Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Femoral neck‐shaft angle in humans: variation relating to climate, clothing, lifestyle, sex, age and side

The femoral neck‐shaft angle (NSA) varies among modern humans but measurement problems and sampling limitations have precluded the identification of factors contributing to its variation at the population level. Potential sources of variation include sex, age, side (left or right), regional differences in body shape due to climatic adaptation, and the effects of habitual activity patterns (e.g. mobile and sedentary lifestyles and foraging, agricultural, and urban economies). In this study we addressed these issues, using consistent methods to assemble a global NSA database comprising over 8000 femora representing 100 human groups. Results from the analyses show an average NSA for modern humans of 127° (markedly lower than the accepted value of 135°); there is no sex difference, no age‐related change in adults, but possibly a small lateral difference which could be due to right leg dominance. Climatic trends consistent with principles based on Bergmann's rule are evident at the global and continental levels, with the NSA varying in relation to other body shape indices: median NSA, for instance, is higher in warmer regions, notably in the Pacific (130°), whereas lower values (associated with a more stocky body build) are found in regions where ancestral populations were exposed to colder conditions, in Europe (126°) and the Americas (125°). There is a modest trend towards increasing NSA with the economic transitions from forager to agricultural and urban lifestyles and, to a lesser extent, from a mobile to a sedentary existence. However, the main trend associated with these transitions is a progressive narrowing in the range of variation in the NSA, which may be attributable to thermal insulation provided by improved cultural buffering from climate, particularly clothing.
Segmentation Through Edge-linking - Segmentation for Video-based Driver Assistance Systems

This work aims to develop an image segmentation method to be used in automotive driver assistance systems. In this context it is possible to incorporate a priori knowledge from other sensors to ease the problem of localizing objects and to improve the results. It is however desired to produce accurate segmentations displaying good edge localization and to have real time capabilities. An edge-segment grouping method is presented to meet these aims. Edges of varying strength are detected initially. In various preprocessing steps edge-segments are formed. A sparse graph is generated from those using perceptual grouping phenomena. Closed contours are formed by solving the shortest path problem. Using test data fitting to the application domain, it is shown that the proposed method provides more accurate results than the well-known Gradient Vector Field Snakes.
Longitudinal prognostic value of serum “free” copper in patients with Alzheimer disease

Background: Serum copper not bound to ceruloplasmin (“free”) appears slightly elevated in patients with Alzheimer disease (AD). We explored whether a deregulation of the free copper pool can predict AD clinical worsening. Methods: We assessed levels of copper, iron, zinc, transferrin, ceruloplasmin, peroxides, total antioxidant capacity, free copper, and apolipoprotein E genotype in 81 patients with mild or moderate AD, mean age 74.4, SD = 7.4 years, clinically followed up after 1 year. The association among biologic variables under study and Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) (primary outcome), activities of daily living (ADL), and instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) (secondary outcomes) performed at study entry and after 1 year were analyzed by multiple regression. Results: Free copper predicted the annual change in MMSE, adjusted for the baseline MMSE by means of a linear regression model: it raised the explained variance from 2.4% (with only sex, age, and education) to 8.5% (p = 0.026). When the annual change in MMSE was divided into <3 or ≥3 points, free copper was the only predictor of a more severe decline (predicted probability of MMSE worsening 23%: odds ratio = 1.23; 95% confidence interval = 1.03–1.47; p = 0.022). Hyperlipidemic patients with higher levels of free copper seemed more prone to worse cognitive impairment. Free copper at baseline correlated with the ADL and IADL clinical scales scores at 1 year. Conclusions: These results show an association between copper deregulation and unfavorable evolution of cognitive function in Alzheimer disease. Further research is needed to establish whether copper is an independent risk factor for cognitive decline.
Glutathione S-Transferase Polymorphisms and Their Biological Consequences

Two supergene families encode proteins with glutathione S-transferase (GST) activity: the family of soluble enzymes comprises at least 16 genes; the separate family of microsomal enzymes comprises at least 6 genes. These two GST families are believed to exert a critical role in cellular protection against oxidative stress and toxic foreign chemicals. They detoxify a variety of electrophilic compounds, including oxidized lipid, DNA and catechol products generated by reactive oxygen species-induced damage to intracellular molecules. An increasing number of GST genes are being recognized as polymorphic. Certain alleles, particularly those that confer impaired catalytic activity (e.g. GSTM1*0, GSTT1*0), may be associated with increased sensitivity to toxic compounds. GST polymorphisms may be disease modifying; for example, in subgroups of patients with basal cell carcinoma or bronchial hyper-responsiveness, certain GST appear to exert a statistically significant and biologically relevant impact on disease susceptibility.
Driving Customer Equity: How Customer Lifetime Value is Reshaping Corporate Strategy (Управление ценностью клиентуры: как ценность клиентской базы изменяет корпоративную стратегию)

In their efforts to become more customer-focused, companies everywhere find themselves entangled in outmoded systems, metrics, and strategies rooted in their product-centered view of the world. Now, to ease this shift to a customer focus, marketing strategy experts Roland T. Rust, Valarie A. Zeithaml, and Katherine N. Lemon have created a dynamic new model they call "Customer Equity," a strategic framework designed to maximize every firm's most important asset, the total lifetime value of its customer base. The authors' Customer Equity Framework yields powerful insights that will help any business increase the value of its customer base. Rust, Zeithaml, and Lemon introduce the three drivers of customer equity - Value Equity, Brand Equity, and Retention Equity - and explain in clear, nontechnical language how managers can base their strategies on one or a combination of these drivers. The authors demonstrate in this breakthrough book how managers can build and employ competitive metrics that reveal their company's Customer Equity relative to their competitors. Based on these metrics, they show how managers can determine which drivers are most important in their industry, how they can make efficient strategic trade-offs between expenditures on these drivers, and how to project a financial return from these expenditures. The final section devotes two chapters to the Customer Pyramid, an approach that segments customers based on their long-term profitability, and an especially important chapter examines the Internet as the ultimate Customer Equity tool. Here the authors show how companies such as Intuit.com, Schwab.com, and Priceline.com have used more than one or all three drivers to increase Customer Equity. In this age of one-to-one marketing, understanding how to drive Customer Equity is central to the success of any firm. In particular, Driving Customer Equity will be essential reading for any marketing manager and, for that matter, any manager concerned with growing the value of the firm's customer base.
Exploiting Hadoop Topology in Virtualized Environments

Virtualization is a key technique to make an environment easier to manage in terms of resource allocation. MapReduce is a programming model that provides an abstraction to perform distributed computation for large datasets. Hadoop is a well-known framework that offers an open source implementation for this model. Combining Hadoop and virtualization techniques in cloud-computing environments can unveil great potential, especially for big data context. However, running MapReduce jobs on virtual machines has indicated performance issues not solved yet. In this paper we present and discuss three scenarios regarding Hadoop topology in a cloud infrastructure. The first scenario proposes to allocate Hadoop daemons in a fully virtualized environment, the second scenario presents a hybrid environment, and the third scenario suggests to virtualize only MapReduce daemons.We also report results from a series of tests allocating Hadoop daemons in a fully virtualized environment. Results show that adding virtual machines to the cluster causes an overhead, decreases the efficiency of CPU utilization, and shortens the time slots for the MapReduce jobs.
Arranging Deckchairs on the Titanic:Climate Change, Greenhouse Gas Emissions and International Shipping

In 1988 the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to assess ‘the scientific, technical and socioeconomic information relevant for the understanding of the risk of human-induced climate change. Subsequently, in 1992, the United Nations (UN) proposed a framework for dealing with climate change, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). UNFCCC divides UN member states into developed (Annex I) and developing (non-Annex I) nations. In 1997, the Kyoto Protocol (KP) was agreed as a practical attempt to put the aspirations of UNFCCC into effect. GHG emissions reduction targets were only set for Annex I nations under the UNFCCC concept of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’; this precludes allocation of national ownership of GHG emissions from activities of an international character, specifically international shipping and aviation. Article 2(2) of KP (KP2(2)) assigns responsibility for these to Annex I nations through the international the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the International Maritime Organization (IMO). In this paper, I have endeavored to reconcile the implications of GHG emissions, climate change and international shipping with IMO’s mandate under KP.
Review of Polarimetric Indicators for Forest Characterisation over Several Sites

Global warning is now known to be the major environmental issue mankind will have to face in the next decade. Monitoring of vegetation and biomass is clearly an essential piece of information required at all levels ranging from the scientific studies to understand and forecast, to the political world responsible for drafting remediation policies and evaluating their impact. Microwave remote sensing with the low-frequency SAR technique can provide a useful characterization of forest (spatial coverage, species, density, height.) at a global scale, relying on the all-weather imaging capabilities of SAR linked with the significant penetration of the low-frequency EM wave in the canopy. In this paper, we will review the potential polarimetric indicators and evaluate their performance over several types of forest. We will particularly focus on the impact of the topography and the influence of the weather conditions.
Successive approximations for charged particle motion

Single-particle dynamics in electron microscopes, ion or electron lithographic instruments, particle accelerators, and particle spectrographs is described by weakly nonlinear ordinary di! erential equations. Therefore, the linear part of the equation of motion is usually solved and the nonlinear e! ects are then found in successive order by iteration methods. When synchrotron radiation is not important, the equation can be derived from a Hamiltonian or a Lagrangian. The Hamiltonian nature can lead to simpli"ed computations of particle transport through an optical device when a suitable computational method is used. H. Rose and his school have contributed to these techniques by developing and intensively using the eikonal method [1}3]. Many ingenious microscopic and lithographic devices were found by Rose and his group due to the simple structure of this method [4}6]. The particle optical eikonal method is either derived by propagating the electron wave or by the principle of Maupertuis for time-independent "elds. Maybe because of the time-dependent "elds which are often required, in the area of accelerator physics the eikonal method has never become popular, although Lagrange methods had been used sometimes already in early days [7]. In this area classical Hamilitonian dynamics is usually used to compute nonlinear particle motion. Here the author will therefore derive the eikonal method from a Hamiltonian quite familiar to the accelerator physics community and reformulate it in a simplifying way. With the event of high-energy polarized electron beams [8] and plans for high-energy proton beams [9], nonlinear e! ects in spin motion have become important in high-energy accelerators. The author introduces a successive approximation for the nonlinear e! ects in the coupled spin and orbit motion of charged particles which resembles some of the simpli"cations resulting from the eikonal method for the pure orbit motion. ( 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
The sigma 70 family: sequence conservation and evolutionary relationships

The cr subunit confers promoter-specific transcription initiation on RNA polymerase (4; for reviews, see references 21 and 24). The identification, characterization, and sequence analysis of many sigma factors have revealed that they fall into two broad classes, with little if any sequence identity between them (37, 41). One family is similar to the originally identified Escherichia coli ur70 subunit; the other is similar to the 54-kDa E. coli cr subunit (for reviews, see references 32 and 52). Recently, sequence information has become available for many more members of the u70 family. In addition,
Underwater Scan Matching using a Mechanical Scanned Imaging Sonar

Abstract Underwater environments are extremely challenging to perform localization. Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) are usually endowed with acoustic devices such as a Mechanically Scanned Imaging Sonar (MSIS). This sensor scans the environment by emitting ultrasonic pulses and it provides echo intensity profiles of the scanned area. Our goal is to provide self-localization capabilities to an AUV endowed with a MSIS. To this end, this paper proposes a scan matching strategy to estimate the robot motion. This strategy extracts range information from the sensor data, deals with the large scan times and performs a probabilistic data association. The proposal is tested with real data obtained during a trip in a marina environment, and the results show the benefits of our proposal by comparing it to other well known approaches.
Dead or alive? New confirmatory test using quantitative analysis of computed tomographic angiography

BACKGROUND When clinical examination is not reliable for brain death (BD) diagnosis, the preferred confirmatory test at our institution is nuclear medicine perfusion test (NMPT). Computed tomographic angiography (CTA) has been described as an alternative for BD confirmation. This study was designed to quantitatively analyze CTA, assess its accuracy compared with NMPT, and define set parameters for BD confirmation. METHODS This is a prospective clinical study, from 2007 to 2014, evaluating a consecutive series of clinically BD patients (n = 60) and randomly selected control group with normal CTA findings (n = 20). NMPT, used as the reference standard, was performed on all study patients followed immediately by CTA. Assessment of NMPT and quantitative CTA Hounsfield units of the horizontal segment of middle cerebral artery (M1), precommunicating segment of anterior cerebral artery (A1), and basilar artery (BA) was performed. RESULTS In the study cohort, 88% demonstrated absence of cerebral blood flow (CBF) on NMPT; however, only 50% demonstrated absence on CTA. Together, 50% had no CBF on NMPT and CTA (Group 1), 38% had no CBF on NMPT but persistent CBF on CTA (Group 2), 12% had persistent CBF on both NMPT and CTA (Group 3). Analysis of variance demonstrated that all groups varied significantly for M1, A1, and BA (p < 0.001). We were able to establish criteria that differentiate persistent CBF on CTA as either preserved cerebral perfusion or stasis filling. CONCLUSION We propose that a CTA Hounsfield units less than 80 in M1, A1, and BA is concordant with no CBF on NMPT, therefore indicative of a lack of physiologic cerebral perfusion, and thus allows the confirmation of BD with 97% sensitivity and 100% specificity. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE Diagnostic study, level II.
Evaluating Service Recovery Strategies in the Airlines Industry

This study investigates “what are the effective service recovery strategies in the airlines industry? ” The effects of compensation and interpersonal communication on airline passengers’ responses after service recovery were analyzed. The study is unique in examining the role of responsibility locus on the effectiveness of service recovery strategies, and exploring the effect of downward social comparison strategy. Initial results suggest that the effectiveness of compensation and interpersonal communication on passengers’ responses varies as a function of the locus of responsibility. The findings should assist airlines to better understand the subtle influence that situation plays in service failure as well as developing direction to formulate effective recovery strategies to better manage passengers’ post-failure responses.
Reproductive ecology of 21 coexisting Psychotria species (Rubiaceae): when is heterostyly lost?

Heterostyly is a genetic polymorphism in which plant populations are composed of two or more morphs that differ in stigma and anther heights. The polymorphism promotes intermorph pollen transfer, thus outcrossing. Heterostyly has been reported in 28 angiosperm families and is frequently lost in heterostylous lineages. To assess ecological factors related to shifts from heterostyly to monomorphy, we examined the reproductive ecology of heterostylous tropical shrubs of Psychotria. Among 21 species at Barro Colorado Island and the nearby Parque Nacional Soberania, Panama, 14 species were heterostylous while seven were monomorphic. A molecular phylogeny and the existence elsewhere of heterostylous populations indicated that the breakdown of heterostyly had occurred independently. Heterostylous and monomorphic species were visited by the same bee species, although visit frequencies were lower in monomorphic species. Monomorphic species had significantly lower population density and greater fruit set than did heterostylous species. Autonomous autogamy made a large contribution to fruit set in monomorphic species and was only rarely observed in heterostylous species. The results indicate monomorphic and heterostylous species produce more seeds through selfing and outcrossing, respectively. The limitation of outcrossing as a result of low population density may be related to the breakdown of heterostyly and the evolution of selfing. © 2008 The Linnean Society of London, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2008, 93, 125‐134. ADDITIONAL KEYWORDS: Barro Colorado Island ‐ breeding system evolution ‐ Panama ‐ pollination ‐ rarity ‐ self-fertilization ‐ tropical forest.
Sense of Coherence as a Predictor of Quality of Life in Adolescents With Congenital Heart Defects: A Register-Based 1-Year Follow-Up Study

Objective: Sense of coherence (SOC) is a resource for health and quality of life (QoL) in adults. The aim of this investigation was to prospectively evaluate the association between SOC and QoL in adolescents with congenital heart defects (CHDs). Methods: This is an observational study among 770 adolescents aged 14 to 17 years from a national CHD register. SOC was measured at baseline with the SOC-L9 questionnaire. QoL was measured at baseline and at a follow-up 12 months later. For this, we used the KINDL-R (revidierter KINDer Lebensqualitätsfragebogen) questionnaire to evaluate overall well-being and 6 subscales (physical well-being, psychological well-being, self-esteem, family-related well-being, friend-related well-being, and school-related well-being). The association between SOC and QoL both in terms of overall well-being and the KINDL-R subscales was evaluated in multilevel linear models. Fully adjusted models accounted for age, gender, behavioral factors, and medical and socioeconomic status. Results: Overall well-being, self-esteem, and school-related well-being were significantly higher at follow-up than at baseline. SOC (median: 50 [range: 16–63] points) was positively associated with overall well-being and all KINDL-R subscales at baseline. In overall well-being and the KINDL-R subscales (except in psychological well-being), significant negative interaction terms were observed for SOC at baseline and time to follow-up. However, the associations between SOC at baseline and overall well-being and all KINDL-R subscales at follow-up remained significant even in fully adjusted models. Conclusion: SOC is an independent predictor of QoL in adolescents with CHD. In psychological well-being, this prediction remains stable, whereas in total well-being and all other QoL subdimensions, its strength as such wanes over the course of a year but does not entirely dissipate. Further studies should evaluate whether interventions designed to increase SOC in children with CHD would also improve their QoL.
Fundamentals of the stock market

Origins: The Markets and Major Indexes. Economics Basics: Terms, Definitions, Trends, and Policies. Beginnings: What Affects Markets and Prices. Trading: Buying and Selling Stocks. Studying: How to Interpret Prices and Understand Financial News. Analysis: Tools and Theories. Goals and Guidelines: Setting Portfolio Parameters. Diversifying with Mutual Funds. Tax Considerations: Equity-Related Vehicles. Brokers: Investment Companies and Services.
The composition of coding joints formed in V(D)J recombination is strongly affected by the nucleotide sequence of the coding ends and their relationship to the recombination signal sequences

V(D)J recombination proceeds in two stages. Precise cleavage at the border of the conserved recombination signal sequences (RSSs) and the coding ends results in flush double-stranded signal ends and coding ends terminating in hairpins. In the second stage, the signal and coding ends are processed into signal and coding joints. Coding ends containing certain nucleotide homopolymers affect the efficiency of V(D)J recombination. In this study, we have tested the effect of small changes in coding-end nucleotide composition on the frequency of coding- and signal joint formation. Furthermore, we have determined the sequences of coding joints resulting from recombination of coding ends with different compositions. We found that the presence of two T nucleotides 5' of both RSSs, but not a single T, reduces the frequency of signal joint formation, i.e., interferes with the cleavage stage of V(D)J recombination. However, coding-joint processing is sensitive even to a single T. Both the sequence of the coding ends and the particular RSS (12-mer or 23-mer) with which the coding end is associated affect the final composition of the coding joints. Thus, the presence of P nucleotides, the conservation of one undeleted coding end, the formation of joints without any deletions, and the template-dependent insertion of nucleotides are strongly influenced by the coding-end nucleotide composition and/or RSS association. The implications of these results with respect to the processing of coding ends are discussed.