Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Van Allen Probes Observations of Drift‐Bounce Resonance and Energy Transfer Between Energetic Ring Current Protons and Poloidal Pc4 Wave

A poloidal Pc4 wave and proton flux oscillations are observed in the inner magnetosphere on the dayside near the magnetic equator by the Van Allen Probes spacecraft on 2 March 2014. The flux oscillations are observed in the energy range of 67.0 to 268.8 keV with the same frequency of the poloidal Pc4 wave. We find pitch angle and energy dispersion in the phase difference between the poloidal magnetic field and the proton flux oscillations, which are features of drift‐bounce resonance. We estimate the resonance energy to be ~120 keV for pitch angle (α) of 30° or 150° and 170–180 keV for α = 50° or 130°. To examine the direction of energy flow between protons and the wave, we calculate the sign of the gradient of proton phase space density (df/dW) on both the inbound and outbound legs of the orbit. We find the gradient to be outward on both legs, which means that energy is transferred from the protons to the wave. During the poloidal Pc4 wave event, the Dst* index shows a measurable increase of ~6.7 nT. We estimate the total energy loss of the ring current from the recovery of the Dst* index and from the variation of proton flux by the drift‐bounce resonance. We suggest that energy transfer from the ring current protons to the poloidal Pc4 wave via the drift‐bounce resonance contributes to up to ~85% of the increase of the Dst* index.
Recent Advances in Sensing Oropharyngeal Swallowing Function in Japan

Dysphagia (difficulty in swallowing) is an important issue in the elderly because it causes aspiration pneumonia, which is the second largest cause of death in this group. It also causes decline in activities of daily living and quality of life. The oral phase of swallowing has been neglected, despite its importance in the evaluation of dysphagia, because adequate protocols and measuring devices are unavailable. However, recent advances in sensor technology have enabled straightforward, non-invasive measurement of the movement of important swallowing-related organs such as the lips and tongue, as well as the larynx. In this article, we report the present state and possibility of clinical application of such systems developed in Japan.
Ascaris and hookworm transmission in preschool children in rural Panama: role of subsistence agricultural activities

SUMMARY This longitudinal study explored whether aspects of subsistence agriculture were associated with presence and intensity of Ascaris and hookworm in preschool children in rural Panama. Questionnaires were used to collect data on household socio-demographics, child exposure to agriculture and household agricultural practices. Stool samples were collected from children (6 months–5 years) at 3 time points, with albendazole administered after each to clear infections, resulting in 1 baseline and 2 reinfection measures. A novel Agricultural Activity Index (AAI) was developed using principal components analysis to measure the intensity of household agricultural practices. Zero-inflated negative binomial regression models revealed baseline hookworm egg counts were higher if children went to the agricultural plot and if the plot was smaller. Baseline and reinfection Ascaris egg counts were higher if children went to the plot and households had higher AAI, and higher at baseline if the plot was smaller. Caregiver time in the plot was negatively associated with baseline Ascaris egg counts, but positively associated with baseline hookworm and Ascaris reinfection egg counts. Children who spent more time playing around the home were less likely to be infected with Ascaris at baseline. We conclude that preschool child exposure to subsistence agriculture increased Ascaris and hookworm intensity.
Rituximab plus hyper‐CVAD alternating with MTX/Ara‐C in patients with newly diagnosed mantle cell lymphoma: 15‐year follow‐up of a phase II study from the MD Anderson Cancer Center

Intensive chemotherapy regimens containing cytarabine have substantially improved remission durability and overall survival in younger adults with mantle cell lymphoma (MCL). However, there have been no long‐term follow‐up results for patients treated with these regimens. We present long‐term survival outcomes from a pivotal phase II trial of rituximab, hyper‐fractionated cyclophosphamide, vincristine, doxorubicin and dexamethasone alternating with methotrexate and cytarabine (R‐HCVAD/MA). At 15 years of follow‐up (median: 13·4 years), the median failure‐free survival (FFS) and overall survival (OS) for all patients was 4·8 years and 10·7 years, respectively. The FFS seems to have plateaued after 10 years, with an estimated 15‐year FFS of 30% in younger patients (≤65 years). Patients who achieved complete response (CR) after 2 cycles had a favourable median FFS of 8·8 years. Six patients developed myelodysplastic syndrome/acute myeloid leukaemia (MDS/AML) whilst in first CR. The 10‐year cumulative incidence of MDS/AML of patients in first remission was 6·2% (95% confidence interval: 2·5–12·2%). In patients with newly diagnosed MCL, R‐HCVAD/MA showed sustained efficacy, with a median OS exceeding 10 years in all patients and freedom from disease recurrence of nearly 15 years in almost one‐third of the younger patients (≤65 years).
Crowd Event Detection on Optical Flow Manifolds

Analyzing crowd events in a video is key to understanding the behavioral characteristics of people (humans). Detecting crowd events in videos is challenging because of articulated human movements and occlusions. The aim of this paper is to detect the events in a probabilistic framework for automatically interpreting the visual crowd behavior. In this paper, crowd event detection and classification in optical flow manifolds (OFMs) are addressed. A new algorithm to detect walking and running events has been proposed, which uses optical flow vector lengths in OFMs. Furthermore, a new algorithm to detect merging and splitting events has been proposed, which uses Riemannian connections in the optical flow bundle (OFB). The longest vector from the OFB provides a key feature for distinguishing walking and running events. Using a Riemannian connection, the optical flow vectors are parallel transported to localize the crowd groups. The geodesic lengths among the groups provide a criterion for merging and splitting events. Dispersion and evacuation events are jointly modeled from the walking/running and merging/splitting events. Our results show that the proposed approach delivers a comparable model to detect crowd events. Using the performance evaluation of tracking and surveillance 2009 dataset, the proposed method is shown to produce the best results in merging, splitting, and dispersion events, and comparable results in walking, running, and evacuation events when compared with other methods.
Time-dependent outward current in guinea pig ventricular myocytes. Gating kinetics of the delayed rectifier

Several conflicting models have been used to characterize the gating behavior of the cardiac delayed rectifier. In this study, whole-cell delayed rectifier currents were measured in voltage-clamped guinea pig ventricular myocytes, and a minimal model which reproduced the observed kinetic behavior was identified. First, whole-cell potassium currents between -10 and +70 mV were recorded using external solutions designed to eliminate Na and Ca currents and two components of time-dependent outward current were found. One component was a La3(+)-sensitive current which inactivated and resembled the transient outward current described in other cell types; single-channel observations confirmed the presence of a transient outward current in these guinea pig ventricular cells (gamma = 9.9 pS, [K]o = 4.5 mM). Analysis of envelopes of tail amplitudes demonstrated that this component was absent in solutions containing 30-100 microM La3+. The remaining time- dependent current, IK, activated with a sigmoidal time course that was well-characterized by three time constants. Nonlinear least-squares fits of a four-state Markovian chain model (closed - closed - closed - open) to IK activation were therefore compared to other models previously used to characterize IK gating: n2 and n4 Hodgkin-Huxley models and a Markovian chain model with only two closed states. In each case the four-state model was significantly better (P less than 0.05). The failure of the Hodgkin-Huxley models to adequately describe the macroscopic current indicates that identical and independent gating particles should not be assumed for this K channel. The voltage- dependent terms describing the rate constants for the four-state model were then derived using a global fitting approach for IK data obtained over a wide range of potentials (-80 to +70 mV). The fit was significantly improved by including a term representing the membrane dipole forces (P less than 0.01). The resulting rate constants predicted long single-channel openings (greater than 1 s) at voltages greater than 0 mV. In cell-attached patches, single delayed rectifier channels which had a mean chord conductance of 5.4 pS at +60 mV ([K]o = 4.5 mM) were recorded for brief periods. These channels exhibited behavior predicted by the four-state model: long openings and latency distributions with delayed peaks. These results suggest that the cardiac delayed rectifier undergoes at least two major transitions between closed states before opening upon depolarization.
Calcium channel currents in pars intermedia cells of the rat pituitary gland. Kinetic properties and washout during intracellular dialysis

Ca channel currents in primary cultured pars intermedia cells were studied using whole-cell recording with patch pipettes. Experiments were carried out at 18-21 degrees C in cells internally dialyzed with K- free, EGTA-containing solutions and in the presence of 10 mM Ca or 10 mM Ba in the external solution. Ca and Ba currents depended on the activity of two main populations of channels, SD and FD. With Ca as the charge carrier, these two populations differed in their closing time constants at -80 mV (SD, 1.8 ms; FD, 110 microseconds), apparent activation levels (SD, -40 mV; FD, -5 mV), half-maximal activation levels (SD, +5 to +10 mV; FD, +20 to +25 mV), half-times of activation at +20 mV (SD, 2.5-3.5 ms; FD, 1.0-1.3 ms), and time courses of inactivation (SD, fast; FD, slow). Functional FD channels were almost completely lost within 20-25 min of breaking into a cell, whereas SD channels retained most of their functional activity. In addition, the conductance-voltage curve for FD channels shifted approximately 15 mV toward more negative membrane potentials within 11-14 min under whole- cell recording. At that time, 60-70% of the FD channel maximum conductance was lost. However, the conductance-voltage curve for SD channels shifted less than 5 mV within 25 min. The addition of 3 mM MgATP and 40 microM GTP to the internal solution slowed down the loss of FD channels and prevented the shift in their activation curve. It was also found that the amplitude of the current carried by FD channels tends to increase as a function of the age of the culture, with no obvious changes in the kinetic properties of the channels or in SD channel activity.
Reactive diffracting trees

A shared counter is a concurrent object that provides a fetch-and-increment operation in a distributed system. Recently, diffracting trees have been introduced as an efficient way of implementing shared counters in heavily loaded distributed systems. Diffracting trees dynamically partition processors into small groups that can access a collection of disjoint local counters quickly in a globally coordinated way. Their empirical performance under heavy load surpasses all other shared counter implementations. However, diffracting trees of any particular depth are optimal for only a limited load range. Thus, there would be great benefit in designing a diffracting tree algorithm that would effectively scale up from a simple centralized queue-lock-based counter at low loads to the optimal size diffracting tree counter as the load increases and scale back down to a queue-lock as the load decreases. This paper presents the reactive diffracting tree data structure and an implementation of it in a shared memory multiprocessor system. The reactive diffracting tree is a shared structure similar to a diffracting tree, with the added property that it can grow and shrink to better handle changing access patterns and the memory layouts, providing true scalability and locality. The tree mimics the behavior of an optimal size diffracting tree for each concurrency range. Empirical evidence, collected on the Alewife cache-coherent multiprocessor and the Proteus simulator, shows that the reactive diffracting tree provides throughput within a constant factor of optimal diffracting trees at all load levels. It also proves to be an effective competitor with randomized load balancing algorithms in several producer/consumer applications.
Health, Employment, and Disability: Implications from the Undocumented Population

Disability benefit recipients in the United States have nearly doubled in the past two decades, growing substantially faster than the population. It is difficult to estimate how much of this increase is explained by changes in population health, as we often lack a valid counterfactual. We propose using undocumented immigrants as the counterfactual, as they cannot currently claim benefits. Using NHIS microdata, we estimate models of disability as a function of medical conditions for both the legal and undocumented populations. The relationship between health and disability is far stronger for those with legal status than it is for those who are undocumented. We find that almost all of the difference in disability trends between the two populations can be explained by different responses to underlying health impairments.
Distributed under Creative Commons Cc-by 4.0 a Third-generation Dispersion and Third-generation Hydrogen Bonding Corrected Pm6 Method: Pm6-d3h+

We present new dispersion and hydrogen bond corrections to the PM6 method, PM6-D3H+, and its implementation in the GAMESS program. The method combines the DFT-D3 dispersion correction by Grimme et al. with a modified version of the H+ hydrogen bond correction by Korth. Overall, the interaction energy of PM6-D3H+ is very similar to PM6-DH2 and PM6-DH+, with RMSD and MAD values within 0.02 kcal/mol of one another. The main difference is that the geometry optimizations of 88 complexes result in 82, 6, 0, and 0 geometries with 0, 1, 2, and 3 or more imaginary frequencies using PM6-D3H+ implemented in GAMESS, while the corresponding numbers for PM6-DH+ implemented in MOPAC are 54, 17, 15, and 2. The PM6-D3H+ method as implemented in GAMESS offers an attractive alternative to PM6-DH+ in MOPAC in cases where the LBFGS optimizer must be used and a vibrational analysis is needed, e.g., when computing vibrational free energies. While the GAMESS implementation is up to 10 times slower for geometry optimizations of proteins in bulk solvent, compared to MOPAC, it is sufficiently fast to make geometry optimizations of small proteins practically feasible.
Does teaching online take more time?

Many instructors feel that teaching online takes more time, but there is relatively little data available on this issue. This paper discusses a study that involves detailed recording of instructor time in online and traditional course sections to support a comparison between the two modes of delivery. The presentation describes the study approach and problems encountered in trying to get an accurate picture of instructor time. The presentation also includes results of an analysis of instructor time for a series of course section pairs. Each section pair includes one online and one face-to-face section of the same course taught by the same faculty member. The data provides some general support for the notion that teaching online may take more time than teaching face-to-face. However, the amount of difference tends to be small, and there are some indications that this relationship between teaching mode and time is more complicated than generally assumed.
Neurotoxic Alkaloids: Saxitoxin and Its Analogs

Saxitoxin (STX) and its 57 analogs are a broad group of natural neurotoxic alkaloids, commonly known as the paralytic shellfish toxins (PSTs). PSTs are the causative agents of paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) and are mostly associated with marine dinoflagellates (eukaryotes) and freshwater cyanobacteria (prokaryotes), which form extensive blooms around the world. PST producing dinoflagellates belong to the genera Alexandrium, Gymnodinium and Pyrodinium whilst production has been identified in several cyanobacterial genera including Anabaena, Cylindrospermopsis, Aphanizomenon Planktothrix and Lyngbya. STX and its analogs can be structurally classified into several classes such as non-sulfated, mono-sulfated, di-sulfated, decarbamoylated and the recently discovered hydrophobic analogs—each with varying levels of toxicity. Biotransformation of the PSTs into other PST analogs has been identified within marine invertebrates, humans and bacteria. An improved understanding of PST transformation into less toxic analogs and degradation, both chemically or enzymatically, will be important for the development of methods for the detoxification of contaminated water supplies and of shellfish destined for consumption. Some PSTs also have demonstrated pharmaceutical potential as a long-term anesthetic in the treatment of anal fissures and for chronic tension-type headache. The recent elucidation of the saxitoxin biosynthetic gene cluster in cyanobacteria and the identification of new PST analogs will present opportunities to further explore the pharmaceutical potential of these intriguing alkaloids.
Revisiting Estrogen: Efficacy and Safety for Postmenopausal Bone Health

The rapid decline in endogenous estrogen production that occurs during menopause is associated with significant bone loss and increased risk for fragility fracture. While hormone therapy (HT) is an effective means to re-establish endogenous estrogen levels and reduce the risk of future fracture, its use can be accompanied by undesirable side effects such as stroke and breast cancer. In this paper, we revisit the issue of whether HT can be both safe and effective for the prevention of postmenopausal bone loss by examining standard and alternative doses and formulations of HT. The aim of this paper is to continue the dialogue regarding the benefits and controversies of HT with the goal of encouraging the dissemination of-up-to date evidence that may influence how HT is viewed and prescribed.
Trends in HIV Infection: Prevention-Related Attitudes and Behaviors Among Secondary School Students in Western Uganda

Objective:To monitor trends in the attitudes and behaviors of youth in western Uganda with respect to prevention of HIV/AIDS. Design:Annual data collection in a group of sentinel secondary schools in 3 districts using a short, self-administered, and anonymous questionnaire. Methods:Fifteen secondary schools were randomly selected, and a cross-sectional survey of students was carried out each year between 1995 and 2001. All students from S (senior level) 2 to S4 were invited to complete the questionnaire. For data analysis, all completed questionnaires of students between the ages of 12 and 20 years were considered. Results:In total, 6 surveys were carried out yielding 6231 valid questionnaires. Ever use of condoms among sexually active youth increased significantly from 48.8% in 1995 to 1996 to 72.8% in 2000 to 2001. Male students were more likely to report increased sexual abstinence during the time period than female students. Conversely, female students over the same time period reported having fewer sexual partners than male students. The number of sexually active students reporting sexual intercourse in the past 3 months remained the same. Conclusions:These data show that significant positive changes in the sexual behavior of secondary school students in western Uganda have occurred. This could explain, in part, the decline of HIV prevalence rates among young people observed in this region.
Cannabinoids in bipolar affective disorder: a review and discussion of their therapeutic potential

Bipolar affective disorder is often poorly controlled by prescribed drugs. Cannabis use is common in patients with this disorder and anecdotal reports suggest that some patients take it to alleviate symptoms of both mania and depression. We undertook a literature review of cannabis use by patients with bipolar disorder and of the neuropharmacological properties of cannabinoids suggesting possible therapeutic effects in this condition. No systematic studies of cannabinoids in bipolar disorder were found to exist, although some patients claim that cannabisrelieves symptoms of mania and/or depression. The cannabinoids Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD) may exert sedative, hypnotic, anxiolytic, antidepressant, antipsychotic and anticonvulsant effects. Pure synthetic cannabinoids, such as dronabinol and nabilone and specific plant extracts containing THC, CBD, or amixture of the two in known concentrations, are available and can be delivered sublingually. Controlled trials of these cannabinoids as adjunctive medication in bipolar disorder are now indicated.
Thiol and cardiovascular risk factor status in a male northern Irish population.

OBJECTIVES Raised plasma homocysteine is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD). Cysteine has also been associated with CVD risk. In this study, we investigated the association between known CVD risk factors, dietary factors, and total plasma cysteine, cysteinyl-glycine, and homocysteine. METHODS The study group was 765 male workers aged between 30-49 years. The dietary habits of the subjects were recorded using a food frequency questionnaire. Body mass index (BMI), smoking status, and blood pressure were assessed, and fasting blood samples were taken for analysis of serum concentrations of vitamins, lipids, total plasma cysteine, cysteinyl-glycine, and homocysteine, and genotyping for the methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) polymorphism. RESULTS In multivariable analyses, cysteine was significantly positively associated with age and negatively associated with serum vitamin B12 and serum vitamin B6, while cysteinyl-glycine was significantly positively associated with BMI. Homocysteine (tHcy) was significantly negatively associated with serum folate, serum vitamin B12, and fruit and vegetable intake, and also depended on the MTHFR 677C>T genotype. CONCLUSIONS Our data show a significant relationship between age, serum levels of B-vitamins and cysteine, and BMI and cysteinyl-glycine. In agreement with other studies, we also confirm an association between tHcy, serum folate and vitamin B12, MTHFR genotype, and fruit and vegetable intake. Further investigation into the role of these thiols and their determinants in CVD is required.
An Approach to Determining the Optimal Cell Number of Manufacturing Cell Formation

An approach to determining the optimal cell number of manufacturing cell formation is presented. Firstly, the difference of weighting exponent, cluster center and metrics how to have an impact upon the clustering results and membership function are studied. Secondly, a method to determine the optimal m value is given. Two-order partial derivative of the objective function for FCM is calculated, and the variational weighting exponent m is obtained that can prevent the parameter from being the unique value and play an important role in the process of fuzzy clustering. Moreover, in order to avoid a single validity index can not assess correctly, partition coefficient (PC), classification entropy (CE), Fukuyama and Sugeno (FS) and Xie and Beni (XB) are considered as multi-performance indexes to evaluate the cluster validity, and then an optimal number c is chosen based on these validity measures. Finally, test exampls are given to illustrate the validity of the proposed approach. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.11591/telkomnika.v11i4. 2332