Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fascinating random networks

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Error Analysis of the Stochastic Linear Feedback Particle Filter

This paper is concerned with the convergence and long-term stability analysis of the feedback particle filter (FPF) algorithm. The FPF is an interacting system of $N$ particles where the interaction is designed such that the empirical distribution of the particles approximates the posterior distribution. It is known that in the mean-field limit $(N=\infty)$, the distribution of the particles is equal to the posterior distribution. However little is known about the convergence to the mean-field limit. In this paper, we consider the FPF algorithm for the linear Gaussian setting. In this setting, the algorithm is similar to the ensemble Kalman-Bucy filter algorithm. Although these algorithms have been numerically evaluated and widely used in applications, their convergence and long-term stability analysis remains an active area of research. In this paper, we show that, (i) the mean-field limit is well-defined with a unique strong solution; (ii) the mean-field process is stable with respect to the initial condition; (iii) we provide conditions such that the finite-@ $N$ system is long term stable and we obtain some mean-squared error estimates that are uniform in time.
Media violence exposure and aggression in adolescents: A risk and resilience perspective

Media violence exposure (MVE) is associated with aggressive outcomes in adolescents. However, based on the differential susceptibility hypothesis, this risk is expected to vary based on the individual's unique risk and protective factors. Using survey data from 1,990 adolescents (Mean age = 15.6 ± 1.10 years; 48% female) and content analysis of U.S. top-grossing films and popular TV shows, we evaluated the effect of MVE in relation to both risk (i.e., family conflict, impulsivity, sensation seeking) and protective factors (i.e., parental monitoring, parental involvement, parental mediation). Relative weights analyses revealed that MVE was one of the strongest predictors of aggression, after impulsivity and family conflict. The cumulative risk score showed a linear and quadratic relation with the likelihood of aggression, with MVE and family conflict having an interactive relation in predicting aggression. Parental monitoring remained a significant protective factor even when all risk factors were accounted for. Targeted preventive interventions that reduce family conflict, promote parental monitoring, and reduce exposure to violent media may be effective in reducing aggressive tendencies and related negative outcomes.
How does it feel to be a problem? Patients’ experiences of self‐management support in New Zealand and Canada

The impact of long‐term conditions is the “healthcare equivalent to climate change. ” People with long‐term conditions often feel they are a problem, a burden to themselves, their family and friends. Providers struggle to support patients to self‐manage. The Practical Reviews in Self‐Management Support (PRISMS) taxonomy lists what provider actions might support patient self‐management.
Mechanical Design and Assessment of a Low-Cost 7-DOF Prosthetic Arm for Shoulder Disarticulation

This work presents the design of a low-cost prosthetic device for shoulder disarticulation. A proper design of the mechanisms has been addressed to obtain a prototype that presents 7 degrees of freedom. Shoulder movement is achieved by means of a spherical parallel manipulator, elbow movement is performed by a six-bar mechanism, and the wrist movement is implemented by a spherical parallel manipulator. A set of dynamic simulations was performed in order to assess the functionality of the design. The prototype was built using 3D printing techniques and implementing low-cost actuators. An experimental evaluation was carried out to characterize this device. The result of this work is a prototype that weighs 1350 g that is able to perform movements related to activities of daily living.
Constructing Hard Examples for Graph Isomorphism

We describe a method for generating graphs that provide difficult examples for practical Graph Isomorphism testers. We first give the theoretical construction, showing that we can have a family of graphs without any non-trivial automorphisms which also have high Weisfeiler-Leman dimension. The construction is based on properties of random 3XOR-formulas. We describe how to convert such a formula into a graph which has the desired properties with high probability. We validate the method by an experimental implementation. We construct random formulas and validate them with a SAT solver to filter through suitable ones, and then convert them into graphs. Experimental results demonstrate that the resulting graphs do provide hard examples that match the hardest known benchmarks for graph isomorphism.
Improving early detection of developmental dysplasia of the hip through general practitioner assessment and surveillance.

BACKGROUND Cases of late diagnosed developmental dysplasia of the hip (DDH) have increased in Australia in recent years despite an ongoing clinical screening program and increasing use of selective ultrasonography screening. OBJECTIVE The aim of this paper is to discuss an evidence-based approach that involves prevention and early detection of DDH using assessment and surveillance that is suitable for general practitioners (GPs) who see young children in their practices. DISCUSSION Repeated, carefully performed clinical examinations of the paediatric hip from newborn to walking age remain the best method for early detection of DDH. GPs are ideally placed to conduct regular assessments to maximise detection of dislocated hips in early infancy and lower the age at detection for children who develop progressive signs of DDH outside the newborn period.
Recurrent Neural Networks Based Obesity Status Prediction Using Activity Data

Obesity, a serious public health concern worldwide, increases the risk of many diseases, including hypertension, stroke, and type 2 diabetes. To tackle this problem, researchers collect diverse types of data, which includes biomedical, behavioral and activity, and utilize machine learning techniques to mine hidden patterns for obesity status improvement prediction. While existing machine learning methods such as Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) provide exceptional results, it is challenging to discover hidden patterns of the sequential data due to the irregular observation time instances. Meanwhile, the lack of understanding of why those learning models are effective also limits further improvements on their architectures. Thus, we develop a RNN based time-aware architecture to handle irregular observation times and identify relevant feature extractions from longitudinal patient records for obesity status improvement pre-diction. Evaluations of real-world data involving activity data collected from wearables and electronic health records demonstrate that our proposed method can capture the underlying structures in users' time sequences with irregularities, and achieve an accuracy of 77% in predicting the obesity status improvement.
GLNMDA: a novel method for miRNA-disease association prediction based on global linear neighborhoods

ABSTRACT Recently, increasing studies have shown that miRNAs are involved in the development and progression of various complex diseases. Consequently, predicting potential miRNA-disease associations makes an important contribution to understanding the pathogenesis of diseases, developing new drugs as well as designing individualized diagnostic and therapeutic approaches for different human diseases. Nonetheless, the inherent noise and incompleteness in the existing biological datasets have limited the prediction accuracy of current computational models. To solve this issue, in this paper, we propose a novel method for miRNA-disease association prediction based on global linear neighborhoods (GLNMDA). Specifically, our method obtains a new miRNA/disease similarity matrix by linearly reconstructing each miRNA/disease according to the known experimentally verified miRNA-disease associations. We then adopt label propagation to infer the potential associations between miRNAs and diseases. As a result, GLNMDA achieved reliable performance in the frameworks of both local and global LOOCV (AUCs of 0.867 and 0.929, respectively) and 5-fold cross validation (average AUC of 0.926). Case studies on five common human diseases further confirmed the utility of our method in discovering latent miRNA-disease pairs. Taken together, GLNMDA could serve as a reliable computational tool for miRNA-disease association prediction.
Smoking Cessation With 20 Hz Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) Applied to Two Brain Regions: A Pilot Study

Chronic smoking impairs brain functions in the prefrontal cortex and the projecting meso-cortical limbic system. The purpose of this pilot study is to examine whether modulating the frontal brain activity using high-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) can improve smoking cessation and to explore the changing pattern of the brain activity after treatment. Fourteen treatment-seeking smokers were offered a program involving 10 days of rTMS treatment with a follow-up for another 25 days. A frequency of 20 Hz rTMS was sequentially applied on the left dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and the superior medial frontal cortex (SMFC). The carbon monoxide (CO) level, withdrawal, craving scales, and neuroimaging data were collected. Ten smokers completed the entire treatment program, and 90% of them did not smoke during the 25-day follow-up time. A significant smoking craving reduction and resting brain activity reduction measured by the cerebral blood flow (CBF) and brain entropy (BEN) were observed after 10 days of 20 Hz rTMS treatments compared to the baseline. Although limited by sample size, these pilot findings definitely showed a high potential of multiple-target high-frequency rTMS in smoking cessation and the utility of fMRI for objectively assessing the treatment effects.
Effects of N-acetyl-L-cysteine on lifespan, locomotor activity and stress-resistance of 3 Drosophila species with different lifespans

N-acetyl-L-cysteine (NAC) is a derivative of the sulphur-containing amino acid L-cysteine with potential anti-aging properties. We studied 3 Drosophila species with contrast longevity differences (D. virilis is longest-lived, D. kikkawai is shortest-lived and D. melanogaster has moderate lifespan) to test the effects of NAC at 8 different concentrations (from 10 nM to 100 mM) on the lifespan, stress-resistance and locomotor activity. Except the adverse effects of highest (10 mM and 100 mM) concentrations NAC demonstrated sexually opposite and male-biased effects on Drosophila lifespan, stress-resistance and locomotor activity and not satisfied the criteria of a geroprotector in terms of the reproducibility of lifespan extending effects in different model organisms. The concentration- and sex-dependent changes in the relative expression levels of the antioxidant genes (Cat/CG6871 and Sod1/CG11793) and genes involved in hydrogen sulfide biosynthesis (Cbs/CG1753, Eip55E/CG5345 and Nfs1/CG12264) suggest the involvement of hormetic mechanisms in the geroprotective effects of NAC.
Parental presence with encouragement alters feedback processing in preschoolers: An ERP study

ABSTRACT External feedback plays an important role in adapting to the environment; however, feedback processing in preschoolers has not been fully understood. The present event-related brain potential (ERP) study sought to understand the influence of parental presence with encouragement on feedback processing by focusing on reward positivity (RewP: mean amplitude between 200–350 ms). Five-year-old children (N = 21) completed an animal search task both alone (the alone condition) and with a parent who offered words of encouragement (the with a parent condition). ERPs were recorded while they received negative and positive feedback. We found a larger RewP amplitude in response to positive feedback in the with a parent condition relative to in the alone condition. In addition, differences in RewP between positive and negative feedback were only observed in the with a parent condition. These findings suggest that everyday parental encouragement has the potential to promote differential positive and negative feedback processing possibly by enhancing the reward value of positive feedback.
The Dark Side of Luxury: Social Costs of Luxury Consumption

Extant research demonstrates that luxury goods are beneficial signals that bestow upon individuals social benefits that range from positive evaluations to compliance. In contrast to this perspective, the current work explores the idea that luxury goods can carry significant negative social costs for actors. Across four experiments, the social cost of luxury is examined. Although individuals who display luxury goods are ascribed higher status, they can pay a hefty tax when it comes to warmth. The social costs of luxury consumption appear to be driven by impression management concerns rather than envy. Consequently, whether the consumption of luxury goods yields positive or negative social consequences for an actor critically depends both on whether status or warmth is relevant for a decision and observers’ own lay beliefs about luxury consumption. Overall, this work reveals the more complex psychology of individuals’ interpretation and response to actors’ use of luxury goods.
ATL

Objectives Cisplatin and mitomycin C exert high activity towards BRCA1-deficient cells. This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of a combination of these drugs in hereditary BRCA1-associated ovarian cancer (OC). Methods Twelve OC patients, who could not be treated by primary debulking surgery owing to extensive tumor spread, were given neoadjuvant cisplatin (100 mg/m2) and mitomycin C (10 mg/m2) every 4 weeks for 3 (n = 9), 2 (n = 2), or 4 (n = 1) cycles. Results The decrease of tumor burden and complete surgical cytoreduction were achieved in all patients. Pathologic complete response, defined as the absence of tumor cells in surgically removed tissues, was observed in 2 (17%) of 12 cases. Retrospective analysis of 62 OC in BRCA1 mutation carriers subjected to conventional neoadjuvant chemotherapy schemes revealed 36 objective tumor responses (58%) and 37 instances (60%) of complete cytoreductive surgery; however, none of these patients demonstrated pathologic complete response. Conclusions The combination of cisplatin plus mitomycin C showed promising results in BRCA1-driven OC and therefore deserves further clinical evaluation.
Power Market Price Forecasting via Deep Learning

A study on power market price forecasting by deep learning is presented. As one of the most successful deep learning frameworks, the LSTM (Long short-term memory) neural network is utilized. The hourly prices data from the New England and PJM day-ahead markets are used in this study. First, a LSTM network is formulated and trained. Then the raw input and output data are preprocessed by unit scaling, and the trained network is tested on the real price data under different input lengths, forecasting horizons and data sizes. Its performance is also compared with other existing methods. The forecasted results demonstrate that, the LSTM deep neural network can outperform the others under different application settings in this problem.
Enriched Physical Environment Attenuates Spatial and Social Memory Impairments of Aged Socially Isolated Mice

Abstract Background Social isolation in the elderly is one of the principal health risks in an aging society. Physical environmental enrichment is shown to improve sensory, cognitive, and motor functions, but it is unknown whether environmental enrichment can protect against brain impairments caused by social isolation. Methods Eighteen-month-old mice were housed, either grouped or isolated, in a standard or enriched environment for 2 months, respectively. Behavioral tests were performed to evaluate cognitive functional and social interaction ability. Synaptic protein levels, myelination, neuroinflammation, brain derived neurotrophic factor, and NOD-like receptor protein 3 inflammasome signaling pathways were examined in the medial prefrontal cortex and hippocampus. Results Isolated aged mice exhibited declines in spatial memory and social memory compared with age-matched littermates living within group housing. The aforementioned memory malfunctions were mitigated in isolated aged mice that were housed in a large cage with a running wheel and novel toys. Enriched housing prevented synaptic protein loss, myelination defects, and downregulation of brain derived neurotrophic factor, while also increasing interleukin 1 beta and tumor necrosis factor alpha in the medial prefrontal cortex and hippocampus of isolated mice. In addition, activation of glial cells and NOD-like receptor protein 3 inflammasomes was partially ameliorated in the hippocampus of isolated mice treated with physical environmental enrichment. Conclusions These results suggest that an enriched physical environment program may serve as a nonpharmacological intervention candidate to help maintain healthy brain function of elderly people living alone.
Potential of AKR1B10 as a Biomarker and Therapeutic Target in Type 2 Leprosy Reaction

The AKR1B10 (aldo-keto reductase family 1 member B10) gene has important functions in carcinogen-induced neoplasia. AKR1B10 is also expressed in type 2 reaction leprosy patients (R2). We measured the expression of AKR1B10 in the skin lesions of patients with leprosy by immunohistochemistry from biopsies that encompassed the spectrum of types of leprosy, based on the Ridley and Jopling classification [10 samples each of tuberculoid (TT), borderline tuberculoid (BT), mid-borderline (BB), and borderline lepromatous (BL) lesions; four samples of lepromatous lesions (LL)], reactional leprosy [14 samples of type 1 Reaction (R1) and 10 samples of type 2 Reaction (R2)], and biopsies from 9 healthy control (HC) subjects. In addition, 46 lepromatous lesions (BL and LL), 45 lepromatous lesions in regression, and 115 R2 lesions were included. Eight of 10 R2 samples (80%), 3 of 46 active BL and LL samples (6%), 23 of 45 BL and LL samples in regression (51%), and 107 of 115 R2 samples (93%) were positive for AKR1B10, differing significantly between all groups (p < 0.05). AKR1B10 expression was highest in the cytoplasm of macrophages. Thus, AKR1B10 is overexpressed on the lepromatous side (BL and LL) in samples that are in regression, especially type 2 reaction-associated lesions, rendering it a potential marker of type 2 reactional episodes of leprosy and a target of drugs against reactional episodes.
Oestradiol and leptin have separate but additive anorexigenic effects and differentially target fat mass in rats

We recently showed that male rats exhibit lower hypophagia and body weight loss compared to female rats following central leptin delivery, suggesting a role for oestradiol in leptin responsiveness. Accordingly, we delivered Ob (leptin) or GFP (control) gene into the brain of male rats that were simultaneously treated with oestradiol or vehicle. In a reciprocal approach, we compared oestradiol‐deficient (OVX) with intact females (sham) that received leptin or control vector. Changes in food intake), body weight and body composition were examined. In males, oestradiol and leptin resulted in lower cumulative food intake (15%) and endpoint body weight (5%), although rats receiving dual treatment (oestradiol‐leptin) ate 28% less and weighed 22% less than vehicle‐control. Changes in food intake were unique to each treatment, with a rapid decrease in vehicle‐leptin followed by gradual renormalisation. By contrast, hypophagia in oestradiol‐control was of lower amplitude and sporadic. Leptin selectively targeted fat mass and endpoint abdominal fat mass was 65%‐80% lower compared to their respective control groups. In females, both leptin groups had lower body weight (endpoint values 20% lower than control groups) with the highest extent in sham animals (endpoint value was 28% less in sham‐leptin than in sham‐control). OVX rats rapidly started regaining their lost body weight reminiscent of the pattern in males. Leptin rapidly and robustly reduced fat mass with endpoint values 30%‐35% less than control treated animals. It appears that leptin and oestradiol decreased food intake and body weight via different mechanisms, with the pattern of oestradiol‐leptin being reminiscent of that observed in females and the pattern of OVX‐leptin reminiscent of that observed in males. Oestrogen status did not influence initial fat mass loss by leptin. It can be concluded that oestradiol modulates the long‐term response to central leptin overexpression, although its actions on energy homeostasis are additive and independent of those of leptin.
The different roles of hcp1 and hcp2 of the type VI secretion system in Escherichia coli strain CE129

Type VI secretion system (T6SS) is a secretory system found in Gram‐negative bacteria. One of the main structures for T6SS is Hcp (hemolysin co‐regulation protein) pipeline. To investigate the role of Hcp major sub‐unit genes hcp1 and hcp2, we deleted hcp1 and hcp2 genes for constructing the in‐frame gene deletion mutants. The properties of biofilm formation and the adhesion to chicken embryo fibroblasts cells (DF1 cells) were reduced in the hcp2 mutant. The knockout of hcp1 and hcp2 genes reduced the ability of the avian pathogenic Escherichia coli (APEC) strain CE129 to infect developing chicken embryos. The expression of quorum sensing (QS)‐associated genes luxS, lsrR, and pfs were down‐regulated in the hcp1 mutant, and the expression of type 1 fimbriae gene fimA and the adhesion‐related genes fimC and papC were decreased in the hcp2 mutant, as well as the expression of anti‐serum survival factor genes ompA and iss were inhibited in both hcp1 and hcp2 mutants. These results described above from this study help to further elaborate the role of HCP in APEC.
Gingival, oral hygiene and periodontal status of the teeth restored with stainless steel crown: A prospective study

Aim: To compare the gingival health and periodontal status in primary molars restored with stainless steel crowns with unrestored contralateral teeth. Materials and Methods: A split mouth design study was conducted on 60 children aged 5- 10 years who required stainless steel crown restoration on deciduous molars. The molar teeth restored with stainless steel crown were selected for study and healthy unrestored contralateral teeth were selected as controls. Bitewing radiograph of study and control tooth was taken at initial, three months and at six months. The gingival status, oral hygiene status was evaluated at three months and six month intervals using gingival index and oral hygiene index respectively. Result: On evaluating the oral hygiene status at three months study group showed the mean value of 0.7±0.700 whereas in control group it was 1±0.368. At six months it was 1.183±0.390 in study group and 1.5±0.504 in control group. Chi square test shows that the crown marginal adaptation produced statistically significant difference at six months. Crown marginal extension did not produce any difference on gingival index and oral hygiene index. Conclusion: When compared to control teeth, the teeth restored with stainless steel crown showed lesser plaque and debris accumulation at three months and six months. Radiographic bone level the control teeth showed higher level of bone resorption compared to the teeth restored with stainless steel crown.