Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
To evaluate the effect of perceived stress on menstrual function.

INTRODUCTION Menstrual irregularities affect 2-5% of childbearing women, a number that is considerably higher among females under constant stress during a cycle. AIM To study the effect of perceived stress on cycle length, regularity and dysmenorrhoea. MATERIALS AND METHODS A cross-sectional study was conducted on 100 female undergraduate students of a medical college. A questionnaire along with the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) and Pictorial Blood Assessment Chart (PBAC) was provided to the students. The menstrual pattern was then correlated with the PSS using the chi- square test and the Fisher's Exact test for statistical analysis. OBSERVATIONS AND RESULTS Out of the 100 undergraduate medical students, 30 students had a PSS score >20 while 70 had a score ≤20. An association was established between high stress levels (PSS >20) and menstrual irregularity. No association was found in students with PSS >20 with hypomenorrhoea, menorrhagia, dysmenorrhoea, long cycle length and short cycle length. CONCLUSION High stress levels (PSS >20) was associated with only menstrual irregularities and not with duration, amount of flow or dysmenorrhoea. Hence, other causes should be looked for in young women complaining of menstrual problems before stress is assumed to be the cause.
Muslim Family Law, Prenuptial Agreements, and the Emergence of Dowry in Bangladesh

We explain trends in dowry levels in Bangladesh by drawing attention to an institutional feature of marriage contracts previously ignored in the literature: mehr or traditional Islamic bride-price. We develop a model of marriage contracts in which mehr serves as a barrier to husbands exiting marriage and a component of dowry as an amount that ex ante compensates the groom for the cost of mehr. We investigate how mehr and dowry respond to exogenous changes in the costs of polygamy and divorce, and show that our model gives a different set of predictions than traditional models. We show that major changes in dowry levels took place precisely after the legal changes, corresponding to simultaneous changes in levels of mehr.
Stocks or Options? Moral Hazard, Firm Viability, and the Design of Compensation Contracts

We consider the choice between stocks and options to provide effort incentives to a risk-averse manager. We show that stocks can dominate options as a means of motivation only if nonviability risk is substantial, as in financially distressed firms or start-ups. Options dominate stocks for other firms. These results hold regardless of the existing portfolio of the manager. We provide empirical evidence that higher bankruptcy risk is indeed correlated with more use of stock. The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org, Oxford University Press.
Role of Daptomycin in the Induction and Persistence of the Viable but Non-Culturable State of Staphylococcus Aureus Biofilms

We have recently demonstrated that antibiotic pressure can induce the viable but non-culturable (VBNC) state in Staphylococcus aureus biofilms. Since dormant bacterial cells can undermine anti-infective therapy, a greater understanding of the role of antibiotics of last resort, including daptomycin, is crucial. Methicillin-resistant S. aureus 10850 biofilms were maintained on non-nutrient (NN) agar in the presence or absence of the MIC of daptomycin until loss of culturability. Viable cells were monitored by epifluorescence microscopy and flow cytometry for 150 days. All biofilms reached non-culturability at 40 days and showed a similar amount of viable cells; however, in biofilms exposed to daptomycin, their number remained unchanged throughout the experiment, whereas in those maintained on NN agar alone, no viable cells were detected after 150 days. Gene expression assays showed that after achievement of non-culturability, 16S rDNA and mecA were expressed by all biofilms, whereas glt expression was found only in daptomycin-exposed biofilms. Our findings suggest that low daptomycin concentrations, such as those that are likely to obtain within biofilms, can influence the viability and gene expression of non-culturable S. aureus cells. Resuscitation experiments are needed to establish the VBNC state of daptomycin-exposed biofilms.
Triamcinolone acetonide destabilizes VEGF mRNA in Müller cells under continuous cobalt stimulation.

PURPOSE To identify the molecular mechanism of steroid-induced downregulation of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) synthesis in Müller cells. METHODS Confluent cultures of human Müller cells (MIO-M1) were treated with 100 microM CoCl(2), 1 microg/mL triamcinolone acetonide (TA), or both. VEGF secretion was measured with respect to time by ELISA. VEGF mRNA quantity and stability were analyzed by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction. The activity of hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF)-1 was measured by the relative binding of HIF-1 protein to the hypoxia response element (HRE), by gel shift and ELISA. The HIF-1alpha protein level was determined with Western blot. RESULTS TA decreased VEGF secretion by at least 50% in the presence of continuous cobalt stimulus. VEGF mRNA decreased 50- to 100-fold 6 hours after treatment with TA and cobalt compared with cobalt alone. VEGF mRNA stability was decreased in cobalt-stimulated, TA-treated cells compared with cobalt alone in cells synchronized by exposure to actinomycin D. HIF-1alpha protein level was sustained for the entire 24-hour treatment period and partitioned into nuclear, not cytosolic, fractions. HIF-1 activity was decreased by 20% to 30% in the presence of TA and cobalt compared with cobalt alone. CONCLUSIONS TA may decrease VEGF synthesis by nongenomic destabilization of VEGF mRNA in cobalt-stimulated Müller cells. There was little effect on the total HIF-1alpha protein level, HIF-1 partitioning, and HIF-1 activity.
A High-Throughput Radix-16 FFT Processor With Parallel and Normal Input/Output Ordering for IEEE 802.15.3c Systems

This paper presents a high-throughput FFT processor for IEEE 802.15. 3c (WPANs) standard. To meet the throughput requirement of 2.59 Giga-samples/s, radix-16 FFT algorithm is adopted and reformulated to an efficient form so that the required number of butterfly stages is reduced. Specifically, the radix-16 butterfly processing element consists of two cascaded parallel/pipelined radix-4 butterfly units. It facilitates low-complexity realization of radix-16 butterfly operation and high operation speed due to its optimized pipelined structure. Besides, a new three-stage multiplier for twiddle factor multiplication is also proposed, which has lower area and power consumption than conventional complex multipliers. Moreover, a conflict-free multibank memory addressing scheme is devised to support up to 16-way parallel and normal-order data input/output. Without needing to reorder the input/output data, this scheme helps a high-throughput design result. Equipped with those new performance-boosting techniques, overall the proposed radix-16 FFT processor is area-efficient with high data processing rate and hardware utilization efficiency. The EDA synthesis results show that whole FFT processor area is 0.93 mm2, and the power consumption is 42 mW with 90 nm process. The SQNR performance is 57 dB with 12-bit wordlength implementation.
ACE Inhibitors Potently Reduce Vascular Inflammation, Results of an Open Proof-Of-Concept Study in the Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm

Background Independent of their blood pressure lowering effect, ACE inhibitors are thought to reduce vascular inflammation. The clinical relevance of this effect is unclear with the current knowledge. Abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA) are characterized by a broad, non-specific inflammatory response, and thus provide a clinical platform to evaluate the anti-inflammatory potential of ACE inhibitors. Methods and Results Eleven patients scheduled for open AAA repair received ramipril (5 mg/day) during 2–4 weeks preceding surgery. Aortic wall samples were collected during surgery, and compared to matched samples obtained from a biobank. An anti-inflammatory potential was evaluated in a comprehensive analysis that included immunohistochemistry, mRNA and protein analysis. A putative effect of ACE inhibitors on AAA growth was tested separately by comparing 18-month growth rate of patients on ACE inhibitors (n = 82) and those not taking ACE inhibitors (n = 204). Ramipril reduces mRNA expression of multiple pro-inflammatory cytokines such as IL-1β, IL-6, IL-8, TNF -α, Interferon-, and MCP-1, as well as aortic wall IL-8 and MCP-1 (P = 0.017 and 0.008, respectively) protein content. The is followed by clear effects on cell activation that included a shift towards anti-inflammatory macrophage (M2) subtype. Evaluation of data from the PHAST cohort did not indicate an effect of ACE inhibitors on 18-month aneurysm progression (mean difference at 18 months: −0.24 mm (95% CI: −0.90–0.45, P = NS). Conclusions ACE inhibition quenches multiple aspects of vascular inflammation in AAA. However, this does not translate into reduced aneurysm growth. Trial Registration Nederlands Trial Register 1345.
Sexual Dichromatism and Temporary Color Changes in the Reproduction of Fishes

SYNOPSIS. Studies on color patterns of fishes have focused on relationships between bright, relatively permanent colors, such as those of fishes inhabiting coral reef and tropical freshwater habitats, and ecological factors, such as competitors, predators, and the visual background. By comparison, the functions of, and hence the selective pressures acting on, temporary changes in nuptial coloration have received much less attention. Temporary color changes associated with reproduction occur in many freshwater and marine groups. Nuptial coloration in fishes functions both in agonistic interactions among males and courtship of females, so that it is subject to both intrasexual and intersexual selection as well as natural selection. Temporal variation in nuptial color patterns is sensitive to temporal changes in the male's physical condition, motivation, and social status. Physiological processes, such as neuronal and endocrine changes, play important roles in the expression of breeding colors, including rapid responses to changes in social conditions. The importance of proximal mechanisms and ultimate selective processes in mediating rapid changes in the blue, melanin—based breeding colors of pupfish, and the red, carotenoid—based color patterns in guppies are discussed in the context of signal function and evolution.
Fuzzy Intelligent System for Patients with Preeclampsia in Wearable Devices

Preeclampsia affects from 5% to 14% of all pregnant women and is responsible for about 14% of maternal deaths per year in the world. This paper is focused on the use of a decision analysis tool for the early detection of preeclampsia in women at risk. This tool applies a fuzzy linguistic approach implemented in a wearable device. In order to develop this tool, a real dataset containing data of pregnant women with high risk of preeclampsia from a health center has been analyzed, and a fuzzy linguistic methodology with two main phases is used. Firstly, linguistic transformation is applied to the dataset to increase the interpretability and flexibility in the analysis of preeclampsia. Secondly, knowledge extraction is done by means of inferring rules using decision trees to classify the dataset. The obtained linguistic rules provide understandable monitoring of preeclampsia based on wearable applications and devices. Furthermore, this paper not only introduces the proposed methodology, but also presents a wearable application prototype which applies the rules inferred from the fuzzy decision tree to detect preeclampsia in women at risk. The proposed methodology and the developed wearable application can be easily adapted to other contexts such as diabetes or hypertension.
Short-Term Effects of PM10 and NO2 on Respiratory Health among Children with Asthma or Asthma-like Symptoms: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Objective Our goal was to quantify the short-term effects of particulate matter with aerodynamic diameter ≤ 10 μm (PM10) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) on respiratory health of asthmatic children from published panel studies, and to investigate the influence of study and population characteristics as effect modifiers. Data extraction After a systematic literature review, we extracted quantitative estimates of the association of PM10 and/or NO2 with respiratory symptoms and peak expiratory flow (PEF). Combined effect estimates for an increase of 10 μg/m3 were calculated by random effects meta-analysis for all studies and for different strata defined by study characteristics. The effect of publication bias was investigated with Egger’s and Begg’s tests and “trim-and-fill” analyses. Data synthesis We identified 36 studies; 14 were part of the European Pollution Effects on Asthmatic Children in Europe (PEACE) study. Adverse associations of PM10 with asthma symptoms were statistically significant [odds ratio (OR) = 1.028; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.006–1.051]. There were also associations, although not statistically significant, of PM10 with cough (OR = 1.012; 95% CI, 0.997–1.026) and on PEF (decrease of −0.082 L/min; 95% CI, −0.214 to 0.050). NO2 had statistically significant associations with asthma symptoms in the overall analysis considering all possible lags (OR = 1.031; 95% CI, 1.001–1.062), but not when we evaluated only the 0–1 lag. We found no publication bias, although it appeared when excluding the PEACE studies. When we applied the trim-and-fill method to the data set without the PEACE studies, the results were similar to the overall estimates from all studies. There was an indication for stronger PM10 associations for studies conducted in summer, outside of Europe, with longer lags, and in locations with higher NO2 concentrations. Conclusions We found clear evidence of effects of PM10 on the occurrence of asthma symptom episodes, and to a lesser extent on cough and PEF. The results for NO2 are more difficult to interpret because they depend on the lag times examined. There was an indication of effect modification by several study conditions.
Application of PGAS Programming to Power Grid Simulation

This paper will describe the application of the PGAS Global Arrays (GA) library to power grid simulations. The GridPACK™ framework has been designed to enable power grid engineers to develop parallel simulations of the power grid by providing a set of templates and libraries that encapsulate most of the details of parallel programming in higher level abstractions. The communication portions of the framework are implemented using a combination of message-passing (MPI) and one-sided communication (GA). This paper will provide a brief overview of GA and describe in detail the implementation of collective hash tables, which are used in many power grid applications to match data with a previously distributed network.
Identification of Differentially Expressed Genes in Distinct Skeletal Muscles in Cattle using cDNA Microarray

The 788-gene microarray was manufactured using selected elements from three different cDNA libraries in order to identify molecular processes that determine phenotypic characteristics between loin (M. longissimus thoracis) and round (M. semimembranosus) muscles. Microarray analyses identified 24 differentially expressed genes between the two muscles investigated. Five of the genes were verified by quantitative RT-PCR and three of them were mapped on bovine chromosomes using 5,000 rad bovine radiation hybrid (RH) panel. The map locations indicated that they were mapped in the same chromosomal regions where IMF and growth QTLs were located, suggesting that they are most possible positional candidate genes for the traits.
Flexibility and Size Heterogeneity of the LH1 Light Harvesting Complex Revealed by Atomic Force Microscopy

Previous electron microscopic studies of bacterial RCLH1 complexes demonstrated both circular and elliptical conformations of the LH1 ring, and this implied flexibility has been suggested to allow passage of quinol from the QB site of the RC to the quinone pool prior to reduction of the cytochrome bc1 complex. We have used atomic force microscopy to demonstrate that these are just two of many conformations for the LH1 ring, which displays large molecule-to-molecule variations, in terms of both shape and size. This atomic force microscope study has used a mutant lacking the reaction center complex, which normally sits within the LH1 ring providing a barrier to substantial changes in shape. This approach has revealed the inherent flexibility and lack of structural coherence of this complex in a reconstituted lipid bilayer at room temperature. Circular, elliptical, and even polygonal ring shapes as well as arcs and open rings have been observed for LH1; in contrast, no such variations in structure were observed for the LH2 complex under the same conditions. The basis for these differences between LH1 and LH2 is suggested to be the H-bonding patterns that stabilize binding of the bacteriochlorophylls to the LH polypeptides. The existence of open rings and arcs provides a direct visualization of the consequences of the relatively weak associations that govern the aggregation of the protomers (α1β1Bchl2) comprising the LH1 complex. The demonstration that the linkage between adjacent protomer units is flexible and can even be uncoupled at room temperature in a detergent-free membrane bilayer provides a rationale for the dynamic separation of individual protomers, and we may now envisage experiments that seek to prove this active opening process.
Relationship between Hounsfield Unit in CT Scan and Gray Scale in CBCT

Background and aims. Cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) is an imaging system which has many advantages over computed tomography (CT). In CT scan, Hounsfield Unit (HU) is proportional to the degree of x-ray attenuation by the tissue. In CBCT, the degree of x-ray attenuation is shown by gray scale (voxel value). The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between gray scale in CBCT) and Hounsfield Unit (HU) in CT scan. Materials and methods. In this descriptive study, the head of a sheep was scanned with 3 CBCT and one medical CT scanner. Gray scales and HUs were detected on images. Reconstructed data were analyzed to investigate relationship between CBCT gray scales and HUs. Results. A strong correlation between gray scales of CBCT and HUs of CT scan was determined. Conclusion. Considering the fact that gray scale in CBCT is the criteria in measurement of bone density before implant treatments, it is recommended because of the lower dose and cost compared to CT scan.
Long‐term results of calcium hydroxylapatite for vocal fold augmentation

Studies have shown excellent results for 12‐month post–injection augmentation data for calcium hydroxylapatite (CaHA) for glottal incompetence; however, the longevity of the material past one year was unknown. Our objective was to report the long‐term effectiveness of CaHA as a vocal fold injectable by assessing data from a cohort of patients who underwent injection for glottal insufficiency.
Insulin-like growth factors 1 and 2 induce lymphangiogenesis in vivo

Lymphangiogenesis is an important process that contributes to the spread of cancer. Here we show that insulin-like growth factors 1 (IGF-1) and 2 (IGF-2) induce lymphangiogenesis in vivo. In a mouse cornea assay, IGF-1 and IGF-2 induce lymphangiogenesis as detected with LYVE-1, a specific marker for lymphatic endothelium. Interestingly, IGF-1-induced lymphangiogenesis could not be blocked by a soluble vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 3, suggesting that the vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 3-signaling pathway is not required for IGF-induced lymphangiogenesis. In vitro, IGF-1 and IGF-2 significantly stimulated proliferation and migration of primary lymphatic endothelial cells. IGF-1 and IGF-2 induced phosphorylation of intracellular signaling components, such as Akt, Src, and extracellular signal-regulated kinase in lymphatic endothelial cells. Immunohistochemistry, RT-PCR, and Affymetrix GeneChip microarray analysis showed that the receptors for IGFs are present in lymphatic endothelium. Together, our findings suggest that IGFs might act as direct lymphangiogenic factors, although any indirect roles in the induction of lymphangiogenesis cannot be excluded. Because members of the IGF ligand and receptor families are widely expressed in various types of solid tumors, our findings suggest that these factors are likely to contribute to lymphatic metastasis.
The Proinflammatory Cytokine Response to Chlamydia trachomatis Elementary Bodies in Human Macrophages Is Partly Mediated by a Lipoprotein, the Macrophage Infectivity Potentiator, through TLR2/TLR1/TLR6 and CD141

Chlamydiae components and signaling pathway(s) responsible for the production of proinflammatory cytokines by human monocytes/macrophages are not clearly identified. To this aim, Chlamydia trachomatis-inactivated elementary bodies (EB) as well as the following seven individual Ags were tested for their ability to induce the production of proinflammatory cytokines by human monocytes/macrophages and THP-1 cells: purified LPS, recombinant heat shock protein (rhsp)70, rhsp60, rhsp10, recombinant polypeptide encoded by open reading frame 3 of the plasmid (rpgp3), recombinant macrophage infectivity potentiator (rMip), and recombinant outer membrane protein 2 (rOmp2). Aside from EB, rMip displayed the highest ability to induce release of IL-1β, TNF-α, IL-6, and IL-8. rMip proinflammatory activity could not be attributed to Escherichia coli LPS contamination as determined by the Limulus Amoebocyte lysate assay, insensitivity to polymyxin B (50 μg/ml), and different serum requirement. We have recently demonstrated that Mip is a “classical” bacterial lipoprotein, exposed at the surface of EB. The proinflammatory activity of EB was significantly attenuated in the presence of polyclonal Ab to rMip. Native Mip was able to induce TNF-α and IL-8 secretion, whereas a nonlipidated C20A rMip variant was not. Proinflammatory activity of rMip was unaffected by heat or proteinase K treatments but was greatly reduced by treatment with lipases, supporting a role of lipid modification in this process. Stimulating pathways appeared to involve TLR2/TLR1/TLR6 with the help of CD14 but not TLR4. These data support a role of Mip lipoprotein in pathogenesis of C. trachomatis-induced inflammatory responses.