Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Elevated levels of interleukin-6 in unstable angina.

BACKGROUND Elevated plasma levels of C-reactive protein have been found in the majority of patients with unstable angina. The evidence of elevated levels of acute-phase proteins in unstable angina is in line with a growing body of evidence that suggests that inflammation plays a role in this syndrome and is an indirect sign of increased production of interleukin-6, which is the major determinant of acute-phase-protein production by the liver. However, in unstable angina, there is no direct proof of the role played by interleukin-6. METHODS AND RESULTS We measured levels of interleukin-6 in 38 patients with unstable angina at the time of their admission to the coronary care unit and in 29 patients with stable angina. In the same groups of patients, we also measured C-reactive protein. Interleukin-6 (undetectable, ie, < 3 pg/mL, in healthy volunteers) was detectable in 23 (61%) of 38 patients with unstable angina but in only 6 (21%) of 29 with stable angina (P < .01). Median interleukin-6 levels were 5.25 pg/mL (range, 0 to 90 pg/mL) in patients with unstable angina but were below the detection limit of the assay in patients with stable angina (range, 0 to 7 pg/mL). A significant correlation was observed between interleukin-6 and C-reactive protein levels (r = .4, P = .013). CONCLUSIONS Our study demonstrates that raised levels of interleukin-6 are common in unstable angina, correlate with C-reactive protein, and are associated with prognosis, thus confirming the importance of the cytokine pathway for the production by the liver of acute-phase proteins and strengthening the importance of inflammation in this syndrome. Further studies are required to elucidate better the role of interleukins in unstable angina.
Fructose Might Contribute to the Hypoglycemic Effect of Honey

Honey is a natural substance with many medicinal properties, including antibacterial, hepatoprotective, hypoglycemic, antioxidant and antihypertensive effects. It reduces hyperglycemia in diabetic rats and humans. However, the mechanism(s) of its hypoglycemic effect remain(s) unknown. Honey comprises many constituents, making it difficult to ascertain which component(s) contribute(s) to its hypoglycemic effect. Nevertheless, available evidence indicates that honey consists of predominantly fructose and glucose. The objective of this review is to summarize findings which indicate that fructose exerts a hypoglycemic effect. The data show that glucose and fructose exert a synergistic effect in the gastrointestinal tract and pancreas. This synergistic effect might enhance intestinal fructose absorption and/or stimulate insulin secretion. The results indicate that fructose enhances hepatic glucose uptake and glycogen synthesis and storage via activation of hepatic glucokinase and glycogen synthase, respectively. The data also demonstrate the beneficial effects of fructose on glycemic control, glucose- and appetite-regulating hormones, body weight, food intake, oxidation of carbohydrate and energy expenditure. In view of the similarities of these effects of fructose with those of honey, the evidence may support the role of fructose in honey in mediating the hypoglycemic effect of honey.
Participatory Journalism - Guarding Open Gates at Online Newspapers

Notes on Authors. Acknowledgements. Authors' Note. Chapter 1: Introduction: Sharing the Road. Part I: The Impact of Participatory Journalism. Chapter 2: Mechanisms of Participation: How audience options shape the conversation (Alfred Hermida). Chapter 3: The Journalist s Relationship with Users: New dimensions to conventional roles (Ari Heinonen). Part II: Managing Change. Chapter 4: Inside the Newsroom: Journalists' motivations and organizational structures (Steve Paulussen). Chapter 5: Managing Audience Participation: Practices, workfl ows and strategies (David Domingo). Chapter 6: User Comments: The transformation of participatory space (Zvi Reich). Part III: Issues and Implications. Chapter 7: Taking Responsibility: Legal and ethical issues in participatory journalism (Jane B. Singer). Chapter 8: Participatory Journalism in the Marketplace: Economic motivations behind the practices (Marina Vujnovic). Chapter 9: Understanding a New Phenomenon: The signifi cance of participatory journalism (Thorsten Quandt). Chapter 10: Fluid Spaces, Fluid Journalism: The role of the "active recipient" in participatory journalism (Alfred Hermida). Appendix: About Our Study. Glossary. References. Index.
Facilitating intention prediction for humans by optimizing robot motions

Members of a team are able to coordinate their actions by anticipating the intentions of others. Achieving such implicit coordination between humans and robots requires humans to be able to quickly and robustly predict the robot's intentions, i.e. the robot should demonstrate a behavior that is legible. Whereas previous work has sought to explicitly optimize the legibility of behavior, we investigate legibility as a property that arises automatically from general requirements on the efficiency and robustness of joint human-robot task completion. We do so by optimizing fast and successful completion of joint human-robot tasks through policy improvement with stochastic optimization. Two experiments with human subjects show that robots are able to adapt their behavior so that humans become better at predicting the robot's intentions early on, which leads to faster and more robust overall task completion.
Assessing the ecological impact of a university

Since the environmental movement began, teachers, researchers, and activists on college and university campuses have made great strides toward making campuses “greener” places. As effective as these efforts have been and continue to be, some increasingly salient questions about sustainability remain unanswered. This paper offers an answer to the question, “How big is the University of Redlands’s ecological impact? ”, using a recently developed technique called ecological footprint analysis (EFA). The output of EFA, as used here, is a partial ecological footprint for the University of Redlands (UR). UR’s ecological footprint is then evaluated using criteria derived from several different theoretical approaches to sustainability.
A Survey of Language Identification Techniques and Applications

Language Identification is the process of determining in which natural language the contents of the text is written. Language identification is always been an important research area which has been carried out from early 1970’s. Still it is a fascinating field to be studied due to increased demand of natural language processing applications. In many applications, it works as a primary step of some larger process. In this paper, a number of applications are outlined where language identification is working successfully. Language Identification can be done using two types of techniques: computational techniques and non-computational techniques. Computational techniques are based on statistical methods and requires large set of training data for each of the language while non-computational techniques require that researcher must have extensive knowledge about the language to-be-identified. In this paper, a brief review of the few papers is presented which outlines the various statistical and non-statistical techniques that have been applied by the different researchers for language identification. Besides it, different researchers performed language identification for different type of documents such as monolingual, multilingual, long and short and for a particular set of languages.
Globalization and the myth of the powerless state

economies and the demise of the state’s domestic power. This article, instead, seeks to show why the modern notion of the powerless state, with its accompanying reports about the demise of national diversity, is fundamentally misleading.1 It is undeniable that striking changes have taken place inside nation-states in recent times. On the social policy front, there has been a decisive move towards fiscal conservatism, whether from the Right or the Left, with reforms to taxation systems and the trimming of social programmes. In the economic sphere, governments have moved towards greater openness in matters of trade, investment and finance. These changes are often represented as prima facie evidence of the emergence of a new global ‘logic of capitalism’. According to this logic, states are now virtually powerless to make real policy choices; transnational markets and footloose corporations have so narrowly constrained policy options that more and more states are being forced to adopt similar fiscal, economic and social policy regimes. Globalists therefore predict
Police officer performance appraisal systems

Constables, sergeants, and staff sergeants (n=393) representing 15 municipal Canadian police departments completed a survey in which they reported about their organizations’ performance appraisal practices. In general, the officers’ responses suggested that their organizations’ performance appraisal systems were deficient with respect to well‐established key components of performance appraisal. Most officers indicated that they, for example, had little or no opportunity for input, did not receive informal feedback on a regular basis, received evaluations that were based on personal traits (as opposed to performance criteria), and their appraisals did not to lead to improved job performance or the identification of career development objectives. Also, the vast majority of officers indicated that supervisors received little or no training. In addition to emphasizing the need for improved supervisor training, the discussion focused on the negative consequences of inadequate performance appraisal at the individual level (e.g. employee development) and the organizational level (e.g. poor utilization of resources and undermining other systems and organizational change strategies).
Intestinal colonization: How key microbial players become established in this dynamic process

In this review, we provide an overview of the dynamic changes within the microbiota and its metabolites that are implicated in establishing and maintaining gastrointestinal homeostasis during various stages of microbial colonization. The gradual conversion of the gut microbiota toward a mutualistic microbial community involves replacement of pioneer gut colonizers with bacterial taxa that are characteristic for the adult gut. An important microbial signature of homeostasis in the adult gut is the prevalence and activity of a diverse spectrum of bacterial species that produce beneficial metabolites through metabolic interactions between microbial groups. Deciphering these microbial signatures and their metabolites that govern short and long‐term equilibrium, as well as imbalances in host‐microbial relationships, may provide novel diagnostic tools and/or therapeutic targets for specific disorders associated with intestinal dysbiosis and loss of homeostasis.
Universal newborn hearing screenings: a three-year experience.

OBJECTIVE To perform hearing screenings on all newborns before hospital discharge, using auditory brainstem evoked responses with analysis of time, cost, and failure rates to evaluate and determine the screening practicality. METHOD Over a 3-year period from January 1, 1993 to December 31, 1995, auditory brainstem evoked response screenings were performed on 15 749 infants born at Saint Barnabas Medical Center, Livingston, New Jersey, before their hospital discharge by certified/licensed audiologists. The auditory brainstem evoked response screenings were conducted using the Nicolet Compass Evoked Potential System. RESULTS A 3-year experience of testing 15 749 infants proved to be a cost-effective program with costs less than $30.00/baby. To date, 46 babies have been identified with bilateral sensorineural hearing loss and 6 babies with unilateral sensorineural hearing loss. CONCLUSIONS The universal newborn hearing screening program at Saint Barnabas Medical Center has proved to be effective, beneficial, and necessary for an institution with more than 5000 births, annually. Early identification of hearing loss has resulted in infants receiving early intervention, and the screening program has provided education and follow-up services to both parents and physicians.
Modeling of dynamic cardiovascular responses during G-transition-induced orthostatic stress in pitch and roll rotations

Dynamic and fuzzy models for a typical subject's cardiovascular response to the orthostatic stress have been developed based on experimental data. In our original study (Cheung et al., 1999), arterial blood pressure (BP) time-series data were obtained using a man-rated tilt table that applies gigahertz-acceleration transitions from +0.861 Gz [head-up (HU)] to -0.707 G [head-down (HD)] and back to +0.861 Gz (HU) using either pitch or roll rotations (Cheung et al., 1999). G transitions of different duration and onset rates are common in fighter maneuvers. Based on these data, two types of predictive models have been developed in this paper: 1) second-order discrete-time models that predict BP dynamics during pitch and roll rotations and 2) fuzzy logic models that predict important variations in a subject's cardiovascular dynamics induced by HU-to-HD and HD-to-HU transitions. These two types of models assist in providing an operationally important predictive view on the characteristics of BP responses to orthostatic stress induced by pitch and roll rotations of a fighter jet pilot. The new models are being currently utilized in the design of operational recommendations for more G-tolerant operational flight regimes (e.g., split-S tactical maneuver) than the ones currently in use for modern combat aircraft.
Strong Clutter Suppression via RPCA in Multichannel SAR/GMTI System

Clutter suppression and ground moving target indication are challenging tasks in multichannel synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems. In recent years, robust principal component analysis (RPCA) has attracted much attention for its good performance in distinguishing the different parts from a set of correlative database. Therefore, we propose a fast RPCA-based detection method for multichannel SAR under a strong clutter background in this letter even with channel unbalance or platform motion error. Subsequently, as the existing space-time adaptive processing (STAP) method would fail when the training samples are contaminated by the moving target, we apply the RPCA-based method in the range-Doppler domain to improve the performance of STAP. Since the regions of targets can be detected via RPCA, the remaining samples, which can be regarded as only clutter, are used to estimate the covariance matrix for further processing. The final experiments based on real measured data set show its good performance under the strong clutter background. Although the RPCA-based result differs from that of the STAP method, they can work cooperatively to get a more robust detection performance.
Altered Fatty Acid Metabolism-Related Gene Expression in Liver from Morbidly Obese Women with Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease

Lipid accumulation in the human liver seems to be a crucial mechanism in the pathogenesis and the progression of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). We aimed to evaluate gene expression of different fatty acid (FA) metabolism-related genes in morbidly obese (MO) women with NAFLD. Liver expression of key genes related to de novo FA synthesis (LXRα, SREBP1c, ACC1, FAS), FA uptake and transport (PPARγ, CD36, FABP4), FA oxidation (PPARα), and inflammation (IL6, TNFα, CRP, PPARδ) were assessed by RT-qPCR in 127 MO women with normal liver histology (NL, n = 13), simple steatosis (SS, n = 47) and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH, n = 67). Liver FAS mRNA expression was significantly higher in MO NAFLD women with both SS and NASH compared to those with NL (p = 0.003, p = 0.010, respectively). Hepatic IL6 and TNFα mRNA expression was higher in NASH than in SS subjects (p = 0.033, p = 0.050, respectively). Interestingly, LXRα, ACC1 and FAS expression had an inverse relation with the grade of steatosis. These results were confirmed by western blot analysis. In conclusion, our results indicate that lipogenesis seems to be downregulated in advanced stages of SS, suggesting that, in this type of extreme obesity, the deregulation of the lipogenic pathway might be associated with the severity of steatosis.
Phase II trial of high‐dose, intermittent calcitriol (1,25 dihydroxyvitamin D3) and dexamethasone in androgen‐independent prostate cancer

Data suggest that vitamin D plays a role in the treatment and prevention of prostate cancer. The combination of high‐dose, intermittent calcitriol (1,25 dihydroxyvitamin D3) plus dexamethasone was studied based on evidence that dexamethasone potentiates the antitumor effects of calcitriol and ameliorates hypercalcemia.
Impedance-based tissue discrimination for needle guidance

Measurement of electrical impedance can discriminate between tissues of different electrical properties. A measurement system with adequate spatial resolution focused on a volume around the tip of a needle or other invasive clinical equipment can be used to determine in which type of tissue the tip is positioned. We have measured the sensitivity zone of a needle electrode with an active electrode area of 0.3 mm2, and measured impedance spectra in porcine tissue in vivo. Small electrode impedance data will be influenced by electrode polarization impedance (EPI) at low frequencies. To refine existing methods for needle guidance with higher spatial resolution, we have used multivariate analysis and new interpretations of EPI, and tissue data gathered with selected needle electrodes. The focus of this study is on discrimination between muscle and fat/subdermis for drug administration, but our results also indicate that these refinements will facilitate new clinical applications for impedance-based needle guidance in general.
Acceptability and effects of a seated active workstation during sedentary work : A proof of concept study

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to test the user acceptability (Phase 1) and effects (Phase 2) of completing sedentary work while using a seated active workstation. Design/methodology/approach – In Phase 1, 45 sedentary employees completed an acceptability questionnaire immediately after performing sedentary work tasks (typing, mousing) while using the seated active workstation for 30 minutes. In Phase 2, the paper tested the differential effects of completing sedentary work tasks at two different workstations (sedentary workstation vs seated active workstation) on physiological (energy expenditure, muscle activity, heart rate, blood pressure), cognitive (learning, memory, attention) and work performance (typing and mousing ability) outcomes among 18 sedentary employees. Findings – In Phase 1, 96 percent of participants reported they would use the seated active workstation “daily” if provided access in their office. In Phase 2, working while using the seated active workstation increased energy expe.
Gyrification from constrained cortical expansion

Significance The convolutions of the human brain are a symbol of its functional complexity and correlated with its information-processing capacity. Conversely, loss of folds is correlated with loss of function. But how did the outer surface of the brain, the layered cortex of neuronal gray matter, get its folds? Guided by prior experimental observations of the growth of the cortex relative to the underlying white matter, we argue that these folds arise due to a mechanical instability of a soft tissue that grows nonuniformly. Numerical simulations and physical mimics of the constrained growth of the cortex show how compressive mechanical forces sculpt it to form characteristic sulci and gyri, consistent with observations across species in both normal and pathological situations. The exterior of the mammalian brain—the cerebral cortex—has a conserved layered structure whose thickness varies little across species. However, selection pressures over evolutionary time scales have led to cortices that have a large surface area to volume ratio in some organisms, with the result that the brain is strongly convoluted into sulci and gyri. Here we show that the gyrification can arise as a nonlinear consequence of a simple mechanical instability driven by tangential expansion of the gray matter constrained by the white matter. A physical mimic of the process using a layered swelling gel captures the essence of the mechanism, and numerical simulations of the brain treated as a soft solid lead to the formation of cusped sulci and smooth gyri similar to those in the brain. The resulting gyrification patterns are a function of relative cortical expansion and relative thickness (compared with brain size), and are consistent with observations of a wide range of brains, ranging from smooth to highly convoluted. Furthermore, this dependence on two simple geometric parameters that characterize the brain also allows us to qualitatively explain how variations in these parameters lead to anatomical anomalies in such situations as polymicrogyria, pachygyria, and lissencephalia.
Personal use of the genomic data: Privacy vs. storage cost

In this paper, we propose privacy-enhancing technologies for personal use of the genomic data and analyze the tradeoff between genomic privacy and storage cost of the genomes. First, we highlight the potential privacy threats on the genomic data. Then, focusing specifically on a disease-susceptibility test, we develop a new architecture (between the patient and the medical unit) and propose a privacy-preserving algorithm by utilizing homomorphic encryption. Assuming the whole genome sequencing is done by a certified institution, we propose to store patients' genomic data encrypted by their public keys at a Storage and Processing Unit (SPU). The proposed algorithm lets the SPU process the encrypted genomic data for medical tests while preserving the privacy of patients' genomic data. We extensively analyze the relationship between the storage cost (of the genomic data), the level of genomic privacy (of the patient), and the characteristics of the genomic data. Furthermore, we show via a complexity analysis the practicality of the proposed scheme.
The design and implementation of a vision-based people counting system in buses

This system counts passengers through a single camera that is fixed at an overhead (zenithal) position. The proposed algorithm is designed to solve the problem of illumination, which can occur when the bus door opens or closes. A processing ratio of about 30 frames/s is necessary to overcome the extreme change in illumination. The system combines global positioning system data and standard time to establish the number of passengers at each bus stop at different periods of time and calculates the number of passengers and unoccupied seats to provide business-related information.
Meta-Analysis of Teacher Demographic Variables and their Association with Pupil Attitude towards Science

This paper purposed to find out whether teacher demographic variables had an association with pupil total attitude towards the teaching and learning of science amongst secondary school students. A random sample of 243 pupils (115 girls, 128 boys: age range 12-17 years) comprised the respondents. The study was premised on survey paradigm with a self designed and administered questionnaire as the main tool for data collection. Meta analysis based on (Ho) testing was implemented, leading to F- ratios at p < 0.05 being tabulated and discussed. It was found out that teacher experience, teacher qualification and teacher gender were significantly related to pupil attitude towards the learning of classroom science. It was concluded that science must be taught by well qualified and experienced teachers. Institutions of higher learning educating science teachers must envisage gender equity and equality, among others.