Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
I Can’t Eat That! Sticking to a Gluten-Free Diet

Despite the benefits of a gluten-free diet (GFD), rates for strict adherence range from 42% to 91%. Studies have established the maximum tolerable daily dose at 50 mg/day and led the European Union to restrict labelling ‘gluten-free’ products to those with less than 20 mg/kg. Qualitative studies have determined that patients experience social problems in five areas: eating in the workplace, shopping, travelling, eating out and eating at home with others. These situations may lead to negative emotions and affect relationships. Therefore, further research into investigating the underlying factors behind effective adherence is essential, as is the need for a theoretical framework to design programmes to improve adherence and quality of life in coeliac patients. Albert Bandura´s Social Cognitive Theory can provide a better understanding of adherence and, more-over, a theoretical framework to design self-management programmes. Within this framework, the Health Action Process Approach (HAPA) model could provide a theo- retical mechanism to better understand GFD adherence. The main aim of this paper is to review the factors related to GFD adherence and to present the HAPA model as a useful framework for the design of interventions to improve perceived self-efficacy, adherence to the diet and, thus, enhance quality of life in coeliac patients.
Administration of low-molecular-weight heparin in patients with two or more unsuccessful IVF/ICSI cycles: a multicenter cohort study

Abstract To compare the effects of the administration of low-molecular-weight heparin (LMWH) in subfertile patients with two or more unsuccessful IVF/ICSI cycles. In this six-center two-arm retrospective cohort study, the study population (230 women) underwent a GnRH-antagonist protocol and was classified into two groups, according to the couse of LMWH or not. Groups were compared regarding the clinical and IVF/ICSI cycle characteristics and reproductive outcomes, whereas clinical pregnancy and miscarriage constituted the primary endpoints. Logistic regression analysis was performed to determine the potential predictors of clinical pregnancy, miscarriage and live birth rates using the Enter method. Baseline characteristics were comparable in the two groups. There was no statistically significant difference between the two study groups with regard neither to clinical pregnancy and miscarriage rates (33/133 vs. 20/97, p = .456 and 15/133 vs. 9/97, p = .624, respectively), nor to the secondary outcomes preset for this study (all p values >.05). Logistic regression revealed that age of the woman and ICSI and dose of gonadotrophins used were predictors of clinical pregnancy and live birth, respectively. In conclusion, there is no evidence to support the standard addition of LMWH in patients with two or more unsuccessful IVF/ICSI cycles.
Seasonal and weather variation of sleep and physical activity in 12–14-year-old children

ABSTRACT Background: Understanding variation in physical activity (PA) and sleep is necessary to develop novel intervention strategies targeting adolescents’ health behaviors. We examined the extent to which PA and sleep vary by aspects of the physical environment. Participants: We performed a cross-sectional analysis of 669 adolescents in the Project Viva cohort. Methods: We estimated total PA, sleep duration, sleep efficiency, and sleep midpoint timing from wrist accelerometers. We used multivariable linear regression models and generalized estimated equations to assess associations of PA and sleep with season and daily weather conditions obtained from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration archive. Results: Mean age was 12.9 (SD 0.6) years; 51% were female and 68% were white. Mean sleep duration was 466 (SD 42) min per night and total PA was 1,652 (SD 431) counts per min per day. Sleep midpoint time was 41 (95% CI: 27 to 54) min later in summer, 28 (95% CI: −41 to −14) min earlier in spring, and 29 (95% CI: −43 to −15) min earlier in autumn compared to winter. Higher temperature and longer day length both were associated with small reductions of nightly sleep duration. Adolescents were less physically active during winter and on rainy and short sunlight days. There was an inverse U-shaped relationship between PA and mean temperature. Conclusions: Season was associated with large changes in sleep timing, and smaller changes in other sleep and PA measurements. Given the importance of sleep and circadian alignment, future health behavioral interventions may benefit by targeting “season-specific” interventions.
A mechanism for the consolidation of the structure of clay–latex coatings

Attempts have been made to follow the process of consolidation, during drying, of the structure of a paper coating based on clay and latex by the electron microscope observation, and the analysis of coatings quenched by freezing at various stages and freeze-dried. Three phases are considered, separated by two critical concentrations. At the first critical concentration (FCC), a 3-dimensional network is formed, and particle motion is greatly restricted. The water–air interface recedes into the surface capillaries, creating a capillary pressure that causes a shrinkage of the 3-dimensional network until a second critical concentration (SCC) is reached at which the network is fixed and air enters the rigid structure. Latex stiffness and colloidal interactions influence the critical concentrations. The latex coalescence process has been observed to take place over a relatively narrow concentration range after the FCC and is completed at the SCC.
Alginate Oligosaccharide-Induced Modification of the lasI-lasR and rhlI-rhlR Quorum-Sensing Systems in Pseudomonas aeruginosa

ABSTRACT Pseudomonas aeruginosa plays a major role in many chronic infections. Its ability to readily form biofilms contributes to its success as an opportunistic pathogen and its resistance/tolerance to antimicrobial/antibiotic therapy. A low-molecular-weight alginate oligomer (OligoG CF-5/20) derived from marine algae has previously been shown to impair motility in P. aeruginosa biofilms and disrupt pseudomonal biofilm assembly. As these bacterial phenotypes are regulated by quorum sensing (QS), we hypothesized that OligoG CF-5/20 may induce alterations in QS signaling in P. aeruginosa. QS regulation was studied by using Chromobacterium violaceum CV026 biosensor assays that showed a significant reduction in acyl homoserine lactone (AHL) production following OligoG CF-5/20 treatment (≥2%; P < 0.05). This effect was confirmed by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis of C4-AHL and 3-oxo-C12-AHL production (≥2%; P < 0.05). Moreover, quantitative PCR showed that reduced expression of both the las and rhl systems was induced following 24 h of treatment with OligoG CF-5/20 (≥0.2%; P < 0.05). Circular dichroism spectroscopy indicated that these alterations were not due to steric interaction between the AHL and OligoG CF-5/20. Confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) and COMSTAT image analysis demonstrated that OligoG CF-5/20-treated biofilms had a dose-dependent decrease in biomass that was associated with inhibition of extracellular DNA synthesis (≥0.5%; P < 0.05). These changes correlated with alterations in the extracellular production of the pseudomonal virulence factors pyocyanin, rhamnolipids, elastase, and total protease (P < 0.05). The ability of OligoG CF-5/20 to modify QS signaling in P. aeruginosa PAO1 may influence critical downstream functions such as virulence factor production and biofilm formation.
Pseudomonas Quinolone Signal Induces Oxidative Stress and Inhibits Heme Oxygenase-1 Expression in Lung Epithelial Cells

ABSTRACT Pseudomonas aeruginosa causes lung infections in patients with cystic fibrosis (CF). The Pseudomonas quinolone signal (PQS) compound is a secreted P. aeruginosa virulence factor that contributes to the pathogenicity of P. aeruginosa. We were able to detect PQS in sputum samples from CF patients infected with P. aeruginosa but not in samples from uninfected patients. We then tested the hypothesis that PQS induces oxidative stress in host cells by determining the ability of PQS to induce the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in lung epithelial cells (A549 and primary normal human bronchial epithelial [NHBE]) cells and macrophages (J774A.1 and THP-1). ROS production induced by PQS was detected with fluorescent probes (dichlorodihydrofluorescein diacetate, dihydroethidium, and MitoSOX Red) in conjunction with confocal microscopy and flow cytometry. PQS induced ROS production in lung epithelial (A549 and NHBE) cells and macrophages (J774A.1 and THP-1 cells). NHBE cells were sensitive to PQS concentrations as low as 500 ng/ml. PQS significantly induced early apoptosis (P < 0.05, n = 6) in lung epithelial cells, as measured by annexin/propidium iodide detection by flow cytometry. However, no change in apoptosis upon PQS treatment was seen in J774A.1 cells. Heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) protein is an antioxidant enzyme usually induced by oxidative stress. Interestingly, incubation with PQS significantly reduced HO-1 and NrF2 expression in A549 and NHBE cells but increased HO-1 expression in J774A.1 cells (P < 0.05, n = 3), as determined by immunoblotting and densitometry. These PQS effects on host cells could play an important role in the pathogenicity of P. aeruginosa infections.
Specific Wear Rate of Kenaf Epoxy Composite and Oil Palm Empty Fruit Bunch (OPEFB) Epoxy Composite in Dry Sliding

This paper presents an experimental investigation carried out to compare specific wear rate and surface morphology between two types of natural fibres namely kenaf and oil palm empty fruit bunch (OPEFB). Kenaf fibres were received in long fiber size and OPEFB in different sizes (100, 125, 180 and 250 μm). Both materials were mixed with the epoxy resin to produce epoxy composites. Wear tests were carried out using Abrasion Resistance Tester in dry sliding condition. These tests were performed at room temperature for different loads and at a constant sliding velocity of 1.4m/s. Based on the results, the specific wear rate of Kenaf Fibre composite starts to converge to one similar value beyond 6km distance. In the case of OPEFB epoxy composite, it was found the fiber size of 100 um has produced the highest specific wear rate.
Doctors’ reports about palliative systemic treatment: A medical record study

Background: Decisions about palliative systemic treatment are key elements of palliative and end-of-life care. Such decisions must often be made in complex, clinical situations. Aim: To explore the content of medical records of patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer and pancreatic cancer with specific emphasis on doctors’ notes about decisions on palliative systemic treatment. Design: Medical record review (2009–2012) of 147 cancer patients containing 276 notes about palliative systemic treatment. We described the proportion of notes/medical records containing pre-specified items relevant to palliative systemic treatment. We selected patients using the nationwide Netherlands Cancer Registry. Setting: Hospital based. Results: About 75% of all notes reported doctors’ considerations to start/continue palliative systemic treatment, including information about the prognosis (47%), possible survival gain (22%), patients’ wish for palliative systemic treatment (33%), impact on quality of life (8%), and patient’s age (3%). Comorbidity (82%), smoking status (78%) and drinking behaviour (63%) were more often documented than patients’ performance status (16%). Conversations with the patient/family about palliative systemic treatment were reported in 49% of all notes. Response measurements and dose adaptations were documented in 75% and 71% of patients who received palliative systemic treatment respectively. Conclusion: Medical records provide insight into the decision-making process about palliative systemic treatment. The content and detail of doctors’ notes, however, widely varies especially concerning their palliative systemic treatment considerations. Registries that aim to measure the quality of (end-of-life) care must be aware of this outcome. Future research should further explore how medical records can best assist in evaluating the quality of the decision-making process in the patient’s final stage of life.
Extraction of a Natural Dye from Sesbania aculeata Plant

The focus on environmental concerns is increasingly causing the textile industry to explore natural sources of dyes as opposed to synthetic dyes. As a representative effort in this direction, the current paper describes the process of dyeing silk and cotton-polyester blend with the aqueous extract of Sesbania aculeata plant. This plant is a green manure plant with several traditional applications. Shade cards were prepared and evaluations were made on the basis of two fabrics dyed, five mordants and three different mordanting techniques applied. Fastness properties of the dyed fabrics were tested. For colour measurements K/S values and CIE L*a*b* values were calculated. Keywords: Natural dyeing, Sesbania aculeata, aqueous extraction, silk, polyester-cotton
Committee-Based Active Learning for Surrogate-Assisted Particle Swarm Optimization of Expensive Problems

Function evaluations (FEs) of many real-world optimization problems are time or resource consuming, posing a serious challenge to the application of evolutionary algorithms (EAs) to solve these problems. To address this challenge, the research on surrogate-assisted EAs has attracted increasing attention from both academia and industry over the past decades. However, most existing surrogate-assisted EAs (SAEAs) either still require thousands of expensive FEs to obtain acceptable solutions, or are only applied to very low-dimensional problems. In this paper, a novel surrogate-assisted particle swarm optimization (PSO) inspired from committee-based active learning (CAL) is proposed. In the proposed algorithm, a global model management strategy inspired from CAL is developed, which searches for the best and most uncertain solutions according to a surrogate ensemble using a PSO algorithm and evaluates these solutions using the expensive objective function. In addition, a local surrogate model is built around the best solution obtained so far. Then, a PSO algorithm searches on the local surrogate to find its optimum and evaluates it. The evolutionary search using the global model management strategy switches to the local search once no further improvement can be observed, and vice versa. This iterative search process continues until the computational budget is exhausted. Experimental results comparing the proposed algorithm with a few state-of-the-art SAEAs on both benchmark problems up to 30 decision variables as well as an airfoil design problem demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is able to achieve better or competitive solutions with a limited budget of hundreds of exact FEs.
Preperimetric Glaucoma Prospective Study (PPGPS): Predicting Visual Field Progression With Basal Optic Nerve Head Blood Flow in Normotensive PPG Eyes

Purpose To investigate the site specificity of visual field changes in eyes with normotensive preperimetric glaucoma (PPG), and to determine factors influencing visual field progression. Methods This prospective study comprised 84 eyes of 84 normotensive PPG patients followed for at least 16 months. Optic nerve head (ONH) blood flow was assessed with tissue-area mean blur rate (MBRT), derived from laser speckle flowgraphy. Total deviation (TD) was measured in each sector of the Garway-Heath map to evaluate the site specificity of visual field loss. Subjects with a TD slope in the first quartile were classified as progressive, and other subjects as nonprogressive. Linear and multiple regression analyses were performed to determine factors affecting visual field progression. Results TD in the superior sector significantly decreased in the subjects overall during the follow-up periods (−0.48 ± 1.92 dB/y, P = 0.025). Linear regression analysis showed that basal MBRT-inferior was correlated significantly with TD-superior slope (r = 0.332, P = 0.002). Furthermore, basal MBRT was significantly lower in this sector in the progressive than the nonprogressive group (P = 0.010). Multiple linear regression analysis revealed that basal MBRT-inferior was the only predictive factor for TD-superior slope (β = 0.329, P = 0.005). Conclusions These findings suggest that superior-sector visual field progression is most common in normotensive PPG eyes, and that reduced basal ONH blood flow is associated with visual field progression. Translational Relevance These findings provide new insight into the involvement of ONH blood flow impairment in glaucoma pathogenesis, and demonstrate the importance of assessing ONH blood flow to determine visual field progression in normotensive PPG.
A survey of sequence alignment algorithms for next-generation sequencing

Rapidly evolving sequencing technologies produce data on an unparalleled scale. A central challenge to the analysis of this data is sequence alignment, whereby sequence reads must be compared to a reference. A wide variety of alignment algorithms and software have been subsequently developed over the past two years. In this article, we will systematically review the current development of these algorithms and introduce their practical applications on different types of experimental data. We come to the conclusion that short-read alignment is no longer the bottleneck of data analyses. We also consider future development of alignment algorithms with respect to emerging long sequence reads and the prospect of cloud computing.
Selective adhesive bonding with SU-8 for zero-level-packaging

An adhesive bonding technique for wafer-level encapsulation of high aspect ratio microstructures (HARMS) is presented. The adhesive material is spin coated on a cap wafer and structured prior to bonding. Thus sealed cavities of variable height are created in the bonding layer. SU-8 negative photoresist is used as the adhesive material in combination with miscellaneous surface materials: silicon, silicon dioxide and aluminum. The influences of the bonding process parameters - bonding pressure, bonding temperature and process time - as well as the SU-8 layer properties on the bond strength and the homogeneity of the bond have been investigated. To evaluate the process conditions the shear strength of the bond has been measured according to the ASTM standard D 1002 for adhesive bonds. Each bond interface was tested by 32 test specimens of 10 by 10 mm2 side length. With optimal process conditions shear strength of 19.2, 23.3 and 21.3 MPa have been obtained for silicon, silicon dioxide and aluminium respectively. The application of the selective adhesive bonding technique has been successfully demonstrated by encapsulating different types of single crystal silicon inertial sensors.
Performance Evaluation of Glass Fiber-Reinforced Polymer Shear Reinforcement for Concrete Beams

Using fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) reinforcing bars as the main reinforcement for concrete structures in severe environments is becoming a widely accepted solution to overcome the problem of steel corrosion and the related deteriorations. Due to the relatively lower cost of glass FRP (GFRP) bars compared to the other commercially available FRP bars, the use of GFRP bars in reinforced concrete (RC) structures has been widely investigated in the last few years. This paper reports experimental data on the shear strength of concrete beams reinforced with GFRP stirrups. A total of four large-scale RC beams with a total length of 7000 mm (276 in.) and a T-shaped cross section were constructed and tested up to failure. The test variables were type and ratio of shear reinforcement (stirrups). The test beams comprised three beams reinforced with sand-coated GFRP stirrups of 9.5 mm (3/8 in.) diameter spaced at d/2, d/3, and d/4 (where d is the beam depth), and a reference beam reinforced with conventional steel stirrups of 9.5 mm (3/8 in.) diameter spaced at d/2. As designed, the beams failed in shear due to GFRP stirrup rupture or steel stirrups yielding. ACI 440.1R-06 and the updated version of CAN/CSA S6-06 are able to predict the shear strength of beams reinforced with GFRP stirrups with a reasonable accuracy. The analytical approach using Response 2000 (R2K), which is based on the modified compression field theory (MCFT), predicted well the shear capacity of the beams reinforced with GFRP stirrups, but overestimated their shear crack width.
A graph-based approach to API usage adaptation

Reusing existing library components is essential for reducing the cost of software development and maintenance. When library components evolve to accommodate new feature requests, to fix bugs, or to meet new standards, the clients of software libraries often need to make corresponding changes to correctly use the updated libraries. Existing API usage adaptation techniques support simple adaptation such as replacing the target of calls to a deprecated API, however, cannot handle complex adaptations such as creating a new object to be passed to a different API method, or adding an exception handling logic that surrounds the updated API method calls. This paper presents LIBSYNC that guides developers in adapting API usage code by learning complex API usage adaptation patterns from other clients that already migrated to a new library version (and also from the API usages within the library's test code). LIBSYNC uses several graph-based techniques (1) to identify changes to API declarations by comparing two library versions, (2) to extract associated API usage skeletons before and after library migration, and (3) to compare the extracted API usage skeletons to recover API usage adaptation patterns. Using the learned adaptation patterns, LIBSYNC recommends the locations and edit operations for adapting API usages. The evaluation of LIBSYNC on real-world software systems shows that it is highly correct and useful with a precision of 100% and a recall of 91%.
The Relationship Between Maximal Aerobic Power and Recovery in Elite Ice Hockey Players During a Simulated Game.

This project investigated whether there was a relationship between maximal aerobic power and the recovery or performance in elite ice hockey players during a simulated hockey game. An on-ice protocol was used to simulate a game of ice hockey. Recovery values were determined by the differences in lactate and heart rate measures. Total distance traveled was also recorded as a performance measure. On two other days, subjects returned and completed a maximal aerobic power test on a treadmill and a maximal lactate test on ice. Statistical analysis showed no relationship between maximal aerobic power or maximal lactate values and recovery (heart rate, lactate) or the performance measure of distance traveled. It was concluded there was no relationship between maximal aerobic power and recovery during a simulated game in elite hockey players.