Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Relations between asphaltene content, viscosity reduction rate of heavy oil and ultrasonic parameters

Abstract Ultrasonic treatment could decrease the viscosity of heavy oil and previous study on had focused on one heavy oil sample and involved less on the influence of asphaltene content. This study examined the effect of asphaltene content on viscosity reduction rate by ultrasonication. A comparison on samples with various asphaltene content and vibration parameter was made. The results showed that the optimal vibration frequency might decrease as the asphaltene content increased, whereas the optimal vibration intensity and the optimal treatment time were suggested to be enlarged. A semi-quantitative correlation was matched, which helped for numerical simulation about ultrasonic treatment.
Low Temperature and Short-Term High-CO2 Treatment in Postharvest Storage of Table Grapes at Two Maturity Stages: Effects on Transcriptome Profiling

Table grapes (Vitis vinifera cv. Cardinal) are highly perishable and their quality deteriorates during postharvest storage at low temperature mainly because of sensitivity to fungal decay and senescence of rachis. The application of a 3-day CO2 treatment (20 kPa CO2 + 20 kPa O2 + 60 kPa N2) at 0°C reduced total decay and retained fruit quality in early and late-harvested table grapes during postharvest storage. In order to study the transcriptional responsiveness of table grapes to low temperature and high CO2 levels in the first stage of storage and how the maturity stage affect these changes, we have performed a comparative large-scale transcriptional analysis using the custom-made GrapeGen GeneChip®. In the first stage of storage, low temperature led to a significantly intense change in grape skin transcriptome irrespective of fruit maturity, although there were different changes within each stage. In the case of CO2 treated samples, in comparison to fruit at time zero, only slight differences were observed. Functional enrichment analysis revealed that major modifications in the transcriptome profile of early- and late-harvested grapes stored at 0°C are linked to biotic and abiotic stress-responsive terms. However, in both cases there is a specific reprogramming of the transcriptome during the first stage of storage at 0°C in order to withstand the cold stress. Thus, genes involved in gluconeogenesis, photosynthesis, mRNA translation and lipid transport were up-regulated in the case of early-harvested grapes, and genes related to protein folding stability and intracellular membrane trafficking in late-harvested grapes. The beneficial effect of high CO2 treatment maintaining table grape quality seems to be an active process requiring the induction of several transcription factors and kinases in early-harvested grapes, and the activation of processes associated to the maintenance of energy in late-harvested grapes.
Dialysis Adequacy in Hypoalbuminemic Continuous Ambulatory Peritoneal Dialysis Patients

We examined the interrelationship between hypoalbuminemia (HA) and the normalized protein catabolic rate (NPCR; g/kg/day) in the face of adequate Kt/V and weekly creatinine clearances in 40 end-stage renal disease patients on long-term continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD). We also evaluated serum albumin (SA) levels as an additional marker of nutritional status of the PD patients receiving adequate dialysis therapy in terms of Kt/V greater than 1.5 per week. Twenty-three of 40 patients had normal serum albumin (NSA; ≥3.4 g/dL) and 17 had HA «g/dL). A correlation between NPCR and SA levels was observed. Also, the NPCR values in patients with NSA (0.98±0.31) differ significantly (p<0.0005) from patients with HA (0.80±0.13). Urea kinetic parameters for adequacy of dialysis, that is, Kt/V, blood urea nitrogen (BUN), and weekly creatinine clearance, did not reveal any statistically significant difference between patients with NSA and HA. These data suggest that low values of NPCR may be seen in hypoalbuminemic CAPD patients despite adequate dialysis therapy and indicate further investigation for associated morbid conditions or supplemental nutrition.
Primary screening for human papillomavirus compared with cytology screening for cervical cancer in European settings : cost effectiveness analysis based on a Dutch microsimulation model

Objectives To investigate, using a Dutch model, whether and under what variables framed for other European countries screening for human papillomavirus (HPV) is preferred over cytology screening for cervical cancer, and to calculate the preferred number of examinations over a woman’s lifetime. DesignCost effectiveness analysis based on a Dutch simulation model. Base case analyses investigated the cost effectiveness of more than 1500 different screening policies using the microsimulation model. Subsequently, the policies were compared for five different scenarios that represent different possible scenarios (risk of cervical cancer, previous screening, quality associated test characteristics, costs of testing, and prevalence of HPV). Setting Various European countries. Population Unvaccinated women born between 1939 and 1992. Main outcome measures Optimal screening strategy in terms of incremental cost effectiveness ratios (costs per quality adjusted life years gained) compared with different cost effectiveness thresholds, for two levels of sensitivity and costs of the HPV test. Results Primary HPV screening was the preferred primary test over the age of 30 in many considered scenarios. Primary cytology screening was preferred only in scenarios with low costs of cytology and in scenarios with a high prevalence of HPV in combination with high costs of HPV testing. Conclusions Most European countries should consider switching from primary cytology to HPV screening for cervical cancer. HPV screening must, however, only be implemented in situations where screening is well controlled.
Comparison of Antibiotic Sensitivity Pattern of Escherichia coli which Produce Extended Spectrum Beta-Lactamase Strains Isolated From Various Clinical Specimens In Intensive Care Unit

Objective : A retrospective analysis of the widely used antibiotics all susceptibility testing results from Escherichia coli ( E. coli ) cultured from clinical specimens private hospital (from January 2017 to November 2018 ) was performed. Methods: The VITEK 2 Compact automated microbiology system (bioMerieux) is designed for automated rapid antimicrobial susceptibility testing and identification of clinically relevant bacteria. Minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) results previously obtained in recent clinical isolates with well-defined in isolates with well-characterized resistance mechanisms with the microdilution method were re-interpreted for the susceptible, intermediate and resistant categories using the 2018 EUCAST breakpoints. Clinical samples are most commonly isolated from blood, sputum and urine samples. Results: The results of resistance pattern of E. coli isolates in our locality to antimicrobial agents showed that the 64 E. coli strains tested against fifteen antimicrobial agents. E. coli isolates were highly resistant to piperacillin, ceftazidime and aztreonam 98%, 61% and 61% respectively. The most sensitive antibiotics were colistin, tigecycline, imipenem and meropenem. In the present study, 73% (47) of the isolates were resistant to at least three to fourteen antibiotics. All of the isolates showed resistance to at least one antibiotics. Thirty nine per cent of E. coli isolates were extended spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL) producers. Conclusion: Considering the antibiogram, imipenem and meropenem should be preferred drugs for E. coli infection isolated from clinical samples.
HGF Accelerates Wound Healing by Promoting the Dedifferentiation of Epidermal Cells through β 1-Integrin/ILK Pathway

Skin wound healing is a critical and complex biological process after trauma. This process is activated by signaling pathways of both epithelial and nonepithelial cells, which release a myriad of different cytokines and growth factors. Hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) is a cytokine known to play multiple roles during the various stages of wound healing. This study evaluated the benefits of HGF on reepithelialization during wound healing and investigated its mechanisms of action. Gross and histological results showed that HGF significantly accelerated reepithelialization in diabetic (DB) rats. HGF increased the expressions of the cell adhesion molecules β 1-integrin and the cytoskeleton remodeling protein integrin-linked kinase (ILK) in epidermal cells in vivo and in vitro. Silencing of ILK gene expression by RNA interference reduced expression of β 1-integrin, ILK, and c-met in epidermal cells, concomitantly decreasing the proliferation and migration ability of epidermal cells. β 1-Integrin can be an important maker of poorly differentiated epidermal cells. Therefore, these data demonstrate that epidermal cells become poorly differentiated state and regained some characteristics of epidermal stem cells under the role of HGF after wound. Taken together, the results provide evidence that HGF can accelerate reepithelialization in skin wound healing by dedifferentiation of epidermal cells in a manner related to the β 1-integrin/ILK pathway.
What Matters Most in Morphologically Segmented SMT Models?

Morphological segmentation is an effective strategy for addressing difficulties caused by morphological complexity. In this study, we use an English-to-Arabic test bed to determine what steps and components of a phrase-based statistical machine translation pipeline benefit the most from segmenting the target language. We test several scenarios that differ primarily in when desegmentation is applied, showing that the most important criterion for success in segmentation is to allow the system to build target words from morphemes that span phrase boundaries. We also investigate the impact of segmented and unsegmented target language models (LMs) on translation quality. We show that an unsegmented LM is helpful according to BLEU score, but also leads to a drop in the overall usage of compositional morphology, bringing it to well below the amount observed in human references.
Major Cereal Grain Fibers and Psyllium in Relation to Cardiovascular Health

Numerous studies reveal the cardiovascular benefits of consuming dietary fiber and, especially, cereal fiber. Cereal fiber is associated with cardiovascular risk reduction through multiple mechanisms and consuming a variety of cereal fiber sources offers health benefits specific to the source. Certain cereal fibers have been studied more extensively than others and provide greater support for their incorporation into a healthful diet. β-glucan from oats or barley, or a combination of whole oats and barley, and soluble fiber from psyllium reduces the risk of coronary heart disease; inulin-type fructans added to foods and beverages may modestly decrease serum triacylglycerols; arabinoxylan and resistant starch may improve glycemic control. Individuals with low cereal fiber intake should increase their intake of whole grains in order to receive the benefits of whole grains in addition to fiber. For those adjusting to the texture and palatability of whole grains, turning to added-fiber products rich in β-glucan and psyllium may allow them to reach their fiber goals without increasing caloric intake.
MOG35–55 i.v suppresses experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis partially through modulation of Th17 and JAK/STAT pathways

Intravenous (i.v.) administration of encephalitogenic peptide can effectively prevent experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), an animal model of multiple sclerosis; however, the underlying cellular and molecular mechanisms are not fully understood. In this study, we induced i.v. tolerance to EAE by administration of MOG35–55 peptide and determined the effect of this approach on intracellular signaling pathways of the IL‐23/IL‐17 system, which is essential for the pathogenesis of MS/EAE. In tolerized mice, phosphorylation of JAK/STAT‐1, ‐4, ERK1/2 and NF‐κBp65 were significantly reduced in splenocytes and the central nervous system. MOG i.v. treatment led to significantly lower production of IL‐17, and administration of exogenous IL‐17 slightly broke immune tolerance, which was associated with reduced activation of STAT4 and NF‐κB. Suppressed phosphorylation of these pathway molecules was primarily evident in CD11b+ and small numbers of CD4+, CD8+ and CD11c+ cells. More importantly, adoptive transfer of CD11b+ splenocytes of tolerized mice effectively delayed onset and reduced clinical severity of actively induced EAE. This study correlates MOG i.v. tolerance with modulation of Jak/STAT signaling pathways and investigates novel therapeutic avenues for the treatment of EAE/MS.
Investor regret: The role of expectation in comparing what is to what might have been

Investors, like any decision maker, feel regret when they compare the outcome of an investment with what the outcome would have been had they invested differently. We argue and show that this counterfactual comparison process is most likely to take place when the decision maker’s expectations are violated. Across five scenario experiments we found that decision makers were influenced only by forgone investment outcomes when the realized investment fell short of the expected result. However, when their investments exceeded prior expectations, the effect of foregone investment on regret disappeared. In addition, Experiment 4 found that individual differences in the need to maximize further moderated the effects of their expectations, such that maximizers always take into account the forgone investment. The final experiment found that when probed to make counterfactual comparisons, also investments that exceed expectations may lead to regret. Together these experiments reveal insights into the comparative processes leading to decision regret.
Electrical cardioversion for atrial fibrillation improves microvascular flow independent of blood pressure changes.

OBJECTIVE This study tested the hypothesis that there is a discrepancy between global hemodynamic parameters and microvascular flow in patients before and after successful elective electrical cardioversion (ECV) for atrial fibrillation (AF). DESIGN Prospective observational study. SETTING Preanesthesia holding area in a teaching hospital. PARTICIPANTS Adult patients who underwent successful elective ECV for AF. INTERVENTIONS ECV. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS Routine measurements of heart rate and noninvasive blood pressure were recorded and the sublingual microcirculation was visualized by sidestream darkfield imaging before and after the conversion of AF to sinus rhythm by elective ECV. The conversion to sinus rhythm significantly improved the microvascular flow index for smaller and larger microvessels. For smaller microvessels, perfused vessel density did not reach significance after conversion to sinus rhythm, whereas the proportion of perfused vessels was significantly larger and indices of heterogeneity for microvascular flow index decreased significantly. No correlation could be identified for the changes in mean blood pressure, perfused vessel density, and microvascular flow index for smaller microvessels. CONCLUSIONS Successful ECV in patients with AF improves indices of sublingual microvascular perfusion. This change has no clear relation to the change in blood pressure and cannot be predicted from it. It may be prudent not to rely solely on global hemodynamic parameters to assess end-organ perfusion in this setting.
by B Cells In Vitro Antibody Production, and T Cell Stimulation Differentially Promote Differentiation, Human Invariant NKT Cell Subsets

Invariant NK T (iNKT) cells can provide help for B cell activation and Ab production. Because B cells are also capable of cytokine production, Ag presentation, and T cell activation, we hypothesized that iNKT cells will also inﬂuence these activities. Furthermore, subsets of iNKT cells based on CD4 and CD8 expression that have distinct functional activities may differentially affect B cell functions. We investigated the effects of coculturing expanded human CD4 + , CD8 a + , and CD4 2 CD8 a 2 double-negative (DN) iNKT cells with autologous peripheral B cells in vitro. All iNKT cell subsets induced IgM, IgA, and IgG release by B cells without needing the iNKT cell agonist ligand a -galactosylceramide. Additionally, CD4 + iNKT cells induced expansions of cells with phenotypes of regulatory B cells. When cocultured with a -galactosylceramide–pulsed B cells, CD4 + and DN iNKT cells secreted Th1 and Th2 cytokines but at 10–1000-fold lower levels than when cultured with dendritic cells. CD4 + iNKT cells reciprocally induced IL-4 and IL-10 production by B cells. DN iNKT cells expressed the cytotoxic degranulation marker CD107a upon exposure to B cells. Remarkably, whereas iNKT cell subsets could induce CD40 and CD86 expression by B cells, iNKT cell– matured B cells were unable to drive proliferation of autologous and alloreactive conventional T cells, as seen with B cells cultured in the absence of iNKT cells. Therefore, human CD4 + , CD8 a + , and DN iNKT cells can differentially promote and regulate the induction of Ab and T cell responses by B cells. The Journal of Immunology
Orthopaedic considerations of Silver's syndrome.

The literature on forty-seven cases of Silver's syndrome—congenital somatic asymmetry, low birth weight, and short stature—is reviewed with emphasis on the quantitative aspects of leg-length discrepancy which may be as much as six centimeters. Four new cases are described, and the variety of associated skeletal anomalies (scoliosis, anomalies of fingers, and so forth) are listed.
Context-aware robot navigation using interactively built semantic maps

Abstract We discuss the process of building semantic maps, how to interactively label entities in them, and how to use them to enable context-aware navigation behaviors in human environments. We utilize planar surfaces, such as walls and tables, and static objects, such as door signs, as features for our semantic mapping approach. Users can interactively annotate these features by having the robot follow him/her, entering the label through a mobile app, and performing a pointing gesture toward the landmark of interest. Our gesture-based approach can reliably estimate which object is being pointed at, and detect ambiguous gestures with probabilistic modeling. Our person following method attempts to maximize future utility by search for future actions assuming constant velocity model for the human. We describe a method to extract metric goals from a semantic map landmark and to plan a human aware path that takes into account the personal spaces of people. Finally, we demonstrate context awareness for person following in two scenarios: interactive labeling and door passing.We believe that future navigation approaches and service robotics applications can be made more effective by further exploiting the structure of human environments.
Unsupervised Representation Learning with Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks

In recent years, supervised learning with convolutional networks (CNNs) has seen huge adoption in computer vision applications. Comparatively, unsupervised learning with CNNs has received less attention. In this work we hope to help bridge the gap between the success of CNNs for supervised learning and unsupervised learning. We introduce a class of CNNs called deep convolutional generative adversarial networks (DCGANs), that have certain architectural constraints, and demonstrate that they are a strong candidate for unsupervised learning. Training on various image datasets, we show convincing evidence that our deep convolutional adversarial pair learns a hierarchy of representations from object parts to scenes in both the generator and discriminator. Additionally, we use the learned features for novel tasks - demonstrating their applicability as general image representations.
Obstructive Sleep Apnea is Associated with Diabetes in Sleepy Subjects

Background: Although obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) has been linked to insulin resistance and glucose intolerance, it is unclear whether there is an independent association between OSA and diabetes mellitus (DM) and whether all patients with OSA are at risk. The objective of this study was to determine the association between OSA and DM in a large cohort of patients referred for sleep diagnostic testing. Methods: Cross-sectional analysis of participants in a clinic-based study conducted between July 2005 and August 2007. Diabetes was defined by self-report and concurrent use of diabetic medications (oral hypoglycemics and/or insulin). Sensitivity analysis was performed using a validated administrative definition of diabetes. Obstructive sleep apnea was defined by the respiratory disturbance index (RDI) using polysomnography or ambulatory monitoring. Severe OSA was defined as an RDI >30 hr -1 . Subjective sleepiness was defined as an Epworth Sleepiness Scale score ≥ 10. Results: Complete data was available in 2149 patients. The prevalence of DM increased with increasing OSA severity (p<0.001). Severe OSA was associated with DM following adjustment for patient demographics, weight, and neck circumference (Odds Ratio 2.18; 95% CI: 1.22, 3.89; p<0.01). Following a stratified analysis, this relationship was observed exclusively in sleepy patients: Odds Ratio 2.59 (95% CI: 1.35, 4.97) vs. non-sleepy patients: 1.16 (95% CI: 0.31, 4.37). Conclusions: Severe OSA is independently associated with DM in patients who report excessive sleepiness. Future studies investigating the impact of OSA treatment on DM may wish to focus on this patient population.
Nitric oxide and physical exercise: modulations in physiological systems during elderly

Background: Nitric oxide (NO) is a gaseous substance, which act as a key factor on the regulation of some physiological systems activity (e.g. cardiovascular, skeletal), since decrease on NO biodisponibility, such as on the pathway responsible for its production, lead to impairment on body homeostasis. Besides chronic pathological conditions, senescence — which is conceited as the healthy aging — NO levels and its pathway also can be found decreased. In front of this scenario, it is possible observe that there is necessity of therapies that act collaborating with the maintaining of a favorable environment to NO synthesis, as well to development of its functions during aging. Some trial has been observed in animals and in human beings the capacity of physical exercise to act collaborating to NO activity maintaining during senescence and senility. Objectives: To evaluate the effect of physical training on activity of pathway responsible for NO formation, as well as its blood concentrations in animal and elderly human models. Methods: A literature search was performed in the PubMed, Web of Science, Scielo and Lilacs databases, that evaluated the effects of physical training and nitric oxide formation in animal and elderly human models. Results: According to the studies reviewed in this research, pathway of the NO synthesis improves through physical exercise in animal and elderly human models. Conclusion: Scientific evidences demonstrate effectiveness of the physical exercise in inhibiting decrease of bioavailability in NO which accompanies senescence, greater magnitude and senility.