Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Association Between Somatization and Perceived Ability: Roles in Dysmenorrhea Among Israeli Arab Adolescents

Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate whether somatization and attitudes toward menstruation predict the incidence of pain intensity and dysmenorrhea among Israeli Arab adolescent females. Methods: Participants were 160 Israeli Arab adolescents, including 50 Muslims, 50 Christians, and 60 Druze. A 20-item questionnaire was used to assess attitudes regarding menstruation. The short version of the Brief Symptom Inventory was used to measure the level of somatization. Results: Factor analysis of the Attitudes Toward Menstruation Instrument revealed two significant composites: perceived ability and impurity during menstruation. High levels of somatization predicted pain intensity and low levels of perceived ability predicted the prevalence of dysmenorrhea. Although the Israeli Muslim adolescents revealed higher levels of somatization as compared with their Christian and Druze counterparts and the Druze revealed the lowest levels of perceived ability compared with the other subgroups, no significant role for ethnicity and impurity was found. No differences were found between groups in scores of menstrual pain and prevalence of dysmenorrhea. Higher levels of somatization and lower levels of perceived ability, as well as a greater portion of Muslim and Druze and higher levels of religiosity, were found among rural residents. Conclusions: The role of cultural variables and personality traits in the complexity of dysmenorrhea as a socio-bio-psychological phenomenon is proposed in light of contemporary interactive models. It is suggested that within the Israeli Arab minorities the impact of cultural background on health affects more the perceptual and cognitive levels and are not generalized to overt behavior and morbidity such as dysmenorrhea. VAS = visual analog scale; ATMI = Attitudes Toward Menstruation Instrument
Pamidronate reduces bone loss after allogeneic stem cell transplantation.

BACKGROUND Rapid bone loss occurs from the proximal femur after allogeneic stem cell transplantation (alloSCT). OBJECTIVE The objective of the study was to evaluate effects of high-dose pamidronate therapy on bone loss (BMD) after alloSCT. DESIGN This was a randomized, multicenter, open-label, 12-month prospective study of iv pamidronate (90 mg/month) beginning before conditioning vs. no pamidronate. All 116 patients also received calcitriol (0.25 microg/d) and calcium (1000 mg/d), which were continued for another year. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Primary objectives were to compare changes in BMD 12 months after alloSCT at the femoral neck, lumbar spine, and total hip between the treatment arms and assess influences of glucocorticoid and cyclosporin therapy on these changes. RESULTS Pamidronate reduced bone loss at the spine, femoral neck, and total hip by 5.6, 7.7, and 4.9% (all P < or = 0.003), respectively, at 12 months. However, BMD of the femoral neck and total hip was still 2.8 and 3.5% lower than baseline, respectively (P < 0.05) with pamidronate. Only differences at the total hip remained significant between the two groups at 24 months. Benefits were restricted to patients receiving an average daily prednisolone dose greater than 10 mg and cyclosporin therapy for more than 5 months within the first 6 months of alloSCT. CONCLUSIONS Pamidronate markedly reduced but did not completely prevent postallogeneic bone marrow transplantation bone loss. BMD benefits were greatest in patients on higher doses of immunosuppressive therapy, but most were lost 12 months after stopping pamidronate. Studies of more potent bisphosphonates or anabolic therapy with PTH after alloSCT are warranted with the aim of durable maintenance of bone mass.
A system for extracting top-K lists from the web

List data is an important source of structured data on the web. This paper is concerned with "top-k" pages, which are web pages that describe a list of k instances of a particular topic or concept. Examples include "the 10 tallest persons in the world" and "the 50 hits of 2010 you don't want to miss". Compared to normal web list data, "top-k" lists contain richer information and are easier to understand. Therefore the extraction of such lists can help enrich existing knowledge bases about general concepts, or act as a preprocessing step to produce facts for a fact answering engine. We present an efficient system that extracts the target lists from web pages with high accuracy. We have used the system to process up to 160 million, or 1/10 of a high-frequency web snapshot from Bing, and obtained over 140,000 lists with 90.4% precision.
Machine Translation of Arabic Dialects

Arabic Dialects present many challenges for machine translation, not least of which is the lack of data resources. We use crowdsourcing to cheaply and quickly build Levantine-English and Egyptian-English parallel corpora, consisting of 1.1M words and 380k words, respectively. The dialectal sentences are selected from a large corpus of Arabic web text, and translated using Amazon's Mechanical Turk. We use this data to build Dialectal Arabic MT systems, and find that small amounts of dialectal data have a dramatic impact on translation quality. When translating Egyptian and Levantine test sets, our Dialectal Arabic MT system performs 6.3 and 7.0 BLEU points higher than a Modern Standard Arabic MT system trained on a 150M-word Arabic-English parallel corpus.
Serum levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor and thiobarbituric acid reactive substances in chronically medicated schizophrenic patients: a positive correlation.

OBJECTIVE The neurotrophins, antioxidant enzymes and oxidative markers have reciprocal interactions. This report verified in chronically stable medicated schizophrenic patients whether there are correlations between the serum levels of superoxide dismutase, a key enzyme in the antioxidant defense, thiobarbituric acid reactive substances, a direct index of lipid peroxidation, and brain-derived neurotrophic factor, the most widely distributed neurotrophin. METHOD Sixty DSM-IV schizophrenic patients were included (43 males, 17 females). Mean age was 34.7 +/- 10.8 years, mean age at first episode was 19.8 +/- 7.9 years, and mean illness duration was 14.9 +/- 8.5 years. Each subject had a blood sample collected for the determination of serum levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, thiobarbituric acid reactive substances and superoxide dismutase. RESULTS Brain-derived neurotrophic factor levels showed a positive correlation with thiobarbituric acid reactive substances levels (r = 0.333, p = 0.009). Brain-derived neurotrophic factor levels were not correlated with superoxide dismutase levels (r = - 0.181, p = 0.166), and superoxide dismutase levels were not correlated with thiobarbituric acid reactive substances levels (r = 0.141, p = 0.284). CONCLUSIONS The positive correlation between brain-derived neurotrophic factor and thiobarbituric acid reactive substances suggests the need of further investigation on intracellular interactions of neurotrophins, antioxidant enzymes and oxidative markers. In addition, this opens a venue for investigation on treatments for the prevention of neurotoxicity along the course of schizophrenia.
Bactericidal antibody after colonization with Neisseria meningitidis.

Immunity to meningococcal disease is correlated with the presence of bactericidal antibody in serum. The role of the carrier state in stimulating production of bactericidal antibody was studied by obtaining samples of serum from military recruits before and after colonization with Neisseria meningitidis. The sera from 38 men, all of whom harbored meningococci that could not be grouped serologically, were assayed for bactericidal activity against their homologous carrier strains and selected pathogenic strains of groups A, B, C, and Y. Among these men, 38.9% developed antibody to their own strain; the proportion of those developing antibody to selected pathogenic strains of groups A, B, C, and Y was 20.6%, 52%, 47.8%, and 7.9%, respectively. These studies indicate that colonization of the nasopharynx of adults with nongroupable meningococci, which rarely cause disease, can be a potent stimulus to the production of bactericidal antibody, not only against the carrier's own nongroupable strain, but also against selected strains of known pathogenicity. These observations support the role of the nongroupable carrier state in developing and maintaining natural immunity to meningococcal disease.
Extraction/chromatographic testosterone RIA can be used as the "gold standard" for determining the reliability of direct testosterone immunoassay measurements.

In their reply to my letter to the editor published in a recent issue of Clinical Chemistry (1), Herold and Fitzgerald state that there are no convincing data showing that extraction/chromatography testosterone RIAs work. In addition, they conclude that unless an extraction/chromatographic RIA has been validated against a gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GS-MS) method, the results generated from such tests are subject to question. I disagree with their point of view. The extraction/chromatography RIA method has been used for measurement of testosterone and many other steroid hormones ever since the RIA method was first developed by Abraham (2) for measuring estradiol in 1969. Over the years, this RIA method has remained essentially the same, with the exceptions that tritiated ligands used in the RIAs have been replaced with iodinated derivatives to improve assay sensitivity and that more-specific antibodies are used. When properly validated with respect to sensitivity, accuracy, precision, and specificity and …
Prevalence and factors associated with sleep disturbances among early-treated HIV-infected persons.

BACKGROUND Sleep disturbances are reportedly common among persons infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), but recent data, including comparisons with HIV-uninfected persons, are limited. METHODS We performed a cross-sectional study among early-treated HIV-infected military beneficiaries (n = 193) to determine the prevalence and factors associated with insomnia (Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index [PSQI]) and daytime sleepiness (Epworth Sleepiness Scale [ESS]). Data were compared with HIV-uninfected persons (n = 50) matched by age, sex, race or ethnicity, and military rank. RESULTS Forty-six percent of HIV-infected persons had insomnia (PSQI >5), and 30% reported daytime drowsiness (ESS ≥10). The prevalence of insomnia and daytime sleepiness was not significantly higher compared with the HIV-uninfected group (38% [P = .30] and 20% [P = .18], respectively). In the multivariate model, factors associated with insomnia among HIV infected patients included depression (odds ratio [OR], 16.8; 95% confidence interval [CI], 2.0-142.1; P = .01), increased waist size (OR, 2.7; 95% CI, 1.4-5.1; P = .002), and fewer years of education (OR, 0.8; 95% CI, .7-.95; P = .006). Neurocognitive impairment (diagnosed in 19% of HIV-infected participants) was not associated with insomnia; however, HIV-infected persons with insomnia were 3.1-fold more likely to have a decline in activities of daily living than those without insomnia (23% vs 9%; P = .01). Only 18% of HIV-infected persons reported using a sleep medication at least weekly. CONCLUSIONS HIV-infected persons have a high prevalence of insomnia, but among an early-treated cohort this rate was not significantly higher compared with HIV-uninfected persons. Factors associated with insomnia among HIV-infected patients include depression and increased waist size. Prompt diagnosis and treatment of sleep disturbances are advocated and may improve quality of life.
Neuropeptides CRH, SP, HK-1, and Inflammatory Cytokines IL-6 and TNF Are Increased in Serum of Patients with Fibromyalgia Syndrome, Implicating Mast Cells

Fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) is a chronic, idiopathic condition of widespread musculoskeletal pain affecting more women than men. Even though clinical studies have provided evidence of altered central pain pathways, the lack of definitive pathogenesis or reliable objective markers has hampered development of effective treatments. Here we report that the neuropeptides corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH), substance P (SP), and SP-structurally-related hemokinin-1 (HK-1) were significantly (P = 0.026, P < 0.0001, and P = 0.002, respectively) elevated (0.82 ± 0.57 ng/ml, 0.39 ± 0.18 ng/ml, and 7.98 ± 3.12 ng/ml, respectively) in the serum of patients with FMS compared with healthy controls (0.49 ± 0.26 ng/ml, 0.12 ± 0.1 ng/ml, and 5.71 ± 1.08 ng/ml, respectively). Moreover, SP and HK-1 levels were positively correlated (Pearson r = 0.45, P = 0.002) in FMS. The serum concentrations of the inflammatory cytokines interleukin (IL)-6 and tumor necrosis factor (TNF) were also significantly (P = 0.029 and P = 0.006, respectively) higher (2.97 ± 2.35 pg/ml and 0.92 ± 0.31 pg/ml, respectively) in the FMS group compared with healthy subjects (1.79 ± 0.62 pg/ml and 0.69 ± 0.16 pg/ml, respectively). In contrast, serum IL-31 and IL-33 levels were significantly lower (P = 0.0001 and P = 0.044, respectively) in the FMS patients (849.5 ± 1005 pg/ml and 923.2 ± 1284 pg/ml, respectively) in comparison with healthy controls (1281 ± 806.4 pg/ml and 3149 ± 4073 pg/ml, respectively). FMS serum levels of neurotensin were not different from controls. We had previously shown that CRH and SP stimulate IL-6 and TNF release from mast cells (MCs). Our current results indicate that neuropeptides could stimulate MCs to secrete inflammatory cytokines that contribute importantly to the symptoms of FMS. Treatment directed at preventing the secretion or antagonizing these elevated neuroimmune markers, both centrally and peripherally, may prove to be useful in the management of FMS.
Association between Neurocognitive Impairment and the Short Allele of the 5-HTT Promoter Polymorphism in Depression: A Pilot Study

Depression has been shown to be associated with cognitive deficits in various cognitive domains. However, it is still unclear which factors contribute to cognitive impairment. The objective of this study was to find out whether a functional polymorphism in the promoter region of the serotonin transporter (5-HTTLPR) gene is associated with the impairment of cognitive functioning among depressed patients. In a pilot study, a sample of 19 patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) and 19 healthy controls was investigated with an extensive psychiatric and neuropsychological examination. All participants were genotyped for 5-HTTLPR. Depressed patients with the short allele of the 5-HTT promoter region exhibited inferior cognitive performance compared to patients with the long allele polymorphism. In healthy controls, no association between genotype and cognitive performance was found. The result suggests that in MDD patients with the short allele of the 5-HTTLPR polymorphism the vulnerability to cognitive impairment is increased compared to MDD patients without the short allele inheritance. These preliminary findings need to be confirmed in a larger cohort of MDD patients.
Chapter for the book Consolidation of Fine Tuning On the Habitability of Our Universe

Is life most likely to emerge at the present cosmic time near a star like the Sun? We consider the habitability of the Universe throughout cosmic history, and conservatively restrict our attention to the context of “life as we know it” and the standard cosmological model, ΛCDM. The habitable cosmic epoch started shortly after the first stars formed, about 30 Myr after the Big Bang, and will end about 10 Tyr from now, when all stars will die. We review the formation history of habitable planets and find that unless habitability around low mass stars is suppressed, life is most likely to exist near ∼ 0.1M stars ten trillion years from now. Spectroscopic searches for biosignatures in the atmospheres of transiting Earth-mass planets around low mass stars will determine whether present-day life is indeed premature or typical from a cosmic perspective. ar X iv :1 60 6. 08 92 6v 1 [ as tr oph . C O ] 2 9 Ju n 20 16
Municipal Leachate Treatment by Fenton Process: Effect of Some Variable and Kinetics

Due to complex composition of leachate, the comprehensive leachate treatment methods have been not demonstrated. Moreover, the improper management of leachate can lead to many environmental problems. The aim of this study was application of Fenton process for decreasing the major pollutants of landfill leachate on Kermanshah city. The leachate was collected from Kermanshah landfill site and treated by Fenton process. The effect of various parameters including solution pH, Fe2+ and H2O2 dosage, Fe2+/H2O2 molar ratio, and reaction time was investigated. The result showed that with increasing Fe2+ and H2O2 dosage, Fe2+/H2O2 molar ratio, and reaction time, the COD, TOC, TSS, and color removal increased. The maximum COD, TOC, TSS, and color removal were obtained at low pH (pH: 3). The kinetic data were analyzed in term of zero-order, first-order, and second-order expressions. First-order kinetic model described the removal of COD, TOC, TSS, and color from leachate better than two other kinetic models. In spite of extremely difficulty of leachate treatment, the previous results seem rather encouraging on the application of Fenton's oxidation.
MOTIVES FOR ASSET REVALUATION POLICY CHOICE IN CROATIA

Slavko Sodan University of Split / Faculty of Economics Matice hrvatske 31, 21 000 Split, Croatia Phone: ++ 38521430763; E-mail: ssodan@efst.hr Abstract The aim of this paper is to research managers’ motives of accounting policy choice for long-term nonfinancial assets. International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) allow managers to choose between cost and revaluation model for measurement after recognition. The assumption is that manager’s decision is opportunistic so they use the revaluation model as a device to improve perceptive borrowing capacity of a company, and consequently, to reduce debt cost. Prior studies were mainly conducted in developed, marketoriented economies, unlike Croatia. The contribution of this paper is the research of motives and determinants of asset revaluation policy choice in bank-oriented economies with inactive markets. Furthermore, multivariate logistic regression was not used as a research method in this field of accounting in transition and emerging economies till now. Empirical evidence is provided through the sample of Croatian listed companies and the results show that large, profitable companies with low liquidity ratio, low cash flow ratio and increasing debt are more likely to perform upward revaluation.
Paratome: an online tool for systematic identification of antigen-binding regions in antibodies based on sequence or structure

Antibodies are capable of specifically recognizing and binding antigens. Identification of the antigen-binding site, commonly dubbed paratope, is of high importance both for medical and biological applications. To date, the identification of antigen-binding regions (ABRs) relies on tools for the identification of complementarity-determining regions (CDRs). However, we have shown that up to 22% of the residues that actually bind the antigen fall outside the traditionally defined CDRs. The Paratome web server predicts the ABRs of an antibody, given its amino acid sequence or 3D structure. It is based on a set of consensus regions derived from a structural alignment of a non-redundant set of all known antibody–antigen complexes. Given a query sequence or structure, the server identifies the regions in the query antibody that correspond to the consensus ABRs. An independent set of antibody–antigen complexes was used to test the server and it was shown to correctly identify at least 94% of the antigen-binding residues. The Paratome web server is freely available at http://www.ofranlab. org/paratome/.
Estimation of Low Temperature Properties of RAP Binder Without Extraction

In recent years, the use of reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) as a component of asphalt mixtures has become a common practice. For many years, researchers and DOT officials have questioned the adverse effects, if any, of using solvents to extract and recover the binder. Therefore, researchers have been investigating new methods, without extraction techniques, of estimating the RAP binder properties, especially with respect to the low-temperature characteristics of binders and the mixtures. The major goal of this research project was to determine if the low-temperature properties of the aged asphalt binder in RAP could be obtained by using the fines (-#50 to +#100) generated from sieved RAP materials rather than from the binder extracted from the RAP. In addition, the low-temperature characteristics of several mixtures containing RAP were studied and evaluated for any correlation with the binder properties. Several samples were made with different RAP sources, different percentages of RAP content, various low temperatures (i.e., 0, -6, -12, and -18 °C), and at virgin, RTFO, and PAV states. In addition, some of the RAP sources were obtained again after one year, and bending beam rheometer (BBR) testing was conducted. Other testing procedures and specifications such as indirect tensile strength (ITS) and semi-circle bending (SCB) were used and evaluated.
Breakthrough Technologies AGRONOMICS 1 : A New Resource for Arabidopsis Transcriptome Profiling 1

Functional Genomics Center Zurich, ETH and University of Zurich, CH–8057 Zurich, Switzerland (H.R., C.A., A.P.); Department of Biology and Zurich-Basel Plant Science Center, ETH Zurich, CH–8092 Zurich, Switzerland (W.G., H.S., L.H.); Department of Molecular Biology, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, D–72076 Tuebingen, Germany (S.R.H., S.L., D.W., G.Z.); Department of Plant Systems Biology, Flanders Institute for Biotechnology, B–9052 Ghent, Belgium (P.H., N.N., S.R., Y.V.d.P., M.V.); and Department of Plant Biotechnology and Genetics, Ghent University, B–9052 Ghent, Belgium (P.H., N.N., S.R., Y.V.d.P., M.V.)
Downregulation of microRNA-29 by antisense inhibitors and a PPAR-gamma agonist protects against myocardial ischaemia-reperfusion injury.

AIMS MicroRNAs (miRNAs) regulate various cardiac processes including cell proliferation and apoptosis. Pioglitazone (PIO), a peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR)-gamma agonist, protects against myocardial ischaemia-reperfusion (IR) injury. We assessed the effects of PPAR-gamma activation on myocardial miRNA levels and the role of miRNAs in IR injury. METHODS AND RESULTS We evaluated the expression changes of miRNAs in the rat heart after PIO administration using miRNA arrays and then confirmed the result by northern blot. miR-29a and c levels decreased remarkably after 7-day treatment with PIO. In H9c2 cells, the effects of PIO and rosiglitazone on miR-29 expression levels were blocked by a selective PPAR-gamma inhibitor GW9662. Downregulation of miR-29 by antisense inhibitor or by PIO protected H9c2 cells from simulated IR injury, indicated as increased cell survival and decreased caspase-3 activity. In contrast, overexpressing miR-29 promoted apoptosis and completely blocked the protective effect of PIO. Antagomirs against miR-29a or -29c significantly reduced myocardial infarct size and apoptosis in hearts subjected to IR injury. Western blot analyses demonstrated that Mcl-2, an anti-apoptotic Bcl-2 family member, was increased by miR-29 inhibition. CONCLUSION Downregulation of miR-29 protected hearts against IR injury. The modulation of miRNAs can be achieved by pharmacological intervention. These findings provide a rationale for the development of miRNA-based strategies for the attenuation of IR injury.