ethicalabs/Research-Intent-Collab huggingface dataset:
Epigenetic Regulation of Higher Order Chromatin Conformations and Gene Transcription

Epigenetic states constitute heritable features of the chromatin to regulate when, where and how genes are expressed in the developing conceptus. A special case of epigenetic regulation, genomic imprinting, is defined as parent of origin-dependent monoallelic expression. The Igf2-H19 locus is considered as paradigm of genomic imprinting with a growth-promoting gene, Igf2, expressed paternally and a growth antagonist, H19 encoding a non-coding transcript, expressed only from the maternal allele. The monoallelic expression patterns are regulated by the epigenetic status at an imprinting control region (ICR) in the 5´-flank of the H19 gene. The chromatin insulator protein CTCF interacts with only the maternal H19 ICR allele to prevent downstream enhancers to communicate with the Igf2 promoters. Mutations of these CTCF binding sites lead to biallelic Igf2 expression, increased size of the conceptus and predisposition for cancer. Reasoning that these effects cannot be explained by the regulation of Igf2 expression alone, a technique was invented to examine long-range chromatin interactions without prior knowledge of the interacting partners. Applying the circular chromosomal conformation capture (4C) technique to mouse neonatal liver cells, it was observed that 114 unique sequences interacted with the H19 ICR. A majority of these interactors was in complex with only the maternal H19 ICR allele and depended on the presence of functional CTCF binding sites. The functional consequence of chromosomal networks was demonstrated by the observation that the maternal H19 ICR allele regulated the transcription of two genes on another chromosome. As the chromosomal networks underwent reprogramming during the maturation of embryonic stem cells, attention was turned to human cancer cells, displaying features common with mouse embryonic stem cells. Subsequently, chromatin folding at the human H19 ICR suggested that stable chromatin loops were organized by synergistic interactions within and between baits and interactors. The presence of these interactions was linked to DNA methylation patterns involving repeat elements. A "flower" model of chromatin networks was formulated to explain these observations. This thesis has unravealed a novel feature of the epigenome and its functions to regulate gene expression in trans. The identified roles for CTCF as an architectural factor in the organization of higher order chromatin conformations may be of importance in understanding development and disease ontogeny from novel perspectives.
International Collaborative Research Partnerships: Blending Science with Management and Diplomacy

As globalization progressively connects and impacts the health of people across the world, collaborative research partnerships provide mutual advantages by sharing knowledge and resources to address locally and globally relevant scientific and public health questions. Partnerships undertaken for scientific research are similar to business collaborations in that they require attention to partner systems, whether local, international, political, academic, or non-academic. Scientists, like diplomats or entrepreneurs, are representatives of their field, culture, and country and become obligatory agents in health diplomacy. This role significantly influences current and future collaborations with not only the immediate partner but with other in country partners as well. Research partnerships need continuous evaluation of the collaboration's productivity, perspectives of all partners, and desired outcomes for success to avoid engaging in "research tourism", particularly in developing regions. International engagement is a cornerstone in addressing the impact of infectious diseases globally. Global partnerships are strategically aligned with national, partner and global health priorities and may be based on specific requests for assistance from the partnering country governments. Here we share experiences from select research collaborations to highlight principles that we have found key in building long-term relationships with collaborators and in meeting the aim to address scientific questions relevant to the host country and strategic global health initiatives.
Heart Rate Variability and Activity Magnitude Measuring Wearable Heart Rate Sensor in Depression

53 mood disorder patients (mean 39±12 years) with 8 or more points on the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale and 58 healthy subjects (mean 36±12 years) were measured RR intervals and accelerations with wearable heart rate sensors (myBeat WHS-1, Union Tool Co., Ltd.) from 15:00 to 3 consecutive days. The average of heart rate variability and activity magnitude during waking and sleeping time period estimated from the accelerations were calculated, and those of patients group were compared with healthy subjects group by Mann Whitney U test. Compared with the controls, the patients had shorter RR intervals during both time periods. In the sleep time, the patients had less HF as index of the parasympathetic nervous system than controls. And the patients activity was less than the controls during the waking time periods. It was suggested that heart rate variability and activity magnitude during sleep and waking time periods could be objective indicators of depression.
Does Robotic Surgical Simulator Performance Correlate With Surgical Skill?

To assess the relationship between robotic surgical simulation performance and the real-life surgical skill of attending surgeons. We hypothesized that simulation performance would not correlate with real-life robotic surgical skill in attending surgeons.In 2013, Birkmeyer et al. demonstrated an association between laparoscopic surgical performance as determined by expert review of video clips and surgical outcomes. Using that model of expert review, we studied the relationship between robotic simulator performance and real-life surgical skill. Ten attending robotic surgeons performed 4 tasks on the da Vinci Skills Simulator (Camera Targeting 1, Ring Walk 3, Suture Sponge 3, and Energy Dissection 3). Two video clips of a robotic-assisted operation were then recorded for each surgeon. Three expert robotic surgeons reviewed the recordings and rated surgical technique using the Global Evaluative Assessment of Robotic Skills.University of Virginia; Charlottesville, VA; tertiary hospital PARTICIPANTS: All attending surgeons who perform robotic-assisted surgery at our institution were enrolled and completed the study.The surgeons had a median of 7.25 years of robotic surgical experience with a median of 91 cases (ranging: 20-346 cases) in the last 4 years. Median scores for each simulator task were 87.5%, 39.0%, 77.5%, and 81.5%. Using Pearson's correlation, scores for each of the individual tasks correlated poorly with expert review of intraoperative performance. There was also no correlation (r = -0.0304) between overall simulation score (mean: 70.7 ± 9.6%) and expert video ratings (mean: 3.66 ± 0.32 points).There was no correlation between attending surgeons' simulator performance and expert ratings of intraoperative videos based on the Global Evaluative Assessment of Robotic Skills scale. Although novice surgeons may put considerable effort into training on robotic simulators, performance on a simulator may not correlate with attending robotic surgical performance. Development of simulation exercises that guide novice surgeons toward expert performance is needed.
Sexual and reproductive health and rights knowledge, perceptions, and experiences of adolescent learners from three South African townships: qualitative findings from the Girls Achieve Power (GAP Year) Trial [version 2; peer review: 2 approved]

Background: Adolescence is a time of psycho-social and physiological changes, with increased associated health risks including vulnerability to pregnancy, HIV, sexually transmitted infections, and gender-based violence. Adolescent learners, from three townships in South Africa, participated in a 44 session, after-school asset-building intervention (GAP Year), over 2 years providing sexual and reproductive health (SRH) education. This paper explores adolescent learners’ SRH, sexual risk and rights knowledge; perceptions about transactional sex; and contraceptive method preferences and decision-making practices. Methods: The intervention was conducted in 13 secondary schools across Khayelitsha, Thembisa, and Soweto, South Africa. A baseline survey collected socio-demographic data prior to the intervention. Overall, 26 focus group discussions (FGDs): 13 male and 13 female learner groups, purposively selected from schools, after completing the intervention (2 years after baseline data collection). Descriptive analyses were conducted on baseline data. Qualitative data were thematically coded, and NVivo was used for data analysis. Results: In total, 194 learners participated in the FGDs. Mean age at baseline was 13.7 years (standard deviation 0.91). Participants acquired SRH and rights knowledge during the GAP Year intervention. Although transactional sex was viewed as risky, some relationships were deemed beneficial and necessary for material gain. Negative healthcare provider attitudes were the main barrier to healthcare service utilisation. There was awareness about the benefits of contraceptives, but some myths about method use. The injectable was the preferred contraceptive method, followed by the implant, with equal preference for condoms and oral pill. Conclusions: An afterschool intervention at school is a viable model for the provision of SRH and rights education to learners. Recommendations include the need for risk reduction strategies in the curriculum, dealing with misconceptions, and the promotion of informed decision making. Endeavours to ensure health services are youth friendly is a priority to limit barriers to accessing these services.
Development of computer science disciplines: a social network analysis approach

In contrast to many other scientific disciplines, computer science considers conference publications. Conferences have the advantage of providing fast publication of papers and of bringing researchers together to present and discuss the paper with peers. Previous work on knowledge mapping focused on the map of all sciences or a particular domain based on ISI published JCR (Journal Citation Report). Although this data covers most of important journals, it lacks computer science conference and workshop proceedings. That results in an imprecise and incomplete analysis of the computer science knowledge. This paper presents an analysis on the computer science knowledge network constructed from all types of publications, aiming at providing a complete view of computer science research. Based on the combination of two important digital libraries (DBLP and CiteSeerX), we study the knowledge network created at journal/conference level using citation linkage, to identify the development of sub-disciplines. We investigate the collaborative and citation behavior of journals/conferences by analyzing the properties of their co-authorship and citation subgraphs. The paper draws several important conclusions. First, conferences constitute social structures that shape the computer science knowledge. Second, computer science is becoming more interdisciplinary. Third, experts are the key success factor for sustainability of journals/conferences.
On the Importance of Error Mitigation for Quantum Computation

28 pages, 3 figures, 3 tables
The cosmic microwave background anisotropy power spectrum  measured by Archeops

We present a determination by the Archeops experiment of the angular power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background anisotropy in 16 bins over the multipole range l=15-350. Archeops was conceived as a precursor of the Planck HFI instrument by using the same optical design and the same technology for the detectors and their cooling. Archeops is a balloon-borne instrument consisting of a 1.5 m aperture diameter telescope and an array of 21 photometers maintained at ~100 mK that are operating in 4 frequency bands centered at 143, 217, 353 and 545 GHz. The data were taken during the Arctic night of February 7, 2002 after the instrument was launched by CNES from Esrange base (Sweden). The entire data cover ~ 30% of the sky.This first analysis was obtained with a small subset of the dataset using the most sensitive photometer in each CMB band (143 and 217 GHz) and 12.6% of the sky at galactic latitudes above 30 degrees where the foreground contamination is measured to be negligible. The large sky coverage and medium resolution (better than 15 arcminutes) provide for the first time a high signal-to-noise ratio determination of the power spectrum over angular scales that include both the first acoustic peak and scales probed by COBE/DMR. With a binning of Delta(l)=7 to 25 the error bars are dominated by sample variance for l below 200. A companion paper details the cosmological implications.
Physics Benchmarks for the ILC Detectors

This note presents a list of physics processes for benchmarking the performance of proposed ILC detectors. This list gives broad coverage of the required physics capabilities of the ILC experiments and suggests target accuracies to be achieved. A reduced list of reactions, which capture within a very economical set the main challenges put by the ILC physics program, is suggested for the early stage of benchmarking of the detector concepts.
Rule of Law and Judicial Independence in the EU: Lessons from the Union’s Eastward Enlargement and Ways Forward

The question of respect for the rule of law in the member states of the European Union (EU) has come up high on the agenda of EU institutions. The background is well known and relates to the disturbing political trend of nationalist and populist forces either rising to power, or gaining increasing political influence across the European continent. While this trend can be discerned in a number of EU member states such as Italy, France, Finland and recently even Sweden, it has been most prominently visible in the ascent of self-proclaimed ‘illiberal democracies’ in Hungary and Poland.
Are transparency and accountability enough? Open corruption and why it exists

The global movement against corruption has long assumed its demise lay in transparency and accountability. We test this assumption by measuring whether highly accountable Indian village council presidents favor their own households while making observable allocations of public works jobs. We link millions of public works records to election outcomes. We find that winners of close elections receive 3 times as many days of labor as losers, earning excess wages equaling two-thirds of the median president's salary. Using an original survey of council presidents we find suggestive evidence that corruption is "performance pay" used to attract talented candidates into office.
Unlimited Central Bank Digital Currency: The Case for a Public Good in the Euro-area and its Regulatory (and Deregulatory) Implications for Modern Finance

North Carolina Journal of International Law ; 48 ; 1 ; Jan-77 ; United States
Analysis of Access to Health Insurance Coverage in Uganda: A Secondary Data Analysis

The association and relationship between socio-demographic, media and economic factors affecting the access to health insurance coverage in Uganda was considered. The obtained data and analysis went through data cleaning, manipulation, coding and statistical analysis using the SATA 15, sample survey weighted results, univariate analysis for mean, standard errors and confidence intervals, and Scot-Rao Adjusted Chi-square tests for bivariate analysis and complementary log-log regression model to examine the relationship of various study variables on access to health insurance. The study findings revealed that out of 18,506 respondents, 23.5% were aware of health insurance, of these 18.8% ever considered joining a health insurance scheme while, 1.4% of the respondents reported to be on a health insurance scheme. Demographic findings indicated that 43.7% were below 25 years, 60.6% were married and 40.2% were self-employed in agricultural sector. Similarly, obtained results revealed that access to health insurance increases with age.
Photometry and spectroscopy of GRB 060526: a detailed study of the afterglow and host galaxy of a<i>z</i> = 3.2 gamma-ray burst

Aims: With this paper we want to investigate the highly variable afterglow light curve and environment of gamma-ray burst (GRB) 060526 at $z=3.221$. Methods: We present one of the largest photometric datasets ever obtained for a GRB afterglow, consisting of multi-color photometric data from the ultraviolet to the near infrared. The data set contains 412 data points in total to which we add additional data from the literature. Furthermore, we present low-resolution high signal-to-noise spectra of the afterglow. The afterglow light curve is modeled with both an analytical model using broken power law fits and with a broad-band numerical model which includes energy injections. The absorption lines detected in the spectra are used to derive column densities using a multi-ion single-component curve-of-growth analysis from which we derive the metallicity of the host of GRB 060526. Results: The temporal behaviour of the afterglow follows a double broken power law with breaks at $t=0.090\pm0.005$ and $t=2.401\pm0.061$ days. It shows deviations from the smooth set of power laws that can be modeled by additional energy injections from the central engine, although some significant microvariability remains. The broadband spectral-energy distribution of the afterglow shows no significant extinction along the line of sight. The metallicity derived from \ion{S}{II} and \ion{Fe}{II} of [S/H] = --0.57 $\pm$0.25 and [Fe/H] = --1.09$\pm$0.24 is relatively high for a galaxy at that redshift but comparable to the metallicity of other GRB hosts at similar redshifts. At the position of the afterglow, no host is detected to F775W(AB) = 28.5 mag with the HST, implying an absolute magnitude of the host M(1500 Å)$&gt;$--18.3 mag which is fainter than most long-duration hosts, although the GRB may be associated with a faint galaxy at a distance of 11 kpc.
Efficient basic event ordering schemes for fault tree analysis

Fault Tree Analysis is a commonly used means of assessing the system reliability performance in terms of its component’s reliability characteristics. More recently, significant advances have been made in methodologies to analyse the fault tree diagram. The most successful of these developments has been the Binary Decision Diagram (BDD) approach. The Binary Decision Diagram approach has been shown to improve both the efficiency of determining the minimal cut sets of the fault tree and also the accuracy of the calculation procedure used to determine the top event parameters. To utilize the Binary Decision Diagram approach the fault tree structure is first converted to the BDD format. Implementing the conversion of the tree is relatively straight forward but requires the basic events of the tree to be placed in an ordering. The ordering scheme chosen is critical to the size of the BDD produced, and hence the advantages of this technique. Alternative ordering schemes have been investigated and no one scheme is appropriate for every tree structure. The work presented in this paper takes a machine learning approach based on Genetic Algorithms to select the most appropriate ordering scheme. Features which describe a fault tree structure have been identified and these provide the inputs to the machine learning algorithm. A set of possible ordering schemes has been selected based on previous heuristic work. The objective of the work detailed in the paper is to predict the most efficient of the possible ordering alternatives from parameters which describe a fault tree structure.
Challenges Faced with Application Performance Monitoring (APM) when Migrating to the Cloud

Application Performance Management (APM) is an important software engineering process that is critical to properly assessing the reliability of software in its targeted environment. Of late, migrating applications to the cloud has become increasingly popular for many reasons such as reduced operational costs, scalability, and increased IT productivity. While much has been said about how to migrate applications, relatively less has been said on how to appropriately monitor them in the cloud, which presents its own unique challenges. This article outlines some of the technical challenges that we have faced at AT&T when migrating to the cloud, with a focus on APM, and aims to stimulate further industrial-academic research and collaboration in this area.
Data Science and Knowledge Discovery

Nowadays, Data Science (DS) is gaining a relevant impact on the community. The most recent developments in Computer Science, such as advances in Machine and Deep Learning, Big Data, Knowledge Discovery, and Data Analytics, have triggered the development of several innovative solutions (e.g., approaches, methods, models, or paradigms). It is a trending topic with many application possibilities and motivates the researcher to conduct experiments in these most diverse areas. This issue created an opportunity to expose some of the most relevant achievements in the Knowledge Discovery and Data Science field and contribute to such subjects as Health, Smart Homes, Social Humanities, Government, among others. The relevance of this field can be easily observed by its current achieved numbers: thirteen research articles, one technical note, and forty-six authors from fifteen nationalities.
A Nationwide VA Palliative Care Quality Measure: The Family Assessment of Treatment at the End of Life

To evaluate the FATE (Family Assessment of Treatment at End of Life) Survey for use as a nationwide quality measure in the VA health care system.Nationwide telephone survey.Five VA medical centers.Eligible patients received inpatient or outpatient care from a participating VA facility in the last month of life. One respondent/patient was selected using predefined eligibility criteria and invited to participate.The FATE survey consists of 32 items in 9 domains: Well-being and dignity (4 items), Information and communication (5 items), Respect for treatment preferences (2 items), Emotional and spiritual support (3 items), Management of symptoms (4 items), Choice of inpatient facility (1 item), Care around the time of death (6 items), Access to VA services (4 items), and Access to VA benefits after the patient's death (3 items).Interviews were completed with 309 respondents. The FATE showed excellent psychometric characteristics, with good homogeneity (e.g., Cronbach (alpha = 0.91) and no evidence of significant ceiling effects. The FATE also demonstrated good discriminant validity. For instance, FATE scores varied across facilities (range 44-72; Kruskal Wallis test p < 0.001). Patients who were seen by a palliative care service had better scores (mean 66 versus 52; rank sum test p < 0.001), as did patients who were referred to hospice (67 versus 49; rank sum test p < 0.001).The FATE survey offers an important source of quality data that can be used to improve the end-of-life care of all veterans, regardless of the type of care they receive or their site of death.