Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Light Intensity Physical Activity and Sedentary Behavior in Relation to Body Mass Index and Grip Strength in Older Adults: Cross-Sectional Findings from the Lifestyle Interventions and Independence for Elders (LIFE) Study

Background Identifying modifiable determinants of fat mass and muscle strength in older adults is important given their impact on physical functioning and health. Light intensity physical activity and sedentary behavior are potential determinants, but their relations to these outcomes are poorly understood. We evaluated associations of light intensity physical activity and sedentary time—assessed both objectively and by self-report—with body mass index (BMI) and grip strength in a large sample of older adults. Methods We used cross-sectional baseline data from 1130 participants of the Lifestyle Interventions and Independence for Elders (LIFE) study, a community-dwelling sample of relatively sedentary older adults (70-89 years) at heightened risk of mobility disability. Time spent sedentary and in light intensity activity were assessed using an accelerometer worn for 3–7 days (Actigraph GT3X) and by self-report. Associations between these exposures and measured BMI and grip strength were evaluated using linear regression. Results Greater time spent in light intensity activity and lower sedentary times were both associated with lower BMI. This was evident using objective measures of lower-light intensity, and both objective and self-reported measures of higher-light intensity activity. Time spent watching television was positively associated with BMI, while reading and computer use were not. Greater time spent in higher but not lower intensities of light activity (assessed objectively) was associated with greater grip strength in men but not women, while neither objectively assessed nor self-reported sedentary time was associated with grip strength. Conclusions In this cross-sectional study, greater time spent in light intensity activity and lower sedentary times were associated with lower BMI. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that replacing sedentary activities with light intensity activities could lead to lower BMI levels and obesity prevalence among the population of older adults. However, longitudinal and experimental studies are needed to strengthen causal inferences.
Short-Term Effects of Thoracic Spine Manipulation on the Biomechanical Organisation of Gait Initiation: A Randomized Pilot Study

Speed performance during gait initiation is known to be dependent on the capacity of the central nervous system to generate efficient anticipatory postural adjustments (APA). According to the posturo-kinetic capacity (PKC) concept, any factor enhancing postural chain mobility and especially spine mobility, may facilitate the development of APA and thus speed performance. “Spinal Manipulative Therapy High-Velocity, Low-Amplitude” (SMT-HVLA) is a healing technique applied to the spine which is routinely used by healthcare practitioners to improve spine mobility. As such, it may have a positive effect on the PKC and therefore facilitate gait initiation. The present study aimed to investigate the short-term effect of thoracic SMT-HVLA on spine mobility, APA and speed performance during gait initiation. Healthy young adults (n = 22) performed a series of gait initiation trials on a force plate before (“pre-manipulation” condition) and after (“post-manipulation” condition) a sham manipulation or an HVLA manipulation applied to the ninth thoracic vertebrae (T9). Participants were randomly assigned to the sham (n = 11) or the HVLA group (n = 11). The spine range of motion (ROM) was assessed in each participant immediately after the sham or HVLA manipulations using inclinometers. The results showed that the maximal thoracic flexion increased in the HVLA group after the manipulation, which was not the case in the sham group. In the HVLA group, results further showed that each of the following gait initiation variables reached a significantly lower mean value in the post-manipulation condition as compared to the pre-manipulation condition: APA duration, peak of anticipatory backward center of pressure displacement, center of gravity velocity at foot-off, mechanical efficiency of APA, peak of center of gravity velocity and step length. In contrast, for the sham group, results showed that none of the gait initiation variables significantly differed between the pre- and post-manipulation conditions. It is concluded that HVLA manipulation applied to T9 has an immediate beneficial effect on spine mobility but a detrimental effect on APA development and speed performance during gait initiation. We suggest that a neural effect induced by SMT-HVLA, possibly mediated by a transient alteration in the early sensory-motor integration, might have masked the potential mechanical benefits associated with increased spine mobility.
Using age to evaluate reproduction in Caribbean spiny lobster, Panulirus argus, in the Florida Keys and Dry Tortugas, United States

Abstract For many species of lobsters, size at sexual maturity varies across spatially separated populations. This is so for two populations of Caribbean spiny lobster, Panulirus argus, in southern Florida, where females from open‐fishing areas around the Dry Tortugas mature at a larger size than females from open‐fishing areas in the Florida Keys. Variations in onset of maturity between populations of lobsters have been attributed to different environmental conditions, lobster density, and/or fishing pressure. We used age as estimated by histologically expressed neurolipofuscin to examine differences in size at maturity in P. argus. Neurolipofuscin content measured in known‐age, laboratory‐reared animals in a previous study was used to estimate age in wild‐caught P. argus. We show that lobsters from the Florida Keys are significantly smaller than lobsters of the same age from the Dry Tortugas. This difference in growth rates between lobsters from the two locations likely explains the differences in size at onset of maturation. High rates of injury from fishery practices in the Florida Keys and differential predation on slow‐growing lobsters in the Dry Tortugas may account for these differences in growth rates. Additionally, we compared the ages of reproductive females collected from breeding grounds of the Florida Keys to same‐sized non‐reproductive females from an area in the Florida Keys where there was no evidence of breeding. We found that females possessing eggs early in the breeding season were significantly older than females that bore eggs later in the breeding season or that did not produce eggs. Older females also produced more clutches of eggs. Our research indicates that reproduction is related to age in P. argus. The intense fishery and the methods used to fish lobsters are the most likely causes of the reduction in spiny lobster population size structure and size at maturity.
Jns Journal of Nutritional Science

The oral [ 13 C]bicarbonate technique for measurement of short-term energy expenditure of sled dogs and their physiological response to diets with different fat:carbohydrate ratios Abstract The oral [ 13 C]bicarbonate technique (o 13 CBT) was assessed for the determination of short-term energy expenditure (EE) under field conditions. A total of eight Alaskan huskies were fed two experimental diets in a cross-over experiment including two periods of 3 weeks. Effects of diets on EE, apparent total tract digestibility (ATTD) and on plasma hormones, blood lactate and glucose were furthermore investigated. The percentages of metabolisable energy derived from protein (P), fat (F) and carbohydrates (C) were 26:58:16 in the PFC diet and 24:75:1 in the PF diet. Measurements of EE were performed in the post-absorptive state during rest. Blood samples were collected during rest and exercise and ATTD was determined after days with rest and with exercise. EE was higher (P < 0·01) in period 2 than in period 1 (68 v. 48 kJ/kg body weight 0·75 per h). The ATTD of organic matter, crude protein and crude fat was higher (P < 0·01) in the PF diet compared with the PFC diet, and lower (P < 0·01) for total carbohydrates. Exercise did not affect ATTD. Higher (P < 0·01) insulin-like growth factor 1 and leptin concentrations were measured when fed the PF diet compared with the PFC diet. Concentrations of insulin decreased (P < 0·01), whereas cortisol and ghrelin increased (P < 0·05), after exercise. There was no effect of diet on blood lactate and glucose, but higher (P < 0·001) lactate concentrations were measured in period 1 than in period 2. The results suggest that the o 13 CBT can be used in the field to estimate short-term EE in dogs during resting conditions. Higher ATTD and energy density of the PF diet may be beneficial when energy requirements are high. Daily metabolisable energy (ME) requirements vary greatly among dogs depending on several factors, such as breed, body composition, age, physical activity and ambient temperature. For dogs living outdoors all year around, a decrease in ambient temperature of 20°C may increase the daily ME requirements by about 50 % (1). Performance sled dogs, which also are working hard for many hours per d in cold environments, may at times have tremendously high energy distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creative-commons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, …
Agreement Between Long-Term Neonatal Background Classification by Conventional and Amplitude-Integrated EEG

Conventional EEG (CEEG) in neonates is considered the gold standard for evaluating EEG background and detecting electrographic seizures. However, CEEG is expensive and cumbersome for long-term monitoring. A simplified method, amplitude-integrated EEG (AEEG) has been rapidly adopted to accomplish the same goals. The purpose of this study was to measure the agreement between the methods of classification in long-term EEG background assessments by CEEG and AEEG. Infants underwent CEEG monitoring after cardiac surgery and the background during four 12-hour epochs classified as “normal” or “mildly,” “moderately,” or “markedly” abnormal. CEEGs were converted to a single-channel AEEG and independently interpreted as “normal,” “moderately abnormal,” or “markedly abnormal” by standard amplitude criteria. The distributions of CEEG and AEEG interpretations were statistically compared, and the associations between CEEG and AEEG interpretations were measured. Generalized estimating equations were used to measure the effects of seizures and patient age on the agreement between AEEG and CEEG scores. Paired CEEGs and AEEGs were available for 637 epochs recorded from 179 infants. The distribution of CEEG backgrounds included 60% normal, 22% mildly abnormal, 13% moderately abnormal, and 5% markedly abnormal. The distribution of AEEG backgrounds was significantly different from CEEG and included 22% normal, 73% moderately abnormal, and 5% markedly abnormal. Nevertheless, the two techniques exhibited a significant, moderate positive association. Generalized estimating equations focusing on those with moderately abnormal AEEGs showed that younger patients with seizures were significantly more likely to have moderately or markedly abnormal CEEGs than older patients without seizures. Although there was overall significant moderate agreement between the two techniques, the distribution of backgrounds assigned by AEEG was significantly different from CEEG. Most moderately abnormal AEEGs were associated with normal or mildly abnormal CEEGs. However, the ability of moderately abnormal AEEGs to correctly predict moderately or markedly abnormal CEEG was significantly associated with the knowledge of the patient's age and the presence of seizures on CEEG.
E22Δ Mutation in Amyloid β-Protein Promotes β-Sheet Transformation, Radical Production, and Synaptotoxicity, But Not Neurotoxicity

Oligomers of 40- or 42-mer amyloid β-protein (Aβ40, Aβ42) cause cognitive decline and synaptic dysfunction in Alzheimer's disease. We proposed the importance of a turn at Glu22 and Asp23 of Aβ42 to induce its neurotoxicity through the formation of radicals. Recently, a novel deletion mutant at Glu22 (E22Δ) of Aβ42 was reported to accelerate oligomerization and synaptotoxicity. To investigate this mechanism, the effects of the E22Δ mutation in Aβ42 and Aβ40 on the transformation of β-sheets, radical production, and neurotoxicity were examined. Both mutants promoted β-sheet transformation and the formation of radicals, while their neurotoxicity was negative. In contrast, E22P-Aβ42 with a turn at Glu22 and Asp23 exhibited potent neurotoxicity along with the ability to form radicals and potent synaptotoxicity. These data suggest that conformational change in E22Δ-Aβ is similar to that in E22P-Aβ42 but not the same, since E22Δ-Aβ42 exhibited no cytotoxicity, unlike E22P-Aβ42 and wild-type Aβ42.
Functional analysis for operating emergency department of a general hospital

An entire emergency department of a general hospital is simulated to examine patient flows. First, times needed for both outpatients and patients arriving via ambulance to be processed in the emergency department are examined. A special-purpose data-generator is designed and developed to create experimental data for executing a simulation. It is found that the patients spend the longer part of their time waiting, depending on the number of patients to be processed. In addition, it is found that the waiting time for available emergency-treatment beds, doctors, drips, and stretchers accounts for the major part of all the waiting time in the emergency department. A stepwise procedure of operations planning is proposed to minimize the patient waiting times, and numerical examples are shown to illustrate the procedure.
Thyroid Peroxidase Gene Mutation in Patients with Congenital Hypothyroidism in Isfahan, Iran

Background. Thyroid peroxidase gene (TPO) mutations are one of the most common causes of thyroid dyshormonogenesis in patients with congenital hypothyroidism (CH). In this study, the prevalence of TPO gene mutations in patients with thyroid dyshormonogenesis in Isfahan was investigated. Methods. In this cross-sectional study, genomic DNA of 41 patients with permanent CH due to thyroid dyshormonogenesis was extracted using the salting out method. The 17 exonic regions of the TPO gene were amplified. SSCP technique was performed for scanning of the exonic regions of the TPO gene, except exon 8. DNA sequencing was performed for those with different migration patterns in SSCP by chain termination method. Exon 8 was sequenced directly in all patients. In 4 patients, all fragments were also sequenced. Results. One missense mutation c.2669G > A (NM_000547.5) at exon 15 (14th coding exon) in one patient in homozygous form and seven different single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in exons 1, 7, 8, 11, and 15 of TPO gene. Conclusion. The TPO gene mutations among CH patients with dyshormonogenesis in Isfahan were less frequent in comparison with other similar studies. It may be due to the presence of other unknown gene mutations which could not be detected by SSCP and sequencing methods.
The Logical Analysis of Lexical Ambiguity

Theories of semantic interpretation which wish to capture as many generalizations as possible must face up to the manifoldly ambiguous and contextually dependent nature of word meaning. In this paper I present a two-level scheme of semantic interpretation in which the first level deals with the semantic consequences of syntactic structure and the second with the choice of word meaning. On the first level the meanings of ambiguous words, pronominal references, nominal compounds and metonomies are not treated as fixed, but are instead represented by free variables which range over predicates and functions. The context-dependence of lexical meaning is dealt with by the second level, a constraint propagation process which attempts to assign values to these variables on the basis of the logical coherence of the overall result. In so doing it makes use of a set of polysemy operators which map between lexical senses, thus making a potentially indefinite number of related senses available.
Prediction of Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment using cortical morphological patterns

This article describes a novel approach to extract cortical morphological abnormality patterns from structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data to improve the prediction accuracy of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and its prodromal stage, i.e., mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Conventional approaches extract cortical morphological information, such as regional mean cortical thickness and regional cortical volumes, independently at different regions of interest (ROIs) without considering the relationship between these regions. Our approach involves constructing a similarity map where every element in the map represents the correlation of regional mean cortical thickness between a pair of ROIs. We will demonstrate in this article that this correlative morphological information gives significant improvement in classification performance when compared with ROI‐based morphological information. Classification performance is further improved by integrating the correlative information with ROI‐based information via multi‐kernel support vector machines. This integrated framework achieves an accuracy of 92.35% for AD classification with an area of 0.9744 under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve, and an accuracy of 83.75% for MCI classification with an area of 0.9233. In differentiating MCI subjects who converted to AD within 36 months from non‐converters, an accuracy of 75.05% with an area of 0.8426 under ROC curve was achieved, indicating excellent diagnostic power and generalizability. The current work provides an alternative approach to extraction of high‐order cortical information from structural MRI data for prediction of neurodegenerative diseases such as AD. Hum Brain Mapp 34:3411–3425, 2013. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
The Purpose of Remittances - Evidence from Germany

This paper examines the purpose of remittances using individual data of migrants in Germany. Particular attention is paid to migrants’ savings and transfers to family members in the home country. Our findings indicate that migrants who intend to stay in Germany only temporarily have a higher propensity to save and save larger amounts in their home country than permanent migrants. A similar picture emerges when considering migrants’ payments to family members abroad. The results of a decomposition analysis indicate that temporary and permanent migrants seem to have different preferences towards sending transfers abroad, while economic characteristics and the composition of households in home and host countries are less relevant.
Residual sleepiness in patients with OSA on CPAP

To the Editors: We read with great interest the excellent article by Levy et al. 1, which was published recently in the European Respiratory Journal . The authors conclude that continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) treatment has little or no effect on the metabolic status of obese obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) patients, presumably due to the major impact of visceral obesity 1. While we agree on most …
Low-Grade Inflammation, Metabolic Syndrome and the Risk of Chronic Kidney Disease: the 2005 Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey

Either chronic inflammation or metabolic syndrome (MetS) is associated with renal impairment. This cross-sectional study was designed to investigate the relationship between elevated white blood cell (WBC) counts and chronic kidney disease (CKD) stage 3 or more according to the presence of MetS in adult Koreans. In total, 5,291 subjects (≥ 20 yr-old) participating in the 2005 Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination were included. CKD stage 3 or more was defined as having an estimated glomerular filtration rate below 60 mL/min/1.73 m2, as calculated using the formula from the Modification of Diet in Renal Disease study. The odds ratio (95% confidence interval) for CKD stage 3 or more in the highest WBC quartile (≥ 7,200 cells/µL) was 1.70 (1.17-2.39) after adjusting for MetS and other covariates, compared with the lowest WBC quartile (< 5,100 cells/µL). In subjects with MetS, the prevalence risk for CKD stage 3 or more in the highest WBC quartile was 2.25 (1.28-3.95) even after fully adjusting for confounding variables. In contrast, this positive association between WBC quartile and CKD stage 3 or more disappeared in subjects without MetS. Low-grade inflammation is significantly associated with CKD stage 3 or more in subjects with MetS but not in those without MetS.
Widespread Parallel Evolution in Sticklebacks by Repeated Fixation of Ectodysplasin Alleles

Major phenotypic changes evolve in parallel in nature by molecular mechanisms that are largely unknown. Here, we use positional cloning methods to identify the major chromosome locus controlling armor plate patterning in wild threespine sticklebacks. Mapping, sequencing, and transgenic studies show that the Ectodysplasin (EDA) signaling pathway plays a key role in evolutionary change in natural populations and that parallel evolution of stickleback low-plated phenotypes at most freshwater locations around the world has occurred by repeated selection of Eda alleles derived from an ancestral low-plated haplotype that first appeared more than two million years ago. Members of this clade of low-plated alleles are present at low frequencies in marine fish, which suggests that standing genetic variation can provide a molecular basis for rapid, parallel evolution of dramatic phenotypic change in nature.
Preparation and evaluation of enrofloxacin microspheres and tissue distribution in rats

New enrofloxacin microspheres were formulated, and their physical properties, lung-targeting ability, and tissue distribution in rats were examined. The microspheres had a regular and round shape. The mean diameter was 10.06 µm, and the diameter of 89.93% of all microspheres ranged from 7.0 µm to 30.0 µm. Tissue distribution of the microspheres was evaluated along with a conventional enrofloxacin preparation after a single intravenous injection (7.5 mg of enrofloxacin/kg bw). The results showed that the elimination half-life (t1/2β) of enrofloxacin from lung was prolonged from 7.94 h for the conventional enrofloxacin to 13.28 h for the microspheres. Area under the lung concentration versus time curve from 0 h to ∞ (AUC0-∞) was increased from 11.66 h·µg/g to 508.00 h·µg/g. The peak concentration (Cmax) in lung was increased from 5.95 µg/g to 93.36 µg/g. Three lung-targeting parameters were further assessed and showed that the microspheres had remarkable lung-targeting capabilities.
Physical evidence of predatory behavior in Tyrannosaurus rex

Feeding strategies of the large theropod, Tyrannosaurus rex, either as a predator or a scavenger, have been a topic of debate previously compromised by lack of definitive physical evidence. Tooth drag and bone puncture marks have been documented on suggested prey items, but are often difficult to attribute to a specific theropod. Further, postmortem damage cannot be distinguished from intravital occurrences, unless evidence of healing is present. Here we report definitive evidence of predation by T. rex: a tooth crown embedded in a hadrosaurid caudal centrum, surrounded by healed bone growth. This indicates that the prey escaped and lived for some time after the injury, providing direct evidence of predatory behavior by T. rex. The two traumatically fused hadrosaur vertebrae partially enclosing a T. rex tooth were discovered in the Hell Creek Formation of South Dakota.