Association class ≥II (p = 0.0004), resternotomy (p = 0.02), postoperative myocardial infarction (p = 0.01), and IABP (p = 0.03). CONCLUSIONS The risk of developing severe AKI depended on the type of cardiac surgical procedure. Thirty-day mortality was associated with severe perioperative circulation impairment or bleeding, but overall long-term mortality was additionally predicted by age, postoperative myocardial infarct, and preoperative circulation status.
Neuroendocrine γ-Aminobutyric Acid (GABA): Functional Differences in GABAA Versus GABAB Receptor Inhibition of the Melanotrope Cell of Xenopus laevis1.

The melanotrope cell of Xenopus laevis is innervated by nerve terminals that contain, among other transmitter substances, the neurotransmitter γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA). Postsynaptically the melanotrope cell possess both GABAA and GABAB receptors. Activation of either receptor type leads to an inhibition ofα MSH release from the cell. The present study concerns the functional significance of the existence of two types of GABA receptors on the melanotrope regarding two questions: 1) do the different receptor types have different effects on the melanotrope? and 2) can the endogenous ligand GABA differentially activate these receptors? Concerning the first question, we have tested the hypothesis that the GABAA receptor (a chloride ion channel) and the GABAB receptor (a G protein-coupled receptor negatively linked to adenylyl cyclase) may have differential effects on the sensitivity of the cell to stimulation by cAMP-dependent mechanisms. We show that treatments with either isoguvacine (GABAA agonist) or bac.
DC-Bus Voltage Control Stability Affected by AC-Bus Voltage Control in VSCs Connected to Weak AC Grids

With the wide application of voltage source converters (VSCs) in power system, dc-bus voltage control instabilities increasingly occurred in practical conditions, especially in weak ac grid, which poses challenges on stability and security of power converters applications. This paper aims to give physical insights into the stability of dc-bus voltage control affected by ac-bus voltage control in VSC connected to weak grid. The concepts of damping and restoring components are developed for dc-bus voltage to describe the stability of dc-bus voltage control. The impact of ac-bus voltage control on dc-bus voltage control stability can be revealed by investigating the impact of ac-bus voltage control on damping and restoring components essentially. Furthermore, the detailed analysis for the impact of ac-bus voltage control on damping and restoring components is presented considering varied ac system strengths, operating points, and ac-bus voltage control parameters. The simulation results from 1.5-MW full-capacity wind power generation system are demonstrated which conform well to the analysis. Finally, the experimental results validate the analysis.