Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Real-time measurement of particulate matter deposition in the lung

Abstract Air pollution and cigarette smoke are recognized health risks. A method was developed for the measurement of the deposition fraction (DF) of polydisperse particulate matter (PM) in human airways. Ten normal volunteers [three females, age range 18–67 years, mean age (SD) 43.9 (14)] made single breath exhalations after inhalation to total lung capacity. The exhaled breath was diverted to a multichannel laser diffraction chamber where the particulate profiler measured 0.3–1.0-µm particles. DF was inversely related to expiration flow-rate, 0.69 (0.02) at 4 l min−1 and 0.5 (0.01) at 13 l min−1, respectively (p<0.05), and was influenced by the inhalation flow-rate [0.70 (0.02) at 3 l min−1 and 0.59 (0.02) at 13 l min−1, respectively (p<0.05)], while no differences were found between nasal and oral inhalation (0.68 (0.05) versus 0.67 (0.06), p>0.05). Higher breath holding times were associated with elevated DF [0.74 (0.02) at 20 s, and 0.62 (0.05) without breath holding (p<0.01)]. When the expiratory flow was controlled and the breath hold time standardized, DF was reproducible (CV = 4.85%). PM can be measured in the exhaled breath and its DF can be quantified using a portable device. These methods may be useful in studies investigating the health effects of air pollution and tobacco smoke.
Atheists: A psychological profile.

Those who have shaped the modern human sciences have been preoccupied with explaining the phenomena of religion and religiosity. Accounting for the absence of religious faith has never been of much concern to them. The reasons for the neglect of atheism as a phenomenon in need of explanation are twofold. First, religion, and religiosity, seem to be adhered to by the majority of humans, and thus explaining their existence and survival is called for. Second, explaining religious beliefs is urgently called for if those doing it do not share those beliefs. And this indeed has been the case. Most of the great names in the history of modern human sciences have been atheists or agnostics, and we can recall Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Emile Durkheim, Bronislaw Malinowski, and Max Weber. They looked at religion from the outside, and explaining why they did not believe in any of it was unnecessary. ATHEISTS AS DEVIANTS Most theories of religion assume that it stems from universal aspects of the human condition or the human mind. Classical explanations used the notions of such universal and automatic psychological processes as projection, animism, or anthropomorphism. In some more recent theoretical formulations (Boyer 2001; Atran 2002) the framework is cognitive-evolutionary and assumes that the brain is a machine operating according to rules developed through evolution. The question is that of the seeming plausibility of religious ideas for most humans. Religion uses the basic and ordinary cognitive processes that are the evolutionary endowments of every human. The belief in supernatural agents is a by-product of naturally selected cognitive mechanisms.
Short Hypoxia Does not Affect Plasma Leptin in Healthy Men under Euglycemic Clamp Conditions

Leptin is involved in the endocrine control of energy expenditure and body weight regulation. Previous studies emphasize a relationship between hypoxic states and leptin concentrations. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of acute hypoxia on leptin concentrations in healthy subjects. We examined 14 healthy men. Hypoxic conditions were induced by decreasing oxygen saturation to 75% for 30 minutes. Plasma leptin concentrations were determined at baseline, after 3 hours of euglycemic clamping, during hypoxia, and repeatedly the following 2.5 hours thereafter. Our results show an increase of plasma leptin concentrations in the course of 6 hours of hyperinsulinemic-euglycemic clamping which may reflect diurnal rhythmicity. Notwithstanding, there was no difference between levels of leptin in the hypoxic and the normoxic condition (P = .2). Since we did not find any significant changes in leptin responses upon hypoxia, plasma leptin levels do not seem to be affected by short hypoxic episodes of moderate degree.
Efficient Benchmarking of Algorithm Configuration Procedures via Model-Based Surrogates

The optimization of algorithm (hyper-)parameters is crucial for achieving peak performance across a wide range of domains, ranging from deep neural networks to solvers for hard combinatorial problems. The resulting algorithm configuration (AC) problem has attracted much attention from the machine learning community. However, the proper evaluation of new AC procedures is hindered by two key hurdles. First, AC benchmarks are hard to set up. Second and even more significantly, they are computationally expensive: a single run of an AC procedure involves many costly runs of the target algorithm whose performance is to be optimized in a given AC benchmark scenario. One common workaround is to optimize cheap-to-evaluate artificial benchmark functions (e.g., Branin) instead of actual algorithms; however, these have different properties than realistic AC problems. Here, we propose an alternative benchmarking approach that is similarly cheap to evaluate but much closer to the original AC problem: replacing expensive benchmarks by surrogate benchmarks constructed from AC benchmarks. These surrogate benchmarks approximate the response surface corresponding to true target algorithm performance using a regression model, and the original and surrogate benchmark share the same (hyper-)parameter space. In our experiments, we construct and evaluate surrogate benchmarks for hyperparameter optimization as well as for AC problems that involve performance optimization of solvers for hard combinatorial problems, drawing training data from the runs of existing AC procedures. We show that our surrogate benchmarks capture overall important characteristics of the AC scenarios, such as high- and low-performing regions, from which they were derived, while being much easier to use and orders of magnitude cheaper to evaluate.
The Safety of Orthokeratology—A Systematic Review

Objectives: The aim of this review is to evaluate the ocular safety of orthokeratology (OrthoK) treatment of myopia correction and retardation. Data Sources: Clinical studies published in English and Chinese were identified from MEDLINE, EMBASE CNKI, CQVIP, and WANFANG DATA (all from 1980 to April 2015). The reference lists of the studies and the Science Citation Index were also searched. Selection Criteria: Relevant clinical studies including case series, case reports, patient/practitioner surveys, retrospective and prospective cohort studies, and clinical trials were all included in the review. The material of OrthoK lenses was limited to gas-permeable lens. Main Results: This review incorporated a total of 170 publications, including 58 English and 112 Chinese literature. The risk of microbial keratitis in overnight OrthoK was similar to that of other overnight modality. The most common complication was corneal staining. Other clinically insignificant side effects included epithelial iron deposit, prominent fribrillary lines, and transient changes of corneal biomechanical properties. There was no long-term effect of OrthoK on corneal endothelium. Conclusions: There is sufficient evidence to suggest that OrthoK is a safe option for myopia correction and retardation. Long-term success of OrthoK treatment requires a combination of proper lens fitting, rigorous compliance to lens care regimen, good adherence to routine follow-ups, and timely treatment of complications.
Islet protection and amelioration of type 2 diabetes mellitus by treatment with quercetin from the flowers of Edgeworthia gardneri

Background and purpose The traditional Chinese medicine – the flower of Edgeworthia gardneri – is reported as an effective therapeutic for type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Nevertheless, most constituents of the flowers of E. gardneri have not yet been studied. This study was conducted to investigate the effect of quercetin extracted from the flowers of E. gardneri on islet protection and amelioration in T2DM and explore its mechanism. Method Quercetin was extracted from the flowers of E. gardneri and verified by high-performance liquid chromatography. Quercetin or crude extract’s effect on insulin secretion was investigated. ERK1/2 and phospho-ERK1/2 were detected by Western blot analysis, and fluo-3 AM was used to detect intracellular Ca2+. The anti-apoptosis effect of quercetin or crude extract on MIN-6 cells was investigated by thiazolyl blue tetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay and flow cytometry analysis. Activation of caspases and expression of Bcl-2 and BAX were tested by Western blot analysis. In addition, the mitochondrial membrane potential was determined by JC-1 probe. Moreover, in vivo activity was also tested in db/db mice. Results A quercetin level of >10 μmol/L could induce insulin secretion. Intracellular Ca2+ and ERK1/2 were involved in the signaling pathway of quercetin-induced insulin secretion. We also observed that quercetin could inhibit palmitic acid-induced cell apoptosis via suppressing the activation of caspase-3, -9, -12; increasing the ratio of Bcl-2/BAX and reversing the impaired mitochondrial membrane potential. Crude extract’s effect on insulin secretion was similar to that of pure extracted quercetin, while it possessed higher anti-apoptosis activity. Additionally, intraperitoneal glucose tolerance, plasma insulin level, hepatic triglyceride, hepatic glycogen and the pathological histology of both pancreatic islet and liver in db/db mice were significantly improved by the administration of the extracted quercetin. Conclusion Our study indicated that quercetin extracted from the flowers of E. gardneri exerted excellent properties in islet protection and amelioration.
The Impact of Pretrial Publicity on “Eye for an Eye” Retributivist Support and Malicious Perceptions of Criminal Offenders

This study explores the associative influence of pretrial publicity on (a) an individual’s perceptions of a criminal offender as malicious and (b) an individual’s judgment of the criminal offender’s punishment for the crime. Expanding on the uses of agenda-setting and framing theories, this research indicates that attention to pretrial news media about a specific criminal is significantly associated with negative judgments of a criminal offender. The criminal offender in the Colorado theater shooting case, James Holmes, was the criminal offender used in this study. Results from a national survey (N = 236) indicated that pretrial publicity significantly influenced participants’ perceptions of James Holmes as malicious and resulted in increased retributivist support (i.e., views of the offender deserving a harsher punishment). Mediation scenarios were also detected, whereas pretrial publicity exposure mediated the relationship between case interest and judgments of James Holmes as malicious and deserving retributivist punishment.
Explicit time integration of transient eddy current problems

For time integration of transient eddy current problems, commonly implicit time integration methods are used, where in every time, step 1 or several nonlinear systems of equations have to be linearized with the Newton‐Raphson method because of ferromagnetic materials involved. In this paper, a generalized Schur complement is applied to the magnetic vector potential formulation, which converts a differential‐algebraic equation system of index 1 into a system of ordinary differential equations with reduced stiffness. For the time integration of this ordinary differential equations system of equations, the explicit Euler method is applied. The Courant‐Friedrich‐Levy stability criterion of explicit time integration methods may result in small time steps. Applying a pseudoinverse of the discrete curl‐curl operator in nonconducting regions of the problem is required in every time step. For the computation of the pseudoinverse, the preconditioned conjugate gradient method is used. The cascaded subspace extrapolation method is presented to produce suitable start vectors for these preconditioned conjugate gradient iterations. The resulting scheme is validated using the nonlinear TEAM 10 benchmark problem.
Brain volume changes in first-episode schizophrenia: a 1-year follow-up study.

BACKGROUND Imaging studies of patients with schizophrenia have demonstrated that brain abnormalities are largely confined to decreases in gray matter volume and enlargement of the lateral and third ventricles. Global gray matter volume has been reported to progressively decrease in childhood-onset and chronic schizophrenia. Global gray matter volumes have not been examined longitudinally in patients with first-episode schizophrenia. One would expect global gray matter to decrease progressively, particularly in first-episode patients, because clinical deterioration is greatest in the early stages of the disease. METHODS Patients with first-episode schizophrenia who had taken antipsychotic medication for 0 to 16 weeks (n = 34) and matched healthy comparison subjects (n = 36) were included in the study. For all subjects, magnetic resonance imaging scans of the whole brain were obtained at inclusion and after 1 year (mean [SD], 12.7 [1.1] months). Outcome was measured 2 years after inclusion. To compare morphological changes over time between patients and healthy comparison subjects, multiple repeated-measures analyses of variance were conducted with intracranial volume as a covariate. Outcome and cumulative antipsychotic medication were related to changes in patients' brain volumes. RESULTS Total brain volume (-1.2%) and gray matter volume of the cerebrum (-2.9%) significantly decreased and lateral ventricle volume significantly increased (7.7%) in patients. The decrease in global gray matter volume significantly correlated with outcome and, independently of that, with higher cumulative dosage of antipsychotic medication. CONCLUSIONS The loss of global gray matter in schizophrenia is progressive, occurs at an early stage of the illness, and is related to the disease process and antipsychotic medication.
Complications of Cushing's disease - prospective evaluation and clinical characteristics. Do they affect the efficacy of surgical treatment?

INTRODUCTION Hypercortisolaemia is the cornerstone of Cushing's disease (CD). It leads to the occurrence of typical somatic symptoms as well as cardiovascular and metabolic complications, which significantly increase morbidity and mortality and decrease quality of life in CD. MATERIAL AND METHODS A prospective study included 36 patients with CD who were assessed in terms of duration of their disease symptoms as well as the incidence of: arterial hypertension, glucose intolerance and diabetes, overweight, obesity and decreased bone mineral density (BMD). The relation was assessed between these particular complications and their impact on the efficacy of surgical treatment for CD. RESULTS The prevalence in the study group of arterial hypertension was 79%, and diabetes was 16.7%, whereas the proportion of pre-diabetic states was 33%. 36.1% of patients fulfilled the criteria of obesity and an additional 44% were overweight. Decreased BMD was reported in 72.2% of patients. There was a confirmed relationship between the duration of CD symptoms and the occurrence of overt diabetes (p 〈 0.01) and any type of glucose homeostasis alterations (p = 0.04). In this studied group with CD, there was also an association demonstrated between the occurrence of arterial hypertension and overweight or obesity (p = 0.03). Simultaneously, there was no relationship between the duration of symptoms or the presence of particular organ complications and the efficacy of surgical treatment for CD. CONCLUSIONS Longer duration of CD is associated with a higher risk of glucose intolerance and/or diabetes. The overweight/obesity presented in the majority of patients increases the risk of secondary hypertension in CD. However, the efficacy of transsphenoidal surgery does not depend directly on either disease duration or type of occurring complications.
Utilisation Of Weed Species As Sources Of Traditional Medicines In Central Kenya

1Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture, Science and Technology, Botany Department, P.O. Box 62000, Nairobi, Kenya, email: vwabuingumi@yahoo.com; 2Harold L. Lyon Arboretum, University of Hawaii, 3860 Manoa Rd., Honolulu, HI 96822, USA, email: bussmann@hawaii.edu; 3University of Nairobi, Botany Department, P.O. Box 30197, Nairobi, Kenya, email: barbarag@elci.org; 4Kenyatta University of Agriculture, Science and Technology, P.O. Box 43844, Nairobi, Kenya, email: lnewton@avu.org *corresponsing author, e-mail gnjerinjoroge@hotmail.com
Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C and HIV-1 Coinfection in Two Informal Urban Settlements in Nairobi, Kenya

Background HIV-1 and Hepatitis B and C viruses coinfection is common in Sub-Saharan Africa due to similar routes of transmission and high levels of poverty. Most studies on HIV-1 and Hepatitis B and C viruses have occurred in hospital settings and blood transfusion units. Data on Hepatitis B and C viruses and HIV-1 coinfection in informal urban settlements in Kenya are scanty, yet they could partly explain the disproportionately high morbidity and mortality associated with HIV-1 infections in these slums. Objectives The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of HIV and Hepatitis B and C dual infection in urban slums in Nairobi. Methods Blood samples were collected from residents of Viwandani and Korogocho between 2006 and 2007. A structured questionnaire was used to obtain socio-demographic data from participants. Samples were screened for Hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg), anti-HCV and anti-HIV-1. Statistical analysis was done using STATA. Results Samples were successfully collected from 418 (32%) men and 890 (68%) females. The HIV-1, HBV and HCV prevalence was 20.4%, 13.3% and 0.76% respectively at the time of the study. Of the 268 (20.4%) HIV-1 positive participants, 56 (4.26%) had HBV while 6 (0.46%) had HCV. Of the 1041 HIV-1 negative participants, 117 (8.9%) had HBV while 4 (0.31%) had HCV. Only two people (0.15%) were co-infected with all the three viruses together. Discussion The odds of getting hepatitis infection were higher in HIV-1 participants (for HBV OR 2.08,p<0.005 and for HCV OR 5.93, p<0.005). HIV prevalence rates were similar in both informal settlements. HIV infection was highest in age group 35-39 years and among the divorced/separated or widowed. Prevalence of all viruses was highest in those who did not have any formal education. Conclusion The HIV prevalence in these informal settlements suggests a higher rate than what is observed nationally. The prevalence rates of HBV are significantly higher in the HIV-1 positive and negative populations. HCV as well as triple HIV-1, HBV and HCV coinfection are uncommon in Korogocho and Viwandani. This clearly indicates the need for HIV-1 control programmes and hepatitis B virus vaccination to be promoted through public awareness as preventive strategy.
The Anisotropy in the Cosmic Microwave Background at Degree Angular Scales

We detect anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) at degree angular scales and confirm a previous detection reported by Wollack et al. (1993). The root-mean-squared amplitude of the fluctuations is 44(sup+13)(sub -7)microK. This may be expressed as the square root of the angular power spectrum in a band of multiples between l(sub eff)=69(sup +29)(sub -22). We find delta T(sub l) = square root of (l(2l+1) expected value of ((absolute value of (a(sup m)(sub L)))(exp 2))/(4xpi))= 42(sup +12)(sub -7). The measured spectral index of the fluctuations is consistent with zero, the value expected for the CMB. The spectral index corresponding to Galactic free-free emission, the most likely foreground contaminant, is rejected at approximately 3 sigma. The analysis is based on three independent data sets. The first, taken in 1993, spans the 26-36 GHz frequency range with three frequency bands; the second was taken with the same radiometer as the first but during an independent observing campaign in 1994; and the third, also taken in 1994, spans the 36-46 GHz range in three bands. For each telescope position and radiometer channel, the drifts in the instrument offset are less than or equal to 4 microK/day averaged over a period of 1 month. The dependence of the inferred anisotropy on the calibration and data editing is addressed.
Objective evaluation of binocular function with pattern reversal VER

Abstract The effect of central and peripheral stimulus field on monocular and binocular amplitude and binocular summation of the pattern reversal VER were investigated. When the central stimulus field size was smaller than 2.0° × 2.0°, there was no significant difference between the amplitudes of the monocular and binocular VER, but when it was equal to or larger than 2.4°, the binocular VER amplitude was significantly larger than the monocular. The value of the binocular summation was highest at the central stimulus field size of 4.0° × 4.0°; at larger sizes, there were no significant changes in the value. Use of a central stimulus field size larger than 2.4° × 2.4° was therefore considered a prerequisite for the effective assessment of visual function, especially binocular function using the pattern reversal VER. Regarding the effect of peripheral stimulus field, both the monocular and binocular VER, but particularly the latter, were found to be sensitive to the central scotoma produced by covering the center of the full‐field stimulus. The value of the binocular summation showed a significant reduction with the small central scotoma. We concluded that the pattern reversal VER is very sensitive to a central scotoma and that binocular function is mediated mainly through the central part of the stimulus field.
Biology of the schistosome lung-stage schistosomulum

Past and more recent research has examined the ultrastructure, metabolism, cell biology, genomics and post-genomics of schistosome schistosomula. These areas are considered and discussed in this review with particular emphasis on (1) the early migration phases through the host, (2) interaction of the host immune response with the parasite surface, (3) glucose uptake mechanisms, and (4) defining the transcriptional profiles of lung-stage schistosomula compared with other developmental stages using microarrays. The microarray profiling studies suggest caution is required when considering the use of schistosomes obtained by in vitro means for molecular or biochemical studies.