Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dietary Fiber Intake and Risk of First Stroke: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Background and Purpose— Fiber intake is associated with reduced stroke risk in prospective studies, but no meta-analysis has been published to date. Methods— Multiple electronic databases were searched for healthy participant studies reporting fiber intake and incidence of first hemorrhagic or ischemic stroke, published between January 1990 and May 2012. Results— Eight cohort studies from the United States, northern Europe, Australia, and Japan met inclusion criteria. Total dietary fiber intake was inversely associated with risk of hemorrhagic plus ischemic stroke, with some evidence of heterogeneity between studies (I2; relative risk per 7 g/day, 0.93; 95% confidence interval, 0.88–0.98; I2=59%). Soluble fiber intake, per 4 g/day, was not associated with stroke risk reduction with evidence of low heterogeneity between studies, relative risk 0.94 (95% confidence interval, 0.88–1.01; I2=21%). There were few studies reporting stroke risk in relation to insoluble fiber or fiber from cereals, fruit, or vegetables. Conclusions— Greater dietary fiber intake is significantly associated with lower risk of first stroke. Overall, findings support dietary recommendations to increase intake of total dietary fiber. However, a paucity of data on fiber from different foods precludes conclusions regarding the association between fiber type and stroke. There is a need for future studies to focus on fiber type and to examine risk for ischemic and hemorrhagic strokes separately.
Effects of FSH receptor deletion on epididymal tubules and sperm morphology, numbers, and motility

Follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) interacts with its cognate receptor (R) on Sertoli cells within the testis and plays an important role in the maintenance of spermatogenesis. Male FSH‐R knockout (FORKO) mice show fewer Sertoli cells and many that are structurally abnormal and as a consequence fewer germ cells. Lower levels of serum testosterone (T) and androgen binding protein (ABP) also occur, along with reduced fertility. To assess the effects of FSH‐R depletion as an outcome of testicular abnormalities, sperm from the cauda epididymidis were counted and examined ultrastructurally. As reduced fertility may also reflect changes to the epididymis, the secondary responses of the epididymis to lower T and ABP levels were also examined by comparing differences in sizes of epididymal tubules in various regions of FORKO and wild type (WT) mice. Sperm motility was evaluated in FORKO mice and compared to that of WT mice by computer assisted sperm analysis (CASA). Quantitatively, the data revealed that epithelial areas of the caput and corpus epididymidis were significantly smaller in FORKO mice compared to WT mice. Cauda epididymal sperm counts in FORKO mice were also much lower than in WT mice. This resulted in changes to 9 out of 14 sperm motility parameters, related mostly to velocity measures, which were significantly lower in the FORKO mice. The greatest change was observed relative to the percent static sperm, which was elevated by 20% in FORKO mice compared to controls. EM analyses revealed major changes to the structure of the heads and tails of cauda luminal sperm in FORKO mice. Taken together these data suggest a key role for the FSH receptor in maintaining Sertoli cells to sustain normal sperm numbers and proper shapes of their heads and tails. In addition, the shrinkage in epididymal epithelial areas observed in FORKO mice likely reflect direct and/or indirect changes in the functions of these cells and their role in promoting sperm motility, which is noticeably altered in FORKO mice. Mol. Reprod. Dev. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Cognitive Change Associated with Self‐Reported Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Sustained During the OEF/OIF Conflicts

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) has received much attention due to high rates of this injury in Service Members returning from the Iraq/Afghanistan conflicts. This study examined cognitive performance in Service Members tested with ANAM prior to and following deployment. The sample was divided into a control group (n = 400) reporting no TBI injury prior to or during most recent deployment, and a group who self‐reported a TBI injury (n = 502) during most recent deployment. This latter group was divided further based on self‐report of post‐concussion symptoms at post‐deployment testing. All three groups performed similarly at pre‐deployment. The group reporting TBI with active symptoms performed worst at post‐deployment and included the highest percentage of individuals showing significant decline in cognitive performance over time (30.5%). A small sample of symptomatic individuals with a non‐TBI reported injury did not demonstrate similar declines in performance, suggesting that active symptoms alone cannot account for these findings. Of those reporting a TBI injury during deployment, 70% demonstrated no significant change in cognitive performance compared with baseline. Although the exact etiology of observed declines is uncertain, findings indicate that individuals who self‐report TBI during deployment with active symptomatology at post‐deployment are at greatest risk for declines in cognitive performance. These individuals can be identified using self‐report and brief computer‐based testing. Importantly, the majority of active‐duty individuals reporting TBI during deployment do not present with lasting significant cognitive impairment, a finding consistent with the civilian literature on mild TBI.
Explosive radiation in high Andean Hypericum—rates of diversification among New World lineages

The páramos, high-elevation Andean grasslands ranging from ca. 2800 m to the snow line, harbor one of the fastest evolving biomes worldwide since their appearance in the northern Andes 3–5 million years (Ma) ago. Hypericum (St. John's wort), with over 65% of its Neotropical species, has a center of diversity in these high Mountain ecosystems. Using nuclear rDNA internal transcribed spacer (ITS) sequences of a broad sample of New World Hypericum species we investigate phylogenetic patterns, estimate divergence times, and provide the first insights into diversification rates within the genus in the Neotropics. Two lineages appear to have independently dispersed into South America around 3.5 Ma ago, one of which has radiated in the páramos (Brathys). We find strong support for the polyphyly of section Trigynobrathys, several species of which group within Brathys, while others are found in temperate lowland South America (Trigynobrathys s.str.). All páramo species of Hypericum group in one clade. Within these páramo Hypericum species enormous phenotypic evolution has taken place (life forms from arborescent to prostrate shrubs) evidently in a short time frame. We hypothesize multiple mechanisms to be responsible for the low differentiation in the ITS region contrary to the high morphological diversity found in Hypericum in the páramos. Amongst these may be ongoing hybridization and incomplete lineage sorting, as well as the putative adaptive radiation, which can explain the contrast between phenotypic diversity and the close phylogenetic relationships.
Left ventricular mechanical dispersion by tissue Doppler imaging: a novel approach for identifying high-risk individuals with long QT syndrome

Aims The aim of this study was to investigate whether prolonged and dispersed myocardial contraction duration assessed by tissue Doppler imaging (TDI) may serve as risk markers for cardiac events (documented arrhythmia, syncope, and cardiac arrest) in patients with long QT syndrome (LQTS). Methods and results Seventy-three patients with genetically confirmed LQTS (nine double- and 33 single-mutation carriers with previous cardiac events and 31 single-mutation carriers without events) were studied. Myocardial contraction duration was prolonged in each group of LQTS patients compared with 20 healthy controls (P < 0.001). Contraction duration was longer in single-mutation carriers with previous cardiac events compared with those without (0.46 ± 0.06 vs. 0.40 ± 0.06 s, P = 0.001). Prolonged contraction duration could better identify cardiac events compared with corrected QT (QTc) interval in single-mutation carriers [area under curve by receiver-operating characteristic analysis 0.77 [95% confidence interval (95% CI) 0.65–0.89] vs. 0.66 (95% CI 0.52–0.79)]. Dispersion of contraction was more pronounced in single-mutation carriers with cardiac events compared with those without (0.048 ± 0.018 vs. 0.031 ± 0.019 s, P = 0.001). Conclusion Dispersion of myocardial contraction assessed by TDI was increased in LQTS patients. Prolonged contraction duration was superior to QTc for risk assessment. These new methods can easily be implemented in clinical routine and may improve clinical management of LQTS patients.
Generational Changes in Materialism and Work Centrality, 1976-2007

We examined whether culture-level indices of threat, instability, and materialistic modeling were linked to the materialistic values of American 12th graders between 1976 and 2007 (N = 355,296). Youth materialism (such as the importance of money and of owning expensive material items) increased over the generations, peaking in the late 1980s to early 1990s with Generation X and then staying at historically high levels for Millennials (GenMe). Societal instability and disconnection (e.g., unemployment, divorce) and social modeling (e.g., advertising spending) had both contemporaneous and lagged associations with higher levels of materialism, with advertising most influential during adolescence and instability during childhood. Societal-level living standards during childhood predicted materialism 10 years later. When materialistic values increased, work centrality steadily declined, suggesting a growing discrepancy between the desire for material rewards and the willingness to do the work usually required to earn them.
What Do N Photographs Tell Us about 3D Shape

In this paper we consider the problem of computing the 3D shape of an unknown, arbitrarily-shaped scene from multiple color photographs taken at known but arbitrarily-distributed viewpoints. By studying the equivalence class of all 3D shapes that reproduce the input photographs, we prove the existence of a special member of this class, the maximal photo-consistent shape, that (1) can be computed from an arbitrary volume that contains the scene, and (2) subsumes all other members of this class. We then give a provably-correct algorithm for computing this shape and present experimental results from applying it to the reconstruction of a real 3D scene from several photographs. The approach is specifically designed to (1) build 3D shapes that allow faithful reproduction of all input photographs, (2) resolve the complex interactions between occlusion, parallax, shading, and their effects on arbitrary collections of photographs of a scene, and (3) follow a "least commitment" approach to 3D shape recovery.
From Genus to Phylum: Large-Subunit and Internal Transcribed Spacer rRNA Operon Regions Show Similar Classification Accuracies Influenced by Database Composition

ABSTRACT We compared the classification accuracy of two sections of the fungal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region, individually and combined, and the 5′ section (about 600 bp) of the large-subunit rRNA (LSU), using a naive Bayesian classifier and BLASTN. A hand-curated ITS-LSU training set of 1,091 sequences and a larger training set of 8,967 ITS region sequences were used. Of the factors evaluated, database composition and quality had the largest effect on classification accuracy, followed by fragment size and use of a bootstrap cutoff to improve classification confidence. The naive Bayesian classifier and BLASTN gave similar results at higher taxonomic levels, but the classifier was faster and more accurate at the genus level when a bootstrap cutoff was used. All of the ITS and LSU sections performed well (>97.7% accuracy) at higher taxonomic ranks from kingdom to family, and differences between them were small at the genus level (within 0.66 to 1.23%). When full-length sequence sections were used, the LSU outperformed the ITS1 and ITS2 fragments at the genus level, but the ITS1 and ITS2 showed higher accuracy when smaller fragment sizes of the same length and a 50% bootstrap cutoff were used. In a comparison using the larger ITS training set, ITS1 and ITS2 had very similar accuracy classification for fragments between 100 and 200 bp. Collectively, the results show that any of the ITS or LSU sections we tested provided comparable classification accuracy to the genus level and underscore the need for larger and more diverse classification training sets.
Modification, processing, and subcellular localization in Escherichia coli of the pCloDF13-encoded bacteriocin release protein fused to the mature portion of beta-lactamase

A fusion between the pCloDF13-derived bacteriocin release protein and beta-lactamase was constructed to investigate the subcellular localization and posttranslational modification of the bacteriocin release protein in Escherichia coli. The signal sequence and 25 of the 28 amino acid residues of the mature bacteriocin release protein were fused to the mature portion of beta-lactamase. The hybrid protein (Mr, 31,588) was expressed in minicells and whole cells and possessed full beta-lactamase activity. Immunoblotting of subcellular fractions revealed that the hybrid protein is present in both the cytoplasmic and outer membranes of E. coli. Radioactive labeling experiments in the presence or absence of globomycin showed that the hybrid protein is modified with a diglyceride and fatty acids and is processed by signal peptidase II, as is the murein lipoprotein. The results indicated that the pCloDF13-encoded bacteriocin release protein is a lipoprotein which is associated with both membranes of E. coli cells.
Ethnic Variation in Interleukin-6 –174 (G/C) Polymorphism in the Malaysian Population

ABSTRACT Interleukin-6 (IL-6) is one of the cytokines that has been well studied and implicated in many diseases including cancers. The frequency of the IL-6 -174 (G/C) polymorphism had been proven to differ in various populations. Malaysia is a country with three major ethnic populations, Malays, Chinese and Indians. In this study, we proposed to determine the G or C allele frequency of the IL-6 -174 polymorphism in these three populations. A total of 348 blood samples were available for analysis. The median age for the subjects was 31 years. There were a total of 245 males and 103 females. A total of 86 Malays (25.0%), 122 Chinese (33.0%) and 140 Indians (40.0%) were genotyped. The result showed a significant difference in the G or C allele frequency of the -174 polymorphism. The total frequencies for the G and C alleles were 91.0 and 9.0%, respectively. In the Malays, the allele frequency of the C allele was 4.0% compared with 19.0% in the Indians. The C allele was not detected in the Chinese population. This finding is the first reported on the Malaysian population and may be important in determining risk of diseases associated with the IL-6 polymorphism in these three populations
Edinburgh Research Explorer Stability of equidimensional pseudo-single-domain magnetite over billion-year timescales

Interpretations of paleomagnetic observations assume that natu-rally occurring magnetic particles can retain their primary magnetic recording over billions of years. The ability to retain a magnetic recording is inferred from laboratory measurements, where heating causes demagnetization on the order of seconds. The theoretical ba-sis for this inference comes from previous models that assume only the existence of small, uniformly magnetized particles, whereas the carriers of paleomagnetic signals in rocks are usually larger, non-uniformly magnetized particles, for which there is no empirically complete, thermally-activated model. This study has developed a thermally-activated numerical micromagnetic model that can quanti-tatively determine the energy barriers between stable states in non-uniform magnetic particles on geological time scales. We examine in detail the thermal stability characteristics of equidimensional cuboctahedral magnetite and ﬁnd that contrary to previously published theories, such non-uniformly magnetized particles provide greater magnetic stability than their uniformly magnetized counterparts. Hence, non-uniformly magnetized grains, which are commonly the main remanence carrier in meteorites and rocks, can record and retain high-ﬁdelity magnetic recordings over billions of years.
Approximate Personalized PageRank on Dynamic Graphs

We propose and analyze two algorithms for maintaining approximate Personalized PageRank (PPR) vectors on a dynamic graph, where edges are added or deleted. Our algorithms are natural dynamic versions of two known local variations of power iteration. One, Forward Push, propagates probability mass forwards along edges from a source node, while the other, Reverse Push, propagates local changes backwards along edges from a target. In both variations, we maintain an invariant between two vectors, and when an edge is updated, our algorithm first modifies the vectors to restore the invariant, then performs any needed local push operations to restore accuracy. For Reverse Push, we prove that for an arbitrary directed graph in a random edge model, or for an arbitrary undirected graph, given a uniformly random target node t, the cost to maintain a PPR vector to t of additive error ε as k edges are updated is O(k + d/ε, where d is the average degree of the graph. This is O(1) work per update, plus the cost of computing a reverse vector once on a static graph. For Forward Push, we show that on an arbitrary undirected graph, given a uniformly random start node s, the cost to maintain a PPR vector from s of degree-normalized error ε as k edges are updated is O(k + 1/ε, which is again O(1) per update plus the cost of computing a PPR vector once on a static graph.
Subband Adaptive Array for DS-CDMA Mobile Radio

We propose a novel scheme of subband adaptive array (SBAA) for direct-sequence code division multiple access (DS-CDMA). The scheme exploits the spreading code and pilot signal as the reference signal to estimate the propagation channel. Moreover, instead of combining the array outputs at each output tap using a synthesis filter and then despreading them, we despread directly the array outputs at each output tap by the desired user's code to save the synthesis filter. Although its configuration is far different from that of 2D RAKEs, the proposed scheme exhibits relatively equivalent performance of 2D RAKEs while having less computation load due to utilising adaptive signal processing in subbands. Simulation programs are carried out to explore the performance of the scheme and compare its performance with that of the standard 2D RAKE.
Data-Free Knowledge Distillation for Deep Neural Networks

Recent advances in model compression have provided procedures for compressing large neural networks to a fraction of their original size while retaining most if not all of their accuracy. However, all of these approaches rely on access to the original training set, which might not always be possible if the network to be compressed was trained on a very large dataset, or on a dataset whose release poses privacy or safety concerns as may be the case for biometrics tasks. We present a method for data-free knowledge distillation, which is able to compress deep neural networks trained on large-scale datasets to a fraction of their size leveraging only some extra metadata to be provided with a pretrained model release. We also explore different kinds of metadata that can be used with our method, and discuss tradeoffs involved in using each of them.
Breaking continuous flash suppression: competing for consciousness on the pre-semantic battlefield

Traditionally, interocular suppression is believed to disrupt high-level (i.e., semantic or conceptual) processing of the suppressed visual input. The development of a new experimental paradigm, breaking continuous flash suppression (b-CFS), has caused a resurgence of studies demonstrating high-level processing of visual information in the absence of visual awareness. In this method the time it takes for interocularly suppressed stimuli to breach the threshold of visibility, is regarded as a measure of access to awareness. The aim of the current review is twofold. First, we provide an overview of the literature using this b-CFS method, while making a distinction between two types of studies: those in which suppression durations are compared between different stimulus classes (such as upright faces versus inverted faces), and those in which suppression durations are compared for stimuli that either match or mismatch concurrently available information (such as a colored target that either matches or mismatches a color retained in working memory). Second, we aim at dissociating high-level processing from low-level (i.e., crude visual) processing of the suppressed stimuli. For this purpose, we include a thorough review of the control conditions that are used in these experiments. Additionally, we provide recommendations for proper control conditions that we deem crucial for disentangling high-level from low-level effects. Based on this review, we argue that crude visual processing suffices for explaining differences in breakthrough times reported using b-CFS. As such, we conclude that there is as yet no reason to assume that interocularly suppressed stimuli receive full semantic analysis.
Preconception and Contraceptive Care for Women Living with HIV

Women living with HIV have fertility desires and intentions that are similar to those of uninfected women, and with advances in treatment most women can realistically plan to have and raise children to adulthood. Although HIV may have adverse effects on fertility, recent studies suggest that antiretroviral therapy may increase or restore fertility. Data indicate the increasing numbers of women living with HIV who are becoming pregnant, and that many pregnancies are unintended and contraception is underutilized, reflecting an unmet need for preconception care (PCC). In addition to the PCC appropriate for all women of reproductive age, women living with HIV require comprehensive, specialized care that addresses their unique needs. The goals of PCC for women living with HIV are to prevent unintended pregnancy, optimize maternal health prior to pregnancy, improve maternal and fetal outcomes in pregnancy, prevent perinatal HIV transmission, and prevent HIV transmission to an HIV-uninfected sexual partner when trying to conceive. This paper discusses the rationale for preconception counseling and care in the setting of HIV and reviews current literature relevant to the content and considerations in providing PCC for women living with HIV, with a primary focus on well-resourced settings.