Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The catecholamine response to spaceflight: role of diet and gender.

UNLABELLED Compared with men, women appear to have a decreased sympathetic nervous system (SNS) response to stress. The two manifestations where the sexual dimorphism has been the most pronounced involve the response of the SNS to fluid shifts and fuel metabolism during exercise. The objectives of this study were to investigate whether a similar sexual dimorphism was found in the response to spaceflight. To do so, we compared catecholamine excretion by male and female astronauts from two similar shuttle missions, Spacelab Life Sciences 1 (SLS1, 1991) and 2 (SLS2, 1993) for evidence of sexual dimorphism. To evaluate the variability of the catecholamine response in men, we compared catecholamine excretion from the two SLS missions against the 1996 Life and Microgravity Sciences Mission (LMS) and the 1973 Skylab missions. RESULTS No gender- or mission-dependent changes were found with epinephrine. Separating out the SLS1/2 data by gender shows that norepinephrine excretion was essentially unchanged with spaceflight in women (98 +/- 10%; n = 3) and substantially decreased with the men (41 +/- 9%; n = 4, P < 0.05). Data are a percentage of mean preflight value +/- SE. Comparisons among males demonstrated significant mission effects on norepinephrine excretion. After flight, there was a transient increase in norepinephrine but no evidence of any gender-specific effects. We conclude that norepinephrine excretion during spaceflight is both mission and gender dependent. Men show the greater response, with at least three factors being involved, a response to microgravity, energy balance, and the ratio of carbohydrate to fat in the diet.
The Demirjian versus the Willems method for dental age estimation in different populations: A meta-analysis of published studies

Background The accuracy of radiographic methods for dental age estimation is important for biological growth research and forensic applications. Accuracy of the two most commonly used systems (Demirjian and Willems) has been evaluated with conflicting results. This study investigates the accuracies of these methods for dental age estimation in different populations. Methods A search of PubMed, Scopus, Ovid, Database of Open Access Journals and Google Scholar was undertaken. Eligible studies published before December 28, 2016 were reviewed and analyzed. Meta-analysis was performed on 28 published articles using the Demirjian and/or Willems methods to estimate chronological age in 14,109 children (6,581 males, 7,528 females) age 3–18 years in studies using Demirjian’s method and 10,832 children (5,176 males, 5,656 females) age 4–18 years in studies using Willems’ method. The weighted mean difference at 95% confidence interval was used to assess accuracies of the two methods in predicting the chronological age. Results The Demirjian method significantly overestimated chronological age (p<0.05) in males age 3–15 and females age 4–16 when studies were pooled by age cohorts and sex. The majority of studies using Willems’ method did not report significant overestimation of ages in either sex. Overall, Demirjian’s method significantly overestimated chronological age compared to the Willems method (p<0.05). The weighted mean difference for the Demirjian method was 0.62 for males and 0.72 for females, while that of the Willems method was 0.26 for males and 0.29 for females. Conclusion The Willems method provides more accurate estimation of chronological age in different populations, while Demirjian’s method has a broad application in terms of determining maturity scores. However, accuracy of Demirjian age estimations is confounded by population variation when converting maturity scores to dental ages. For highest accuracy of age estimation, population-specific standards, rather than a universal standard or methods developed on other populations, need to be employed.
Development of a measure examining children's roles in alcoholic families.

A measure assessing the roles played by children in their alcoholic families is presented. In Study 1, an item pool was generated targeting four distinct roles discussed in the alcohol literature, and the items were reviewed by a panel of experts. The Children's Roles Inventory (CRI) was then administered to 140 adult children of alcoholics and their responses were used to refine the measure. Observed levels of internal consistency seemed adequate (Cronbach's alpha ranged from .89 to .95). In a replication effort (Study 2), the CRI was administered to 142 adult children of alcoholics. Internal consistency remained at acceptable levels, ranging from . 90 to . 95. Study 3 examined the CRI's convergent and discriminant validity. A sample of 138 adult children of alcoholics as well as a sample of 105 adults from nonalcoholic families completed the CRI, a measure of self-esteem and an index of one's use of social support. Reliability results from Studies 1 and 2 were replicated (in both samples). Likewise, in both samples the CRI subscales were differentially predictive of self-esteem as well as size of and satisfaction with one's social support network.
Modeled CO2 Emissions from Coastal Wetland Transitions to Other Land Uses: Tidal Marshes, Mangrove Forests, and Seagrass Beds

The sediments of coastal wetlands contain large stores of carbon which are vulnerable to oxidation once disturbed, resulting in high levels of CO2 emissions that may be avoided if coastal ecosystems are conserved or restored. We used a simple model to estimate CO2 emissions from mangrove forests, seagrass beds and tidal marshes based on known decomposition rates for organic matter in these ecosystems under either oxic or anoxic conditions combined with assumptions of the proportion of sediment carbon being deposited in either oxic or anoxic environments following a disturbance of the habitat. Our model found that over 40 years after disturbance the cumulative CO2 emitted from tidal marshes, mangrove forests and seagrass beds were approximately 70-80% of the initial carbon stocks in the top meter of the sediment. Comparison of our estimates of CO2 emissions with empirical studies suggests that 1) assuming 50% of organic material moves to an oxic environment after disturbance gives rise to estimates that are similar to CO2 emissions reported for tidal marshes; 2) field measurements of CO2 emissions in disturbed mangrove forests were generally higher than our modeled emissions that assumed 50% of organic matter was deposited in oxic conditions, suggesting higher proportions of organic matter may be exposed to oxic conditions after disturbance in mangrove ecosystems; and 3) the generally low observed rates of CO2 emissions from disturbed seagrasses compared to our estimates, assuming removal of 50% of the organic matter to oxic environments, suggests that lower proportions may be exposed to oxic conditions in seagrass ecosystems. There are significant gaps in our knowledge of the fate of wetland sediment carbon in the marine environment after disturbance. Greater knowledge of the distribution, form, decomposition and emission rates of wetland sediment carbon after disturbance would help to improve models.
The 2.6-Angstrom Structure of Infectious Bursal Disease Virus-Derived T=1 Particles Reveals New Stabilizing Elements of the Virus Capsid

ABSTRACT Infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV), a member of the Birnaviridae family, is a double-stranded RNA virus that causes a highly contagious disease in young chickens leading to significant economic losses in the poultry industry. The VP2 protein, the only structural component of the IBDV icosahedral capsid, spontaneously assembles into T=1 subviral particles (SVP) when individually expressed as a chimeric gene. We have determined the crystal structure of the T=1 SVP to 2.60 Å resolution. Our results show that the 20 trimeric VP2 clusters forming the T=1 shell are further stabilized by calcium ions located at the threefold icosahedral axes. The structure also reveals a new unexpected domain swapping that mediates interactions between adjacent trimers: a short helical segment located close to the end of the long C-terminal arm of VP2 is projected toward the threefold axis of a neighboring VP2 trimer, leading to a complex network of interactions that increases the stability of the T=1 particles. Analysis of crystal packing shows that the exposed capsid residues, His253 and Thr284, determinants of IBDV virulence and the adaptation of the virus to grow in cell culture, are involved in particle-particle interactions.
Evidence for the homothetic scaling of urban forms

The size and form of cities influence their social and environmental impacts. Whether cities have the same form irrespective of their size is still an open question. We analyse the profile of artificial land and population density, with respect to the distance to their main centre, for the 300 largest European cities. Our analysis combines the GMES/Copernicus Urban Atlas 2006 land use database at 5 m resolution for 300 larger urban zones with more than 100,000 inhabitants and the Geostat population grid at 1 km resolution. We find a remarkable constancy of radial profiles across city sizes. Artificial land profiles scale in the two horizontal dimensions with the square root of city population, while population density profiles scale in three dimensions with its cube root. In short, cities of different size are homothetic in terms of land use and population density, which challenges the idea that larger cities are more parsimonious in the use of land per capita. While earlier literature documented the scaling of average densities (total surface and population) with city size, we document the scaling of the whole radial distance profile with city size, thus liaising intra-urban radial analysis and systems of cities. Our findings also yield homogenous spatial definitions of cities, from which we can re-question urban scaling laws and Zipf’s law for cities.
Reranked aligners for interactive transcript correction

Clarification dialogs can help address ASR errors in speech-to-speech translation systems and other interactive applications. We propose to use variants of Levenshtein alignment for merging an er-rorful utterance with a targeted rephrase of an error segment. ASR errors that might harm the alignment are addressed through phonetic matching, and a word embedding distance is used to account for the use of synonyms outside targeted segments. These features lead to a relative improvement of 30% of word error rate on sentences with ASR errors compared to not performing the clarification. Twice as many utterances are completely corrected compared to using basic word alignment. Furthermore, we generate a set of potential merges and train a neural network on crowd-sourced rephrases in order to select the best merger, leading to 24% more instances completely corrected. The system is deployed in the framework of the BOLT project.
The auditory and non-auditory brain areas involved in tinnitus. An emergent property of multiple parallel overlapping subnetworks

Tinnitus is the perception of a sound in the absence of an external sound source. It is characterized by sensory components such as the perceived loudness, the lateralization, the tinnitus type (pure tone, noise-like) and associated emotional components, such as distress and mood changes. Source localization of quantitative electroencephalography (qEEG) data demonstrate the involvement of auditory brain areas as well as several non-auditory brain areas such as the anterior cingulate cortex (dorsal and subgenual), auditory cortex (primary and secondary), dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex, insula, supplementary motor area, orbitofrontal cortex (including the inferior frontal gyrus), parahippocampus, posterior cingulate cortex and the precuneus, in different aspects of tinnitus. Explaining these non-auditory brain areas as constituents of separable subnetworks, each reflecting a specific aspect of the tinnitus percept increases the explanatory power of the non-auditory brain areas involvement in tinnitus. Thus, the unified percept of tinnitus can be considered an emergent property of multiple parallel dynamically changing and partially overlapping subnetworks, each with a specific spontaneous oscillatory pattern and functional connectivity signature.
Chronic Antihypertensive Treatment in the Rat Reverses Hypertension-Induced Changes in Cerebral Blood Flow Autoregulation

Cerebral blood flow (CBF) autoregulation was studied in renal hypertensive rats receiving chronic antihypertensive treatment. Young Wistar Kyoto rats (WKY) were made hypertensive by the Loomis procedure i.e. partial infarction of one kidney with contralateral nephrectomy. Systolic tail blood pressure was measured at 2-week intervals throughout the study. After two months, by which time the rats had been severely hypertensive for 5-6 weeks, antihypertensive treatment was begun; reserpine, dihydrala- zine and hydrochlorothiazide were administered in the drinking water. Blood pressure fell rapidly to normotensive levels and remained so. Following two months of antihypertensive treatment, the lower blood pressure limit of CBF autoregulation was studied during controlled bleeding. In age-matched untreated renal hypertensive WKY, the lower limit of autoregulation was in the mean arterial pressure range 90-109 mm Hg, as compared to 50-69 mm Hg in age-matched normotensive WKY. In contradistinction to the untreated rats, the treated rats had a normal lower limit of autoregulation, i.e. 50-69 mm Hg. It was inferred that the reversal of the functional change in CBF autoregulation reflected reversal of hypertension- induced cerebrovascular hypertrophy/hyperplasia.
GIS professional development for teachers: lessons learned from high-needs schools

ABSTRACT University faculty partners from the Departments of Geography and Instruction and Teacher Education at a large, public university collaborated with K-12 teachers and the leadership of a rural school district in order to investigate the crosscutting content of science, mathematics, and geography through the integration of web-based GIS technologies. The project explored the critical connections among technology, pedagogy, and content with a particular emphasis on developing technology-enhanced, inquiry-based lessons in which the teachers and their students used GIS technologies to analyze, visualize, and present data in real-world contexts. The findings highlight the importance of well-structured professional development that builds community, integrates diverse content and pedagogical expertise, provides feedback and coaching, and is of sufficient duration to effect change.
Phase I evaluation of a combination of monoclonal antibody R24 and interleukin 2 in patients with metastatic melanoma.

A combination of recombinant human interleukin 2 (rhIL-2) and mouse monoclonal antibody R24 (recognizing the ganglioside GD3) was evaluated in patients with metastatic melanoma in a phase I trial. rhIL-2 was given at a constant daily dose of 1 x 10(6) units/m2 i.v. over 6 h on days 1-5 and 8-12. R24 was given on days 8-12 at four dose levels (1, 3, 8, and 12 mg/m2 daily). Twenty patients were evaluable for toxicity and response, five at each dose level. The toxicity of the combination was not overlapping and generally mild. There was a rebound peripheral blood T-lymphocytosis at the end of treatment increasing with the dose of R24. The median lymphocyte count on day 12 of treatment was 3108 +/- 554/ml in patients treated at R24 doses of 8 and 12 mg/m2 versus 2239 +/- 672/ml at doses of 1 and 3 mg/m2. This evidence and other data suggested that R24 enhanced IL-2-mediated T-cell activation in vivo. Two patients demonstrated increases in R24-mediated antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity for GD3-expressing cells during treatment. rhIL-2 appeared to accelerate the development of human anti-mouse antibody; three patients developed human anti-mouse antibody by the fifth day of R24 treatment, earlier than observed in prior studies using R24 alone and one patient during the first week of rhIL-2 alone, prior to R24 treatment. One patient had a partial response in soft tissue sites lasting 6 months and two patients had minor responses. This clinical trial extends the previous observation that R24 enhances lymphocyte proliferation in vitro.
Modelling projections for the uptake of edoxaban in an European population to 2050: effects on stroke, thromboembolism, and health economics perspectives.

AIMS In the coming decades, the number of Europeans with atrial fibrillation (AF) is set to rise as the population ages, and so with it will the number of strokes. The risk of thromboembolism (principally stroke and systemic embolism) and death can be reduced by the use of the vitamin K antagonists (VKA, e.g. warfarin) and more so by non-VKA oral anticoagulants (NOACs) such as edoxaban. METHODS AND RESULTS We modelled the effect of the increasing use of edoxaban in preference to warfarin in a European AF population from both clinical and economic perspectives. We estimate that the introduction of NOACs in 2010 eliminated over 88 000 thromboembolisms and deaths annually, of which over 17 000 were ischaemic strokes. At a 1-year cost of €30k per ischaemic stroke, this strategy saved €510 million annually. Should the use of edoxaban increase from 11% in 2013 to 75% by 2030, we expect that rate of thromboembolism and death will fall from 5.67 to 5.42 total events per million patients per year, which will further eliminate over 12 000 of these events annually. At an inflation-adjusted 1-year cost of approximately €35k per ischaemic stroke, this will save €44.5 million each year. At a conservative rate of increase in the AF population of 2.2-fold from 2005, in 2050 there will be around 180 000 AF-related ischaemic strokes that, at an inflation-adjusted cost of around €62k per stroke, sums to €11 116 million. Should the rate of AF rise 2.6-fold from 2005, then in 2050 there will be 214 500 ischaemic strokes that will cost around €13 300 million. CONCLUSION Our data point to a substantial increase in the human and economic cost burden of AF and so emphasize the need to reduce this burden. This may be achieved by the increased use of oral anticoagulants, particularly with the NOACs such as edoxaban.
Endothelial Dysfunction and Fetuin A Levels Before and After Kidney Transplantation

Background. Endothelial dysfunction (ED) has a major role in the cardiovascular outcome of patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). The aim of this study was to investigate the relation between fetuin A levels and ED in kidney transplant recipients. Methods. Forty-two living donor kidney transplant recipients, 21 (11 male) on cyclosporine A and 21 (10 male) on tacrolimus-based regimes, were studied. Forty-two (21 male) healthy subjects were enrolled as controls. Fetuin A, highly sensitive C-reactive protein (hsCRP) levels, brachial artery endothelium-dependent vasodilatation (FMD), nitroglycerine mediated dilatation (NMD), and carotid intima-media thickness (CIMT) were measured before transplantation and on the 30th and 90th days posttransplant. Results. Pretransplantation serum fetuin A concentrations and FMD values of patients were significantly lower than those of the controls (P<0.001 for both). These were significantly increased in the 30th and 90th days posttransplantation There was a significant positive correlation between Fetuin A and FMD levels both before and after kidney transplantation (r=0.534, r=0.576; respectively, P<0.001 for both). Carotid intima-media thickness and hsCRP levels decreased after transplantation (P<0.001 for all). According to the regression analysis, fetuin A, intact parathyroid hormone, and hsCRP levels were the independent determinants of FMD. Conclusion. The results of the present study suggest that low serum fetuin A levels in CKD may contribute to impaired endothelial functions in CKD. Future studies should clarify the role of fetuin A levels in cardiovascular outcomes of CKD.
Response of Different Ion Species to Local Magnetic Dipolarization Inside Geosynchronous Orbit

This paper examines how hydrogen, helium, and oxygen (H, He, and O) ion fluxes at 1–1,000 keV typically respond to local magnetic dipolarization inside geosynchronous orbit. We extracted 144 dipolarizations that occurred at magnetic inclination >30° from the 2012–2016 tail seasons' observations of the Van Allen Probes spacecraft and then defined typical flux changes of these ion species by performing a superposed epoch analysis. On average, the dipolarization inside geosynchronous orbit is accompanied by a precursory transient decrease in the northward magnetic field component, transient impulsive enhancement in the westward electric field component, and decrease (increase) in the proton density (temperature). The coincident ion species experience an energy‐dependent flux change, consisting of enhancement (depression) at energies above (below) ~50 keV. These properties morphologically resemble those around dipolarization fronts (or fast flows) in the near‐Earth tail. A distinction among the ion species is the average energy of the flux ratio peak, being at 200–400 keV (100–200 keV) for He (H and O) ions. The flux ratio peaks at different energies likely reflect the different charge states of injected ionospheric and/or solar wind origin ion species. The ion spectra become harder for sharp dipolarizations, suggesting the importance of accompanying electric field in transporting and/or energizing the ions efficiently. Interestingly, the average flux ratio peak does not differ significantly among the ion species for ~2 min after onset, which implies that mass‐dependent acceleration process is less important in the initial stage of dipolarization.
Quantification De L’erosion Hydrique En Utilisant Le Modèle Rusle Et Déposition Intégrée Dans Un Sig. Cas Du Bassin Versant De L’oued Isly (Maroc Oriental)

In Morocco, hydric erosion is the main factor in soil degradation. It is a dynamic and very complex phenomenon, linked to natural and anthropic factors that are difficult to control in time and space. Land degradation has visible impacts on the environment and hinders economic and social development. The consequences of erosion, both upstream and downstream of watersheds, are costly for the Moroccan economy. The Oued Isly watershed is an elongated mountan basin with an area of 1312km2. It is part of eastern Morocco. It is located in the south of Oujda city. Wadi Isly is characterized by irregular flow. Its flow increases during the winter and early spring. Extreme flows are recorded after exceptional and very intense rain in the Touissit and Guenfouda mountains. The watershed of Wadi Isly knows currently a very active erosive dynamic that affects all the slopes on both banks of the Oued Isly. Several factors contribute to the processes of soil degradation, such as climatic aggression and anthropogenic action. The objective of this study is to estimate soil losses at the Wadi Isly watershed by the application of the universal soil loss equation (USLE) and the use of GIS and Remote sensing. This study also aims to discuss the amplifying factors of the erosive phenomenon in this semi-arid environment.