Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Irradiation of rainbow trout at early life stages results in legacy effects in adults

Purpose: Communication of signals from irradiated to non-irradiated fish has been demonstrated by our group for adults. Major questions are however, whether the effects persist for significant lengths of time (meaning there are memories or legacies of the exposure) and whether they are induced in young animals or very early stages in the life cycle. Methods: To address these questions we used a reporter cell clonogenic bioassay to detect the effects of radiation exposure and of ‘bystander’ signals, emitted from irradiated fish, on non-irradiated fish. The legacy of radiation exposure or receipt of bystander signals was investigated in rainbow trout irradiated as eggs at 48 h, eyed eggs at one month, yolk sac larvae (YSL) at two months and juveniles at three months after fertilisation. The irradiated and bystander fish together with shams and unhandled husbandry controls were grown on in a hatchery and examined as they reached each of the remaining life stages. They were also re-examined as one-year-olds with and without further irradiation and finally examined as sexually mature two-year-olds. Results: The data indicate a clear legacy effect of irradiation at any early life stage in the adult fish. Conclusion: The data suggest that bystander signals can be transmitted in vivo and once induced are persistent during the animals' lifespan.
Integrating Biomonitoring Exposure Data into the Risk Assessment Process: Phthalates [Diethyl Phthalate and Di(2-ethylhexyl) Phthalate] as a Case Study

The probability of nonoccupational exposure to phthalates is high given their use in a vast range of consumables, including personal care products (e.g., perfumes, lotions, cosmetics), paints, industrial plastics, and certain medical devices and pharmaceuticals. Phthalates are of high interest because of their potential for human exposure and because animal toxicity studies suggest that some phthalates affect male reproductive development apparently via inhibition of androgen biosynthesis. In humans, phthalates are rapidly metabolized to their monoesters, which can be further transformed to oxidative products, conjugated, and eliminated. Phthalate metabolites have been used as biomarkers of exposure. Using urinary phthalate metabolite concentrations allows accurate assessments of human exposure because these concentrations represent an integrative measure of exposure to phthalates from multiple sources and routes. However, the health significance of this exposure is unknown. To link biomarker measurements to exposure, internal dose, or health outcome, additional information (e.g., toxicokinetics, inter- and intraindividual differences) is needed. We present a case study using diethyl phthalate and di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate as examples to illustrate scientific approaches and their limitations, identify data gaps, and outline research needs for using biomonitoring data in the context of human health risk assessment, with an emphasis on exposure and dose. Although the vast and growing literature on phthalates research could not be covered comprehensively in this article, we made every attempt to include the most relevant publications as of the end of 2005.
Overview of a performance evaluation system for global computing scheduling algorithms

While there have been several proposals of high-performance global computing systems, scheduling schemes for the systems have not been well investigated. The reason is difficulties of evaluation by large-scale benchmarks with reproducible results. Our Bricks performance evaluation system allows the analysis and comparison of various scheduling schemes in a typical high-performance global computing setting. Bricks can simulate various behaviors of global computing systems, especially the behavior of networks and resource scheduling algorithms. Moreover, Bricks is partitioned into components such that not only can its constituents be replaced to simulate various different system algorithms, but it also allows the incorporation of existing global computing components via its foreign interface. To test the validity of the latter characteristics, we incorporated the NWS (Network Weather Service) system, which monitors and forecasts global computing systems behavior. Experiments were conducted by running NWS under a real environment versus a Bricks-simulated environment, given the observed parameters of the real environment. We observed that Bricks behaved in the same manner as the real environment, and NWS also behaved similarly, making quite comparative forecasts under both environments.
Developmental Changes in Tracheal Structure

ABSTRACT: Mechanical properties of the proximal airways are known to change with development; the highly compliant airways of the immature animal become stiffer and less collapsible with increasing age. Although the relationship between tracheobronchial architecture and function has been described for adult physiology, little is known regarding this relationship during early development. This study was, therefore, designed to test the hypothesis that alterations in tracheal morphometry parallel developmental differences in tracheal functional properties. Tracheal segments obtained from 29 lambs ranging in age from 70% of gestation to full-term newborn lambs up to 6 d old were examined using anatomic, morphometric, and histochemical techniques. The results showed 1) progressive increases in the dimensions of the trachea and the tracheal wall components, 2) alterations in the geometric arrangement of the tracheal ring, and 3) changes in the compositional characteristics of the tracheal cartilage with maturation. These findings demonstrate alterations in tracheal architecture, each of which contribute to the greater stiffness of the trachea, in older animals. When considered together, these factors help explain the differences in tracheal functional characteristics with development.
Social Information Processing in Adolescents: Data from Normally Developing Adolescents and Preliminary Data from Their Peers with Traumatic Brain Injury

Objective:To assess aspects of social information processing in naturalistic conversations, using on- line videotape tasks. Design and Participants:The tasks were administered to 60 normally developing (ND) subjects ages 13 to 21, and 10 adolescents with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Setting:University. Main Outcome Measure:Task accuracy scores and measures of reliability and validity. Results and Conclusions:ND group scores were generally high, without significant differences by race, sex or age. TBI group scores were significantly lower than ND group scores for both emotion recognition and detection of conversation skills. The results are discussed in light of the evaluation of pragmatic competence in adolescents with TBI.
Can the Internet help improve Machine Translation?

This paper summarizes a largely automated method that uses online post-editing feed-back to automatically improve translation rules. As a starting point, bilingual speakers' local fixes are collected through an online Translation Correction Tool. Next, the Rule Refinement Module attacks the problem at its core and uses the local fixes to detect incorrect rules that need to be refined. Once the grammar and lexicon have been refined, the Machine Translation system not only produces the correct translation as fixed by the bilingual speaker, but is also able to generalize and correctly translates similar sentences. Thus, this work constitutes a novel approach to improving translation quality. Enhanced by the reaching power of the Internet, our approach becomes even more relevant to address the problem of how to automatically improve the quality of Machine Translation output.
Endothelial Nitric Oxide Synthase Deficiency Reduces Uterine Blood Flow , Spiral Artery Elongation , and Placental Oxygenation in Pregnant Mice

Preeclampsia is associated with impaired uteroplacental adaptations during pregnancy and abnormalities in the endothelial NO synthase (eNOS)-NO pathway, but whether eNOS deficiency plays a causal role is unknown. Thus, the objective of the current study was to determine the role of eNOS in the mother and/or conceptus in uteroplacental changes during pregnancy using eNOS knockout mice. We quantified uterine artery blood flow using microultrasound, visualized the uteroplacental vasculature using vascular corrosion casts, and used pimonidazole and hypoxia-inducible factor 1 immunohistochemistry as markers of hypoxia in the placentas of eNOS knockout mice versus the background strain, C57Bl/6J (wild type). We found that increases in uteroplacental blood flow, uterine artery diameter, and spiral artery length were reduced, and markers of placental hypoxia in the junctional zone were elevated in late gestation in eNOS knockout mice. Both maternal and conceptus genotypes contributed to changes in uterine artery diameter and flow. Despite placental hypoxia, placental soluble fms-like tyrosine kinase 1 and tumor necrosis factormRNA, and in maternal plasma, soluble fms-like tyrosine kinase 1 were not elevated in eNOS knockout mice. Thus, our results show that both eNOS in the mother and the conceptus contribute to uteroplacental vascular changes and increased uterine arterial blood flow in normal pregnancy. (Hypertension. 2012;60:00-00.) ● Online Data Supplement
PTPN22 1858C>T Polymorphism Distribution in Europe and Association with Rheumatoid Arthritis: Case-Control Study and Meta-Analysis

Objective The PTPN22 rs2476601 polymorphism is associated with rheumatoid arthritis (RA); nonetheless, the association is weaker or absent in some southern European populations. The aim of the study was to evaluate the association between the PTPN22 rs2476601 polymorphism and RA in Italian subjects and to compare our results with those of other European countries, carrying out a meta-analysis of European data. Methods A total of 396 RA cases and 477 controls, all of Italic ancestry, were genotyped for PTPN22 rs2476601 polymorphism. Patients were tested for autoantibodies positivity. The meta-analysis was performed on 23 selected studies. Results The PTPN22 T1858 allele was significantly more frequent in RA patients compared to controls (5.7% vs. 3.7%, p = 0.045). No clear relationship arose with the autoantibodies tested. The 1858T allele frequency in Italian RA patients was lower than the one described in northern European populations and similar to the frequency found in Spain, Turkey, Greece, Tunisia. A clear-cut North-South gradient arose from the analysis. Conclusions The PTPN22 T1858 allele is associated with RA in the Italian population. A North-South gradient of the allele frequency seems to exist in Europe, with a lower prevalence of the mutation in the Mediterranean area.
Is There an Association between Periodontitis and Hypertension?

Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of deaths. Also, cardiovascular risk factors start the atherosclerotic process, which leads to cardiovascular diseases. Nowadays, periodontal disease can also be considered another cardiovascular risk factor. It involves inflammatory, immunological and humoral activities, which induce the production of proinflammatory cytokines and the destruction of the epithelium. This allows the entry of endotoxins and exotoxins in the bloodstream, which may contribute to atherogenesis and thromboembolic events. There is also direct invasion of the vessel wall by oral pathogens, triggering an inflammatory response that produces endothelial dysfunction. In hypertension, changes in microcirculation can cause ischemia in the periodontium, which favors periodontal disease. Moreover, endothelial dysfunction promotes the formation of atherosclerotic plaque and the development of lesions in target organs. Periodontitis has also been associated with insulin resistance and a higher risk for the metabolic syndrome, which is characterized by oxidative stress. This seems to act as a common link to explain the relationship between each component of the metabolic syndrome (including hypertension) and periodontitis. This article will discuss clinical and experimental evidence, as well as possible pathophysiologic mechanisms and links involved in the relationship among periodontal disease, hypertension and cardiovascular disease.
Lateral geniculate neurons of cat: retinal inputs and physiology.

correspond to the EM counterpart retrograde degeneration that one sees with Fink-Heimer techniques? LUND: The Fink-Heimer stains demonstrate dense degeneration and show degenerating axons, terminals, and cell bodies. It might be reasonably expected, therefore, that the postsynaptic dense degeneration shown here after cortical lesions would be stainable by the Fink-Heimer methods. CURTIS: What about the endings of fibers which fluoresce? LUND: Terminals containing granular vesicles are rare in the geniculate, but, of course, it is quite possible that some of the agranular vesiclecontaining terminals fluoresce.
Trade Policy and Economic Performance in Sub-Saharan Africa

This study focuses on the role of trade and trade policy in achieving sustained long-term growth in Africa. One major conclusion is that trade policy in Sub-Saharan Africa works much the same way that it does elsewhere. High levels of trade restrictions have been an important obstacle to exports in the past, and their reduction can be expected to result in significantly improved trade performance in the region. There is little ground for pessimism in this respect, or for concern that Africa&apos;s different conditions poor infrastructure, geography, or dependence on a limited number of primary products make it a special case in which exports are not responsive to prices or to the traditional instruments of commercial policy. At the same time, the effects of trade policy on economic growth seem to be indirect and much more modest. The fundamentals for long-term growth are human resources, physical infrastructure, macroeconomic stability, and the rule of law.
An Intelligent Knowledge-Based and Customizable Home Care System Framework with Ubiquitous Patient Monitoring and Alerting Techniques

This study develops and integrates an efficient knowledge-based system and a component-based framework to design an intelligent and flexible home health care system. The proposed knowledge-based system integrates an efficient rule-based reasoning model and flexible knowledge rules for determining efficiently and rapidly the necessary physiological and medication treatment procedures based on software modules, video camera sensors, communication devices, and physiological sensor information. This knowledge-based system offers high flexibility for improving and extending the system further to meet the monitoring demands of new patient and caregiver health care by updating the knowledge rules in the inference mechanism. All of the proposed functional components in this study are reusable, configurable, and extensible for system developers. Based on the experimental results, the proposed intelligent homecare system demonstrates that it can accomplish the extensible, customizable, and configurable demands of the ubiquitous healthcare systems to meet the different demands of patients and caregivers under various rehabilitation and nursing conditions.
Development and Statistical Optimization of Solid Lipid Nanoparticles of Simvastatin by Using 23 Full-Factorial Design

The objective of this study was to develop solid lipid nanoparticles (SLNs) of simvastatin and to optimize it for independent variables (amount of glycerol monostearate, concentration of poloxamer, and volume of isopropyl alcohol) in order to achieve desired particle size with maximum percent entrapment efficiency (% EE) and percent cumulative drug release (% CDR). To achieve our goal, eight formulations (F1–F8) of SLNs were prepared by solvent injection technique and optimized by 23 full-factorial design. The design was validated by extra design checkpoint formulation (F9), and the possible interactions between independent variables were studied. The responses of the design were analyzed using Design Expert 7.1. 6. (Stat-Ease, Inc, USA), and the analytical tools of software were used to draw Pareto charts and response surface plots. On the basis of software analysis, formulation F10 with a desirability factor of 0.611 was selected as optimized formulation and was evaluated for the independent parameters. Optimized formulation showed particle size of 258.5 nm, % EE of 75.81%, with of 82.67% CDR after 55 h. The release kinetics of the optimized formulation best fitted the Higuchi model, and the recrystallization index of optimized formulation was found to be 65.51%.
Recursive estimation of orientation based on the Bingham distribution

Directional estimation is a common problem in many tracking applications. Traditional filters such as the Kalman filter perform poorly in a directional setting because they fail to take the periodic nature of the problem into account. We present a recursive filter for directional data based on the Bingham distribution in two dimensions. The proposed filter can be applied to circular filtering problems with 180 degree symmetry, i.e., rotations by 180 degrees cannot be distinguished. It is easily implemented using standard numerical techniques and is suitable for real-time applications. The presented approach is extensible to quaternions, which allow tracking arbitrary three-dimensional orientations. We evaluate our filter in a challenging scenario and compare it to a traditional Kalman filtering approach.
Public Health Expenditure as a Determinant of Health Status in Lesotho

In this article, we have examined the relationship between public expenditure on health care and health status in Lesotho using an econometric technique—the error correction model. Three indicators of health status were used: life expectancy at birth (years), infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births), and under-5 mortality rate (per 1,000). The results of our analyses provided evidence that in addition to public expenditure on health, the availability of physicians, female literacy, and child immunization are also important determinants of health status in Lesotho. Contrary to findings from earlier studies, our analyses also found income per capita to be an insignificant determinant of health status. The policy implications that emanate from this article are for the government of Lesotho to channel more resources to educating women, hiring more physicians, and increasing the number of children immunized per year. This will imply an increase in the share of public spending on health.
Testing for Weak Identification in Possibly Nonlinear Models

In this paper we propose a chi-square test for identification. Our proposed test statistic is based on the distance between two shrinkage extremum estimators. The two estimators converge in probability to the same limit when identification is strong, and their asymptotic distributions are different when identification is weak. The proposed test is consistent not only for the alternative hypothesis of no identification but also for the alternative of weak identification, which is confirmed by our Monte Carlo results. We apply the proposed technique to test whether the structural parameters of a representative Taylor-rule monetary policy reaction function are identified.
A Multi-Resolution Dynamic Model for Face Aging Simulation

In this paper we present a dynamic model for simulating face aging process. We adopt a high resolution grammatical face model [1] and augment it with age and hair features. This model represents all face images by a multi-layer and-or graph and integrates three most prominent aspects related to aging changes: global appearance changes in hair style and shape, deformations and aging effects of facial components, and wrinkles appearance at various facial zones. Then face aging is modeled as a dynamic Markov process on this graph representation which is learned from a large dataset. Given an input image, we firstly compute the graph representation, and then sample the graph structures over various age groups according to the learned dynamic model. Finally we generate new face images with the sampled graphs. Our approach has three novel aspects: (1) the aging model is learned from a dataset of 50,000 adult faces at different ages; (2) we explicitly model the uncertainty in face aging andean sample multiple plausible aged faces for an input image; and (3) we conduct a simple human experiment to validate the simulated aging process.
Consumer Buying Behavior Towards Online Shopping Stores in Malaysia

The Internet as a global medium is quickly gaining interest and attractiveness as the most revolutionary marketing tool. The global nature of communication and shopping has as well redefined, seeing that it is the perfect vehicle for online shopping stores. Online convenient shop is mostly reflected in shorter time and less energy spent, including shipping cost reduction, less crowd and queues than real markets, unlimited time and space, which all increase convenience of shopping. Internet shopping for businesses and consumers are being accepted as an alternative shop mode rather than visiting the stores. However, convincing the consumers to shop online is still a challenging task for web retailers in Malaysia. The growth of Internet technology in Malaysia has enormous potential as it reduces the costs of product and service delivery and extends geographical boundaries in bringing buyers and sellers together. This study is conducted to identify factors influencing consumers towards online shopping in Malaysia. The study focused on nine independent variables namely appearance, quick loading, security, sitemap, validity, promotion, attractiveness, believability, and originality. We applied Five-point Likert Scale to measure the influential factors on intention for online shopping. The findings of the study indicated that the first five factors influence consumers towards online shopping and security is the factor that contributes most towards online shopping. Our study revealed the last four factors (promotion, attractiveness, believability, and originality) don’t significantly influence online shopping intention. These indicate that advertisement doesn’t have an important effect on online shopping. The results showed that security and validity of website were widely approved by online consumers. Attractiveness had the minimum influence on online shopping intention. This shows that consumers aren’t interested or couldn’t believe any advertisement in the internet. It seems that the internet users are overloaded by advertisement spams.
Analysis and classification of swallowing sounds using reconstructed phase space features

The paper presents a quantitative analysis of swallowing sounds in normal and dysphagic subjects based on nonlinear dynamics metric tools. In addition, an automated method is proposed to identify patients at risk of dysphagia. Multidimensional phase space representation of the swallowing sound was reconstructed using Takens method of delays. Rosenstein and false nearest neighbor (FNN) methods were employed to evaluate the optimum time delay and proper embedding dimension, respectively. A Grassberger-Procaccia algorithm was utilized to calculate the correlation dimension as a measure of the complexity of the reconstructed attractor. The analysis demonstrated the low-dimensional dynamic characteristics of normal and dysphagic swallowing sounds. The optimum time delay and correlation dimension of the opening and transmission phases of swallowing sounds were used as features for a 3-nearest neighbor classifier to identify individuals at risk of dysphagia. The method was applied to tracheal sound recordings of 15 healthy subjects and 11 patients with some degree of dysphagia. The algorithm was able to classify 83% of swallows correctly. Finally, a screening algorithm was used which correctly classified 24 out of 26 subjects. This study suggests that nonlinear analysis is a promising tool for quantitative analysis of swallowing sounds and swallowing disorders.