Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Antihypertriglyceridemia and Anti-Inflammatory Activities of Monascus-Fermented Dioscorea in Streptozotocin-Induced Diabetic Rats

The rice fermented by Monascus, called red mold rice (RMR), and has a long tradition in East Asia as a dietary staple. Monascus-fermented dioscorea called red mold dioscorea (RMD) contains various metabolites to perform the ability of reducing oxidative stress and anti-inflammatory response. We used Wistar rats and induced diabetes by injecting streptozotocin (STZ, 65 mg/kg i.p.). RMD was administered daily starting six weeks after disease onset. Throughout the experimental period, significantly (P < .05) lowered plasma glucose, triglyceride, cholesterol, free fatty acid and low density lipoprotein levels were observed in the RMD-treated groups. The RMD-treated diabetic rats showed higher activities of glutathione disulfide reductase, glutathione reductase, catalase and superoxide dismutase (P < .05) in the pancreas compared with the diabetic control rats. RMD also inhibited diabetes-induced elevation in the levels of interleukin (IL)-1β, IL-6, interferon-γ and tumor necrosis factor-α. Pancreatic β-cells damaged by STZ in the RMD supplemented groups were ameliorated. The results of this study clearly demonstrated that RMD possesses several treatment-oriented properties, including the control of hyperglycemia, antioxidant effects, pancreatic β-cell protection and anti-inflammatory effects. Considering these observations, it appears that RMD may be a useful supplement to delay the development of diabetes and its complications.
Performance of density functional models to reproduce observed 13Cα chemical shifts of proteins in solution

The purpose of this work is to test several density functional models (namely, OPBE, O3LYP, OPW91, BPW91, OB98, BPBE, B971, OLYP, PBE1PBE, and B3LYP) to determine their accuracy and speed for computing 13Cα chemical shifts in proteins. The test is applied to 10 NMR‐derived conformations of the 76‐residue α/β protein ubiquitin (protein data bank id 1D3Z). With each functional, the 13Cα shielding was computed for 760 amino acid residues by using a combination of approaches that includes, but is not limited to, treating each amino acid X in the sequence as a terminally blocked tripeptide with the sequence Ac‐GXG‐NMe in the conformation of the regularized experimental protein structure. As computation of the 13Cα chemical shifts, not their shielding, is the main goal of this work, a computation of the 13Cα shielding of the reference, namely, tetramethylsilane, is investigated here and an effective and a computed tetramethylsilane shielding value for each of the functionals is provided. Despite observed small differences among all functionals tested, the results indicate that four of them, namely, OPBE, OPW91, OB98, and OLYP, provide the most accurate functionals with which to reproduce observed 13Cα chemical shifts of proteins in solution, and are among the faster ones. This study also provides evidence for the applicability of these functionals to proteins of any size or class, and for the validation of our previous results and conclusions, obtained from calculations with the slower B3LYP functional. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Comput Chem, 2009
Transformation of pleomorphic adenoma to carcinoma ex pleomorphic adenoma of the parotid gland is independent of p53 mutations

This retrospective study was performed to evaluate the status of p53 in pleomorphic adenomas and carcinomas ex pleomorphic adenoma in the parotid gland. As loss or mutation of p53 can cause malignant transformation, the possible degeneration of pleomorphic adenomas to carcinomas ex pleomorhic adenoma was investigated by mutational analysis.
STUDIES ON THE LYMPHOCYTOSIS INDUCED IN MICE BY BORDETELLA PERTUSSIS

1. Intravenous injection into mice of phase I Bordetella pertussis vaccine resulted in a striking hyperleucocytosis with a predominating lymphocytosis. Intraperitoneal inoculation was less effective, and subcutaneous administration was inactive. 2. Active immunization prevented the hyperleucocytosis; passive immunization was less effective. 3. Reticuloendothelial blockage reduced the effect of the vaccine. 4. Extirpation of the spleen or thymus did not alter the leucocyte response. 5. Histologic studies suggested that the increase in circulating lymphocytes resulted from release of cells from lymphoid organs, including the thymus.
Bitmap Movement Detection: HDR for Dynamic Scenes

Exposure Fusion and other HDR techniques generate well-exposed images from a bracketed image sequence while reproducing a large dynamic range that far exceeds the dynamic range of a single exposure. Common to all these techniques is the problem that the smallest movements in the captured images generate artefacts (ghosting) that dramatically affect the quality of the final images. This limits the use of HDR and Exposure Fusion techniques because common scenes of interest are usually dynamic. We present a method that adapts Exposure Fusion, as well as standard HDR techniques, to allow for dynamic scene without introducing artefacts. Our method detects clusters of moving pixels within a bracketed exposure sequence with simple binary operations. We show that the proposed technique is able to deal with a large amount of movement in the scene and different movement configurations. The result is a ghost-free and highly detailed exposure fused image at a low computational cost.
A Chemical Mechanical Planarization Model Including Global Pressure Distribution and Feature Size Effects

In this paper, we propose a chip-scale Chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) model based on the Greenwood-Williamson theory combining the effects of both the pad bulk deformation and the feature size, which are mainly responsible for global pressure distribution and feature-scale removal rate variation, respectively. A reference camber is first constructed to simulate the pad bulk deformation, which can be directly introduced into the global pressure distribution computation for incorporating the long-range characteristics of chip profiles. Then, both the effective curvature and the modified distribution function of pad asperity height are involved in the material removal rate. The model is first verified through some experimental data from CMP test structures and found to be in good agreement with the test data. For further validating the rationality and accuracy of the present model, some simulations are compared with our experimental data and discussed in detail.
Assessing the Energy-Efficiency Gap

Energy-efficient technologies offer considerable promise for reducing the financial costs and environmental damages associated with energy use, but these technologies appear not to be adopted by consumers and businesses to the degree that would apparently be justified, even on a purely financial basis. We present two complementary frameworks for understanding this so-called “energy paradox” or “energy-efficiency gap. ” First, we build on the previous literature by dividing potential explanations for the energy-efficiency gap into three categories: market failures, behavioral anomalies, and model and measurement errors. Second, we posit that it is useful to think in terms of the fundamental elements of cost-minimizing energy-efficiency decisions. This provides a decomposition that organizes thinking around four questions. First, are product offerings and pricing economically efficient? Second, are energy operating costs inefficiently priced and/or understood? Third, are product choices cost-minimizing in present value terms? Fourth, do other costs inhibit more energy-efficient decisions? We review empirical evidence on these questions, with an emphasis on recent advances, and offer suggestions for future research.
Solids and formula: association with pattern and duration of breastfeeding.

OBJECTIVES To study changes in pattern and duration of breastfeeding associated with the introduction of solids and formula. STUDY DESIGN Descriptive longitudinal, prospective study. SETTING The participants were recruited from the maternity ward in the University Hospital in Uppsala, Sweden, between May 1989 and December 1992. A total of 15 189 infants were born during the period, 1 177 mother-infant pairs were found eligible for participation; 57% declined because of the perceived high workload. Study Population. Five hundred six mother-infant pairs. METHODS Daily recordings by the mothers on infant feeding, from the first week after delivery to the second menstruation postpartum or a new pregnancy; fortnightly home visits with structured interviews by a research assistant. RESULTS Introduction of solids was associated with no or minor changes in breastfeeding frequency and suckling duration. Breastfeeding frequency remained constant the first month after the introduction and then declined slowly, while daily suckling duration started to decline slowly when solids were introduced. Breastfeeding duration was not associated with infants' age at introduction of solids. In infants given formula, as soon as regular formula feeds started, the breastfeeding frequency and suckling duration declined swiftly. The younger an infant was at the start of regular formula feeds, the shorter the breastfeeding duration. CONCLUSIONS Health care personnel and parents need to be aware that introduction of solids and introduction of formula can have very different consequences for breastfeeding. If the aim is to introduce other foods to breastfed infants under the protection of breast milk, it is important to realize that formula is also another food and needs to be treated as such.
Stochastic Optimization with Importance Sampling for Regularized Loss Minimization

Uniform sampling of training data has been commonly used in traditional stochastic optimization algorithms such as Proximal Stochastic Gradient Descent (prox-SGD) and Proximal Stochastic Dual Coordinate Ascent (prox-SDCA). Although uniform sampling can guarantee that the sampled stochastic quantity is an unbiased estimate of the corresponding true quantity, the resulting estimator may have a rather high variance, which negatively affects the convergence of the underlying optimization procedure. In this paper we study stochastic optimization with importance sampling, which improves the convergence rate by reducing the stochastic variance. Specifically, we study prox-SGD (actually, stochastic mirror descent) with importance sampling and prox-SDCA with importance sampling. For prox-SGD, instead of adopting uniform sampling throughout the training process, the proposed algorithm employs importance sampling to minimize the variance of the stochastic gradient. For prox-SDCA, the proposed importance sampling scheme aims to achieve higher expected dual value at each dual coordinate ascent step. We provide extensive theoretical analysis to show that the convergence rates with the proposed importance sampling methods can be significantly improved under suitable conditions both for prox-SGD and for prox-SDCA. Experiments are provided to verify the theoretical analysis.
Nostalgia: A Psychological Resource

1. From the Past to the Present: A History of Nostalgia. 2. How we Perceive and Experience Nostalgia. 3. What Makes People Nostalgic? 4. The Affective Consequences of Nostalgia. 5. The Social Functions of Nostalgia. 6. The Self-Related Functions of Nostalgia. 7. The Existential Functions of Nostalgia. 8. Individual Differences and Nostalgia. 9. The Future of the Past: Emerging Research on Nostalgia.
Financial Integration and Consumption Risk Sharing and Smoothing

While paying careful attention to the stochastic properties of income process, this paper tests the joint rational expectation and permanent income hypothesis (RE/PIH) to clarify how and to what degree financial integration delinks national income and consumption. It is shown that both the OECD and the non-OECD countries benefit from financial integration in terms of consumption risk sharing and smoothing. The RE/PIH for the transitory income is not rejected for the OECD countries suggesting full consumption smoothing. Regression results also support the RE/PIH prediction that financial integration delivers even larger increases in consumption responding to positive shocks to income growth.
Occurrence of a common lipopolysaccharide antigen in standard and clinical strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa

The lipopolysaccharide (LPS) of Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1 contains two species of O polysaccharide termed A and B bands. The high-molecular-weight B-band LPS determines the O specificity of the bacterium, while the antigenically distinct A-band LPS consists of only shorter-chain polysaccharides. Seven hybridomas secreting A-band-specific monoclonal antibodies were produced and used to study the LPS of standard and clinical strains. Although A-band antibodies did not agglutinate any of the serotype strains presently in the International Antigenic Typing Scheme, Western immunoblots revealed that 11 of the 17 serotype strains possessed A-band LPS. In a group of 250 clinical isolates from patients with cystic fibrosis, 170 (68%) had A-band LPS on the basis of agglutination tests, but in silver-stained gels all were shown to be deficient in O-antigen-containing B band. Investigation of serial isolates from a single patient revealed a pattern of antigenic variation. During the course of the infection, serotypeable isolates became nontypeable, and the O antigen was replaced with A band as the major LPS antigen. These results suggest that A-band LPS may be the major LPS antigen in nontypeable clinical isolates and a common antigen among other P. aeruginosa strains.
Going the Extra Mile

Character strengths are durable positive attributes that contribute to well-being in life and at work. They are also hypothesized to contribute to the growth and flourishing of individuals and organizations. However, their associations with work performance and counterproductive work behaviors have rarely been studied. The present study seeks to identify character strengths most highly associated with work performance and counterproductive work behaviors and explores the role of individuals’ sense of meaning at work and work orientation in mediating these associations. An international sample (N = 686) completed the measures of strengths endorsement, work performance, counterproductive work behaviors, sense of meaning at work, and work orientation. Results pointed to perseverance as most highly associated with work performance and most negatively associated with counterproductive work behaviors. These associations were mediated by working individuals’ sense of meaning at work and perceptions of work as a career and as a calling. These findings highlight the contribution of perseverance to work performance and counterproductive behaviors, beyond the role of other character strengths, and highlight work meaningfulness and work orientation as psychological mechanisms underlying its effects.
Mandibular landmarks as an aid in minimizing injury to the marginal mandibular branch: A metric and geometric anatomical study

Iatrogenic injury to the marginal mandibular branch is an important reason for medicolegal actions. The aim of this study was to determine the distance of the marginal mandibular branch to the inferior border of the mandible as well as variation of nerve position in relation to this border. The marginal mandibular branch was dissected carefully in a number of 36 facial halves. Three points were identified on the inferior border of the mandibular ramus: Point A at the angle of the mandible, Point B just anterior to the facial artery, and Point C, 2 cm anterior to Point B. A metric and geometric morphometric analysis, including thin‐plate spline and relative warp analysis was done to determine the variation of nerve position in relation to these three bony landmarks. The metric study indicated a median distance from Point A to the nerve 2.3 mm inferior to Point A, 2.4 mm superior to Point B, and 10.7 mm superior to Point C. The shape analysis indicated that variation in the position of the nerve occurs most commonly at Points A and B. We conclude that these mandibular landmarks may assist surgeons in minimizing marginal mandibular branch injury and patient discomfort. Clin. Anat. 18:171–178, 2005. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The assessment of psychological resilience in sport performers

Why is it that some athletes are able to withstand the pressures of competitive sport and attain peak performances, whereas others succumb to the demands and under-perform? It is the study of psychological resilience that aims to address this question. To significantly advance psychologists’ knowledge and understanding of this area, there exists an urgent need to develop a sport-specific measure of resilience (Fletcher & Sarkar, 2012; Galli & Vealey, 2008; Gucciardi, Jackson, Coulter, & Mallett, 2011). The purpose of this thesis, therefore, is to investigate the assessment of psychological resilience in sport performers. To this end, the thesis is split into five chapters. Chapter one reviews and critiques the various definitions, concepts, and theories of resilience, and provides an overview of the research that has specifically examined psychological resilience in sport performers. Chapter two reviews psychometric issues in resilience research and its implications for sport psychology (part one), and discusses psychological resilience in sport performers via a review of the stressors athletes encounter and the protective factors that help them withstand these demands (part two). Drawing on these reviews of resilience in sport, Chapter three (studies one-three) describes the development and validation of the Sport Resilience Scale (SRS). More specifically, Study 1 explores the content validity of a pool of items designed to reflect psychological resilience in athletes, Study 2 examines the factorial structure of the SRS using exploratory factor analysis, and Study 3 tests the factorial structure of the SRS via confirmatory factor analysis, investigates whether the components of the measurement model are invariant across different groups, and examines the relationship between the SRS and other relevant concepts. Using the SRS, and based on Fletcher and Sarkar’s (2012) grounded theory of psychological resilience, Chapter four (studies 4 and 5) investigates resilience in sport performers via an examination of moderation and mediation hypotheses. Specifically, Study 4 tests whether the association between the stressors athletes encounter and athletes’ positive adaptation is moderated by the protective factors that athletes possess and Study 5 tests whether the association between the stressors athletes encounter and athletes’ positive adaptation is mediated by their cognitive appraisal processes. Lastly, Chapter five offers a summary, discussion, and conclusion of the thesis. Overall, the research reported in this thesis has developed the first valid and reliable measure of psychological resilience in sport performers and has provided quantitative support for Fletcher and Sarkar’s (2012) theoretical model of sport resilience by illustrating the moderating role of protective factors and the mediating role of cognitive appraisal.
Diurnal Variations of Corneal Topography and Thickness

ABSTRACT Measurements of central and peripheral corneal thickness, corneal topography, and central corneal curvature were made for 21 subjects at hourly intervals for 12 hr of 1 day for each subject. Values for corneal radius and asphericity were obtained from keratometry and photokeratoscopy, and their stability throughout the day was evaluated. Corneal radius was observed to steepen during the day, whereas asphericity remained constant. Corneal thickness was measured by pachometry and was found to be at its thickest on first awakening. Corneal curvature and central corneal thickness were highly correlated; low correlation was found between corneal asphericity and central corneal thickness. Some subjects exhibited large fluctuations in one or all of the parameters considered.
Optimal Refutations for Constraint Satisfaction Problems

Variable ordering heuristics have long been an important component of constraint satisfaction search algorithms. In this paper we study the behaviour of standard variable ordering heuristics when searching an insoluble (sub)problem. We employ the notion of an optimal refutation of an insoluble (sub)problem and describe an algorithm for obtaining it. We propose a novel approach to empirically looking at problem hardness and typical-case complexity by comparing optimal refutations with those generated by standard search heuristics. It is clear from our analysis that the standard variable orderings used to solve CSPs behave very differently on real-world problems than on random problems of comparable size. Our work introduces a potentially useful tool for analysing the causes of the heavy-tailed phenomenon observed in the runtime distributions of backtrack search procedures.
Combination of CPTED and space syntax for the analysis of crime

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to combine both Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) and space syntax for the more detailed and overall analysis of built environment in terms of crime. The author is aiming to verify the designed research methodology by its application in cities that are similar in terms of size and population, and are very different in culture and location: New Haven (USA) and Kaunas (Lithuania). Design/methodology/approach – Based on CPTED strategies the factors of urban environment are analyzed, such as topological depth from private space to a public space, density of entrances and windows, street’s constitutedness, inter-visibility, land use, blind walls, segment’s accessibility, greenery, lighting, objects of small architecture, graffiti. Space syntax method is applied for the analysis of the following topological properties of urban spaces: integration, choice, depth, connectivity. Findings – The combination of both methods revels that choice and depth of urban spaces are related to robberies, and connectivity and depth are related to thefts from motor vehicles in New Haven. Integration and depth are related to thefts from motor vehicles in Kaunas. According to the correlation analysis results, in Kaunas more robberies happen in common use areas, and more thefts from cars happen in the spaces with blind walls and dense abandoned greenery. In New Haven more thefts from motor vehicles happen in spaces with blind walls. In both cities with the increase of the topological depth the thefts from motor vehicles increase too. Originality/value – Based on the research results recommendations on urban planning and design are developed. The implementation of the recommendations might make New Haven and Kaunas safer.