Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Low Dose Morphine Enhances Morphine Antinociception Effects in the Animals Pretreated with Selective and Non-Selective Phosphodiestrase Inhibitors

In this study, we investigated the interactive effects of intraperitoneal (i.p.) injections of three different phosphodiesterase inhibitors (PDEIs) on morphineinduced analgesia in mice using tail-flick method. Subcutaneous administration of morphine (1, 3 and 6 mg/kg) caused significant antinociceptive effects in a dose dependent manner. Administration of pentoxifylline (12.5, 25, 50 and 100 mg/kg, i.p.), milrinone (3 and 4.5 mg/kg, i.p.) and theophylline (25, 50 and 100 mg/kg, i.p.) as selective and non-seletive phosphodiesterase inhibitors induced analgesia in mice. We also examined the antinociceptive effects of these three PDEIs in combination with non-effective dose of morphine (1 mg/kg). These combinations increased analgesia effects compared to the either morphine or respective phosphodiestrase inhibitor groups significantly. Our findings strongly suggest that PDEIs can induce analgesia and potentiate morphine antinociception effect via possible interactions on the same molecular or biochemical pathways.
Reported intimate partner violence amongst women attending a public hospital in Botswana

ABSTRACT Background Intimate partner violence (IPV) is common worldwide and occurs across social, economic, religious and cultural groups. This makes it an important public health issue for health care providers. In South Africa, the problem of violence against women is complex and it has social and public health consequences. The paucity of data on IPV is related to underreporting and a lack of screening of this form of violence in health care settings. Objectives The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of IPV and explore the risk factors associated with this type of violence against women who visited a public hospital in Botswana. Method A descriptive, cross-sectional survey was conducted among randomly sampled adult women aged 21 years and older, during their hospital visits in 2007. Data were obtained by means of structured interviews, after obtaining written and signed, informed consent from each participant. Results A total of 320 women participated in this study. Almost half (49.7%) reported having had an experience of IPV in one form or another at some point in their lifetime, while 68 (21.2%) reported a recent incident of abuse by their partners in the past year. Experiences of IPV were predominantly reported by women aged 21 – 30 years (122; 38%). Most of the allegedly abused participants were single (173; 54%) and unemployed (140; 44%). Significant associations were found between alcohol use by participants’ male intimate partners (χ2 = 17.318; p = 0.001) and IPV, as well as cigarette smoking (χ2 = 17.318; p = 0.001) and IPV. Conclusion The prevalence of alleged IPV in Botswana is relatively high (49.7%), especially among young adult women, but the prevalence of reported IPV is low (13.2%). It is essential that women are screened regularly in the country's public and private health care settings for IPV.
Multimodality MRI-based Brain Network Analysis: Applications to Genetic Risk for Alzheimer's Disease

Whole-brain structural and functional connectivity networks can be assessed using diffusion-weighted MRI (DW-MRI) and functional MRI (fMRI), respectively. When the brain is parcellated into its constituent subregions, specific methods quantify the relative connectivity strengths between pairs of regions. The calculation of connectivity between all pairs of regions produces a connectivity matrix. With such a matrix, mathematical methods from graph theory characterize the network for global properties of integration, segregation, and robustness. At the regional level, these methods quantify specific properties such as connection density, convergence, and isolation. In this work, we apply these methods to understand how the possession of the Apolipoprotein E ε4 allele, the primary genetic risk factor for late-onset Alzheimer's Disease (AD), contributes to global and local alterations of structural and functional connectivity. In Chapter 2, we find that DW-MRI-based fiber tractography networks in aging APOE-4 carriers exhibit accelerated negative correlations between age and clustering coefficient, a measure of local axonal connection density. This trend occurs simultaneously with reductions in global cortical thickness and decrease performance on episodic memory tests. In a highly similar population, we examined fMRI-based functional connectivity networks during performance on an episodic memory task (Chapter 3). APOE-4 carriers demonstrated reduced activation during memory encoding in the entorhinal cortex, a locus of early disease change in Alzheimer's disease. The degree of activation in this region correlated with the amount of functional brain integration, suggesting a global basis for local alterations in neuronal activity. In Chapter 4, we assessed hippocampal functional and structural connectivity during episodic memory consolidation in healthy young adults. Results indicate that elevated functional connectivity in a hippocampal-cortical network was important for the process of consolidation. The structural connections of this network all traversed the parahippocamal gyrus, an area of known structural atrophy in individuals at genetic risk for AD. In Chapter 5 we describe a web-based tool for the public sharing and analysis of brain connectivity matrices, and then apply it to reveal substantial differences in the topology of whole brain structural and functional networks. Finally, Chapter 6 contains a model of cortico-hippocampal connectivity that unifies the findings from these studies.
Changes in Soil Microbial Community Structure Influenced by Agricultural Management Practices in a Mediterranean Agro-Ecosystem

Agricultural practices have proven to be unsuitable in many cases, causing considerable reductions in soil quality. Land management practices can provide solutions to this problem and contribute to get a sustainable agriculture model. The main objective of this work was to assess the effect of different agricultural management practices on soil microbial community structure (evaluated as abundance of phospholipid fatty acids, PLFA). Five different treatments were selected, based on the most common practices used by farmers in the study area (eastern Spain): residual herbicides, tillage, tillage with oats and oats straw mulching; these agricultural practices were evaluated against an abandoned land after farming and an adjacent long term wild forest coverage. The results showed a substantial level of differentiation in the microbial community structure, in terms of management practices, which was highly associated with soil organic matter content. Addition of oats straw led to a microbial community structure closer to wild forest coverage soil, associated with increases in organic carbon, microbial biomass and fungal abundances. The microbial community composition of the abandoned agricultural soil was characterised by increases in both fungal abundances and the metabolic quotient (soil respiration per unit of microbial biomass), suggesting an increase in the stability of organic carbon. The ratio of bacteria:fungi was higher in wild forest coverage and land abandoned systems, as well as in the soil treated with oat straw. The most intensively managed soils showed higher abundances of bacteria and actinobacteria. Thus, the application of organic matter, such as oats straw, appears to be a sustainable management practice that enhances organic carbon, microbial biomass and activity and fungal abundances, thereby changing the microbial community structure to one more similar to those observed in soils under wild forest coverage.
Almost Partitioning a 3-Edge-Colored Kn, n into Five Monochromatic Cycles

We show that for any colouring of the edges of the complete bipartite graph $K_{n,n}$ with 3 colours there are 5 disjoint monochromatic cycles which together cover all but $o(n)$ of the vertices. In the same situation, 18 disjoint monochromatic cycles together cover all vertices.
4-(3-Phenyl-3,3a,4,5-tetrahydro-2H-benzo[g]indazol-2-yl)benzenesulfonamide ethanol monosolvate

In the title compound ethanol monosolvate, C23H21N3O2S·C2H5OH, the dihydropyrazole ring is twisted about the Csp 3—Csp 3 bond. Nevertheless, the ring approximates a plane (r.m.s. deviation for the fitted atoms = 0.132 Å) and forms dihedral angles of 5.80 (13) and 12.29 (12)°, respectively, with the fused- and sulfonamide-benzene rings. As the dihydropyrazole C-bound phenyl group is roughly perpendicular to the dihydropyrazole ring [dihedral angle = 74.04 (15)°; the amino group is orientated to the same side of the molecule], to a first approximation, the molecule has a stunted T-shape. The cyclohexene ring adopts a half-chair conformation with the methylene C atom connected to the dihydropyrazole ring lying 0.665 (4) Å out of the plane of the five remaining atoms (r.m.s. deviation = 0.050 Å). The components of the asymmetric unit are connected by an O—H⋯O hydrogen bond. Further links between molecules leading to a three-dimensional architecture are of the type N—H⋯O.
Endometriosis of the posterior cul-de-sac: clinical presentation and findings at transvaginal ultrasound.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of our study was to evaluate the clinical findings and transvaginal ultrasound features of posterior cul-de-sac endometriosis. MATERIALS AND METHODS A retrospective search of cases over a 13-year period was performed and yielded 25 patients with posterior cul-de-sac endometriosis. The diagnosis of posterior cul-de-sac endometriosis was confirmed by histology (n = 13), conventional barium enema (n = 13), colonoscopy (n = 8), CT (n = 8), MRI (n = 17), diagnostic laparoscopy (n = 14), and laparotomy (n = 13). All patients underwent transvaginal and abdominal ultrasound including power Doppler examination. Two radiologists working in consensus analyzed the clinical data and reviewed the imaging studies. RESULTS All 25 patients presented with lower abdominal pain that was cyclic in six patients. Eleven patients were unintended childless. Rectal discomfort was mentioned by 17 patients, two of whom also reported rectal blood loss. At physical examination, eight patients had a palpable mass in the posterior cul-de-sac. Transvaginal ultrasound detected one or more hypoechoic masses in the posterior cul-de-sac in all 25 patients. All masses were solid, noncompressible, and localized on the serosal surface of the rectosigmoid with sparing of mucosa and submucosa. The lesions had a rounded or ovoid shape and a mean sagittal diameter of 37 mm with vascularity. The masses had a spiculated or tethering contour in 19 patients. Abdominal ultrasound detected thick-walled adnexal cysts in 11 patients, hydronephrosis in eight, and involvement of the ileocecal region in five. CONCLUSION Patients with endometriosis of the posterior cul-de-sac frequently present with atypical noncyclic symptoms. The transvaginal ultrasound features characteristic of posterior cul-de-sac endometriosis are a solid, often spiculated, noncompressible mass near the posterior cul-de-sac that is localized at the serosal surface of the rectosigmoid, spares the mucosa and submucosa, and is vascular.
The P600 Event-Related Potential Across Ages and Ear Conditions

The P600 Event-Related Potential Across Ages and Ear Conditions Kyla Lewis Tree Department of Communication Disorders Master of Science Studying language development through event-related potentials provides specific information regarding how the brain processes specific aspects of language over time. In this study, the P600 component, a positive wave occurring approximately 600 ms post-stimulus and known for detecting syntactic errors, was specifically analyzed. Thirty children between the ages of 5 and 12 years listened to linguistically correct, syntactically incorrect, and semantically incorrect sentences in three ear conditions: monaurally to the right ear, monaurally to the left ear, and binaurally. The participants were instructed to judge the sentences to be correct or incorrect. Comparisons were then made of the latency and amplitude of the P600 between the age groups, sentence types, and ear conditions. The results of this study indicate that younger children exhibit later latencies and higher amplitudes than do adults. The study also suggests that syntactic processing becomes fully established around the age of 8 to 9 years. In reference to ear condition, this study found that ear condition may be a factor in a child’s ability to recognize syntax. This was the first study that investigated developmental ERPs and ear condition. Therefore, this finding is a result of interest that needs to be further explored in future studies. The current study also suggests that the right ear advantage (REA) phenomenon may exist neurologically in older ages with monotic sentences. This is another area that would benefit from additional research as this phenomenon has not been previously described.
Computer Vision and Image Understanding Computer Vision for Assistive Technologies

In the last decades there has been a tremendous increase in demand for Assistive Technologies (AT) useful to overcome functional limitations of individuals and to improve their quality of life. As a consequence, different research papers addressing the development of assistive technologies have appeared into the literature pushing the need to organize and categorize them taking into account the application assistive aims. Several surveys address the categorization problem for works concerning a specific need, hence giving the overview on the state of the art technologies supporting the related function for the individual. Unfortunately, this " user-need oriented " way of categorization considers each technology as a whole and then a deep and critical explanation of the technical knowledge used to build the operative tasks as well as a discussion on their cross-contextual applicability is completely missing making thus existing surveys unlikely to be technically inspiring for functional improvements and to explore new technological frontiers. To overcome this critical drawback, in this paper an original " task oriented " way to categorize the state of the art of the AT works has been introduced: it relies on the split of the final assistive goals into tasks that are then used as pointers to the works in literature in which each of them has been used as a component. In particular this paper concentrates on a set of cross-application Computer Vision tasks that are set as the pivots to establish a categorization of the AT already used to assist some of the user's needs. For each task the paper analyzes the Computer Vision algorithms recently involved in the development of AT and, finally, it tries to catch a glimpse of the possible paths in the short and medium term that could allow a real improvement of the assistive outcomes. The potential impact on the assessment of AT considering users, medical, economical and social perspective is also addressed.
Do abundance distributions and species aggregation correctly predict macroecological biodiversity patterns in tropical forests?

Abstract Aim It has been recently suggested that different ‘unified theories of biodiversity and biogeography’ can be characterized by three common ‘minimal sufficient rules’: (1) species abundance distributions follow a hollow curve, (2) species show intraspecific aggregation, and (3) species are independently placed with respect to other species. Here, we translate these qualitative rules into a quantitative framework and assess if these minimal rules are indeed sufficient to predict multiple macroecological biodiversity patterns simultaneously. Location Tropical forest plots in Barro Colorado Island (BCI), Panama, and in Sinharaja, Sri Lanka. Methods We assess the predictive power of the three rules using dynamic and spatial simulation models in combination with census data from the two forest plots. We use two different versions of the model: (1) a neutral model and (2) an extended model that allowed for species differences in dispersal distances. In a first step we derive model parameterizations that correctly represent the three minimal rules (i.e. the model quantitatively matches the observed species abundance distribution and the distribution of intraspecific aggregation). In a second step we applied the parameterized models to predict four additional spatial biodiversity patterns. Results Species‐specific dispersal was needed to quantitatively fulfil the three minimal rules. The model with species‐specific dispersal correctly predicted the species–area relationship, but failed to predict the distance decay, the relationship between species abundances and aggregations, and the distribution of a spatial co‐occurrence index of all abundant species pairs. These results were consistent over the two forest plots. Main conclusions The three ‘minimal sufficient’ rules only provide an incomplete approximation of the stochastic spatial geometry of biodiversity in tropical forests. The assumption of independent interspecific placements is most likely violated in many forests due to shared or distinct habitat preferences. Furthermore, our results highlight missing knowledge about the relationship between species abundances and their aggregation.
Current and future diagnostic technologies used in personalized medicine Gene expression profile as a prognostic tool

License. The full terms of the License are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/. Non-commercial uses of the work are permitted without any further permission from Dove Medical Press Limited, provided the work is properly attributed. Permissions beyond the scope of the License are administered by Dove Medical Press Limited. Information on how to request permission may be found at: http://www.dovepress. com/permissions.php Pharmacogenomics and Personalized Medicine 2014:7 1–19 Pharmacogenomics and Personalized Medicine Dovepress
Long-Term Quality of Life in Adult Patients with Strabismus after Corrective Surgery Compared to the General Population

Purpose To evaluate the status of and factors associated with long-term health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in adult patients with strabismus following corrective surgery. Methods Prospective cross-sectional study. A total of 122 adults who underwent corrective surgery and were followed up for at least 1 year were recruited. Pre- and post-operative HRQOL were evaluated using the Chinese version of the Adult Strabismus 20 (AS-20). Demographics and clinical characteristics were recorded. Eighty-nine age-matched, normal individuals without a history of strabismus were recruited as a control group. Results AS-20 scores improved significantly in the psychosocial subscale and total scale after surgery for all122 patients, but not in the function subscale. HRQOL was better in the successful cases than in the non-successful cases (p<0.005). Subjects who recovered stereo function had better HRQOL than those who did not (p<0.01). Compared to the control population, the patients had poorer HRQOL post-operatively, with only approximately 30% of the subjects having scores within the normal threshold scores. The self-sense of a lack of ocular deviation and a successful surgical outcome were significant factors associated with post-operative HRQOL status. Conclusions HRQOL, as evaluated by AS-20 scores, improved in the patients after surgery but was worse than that in the general population. Successful surgical outcomes and a sense of good alignment were the main factors that correlated with increased post-operative HRQOL. Positive assessments of surgical results by patients may benefit post-operative HRQOL.
Characterizing random CSMA wireless networks: A stochastic geometry approach

We charachterize the random CSMA wireless networks by statistically quantifing the intensity of simultaneously active nodes and the aggregate interference experienced by a generic node in the network. First, starting from a Poisson point process to model the spatial distribution of the network nodes, we propose a modified hard core point process (MHCPP) to model the spatial distribution of the simultaneously active users in a random CSMA network. Our motivation to propose the MHCPP is to mitigate the node intensity underestimation problem of the traditional hard core point process (HCPP). Then, we use the shot noise theory to statistically quantify the interference experienced by a generic node in the network. Closed-form expressions for the intensity of the simultaneously active nodes and the Laplace transform of the probability density function (and hence the moment generating function and the characteristic function), mean, and variance of the approximate aggregate interference are obtained. The accuracy of our model is validated by simulations.
EQUIVALENCE OF THE HIGHER ORDER ASYMPTOTIC EFFICIENCY OF k-STEP AND EXTREMUM STATISTICS

It is well known that a one-step scoring estimator that starts from any N1/2-consistent estimator has the same first-order asymptotic efficiency as the maximum likelihood estimator. This paper extends this result to k-step estimators and test statistics for k ≥ 1, higher order asymptotic efficiency, and general extremum estimators and test statistics. The paper shows that a k-step estimator has the same higher order asymptotic efficiency, to any given order, as the extremum estimator toward which it is stepping, provided (i) k is sufficiently large, (ii) some smoothness and moment conditions hold, and (iii) a condition on the initial estimator holds. For example, for the Newton–Raphson k-step estimator based on an initial estimator in a wide class, we obtain asymptotic equivalence to integer order s provided 2k ≥ s + 1. Thus, for k = 1, 2, and 3, one obtains asymptotic equivalence to first, third, and seventh orders, respectively. This means that the maximum differences between the probabilities that the (N1/2-normalized) k-step and extremum estimators lie in any convex set are o(1), o(N−3/2), and o(N−3), respectively.
How does the medium of instruction affect the learning of chemistry

This article describes a study of how different media of instruction affected the learning of chemistry in a Malawian secondary school. Pretests, post-tests, an examination and a questionnaire measured the performance of two classes taught in different languages. The article contributes some data for discussing the established language policy, many ideas for follow-up studies, and will perhaps provide the reader with a vision of a new language era in secondary schools in Malawi and other African countries
Carbamazepine: a 'blind' assessment of CYP-associated metabolism and interactions in human liver-derived in vitro systems

1. The ability of various in vitro systems for CYP enzymes (computer modelling, human liver microsomes, precision-cut liver slices, hepatocytes in culture, recombinant enzymes) to predict various aspects of in vivo metabolism and kinetics of carbamazepine (CBZ) was investigated. 2. The study was part of the EUROCYP project that aimed to evaluate relevant human in vitro systems to study drug metabolism. 3. CBZ was given to the participating laboratories without disclosing its chemical nature. 4. The most important enzyme (CYP3A4) and metabolic route (10,11-epoxidation) were predicted by all the systems studied. 5. Minor enzymes and routes were predicted to a different extent by various systems. 6. Prediction of a clearance class, i.e. slow clearance, was correctly predicted by microsomes, slices, hepatocytes and recombinant enzymes (CYP3A4). 7. The 10,11-epoxidation of CBZ by the recombinant CYP3A4 was enhanced by the addition of exogenous cytochrome-b5, leading to a considerable over-prediction. 8. Induction potency of CBZ was predicted in cultured hepatocytes in which 7- ethoxycoumarin O-deethylase was used as an index activity. 9. It seems that for a principally CYP-metabolized substance such as CBZ, all liverderived systems provide useful information for prediction of metabolic routes, rates and interactions.