Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Nutritional and immunological effects of nano-particles in commercial poultry birds

The poultry industry is mainly scared by affected by infections due to microorganisms which reduce the growth rate and cause economic losses. Currently, vaccines and antibiotics are utilised to combat these infectious microorganisms, but irresponsible use of antibiotics may pose health risks to consumers, and there is a need for drug-free alternatives. Nanotechnology could reduce such risks and can improve the wholesomeness of poultry meat. This review discusses the current status of nanotechnology as it relates to improving poultry health by using various nano-particles (NPs). Silver-NPs at a dose rate of 900 ppm have been used in poultry to improve their growth performance in terms of body weight, feed intake and feed conversion ratio. NPs are thought to boost immunity in birds against numerous diseases. Gold-NPs improved the growth performance of poultry birds as well as detecting avian influenza virus with a detection limit of 2.2 pg/ml. Similarly, Copper-loaded chitosan-NPs supplementation at dose rate of 100 mg/kg feed improved growth performance, immunity, protein synthesis and caecal microbiota in broilers. Zinc oxide-NPs improved growth performance and showed anti-oxidative properties in broilers at the dose rate of 20 mg/kg. While, montmorillonite nano-composites at a level of 3 g/kg feed decreased the toxicity of aflatoxins in poultry birds. In conclusion, nanotechnology has the potential to reduce microbial load without resulting drug residues in poultry products, thus improving performance and immune status of poultry birds.
What Goods Do Countries Trade? A Quantitative Exploration of Ricardo&Apos;S Ideas

The Ricardian model predicts that countries should produce and export relatively more in industries in which they are relatively more productive. Though one of the most celebrated insights in the theory of international trade, this prediction has received little attention in the empirical literature since the mid-1960s. The main reason behind this lack of popularity is the absence of clear theoretical foundations to guide the empirical analysis. Building on the seminal work of Eaton and Kortum ("Technology, Geography, and Trade", Econometrica, 70, 1741--1779 2002), we offer such foundations and use them to quantify the importance of Ricardian comparative advantage. In the process, we also provide a theoretically consistent alternative to Balassa's (1965, "An Empirical Demonstration of Classical Comparative Cost Theory", Review of Economics and Statistics, 45, 231--238) well-known index of "revealed comparative advantage". Copyright 2012, Oxford University Press.
Health locus of control and the sense of self-efficacy in patients with systolic heart failure: a pilot study

Background Treatment of heart failure (HF) requires the lifelong adherence to medical self-care regimes. The objective of this study was to examine health-control beliefs and the sense of self-efficacy (psychological features particularly important for efficient compliance among patients suffering from chronic diseases) in patients with systolic HF in relation to clinical status and depressive symptoms. Subjects and methods Sixty-six consecutive patients with chronic systolic HF, hospitalized in the Centre for Heart Diseases, Military Hospital (94% men, age: 61 ± 11 years, ischemic etiology: 63%, left ventricular ejection fraction: 32% ± 12%), filled in (during their hospital stay): (1) the Multidimensional Health Locus of Control Scale measuring three possible localizations of health control: “internality” (ie, the belief that health status depends only on personal decisions and behaviors); “powerful others externality” ([PHLC subscale] ie, the conviction that health depends on “powerful people” such as doctors, family members, close friends), and “chance externality” (ie, belief that health status is determined by chance, fate, or luck), and (2) the Generalized Self-Efficacy Scale. The results obtained by HF patients were compared to those reported by patients with other chronic diseases and healthy subjects. Results In patients with HF, internality was similar to values obtained by patients with diabetes, men after myocardial infarction, and women after mastectomy; and was lower than in healthy subjects. Powerful others externality was more pronounced in patients with HF as compared to other groups of patients and healthy people. Only women after mastectomy had higher scores of PHLC. In patients with HF, chance externality was similar to values reported in patients with renal failure, men after myocardial infarction, and women after mastectomy; and was less pronounced than in healthy subjects. The majority (77%) of patients with HF were characterized by a high sense of self-efficacy (>the 7th sten score), having the highest sense of self-efficacy among patients with other chronic diseases and healthy controls. Higher internality was accompanied by higher sense of self-efficacy (P < 0.05) in patients with HF. Subjects with high plasma N-terminal pro-B type natriuretic peptide (reflecting the disease severity) had the least pronounced internality (P < 0.05), whereas those with more advance depressive symptoms had the lower sense of self-efficacy (P = < 0.05). Conclusion Patients with systolic HF demonstrate a conviction that other people, including physicians, have a large influence on their health status, and at the same time are aware of the efficacy of their own activities in coping with the disease. Such a configuration of psychological features seems to be beneficial in the context of the developing modern strategies, which due to the improved cooperation between the physicians and the patients could enhance the compliance in patients with HF.
Calculation of Joint Reaction Forces in the Equine Distal Forelimb during Walking and Trotting

Forces exerted at the joints of the equine distal forelimb play a major role in common injuries of the region. In this study, a two-dimensional musculoskeletal model was developed to calculate the reaction forces at the joints of the distal forelimb from measured kinematic and kinetic data during walking and trotting. The reaction forces due to muscle- tendon wrapping around the sesamoid bones of the limb were shown to be of similar magnitudes to those exerted between the long bones at the joints, highlighting the importance of the sesamoid bones in the mechanical function of the limb.
Epithelial Cell Signaling Cascade Wound Repair via Activation of a Novel Lipopolysaccharide Accelerates Pseudomonas

The surface of the airway epithelium represents a battleground in which the host intercepts signals from pathogens and activates epithelial defenses to combat infection. Wound repair is an essential function of the airway epithelium in response to injury in chronic airway diseases, and inhaled pathogens such as Pseudomonas bacteria are implicated in the pathobiology of several of these diseases. Because epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) activation stimulates wound repair and because LPS activates EGFR, we hypothesized that LPS accelerates wound repair via a surface signaling cascade that causes EGFR phosphorylation. In scrape wounds of NCI-H292 human airway epithelial cells, high concentrations of LPS were toxic and decreased wound repair. However, lower concentrations of LPS accelerated wound repair. This effect was inhibited by treatment with a selective inhibitor of EGFR phosphorylation (AG 1478) and by an EGFR neutralizing Ab. Metalloprotease inhibitors and TNF- (cid:1) -converting enzyme (TACE) small interfering RNA inhibited wound repair, implicating TACE. Ad-ditional studies implicated TGF- (cid:1) as the active EGFR ligand cleaved by TACE during wound repair. Reactive oxygen species scavengers, NADPH oxidase inhibitors, and importantly small interfering RNA of dual oxidase 1 inhibited LPS-induced wound repair. Inhibitors of protein kinase C isoforms (cid:1)(cid:2) and a TLR-4 neutralizing Ab also inhibited LPS-induced wound repair. Normal human bronchial epithelial cells responded similarly. Thus, LPS accelerates wound repair in airway epithelial cells via a novel TLR-4 3 protein kinase C (cid:1)(cid:2) 3 dual oxidase 1 3 reactive oxygen species 3 TACE 3 TGF- (cid:1) 3
Optimal Trade-off Between Energy Efficiency and Average Delay

In wireless networks consisting of sensors and mobile devices, battery power is a severe resource constraint. Energyefficient communication techniques are therefore crucial to the long-term survivability of the network. In communication theory, it is well known that for a bandlimited additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel with bandwidth W and onesided noise spectral level N0, the minimum energy per information bit Eb,min achieves its minimum value N0 ln 2 as W →∞. Interpreting this trade-off between energy efficiency and bandwidth in the more general context of available degrees of freedom, it can be verified that, for a fixed bandwidth and noise level, the minimum energy per bit decreases as the transmission time per bit increases. Thus, greater energy efficiency is gained by using low power and long transmission delays. Using this observation, recent work in [1, 2] examines a scheduling problem in which energy efficiency is traded off with the need to transmit a finite number of packets by a fixed deadline. The findings in [1, 2] are important for communication scenarios where a group of time-sensitive data packets (such as observations from sensors) must be delivered to its destination (such as a sensor fusion site) by a given deterministic deadline. There are also many situations, however, where time-critical information must reach its destination promptly on an ongoing basis. In this paper, we focus on the latter scenario, and investigate the trade-off between energy efficiency and the average system delay of bits. We show that minimizing a weighted combination of energy per bit and average delay per bit is equivalent to a convex optimization problem which can be solved exactly using an iterative “off-line” algorithm, where packet arrival times and packet lengths are known beforehand. The structure of the solution turns out to be very different from that of the solution to the deadline problem of [1, 2].
Use of Machine Readable Dictionaries for Word-Sense Disambiguation in SENSEVAL-2

CL Research's word-sense disambiguation (WSD) system is part of the DIMAP dictionary software, designed to use any full dictionary as the basis for unsupervised disambiguation. Official SENSEVAL-2 results were generated using WordNet, and separately using the New Oxford Dictionary of English (NODE). The disambiguation functionality exploits whatever information is made available by the lexical database. Special routines examined multiword units and contextual clues (both collocations, definition and example content words, and subject matter analyses); syntactic constraints have not yet been employed. The official coarse-grained precision was 0.367 for the lexical sample task and 0.460 for the all-words task (these are actually recall, with actual precision of 0.390 and 0.506 for the two tasks). NODE definitions were automatically mapped into WordNet, with precision of 0.405 and 0.418 on 75% and 70% mapping for the lexical sample and all-words tasks, respectively, comparable to WordNet. Bug fixes and implementation of incomplete routines have increased the precision for the lexical sample to 0.429 (with many improvements still likely).
Responsive play: Creating transformative classroom spaces through play as a reader response

This eight-month study, conducted in a first-grade classroom in the southwestern United States, analyzed young children's playful responses to literature. It focuses on framing a theory that underpins play as a form of reader response, which I term ‘responsive play’. It further aims to answer the overarching research question and the sub-question: What are the affordances of play for responding to text in a first-grade classroom? What are the sociocultural resources that children use to respond to and make meaning with text? Findings suggest that the children in this study created a space for learning and understanding, through their responsive play, that allowed them to think through, demonstrate, and share their experiential knowledge, their funds of knowledge, and their intertextual knowledge – as sociocultural resources – and to connect these to their literacy learning as they cooperatively transacted with and responded to various books. These findings suggest that children's play, language, and literacy are complementary, that children's responsive play should be encouraged in the classroom setting, and that children's experiences and funds of knowledge should be valued as additive to the academic learning context. Implications of this study include that responsive play can be viewed as a generative source of academic learning and that the notion of reader response, in research and practice, can be reconceived to include responsive play.
CYTOCHEMICAL LOCALIZATION OF PEROXIDATIC ACTIVITY OF CATALASE IN RAT HEPATIC MICROBODIES (PEROXISOMES)

Prominent staining of rat hepatic microbodies was obtained by incubating sections of aldehyde-fixed rat liver in a modified Graham and Karnovsky's medium for ultrastructural demonstration of peroxidase activity. The electron-opaque reaction product was deposited uniformly over the matrix of the microbodies. The microbodies were identified by their size, shape, presence of tubular nucleoids, and other morphologic characteristics, and by their relative numerical counts. The staining reaction was inhibited by the catalase inhibitor, aminotriazole, and by KCN, azide, high concentrations of H2O2, and by boiling of sections. These inhibition studies suggest that the peroxidatic activity of microbody catalase is responsible for the staining reaction. In the absence of exogenous H2O2 appreciable staining of microbodies was noted only after prolonged incubation. Addition of sodium pyruvate, which inhibits endogenous generation of H2O2 by tissue oxidases, or of crystalline catalase, which decomposes such tissue-generated H2O2, completely abolished microbody staining in the absence of H2O2. Neither diaminobenzidine nor the product of its oxidation had any affinity to bind nonenzymatically to microbody catalase and thus stain these organelles. The staining of microbodies was optimal at alkaline pH of 8.5. The biological significance of this alkaline pH in relation to the similar pH optima of several microbody oxidases is discussed. In addition to staining of microbodies, a heat-resistant peroxidase activity is seen in some of the peribiliary dense bodies. The relation of this reaction to the peroxidase activity of lipofuscin pigment granules is discussed.
Preschoolers' Responses to Social Comparisons Involving Relative Failure

Prior work indicates that preschoolers (ages 4–5) maintain high self-appraisals and behavioral engagement after performing less well than their peers. This study tested the hypothesis that relative failure has more negative consequences for preschoolers when they interpret achievement differences as being tied to membership in social categories (e.g., when members of different categories have different achievement levels), as opposed to variations in individual effort. Preschoolers (N = 58) were randomly assigned to receive feedback that a same-gender, other-gender, or gender-unidentified peer performed better than they did on a novel task. Experiences of failure relative to other-gender peers resulted in impaired performance on a subsequent task trial, as well as lack of improvement in self-evaluations after children received more positive feedback. These findings have implications for the origins of social comparisons, category-based reasoning, and the development of gender stereotypes and achievement motivation.
‘I wanted to carry out the revolution’: activists’ trajectories in Portugal from dictatorship to democracy

ABSTRACT This article reconstructs the life trajectories of Portuguese radical left activists who mobilized against the Estado Novo authoritarian regime between the mid 1960s and the mid 1970s. It analyses the consequences of political engagement on the political and life trajectories of the activists across three different institutional settings: an authoritarian regime (until 1974), a revolutionary process (1974–1975) and a democracy (from 1976 onwards). The aim is to understand how the engagement and its consequences changed according to the changes at a political level. The underlying question is ‘what became of the radical activists who mobilized against the Portuguese dictatorship in the late 1960s’? To address this question, I adopt a longitudinal perspective, which contextualizes the present life of the former activists in a longer process, composed of different phases of engagement, activism, prison, disengagement, reconversion and life as former activists. I understand these phases as strictly interconnected to the organizational dynamics (groups and networks) and the political processes.
A reexamination of the long latency N1 response in patients with tinnitus.

There have been disparate findings reported previously by investigators who have examined differences in the cortically generated N1 (i.e., N100) from control and tinnitus samples. Investigators have employed differing stimulation paradigms applied to relatively small subject samples. Accordingly, it is not surprising that there has been no unanimity in the reported findings. The present investigation was conducted to determine, once again, whether differences exist in the cortically generated N1 potential recorded from both normals and subjects with bothersome tinnitus. In this investigation both passive and selective auditory attention paradigms were employed. Subjects were a total of 63 adults (31 controls and 32 tinnitus patients). The mean score on the Tinnitus Handicap Inventory for the tinnitus group was 39 points. Results failed to reveal group differences in the latency of N1 across listening conditions. However, tinnitus patients demonstrated N1 potentials that were of significantly smaller amplitude than those obtained from normal subjects. These findings are consistent with those reported in previous investigations.
Understanding the efficiency of ray traversal on GPUs

We discuss the mapping of elementary ray tracing operations---acceleration structure traversal and primitive intersection---onto wide SIMD/SIMT machines. Our focus is on NVIDIA GPUs, but some of the observations should be valid for other wide machines as well. While several fast GPU tracing methods have been published, very little is actually understood about their performance. Nobody knows whether the methods are anywhere near the theoretically obtainable limits, and if not, what might be causing the discrepancy. We study this question by comparing the measurements against a simulator that tells the upper bound of performance for a given kernel. We observe that previously known methods are a factor of 1.5--2.5X off from theoretical optimum, and most of the gap is not explained by memory bandwidth, but rather by previously unidentified inefficiencies in hardware work distribution. We then propose a simple solution that significantly narrows the gap between simulation and measurement. This results in the fastest GPU ray tracer to date. We provide results for primary, ambient occlusion and diffuse interreflection rays.
Prevalence and risk factors of albuminuria and chronic kidney disease in Chinese population with type 2 diabetes and impaired glucose regulation: Shanghai diabetic complications study (SHDCS).

BACKGROUND Diabetes is a major risk factor for the development of kidney disease. We aimed to determine the prevalence of albuminuria and chronic kidney disease (CKD) in Chinese subjects with diabetes and pre-diabetes and the risk factors for kidney disease. METHODS An urban community-based sample of 3714 adults in Shanghai was classified into normal glucose tolerance (NGT), impaired glucose regulation (IGR) and diabetes. The estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) and the urinary albumin-to-creatinine ratio (ACR) were applied to designate renal function and albuminuria, respectively. Binary logistic regression was performed to analyse the contribution of risk factors to CKD. Polynominal regression was used to determine the trends of eGFR with the increment of ACR. RESULTS The prevalence of microalbuminuria, macroalbuminuria and CKD in subjects with diabetes was 22.8%, 3.4% and 29.6%, respectively, which was significantly higher than that in non-diabetes subjects. After adjustment for age, the odds ratio of hypertension for albuminuria and renal insufficiency (eGFR <60 mL/min/1.73 m(2,) stages 3-5 of CKD) were 1.23 (P = 0.000) and 2.55 (P = 0.000). Diabetes and cardiovascular disease (CVD) both increased the risk for albuminuria significantly, with the odds ratio of 1.22 (P = 0.04) and 1.36 (P = 0.006), respectively. Diabetes and CVD were not independent risk factor for renal insufficiency. Although the worsening trends of eGFR are similar in diabetes and IGR subjects, IGR was not a significant risk factor for albuminuria and renal insufficiency. CONCLUSION Screening for albuminuria and eGFR is highly recommended for older patients with diabetes, hypertension and CVD to prevent end-stage kidney disease.
[Prevalence of genital HPV infection among women screened for cervical cancer].

OBJECTIVE To assess the prevalence of high-risk genital human papillomavirus (HPV) infection by age group and risk factors associated. METHODS Cross-sectional study in a sample of 2,300 women (15-65 years old) who self-referred to cervical cancer screening in Sao Paulo and Campinas, Southeastern Brazil, between February 2002 and March 2003. An epidemiological questionnaire was applied and cervical specimens were obtained for cytology and hybrid capture II test (HCII) for HPV detection. Statistical analysis included Pearson Chi-square and unconditional multiple logistic regression model (forward likelihood ratio). RESULTS High-risk genital HPV infection prevalence in this sample was 17.8% and age distribution was as follows: 27.1% (<25 years), 21.3% (25-34 years), 12.1% (35-44 years), 12.0% (45-54 years) and 13.9% (55-65 years). Subjects with the highest number of lifetime sexual partners had the highest rates of genital HPV infection. To be living with a partner, aged 35 to 44 years, and former smokers were protective factors. High-risk genital HPV infection was 14.3% in normal cytology, 77.8% in high grade squamous intraepithelial lesions and in the two cases (100%) of cervical cancer. CONCLUSIONS High-risk HPV prevalence was high in the sample studied. The highest prevalence of HPV infection was seen in women under 25 years old and then a new increase was seen over the age of 55 and the highest rates were found among those with many sexual partners during their lifetime.
TCTP Is an Androgen-Regulated Gene Implicated in Prostate Cancer

TCTP has been implicated in a plethora of important cellular processes related to cell growth, cell cycle progression, malignant transformation and inhibition of apoptosis. In addition to these intracellular functions, TCTP has extracellular functions and plays an important role in immune cells. TCTP expression was previously shown to be deregulated in prostate cancer, but its function in prostate cancer cells is largely unknown. Here we show that TCTP expression is regulated by androgens in LNCaP prostate cancer cells in vitro as well as human prostate cancer xenografts in vivo. Knockdown of TCTP reduced colony formation and increased apoptosis in LNCaP cells, implicating it as an important factor for prostate cancer cell growth. Global gene expression profiling in TCTP knockdown LNCaP cells showed that several interferon regulated genes are regulated by TCTP, suggesting that it may have a role in regulating immune function in prostate cancer. In addition, recombinant TCTP treatment increased colony formation in LNCaP cells suggesting that secreted TCTP may function as a proliferative factor in prostate cancer. These results suggest that TCTP may have a role in prostate cancer development.