Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Stress Reduction in Postcardiac Surgery Family Members: Implementation of a Postcardiac Surgery Tool Kit

The intensive care unit (ICU) can be a place of stress, anxiety, and emotional instability for both patients and families. Medical and nursing care during this acute time is patient focused, and family members are often left in the dark. Unintentional exclusion from information results in high levels of stress, anxiety, and uncertainty for families. Due to the acuity of illness, family members of cardiac surgery patients experience the highest levels of stress. Spouses may experience intense psychosomatic symptoms such as depression, anxiety, and fear for several months after the surgery. The purpose of this study was aimed at decreasing those feelings of anxiety in family members with postcardiac surgery through the use of a cardiac surgery tool kit. The study was a quality improvement project utilizing a convenience sample of 83 participants 18 years and older. Participants were asked to use the State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) Form Y-1 (state anxiety) to rate their anxiety level preintervention and then again postintervention. Data were collected over a 6-month period. Descriptive data including age, education level, ethnicity, relationship, experience in the ICU, and active diagnoses of mental disorders did not affect the changes in the pre- and posttest data. A paired t test was conducted on the sample to assess changes in state anxiety, using the STAI Form Y-1. The results were statistically significant (t = 11.97, df = 81, P < .001). Respondents' scores decreased significantly from pre intervention (mean = 53.01, standard deviation = 12.19) to postintervention (mean = 37.38, standard deviation = 10.94). The data suggest that the use of a postcardiac surgery tool kit is a low-risk measure that can decrease the anxiety in family members of postcardiac surgery patients.
Exogenous thyroxine improves glucose intolerance in insulin-resistant rats.

Both hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism are associated with glucose intolerance, calling into question the contribution of thyroid hormones (TH) on glucose regulation. TH analogues and derivatives may be effective treatment options for glucose intolerance and insulin resistance (IR), but their potential glucoregulatory effects during conditions of impaired metabolism are not well described. To assess the effects of thyroxine (T4) on glucose intolerance in a model of insulin resistance, an oral glucose tolerance test (oGTT) was performed on three groups of rats (n = 8): (1) lean, Long Evans Tokushima Otsuka (LETO), (2) obese, Otsuka Long Evans Tokushima Fatty (OLETF) and (3) OLETF + T4 (8.0 µg/100 g BM/day × 5 weeks). T4 attenuated glucose intolerance by 15% and decreased IR index (IRI) by 34% in T4-treated OLETF compared to untreated OLETF despite a 31% decrease in muscle Glut4 mRNA expression. T4 increased the mRNA expressions of muscle monocarboxylate transporter 10 (Mct10), deiodinase type 2 (Di2), sirtuin 1 (Sirt1) and uncoupling protein 2 (Ucp2) by 1.8-, 2.2-, 2.7- and 1.4-fold, respectively, compared to OLETF. Activation of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) and insulin receptor were not significantly altered suggesting that the improvements in glucose intolerance and IR were independent of enhanced insulin-mediated signaling. The results suggest that T4 treatment increased the influx of T4 in skeletal muscle and, with an increase of DI2, increased the availability of the biologically active T3 to upregulate key factors such SIRT1 and UCP2 involved in cellular metabolism and glucose homeostasis.
Effectiveness of 3 doses of Intermittent Preventive Therapy with Sulphadoxine-Pyrimethamine in Pregnancy

Background: In 2014, Nigeria scaled up to at least 3 doses of intermittent preventive therapy in pregnancy with Sulphadoxine-Pyrimethamine (ITPp-SP). While the fact of existing evidence as to the superiority of SP3 over SP2 was shown by WHO back in 2012, the Nigerian Government domesticated it in her Federal Ministry of Health guideline for the prevention of Malaria in pregnancy of 2014. Studies leading to the pronouncement were mainly in East African Countries where the density / pattern of infection as well as the species of the plasmodium tend to vary with what is occasionally obtainable in West African sub-region including, Nigeria. There was an apparent need for the measurement of the effectiveness in hyper / holo-endemic country like Nigeria. Aim: To determine the efficacy and safety of 3-doses compared with 2-doses of intermittent preventive therapy in pregnancy with sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP) for the prevention of placental malaria and associated low birth weight. Subjects and Methods: Nine hundred and twenty (920) pregnant women were randomised to receive either 2 doses (SP2) or 3 doses (SP3) of sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine between December 2013 and August, 2014. Pre-delivery blood samples were collected for maternal haemoglobin as well as placenta blood samples for placenta parasitaemia. The Neonates were weighed and followed-up. Prevalence of placental parasitaemia, low birth weight (LBW), preterm birth and anaemia were analysed using intention-to-treat (ITT) and per-protocol (PP) analysis. Results: Data from 910 women were analysed (458 in the SP2 and 452 in the SP3 group). Overall, the incidence of placenta parasitaemia, low birth weight and pre-delivery anaemia in pregnancy were significantly lower among the SP3 group compared with those that had two doses (Sp2), p < 0.001for all factors. There was no neonatal jaundice in either group. Conclusion: Addition of a third dose of SP to the current popular two doses of IPT-SP demonstrated a better outcome in the reduction of placenta parasitaemia, LBW and, anaemia in pregnancy among many more advantages. It would be worthwhile to domesticate the at least, 3 dose of IPTp-SP to all pregnant women in our current practice.
Failure of Working Memory Training to Enhance Cognition or Intelligence

Fluid intelligence is important for successful functioning in the modern world, but much evidence suggests that fluid intelligence is largely immutable after childhood. Recently, however, researchers have reported gains in fluid intelligence after multiple sessions of adaptive working memory training in adults. The current study attempted to replicate and expand those results by administering a broad assessment of cognitive abilities and personality traits to young adults who underwent 20 sessions of an adaptive dual n-back working memory training program and comparing their post-training performance on those tests to a matched set of young adults who underwent 20 sessions of an adaptive attentional tracking program. Pre- and post-training measurements of fluid intelligence, standardized intelligence tests, speed of processing, reading skills, and other tests of working memory were assessed. Both training groups exhibited substantial and specific improvements on the trained tasks that persisted for at least 6 months post-training, but no transfer of improvement was observed to any of the non-trained measurements when compared to a third untrained group serving as a passive control. These findings fail to support the idea that adaptive working memory training in healthy young adults enhances working memory capacity in non-trained tasks, fluid intelligence, or other measures of cognitive abilities.
The usfulness of the SLUMS test for diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment and dementia.

OBJECTIVES To compare Polish version of the The Saint Louis University Mental Status Examination test (SLUMS) to generally used psychometric screening tools for detecting mild cognitive impairment and dementia. METHODS The total number of 58 nursing home residents were divided into 3 groups: 1) people showing no symptoms of dementia, 2) people with mild cognitive impairment and 3) people with suspected dementia. The Saint Louis University Mental Status Examination (SLUMS), Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE), Short Test of Mental State (STMS) and Test Your Memory (TYM) were administered for comparison. RESULTS Mean age was 81.7 ± 8.62. Regarding the education, 37.9% of the sample was educated at the primary school level, 31% completed high school and 22.4 % had higher education. The SLUMS internal consistency was 0.7031. The mean of total SLUMS score was 23.3 in no demented residents, 19.3 among those identified as having cognitive impairments and 13.1 residents with suspected dementia. The statistical analysis illustrated that SLUMS differentiate the dementia residents from those considered as having cognitive impairment (p = 0.01), as well as from non demented participants (p = 0.0001). Moreover, it seems to be useful for detecting mild cognitive impairment in non demented participants (p=0.017), while MMSE does not offer such a possibility (p = 0.51). CONCLUSIONS The SLUMS is not just another screening tool that can complement the range of existing cognitive tests in Polish clinical practice, but according to statistical analysis it demonstrates superior capabilities in the screening diagnosis compared to the most famous scale used in Poland - MMSE.
Present status and future perspective of peptide‐based vaccine therapy for urological cancer

Use of peptide‐based vaccines as therapeutics aims to elicit immune responses through antigenic epitopes derived from tumor antigens. Peptide‐based vaccines are easily synthesized and lack significant side‐effects when given in vivo. Peptide‐based vaccine therapy against several cancers including urological cancers has made progress for several decades, but there is no worldwide approved peptide vaccine. Peptide vaccines were also shown to induce a high frequency of immune response in patients accompanied by clinical efficacy. These data are discussed in light of the recent progression of immunotherapy caused by the addition of immune checkpoint inhibitors thus providing a general picture of the potential therapeutic efficacy of peptide‐based vaccines and their combination with other biological agents. In this review, we discuss the mechanism of the antitumor effect of peptide‐based vaccine therapy, development of our peptide vaccine, recent clinical trials using peptide vaccines for urological cancers, and perspectives of peptide‐based vaccine therapy.
Effects of egg weight, glucose administration at hatch, and delayed access to feed and water on the poult at 2 weeks of age.

Eggs from a 42-wk-old small-type turkey breeder flock were weighed and divided into heavy, medium, and light categories relative to the population average. Poults from each category were sexed, then given . 5 mL of 50% glucose in saline by either crop intubation (CI) or subcutaneous injection at the neck (SC). Controls did not receive glucose. One-half of the birds from each treatment were immediately given access to feed and water in pens of brooder batteries; the remainder were held 3 days in transportation boxes before placement in other pens of the same batteries. Poult weight at hatching and 3 days later paralleled egg weight. Improvement in 3 day BW occurred after glucose administration and was greater by SC than CI, but these advantages were only apparent when feed and water had been accessible during the interim. Egg weight effects on BW and gain persisted to 2 wk of age, as did the depression from delayed nutrient access; however, the advantage from glucose with poults having early access to nutrition disappeared. Alterations in the proximate compositions of livers and carcasses among treatments were small. Total mortality increased with egg weight when poults received feed and water early after hatching, while the converse occurred when delayed. Deaths were not altered by either glucose or fasting (P greater than .05).
High-frequency resistance training is not more effective than low-frequency resistance training in increasing muscle mass and strength in well-trained men.

We studied the effects of two different weekly frequency resistance training (RT) protocols over eight weeks on muscle strength and muscle hypertrophy in well-trained men. Twenty-three subjects (age: 26.2±4.2 years; RT experience: 6.9±3.1 years) were randomly allocated into the two groups: low frequency (LFRT, n = 12) or high frequency (HFRT, n = 11). The LFRT performed a split-body routine, training each specific muscle group once a week. The HFRT performed a total-body routine, training all muscle groups every session. Both groups performed the same number of sets (10-15 sets) and exercises (1-2 exercise) per week, 8-12 repetitions maximum (70-80% of 1RM), five times per week. Muscle strength (bench press and squat 1RM) and lean tissue mass (dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry) were assessed prior to and at the end of the study. Results showed that both groups improved (p<0.001) muscle strength [LFRT and HFRT: bench press = 5.6 kg (95% Confidence Interval (CI): 1.9 - 9.4) and 9.7 kg (95%CI: 4.6 - 14.9) and squat = 8.0 kg (95%CI: 2.7 - 13.2) and 12.0 kg (95%CI: 5.1 - 18.1), respectively] and lean tissue mass (p = 0.007) [LFRT and HFRT: total body lean mass = 0.5 kg (95%CI: 0.0 - 1.1) and 0.8 kg (95%CI: 0.0 - 1.6), respectively] with no difference between groups (bench press, p = 0.168; squat, p = 0.312 and total body lean mass, p = 0.619). Thus, HFRT and LFRT are similar overload strategies for promoting muscular adaptation in well-trained subjects when the sets and intensity are equated per week.
Prospective study of intake of fruits, vegetables, vitamins, and carotenoids and risk of age-related maculopathy.

OBJECTIVE To examine the intake of antioxidant vitamins and carotenoids as well as fruits and vegetables in relation to the development of age-related maculopathy (ARM). METHODS We conducted a prospective follow-up study of women in the Nurses' Health Study and men in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. We followed 77 562 women and 40 866 men who were at least 50 years of age and had no diagnosis of ARM or cancer at baseline for up to 18 years for women and up to 12 years for men. Fruit and vegetable intakes were assessed with a validated semiquantitative food-frequency questionnaire up to 5 times for women and up to 3 times for men during follow-up. RESULTS A total of 464 (329 women and 135 men) incident cases of early ARM and 316 (217 women and 99men) cases of neovascular ARM, all with visual loss of 20/30 or worse due primarily to ARM, were diagnosed during follow-up. Fruit intake was inversely associated with the risk of neovascular ARM. Participants who consumed 3 or more servings per day of fruits had a pooled multivariate relative risk of 0.64 (95% confidence interval, 0.44-0.93; P value for trend =.004) compared with those who consumed less than 1.5 servings per day. The results were similar in women and men. However, intakes of vegetables, antioxidant vitamins, or carotenoids were not strongly related to either early or neovascular ARM. CONCLUSION These data suggest a protective role for fruit intake on the risk of neovascular ARM.
Psychophysiological Measurement of Backward Response Activation in the Prioritized Processing Paradigm

Response-selection bottleneck (RSB) models provide an important account of dual-task interference. These models are thought to have difficulty, however, explaining the commonly observed backward compatibility effect (BCE), which is the finding that the speed of first-task responses depends on their compatibility with later second-task responses. One explanation of this phenomenon is based on a distinction between an early response activation stage and a subsequent response selection stage (e.g., Hommel, 1998). The former stage is thought to be influenced by both tasks and to be responsible for BCEs, whereas the latter stage implements the RSB suggested to explain many aspects of dual-task interference. The present experiments measured lateralized readiness potentials (LRPs) to test predictions of this early response activation account. The results are generally consistent with a distinction between response selection and response activation, but they suggest that BCEs arise because second-task stimuli influence first-task response selection rather than because these stimuli activate the second-task responses with which they are associated. Thus, the results support an account of BCEs that is even more consistent with RSB models than previous accounts.
This Paper Is Included in the Proceedings of the 12th Usenix Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (osdi '16). Gemini: a Computation-centric Distributed Graph Processing System Gemini: a Computation-centric Distributed Graph Processing System

Traditionally distributed graph processing systems have largely focused on scalability through the optimizations of inter-node communication and load balance. However , they often deliver unsatisfactory overall processing efficiency compared with shared-memory graph computing frameworks. We analyze the behavior of several graph-parallel systems and find that the added overhead for achieving scalability becomes a major limiting factor for efficiency, especially with modern multi-core processors and high-speed interconnection networks. Based on our observations, we present Gemini, a distributed graph processing system that applies multiple optimizations targeting computation performance to build scalability on top of efficiency. Gemini adopts (1) a sparse-dense signal-slot abstraction to extend the hybrid push-pull computation model from shared-memory to distributed scenarios, (2) a chunk-based partitioning scheme enabling low-overhead scaling out designs and locality-preserving vertex accesses, (3) a dual representation scheme to compress accesses to vertex indices, (4) NUMA-aware sub-partitioning for efficient intra-node memory accesses, plus (5) locality-aware chunking and fine-grained work-stealing for improving both inter-node and intra-node load balance, respectively. Our evaluation on an 8-node high-performance cluster (using five widely used graph applications and five real-world graphs) shows that Gemini significantly outperforms all well-known existing distributed graph processing systems , delivering up to 39.8× (from 8.91×) improvement over the fastest among them.
Comparative yolk cholesterol content in four Spanish breeds of hens, an F2 cross, and a White Leghorn population.

Yolk cholesterol content (milligrams per gram of yolk and milligrams per egg) was studied in eggs of four Spanish breeds of hens (Castellana, Buff Prat, Vasca, and Villafranquina), an F2 from a cross between Castellana and Buff Prat (C x BP-F2), and a White Leghorn population. Birds were tested at 30 wk of age. There were differences among breeds (P < .001), cholesterol concentration being significantly lower in the C x BP-F2 (13.14 +/- .26 mg/g yolk) than in the other breeds. Villafranquina and Buff Prat showed significantly lower cholesterol (14.54 +/- .26 and 14.56 +/- .26 mg/g yolk, respectively) than the White Leghorn (16.30 +/- .26 mg/g yolk). Eggs from the Vasca breed contained significantly more cholesterol (19.09 +/- .26 mg/g yolk) than did eggs laid by the other breeds, whereas no differences were found between Leghorn and Castellana. A negative heterosis percentage of -13% was found in the C x BP-F2 when compared with the parental breed means. The reduction in cholesterol concentration per egg observed in the C x BP-F2 (220.49 mg per egg) was not related to breed differences in egg weight or to the proportion of yolk per egg. Eggs from the Vasca breed, with the lightest yolk and smallest yolk: albumen ratio (P < .05), contained the highest amount of cholesterol (304.29 mg per egg). Eggs from the White Leghorn containing the second highest amount of cholesterol (275.63 mg per egg). Thus, the variation in cholesterol content per egg was not attributable to differences in the proportion of yolk.
Representations and Similarities of Images for Visual Classification

With the rapid development of digital cameras and camera phones, the world is currently experiencing a digital imaging revolution. There has been a great interest in the last decade in automatic image annotation, i.e. assigning to an image one or multiple labels based on its semantic content. In the field of image annotation, representations based on the bag-of-patches (BOP) - which describe an image as an unordered set of low-level local feature vectors - combined with kernel-based learning have become the state-of-the-art. The focus of this thesis has been on the definition of probabilistic representations of images based on the BOP assumption and the computation of similarities between such representations with application to kernel learning of image classifiers. First, we propose a novel GMM-based representation of images which is based on the maximum a posteriori (MAP) adaptation of a "universal" GMM. Then, we propose to approximate an image, modeled as a GMM, as a convex combination of /K /reference image GMMs (later referred to as MOM for mixture of mixtures) and to characterize this image as a /K/-dimensional vector of mixture weights. We also propose an alternative measure of contextual similarity between distributions: the similarity between two distributions /p /and /q /is measured in the context of a third distribution /u/. Finally we experiment with three approaches to BOV embedding: 1) kernel PCA (kPCA), 2) a modified kPCA we propose for additive kernels and 3) random projections for shift-invariant kernels. An important conclusion is that simply square-rooting BOV vectors - which corresponds to an exact mapping for the Bhattacharyya kernel -already leads to large improvements, often quite close to the best results obtained with additive kernels.
Distributed exponential finite-time coordination of multi-agent systems: containment control and consensus

In this paper, exponential finite-time coordination problems of multi-agent systems are investigated, including containment control and consensus. The theoretical basis is that a class of nonlinear systems has favourable finite-time convergence characteristic. For the objective of containment control, the proposed protocol ensures that the boundary agents in the same strong component exponentially reach a consensus and the internal agents exponentially converge to the convex hull spanned by the boundary agents in a finite time. For the objective of consensus, a pinning control strategy is designed for a fraction of agents such that all the agents exponentially reach a consensus with the leader in a finite time. The distinguished features of this paper lie in the following two points: (1) a smaller settling time of the Lyapunov function is obtained, which manifests in a faster convergence rate than the traditional one and (2) the weakly connected topology considered in this paper is more general than the ones (a spanning tree, a spanning forest, and so on) in other coordination problems. All the results are illustrated by some simulations.
Bacteria-Derived Carbon Dots Inhibit Biofilm Formation of Escherichia coli without Affecting Cell Growth

Biofilms are deleterious in many biomedical and industrial applications and prevention of their formation has been a pressing challenge. Here, carbon dots, CDs-LP that were easily synthesized from the biomass of Lactobacillus plantarum by one-step hydrothermal carbonization, were demonstrated to prevent biofilm formation of E. coli. CDs-LP did not thwart the growth of E. coli, indicating the anti-biofilm effect was not due to the bactericidal effect. Moreover, CDs-LP did not affect the growth of the animal cell AT II, showing low cytotoxicity, good safety and excellent biocompatibility. Therefore, CDs-LP could overcome the cytotoxicity issue found in many current antibiofilm agents. CDs-LP represent a new type of anti-biofilm materials, opening up a novel avenue to the development of biofilm treatment.