Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Quantum Field Theory of Fermion Mixing

The fermion mixing transformations are studied in the quantum field theory framework. In particular neutrino mixing is considered and the Fock space of definite flavor states is shown to be unitarily inequivalent to the Fock space of definite mass states. The flavor oscillation formula is computed for two and three flavors mixing and the oscillation amplitude is found to be momentum dependent, a result which may be subject to experimental test. The flavor vacuum state exhibits the structure of SU(2) generalized coherent state.
Health: A Developing Concept in Nursing

PURPOSE The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the level of maturity of the concept of health in the nursing discipline. METHOD The four principles of Morse and colleagues were used to evaluate the level of maturity of the health concept-epistemological, logical, pragmatical, and linguistical. FINDINGS This evaluation suggests that the concept of health in nursing is immature, defined inconsistently, and with different instruments. CONCLUSION Health is a central concept for nursing. Additional concept development and clarification are needed. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS For the concept of health to be conceptualized, it is important that nurses have consensus regarding the definition of health. The nursing discipline should define health in a manner that is consistent with its philosophical presuppositions. Further, it should be measurable, empirically based, and capture the outcomes that are sensitive to the nursing interventions.
Structural comparison of cephalopod hemocyanins: phylogenetic significance.

Hemocyanins, the respiratory molecules of cephalopod mollusks, are hollow cylinders with five internal arches. Three hemocyanins representative of three orders of cephalopods (Benthoctopus species, Octopoda; Vampyroteuthis infernalis, Vampyromorpha; Sepia officinalis, Sepioidea) were subjected to cryoelectron microscopy and three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction. The structure of Benthoctopus hemocyanin, solved at 26.4-A resolution, possesses arches comprising two identical functional units. The similarity between these functional units and the structure recently observed in X-ray crystallography for Octopus by Cuff et al. (J. Mol. Biol., 1998, 232, 522-529) allows the identification of their N- and C-terminal domains in the 3D reconstruction volume. Conversely, arches present in the 3D reconstruction volume of Sepia hemocyanin (21.8 A resolution) contain four functional units that are disposed differently. The strong resemblance between the reconstruction volumes of Vampyroteuthis (21.4-A resolution) and Benthoctopus hemocyanins suggests that Sepioidea diverged from a group containing Octopoda and Vampyromorpha.
Genetic analysis and association of simple sequence repeat markers with storage root yield, dry matter, starch and β-carotene content in sweetpotato

Molecular markers are needed for enhancing the development of elite sweetpotato (Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam) cultivars with a wide range of commercially important traits in sub-Saharan Africa. This study was conducted to estimate the heritability and determine trait correlations of storage root yield, dry matter, starch and β-carotene content in a cross between ‘New Kawogo’ × ‘Beauregard’. The study was also conducted to identify simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers associated with these traits. A total of 287 progeny and the parents were evaluated for two seasons at three sites in Uganda and genotyped with 250 SSR markers. Broad sense heritability (H2) for storage root yield, dry matter, starch and β-carotene content were 0.24, 0.68, 0.70 and 0.90, respectively. Storage root β-carotene content was negatively correlated with dry matter (r = −0.59, P < 0.001) and starch (r = −0.93, P < 0.001) content, while storage root yield was positively correlated with dry matter (r = 0.57, P = 0.029) and starch (r = 0.41, P = 0.008) content. Through logistic regression, a total of 12, 4, 6 and 8 SSR markers were associated with storage root yield, dry matter, starch and β-carotene content, respectively. The SSR markers used in this study may be useful for quantitative trait loci analysis and selection for these traits in future.
Changes in cortical thickness during the course of illness in schizophrenia.

CONTEXT Whether cortical thickness changes in schizophrenia over time are more pronounced relative to the changes that can be attributed to normal aging has not been studied. OBJECTIVE To compare patients with schizophrenia and healthy control participants on cortical thickness change. DESIGN A 5-year longitudinal study comparing schizophrenic patients and healthy controls using 2 magnetic resonance images of the brain. SETTING Patients were recruited from the Department of Psychiatry at the University Medical Centre Utrecht and from other psychiatric hospitals in the Netherlands. Healthy controls were recruited via advertisement in newspapers and notice boards. PARTICIPANTS Ninety-six schizophrenic patients and 113 healthy controls aged 16 to 56 years. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Cortical thickness and change in cortical thickness on a vertex-by-vertex basis across the cortical mantle, measures of functional and symptomatic outcome, and cumulative intake of antipsychotics during the scan interval. RESULTS At baseline, the schizophrenic patients had thinner left orbitofrontal and right parahippocampal and superior temporal cortices and a thicker superior parietal lobule and occipital pole compared with the controls. Mean cortical thickness did not differ between the groups. Over time, excessive cortical thinning was found in widespread areas on the cortical mantle, most pronounced bilaterally in the temporal cortex and in the left frontal area. Poor outcome in patients was associated with more pronounced cortical thinning. Higher cumulative intake of typical antipsychotics during the scan interval was associated with more pronounced cortical thinning, whereas higher cumulative intake of atypical antipsychotic medication was associated with less pronounced cortical thinning. CONCLUSIONS In schizophrenia, the cortex shows excessive thinning over time in widespread areas of the brain, most pronounced in the frontal and temporal areas, and progresses across the entire course of the illness. The excessive thinning of the cortex appears related to outcome and medication intake.
A new approach for assessing the moisture content in SF6-insulated equipment

The moisture assessment of SF6-insulated equipment was never a real concern at Hydro-Quebec. In fact, the molecular sieve installed in the equipment was expected to provide an absolute guarantee of the appropriate moisture level. Since then, major failures caused by high moisture content have changed Hydro-Quebec's approach regarding moisture and revealed the importance of its assessment in such equipment. However, from a practical standpoint, there have been problems in accurately assessing the moisture content and then being able to meet the acceptance criteria specified by the manufacturers or by the standards. To prevent new failures associated with high moisture content in SF6-insulated equipment, Hydro-Quebec has developed a new approach based on relative humidity measurement. The present paper explains this technical approach, which is supported by outdoor field experiments.
Riluzole activates TRPC5 channels independently of PLC activity

The transient receptor potential channel C5 (TRPC5) is a Ca2+‐permeable cation channel, which is predominantly expressed in the brain. TRPC5 is activated in a PLC‐dependent manner by, as yet, unidentified endogenous messengers. Recently, modulators of TRPC5, like Ca2+, pH and phospholipids, have been identified. However, the role of TRPC5 in vivo is only poorly understood. Novel specific modulators of TRPC5 might help to elucidate its function.
Alternative Luciferase for Monitoring Bacterial Cells under Adverse Conditions

ABSTRACT The availability of cloned luciferase genes from fireflies (luc) and from bacteria (luxAB) has led to the widespread use of bioluminescence as a reporter to measure cell viability and gene expression. The most commonly occurring bioluminescence system in nature is the deep-sea imidazolopyrazine bioluminescence system. Coelenterazine is an imidazolopyrazine derivative which, when oxidized by an appropriate luciferase enzyme, produces carbon dioxide, coelenteramide, and light. The luciferase from the marine copepod Gaussia princeps (Gluc) has recently been cloned. We expressed the Gluc gene in Mycobacterium smegmatis using a shuttle vector and compared its performance with that of an existing luxAB reporter. In contrast to luxAB, the Gluc luciferase retained its luminescence output in the stationary phase of growth and exhibited enhanced stability during exposure to low pH, hydrogen peroxide, and high temperature. The work presented here demonstrated the utility of the copepod luciferase bioluminescent reporter as an alternative to bacterial luciferase, particularly for monitoring responses to environmental stress stimuli.
Hospitalization with hypoglycemia in patients without diabetes mellitus

Abstract We aimed to examine prevalence, patient characteristics, etiology, and clinical outcomes of hospitalized patients who had hypoglycemia without a diagnosis of diabetes mellitus, using a Japanese nationwide database. This was a retrospective observational study using a national database of acute-care inpatients in Japan. Nondiabetic patients aged ≥15 years who were hospitalized for hypoglycemia were eligible. We estimated the annual numbers of hospitalized cases in Japan. We also investigated the patient characteristics, and risk factors of in-hospital mortality. We identified 8684 eligible patients out of 22.7 million discharge records between July 2008 and March 2013. The average age was 70.0 years and the average body mass index (BMI) was 19.9 kg/m2. Most frequently recorded underlying diseases were malignancies, cerebrovascular diseases, pneumonia, renal failure, and heart failure. The estimated annual numbers of hospitalizations because of hypoglycemia in nondiabetic patients were 5000 to 7000. In-hospital mortality was 14.9%, and predictive factors for poor survival included older age, community hospital, low BMI, coma at admission, urgent admission, renal failure, heart failure, pneumonia, sepsis, chronic liver diseases, and malignancies. Patients without diabetes mellitus but with hypoglycemia had multiple comorbidities and high in-hospital mortality. Clinicians should carefully investigate the etiology of hypoglycemia in nondiabetic patients, and treat the underlying diseases.
Chemical Inducers of Rodent Glutathione S-Transferases Down-Regulate Human GSTA1 Transcription through a Mechanism Involving Variant Hepatic Nuclear Factor 1-C

The regulation of human GSTA1 by chemical inducers of rodent glutathione S-transferases (GSTs) and the regulatory role of hepatic nuclear factor (HNF) 1 was investigated in Caco-2 cells. Treatment of preconfluent and confluent cells with 12-O-tetra-decanoyl phorbol-13-acetate (TPA), 3-methylcholanthrene (3-MC), 2-tert-butyl-4-hydroxy-anisol (BHA), and phenobarbital (PB) reduced GSTA1 mRNA levels in preconfluent and confluent cells. Constitutive levels of GSTA1 and HNF1α mRNA were elevated 6.25- and 50-fold, respectively, in postconfluent cells compared with preconfluent cells. Overexpression of HNF1α in cells transfected with a GSTA1 promoter-luciferase construct (pGSTA1-1591-luc) resulted in dose-related increases in reporter activity not observed when an HNF1 response element (HRE) in the proximal promoter was mutated (pGSTA1-ΔHNF1-luc). TPA, 3-MC, BHA, and PB reduced HNF1α mRNA levels in preconfluent and confluent cells and caused marked reductions in luciferase activity in pGSTA1-1591-luc transfectants. Transcriptional repression was abrogated with pGSTA1-ΔHNF1-luc and with truncated constructs that eliminated a functional HRE. Moreover, cotransfection of pHNF1α with pGSTA1-1591-luc partially prevented the reduction in luciferase activity by rodent GST inducers. Immunoblot analysis of DNA binding studies indicate that variant (v)HNF1-C binding to HRE is increased in preconfluent cells treated with 3-MC, BHA, and PB. In addition, overexpression of vHNF1-C repressed GSTA1 transcriptional activity in luciferase reporter assays. Finally, treatment with 3-MC, BHA, and PB increased vHNF1-C mRNA levels in preconfluent cells. These data demonstrate that repression of human GSTA1 transcription by chemical inducers of rodent GSTs occurs, in part, through a mechanism involving the repressive action of vHNF1-C.
Using Adhesive Glue to Repair First Degree Perineal Tears: A Prospective Randomized Controlled Trial

Our objective was to evaluate the effectiveness of adhesive glue in repairing first degree perineal tears. We conducted a noninferiority prospective, randomized, controlled trial comparing adhesive glue with traditional suturing. Each case was evaluated immediately after birth and after the puerperium. The two-sample t-test and the Mann-Whitney nonparametric test were applied to compare quantitative variables between the treatment groups. The chi-squared test and Fisher's exact test were used to assess the association between qualitative variables. A total of 102 women participated, 28 in the suture arm and 74 in the adhesive glue arm. While cosmetic and functional results of adhesive glue use were not inferior to suturing, the use of adhesive glue was associated with a shorter procedure, less need for local anesthetic, less pain, and greater satisfaction. Our results suggest a novel approach for the repair of common postpartum first degree lacerations. The use of adhesive glue achieves cosmetic and functional results equal to traditional suturing and offers some immediate advantages for the patient. While further clinical trials are needed to validate our results, it is important to inform obstetrician of the possible use of adhesive glue in these very common clinical scenarios. This trial is registered with NCT00746707.
sEMG Based Control for 5 DOF Upper Limb Rehabilitation Robot System

This paper presents a 5 DOF wearable rehabilitation robot which can implement single joint and multi- joint multiple motions for hemiplegic patients. The method of driving rehabilitation robot to assistant patients' impaired limb carry out rehabilitation exercises by healthy one of their own is present because hemiplegic patients' upper limb is usually unilaterally impaired. sEMG (surface electromyogram) signal is introduced into this method as the input of rehabilitation motion. Two algorithms-integral of absolute values (IAV) and Auto-regressive (AR) parameter model are adopted to compress data and extract feature of sEMG. Features worked out are sent into Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) based back propagation neural network (BPN) as the input, whose outputs are six upper limb rehabilitation exercise motions, to establish relationship of sEMG signal and motions. At the end of paper, for each motion 60 groups data is used to train and test network to get a good result. It laid the groundwork for study relationship of sEMG signal of patients' impaired upper limb and motions of which.
Coming of Age with Diabetes: Patients' Views of a Clinic for Under‐25 year olds

This study is both an evaluation of patients' perceptions of a diabetes clinic for under‐25 year olds, and an assessment of experiences in transferring from a paediatric clinic. Sixty‐nine patients with Type 1 diabetes (74% of the total clinic), including 41 females, completed evaluations of the clinic and recall of experiences in transfer. Mean age on transferring clinic was 15.9 (range 12–20) years. Paediatricians were perceived to emphasise family and social life, school or work progress; adult physicians tended to stress the risk of long‐term complications, importance of exercise and need to maintain strict levels of glycaemic control. Our data suggest that transition to adult care can generally be achieved non‐traumatically, but patients may perceive some difficulty because of different emphases and treatment advice favoured by paediatricians and adult physicians.
Clinical Brain Monitoring with Time Domain NIRS: A Review and Future Perspectives

Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is an optical technique that can measure brain tissue oxygenation and haemodynamics in real-time and at the patient bedside allowing medical doctors to access important physiological information. However, despite this, the use of NIRS in a clinical environment is hindered due to limitations, such as poor reproducibility, lack of depth sensitivity and poor brain-specificity. Time domain NIRS (or TD-NIRS) can resolve these issues and offer detailed information of the optical properties of the tissue, allowing better physiological information to be retrieved. This is achieved at the cost of increased instrument complexity, operation complexity and price. In this review, we focus on brain monitoring clinical applications of TD-NIRS. A total of 52 publications were identified, spanning the fields of neonatal imaging, stroke assessment, traumatic brain injury (TBI) assessment, brain death assessment, psychiatry, peroperative care, neuronal disorders assessment and communication with patient with locked-in syndrome. In all the publications, the advantages of the TD-NIRS measurement to (1) extract absolute values of haemoglobin concentration and tissue oxygen saturation, (2) assess the reduced scattering coefficient, and (3) separate between extra-cerebral and cerebral tissues, are highlighted; and emphasize the utility of TD-NIRS in a clinical context. In the last sections of this review, we explore the recent developments of TD-NIRS, in terms of instrumentation and methodologies that might impact and broaden its use in the hospital.
Consistency of the posterior distribution and MLE for piecewise linear regression

We prove the weak consistency of the posterior distribution and that of the Bayes estimator for a two-phase piecewise linear regression mdoel where the break-point is unknown. The non-differentiability of the likelihood of the model with regard to the break- point parameter induces technical difficulties that we overcome by creating a regularised version of the problem at hand. We first recover the strong consistency of the quantities of interest for the regularised version, using results about the MLE, and we then prove that the regularised version and the original version of the problem share the same asymptotic properties.
Assessment of Genetic Diversity, Relationships and Structure among Korean Native Cattle Breeds Using Microsatellite Markers

Four Korean native cattle (KNC) breeds—Hanwoo, Chikso, Heugu, and Jeju black—are entered in the Domestic Animal Diversity Information System of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The objective of this study was to assess the genetic diversity, phylogenetic relationships and population structure of these KNC breeds (n = 120) and exotic breeds (Holstein and Charolais, n = 56). Thirty microsatellite loci recommended by the International Society for Animal Genetics/FAO were genotyped. These genotypes were used to determine the allele frequencies, allelic richness, heterozygosity and polymorphism information content per locus and breed. Genetic diversity was lower in Heugu and Jeju black breeds. Phylogenetic analysis, Factorial Correspondence Analysis and genetic clustering grouped each breed in its own cluster, which supported the genetic uniqueness of the KNC breeds. These results will be useful for conservation and management of KNC breeds as animal genetic resources.
Mitochondrial disorders: genetics, counseling, prenatal diagnosis and reproductive options.

Most patients with mitochondrial disorders are diagnosed by finding a respiratory chain enzyme defect or a mutation in the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). The provision of accurate genetic counseling and reproductive options to these families is complicated by the unique genetic features of mtDNA that distinguish it from Mendelian genetics. These include maternal inheritance, heteroplasmy, the threshold effect, the mitochondrial bottleneck, tissue variation, and selection. Although we still have much to learn about mtDNA genetics, it is now possible to provide useful guidance to families with an mtDNA mutation or a respiratory chain enzyme defect. We describe a range of current reproductive options that may be considered for prevention of transmission of mtDNA mutations, including the use of donor oocytes, prenatal diagnosis (by chorionic villus sampling or amniocentesis), and preimplantation genetic diagnosis, plus possible future options such as nuclear transfer and cytoplasmic transfer. For common mtDNA mutations associated with mitochondrial cytopathies (such as NARP, Leigh Disease, MELAS, MERRF, Leber's Hereditary Optic Neuropathy, CPEO, Kearns-Sayre syndrome, and Pearson syndrome), we summarize the available data on recurrence risk and discuss the relative advantages and disadvantages of reproductive options.
The physiological expression of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) in the human colon

Background—Inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) is expressed in the colonic epithelium in both inflammatory bowel disease and colorectal cancer. Nitric oxide (NO), the product of this enzyme, has been implicated in the pathogenesis of both conditions. However, there are conflicting data on whether iNOS is expressed in the normal, uninflamed human colon. Aims—To evaluate the expression of iNOS in histologically normal, non-inflamed human colonic mucosa. Patients/Methods—Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), immunoblotting, and immunohistochemistry were used to investigate the expression of iNOS in 17 histologically normal specimens obtained at colectomy performed for colorectal neoplasia. In addition, 16 endoscopic mucosal biopsies, taken from normal individuals, were also evaluated. Eleven surgical specimens and 16 endoscopic biopsies from patients with refractory ulcerative colitis were used as inflammatory controls. Results—All types of specimens expressed iNOS mRNA. Immunoblotting revealed a protein of approximately 130 kDa consistent with iNOS in mucosal extracts of 77% of normal individuals, and 85% of diseased controls. Immunolabelling localised this protein to the surface epithelium in most of the normal specimens and also to the crypt epithelium and inflammatory cells in the diseased controls. Conclusions—These findings provide evidence that iNOS is often expressed in the surface epithelium of non-inflamed human colon, suggesting that it is induced by local luminal factors, such as bacterial lipopolysaccharide (endotoxin). The resultant NO produced at this site might act as an oxidative barrier, reducing bacterial translocation and providing a means of defence against pathogenic microorganisms.