Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
10 Preserving Proteins Under High Pressure and Low Temperature

Our group has a continuing interest in devising new freezing-protection agents. To this end, we have systematically investigated the structure of aqueous electrolyte salt solutions and room-temperature ionic liquids (RTILs), which consist of the cations and anions. We found that such water-mixed solutions remain liquid even at 1.0 GPa and 77 K (achieved by rapid cooling at 500 K/min) (Imai et al., 2010; Takekiyo et al., 2006a, 2006b; Yoshimura et al., 2009, 2011) and that water-soluble RTILs such as 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate remain liquid even at 2.0 GPa (Imai et al., 2011, Takekiyo et al., 2011). These results suggest that high pressure and low temperature by the use of RTILs-water mixtures might be useful for the freezing preservation of aqueous protein solutions.
Fruit and vegetable intake and risk of cardiovascular disease in US adults: the first National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey Epidemiologic Follow-up Study 1–3

Background: Epidemiologic studies report inconsistent findings on the association of fruit and vegetable intake with the risk of cardiovascular disease. Objective: The objective was to examine the relation between fruit and vegetable intake and the risk of cardiovascular disease. Design: We studied 9608 adults aged 25–74 y participating in the ﬁrst National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey Epidemiologic Follow-up Study and free of cardiovascular disease at the time of their baseline examination between 1971 and 1975. Fruit and vegetable intake at baseline was measured with a food-frequency questionnaire. The incidence of and mortality from cardiovascular disease were obtained from medical records and death certiﬁcates. Results: Over an average of 19 y, 888 strokes (218 fatal), 1786 ischemic heart disease events (639 fatal), 1145 cardiovascular disease deaths, and 2530 all-cause deaths were documented. Consuming fruit and vegetables ≥ 3 times/d compared with <1 time/d was associated with a 27% lower stroke incidence [relative risk (RR): 0.73; 95% CI: 0.57, 0.95; P for trend = 0.01), a 42% lower stroke mortality (0.58; 0.33, 1.02; P for trend = 0.05), a 24% lower ischemic heart disease mortality (0.76; 0.56, 1.03; P for trend = 0.07), a 27% lower cardiovascular disease mortality (0.73; 0.58, 0.92; P for trend = 0.008), and a 15% lower all-cause mortality (0.85; 0.72, 1.00; P for trend = 0.02) after adjustment for established cardiovascular disease risk factors. Conclusion: We showed an inverse association of fruit and vegetable intake with the risk of cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality in the general US population.
Efficacy and safety of venlafaxine hydrochloride combined with tandospirone citrate for patients with vascular depression accompanied by somatic symptoms: An open‐labeled randomized control trial

Abstract Aims To explore the pharmacological treatment of vascular depression (VaDep) and whether the blood levels of neurotransmitters can reflect the VaDep severity. Methods VaDep patients with somatic symptoms were enrolled and randomly received venlafaxine + tandospirone (Combined Group) or venlafaxine (Monotherapy Group). The treatment efficacy was assessed by Hamilton Depression Scale (HAMD), Hamilton Anxiety Scale (HAMA), and Patient Health Questionnaire‐15 (PHQ‐15). The levels of blood monoamine neurotransmitters were measured by enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assay. Results Both groups reported a progressive decrease in HAMD, HAMA, and PHQ‐15 scores to below the baseline after the respective treatment. Compared with the Monotherapy Group, the Combined Group reported a significant decrease in HAMD score at week 2 and markedly lower HAMA and PHQ‐15 scores at weeks 1, 2, 4, and 8. Both groups showed a decrease in the levels of blood monoamine neurotransmitters at weeks 4 and 8 when compared with the baseline. A strong positive association was evident between the plasma 5‐HT levels and the HAMD score. Conclusion The combined therapy rapidly acts on VaDep comorbid with anxiety and somatic symptoms and significantly alleviates the anxiety and somatic symptoms. The plasma levels of 5‐HT may serve as potential objective candidates in evaluating VaDep severity and the efficacy of the undertaken treatment regimen.
Cognition-Based Versus Affect-Based Trust Determinants in E-Commerce: Cross-Cultural Comparison Study

The aim of this study is to examine the impact of culture on the trust determinants in e-commerce. Adopting two broad trust building foundations (cognition-based and affect-based trust) from cross-culture literature and focusing on well-established cultural constructs as groups of culture, this study develops a theoretical model of cognition-based versus affect-based e-vendor trust, and empirically tests the model using cross-cultural data. The results show that cognition-based trust determinants are more positively related to consumer trust in evendor in an individualist culture than in a collectivist culture. Affect-based trust determinants are more positively related to consumer trust in e-vendor in a collectivist culture than in an individualist culture. Limitation and implications for practice are also discussed.
Transfers between health facilities of people living with diabetes attending primary health care services in the Western Cape Province of South Africa: A retrospective cohort study.

OBJECTIVES Transfers between health facilities of people living with HIV attending primary health care (PHC) including hospital to PHC facility, PHC facility to hospital and PHC facility to PHC facility transfers occur frequently, affect health service planning, and are associated with disengagement from care and viraemia. Data on transfers among people living with diabetes attending PHC, particularly transfers between PHC facilities, are few. We assessed the transfer incidence rate of people living with diabetes attending PHC, and the association between transfers between PHC facilities and subsequent HbA1c values. METHODS We analysed data on HbA1c tests at public sector facilities in the Western Cape Province (2016-March 2020). Individuals with an HbA1c in 2016-2017 were followed-up for 27 months and included in the analysis if ≥18 years at first included HbA1c, ≥2 HbA1cs during follow-up and ≥1 HbA1c at a PHC facility. A visit interval was the duration between two consecutive HbA1cs. Successive HbA1cs at different facilities of any type indicated any transfer, and HbA1cs at different PHC facilities indicated a transfer between PHC facilities. Mixed effects logistic regression adjusted for sex, age, rural/urban facility attended at the start of the visit interval, disengagement (visit interval >14 months) and a hospital visit during follow-up assessed the association between transfers between PHC facilities and HbA1c >8%. RESULTS Among 102,813 participants, 22.6% had ≥1 transfer of any type. Including repeat transfers, there were 29,994 transfers (14.4 transfers per 100 person-years, 95% confidence interval [CI] 14.3-14.6). A total of 6996 (30.1%) of those who transferred had a transfer between PHC facilities. Visit intervals with a transfer between PHC facilities were longer (349 days, interquartile range [IQR] 211-503) than those without any transfer (330 days, IQR 182-422). The adjusted relative odds of an HbA1c ≥8% after a transfer between PHC facilities versus no transfer were 1.20 (95% CI 1.05-1.37). CONCLUSION The volume of transfers involving PHC facilities requires consideration when planning services. Individuals who transfer between PHC facilities require additional monitoring and support.
Exploring the barriers and enablers to attendance at rural cardiac rehabilitation programs.

OBJECTIVE The objectives of this study were to: (i) identify local barriers and enablers to the uptake of hospital-based cardiac rehabilitation (CR) programs, and (ii) identify preferred alternatives for the delivery of CR. DESIGN A questionnaire administered by local CR coordinators and focus groups facilitated by the research team. SETTING Six regional hospitals in south-west Victoria offering hospital-based CR programs. PARTICIPANTS Patients and their carers referred to and eligible for local CR programs; health professionals working within local CR programs. MAIN OUTCOMES MEASURES CR attendees and decliners demographics, patient and health professional perceived factors which contribute to enabling hospital-based CR attendance, patient and health professional perceived barriers to CR attendance, and receptiveness and preferences for alternative modes of CR delivery. RESULTS This study identified distance to travel to hospital-based CR programs the only statistically significant factor in determining uptake of CR. Easy access to transport (63%) and to a lesser extent family support (49%) and work flexibility (43%) were the primary enablers to attendance. Of the 97 study participants, 38% were receptive to alternative CR methods such as programs in outlying communities, evening facility-based programs, home and GP based programs, telephone support and a patient manual/workbook. CONCLUSIONS The results of this study provide valuable information for designing strategies to increase utilisation and improve patient acceptability of existing hospital-based CR programs. It provides a basis for pilot testing alternative modes of CR program delivery for cardiac patients in rural areas unable to access hospital-based CR.
Non-Maxwellian velocity distribution and anomalous diffusion of {\it in vitro} kidney cells

This manuscript uses a statistical mechanical approach to study the effect of the adhesion, through MOCA protein, on cell locomotion. The MOCA protein regulates cell-cell adhesion, and we explore its potential role in the cell movement. We present a series of statistical descriptions of the motion in order to characterize the cell movement, and found that MOCA affects the statistical scenario of cell locomotion. In particular, we observe that MOCA enhances the tendency of joint motion, inhibits super-diffusion, and decreases overall cell motion. These facts are compatible with the hypothesis that the cells move faster in a less cohesive environment. Furthermore, we observe that velocity distribution tails are longer than those predicted by Maxwell-Boltzmann in all cases studied here, indicating that cell movement is more complex than that of a liquid.
Plant Density Effect on Grain Number and Weight of Two Winter Wheat Cultivars at Different Spikelet and Grain Positions

In winter wheat, grain development is asynchronous. The grain number and grain weight vary significantly at different spikelet and grain positions among wheat cultivars grown at different plant densities. In this study, two winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) cultivars, ‘Wennong6’ and ‘Jimai20’, were grown under four different plant densities for two seasons, in order to study the effect of plant density on the grain number and grain weight at different spikelet and grain positions. The results showed that the effects of spikelet and grain positions on grain weight varied with the grain number of spikelets. In both cultivars, the single-grain weight of the basal and middle two-grain spikelets was higher at the 2nd grain position than that at the 1st grain position, while the opposite occurred in the top two-grain spikelets. In the three-grain spikelets, the distribution of the single-grain weight was different between cultivars. In the four-grain spikelets of Wennong6, the single-grain weight was the highest at the 2nd grain position, followed by the 1st, 3rd, and 4th grain positions. Regardless of the spikelet and grain positions, the single-grain weight was the highest at the 1st and 2nd grain positions and the lowest at the 3rd and 4th grain positions. Overall, plant density affected the yield by controlling the seed-setting characteristics of the tiller spike. Therefore, wheat yield can be increased by decreasing the sterile basal and top spikelets and enhancing the grain weight at the 3rd and 4th grain positions, while maintaining it at the 1st and 2nd grain positions on the spikelet.
The role of pharmacoepidemiological studies in the market withdrawal of carisoprodol (Somadril®) in Europe.

Carisoprodol is a centrally acting muscle relaxant that has been marketed in Europe for more than 45 years. In November 2007 the European Medicines Association recommended suspension of all carisoprodol containing products in all EU countries. During recent years, several observational studies on carisoprodol have been published by our group, which works in the field of traffic medicine and pharmacoepidemiological research in general. In this paper, we review the role pharmacoepidemiological studies on carisoprodol played in providing evidence for the risk of psychomotor impairment and traffic accidents, intoxications and abuse. These issues have been important for decisions about the regulation of carisoprodol. Key words: pharmacoepidemiology, carisoprodol, drug abuse, impairment, intoxication
Path directed abstraction and refinement in SAT-based design debugging

The past decade has seen a disproportionate amount of resources dedicated towards verification as compared to actual design. It is reported that one third of this overhead is due to the resource-intensive task of manual debugging. To relieve this burden, this work introduces the novel concept of path directed debugging within a window-based abstraction/refinement framework. The algorithm divides the error trace into non-overlapping time-windows where each window is analyzed separately. Subsequent windows are replaced with abstracted over-approximations derived from failing paths in the time domain. Using this abstracted model, each solution found is processed through an additional verification step that removes spurious solutions and simultaneously refines the problem. This paper also develops the theory that shows that the proposed approach is complete, a fact that mitigates the incompleteness inherent in past time-window based debugging methods. Experimental results on industrial designs with long error traces show a 55% decrease in peak memory usage resulting in 78% more instances being solved when compared to previous work.
Molecular dynamics simulations reveal the balance of forces governing the formation of a guanine tetrad—a common structural unit of G-quadruplex DNA

G-quadruplexes (G4) are nucleic acid conformations of guanine-rich sequences, in which guanines are arranged in the square-planar G-tetrads, stacked on one another. G4 motifs form in vivo and are implicated in regulation of such processes as gene expression and chromosome maintenance. The structure and stability of various G4 topologies were determined experimentally; however, the driving forces for their formation are not fully understood at the molecular level. Here, we used all-atom molecular dynamics to probe the microscopic origin of the G4 motif stability. By computing the free energy profiles governing the dissociation of the 3′-terminal G-tetrad in the telomeric parallel-stranded G4, we examined the thermodynamic and kinetic stability of a single G-tetrad, as a common structural unit of G4 DNA. Our results indicate that the energetics of guanine association alone does not explain the overall stability of the G-tetrad and that interactions involving sugar–phosphate backbone, in particular, the constrained minimization of the phosphate–phosphate repulsion energy, are crucial in providing the observed enthalpic stabilization. This enthalpic gain is largely compensated by the unfavorable entropy change due to guanine association and optimization of the backbone topology.
The University of Birmingham ( Live System ) Comparison of functional thalamic segmentation from seed-based analysis and

Publisher Rights Statement: NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published as Hale, Joanne R. , Mayhew, Stephen D. , Mullinger, Karen J., Wilson, Rebecca S. , Arvanitis, Theodoros N. , Francis, Susan T. , Bagshaw, Andrew P., Comparison of functional thalamic segmentation from seed-based analysis and ICA, NeuroImage (2015), doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage. 2015.04. 027
Comparative Assessment of Adaptive Body-Bias SOI Pass-Transistor Logic

We present a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) pass-transistor logic (PTL) gate with an active body bias control circuit and compare the proposed PTL gate with other types of PTL gates with different body bias circuits in two different 0.13 μm SOI CMOS technologies. The experimental results show that the proposed SOI PTL gate using the body bias controlled technique is superior in terms of performance and power consumption than other DTMOS PTL gates.
Crown rootless1, Which Is Essential for Crown Root Formation in Rice, Is a Target of an AUXIN RESPONSE FACTOR in Auxin Signalingw⃞

Although the importance of auxin in root development is well known, the molecular mechanisms involved are still unknown. We characterized a rice (Oryza sativa) mutant defective in crown root formation, crown rootless1 (crl1). The crl1 mutant showed additional auxin-related abnormal phenotypic traits in the roots, such as decreased lateral root number, auxin insensitivity in lateral root formation, and impaired root gravitropism, whereas no abnormal phenotypic traits were observed in aboveground organs. Expression of Crl1, which encodes a member of the plant-specific ASYMMETRIC LEAVES2/LATERAL ORGAN BOUNDARIES protein family, was localized in tissues where crown and lateral roots are initiated and overlapped with β-glucuronidase staining controlled by the DR5 promoter. Exogenous auxin treatment induced Crl1 expression without de novo protein biosynthesis, and this induction required the degradation of AUXIN/INDOLE-3-ACETIC ACID proteins. Crl1 contains two putative auxin response elements (AuxREs) in its promoter region. The proximal AuxRE specifically interacted with a rice AUXIN RESPONSE FACTOR (ARF) and acted as a cis-motif for Crl1 expression. We conclude that Crl1 encodes a positive regulator for crown and lateral root formation and that its expression is directly regulated by an ARF in the auxin signaling pathway.
Association between helminth infection and allergic disorders among children in Batu, Ethiopia

Abstract Background Helminths are potent immunomodulators and in their chronic infection state they may protect against allergy‐related disease and atopy. However, they are also known for inducing allergic conditions. This study aimed to assess the association between helminths, atopy and allergic conditions. Methods A total of 461 school children participated in this cross‐sectional study. Data on allergic symptoms and a range of confounding variables was gathered from parents via an interviewer‐led questionnaire. Skin sensitization to house dust mite and cockroaches was analyzed, and a stool sample was collected for helminth analysis. Serum total Immunoglobulin E using enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assay and eosinophil count were also measured. Results Overall sensitivity to both allergens was 2.4%. Self‐reported allergic outcomes in the last 12 months for the 461 participants had been : wheezing 3.7%, asthma 2.2%, eczema 13.2% and hay fever 6.9%. Overall, the prevalence of helminth infection was 11.9% (53/444). A borderline significant association was found between atopy and any allergy symptoms (odds ratio [OR]: 3.32, 95% confidence interval [95% CI: 0.99, 11.1], p = .052). There was no significant association between helminths and atopy (OR: 0.64 [95% CI: 0.29, 1.41], p = .268) and also between helminths and allergic symptoms (OR: 0.64 [95% CI: 0.29, 1.41], p = .268). Bivariate analysis showed keeping an animal in the house increases the risk of atopy while maternal and paternal history of allergy increases the risk of developing allergic symptoms in the children. Conclusion and clinical relevance This study found a non‐significant inverse association between helminths infection and atopy and allergic disorders, likely due to reduced statistical power, resulting in a lower prevalence of atopy and allergic conditions. A high powered longtitudinal study is necessary to explore the casuality and potential therapeutic benefits of helminths for allergic disorders.
Blind Source Separation Based on Time-Domain Optimization of a Frequency-Domain Independence Criterion

A new technique for the blind separation of convolutive mixtures is proposed in this paper. Inspired by the works of Amari, Sabala , and Rahbar, we firstly start from the application of Kullback-Leibler divergence in frequency domain, and then we integrate Kullback-Leibler divergence over the whole frequency range of interest to yield a new objective function which turns out to be time-domain variable dependent. In other words, the objective function is derived in frequency domain which can be optimized with respect to time domain variables. The proposed technique has the advantages of frequency domain approaches and is suitable for very long mixing channels, but does not suffer from the local permutation problem as the separation is achieved in time-domain
In-classroom self-tracking for teachers and students: preliminary findings from a pilot study

Self-tracking technologies are nowadays commonly used in areas like fitness or personal health. Their use in the work environment is however still under-explored. Employers do have an interest in utilizing technology to quantify different work-related factors, e.g., the use of office space, the interactions among employees, or the collective mood at work. We however advocate for a stronger focus on empowering individuals to self-track their own activities, emotions and performance at work, to reflect on the collected data and possibly use it to drive behavioral changes. In this paper, we focus in particular on empowering two specific categories of workers: teachers and students. We describe a pilot study that we ran at our institution to understand which data and data gathering tools can be used to monitor teachers' and students' emotions and engagement during lectures. We define an empirical metric, called the Emotional Shift, to assess the impact of a lecture on students emotional state. Using the data collected during our pilot study, we show how this metric can be used in practice. Finally, we discuss the limitations of our current approach and provide an outlook on our future work.