Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Older adults' common sense models of diabetes.

OBJECTIVE To investigate the importance of viewing belief systems about health maintenance holistically. METHODS Qualitative (N=74) and quantitative data (N=95) were obtained from a multi-ethnic rural-dwelling sample of older adults with diabetes to characterize their common sense models (CSMs) of diabetes. RESULTS There is a discrete number of CSMs held by older adults, each characterized by unique clusters of diabetes-related knowledge and beliefs. Individuals whose CSM was shaped by biomedical knowledge were better able to achieve glycemic control. CONCLUSIONS Viewing individuals' health beliefs incrementally or in a piece-meal strategy may be less effective for health behavior change than focusing on beliefs holistically.
What brought them up? Exhumation of the Dabie Shan ultrahigh-pressure rocks

Metamorphic coesite and diamond in the Dabie Shan, eastern China, testify to subduction of continental crust to >100 km depth. Exhumation of these ultrahigh-pressure rocks through the crust encompassed two stages. (1) South-dipping foliation, southeast-plunging stretching lineation, lineation-parallel isoclinal folds, and boudins indicate extreme subhorizontal shortening and subvertical extension during top-to-northwest shearing at 200–180 Ma. Syntectonic recrystallization occurred at eclogite and amphibolite facies temperatures and at pressures below coesite stability. (2) Northwest-southeast subhorizontal extension from 133 to 122 Ma was concentrated within an asymmetric structural dome in a magmatic complex that forms the northern half of the Dabie Shan. Pluton cores at deep structural levels have weak hypersolidus fabrics, and pluton carapaces are mylonitic gneisses formed at upper amphibolite facies conditions. Deformation is concentrated in greenschist facies mylonites and ultramylonites along the Xiaotian-Mozitang detachment fault at the northern topographic limit of the Dabie Shan. Our preferred exhumation model involves two stages: Triassic indentation—vertical extrusion and erosion—followed by Cretaceous plate margin transtension.
Mimetic parallels in Korean and Japanese

Korean and Japanese are both known for their extensive utilization of mimetic adverbs. A comparative examination reveals the systematic nature of sound symbolism in the two languages and the striking parallels in their phonology and morphology. Similar mechanisms of symbolic sound alternation, suffixation and reduplication are utilized in both languages to extend the expressive range of mimetic words. The utilization of dark-bright vowel pairs in Korean mimesis is well known, and a comparison between the two languages shows that Japanese also makes use of similar patterns of mimetic volume pairs. Not only does a comparative approach help illuminate the full systematic nature of sound symbolism in each language, but it may also help further our understanding of the wider relationship between the two languages.
Curriculum development in pharmacotherapy: testing the ability of preclinical medical students to learn therapeutic problem solving in a randomized controlled trial.

AIMS To determine whether preclinical medical students are able to learn therapeutic problem solving simultaneously with gaining knowledge of pharmacology. METHODS A randomized controlled pre/post-test study among 85 3rd year preclinical medical students from two medical faculties in Amsterdam. In addition to the normal curriculum, the study group followed a course, which was a copy of the obligatory training in cognitive therapeutic skills for 5th year students who had gained knowledge first, followed by applying the knowledge. Before, immediately after and 9 months after the training both the study group and a control group took a test (T0, T1, T2). The level of knowledge and cognitive therapeutic skills were assessed. As a reference, 38 5th year students also took the tests. RESULTS On T0 the levels of cognitive therapeutic skills of the study and control groups were similar (26.7% and 27.4% of the required level for graduation, respectively). On T1 and T2, the study group scored significantly higher compared with the control group: 46.0/36.7% and 41.3/36.3%, respectively (P<0.05). In comparison with T0, the scores of the study group on T1 increased significantly and showed no significant decline on T2. There were no differences between the groups with respect to the level of knowledge in any of the three tests. The level of cognitive therapeutic skills in the 5th year reference group increased slightly but not significantly from 40.3% to 44.5% after the training; the level of knowledge increased significantly from 48.8% to 68.0%. CONCLUSIONS Preclinical medical students are able to learn cognitive therapeutic skills simultaneously with gaining knowledge of pharmacology.
Caffeine and 35% carbon dioxide challenge tests in panic disorder

Our aim was to compare the demographic and clinical features of panic disorder (PD) patients with agoraphobia—DSM‐IV—who had a panic attack after both an oral caffeine and the 35% carbon dioxide (CO2) challenge tests (responsive group) and compare them with PD patients who did not have a panic attack after both tests (non‐responsive group). We examined 83 PD patients submitted to a 35% CO2 test and to an oral caffeine (480 mg) intake within 1 week interval. A panic attack was induced in 51 (61.4%) patients during the CO2 test (χ2 = 31.67, df = 1, p < 0.001) and in 38 (45.8%) patients during the caffeine test (χ2 = 18.28, df = 1, p = 0.023). All patients who had a panic attack during the caffeine test also had a panic attack during the CO2 test (n = 38)—responsive group. The responsive had more (χ2 = 24.55, df = 1, p = 0.008) respiratory PD subtype, disorder started earlier (Mann‐Whitney, p < 0.001) had a higher familial prevalence of PD (χ2 = 20.34, df = 1, p = 0.019), less previous alcohol abuse (χ2 = 23.42, df = 1, p < 0.001), and had more previous depressive episodes (χ2 = 27.35, df = 1, p < 0.001). Our data suggest that there is an association between respiratory PD subtype and hyperreactivity to challenge tests: CO2 and oral caffeine. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Effects of OPC-14523, a combined sigma and 5-HT1a ligand, on pre- and post-synaptic 5-HT1a receptors

OPC-14523 (OPC) is a novel compound with high affinity for sigma and 5-HT1A receptors that shows ‘antidepressant-like’ effects in animal models of depression. We have previously demonstrated that OPC produces an increase in 5-HT neurotransmission and a decreased response of 5-HT neurons to the acute administration of paroxetine in the DRN, an effect that appears to be mediated by OPC’s 5-HT1A receptor affinity. The current study sets out to investigate more specifically the effects of OPC on 5-HT1A pre- and post-synaptic receptors, to assess whether it acts as an agonist or antagonist. Using an electrophysiological model of in vivo extracellular recordings in anaesthetized rats, the effects of OPC was assessed on pre-synaptic DRN 5-HT1A autoreceptors and post-synaptically on hippocampal 5-HT1A receptors of CA3 pyramidal neurons. OPC applied by microiontophoresis, produced a significant decrease in the firing activity of 5-HT neurons of the DRN and of quisqualate-activated CA3 pyramidal neurons of the dorsal hippocampus. The effects of OPC on 5-HT1A receptors were significantly reduced by the co-application of the 5-HT1A antagonist WAY-100635. In addition, the effects of OPC were not blocked by the injection of the sigma antagonists NE-100 or haloperidol. Therefore, OPC is acting as an agonist on both pre- and post-synaptic 5-HT1A receptors. The current findings combined with previous data on OPC suggest a pharmacological profile that warrants further investigation.
Impact of HPV Assay on Observed Population Prevalence

Type-specific surveillance of human papillomavirus (HPV) has been proposed as an early indicator of vaccine impact. Longitudinal comparison of HPV typing results requires stable assays with high type-specific reproducibility. Assays are evolving and the impact of even minor changes in the assay format may be difficult to anticipate. We initiated a population-based study of HPV with the prototype line blot (PLB) assay. These reagents were replaced by the research use only Linear Array (LA) HPV Genotyping kit. The assays are similar in principle and earlier comparisons found increased sensitivity and detection of more types per sample with LA; however, in samples from women with cervical abnormalities, the overall concordance was good. Slight changes in sensitivity may be more significant in samples from a general population with lower viral loads in the samples. Residual extracts from 3001 self-collected vaginal swabs from women in the general US population originally tested with PLB were retested with LA. With LA, all the samples were hybridized. PLB hybridization was restricted to samples with probable amplicon in gel electrophoresis. For HPV detection, the agreement between the 2 assays was 78.6% (&kgr;=0.55) with a positive concordance of 52.8%. However, this masks the observation that repeat testing with LA led to the detection of HPV in nearly twice as many samples. Agreement improves if comparison was restricted to the samples hybridized. These results emphasize that assay comparisons should consider the clinical-epidemiologic context of sample collection. Studies designed to examine temporal trends in type-specific prevalence should archive residual material to permit retesting if assays change.
The American health care system--the movement for improved quality in health care.

A vibrant movement to improve the quality of health care has sprung up in the United States. Report cards on health plans, hospitals, medical groups, and even individual physicians have appeared on the front pages of newspapers, on television, and on the Internet. Projects to solve problems of quality within health care institutions dot the health care landscape. A small but determined cadre of physician leaders has developed a science of health care quality and is working to transform that science into a national movement. Two main strategic threads intertwine to create the present and future agenda of the movement .
Termination of Open Higher-Order Programs

We study the problem of proving termination of open, higher-order programs with recursive functions and datatypes. We identify a new point in the design space of solutions, with an appealing trade-off between simplicity of specification, modularity, and amenability to automation. Specifically, we consider termination of open expressions in the presence of higher-order, recursive functions, and introduce a new notion of termination that is conditioned on the termination of the callbacks made by the expressions. For closed expressions our definition coincides with the traditional definition of termination. We derive sound proof obligations for establishing termination modulo callbacks, and develop a modular approach for verifying the obligations. Our approach is novel in three aspects. (a) It allows users to express properties about the environment in the form of higher-order contracts. (b) It establishes properties on the creation sites of closures instead of application sites and does not require knowing the targets of applications. (c) It uses a modular reasoning where termination (modulo callbacks) is verified for each function independently and then composed to check termination of their callers. We present the results of evaluating our approach on benchmarks comprising more than 10K lines of functional Scala code. The results show that our approach, when combined with a safety verifier, established both termination and safety of complex algorithms and data structures that are beyond the reach of state-of-the-art techniques. For example, it verifies Okasaki's scheduling-based data structures and lazy trees in under a few seconds.
Modeling of emission from snow-covered ground for passive microwave remote sensing

This paper investigated the emission behavior at 18.7 GHz, 36.5 GHz and 89 GHz over the snow-cover surface and after snow completely removed surface at the Local Scale Observation Site (LSOS) in Fraser, Colorado, USA with 55° incidence angle) using one-layer and two-layer emission model, which is based on the radiative transfer by Matrix Doubling approach with the dense media theory and the surface scattering Model. From the comparisons with the GBMR-7 observation on Feb. 21, both the two-layer emission model and one-layer emission model could predict the observed brightness temperature over snow-covered surface well, but the polarization difference predicted by two-layer emission model was relatively smaller than one-layer model did. In addition, we attempted to interpret the emission magnitude and polarization separation of snow-removed surface by incorporating a transition layer below the soil medium. We also demonstrated the effect of snow fraction on the brightness temperature difference at 18.7 GHz and 36.5 GHz over snow-cover surface with the field observation and model simulation.
Factors Affecting Brand Identification and Loyalty in Online Community

This study explores the factors of online community characteristics which affect customer loyalty through the mediate effects of brand identification. By employing online questionnaire survey, hundreds of observations were collected from online brand communities in Taiwan for hypothetical model test. Research results show that brand loyalty is positively affected by stronger online brand identification which is enhanced by online community interactivity, satisfied customer relationship and platform quality. Based on the findings, this study suggests that online brand managers should focus on providing a rich interactive community environment for establishing satisfied customer relationship on a high quality platform to enhance brand identification thereby to earn customer’s brand loyalty.
Minimal Representation of Speech Signals for Generation of Emotion Speech and Human-Robot Interaction

In this paper minimal representation of voiced speech based on decomposition into AM-FM components is proposed for generation of emotion speech. For the decomposition, firstly time-frequency boundaries of AM-FM components are estimated and secondary each AM-FM component is extracted by using the variable bandwidth filter adaptive to the estimated time-frequency boundaries. Finally, two parameters, that is, instantaneous frequency and instantaneous amplitude of each AM-FM component are estimated. The set composed of instantaneous amplitudes and instantaneous frequencies is the minimal representation of voiced speech signals. The minimal representation is optimal feature set since the set describes effectively the biomechanical characteristics of the vocal codes and the vocal track. Raw speech signals are modified by changing the parameters for generation of emotion speech.
Fast stable REML and ML estimation of semiparametric GLMs

Recent work by Reiss and Ogden (2009) provides a theoretical basis for sometimes preferring restricted maximum likelihood (REML) to generalized cross validation (GCV) for smoothing parameter selection in semiparametric regression. However, existing REML or marginal likelihood (ML) based methods for semiparametric GLMs use iterative REML/ML estimation of the smoothing parameters of working linear approximations to the GLM. Such indirect schemes need not converge, and fail to do so in a non-negligible proportion of practical analyses. By contrast, very reliable prediction error criteria smoothing parameter selection methods are available, based on direct optimization of GCV, or related criteria, for the GLM itself. Since such methods directly optimize properly defined functions of the smoothing parameters, they have much more reliable convergence properties. This article develops the first such method for REML or ML estimation of smoothing parameters. A Laplace approximation is used to obtain an approximate REML or ML for any GLM, which is suitable for efficient direct optimization. This REML/ML criterion requires that Newton-Raphson, rather then Fisher scoring, be used for GLM fitting, and a computationally stable approach to this is proposed. The REML or ML criterion itself is optimized by a Newton method, with the required derivatives obtained by a mixture of implicit differentiation and direct methods. The method will cope with numerical rank deficiency in the fitted model, and in fact provides a slight improvement in numerical robustness on the method of Wood (2008) for prediction error criteria based smoothness selection. Simulation results suggest that the new REML and ML methods offers some improvement in mean square error performance relative to GCV/AIC in most cases, without the small number of severe undersmoothing failures to which AIC and GCV are prone. This is achieved at the same computational cost as GCV/AIC. The new approach also eliminates the convergence failures of previous REML/ML based approaches for penalized GLMs, and usually has lower computational cost than these alternatives. Example applications are presented in adaptive smoothing, scalar on function regression and generalized additive model (GAM) selection.
The antiproteinuric action of enalapril in stroke-prone spontaneously hypertensive rats is unrelated to alterations in urinary prostaglandins.

We examined whether the renal protective effect of the angiotensin I converting enzyme inhibitor enalapril in stroke-prone spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRSP) is dose-related and associated with alterations in the urinary excretion of prostaglandin (PG) E2 and 6-keto-PGF1 alpha, a stable breakdown product of prostacyclin. Enalapril maleate at 1.5, 5 and 15 mg/kg/day or vehicle was chronically administered to saline-drinking SHRSP (six per group) starting at 8.1 weeks of age. Vehicle-treated SHRSP developed severe hypertension, proteinuria and strokes (age at death, 14 +/- 1 weeks; mean +/- S.E.). Enalapril prolonged survival dose-dependently and reduced proteinuria; all SHRSP given 15 mg/kg/day lived beyond 23 weeks of age without evidence of stroke or proteinuria. There was no effect of enalapril at any dose on systolic arterial blood pressure in spite of variable levels of urinary protein excretion and onset of stroke in the different groups. Likewise, urinary 6-keto-PGF1 alpha and PGE2 excretion did not differ among the groups except for an increase in 6-keto-PGF1 alpha in the 15 mg/kg/day group at one week after initiation of enalapril therapy. These results are consistent with a dose-related renal protective action of enalapril in saline-drinking SHRSP that is not closely associated with sustained alterations in urinary excretion of renal vasodilatory PGs.
A Privacy-Preserving Reauthentication Scheme for Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks

The mobile wireless sensor network (MWSN) is a new style WSN with mobile sinks or sensors in the network. MWSN has advantages over static WSN in the aspect of better energy efficiency, improved coverage, and superior channel capacity. However, mobile nodes also bring some security problems. For example, it is difficult to ensure secure communications among the mobile nodes and static nodes. In this paper, we design a lightweight mobile reauthentication protocol for mobile nodes. The designed protocol provides forward secure pairwise key for the mobile node when it moves from one cluster to another. Thus, the mobile sensor node can be authenticated by the new cluster head, and the privacy of his origin area is protected. In addition, the security and performance analysis shows that our scheme meets the need of lower communication and computation overhead, while achieving security requirement for mobile sensor node application in MWSN.
No effect of irinotecan in patients with resistant desmoplastic small round cell tumor

In 2002 we opened a multicenter phase II trial to test irinotecan (CPT-11) on children with resistant soft tissue sarcoma surgically unresectable and refractory to or relapsing after one or more chemotherapy regimens [3]. We then continued to administer CPT11 for selected histiological subtypes such DSRCT, using a dosage of 20 mg/m/day in a 1-hr infusion for five consecutive days, followed by a 2-day rest then another 5-day treatment; the interval between cycles was 4 weeks. Tumor response was assessed after two courses according to standard response criteria. Eight patients (3.8–17.1 years old, median 10.5) were treated (Table I). At diagnosis, six had intraabdominal/pelvic masses and two had mediastinal lesions. Six had regional spread (lymph node 6, ascites 3, serosal implants 2) and four had distant lesions. At the time
Socioeconomic inequalities and child mental health.

OBJECTIVE To analyze the association between sociodemographic determinants and the development of social competence and behavior problems in children. METHODS Cross-sectional study performed with 479 school children aged between six and 13 years, enrolled in the first grade of public elementary schools of the city of São Gonçalo, Southeastern Brazil, in 2005. Socioeconomic variables, family structure, parents' level of education, child ethnicity, and social competence and behavior problems were analyzed. Prevalence ratios with respective 95% confidence intervals were calculated. Data shown were expanded to the population of students of the school network investigated. RESULTS Children who were below the poverty line, who had black skin color, whose parents had low level of education, and lived with single-parent families or comprised by stepmother/stepfather showed lower social competence and more behavior problems. The higher the risk factors, the higher the prevalence of children with low social competence and behavior problems. CONCLUSIONS The association between sociodemographic determinants and higher prevalence of behavior problems and lower social competence in children requires that preventive and care actions should be prioritized by public policies, reducing severe social and emotional difficulties in children, which may continue into adulthood.
Building Credit Scoring Systems Based on Support-Based Support Vector Machine Ensemble

This paper proposes a new strategy - support-based SVM ensemble for building credit scoring systems. Different from the commonly used "one-member-one-vote" majority-ruled ensembles, our proposed new framework aggregates degrees of support, or confidence levels, of several SVM classifiers to generate the final classification results that represent the consensus of the SVM. Decision values of a member SVM classifier are a good measurement of its support to positive or negative classification of an unlabeled sample. Two publicly available credit dataset have been used to test the usefulness and predicting power of the new approach. Results of both tests indicated clearly that the new approach outperformed the other three commonly used approaches: single, single best, and majority-rule ensemble.
Problems and emerging approaches in HIV/AIDS vaccine development

According to recent estimates, 39.5 million people have been infected with HIV and 2.9 million have already died. The effect of HIV infection on individuals and communities is socially and economically devastating. Although antiretroviral drugs have had a dramatically beneficial impact on HIV-infected individuals who have access to treatment, it has had a negligible impact on the global epidemic. Therefore, the need for an efficacious HIV/AIDS vaccine remains the highest priority of the world HIV/AIDS agenda. The generation of a vaccine against HIV/AIDS has turned out to be extremely challenging, as indicated by > 20 years of unsuccessful attempts. This review discusses the major challenges in the field and key experimental evidence providing a rationale for the use of non-structural HIV proteins, such as Rev, Tat and Nef, either in the native form or expressed by viral vectors such as a replicating adeno-vector. These non-structural proteins alone or in combination with modified structural HIV-1 Env proteins represent a novel strategy for both preventative and therapeutic HIV/AIDS vaccine development.