LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Herbal supplements and skin testing: the lack of effect of commonly used herbal supplements on histamine skin prick testing.

BACKGROUND
The use of herbal supplements is common, yet little is known about their pharmacologic properties. The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of 23 commonly used herbal supplements on histamine skin prick testing (SPT).


METHODS
Fifteen healthy volunteers participated in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, single-dose, crossover study. Wheal and flare responses to SPT with histamine phosphate (1 mg/ml) were measured before and 4 h after administration of each of the 23 popular herbal supplements, fexofenadine (60 mg) and placebo. Wheal and flare areas were recorded with tracings performed 10 min after the prick test and measured with a PC-digitizer using stereometric software.


RESULTS
Fexofenadine significantly suppressed the wheal (P < 0.001) and flare (P = 0.02) areas compared with placebo. None of the herbal supplements caused significant suppression of the wheal and flare areas compared with placebo (P > 0.10).


CONCLUSION
When taken in single-doses, the popular herbal supplements tested did not significantly affect the histamine skin response. Therefore, it seems unnecessary for clinicians to ask patients to discontinue these herbal supplements prior to allergy skin testing.
Lifetime risk of suicide ideation and attempts in an Australian community: prevalence, suicidal process, and help-seeking behaviour.

BACKGROUND
The World Health Organisation SUicide PREvention-Multisite Intervention Study on Suicide (WHO/SUPRE-MISS) investigates suicidal behaviours in a number of nations. The feasibility of the different branches of the study was piloted in Queensland, Australia. This paper reports on the community survey component.


METHOD
Randomised telephone interviews (n=11,572) were conducted to determine the lifetime prevalence of suicidal ideation and attempts, and corresponding socio-demographic and cultural characteristics. A subsequent postal survey sent to consenting individuals reporting lifetime suicide ideation/attempt (n=1311) was meant to ascertain the possible development of that behaviour along a continuum, psychiatric and psychological factors, suicidal transmission, help-seeking, and service utilisation.


RESULTS
Suicide ideation and attempts prevailed in individuals aged 25-44 years, and declined with increasing age. In most cases, suicidal experience/s did not develop over time with progressively increasing severity. Knowledge of someone else's suicidal behaviour significantly increased the risk of similar acts. Almost half of the subjects contended with their suicidal crisis by over-drinking alcohol, and 1/3 through other forms of reckless behaviour. The ratio completed/attempted suicide was 1 to 23. Less than 30% of subjects went to the hospital after their suicidal behaviour, and treatment received and staff attitudes were rated less favourably than that of General Practitioners.


CONCLUSIONS
This survey provides a reliable picture of suicide ideation and behaviour in the general population. Information on the development of suicidal process, recklessness, and help-seeking attitudes may be valuable for future prevention strategies.
Bone mineral density in subjects with mild asthma randomised to treatment with inhaled corticosteroids or non-corticosteroid treatment for two years.

BACKGROUND
Inhaled corticosteroids are clearly beneficial for patients with asthma of moderate severity, but the risks and benefits of using them in patients with milder asthma are less clear. We have compared the change in bone mineral density over 2 years in adults with mild asthma randomised to receive an inhaled corticosteroid or non-corticosteroid treatment.


METHODS
Subjects with mild asthma (mean forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV(1)) 86% predicted, mean age 35 years, taking beta agonists only) were randomised to receive inhaled budesonide, inhaled beclomethasone dipropionate, or non-corticosteroid treatment for 2 years in a prospective randomised open study in 19 centres in France, New Zealand, Spain, and the UK. The corticosteroid dose was adjusted according to a written self-management plan. The main outcome measure-change in bone mineral density after 6, 12, and 24 months-was measured "blind". Secondary outcomes included lung function, the relation between change in bone density and inhaled steroid dose and change in biochemical markers of bone metabolism.


RESULTS
Of 374 subjects randomised, 239 (64%) completed the study and were included in the analysis. The median daily doses of inhaled budesonide (n=87) and beclomethasone (n=74) were 389 microg and 499 microg, respectively. Subjects treated with an inhaled corticosteroid had better asthma control than those in the reference group (n=78). Change in bone mineral density did not differ between the three groups over the 2 years, nor did it correlate with changes in markers of bone metabolism. The mean change in bone mineral density over 2 years in the budesonide, beclomethasone dipropionate, and reference groups was 0.1%, -0.4%, and 0.4% for the lumbar spine and -0.9%, -0.9%, and -0.4% for neck of the femur. Mean daily dose of inhaled steroid was related to reduction in bone mineral density at the lumbar spine but not at the femoral neck.


CONCLUSION
In subjects with mild asthma an inhaled corticosteroid provided better asthma control than alternative non-corticosteroid treatment with no difference in change in bone mineral density over 2 years. The relation between dose of inhaled corticosteroid and change in bone density at the lumbar spine may be due to a direct effect of inhaled corticosteroids on bone. Since inhaled steroid dose is also related inversely to lung function, an effect of asthma severity on bone density was also possible.
E-COMMERCE ENTREPRENEURSHIP : EMERGING PRACTICES , KEY CHALLENGES AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS

Introduction The rise of the World Wide Web and electronic commerce has created one of the most challenging environments for entrepreneurship in recent history. Market needs and the technology required to meet those needs can change even while the product or service is still being developed (Iansiti and MacCormak, 1997). This framework demands that founders of organizations strive for "relentless innovation," leading their firms through the continual infusion of new ideas, and emphasizing constant innovation, experimentation, and rapid change (Cohen and Jordan, 1999). The environment of e-commerce enables entrepreneurs to rapidly try new approaches, quickly share successes and failures, and monitor what is new and useful (Oliva, 1998). E-commerce permits managers to become quicker in how they gather, synthesize, utilize, and disseminate information. Those who are willing to experiment with new product and service offerings will be positioned to compete most effectively (Hodgetts, Luthans, and Slocum, 1999). The extent to which entrepreneurs capitalize on the conditions presented by e-commerce and engage in experimentation and innovation is of major interest in contemporary research. Because of the demand for innovative organizational behavior present in e-business, this is an important domain in which to study entrepreneurship. However, because it is so recent, very little is known about the role attributes or innovative activities of entrepreneurs in Internet organizations. What enables emerging organizations to achieve effective performance? What are the opportunities and constraints in operating within this environment? These and many others questions are arising as the field of Internet entrepreneurship grows and develops. The answers 3 will inform the development of the growing research base in this area and will facilitate the subsequent comparison of key variables and relationships found in firms engaging in e-commerce with those in traditional brick and mortar firms. This paper presents the emergent practices and processes of e-commerce entrepreneurship, explores the key challenges facing the new ventures, and offers a research agenda to guide future work in this area. The paper draws on recent research findings and focuses on founders and organizations whose activities encompass the Internet, conducting multiple transactions on the Web, rather than on organizations that use the Web only for customer advertising and information gathering purposes. It is the premise of this paper that the first major step in developing a model of e-commerce entrepreneurship is to examine the processes and behaviors found within the ventures. The examination is conducted along several dimensions and contributes …
DDFTP: Dual-Direction FTP

This paper proposes a fast and efficient concurrent technique for downloading large files from replicated FTP servers available over the Internet, Cloud and Grid environments. This technique utilizes the availability of replicated FTP servers to enhance file download times through concurrent downloads of file blocks. As this technique enhances the download time, it imposes no extra communication and processing overhead compared to other concurrent or parallel FTP techniques. The proposed technique requires no coordination between servers and relies on the features of TCP to provide an efficient load balancing mechanism among multiple heterogeneous replicated FTP servers. This mechanism also provides an efficient load balancing solution to efficiently utilize available network and server resources on dynamic environments with varying network and FTP servers' loads. The proposed technique has been implemented and evaluated and the results show considerable performance gains for file downloading compared to other approaches.
The mythos of model interpretability

In machine learning, the concept of interpretability is both important and slippery.
Redesigning the BSD Callout and Timer Facilities

We describe a new implementation of the BSD callout and timer facilities. Current BSD kernels take time proportional to the number of outstanding timers to set or cancel timers. Our implementation takes constant time to start, stop, and maintain timers; this leads to a highly scalable design that can support thousands of outstanding timers without much overhead. Unlike the existing implementation, our routines are guaranteed to lock out interrupts only for a small, bounded amount of time. We also extend the setitimer() interface to allow a process to have multiple outstanding timers, thereby reducing the need for users to maintain their own timer packages. The changes to the BSD kernel are small (548 lines of code added, 80 removed) and are available on the World Wide Web.
Managing intellectual capital: the MIC matrix

Knowledge assets represent a special set of resources for a firm and as such, their management is of great importance to academics and managers. The purpose of this paper is to review the literature as it pertains to knowledge assets and provide a suggested model for intellectual capital management that can be of benefit to both academics and practitioners. In doing so, a set of research propositions are suggested to provide guidance for future research.
The multisensory perception of flavor

Following on from ecological theories of perception, such as the one proposed by [Gibson, J. J. (1966). The senses considered as perceptual systems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin] this paper reviews the literature on the multisensory interactions underlying the perception of flavor in order to determine the extent to which it is really appropriate to consider flavor perception as a distinct perceptual system. We propose that the multisensory perception of flavor may be indicative of the fact that the taxonomy currently used to define our senses is simply not appropriate. According to the view outlined here, the act of eating allows the different qualities of foodstuffs to be combined into unified percepts; and flavor can be used as a term to describe the combination of tastes, smells, trigeminal, and tactile sensations as well as the visual and auditory cues, that we perceive when tasting food.
Shape-memory NiTi–Nb foams

A new powder metallurgy technique for creating porous NiTi is demonstrated, combining liquid phase sintering of prealloyed NiTi powders by Nb additions and pore creation by NaCl space-holders. The resulting foams exhibit well-densified NiTi–Nb walls surrounding interconnected pores created by the space-holder, with controlled fraction, size, and shape. Only small amounts of Nb (3 at.%) are needed to produce a eutectic liquid that considerably improves the otherwise poor densification of NiTi powders. NiTi–Nb foams with 34–44% porosity exhibit high compressive failure stress (>1,500 MPa), ductile behavior (>50% compressive strain), low stiffness (10–20 GPa), and large shape-memory recovery strains. These thermomechanical properties, together with the known biocompatibility of the alloy, make these open-cell foams attractive for bone implant applications.
Ontogenetic conflicts and rank reversals in two Mediterranean oak species: implications for coexistence

1. In heterogeneous environments, species segregate spatially in response to selective abiotic and biotic filters occurring throughout plant ontogeny. Ontogenetic conflicts in recruitment may lead to spatially discordant patterns of regeneration among microhabitats with different plant cover. In addition, species differing in seed size may be subjected to opposing ecological and evolutionary pressures throughout the life cycle of the plant. 2. We used a multi-stage demographic approach aimed at characterizing the main stage-specific probabilities of recruitment (seed survival, seed germination, seedling emergence and survival during the first 3 years of life) in twoMediterranean oak species coexisting at southern Spain. We calibrated linear and nonlinear likelihood models for each of these consecutive life history stages and calculated overall probabilities of recruitment along awide range of plant cover and seed size variation. 3. Seed predation and seedling mortality over the dry season were the most limiting processes for the two studied oak species. However, species ranking diverged substantially through the life history stages considered in this study due to different ontogenetic trends among species. 4. At the intraspecific level, recruitment-driving processes during the seed and the seedling stages showed opposing tendencies along the explored range of plant cover and seed size. Thus, small-sized acorns and open areas were favoured for the seed stage, whereas large acorns and dense microhabitats did for the seedling stage. 5. The existence of opposing selective pressures on seed mass and their differential influence on the two studied oak species determined the occurrence of species-specific optimal seed sizes (small acorns forQuercus canariensis vs. acorns of large or intermediate size forQuercus suber). 6. The spatial patterns predicted by our overall-recruitment models provided some evidence of regeneration niche partitioning in the two coexisting oak species, supporting their current distribution patterns as saplings and adults at the study area. 7. Synthesis. We conclude that withinand among-species differences through plant ontogeny, arising from species differential response to microhabitat heterogeneity and seed size variation, could be of great importance for oak species niche segregation, driving stand dynamics and spatial pattern distribution along the landscape. The information provided by this study could be also applied to optimize management and restoration programmes since it has enabled us to identify the most favourable conditions and traits for recruitment in oak species that exhibit serious constraints for natural regeneration.
Numerical Simulation of a Model for Transport and Reaction of Radionuclides

In the last years the interest in computer simulations of radioactive waste scenarios has increased. In this article we present numerical simulations with the software package TRAPRO. We consider a system of convection-diffusion-reaction-equations, that we coupled by their reaction terms. We present a new discretization method that improves the explicit discretization for the transportand reaction-term. The method should replace the previous decoupled implicit method with an operator-splitting method by an explicit coupled method between transport and reaction. For analyzing the method we reduce our model to a simpler system of convection-reaction-equations. The numerical results will be compared with the exact solutions. With a test example we illustrate results of our recent research on this subject.
Disruption of sexual communication in the mirid bug Lygocoris pabulinus by hexyl butanoate

1 The metathoracic scent gland in Lygocoris pabulinus contains mostly hexyl butanoate. As secretions of this gland in Heteroptera may serve as an alarm pheromone, we determined whether hexyl butanoate is released by disturbed bugs, and whether this compound disrupts sexual attraction of L. pabulinus males towards females. 2 Undisturbed males and females, and disturbed males released less than 100 ng/h hexyl butanoate, whereas disturbed females released a highly variable amount, ranging from 25 ng/h to more than 1 mg/h. 3 In the ®eld, traps with virgin females and rubber septa containing 20 mg hexyl butanoate, caught a total of one male in a month. In control traps without hexyl butanoate, 36 males were caught in the same period. 4 In Y-track olfactometer tests, males were not attracted to virgin females when a dispenser with 20 mg hexyl butanoate was placed in the bottle with females. Males were attracted to females when the dispenser was placed downwind from the females, but upwind from the point of male release. 5 These results suggest that males are not repelled by hexyl butanoate, but that this compound inhibits sex pheromone release in females. Application possibilities for pest management are discussed.
Vygotsky ’ s Educational Theory in Cultural Context

published by the press syndicate of the university of cambridge Vygotsky's educational theory in cultural context / edited by Alex Kozulin. .. [et al.]. p. cm. – (Learning in doing) Includes bibliographical references and index.
A MLP Classifier for Both Printed and Handwritten Bangla Numeral Recognition

This paper concerns automatic recognition of both printed and handwritten Bangla numerals. Such mixed numerals may appear in documents like application forms, postal mail, bank checks etc. Some pixel-based and shape-based features are chosen for the purpose of recognition. The pixel-based features are normalized pixel density over 4 X 4 blocks in which the numeral bounding-box is partitioned. The shape-based features are normalized position of holes, end-points, intersections and radius of curvature of strokes found in each block. A multi-layer neural network architecture was chosen as classifier of the mixed class of handwritten and printed numerals. For the mixture of twenty three different fonts of printed numerals of various sizes and 10,500 handwritten numerals, an overall recognition accuracy of 97.2% has been achieved.
Determination of total lead in lipstick: development and validation of a microwave-assisted digestion, inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometric method.

Recent reports describing the presence of lead (Pb) in lipsticks have suggested that, under ordinary use, the potential amount of Pb exposure is harmful. To permit independent assessment of the Pb contamination, a method for determining total Pb in lipstick using microwave-assisted digestion and analysis employing inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) was developed and validated. Since lipsticks may contain fats, oils, pigments, dyes, and minerals, several reference materials (RM) were analyzed, including coal, wear metals in oil, organic Pb in oil, milk powder, and estuarine sediment. With the exception of the RM with mineral content (estuarine sediment), complete recovery of Pb from the RMs was obtained by simple nitric acid (HNO(3)) digestion. Complete recovery of Pb from estuarine sediment was achieved only when hydrofluoric acid (HF) was added to the digestion mix, followed by treatment with excess boric acid (H(3)BO(3)) to neutralize the HF and to dissolve insoluble fluorides. Commercial lipsticks were tested for total Pb by the validated method. The detection limit was estimated to be 0.04 microg Pb/g. The average value obtained for the lipsticks was 1.07 microg/g. Undigested material was present in some lipstick digests when only HNO(3) was used, and generally lower Pb values were obtained. All of the Pb levels found by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) were within the range the agency would expect to find in lipsticks formulated with permitted color additives and other ingredients prepared under good manufacturing practice (GMP) conditions. This method will be useful for the FDA and industry in helping to ensure the safety of cosmetic products.
Foveon X 3 Detector : Real goodies or eyecandy ?

This paper investigates Foveons X3 sensor [6] , which vertically stacks three sensor layer that absorb light of different colors, talks about the operating principle of this type of sensors, and the advantages and disadvantages of such design.
Leukocyte common antigen (CD45) is required for immunoglobulin E- mediated degranulation of mast cells

We demonstrate using primary mast cell cultures derived from wild-type and CD45-deficient mice that mast cell triggering through the high-affinity immunoglobulin E (IgE) receptor requires the cell surface tyrosine phosphatase CD45. Unlike wild-type cells, cross-linking of surface-bound IgE in mast cells deficient in CD45 does not induce degranulation. Degranulation in these mutant cells does occur after treatment with the calcium ionophore A23187 indicating that the degranulation machinery is intact in these cells. We also demonstrate that the tyrosine phosphatase inhibitors orthoVanadate and perVanadate inhibit degranulation in wild-type mast cells, as does cross-linking of CD45 by anti-CD45 antibodies. Finally, we show that CD45-deficient mice are resistant to IgE-dependent systemic anaphylaxis. These results show that, like the T cell receptor and the antigen receptor on B cells, there is an absolute requirement for CD45 in signaling via the high affinity IgE receptor, expanding the number of receptors for which CD45 is an essential component.