Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Predicting relapse back to smoking: contrasting affective and physical models of dependence.

Traditional models of physical dependence suggest that nicotine dependence should be reflected by the extent of drug exposure (e.g., smoking rate) and by evidence of physiological adaptation (e.g., withdrawal severity). An affective model suggests that nicotine dependence should be related to an individual's tendency to experience negative affect and expectations that nicotine use would ameliorate such affect. This research investigated the ability of these 2 models to predict relapse back to smoking at 6 months postquit. Logistic regression models were developed and tested in 505 heavy smokers participating in nicotine patch clinical trials. Results supported both models, but the most potent predictor of outcome was postquit negative affect, which accounted for much of the predictive validity of traditional measures of nicotine dependence. Affective reactivity appears to be a core constituent of dependence.
NUANCE : ADDING MULTI-TOUCH FORCE DETECTION TO THE IPAD

NUANCE is a new device adding multi-touch force detection to the iPad touch screen. It communicates with the iPad using the audio jack input. Force information is sent at an audio rate using analog amplitude modulation (AM). NUANCE provides a high level of sensitivity and responsiveness by only using analog components. It is very cheap to make. NUANCE has been developed in the context of a larger project on augmenting mobile devices towards the creation of a form of hybrid lutherie where instruments are based on physical and virtual elements.
Current status of temporomandibular joint imaging for the diagnosis of internal derangements.

Temporomandibular joint (TMJ) pain and dysfunction are common and important clinical problems. With the recent advances in imaging technology, radiologists have made major contributions to the understanding of TMJ diseases. The purpose of this article is to review the anatomy of the TMJ and to put into perspective the relative merits of each imaging technique (conventional radiography and tomography, scintigraphy, CT, MR imaging, and arthrography) as it pertains to diagnosing internal derangement, the most common disorder of the joint.
High-Sensitive Double-Hole Defect Refractive Index Sensor Based on 2-D Photonic Crystal

In this paper, we simulate a refractive index sensor based on the 2-D photonic crystal using finite difference time domain methods. The sensor which is called double-hole defect sensor, consists of two waveguides and two-point defect microcavities when the lattice constant is a = 440 nm. In the optimum structure, the sensitivity of the sensor is s = 500 nm/RIU (refractive index unit), whereas the refractive index resolution is very small and Δn = 0.0001 (i.e., resonance wavelength shifts up by 0.05 nm).
Conversion of raft associated prion protein to the protease‐resistant state requires insertion of PrP‐res (PrPSc) into contiguous membranes

Prion protein (PrP) is usually attached to membranes by a glycosylphosphatidylinositol‐anchor that associates with detergent‐resistant membranes (DRMs), or rafts. To model the molecular processes that might occur during the initial infection of cells with exogenous transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) agents, we examined the effect of membrane association on the conversion of the normal protease‐sensitive PrP isoform (PrP‐sen) to the protease‐resistant isoform (PrP‐res). A cell‐free conversion reaction approximating physiological conditions was used, which contained purified DRMs as a source of PrP‐sen and brain microsomes from scrapie‐infected mice as a source of PrP‐res. Interestingly, DRM‐associated PrP‐sen was not converted to PrP‐res until the PrP‐sen was either released from DRMs by treatment with phosphatidylinositol‐specific phospholipase C (PI‐PLC), or the combined membrane fractions were treated with the membrane‐fusing agent polyethylene glycol (PEG). PEG‐assisted conversion was optimal at pH 6–7, and acid pre‐treating the DRMs was not sufficient to permit conversion without PI‐PLC or PEG, arguing against late endosomes/lysosomes as primary compartments for PrP conversion. These observations raise the possibility that generation of new PrP‐res during TSE infection requires (i) removal of PrP‐sen from target cells; (ii) an exchange of membranes between cells; or (iii) insertion of incoming PrP‐res into the raft domains of recipient cells.
Highly reliable & wideband digital multi beamforming horn array antenna with gain adjustment capabilities for space applications

This paper discusses design & measurement techniques for highly reliable & wideband Digital Multi beamforming Horn Array Antenna with gain adjustment capabilities for Space Applications. Complexity of feeding network has been reduced by many folds with the use of 24 dual coaxial fed circularly polarized conical horn antennas providing an excellent axial ratio of <2 dB for entire array highly recommended for satellite communication. Horn array antenna shows excellent wideband characteristics having bandwidth greater than 1GHz with an excellent VSWR<1.3. Horn array antenna holds the capability of transmission using both circular polarization as well as linear polarization. Horn array antenna exhibits high gain of 23.7 dB with multi beam operation. Independent element digital control enables the options for multiple beam forming, gain adjustment, & combinations of multiple adaptive beam generation discussed in detail. The chains from transmitter to antenna for beam forming network have also been discussed. Reliability analysis through antenna measurements show gain degradation due to failure of elements is less as compared to other antennas. Horn array antenna has been simulated & optimized on Ansoft HFSS v11.
A survey of software development practices in the New Zealand software industry

We report on the software development techniques used in the New Zealand software industry, paying particular attention to requirements gathering. We surveyed a selection of software companies with a general questionnaire and then conducted in-depth interviews with four companies. Our results show a wide variety in the kinds of companies undertaking software development, employing a wide range of software development techniques. Although our data are not sufficiently detailed to draw statistically significant conclusions, it appears that larger software development groups typically have more well-defined software development processes, spend proportionally more time on requirements gathering, and follow more rigorous testing regimes.
Development Projects for the CausalityWorkbench

The CausalityWorkbench project provides an environment to test causal discovery algorithms. Via a web portal, we provide a number of resources, including a repository of datasets, models, and software packages, and a virtual laboratory allowing users to benchmark causal discovery algorithms by performing virtual experiments to study artificial causal systems. We regularly organize competitions. In this paper, we explore the opportunities offered by development applications.
Avoiding Non-Technical Sources of Software Maintenance Technical Debt

Much of the emphasis in identifying a software maintenance project’s technical debt involves analysis of the code to be maintained. Our recent analysis of the sources of software maintenance cost have identified the major sources of technical debt for non-developer maintenance organizations to originate from non-technical acquisition and development decisions and practices. As a way of identifying and avoiding these sources, we have developed an initial counterpart of the Technical Readiness Level framework, called the Software Maintenance Readiness Level (SMRL) framework. This paper summarizes the main non-technical sources of software maintenance technical debt, their root causes, a first-cut SMRL framework, and our early experiences in evaluating it. Keywords—Software life cycle; Life cycle costs; Software maintainability; Software evolution; Software technical debt, Software maintainability readiness level
GA for deceptive problems: inverting schemata by a statistical approach

We propose a method to overcome the premature stagnation of genetic algorithms (GA). We first define an additional population in order to store a larger part of the resulting chromosomes. We then extract the schema responsible for the stagnation of the algorithm, derive its complementary schema and resume the GA's evolution with some fixed positions in the chromosome. We prove that, if working with a directed mutation, the GA will explore better than if it carried on with the canonical genetic operators.
Previous spatial learning is required for the development of place preference in rats following chronic administration of and withdrawal from morphine

The positive reinforcing properties of addictive drugs have a primary role in the development of drug dependence. In the field of opiates, great attention has been given to this phenomenon, as well as to the negative properties eliciting craving and inducing relapse during withdrawal. This study was designed to evaluate whether elevated plus-maze (EPM) experienced rats withdrawn from low doses of subcutaneous (s.c.) morphine (10 mg/kg), in which a high anxiety level is the most prominent withdrawal symptom, acquire place preference when submitted to a conflict paradigm in which drug effects are paired with an aversive context: the distal part of the open arms of an EPM. Both the anxiety test and place preference conditioning were measured in the same apparatus, a biased version of the plus-maze. In order to verify the influence of previous EPM spatial learning on the performance of morphine-withdrawn rats, half the animals in this study experienced the EPM prior to treatment. Additional groups were also tested under the influence of morphine effects. The effects of the treatments were quantified through the analysis of three types of measures: anxiety was inferred from the use of the conventional measures (percentage of entries and time spent in the open-arms) and risk-assessment behaviours (frequency of stretched-attending postures - SAP, and time spent at the centre of the maze). Place preference conditioning was evaluated through analysis of the number of entries, total time spent and distance run in the open-arm extremities, which is where the animals were conditioned. The number of closed-arm entries was taken as an index of locomotor activity. Our results showed that (i) EPM naive rats pre-treated with morphine did not develop place preference, behaving like control rats; (ii) rats that had previous experience in the EPM showed no changes in open-arm avoidance on the second exposure, when compared with rats naive for this condition; (iii) previous spatial learning of the EPM contextual cues was, in fact, a requirement for anxiety-inducing place preference for the open-arms in morphine-withdrawn rats and, (iiii) conditioned place preference was achieved both in rats under the effects of morphine and in withdrawal, probably through the influence of the positive or negative reinforcing effects promoted by the presence or absence of the drug in the central nervous system.
Unlocking the Value of RFID

RFID (Radio‐Frequency Identification) technology has shown itself to be a promising technology to track movements of goods in a supply chain. As such, it can give unprecedented visibility to the supply chain. Such visibility can save labor cost, improve supply chain coordination, reduce inventory and increase product availability. Industry reports and white papers are now filled with estimates and proclamations of the benefits and quantified values of RFID. Early adopters are now rallying more and more followers. However, most such claims are educated guesses at best and are not substantiated, that is, they are not based on detailed, model‐based analysis. This paper argues that there is a huge credibility gap of the value of RFID, and that a void exists in showing how the proclaimed values are arrived at, and how those values can be realized. The paper shows that this credibility gap must be filled with solid model analysis, and therefore presents a great opportunity for the Production and Operations Management (POM) research community. The paper reviews some of the ongoing research efforts that attempt to close the credibility gap, and suggests additional directions for further strengthening the POM's contribution to help industry realize the full potentials of RFID.
Cell adhesion molecules and asthma

For a long time asthma was viewed primarily as a respiratory disease of acute airway obstruction. Consequently, first line therapy consisted of brunchodilators to regulate smtxilh muscle contraction 11 ]. However, in the last decade airway inllammation associated with asthma has become a major focus of interest. Histological examinations of the airways from patients who died during asthmatic attacks showed diunage and detachment of the bronchial epithelium and intense iniillralion of leucocytes |2|. Recent studies, using bronchial biopsies, demonstralc that airway inflammation and epithelial shedding not only exist in patients with severe asthma hut even in individuals with mild a.slhma 13,4]. Increased numbers of leuc(xytes have been observed both in allergic and non-allergic patients with asthma compared to control individuals |-*i.6|. In most studies elevated numbers of eosinophils have been lotind in the bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) lUiiil. in [he bronchial epithelium and in the lamina propria of patients with asthma in the "pre-attack phase" 13.4,6-11|. Allergen prt)vocation increased the number of eosinophils and T cells in the submucosa 24-96 h after the challenge, compared lo saline challenge |12-I4| . The striking increase in the number of bronchial epithelial eusinophils after allergen provocation was associated with an increase in airway hyperresponsiveness and other asthmatic symptoms |6,l. 'i|. Some (but not all) studies also described increased neutrophil numbers in the BAL fluid 24-48 h after allergen challenge in allergic asthmatic airways. However, at this tinte point increases in neulrophii numbers were less pronounced than the elevations in the number of eosinophils 112,14.16,171. Interestingly, Montefort et al. 113] recently demonstrated a large increase in predominantly the number of neutrophils in the submucosa of asthmatic patients 6 h after allergen challenge. The reason why this cell type had been overlooked frequently in the past can probably be explained on the basis of bronchoscopy studies predominantly undertaken 24-48 h post-challenge.
Perceptions of Duchenne and non-Duchenne smiles: A meta-analysis

A meta-analysis was conducted to compare perceptions of Duchenne smiles, smiles that include activation of the cheek raiser muscle that creates crow's feet around the eyes, with perceptions of non-Duchenne smiles, smiles without cheek raiser activation. In addition to testing the overall effect, moderator analyses were conducted to test how methodological, stimulus-specific and perceiver-specific differences between studies predicted the overall effect size. The meta-analysis found that, overall, Duchenne smiles and people producing Duchenne smiles are rated more positively (i.e., authentic, genuine, real, attractive, trustworthy) than non-Duchenne smiles and people producing non-Duchenne smiles. The difference between Duchenne and non-Duchenne smiles was greater when the stimuli were videos rather than photographs, when smiles were elicited naturally rather than through posing paradigms and when Duchenne and non-Duchenne smiles were not matched for intensity of the lip corner puller in addition to other perceiver and methodological moderators.
Structures, factorizations, and design criteria for oversampled paraunitary filterbanks yielding linear-phase filters

We present here a special class of oversampled filterbanks (FBs), namely, paraunitary FBs with linear-phase filters. We propose some necessary conditions for the existence of such banks, based on the repartition between type I/II and type II/IV linear-phase filters in the bank. For a subset of these FBs, we develop a factorization that leads to a minimal implementation, as well as a direct parameterization of the FBs in terms of elementary rotation angles. This factorization is applied to some design examples, with two different optimization criteria: coding gain and reconstructibility of lost coefficients.
Left ventricular strain and its pattern estimated from cine CMR and validation with DENSE

Measurement of local strain provides insight into the biomechanical significance of viable myocardium. We attempted to estimate myocardial strain from cine cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) images by using a b-spline deformable image registration method. Three healthy volunteers and 41 patients with either recent or chronic myocardial infarction (MI) were studied at 1.5 Tesla with both cine and DENSE CMR. Regional circumferential and radial left ventricular strains were estimated from cine and DENSE acquisitions. In all healthy volunteers, there was no difference for peak circumferential strain (− 0.18 ± 0.04 versus − 0.18 ± 0.03, p = 0.76) between cine and DENSE CMR, however peak radial strain was overestimated from cine (0.84 ± 0.37 versus 0.49 ± 0.2, p < 0.01). In the patient study, the peak strain patterns predicted by cine were similar to the patterns from DENSE, including the strain evolution related to recovery time and strain patterns related to MI scar extent. Furthermore, cine-derived strain disclosed different strain patterns in MI and non-MI regions, and regions with transmural and non-transmural MI as DENSE. Although there were large variations with radial strain measurements from cine CMR images, useful circumferential strain information can be obtained from routine clinical CMR imaging. Cine strain analysis has potential to improve the diagnostic yield from routine CMR imaging in clinical practice.
There is a return to non-pregnant coagulation parameters after four not six weeks postpartum following spontaneous vaginal delivery

Changes in the coagulation status of the blood contribute to a 10-fold increased risk of venous thromboembolic disease seen in pregnancy, which rises to 25-fold in the postpartum period.1 The widely accepted assumption that the hypercoagulable state of pregnancy resolves at six weeks postnatal is based on little scientific evidence. Individual parameters show considerable variation in their recovery to prepregnancy levels after childbirth, with some such as factor VIII and von Willebrand factor falling to baseline levels within 72 hours postpartum but others, such as the reduction in protein S, taking several weeks to recover. The cumulative effects of these is not known but could be assessed using a global test of haemostatic function such as thromboelastography (TEG). This technique evaluates the viscoelastic properties of blood during coagulation and fibrinolysis. It is able to provide information relating to the cumulative effect of several components of coagulation at a given time point and, unlike conventional clotting tests, can be performed on whole blood, thus incorporating the contribution of platelets to coagulation. Understanding the rate of change after delivery and the time at which coagulation returns to non-pregnant levels in a population of healthy women with uncomplicated vaginal deliveries, would provide a baseline of normal physiological changes and a standard against which clinical situations associated with higher risk of thromboembolic disease can be compared. This may then inform the use of selective thromboprophylaxis to reduce morbidity and mortality related to thromboembolic disease. We used thromboelastography to investigate the time taken for the hypercoagulable state of pregnancy to resolve in a population of healthy women with uncomplicated vaginal deliveries.
Archaeal chromatin and transcription

Archaea contain a variety of sequence‐independent DNA binding proteins consistent with the evolution of several different, sometimes overlapping and exchangeable solutions to the problem of genome compaction. Some of these proteins undergo residue‐specific post‐translational lysine acetylation or methylation, hinting at analogues of the histone modifications that regulate eukaryotic chromatin structure and transcription. Archaeal transcription initiation most closely resembles the eukaryotic RNA polymerase II (RNAPII) system, but Archaea do not appear to have homologues of the multisubunit complexes that remodel eukaryotic chromatin and activate RNAPII initiation. In contrast, they have sequence‐specific regulators that repress and perhaps activate archaeal transcription by mechanisms superficially similar to the bacterial paradigm of regulating promoter binding by RNAP. Repressors compete with archaeal TATA‐box binding protein (TBP) and TFB for the TATA‐box and TFB‐recognition elements (BRE) of the archaeal promoter, or with archaeal RNAP for the site of transcription initiation. Transcript‐specific regulation by repressors binding to sites of transcript initiation is consistent with such sites having very little sequence conservation. However, most Archaea have only one TBP and/or TFB that presumably must therefore bind to similar TATA‐box and BRE sequences upstream of most genes. Repressors that function by competing with TBP and/or TFB binding must therefore also make additional contacts with transcript‐specific regulatory sites adjacent or remote from the TATA‐box/BRE region. The fate of the archaeal TBP and TFB following transcription initiation remains to be determined. Based on functional homology with their eukaryotic RNAPII‐system counterparts, archaeal TBP and possibly also TFB should remain bound to the TATA‐box/BRE region after transcription initiation. However, this seems unlikely as it might limit repressor competition at this site to only the first round of transcription initiation.
A proof of concept study establishing Necator americanus in Crohn’s patients and reservoir donors

The emergence of autoimmunity, including Crohn’s disease (CD) where the immune relationship with commensal bacteria is corrupted, has been linked to hygiene.1,2 A gradual decline in endoparasites is but one argument that might explain this phenomenon.3 Weinstock and colleagues have successfully tested the pig whipworm, Trichuris suis , in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). 4,5 However, repeated inoculation was required and concern has been raised that aberrant migration could occur.6 The haematophagous hookworm, Necator americanus (NA), is proposed as an alternative. We have tested if CD patients tolerate hookworm infection, and the practical issues associated with establishing reservoir donors (RDs). Over 700 million people remain infected with hookworms. Infective larvae (L3i) are acquired through skin contact with contaminated soil.7 Auto-reinfection, direct person to person infection, aberrant migration, and hypobiosis do not occur. Adult worms live …