Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
High‐Dose Methylprednisolone Prevents Extensive Sick Leave After Whiplash Injury: A Prospective, Randomized, Double‐Blind Study

Study Design. A prospective, randomized, double‐blind study comparing high‐dose methylprednisolone with placebo. Objectives. To evaluate the efficacy of high‐dose methylprednisolone when administered within 8 hours after whiplash injury. Summary of Background Data. Whiplash injury often results in chronic symptoms. The management of whiplash injuries is controversial, and pharmacologic therapy has received little evaluation. In recent reports, dysfunction of the central nervous system has been indicated in several cases. Methylprednisolone administered within 8 hours after the injury to patients with acute spinal cord injury has been demonstrated to improve the outcome. This procedure was also adopted in a randomized study of cases of whiplash injury in car accidents. Methods. Forty patients, 22 men and 18 women with a mean age of 35 years (range, 19‐65), were included in the study, 20 in each of two groups. They were treated for whiplash injury, which they had sustained in car accidents. The patients were enrolled if their diagnoses were complete and treatment had begun within 8 hours after injury. Disabling symptoms severe enough to prevent the patient from returning to work, number of sick days before and after injury, and sick‐leave profile after injury were used as parameters for the evaluation of the effects of the treatment. Baseline demographic data were controlled for when statistical analysis had been performed. Results. At the follow‐up examination 6 months after initial treatment, there was a significant difference in disabling symptoms between the actively treated patients and the placebo group (P = 0.047), total number of sick days (P = 0.01), and sick‐leave profile (P = 0.003). Conclusions. The results of this study indicate that acute treatment with high‐dose methylprednisolone may be beneficial in preventing extensive sick leave after whiplash injury. However, the number of patients studied was small, and therefore further prospective, controlled studies are needed.
Roles of Humidity and Temperature in Shaping Influenza Seasonality

ABSTRACT Experimental studies in guinea pigs demonstrated that influenza virus transmission is strongly modulated by temperature and humidity. A number of epidemiological studies have followed up on these findings and revealed robust associations between influenza incidence in temperate regions and local conditions of humidity and temperature, offering a long-awaited explanation for the wintertime seasonality of influenza in these locales. Despite recent progress, important questions remain as to the mechanism(s) by which humidity and/or temperature affects transmission.
A digital corpus resource of authentic anonymized French text messages: 88milSMS - What about transcoding and linguistic annotation?

In 2011, six academics gathered over 90,000 authentic text messages (SMS) in French from the general public, in compliance with French law (http://sud4s- cience.org, Panckhurst et al., 2013). The SMS ‘donors’ were also invited to fill out a sociolinguistic questionnaire (see Figure A1, Mo ise, 2013, Panckhurst and Mo ise, 2014). The ‘sud4science’ project is part of a vast international initiative, entitled ‘sms4science’ (http://www.sms4science.org/, Fairon et al., 2006, Cougnon and Fairon, 2014, Cougnon, 2015), which aims to build a worldwide database and analyse authentic text messages in different languages. After the ‘sud4science’ SMS data collection, a pre-processing phase of checking and elim- inating any spurious information and a three-step semi-automatic anonymiza- tion phase were conducted (Accorsi et al., 2014, Patel et al., 2013). Two extracts were transcoded into standardized French (1,000 SMS) and annotated (100 SMS). The finalized digital resource of 88,000 anonymized French text messages, the ‘88milSMS’ corpus, the extracts and the sociolinguistic questionnaire data are currently available for all to download, from the Huma-Num web service (http://88milsms.huma-num.fr, Panckhurst et al., 2014). The 88milSMS corpus has also recently become available via a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence on the ‘Ortolang’ platform (https://hdl.handle.net/11403/- comere/cmr-88milsms/cmr-88milsms-tei-v1, Panckhurst et al., in Chanier (ed), 2016). In this paper, first the authors briefly situate the project and describe the anonymization process. Then, they focus on why they decided to exclude full ‘transcoding’ and linguistic annotation in the first version of the final corpus.
Student access to primary health care and preventive health screening at a school-based health centre in South Auckland, New Zealand.

AIMS To determine where students usually access primary health care and compare the quality of preventive health services that students who use the school-based health centre (SBHC) receive to those who go elsewhere for health care. METHODS A convenience sample of 20 classes were selected and surveyed in 2003. Three hundred and forty-three students completed the Young Adult Health Care Survey using a web-based questionnaire. RESULTS While most students (79%) access health care from their family doctor, a significant number (40%) of students attended the SBHC in the last 12 months. Overall, health screening and preventive counselling from health care providers was low. Students who used the SBHC were more likely to received private and confidential health care and preventive screening than students who go elsewhere for health care. CONCLUSION School-based health care provides additional access to health care that does not appear to replace traditional family practice based health care. While the SBHC appears to deliver better quality preventive health services for adolescents compared to traditional primary health care, improvements are needed across all primary health care settings.
Modeling the Spread of Ebola with SEIR and Optimal Control

Ebola is a virus that causes a highly virulent infectious disease that has plagued Western Africa, impacting Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea heavily in 2014. Understanding the spread and containment of this disease is vital to its containment and eventual elimination. We use an SEIR model to simulate the transmission of the disease. The model is validated with data from the World Health Organization. Optimal control theory is used to explore the effect of vaccination and quarantine rates on the SEIR model. The goal is to explore the use of these control strategies to effectively contain the Ebola virus.
Automatic rumors identification on Sina Weibo

In this paper, we study the problem of detecting rumors spreading in the social networks. Different from the most of the previous works on identifying rumors in Twitter, we select Sina Weibo, the China's major microblog system, as our target. We use two interfaces named “@Weibopiyao” and “Weibo Misinformation-Declaration” from Sina Weibo to help us construct high accuracy training dataset. We analyze data types of microblogs based on their content and the role and possible social impacts of different types of microblogs in rumors spreading. Leveraging our findings, we then focus on detecting social news rumors on Weibo. A new method is proposed to annotate the collected data from Weibo automatically, and three new features for identifying social news rumors are proposed. Experimental results illustrate the efficacy and efficiency of the methods and features proposed in this paper.
Nonparametric likelihood and doubly robust estimating equations for marginal and nested structural models

This article considers Robins's marginal and nested structural models in the cross‐sectional setting and develops likelihood and regression estimators. First, a nonparametric likelihood method is proposed by retaining a finite subset of all inherent and modelling constraints on the joint distributions of potential outcomes and covariates under a correctly specified propensity score model. A profile likelihood is derived by maximizing the nonparametric likelihood over these joint distributions subject to the retained constraints. The maximum likelihood estimator is intrinsically efficient based on the retained constraints and weakly locally efficient. Second, two regression estimators, named hat and tilde, are derived as first‐order approximations to the likelihood estimator under the propensity score model. The tilde regression estimator is intrinsically and weakly locally efficient and doubly robust. The methods are illustrated by data analysis for an observational study on right heart catheterization. The Canadian Journal of Statistics 38: 609–632; 2010 © 2010 Statistical Society of Canada
Prokaryotic Transcriptional Regulatory Networks 615 target genes and regulatory interactions in the network ?

0022-2836/$ see front matter Published Abbreviation used: LSI, lifestyle s E-mail addresses of the correspon madanm@mrc-lmb.cam. ac.uk; aravi The structure of complex transcriptional regulatory networks has been studied extensively in certain model organisms. However, the evolutionary dynamics of these networks across organisms, which would reveal important principles of adaptive regulatory changes, are poorly understood. We use the known transcriptional regulatory network of Escherichia coli to analyse the conservation patterns of this network across 175 prokaryotic genomes, and predict components of the regulatory networks for these organisms. We observe that transcription factors are typically less conserved than their target genes and evolve independently of them, with different organisms evolving distinct repertoires of transcription factors responding to specific signals. We show that prokaryotic transcriptional regulatory networks have evolved principally through widespread tinkering of transcriptional interactions at the local level by embedding orthologous genes in different types of regulatory motifs. Different transcription factors have emerged independently as dominant regulatory hubs in various organisms, suggesting that they have convergently acquired similar network structures approximating a scale-free topology. We note that organisms with similar lifestyles across a wide phylogenetic range tend to conserve equivalent interactions and network motifs. Thus, organism-specific optimal network designs appear to have evolved due to selection for specific transcription factors and transcriptional interactions, allowing responses to prevalent environmental stimuli. The methods for biological network analysis introduced here can be applied generally to study other networks, and these predictions can be used to guide specific experiments. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
On the Resolution of Conflicts Over Sacred Goods

We analyze recent proposals from social scientists suggesting that when sacred values are involved in conflicts, progress towards negotiation can be made if the contending parties make symbolic gestures acknowledging the sacred values of their rivals. We incorporate this possibility in a model in which the allocation of a sacred good can be resolved either by direct conflict or by negotiations made possible through (costly) symbolic gestures. We identify conditions under which a negotiated outcome may obtain. Extreme asymmetries in military power and bargaining strength are shown to militate against the possibility of negotiation. Furthermore, for a negotiated solution to be feasible, perceptions regarding the preferences of the organization mediating the negotiations are very important. While isolating some of the root causes for the recalcitrance of conflicts over sacred goods, our model provides cautious optimism for the role of symbolic gestures.
Primal-Dual Aggregation and Disaggregation for Stochastic Linear Programs

A multistage stochastic linear program can be approximated by replacing the underlying information structure by a coarser structure. Given the ordinary Lagrangian for the original problem, this amounts to restricting both the primal and dual variables to be adapted to the coarser information structure. The resulting primal problem has the same form as the original, but with aggregated constraints and decisions. Mutual upper and lower bounds on the optimal values of the original and aggregated problems are obtained via partially aggregated problems formed by restricting only the primal variables or only the dual variables to the coarser structure. The introduction of the partially aggregated problems leads to a general disaggregation framework for developing heuristic approaches to solving the original problem.
Political Conservatism, Rigidity, and Dogmatism in American Foreign Policy Officials: The 1966 Mennis Data

Researchers have established a relationship between political orientation and cognitive styles (A. Chirumbolo, 2002; J. T. Jost, J. Glaser, A. W. Kruglanski, & F. Sulloway, 2003a, 2003b; M. Kemmelmeier, 1997). In this article, the author examined whether this finding is true in the political elite, whether the relationship is linear or curvilinear, and whether interest in politics moderates the relationship between political orientation and cognitive styles. He used a 1966 sample of American foreign policy officials (N = 95) to examine the relationship between self-described conservatism and party identification and individual differences in rigidity and dogmatism. Rigidity was related to self-described conservatism, but this relationship was only significant among participants high in political interest, whereas dogmatism was unconditionally related to party identification. All relationships were linear and did not contain a curvilinear component.
Analyzing the investment impact of strategic players with market power

By comparing the results of the action of price-taking, price-making and strategic players with market power, this study will generate results for different scenarios of investment costs and transmission capacity constraints. The problems are formulated as either a strategic Mixed Complementarity Problem (MCP) or strategic Mathematical Program with Equilibrium Constraints (MPEC). The formulation of the model permits the modeling of the strategic behavior of the market participants through a game theoretical approach. The investment impact of strategic player with market power will thereby be discussed in detail. Through a game theoretical approach, a detailed comparative study is carried out in order to study the power market. By comparing the wide range of market designs, the direction of distinctive market model has been studied in terms of generation capacity expansion and market equilibriums. The proposed study has led to the conclusion that increasing market power leads to decreasing willingness to invest in production capacity. The case study shows large deviations in investments due to market design. This means that larger investment models that assume perfect competition will most likely to over-invest, compared to actual investment levels in the future. The allocation of the investments is also affected by the market design. It is reasonable to assume that the same trends and indications can be found in larger marketand investments models such as EFIs Muliti-Area Power-Market Simulator (EMPS), Power System Simulation Tool (PSST) and Net-Op.
WOLBACHIA AND THE EVOLUTION OF REPRODUCTIVE ISOLATION BETWEEN DROSOPHILA RECENS AND DROSOPHILA SUBQUINARIA

Endosymbiotic bacteria of the genus Wolbachia are widespread among insects and in many cases cause cytoplasmic incompatibility in crosses between infected males and uninfected females. Such findings have been used to argue that Wolbachia have played an important role in insect speciation. Theoretical models, however, indicate that Wolbachia alone are unlikely to lead to stable reproductive isolation between two formerly conspecific populations. Here we analyze the components of reproductive isolation between Drosophila recens, which is infected with Wolbachia, and its uninfected sister species Drosophila subquinaria. Laboratory pairings demonstrated that gene flow via matings between D. recens females and D. subquinaria males is hindered by behavioral isolation. Matings readily occurred in the reciprocal cross (D. quinaria females × D. recens males), but very few viable progeny were produced. The production of viable hybrids via this route was restored by antibiotic curing of D. recens of their Wolbachia symbionts, indicating that hybrid offspring production is greatly reduced by cytoplasmic incompatibility in the crosses involving infected D. recens males. Thus, behavioral isolation and Wolbachia‐induced cytoplasmic incompatibility act as complementary asymmetrical isolating mechanisms between these two species. In accordance with Haldane's rule, hybrid females were fertile, whereas hybrid males invariably were sterile. Levels of mtDNA variation in D. recens are much lower than in either D. subquinaria or D. falleni, neither of which is infected with Wolbachia. The low haplotype diversity in D. recens is likely due to an mtDNA sweep associated with the spread of Wolbachia. Nevertheless, the existence of several mtDNA haplotypes in this species indicates that Wolbachia have been present as a potential isolating mechanism for a substantial period of evolutionary time. Finally, we argue that although Wolbachia by themselves are unlikely to bring about speciation, they can increase the rate of speciation in insects.
Multiplicative Noise Removal with Spatially Varying Regularization Parameters

The Aubert-Aujol (AA) model is a variational method for multiplicative noise removal. In this paper, we study some basic properties of the regularization parameter in the AA model. We develop a method for automatically choosing the regularization parameter in the multiplicative noise removal process. In particular, we employ spatially varying regularization parameters in the AA model in order to restore more texture details of the denoised image. Experimental results are presented to demonstrate that the spatially varying regularization parameters method can obtain better denoised images than the other tested multiplicative noise removal methods.
Transcriptome response to infraorbital nerve transection in the gonadally intact male rat barrel cortex: RNA‐seq

The effects of infraorbital nerve (ION) transection on gene expression in the adult male rat barrel cortex were investigated using RNA sequencing. After a 24‐hour survival duration, 98 genes were differentially regulated by ION transection. Differentially expressed genes suggest changes in neuronal activity, excitability, and morphology. The production of mRNA for neurotrophins, including brain‐derived neurotrophin factor (BNDF), was decreased following ION transection. Several potassium channels showed decreased mRNA production, whereas a sodium channel (NaVβ4) associated with burst firing showed increased mRNA production. The results may have important implications for phantom‐limb pain and complex regional pain syndrome. Future experiments should determine the extent to which changes in RNA result in changes in protein expression, in addition to utilizing laser capture microdissection techniques to differentiate between neuronal and glial cells. J. Comp. Neurol. 524:152–159, 2016. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Transcription Factor C/EBPα: Novel Sites of Expression and Cloning of the Human Gene

We describe the characterization of recombinant clones for the human transcription factor CCAAT/enhancer binding protein alpha (hC/EBP alpha). The intronless hC/EBP alpha gene is almost 90% homologous to its rat and mouse counterparts. The gene copies of more distant species are less conserved, but the alignment reveals a striking homology in five regions, of which four may be involved in transactivation functions while the fifth concerns the carboxy-terminal bZip sequences (basic region and leucine zipper) mediating sequence specific DNA-binding. In addition to the usual expression sites, significant transcript levels were detected in the epidermal compartment of human skin and in rat aorta by northern analysis. The presence of hC/EBP alpha is further documented by immunohistochemical analysis of human skin biopsies and cultured keratinocytes showing the nuclear presence of the protein, notably in the suprabasal layers of the epidermis and in human keratinocytes induced to differentiate.
Oxidation of the alcohol dehydrogenase inhibitor pyrazole to 4-hydroxypyrazole by microsomes. Effect of cytochrome P-450 inducing agents.

Pyrazole and its analogues are widely used to inhibit alcohol dehydrogenase and to block the metabolism of ethanol. Experiments were conducted to demonstrate that pyrazole is oxidized to 4-hydroxypyrazole by isolated rat liver microsomes. A HPLC procedure employing UV and electrochemical detection was developed for the separation and quantitation of 4-hydroxypyrazole. Pyrazole metabolism was NADPH-dependent, sensitive to inhibition by carbon monoxide, and was depressed in the presence of other substrates such as aniline or ethanol. Prior treatment of rats with either pyrazole or 4-methylpyrazole resulted in an increase in pyrazole oxidation to 4-hydroxypyrazole by microsomes. Increases were observed when rates were expressed either per mg of protein or per nmol of P-450. Microsomes from pyrazole- and 4-methylpyrazole-treated rats had Km values for pyrazole of about 0.29 and 0.14 mM, respectively, and Vmax values of about 0.5 and 0.7 nmol of 4-hydroxypyrazole per min per mg of protein, respectively. Chronic consumption of ethanol for 24 days resulted in an increase in pyrazole oxidation (per mg of protein and per nmol of P-450) as compared to pair-fed controls. By contrast, phenobarbital treatment lowered the rate of production of 4-hydroxypyrazole. Treatment with 3-methylcholanthrene resulted in an increase in pyrazole oxidation when rates were expressed per mg of protein, but not per nmol of P-450. These results show that pyrazole is oxidized to 4-hydroxypyrazole by microsomes in a P-450-dependent manner and that this metabolism can be increased by certain inducers, e.g. pyrazole, 4-methylpyrazole, and chronic ethanol treatment.
Reliable Devanagri Handwritten Numeral Recognition using Multiple Classifier and Flexible Zoning Approach

A reliability evaluation system for the recognition of Devanagri Numerals is proposed in this paper. Reliability of classification is very important in applications of optical character recognition. As we know that the outliers and ambiguity may affect the performance of recognition system, a rejection measure must be there for the reliable recognition of the pattern. For each character image pre-processing steps like normalization, binarization, noise removal and boundary extraction is performed. After calculating the bounding box features are extracted for each partition of the numeral image. Features are calculated on three different zoning methods. Directional feature is considered which is obtained using chain code and gradient direction quantization of the orientations. The Zoning firstly, is considered made up of uniform partitions and secondly of non-uniform compartments based on the density of the pixels. For classification 1-nearest neighbor based classifier, quadratic bayes classifier and linear bayes classifier are chosen as base classifier. The base classifiers are combined using four decision combination rules namely maximum, Median, Average and Majority Voting. The framework is used to test the reliability of recognition system against ambiguity.