LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Phenotype modulation of airway smooth muscle in asthma.

The biological responses of airway smooth muscle (ASM) are diverse, in part due to ASM phenotype plasticity. ASM phenotype plasticity refers to the ability of ASM cells to change the degree of a variety of functions, including contractility, proliferation, migration and secretion of inflammatory mediators. This plasticity occurs due to intrinsic or acquired abnormalities in ASM cells, and these abnormalities or predisposition of the ASM cell may alter the ASM response and in some cases recapitulate disease hallmarks of asthma. These phenotypic changes are ultimately determined by multiple stimuli and occur due to alterations in the intricate balance or reversible state that maintains ASM cells in either a contractile or synthetic state, through processes termed maturation or modulation, respectively. To elucidate the role of ASM phenotype in disease states, numerous in vitro studies have suggested a phenotypic switch in ASM primary cell cultures as an explanation for the plethora of responses mediated by ASM cells. Moreover, there is overwhelming evidence suggesting that the immunomodulatory response of ASM is due to the acquisition of a synthetic phenotype; however, whether this degree of plasticity is present in vivo as opposed to cell culture-based models remains speculative. Nonetheless, this review will give an overall scope of ASM phenotypic markers, triggers of ASM phenotype modulation and novel therapeutic approaches to control ASM phenotype plasticity.
Dairy Foods and Dairy Protein Consumption Is Inversely Related to Markers of Adiposity in Obese Men and Women

A number of intervention studies have reported that the prevalence of obesity may be in part inversely related to dairy food consumption while others report no association. We sought to examine relationships between energy, protein and calcium consumption from dairy foods (milk, yoghurt, cheese, dairy spreads, ice-cream) and adiposity including body mass index (BMI), waist (WC) and hip circumference (HC), and direct measures of body composition using dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (% body fat and abdominal fat) in an opportunistic sample of 720 overweight/obese Australian men and women. Mean (SD) age, weight and BMI of the population were 51 ± 10 year, 94 ± 18 kg and 32.4 ± 5.7 kg/m2, respectively. Reduced fat milk was the most commonly consumed dairy product (235 ± 200 g/day), followed by whole milk (63 ± 128 g/day) and yoghurt (53 ± 66 g/day). Overall dairy food consumption (g/day) was inversely associated with BMI, % body fat and WC (all p < 0.05). Dairy protein and dairy calcium (g/day) were both inversely associated with all adiposity measures (all p < 0.05). Yoghurt consumption (g/day) was inversely associated with % body fat, abdominal fat, WC and HC (all p < 0.05), while reduced fat milk consumption was inversely associated with BMI, WC, HC and % body fat (all p < 0.05). Within a sample of obese adults, consumption of dairy products, dairy protein, and calcium was associated with more favourable body composition.
Understanding the impact of colorectal cancer education: a randomized trial of health fairs

BACKGROUND
Regular screening for colorectal cancer (CRC) reduces morbidity and mortality from this disease. A number of factors play a role in the underutilization of CRC screening; populations with the lowest CRC screening rates are least likely to be aware of the need for screening or have knowledge about screening options. The overall purpose of this project was to assess two methods for increasing knowledge about CRC in a health fair context: one, by using a health educator to provide CRC information at a table, or two, to provide a tour through a giant inflatable, walk-through colon model with physical depictions of healthy tissue, polyps, and CRC.


METHODS
We participated in six community health fair events, three were randomized to incorporate the use of the inflatable colon, and three used a standard display table method. We used a pre/post-design to look for changes in knowledge about CRC before and after participating in a health fair. We examined descriptive statistics of participants using frequencies and proportions. McNemar's test for paired binary data was used to test whether there were significant differences in the distribution of correct answer percentage from pre to post and from pre to follow up. Linear regression (GEE) was used to investigate whether there was a significant difference in the change from pre- to post-intervention in the percentage of correct answers on knowledge of tests available to detect CRC and awareness of risk factors for CRC between participants at sites with the inflatable colon compared to participants at sites without the inflatable colon.


RESULTS
Participants (n = 273) were recruited at the six health fairs. Participants in health fairs with the inflatable colon had higher knowledge at post-test than participants in health fairs with tabling activities, that is, without the inflatable colon; however, the difference was not significant. One month follow-up after each health fair showed virtually no recollection of information learned at the health fairs.


CONCLUSIONS
The use of an inflatable colon may be an innovative way to help people learn about CRC and CRC screening; however, it is not significantly more effective than conventional table display methods. Further research is needed to associate intention to obtain screening after touring the inflatable colon with actual screening. Future research could explore ways to better retain knowledge at long-term follow-up.
Concept-based document readability in domain specific information retrieval

Domain specific information retrieval has become in demand. Not only domain experts, but also average non-expert users are interested in searching domain specific (e.g., medical and health) information from online resources. However, a typical problem to average users is that the search results are always a mixture of documents with different levels of readability. Non-expert users may want to see documents with higher readability on the top of the list. Consequently the search results need to be re-ranked in a descending order of readability. It is often not practical for domain experts to manually label the readability of documents for large databases. Computational models of readability needs to be investigated. However, traditional readability formulas are designed for general purpose text and insufficient to deal with technical materials for domain specific information retrieval. More advanced algorithms such as textual coherence model are computationally expensive for re-ranking a large number of retrieved documents. In this paper, we propose an effective and computationally tractable concept-based model of text readability. In addition to textual genres of a document, our model also takes into account domain specific knowledge, i.e., how the domain-specific concepts contained in the document affect the document's readability. Three major readability formulas are proposed and applied to health and medical information retrieval. Experimental results show that our proposed readability formulas lead to remarkable improvements in terms of correlation with users' readability ratings over four traditional readability measures.
The medial sural artery perforator flap in intra-oral reconstruction: A Northeast experience.

BACKGROUND
The medial sural artery perforator (MSAP) flap is a fasciocutaneous flap that is gaining popularity for intra-oral reconstructions. The aim of this two-centre review was to evaluate the use of the MSAP flap in intra-oral reconstructions and report our experiences.


METHODS
Data were collected prospectively on 35 consecutive intra-oral reconstructions using the free MSAP flap. Patient details and intraoperative flap details were recorded.


RESULTS
Thirty-five patients underwent intra-oral reconstruction with a free MSAP flap (26 males and nine females). The average flap dimensions were a length of 8.03 cm, a width of 5.0 cm and a thickness of 7.1 mm. Twenty-two flaps had two perforators, and the average pedicle length was 11.1 cm. There were no flap losses. Ninety-one per cent of donor sites were closed primarily. There were two minor complications related to donor-site wound dehiscence, which required delayed skin grafting. The overall complication rate was 5.7%.


CONCLUSIONS
The MSAP flap is a good choice for intra-oral reconstruction. It has reliable anatomy and provides thin, pliable skin with a long pedicle. In addition, donor morbidity is low as the donor site can be closed directly in most cases. It is currently our flap of choice for small intra-oral soft tissue defects.
The Effect of Health Belief Model-Based Education on Knowledge and Prostate Cancer Screening Behaviors: A Randomized Controlled Trial.

BACKGROUND
Prostate cancer has been reported as the second leading cause of cancer death among men in 2013. Prevention and early detection of cancer are considered as critical factors in controlling the disease and increasing the survival of patients. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the effect of Health Belief Model (HBM)-based education on knowledge and prostate cancer screening behaviors in a randomized controlled trial.


METHODS
This study was a non-blinded randomized controlled trial. We enrolled 210 men aged 50-70. Balanced block randomization method was used to randomize the final participants who had inclusion criteria into intervention (n=93) and control (n=87) groups. The participants of the intervention group attended training workshops based on HBM. Data were collected using three questionnaires, i.e. demographic questionnaire, Prostate Cancer Screening-Health Belief Model Scale (PCS-HBMS), and the Knowledge about Prostate Cancer Screening questionnaire, all given before and immediately one month after the intervention.


RESULTS
The mean scores of the perceived susceptibility, severity, barriers and benefits increased significantly after the intervention (P>0.05) in the intervention group. In the control group, such a difference was reported only for perceived susceptibility (P>0.05). The rate of participation in prostate cancer screening in the intervention group increased from 7.5% to 24% and 43.3% one month and three months after the intervention, respectively.


CONCLUSION
Our findings showed that the health education programs designed based on HBM could positively affect prostate cancer preventive behaviors of individuals by improving their knowledge level and leaving positive effects on perceived susceptibility and severity as well as considering the perceived barriers, benefits and health motivations.


TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER
IRCT2013090911691N3.
Jena: Implementing the RDF Model and Syntax Specification

Some aspects of W3C's RDF Model and Syntax Specification require careful reading and interpretation to produce a conformant implementation. Issues have arisen around anonymous resources, reification and RDF Graphs. These and other issues are identified, discussed and an interpretation of each is proposed. Jena, an RDF API in Java based on this interpretation, is described.
Gasoline demand and car choice: estimating gasoline demand using household information

In recent years, calls for carbon taxes as a policy tool to combat global warming have kept a discussion of the price and income elasticities of gasoline demand alive. To date, gasoline demand elasticity estimates are almost exclusively based on aggregate data that are subject to aggregation problems and make distributional concerns impossible to address. By using Ž . household-level data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics PSID and imputed fuel efficiency measures and gasoline prices, I estimate household demand for gasoline and the corresponding price and income demand elasticities. An attempt is made to include data on the car stock in the estimation since car-portfolio and gasoline demand decisions are closely related. Empirical results from a selection corrected gasoline demand regression suggest low short-run price and income elasticities and clear differences in gasoline demand across the population. These results suggest that a gasoline tax is not likely to result in large decreases in gasoline consumption while potentially imposing hardship on identifiable segments of the population. Q 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. JEL classification: H ; Q41 2
The choice of external morphological characters and developmental stages for tadpole-based anuran taxonomy: a case study in Rana (Sylvirana) nigrovittata (Blyth, 1855) (Amphibia, Anura, Ranidae)

The morphology of tadpoles has long received too little attention in taxonomic and phylogenetic contexts, beyond the use of Orton’s general tadpole types, despite the potential of larval characters for resolving problems in systematics. A possible explanation for this neglect is the ontogenetic variation of external morphology. In order to understand the value of larval characters in taxonomy and systematics, it is necessary to determine the developmental stage at which characters reach their definitive size, form and colour before meaningful comparisons can be made within and between species. Here I use the tadpole of Rana (Sylvirana) nigrovittata as a model organism to assess ontogenetic character variation. Morphometric measurements were taken, and external oral and internal buccal characters were assessed separately for each developmental stage from 26 to 38. Coefficients of variation were calculated for each morphometric character at each stage of development to test the character’s efficiency in reflecting the morphology of the tadpole. Most morphometric characters taken from the body described the shape of the animal well and varied little among individuals, whereas those taken from the tail were less reliable and those of the oral disk were quite variable due to contraction during fixation. A developmental 'climax' for most characters was reached by specimens between stages 32-40, indicating that they are best suited for morphological intraand interspecific comparisons.
Constraint Logic Programming approach to protein structure prediction

The protein structure prediction problem is one of the most challenging problems in biological sciences. Many approaches have been proposed using database information and/or simplified protein models. The protein structure prediction problem can be cast in the form of an optimization problem. Notwithstanding its importance, the problem has very seldom been tackled by Constraint Logic Programming, a declarative programming paradigm suitable for solving combinatorial optimization problems. Constraint Logic Programming techniques have been applied to the protein structure prediction problem on the face-centered cube lattice model. Molecular dynamics techniques, endowed with the notion of constraint, have been also exploited. Even using a very simplified model, Constraint Logic Programming on the face-centered cube lattice model allowed us to obtain acceptable results for a few small proteins. As a test implementation their (known) secondary structure and the presence of disulfide bridges are used as constraints. Simplified structures obtained in this way have been converted to all atom models with plausible structure. Results have been compared with a similar approach using a well-established technique as molecular dynamics. The results obtained on small proteins show that Constraint Logic Programming techniques can be employed for studying protein simplified models, which can be converted into realistic all atom models. The advantage of Constraint Logic Programming over other, much more explored, methodologies, resides in the rapid software prototyping, in the easy way of encoding heuristics, and in exploiting all the advances made in this research area, e.g. in constraint propagation and its use for pruning the huge search space.
Panel vector autoregressive models: a survey

This paper provides an overview of the panel VAR models used in macroeconomics and nance. It discusses what are their distinctive features, what they are used for, and how they can be derived from economic theory. It also describes how they are estimated and how shock identication is performed, and compares panel VARs to other approaches used in the literature to deal with dynamic models involving heterogeneous units. Finally, it shows how structural time variation can be dealt with and illustrates the challanges that they present to researchers interested in studying cross-unit dynamics interdependences in heterogeneous setups. JEL classication: C11, C30, C53. Key words: Panel VAR, Estimation, Identication, Inference.
Usability Maturity Model: Processes

A process model for human-centred activities in the system lifecycle based on ISO 13407, the British HCI Group ISM, the Philips HPI model and Eason and Harker’s human system maturity model. The background to the model is described. The model describes seven processes each defined by a set of base practices. The base practices are defined. A set of work products are given for each process. A summary is provided of the ISO 15504 scale for the assessment of the maturity of processes. The uses of the model are outlined. A recording form is supplied and its use described. Mappings of the base practices to processes in SPICE, CMM and SECMM are provided. The process model is conformant to ISO 15504. This version is prepared for INTERACT’99.
Pharmacokinetics, tolerability and safety of aripiprazole once-monthly in adult schizophrenia: An open-label, parallel-arm, multiple-dose study

This 24-week, open-label, Phase Ib, parallel-arm, multiple-dose trial assessed the pharmacokinetics, safety and tolerability of a once-monthly injection of aripiprazole (aripiprazole once-monthly) in 41 subjects with schizophrenia. The objective was to determine if aripiprazole plasma concentrations (at doses of 200, 300 and 400mg) were within the therapeutic range observed for the oral tablet (10-30 mg). Completion rates were 36.4% (n=4/11), 50.0% (n=8/16) and 71.4% (n=10/14) for the 200mg, 300 mg and 400mg groups, respectively. Patients were stabilized on oral aripiprazole (10mg/day) before the first injection and received oral aripiprazole (10mg/day) concomitantly with the first dose of aripiprazole once-monthly for 14 days. Administration of aripiprazole once-monthly at doses of 300 and 400mg provided sustained mean aripiprazole plasma concentrations comparable with the concentration range observed following multiple consecutive daily doses of oral aripiprazole. In contrast, plasma concentrations following administration of aripiprazole once-monthly at a dose of 200mg were below the therapeutic range and pharmacokinetic parameters were not proportional to the administered dose compared with the 300 mg and 400mg doses. Treatment with aripiprazole once-monthly, at any dose, did not result in any clinically meaningful changes from baseline in extrapyramidal symptom scales, clinical laboratory tests, vital signs, or electrocardiogram parameters. The most common treatment-emergent adverse events were vomiting (13.3%, 300 mg; 14.3%, 400mg), injection site pain (28.6%, 400mg), upper respiratory tract infection (10%, 200mg; 6.7% 300 mg; 14.3%, 400mg) and tremor (6.7%, 300 mg; 21.4%, 400mg). In conclusion, aripiprazole once-monthly at doses of 300 and 400mg is a viable formulation for treatment of adults with schizophrenia.
Biosimilars: a regulatory perspective from America

Biosimilars are protein products that are sufficiently similar to a biopharmaceutical already approved by a regulatory agency. Several biotechnology companies and generic drug manufacturers in Asia and Europe are developing biosimilars of tumor necrosis factor inhibitors and rituximab. A biosimilar etanercept is already being marketed in Colombia and China. In the US, several natural source products and recombinant proteins have been approved as generic drugs under Section 505(b)(2) of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. However, because the complexity of large biopharmaceuticals makes it difficult to demonstrate that a biosimilar is structurally identical to an already approved biopharmaceutical, this Act does not apply to biosimilars of large biopharmaceuticals. Section 7002 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, which is referred to as the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act of 2009, amends Section 351 of the Public Health Service Act to create an abbreviated pathway that permits a biosimilar to be evaluated by comparing it with only a single reference biological product. This paper reviews the processes for approval of biosimilars in the US and the European Union and highlights recent changes in federal regulations governing the approval of biosimilars in the US.
Trends in the market for privately owned seasonal recreational housing

The market for privately owned seasonal recreational properties, such as vacation homes, recreational lots, and resort condominiums has encountered many peaks and declines during the past 15 years. While demand for traditional types of recreational property has recently fallen off due to inflation and lack of financing, other alternatives such as resort timesharing are again beginning to stimulate the market.