Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Perceived stress and associated factors among medical students

Background: Stress and its psychological manifestations are currently a major source of concern. Medical education poses challenging and potentially threatening demands for students throughout the world. Objectives: To determine the prevalence and factors associated with perceived stress in medical students in the College of Medicine, King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, King Fahad Medical City, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Materials and Methods: This was a cross-sectional study on all medical students of batches 9, 10, and 11, which constituted all the enrolled students. Data were collected using a questionnaire based on the Kessler10 psychological distress instrument with a total score ranging from 10 to 50 points in addition to some sociodemographic characteristics. Appropriate statistical test procedures were used to study the magnitude of stress and its risk factors. Results: Mean stress score of the eighty participants was 26.03 ± 9.7. Students with severe stress constituted 33.8%, and 30% were well. Severe stress was significantly associated with female gender and junior level. Nervousness, feeling hopeless, feeling restless, and depressed were the most important factors affecting students′ stress scores. Factor analysis revealed three hidden factors for stress in this group, namely, depression, nervousness, and age. Conclusion: Stress in medical students is prevalent and significantly associated with the female gender and the junior level. Implementation of coping programs is necessary.
Geomicrobiology of the Ocean Crust: A Role for Chemoautotrophic Fe-Bacteria

The delicate balance of the major global biogeochemical cycles greatly depends on the transformation of Earth materials at or near its surface. The formation and degradation of rocks, minerals, and organic matter are pivotal for the balance, maintenance, and future of many of these cycles. Microorganisms also play a crucial role, determining the transformation rates, pathways, and end products of these processes. While most of Earth’s crust is oceanic rather than terrestrial, few studies have been conducted on ocean crust transformations, particularly those mediated by endolithic (rock-hosted) microbial communities. The biology and geochemistry of deep-sea and sub-seafloor environments are generally more complicated to study than in terrestrial or near-coastal regimes. As a result, fewer, and more targeted, studies usually homing in on specific sites, are most common. We are studying the role of endolithic microorganisms in weathering seafloor crustal materials, including basaltic glass and sulfide minerals, both in the vicinity of seafloor hydrothermal vents and off-axis at unsedimented (young) ridge flanks. We are using molecular phylogenetic surveys and laboratory culture studies to define the size, diversity, physiology, and distribution of microorganisms in the shallow ocean crust. Our data show that an unexpected diversity of microorganisms directly participate in rock weathering at the seafloor, and imply that endolithic microbial communities contribute to rock, mineral, and carbon transformations.
Low Density Lipoprotein Receptor Activity in Fibroblasts Cultured from Diabetic Donors

Low density lipoprotein (LDL) receptor activity was evaluated in cultured skin fibroblasts from diabetics and nondiabetic controls to evaluate whether intrinsic abnormalities of the LDL pathway exist, which might account for the premature atherosclerosis associated with diabetes mellitus. LDL receptors did not differ between cells grown from 16 diabetics (7 insulin-dependent, 9 non-insulin-dependent) or from 16 nondiabetic controls. An inverse relationship between LDL receptor activity and cell density was observed (y = 1.35 × −1.22, r = 0.90, P < 0.001), which appeared the same for diabetic and nondiabetic cells. Normalized values for LDL degradation by diabetic and nondiabetic cell strains were 1.52 ± 0.42% of added LDL/106 cells and 1.34 ± 0.28, respectively (P = NS). The kinetics of the LDL receptor also appeared to be the same in cells derived from a diabetic and a nondiabetic donor. LDL receptor activity in diabetic cells increased appropriately in response to physiologic concentrations of insulin in the incubation medium. Thus, LDL receptor activity appears to be normal in diabetic cell strains. Therefore, these results do not support the possibility that alterations in the LDL pathway contribute to the accelerated atherosclerosis associated with diabetes.
The evolution within us

The B-cell immune response is a remarkable evolutionary system found in jawed vertebrates. B-cell receptors, the membrane-bound form of antibodies, are capable of evolving high affinity to almost any foreign protein. High germline diversity and rapid evolution upon encounter with antigen explain the general adaptability of B-cell populations, but the dynamics of repertoires are less well understood. These dynamics are scientifically and clinically important. After highlighting the remarkable characteristics of naive and experienced B-cell repertoires, especially biased usage of genes encoding the B-cell receptors, we contrast methods of sequence analysis and their attempts to explain patterns of B-cell evolution. These phylogenetic approaches are currently unlinked to explicit models of B-cell competition, which analyse repertoire evolution at the level of phenotype, the affinities and specificities to particular antigenic sites. The models, in turn, suggest how chance, infection history and other factors contribute to different patterns of immunodominance and protection between people. Challenges in rational vaccine design, specifically vaccines to induce broadly neutralizing antibodies to HIV, underscore critical gaps in our understanding of B cells' evolutionary and ecological dynamics.
Convergence of Strong Shock in a Van der Waals Gas

Strong cylindrical and spherical shock waves, collapsing at the center (or axis) of symmetry, are studied for a Van der Waals gas. The perturbation technique applied in this paper provides a global solution to the implosion problem, yielding the results for Guderley’s local self‐similar solution, which is valid only in the vicinity of the center/axis of implosion. The similarity exponents are found along with the corresponding amplitudes in the vicinity of the shock‐collapse. The flow parameters and the shock trajectory have been computed for different values of the adiabatic coefficient and the Van der Waals excluded volume.
Fast Multiresolution Image Operations in the Wavelet Domain

A wide class of operations on images can be performed directly in the wavelet domain by operating on coefficients of the wavelet transforms of the images and other matrices defined by these operations. Operating in the wavelet domain enables one to perform these operations progressively in a coarse-to-fine fashion, operate on different resolutions, manipulate features at different scales, trade off accuracy for speed, and localize the operation in both the spatial and the frequency domains. Performing such operations in the wavelet domain and then reconstructing the result is also often more efficient than performing the same operation in the standard direct fashion. In this paper, we demonstrate the applicability and advantages of this framework to three common types of image operations: image blending, 3D warping of images and sequences, and convolution of images and image sequences.
Using RFID/NFC and QR-Code in Mobile Phones to Link the Physical and the Digital World

Today it is clear that the most widely used device in the world is the mobile phone. Phones are mostly voice-centric devices, but a wide range of mobile devices now exist on the market offering multiple services and functions. The term smartphone is now used to characterize a mobile phone with special computer-enabled features. Despite the mobile phone evolution, one of the main disadvantages of these devices is that they still have insufficient input capabilities, providing tiny keyboards to do manual entries. Fortunately most smartphones are now equipped with several sensors that can be used to enhance and create new users interfaces. This is the case for integrated cameras that can be used to read visual codes, like Quick Response (QR) Code as well as other sensing technologies such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and the associated Near Field Communications (NFC). The use of these technologies does not only facilitate entering information, but it also allows using mobile phones for interactions with people, places and things, enhancing the usability and usefulness of these devices. The use of QR Codes and RFID tags has significantly evolve in the last decades, they were first used to track products in the industry, but now they have contributed to develop several new concepts that integrate the physical world with the virtual one.
Backward Path Growth for Efficient Mobile Sequential Recommendation

The problem of mobile sequential recommendation is to suggest a route connecting a set of pick-up points for a taxi driver so that he/she is more likely to get passengers with less travel cost. Essentially, a key challenge of this problem is its high computational complexity. In this paper, we propose a novel dynamic programming based method to solve the mobile sequential recommendation problem consisting of two separate stages: an offline pre-processing stage and an online search stage. The offline stage pre-computes potential candidate sequences from a set of pick-up points. A backward incremental sequence generation algorithm is proposed based on the identified iterative property of the cost function. Simultaneously, an incremental pruning policy is adopted in the process of sequence generation to reduce the search space of the potential sequences effectively. In addition, a batch pruning algorithm is further applied to the generated potential sequences to remove some non-optimal sequences of a given length. Since the pruning effectiveness keeps growing with the increase of the sequence length, at the online stage, our method can efficiently find the optimal driving route for an unloaded taxi in the remaining candidate sequences. Moreover, our method can handle the problem of optimal route search with a maximum cruising distance or a destination constraint. Experimental results on real and synthetic data sets show that both the pruning ability and the efficiency of our method surpass the state-of-the-art methods. Our techniques can therefore be effectively employed to address the problem of mobile sequential recommendation with many pick-up points in real-world applications.
ATP-dependent Activation of the Intermediate Conductance, Ca2+-activated K+ Channel, hIK1, Is Conferred by a C-terminal Domain*

We previously demonstrated that hIK1 is activated directly by ATP in excised, inside-out patches in a protein kinase A inhibitor 5–24 dependent manner, suggesting a role for phosphorylation in the regulation of this Ca2+-dependent channel. However, mutation of the single consensus cAMP-dependent protein kinase phosphorylation site (S334A) failed to modify the response of hIK1 to ATP (Gerlach, A. C., Gangopadhyay, N. N., and Devor, D. C. (2000) J. Biol. Chem. 275, 585–598). Here we demonstrate that ATP does not similarly activate the highly homologous Ca2+-dependent K+channels, hSK1, rSK2, and rSK3. To define the region of hIK1 responsible for the ATP-dependent regulation, we generated a series of hIK1 truncations and hIK1/rSK2 chimeras. ATP did not activate a chimera containing the N terminus plus S1–S4 from hIK1. In contrast, ATP activated a chimera containing the hIK1 C-terminal amino acids His299–Lys427. Furthermore, truncation of hIK1 at Leu414 resulted in an ATP-dependent channel, whereas larger truncations of hIK1 failed to express. Additional hIK1/rSK2 chimeras defined the minimal region of hIK1 required to confer complete ATP sensitivity as including amino acids Arg355–Ala413. An alanine scan of all non-conserved serines and threonines within this region failed to alter the response of hIK1 to ATP, suggesting that hIK1 itself is not directly phosphorylated. Additionally, substitution of amino acids Arg355–Met368 of hIK1 into the corresponding region of rSK2 resulted in an ATP-dependent activation, which was ∼50% of that of hIK1. These results demonstrate that amino acids Arg355–Ala413within the C terminus of hIK1 confer sensitivity to ATP. Finally, we demonstrate that the ATP-dependent phosphorylation of hIK1 or an associated protein is independent of Ca2+.
IgG Avidity Test in Congenital Toxoplasmosis Diagnoses in Newborns

The goal of this study was to investigate the importance of IgG avidity testing in newborns (NBs) diagnosed with early congenital toxoplasmosis. We collected samples from 88 puerperae infected by Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii) and their NBs (48 acutely-infected puerperae (AIP) and 40 chronically-infected puerperae (CIP)), from two public maternity hospitals in Goiania city, Goias, Brazil, from 2010 to 2015. Specific anti-T. gondii IgM and IgG serum levels and IgG avidity tests were evaluated using chemiluminescence. Congenital toxoplasmosis was observed in 66.66% (n = 32) of NBs with AIP, 94.1% presenting low avidity (LA) and 51.61% presenting high avidity (HA) test results. The IgG and IgM levels of NBs with LA and their puerperae were higher in comparison with HA NBs and puerperae (p = 0.0001). The avidity tests showed 100% specificity and 50% sensitivity (p = 0.0001). NBs with LA had a 15-fold increased risk of developing congenital toxoplasmosis in comparison with HA NBs. The IgG avidity test could be used to assist in early congenital toxoplasmosis diagnoses in NBs and LA, identifying a greater probability of vertical transmission.
Combining Family and Twin Data in Association Studies to Estimate the Noninherited Maternal Antigens Effect

It is hypothesized that certain alleles can have a protective effect not only when inherited by the offspring but also as noninherited maternal antigens (NIMA). To estimate the NIMA effect, large samples of families are needed. When large samples are not available, we propose a combined approach to estimate the NIMA effect from ascertained nuclear families and twin pairs. We develop a likelihood‐based approach allowing for several ascertainment schemes, to accommodate for the outcome‐dependent sampling scheme, and a family‐specific random term, to take into account the correlation between family members. We estimate the parameters using maximum likelihood based on the combined joint likelihood ( CJL ) approach. Simulations show that the CJL is more efficient for estimating the NIMA odds ratios as compared to a families‐only approach. To illustrate our approach, we used data from a family and a twin study from the United Kingdom on rheumatoid arthritis, and confirmed the protective NIMA effect, with an odds ratio of 0.477 (95% CI 0.264–0.864).
A Survey on Structure from Motion

The structure from motion (SfM) problem in computer vision is the problem of recovering the $3$D structure of a stationary scene from a set of projective measurements, represented as a collection of $2$D images, via estimation of motion of the cameras corresponding to these images. In essence, SfM involves the three main stages of (1) extraction of features in images (e.g., points of interest, lines, etc.) and matching of these features between images, (2) camera motion estimation (e.g., using relative pairwise camera poses estimated from the extracted features), (3) recovery of the $3$D structure using the estimated motion and features (e.g., by minimizing the so-called reprojection error). This survey mainly focuses on the relatively recent developments in the literature pertaining to stages (2) and (3). More specifically, after touching upon the early factorization-based techniques for motion and structure estimation, we provide a detailed account of some of the recent camera location estimation methods in the literature, which precedes the discussion of notable techniques for $3$D structure recovery. We also cover the basics of the simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) problem, which can be considered to be a specific case of the SfM problem. Additionally, a review of the fundamentals of feature extraction and matching (i.e., stage (1) above), various recent methods for handling ambiguities in $3$D scenes, SfM techniques involving relatively uncommon camera models and image features, and popular sources of data and SfM software is included in our survey.
Environmental, Dietary, and Behavioral Factors Distinguish Chinese Adults with High Waist-to-Height Ratio with and without Inflammation.

BACKGROUND The environmental and behavioral risk factors associated with central obesity and/or inflammation in populations exposed to both obesogenic and pathogenic environments remain unclear. OBJECTIVES We tested which of the characteristics distinguished 3 risk groups--high waist-to-height ratio (WHtR; >0.5) without inflammation [high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) <3 mg/L], normal WHtR (≤ 0.5) with inflammation (hs-CRP: 3-10 mg/L), and high WHtR with inflammation--from the referent group with normal WHtR without inflammation and, secondarily, which factors differed between the groups with high WHtR with and without inflammation. METHODS The analytic sample included 8068 adults participating in the China Health and Nutrition Survey in 2009. Adjusted multinomial and logistic regression models were used to assess the risk of being in one of the "unhealthy" groups compared with the referent group. RESULTS Men with high WHtR with and without inflammation were more likely to live at higher urbanicity (57-63%) and have higher incomes (26-42%) and household sanitation (26-67%) and were >40% less likely to have high physical activity than the healthy referent group. Men with high WHtR with inflammation had higher odds of infectious symptoms than those with high WHtR without inflammation (OR: 1.73; 95% CI: 1.15, 2.61). Women with high WHtR without inflammation were less likely to have high household sanitation (44%) or perform high levels of physical activity (24%) and were 34% more likely to consume more fiber than the healthy referent group. Women with high WHtR and inflammation were more likely than those with high WHtR without inflammation to have infectious symptoms (OR: 1.45; 95% CI: 1.01, 2.07) and less likely to have higher fiber intake (OR: 0.77; 95% CI: 0.60,1.00) or physical activity (OR: 0.55; 95% CI: 0.41, 0.73). CONCLUSION These results document different underlying pathogenic and obesogenic risk factors for visceral adiposity with and without inflammation in Chinese adults, suggesting that context-specific approaches may be needed to prevent and treat inflammation.
Snap-Through of Unsymmetric Cross-Ply Laminates Using Piezoceramic Actuators

The paper discusses the concept of using a piezoceramic actuator bonded to one side of a two-layer unsymmetric cross ply [0/90] T laminate to provide the moments necessary to snap the laminate from one stable equilibrium shape to another. The results presented are considered an alternative to existing morphing concepts wherein actuators are used to elastically warp structures into a shape other than their natural and unique equilibrium shape. These existing concepts require the continuous application of power to maintain the warped shape. With the concept discussed here, the actuators are used only to change from one equilibrium shape to another, so continuous power is not needed. The paper discusses several phases of modeling, including bonding the actuator to the laminate and applying voltage to the actuator to effect the shape change, and experimental work. Two models are developed, a simple model and a more refined one. Both are based on the Rayleigh-Ritz technique and the use of energy and variational methods. The experimental phase of the study is discussed, particularly the measurement of the voltage level needed to snap the laminate. The voltage measurements are compared with predictions and the agreement between measurements and the predictions of the refined model are reasonable, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Suggestions for future activities are presented.
Detection and Location of High Impedance Faults in Multiconductor Overhead Distribution Lines Using Power Line Communication Devices

An effective power system protection scheme has to be able to detect and locate all occurring faults corresponding to low and high impedance values. The latter category poses the greatest challenge for the protection schemes due to the low values of the related fault current. This paper extends previous work by the authors on the subject, aiming to achieve detection and location of high impedance faults (HIFs) in multiconductor overhead distribution networks utilizing power line communication (PLC) devices. Fault detection is proposed to be performed by a PLC device installed at the starting point of the monitored line and by using differences to the values of metrics related to input impedance at frequencies utilized by narrowband systems. Moreover, fault location can be derived by a response to impulse injection procedure utilized by all installed PLC devices along the line. The method is evaluated and validated in various simulation test cases concerning its ability to effectively detect and locate HIFs.
High performance low power dual edge triggered static D flip-flop

In this paper a low-power double-edge triggered static flip-flop (DETSFF) suitable for low-power and high performance applications is presented. The designed DETFF is verified at gpdk 180nm-1.8V CMOS technology. Comparison with some of the latest DETFFs shows that the proposed DETSFF can achieve the lowest power consumption, lowest clock to Q delay and thus Power-delay-product (PDP). Moreover, the proposed DETSFF comprises of only 15 transistors hence requires lesser number of transistors and thus requires lesser overall silicon area.
Prospective evaluation of oro-pharyngeal dysphagia after severe traumatic brain injury

Primary objective: To evaluate clinical, videofluoroscopic findings and clinical evolution of neurogenic dysphagia and to establish the prognostic factors. Research design: Prospective cohort study. Methods and procedures: Forty-eight patients with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) and clinically-suspected oro-pharyngeal dysphagia were studied. Clinical evaluation of oro-pharyngeal dysphagia and videofluoroscopic examination were performed. Clinical evolution was based on feeding mode at discharge, the presence of respiratory complications and body mass index (BMI) at admission and at discharge. Main outcomes and results: Sixty-five per cent of patients had impaired gag reflex and 44% cough during oral feeding. Videofluoroscopy revealed some type of disorder in 90% of cases: 65% in the oral phase and 73% in the pharyngeal phase (aspiration in 62.5%, being silent in 41%). At discharge, 45% were on normal diet, 27% on a modified oral diet, 14% combined oral intake and gastrostomy feeding and 14% were fed exclusively by gastrostomy. Feeding mode at discharge substantially correlated with RLCF score at admission (p=0.04) and with RLCF (p=0.009) and DRS (p=0.02) scores at discharge. Conclusions: Aspiration is very frequent in patients with severe TBI, being silent in almost half. Cognitive function evaluated with the RLCF is the best prognostic factor. At discharge, 72% of the patients were on oral food intake despite having severe TBI.