Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Impact of Industrial Context on Procurement, Management and Development of Harvesting Services: A Comparison of Two Swedish Forest Owners Associations

Increasing demands to harvesting production and quality require improved management practices. This study’s purpose was to analyze the impact of industrial context on procurement, management, and development of harvesting services. Using interviews, functions were modeled at two forest owners associations (FOAs) with outsourced harvesting services. One FOA had its own sawmills, requiring frequent harvesting production adjustments to meet varying volume demand in the short-term. The long-term uncertainty was however low because of good visibility of future demand (>6 months). The other FOA did not own mills and produced wood according to fixed six-month delivery contracts. This meant few short-term production adjustments, but long-term uncertainty due to low visibility of future demand. Demand uncertainty resulted in corresponding needs for harvesting capacity flexibility. This could have been met by a corresponding proportion of short-term contracts for capacity. In this study, however, a large proportion (>90%) of long-term contracts was found, motivated by a perceived contractor shortage. It was also noted that although contractor investment cycles (4–6 years) matched the FOAs’ strategic horizons (3–5 years), contractors’ investment plans were not considered in the FOAs’ strategic planning. The study concludes with a characterization of different FOA contexts and their corresponding needs for capacity flexibility.
Brachial Plexus Tumors in a Consecutive Series of Twenty One Patients

Objective This is a retrospective review of 22 surgically treated benign and malignant tumors of brachial plexus region to describe clinical presentation, the characteristics of brachial plexus tumor and clinical outcomes with a literature review. Methods Twenty-one patients with consecutive 22 surgeries for primary brachial plexus tumors were enrolled between February 2002 and November 2011 were included in this study. The medical records of all patients were reviewed. Results Eleven male and 10 female patients were enrolled. Mean age was 39 years. Three patients had brachial plexus tumor associated with neurofibromatosis (13.6%). Presenting signs and symptoms included parenthesis and numbness (54.5%), radiating pain (22.7%), direct tenderness and pain (27.2%), palpable mass (77.3%). Twelve patients presented preoperative sensory deficit (54.5%) and 9 patients presented preoperative motor deficit (40.9%). Twenty tumors (90.9%) were benign and 2 tumors (9.1%) were malignant. Benign tumors included 15 schwannomas (68.2%), 4 neurofibromas (18.2%) and 1 granular cell tumor (4.5%). There were 1 malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumor (MPNST) and 1 malignant granular cell tumor. Gross total resection was achieved in 16 patients (72.7%), including all schwannomas, 1 neurofibroma. Subtotal resection was performed in 6 tumors (27.3%), including 3 neurofibromatosis associated with brachial plexus neurofibromas, 1 MPNST and 2 granular cell tumor in one patient. Conclusion Resection of tumor is the choice of tumor in the most of benign and malignant brachial plexus tumors. Postoperative outcomes are related to grade of resection at surgery and pathological features of tumor.
Subjective well-being in Swedish active seniors and its relationship with physical activity and commonly available biomarkers

Background Physical activity is claimed to be related to well-being and to a lower risk of cardiovascular disease. Therefore, the possible associations of well-being with physical activity and biomarkers of somatic health were studied in a sample of Swedish active seniors to determine the strength of these associations. Methods Three hundred and eighty-nine community-dwelling senior citizens (127 men and 262 women) of mean age 74±5 years were recruited for this cross-sectional population study. Serum samples were analyzed for lipoproteins and markers of inflammation. The Psychological General Well-Being (PGWB) index was used to measure subjective well-being. Physical activity was assessed by the International Physical Activity Questionnaire modified for the elderly. Results More than 50% of men and women rated their physical activity as high; in the women, there was a significant difference between the age groups (younger and older than the median age [median =74.1 years], respectively). The mean PGWB index indicates a high degree of subjective well-being in this group of Swedish seniors. Of the PGWB subdimensions, general health had the strongest positive relationship with physical activity (r2=5.4%). For the subdimensions of depressed mood, positive well-being, vitality, and PGWB index, physical activity had an r2 ≤4%, while the contributions of sex, age, and biomarkers were minor. Conclusion We have estimated the contribution of physical activity to the variance of subjective well-being in active seniors. Physical activity appears to play a greater role as a determinant of subjective well-being than do biomarkers of somatic health, especially in females, but most of the variance remained unaccounted for by the studied variables.
The Effect of Traditional Cupping on Pain and Mechanical Thresholds in Patients with Chronic Nonspecific Neck Pain: A Randomised Controlled Pilot Study

Introduction. Cupping has been used since antiquity in the treatment of pain conditions. In this pilot study, we investigated the effect of traditional cupping therapy on chronic nonspecific neck pain (CNP) and mechanical sensory thresholds. Methods. Fifty CNP patients were randomly assigned to treatment (TG, n = 25) or waiting list control group (WL, n = 25). TG received a single cupping treatment. Pain at rest (PR), pain related to movement (PM), quality of life (SF-36), Neck Disability Index (NDI), mechanical detection (MDT), vibration detection (MDT), and pressure pain thresholds (PPT) were measured before and three days after a single cupping treatment. Patients also kept a pain and medication diary (PaDi, MeDi) during the study. Results. Baseline characteristics were similar in the two groups. After cupping TG reported significantly less pain (PR: −17.9 mm VAS, 95%CI −29.2 to −6.6; PM: −19.7, 95%CI −32.2 to −7.2; PaDi: −1.5 points on NRS, 95%CI −2.5 to −0.4; all P < 0.05) and higher quality of life than WL (SF-36, Physical Functioning: 7.5, 95%CI 1.4 to 13.5; Bodily Pain: 14.9, 95%CI 4.4 to 25.4; Physical Component Score: 5.0, 95%CI 1.4 to 8.5; all P < 0.05). No significant effect was found for NDI, MDT, or VDT, but TG showed significantly higher PPT at pain-areas than WL (in lg(kPa); pain-maximum: 0.088, 95%CI 0.029 to 0.148, pain-adjacent: 0.118, 95%CI 0.038 to 0.199; both P < 0.01). Conclusion. A single application of traditional cupping might be an effective treatment for improving pain, quality of life, and hyperalgesia in CNP.
Free Radical Biology in Skeletal Muscle Ventilatory muscle activation and inflammation : cytokines , reactive oxygen species , and nitric oxide

Vassilakopoulos T, Hussain SN. Ventilatory muscle activation and inflammation: cytokines, reactive oxygen species, and nitric oxide. J Appl Physiol 102: 1687–1695, 2007. First published December 21, 2006; doi:10.1152/japplphysiol.01273. 2006. — Strenuous diaphragmatic contractions that are induced by inspiratory resistive breathing initiate an inflammatory response that involves the elevation of proand anti-inflammatory cytokines within the diaphragm, which may then spill into the circulation. The production of reactive oxygen species within working respiratory muscles increases in response to these strenuous diaphragmatic contractions. At the same time, diaphragmatic nitric oxide (NO) production declines significantly, despite a time-dependent increase in NO synthase isoform protein expression. The increase in adhesion molecule expression and infiltration of granulocytes and macrophages that follows may contribute to the contraction-induced diaphragm injury. Enhanced generation of reactive oxygen species, oxidative stress augmentation, reduced NO production, and glycogen depletion are potential stimuli for the cytokine induction that is secondary to strenuous diaphragmatic contractions. This production of cytokines within the diaphragm may contribute to the diaphragmatic muscle fiber injury that occurs with strenuous contractions or to the expected repair process. TNFis a cytokine that compromises diaphragmatic contractility and may contribute to muscle wasting. IL-6 is a cytokine that may have beneficial systemic effects by mobilizing glucose from the liver and free fatty acids from the adipose tissue and providing them to the strenuously working respiratory muscles. Thus cytokine upregulation within the working diaphragm may be adaptive and maladaptive.
An Evolutionary Model-Based Algorithm for Accurate Phylogenetic Breakpoint Mapping and Subtype Prediction in HIV-1

Genetically diverse pathogens (such as Human Immunodeficiency virus type 1, HIV-1) are frequently stratified into phylogenetically or immunologically defined subtypes for classification purposes. Computational identification of such subtypes is helpful in surveillance, epidemiological analysis and detection of novel variants, e.g., circulating recombinant forms in HIV-1. A number of conceptually and technically different techniques have been proposed for determining the subtype of a query sequence, but there is not a universally optimal approach. We present a model-based phylogenetic method for automatically subtyping an HIV-1 (or other viral or bacterial) sequence, mapping the location of breakpoints and assigning parental sequences in recombinant strains as well as computing confidence levels for the inferred quantities. Our Subtype Classification Using Evolutionary ALgorithms (SCUEAL) procedure is shown to perform very well in a variety of simulation scenarios, runs in parallel when multiple sequences are being screened, and matches or exceeds the performance of existing approaches on typical empirical cases. We applied SCUEAL to all available polymerase (pol) sequences from two large databases, the Stanford Drug Resistance database and the UK HIV Drug Resistance Database. Comparing with subtypes which had previously been assigned revealed that a minor but substantial (≈5%) fraction of pure subtype sequences may in fact be within- or inter-subtype recombinants. A free implementation of SCUEAL is provided as a module for the HyPhy package and the Datamonkey web server. Our method is especially useful when an accurate automatic classification of an unknown strain is desired, and is positioned to complement and extend faster but less accurate methods. Given the increasingly frequent use of HIV subtype information in studies focusing on the effect of subtype on treatment, clinical outcome, pathogenicity and vaccine design, the importance of accurate, robust and extensible subtyping procedures is clear.
Prevalence of Psoriatic Arthritis in a Large Cohort of Brazilian Patients with Psoriasis

Objective. To determine the prevalence of psoriatic arthritis (PsA) in a large cohort of Brazilian patients with psoriasis (PsO) being seen at dermatology centers. Methods. A multicenter study was conducted in 4 university dermatology clinics. In each center, consecutive patients with confirmed diagnoses of PsO were evaluated by a rheumatologist. Individuals were classified as having PsA according to the ClASsification criteria for Psoriatic ARthritis (CASPAR). Laboratory tests and radiographs were performed, as needed, based on the clinical judgment of the rheumatologist. Results. A total of 524 patients with PsO were evaluated. The mean age was 48.5 ± 14.5 years, 50% were women, and the mean PsO duration was 15.4 ± 11.7 years. A diagnosis of PsA was documented in 175 patients (33%), of whom 49% were newly identified by the rheumatologist. Most individuals with PsA (72%) had peripheral involvement, 11% had isolated axial involvement, and 17% had both peripheral and axial involvement. Dactylitis occurred in 20% and clinical enthesitis in 30% of the patients. Laboratory and/or radiograph tests were necessary for a definitive diagnosis of PsA in 42 of 175 individuals (24%). Conclusion. In our study, one-third of Brazilian patients with PsO, followed in dermatology settings, were diagnosed with PsA by a rheumatologist. Almost half of subjects with PsA had no previous diagnosis. A collaboration between dermatologists and rheumatologists is greatly needed to establish earlier PsA diagnoses and adequate multidisciplinary management.
An Example-Based Face Hallucination Method for Single-Frame, Low-Resolution Facial Images

This paper proposes a face hallucination method for the reconstruction of high-resolution facial images from single-frame, low-resolution facial images. The proposed method has been derived from example-based hallucination methods and morphable face models. First, we propose a recursive error back-projection method to compensate for residual errors, and a region-based reconstruction method to preserve characteristics of local facial regions. Then, we define an extended morphable face model, in which an extended face is composed of the interpolated high-resolution face from a given low-resolution face, and its original high-resolution equivalent. Then, the extended face is separated into an extended shape and an extended texture. We performed various hallucination experiments using the MPI, XM2VTS, and KF databases, compared the reconstruction errors, structural similarity index, and recognition rates, and showed the effects of face detection errors and shape estimation errors. The encouraging results demonstrate that the proposed methods can improve the performance of face recognition systems. Especially the proposed method can enhance the resolution of single-frame, low-resolution facial images.
Optimizing nearest neighbour configurations for airborne laser scanning-assisted estimation of forest volume and biomass

Inferences for forest-related spatial problems can be enhanced using remote sensing-based maps constructed with nearest neighbours techniques. The non-parametric k-nearest neighbours (k-NN) technique calculates predictions as linear combinations of observations for sample units that are nearest in a space of auxiliary variables to population units for which predictions are desired. Implementations of k-NN require four choices: a distance or similarity metric, the specific auxiliary variables to be used with the metric, the number of nearest neighbours, and a scheme for weighting the nearest neighbours. The study objective was to compare optimized k-NN configurations with respect to confidence intervals for airborne laser scanning-assisted estimates of mean volume or biomass per unit area for study areas in Norway, Italy, and the USA. Novel features of the study include a new neighbour weighting scheme, a statistically rigorous method for selecting feature variables, simultaneous optimization with respect to all four k-NN implementation choices and comparisons based on confidence intervals for population means. The primary conclusions were that optimization greatly increased the precision of estimates and that the results of optimization were similar for the k-NN configurations considered. Together, these two conclusions suggest that optimization itself is more important than the particular k-NN configuration that is optimized.
Immunization with a DNA Vaccine Cocktail Protects Mice Lacking CD4 Cells against an Aerogenic Infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis

ABSTRACT Tuberculosis (TB) is the most common opportunistic disease and a potentially fatal complication among immunocompromised individuals infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Effective vaccination against TB in persons with HIV has been considered unlikely because of the central role that CD4 cells play in controlling tuberculous infections. Here we show that the vaccination of CD8−/− mice with a TB DNA vaccine cocktail did not significantly enhance protective responses to a Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection. In contrast, immunization with a DNA vaccine cocktail or with the current TB vaccine, Mycobacterium bovis BCG, induced considerable antituberculosis protective immunity in immune-deficient mice lacking CD4 cells. In vaccinated CD4−/− animals, substantially reduced bacterial burdens in organs and much improved lung pathology were seen 1 month after an aerogenic M. tuberculosis challenge. Importantly, the postchallenge mean times to death of vaccinated CD4−/− mice were significantly extended (mean with DNA cocktail, 172 ± 7 days; mean with BCG, 156 ± 22 days) compared to that of naïve CD4−/− mice (33 ± 6 days). Furthermore, the treatment of DNA-vaccinated CD4−/− mice with an anti-CD8 or anti-gamma interferon (IFN-γ) antibody significantly reduced the effect of immunization, and neither IFN-γ−/− nor tumor necrosis factor receptor-deficient mice were protected by DNA immunization; therefore, the primary vaccine-induced protective mechanism in these immune-deficient mice likely involves the secretion of cytokines from activated CD8 cells. The substantial CD8-mediated protective immunity that was generated in the absence of CD4 cells suggests that it may be possible to develop effective TB vaccines for use in HIV-infected populations.
Prediction of Impaired Performance in Trail Making Test in MCI Patients With Small Vessel Disease Using DTI Data

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a common condition in patients with diffuse hyperintensities of cerebral white matter (WM) in T2-weighted magnetic resonance images and cerebral small vessel disease (SVD). In MCI due to SVD, the most prominent feature of cognitive impairment lies in degradation of executive functions, i.e., of processes that supervise the organization and execution of complex behavior. The trail making test is a widely employed test sensitive to cognitive processing speed and executive functioning. MCI due to SVD has been hypothesized to be the effect of WM damage, and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is a well-established technique for in vivo characterization of WM. We propose a machine learning scheme tailored to 1) predicting the impairment in executive functions in patients with MCI and SVD, and 2) examining the brain substrates of this impairment. We employed data from 40 MCI patients with SVD and created feature vectors by averaging mean diffusivity (MD) and fractional anisotropy maps within 50 WM regions of interest. We trained support vector machines (SVMs) with polynomial as well as radial basis function kernels using different DTI-derived features while simultaneously optimizing parameters in leave-one-out nested cross validation. The best performance was obtained using MD features only and linear kernel SVMs, which were able to distinguish an impaired performance with high sensitivity (72.7%-89.5%), specificity (71.4%-83.3%), and accuracy (77.5%-80.0%). While brain substrates of executive functions are still debated, feature ranking confirm that MD in several WM regions, not limited to the frontal lobes, are truly predictive of executive functions.
Ageing and the auditory system

There are a number of pathophysiological processes underlying age related changes in the auditory system. The effects of hearing loss can have consequences beyond the immediate loss of hearing, and may have profound effects on the functioning of the person. While a deficit in hearing can be corrected to some degree by a hearing aid, auditory rehabilitation requires much more than simply amplifying external sound. It is important that those dealing with elderly people are aware of all the issues involved in age related hearing loss.
A Review of Marital Intimacy-Enhancing Interventions among Married Individuals

Background: Lack of intimacy is currently the main concern rather than main concern of the experts in psychology and counseling. It is considered as one of the most important causes for divorce and as such to improve marital intimacy a great number of interventions have been proposed in the literature. Intimacy training and counseling make the couples take effective and successful steps to increase marital intimacy. No study has reviewed the interventions promoting marital intimacy after marriage. Thus, this review study aimed to classify the articles investigating the impact of interventional programs on marital intimacy after marriage. Search Methods: In April 2015, we performed a general search in Google Scholar search engines, and then we did an advanced search the databases of Science Direct, ProQuest, SID, Magiran, Irandoc, Pubmed, Scopus, Cochrane Library, and Psych info; Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL). Also, lists of the references of the relevant articles were reviewed for additional citations. Using Medical Subject Headings (MESH) keywords: Intervention (Clinical Trials, Non-Randomized Controlled Trials, Randomized Controlled Trials, Education), intimacy, marital (Marriage) and selected related articles to the study objective were from 1995 to April 2015. Clinical trials that evaluated one or more behavioral interventions to improve marital intimacy were reviewed in the study. Main Results: 39 trials met the inclusion criteria. Eleven interventions had follow-up, and 28 interventions lacked follow-up. The quality evidence for 22 interventions was low, for 15 interventions moderate, and for one intervention was considered high. Findings from studies were categorized in 11 categories as the intimacy promoting interventions in dimensions of emotional, psychological, physical, sexual, temporal, communicational, social and recreational, aesthetic, spiritual, intellectual intimacy, and total intimacy. Authors’ Conclusions: Improving and promoting communication, problem solving, self-disclosure and empathic response skills and sexual education and counseling in the form of cognitive-behavioral techniques and based on religious and cultural context of each society, an effective step can be taken to enhance marital intimacy and strengthen family bonds and stability. Health care providers should consider which interventions are appropriate to the couple characteristics and their relationships.
Introgression of apomixis into sexual species is inhibited by mentor effects and ploidy barriers in the Ranunculus auricomus complex

Background and Aims Apomictic plants maintain functional pollen, and via pollination the genetic factors controlling apomixis can be potentially transferred to congeneric sexual populations. In contrast, the sexual individuals do not fertilize apomictic plants which produce seeds without fertilization of the egg cells. This unidirectional introgressive hybridization is expected finally to replace sexuality by apomixis and is thought to be a causal factor for the wide geographical distribution of apomictic complexes. Nevertheless, this process may be inhibited by induced selfing (mentor effects) of otherwise self-incompatible sexual individuals. Here whether mentor effects or actual cross-fertilization takes place between diploid sexual and polyploid apomictic cytotypes in the Ranunculus auricomus complex was tested via experimental crosses. Methods Diploid sexual mother plants were pollinated with tetra- and hexaploid apomictic pollen donators by hand, and the amount of well-developed seed compared with aborted seed was evaluated. The reproductive pathways were assessed in the well-developed seed via flow cytometric seed screen (FCSS). Key Results The majority of seed was aborted; the well-developed seeds have resulted from both mentor effects and cross-fertilization at very low frequencies (1·3 and 1·6 % of achenes, respectively). Pollination by 4x apomictic pollen plants results more frequently in cross-fertilization, whereas pollen from 6x plants more frequently induced mentor effects. Conclusions It is concluded that introgression of apomixis into sexual populations is limited by ploidy barriers in the R. auricomus complex, and to a minor extent by mentor effects. In mixed populations, sexuality cannot be replaced by apomixis because the higher fertility of sexual populations still compensates the low frequencies of potential introgression of apomixis.