Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ice wear and abrasion of marine concrete: design of experimental apparatus and procedures

Abrasion of marine concrete structures from passing ice is an ongoing problem that leads to loss of structural integrity over time. The purpose of this study is to develop new experimental approaches and apparatus that would allow long term testing of ice wear on concrete samples as a prelude to a larger study that will investigate the wear of concrete by ice. This thesis has drawn on the experiences of previous work to identify the important issues, including those areas where different approaches may be beneficial. A review has been completed of previously used tests setups, contributing factors and areas of uncertainty. This has resulted in two conceptual designs that approach the problem from slightly different angles. The first is a lab scale apparatus that aims to standardize the testing methods for concrete wear due to ice. The conceptual design of a new apparatus will allow wide ranging load applications, long test durations and the inclusion of surrounding water. The second is an in-situ apparatus that has been developed to allow direct comparison between concrete mixtures in terms of wear resistance under realistic but uncontrolled ice conditions. Pilot experiments have been completed and reviewed to refine the initial concept and to determine effective means of abrasion measurement. These experiments provided insight into important features of the designed apparatus, trial results from measurements of iceinduced wear on concrete and useful information on concrete wear experiments in general.
Concentration of some heavy metals in organically grown primitive, old and modern wheat genotypes: Implications for human health

The concentration of six HMs (Cd, Cr, Co, Pb, Hg and Ni) was analysed in 321 organically grown winter and spring wheat genotypes from six genotype groups, i.e. selections, old landraces, primitive wheat, spelt, old cultivars and cultivars. Also the potential risk of individual toxic HM to human health was estimated by using the Hazard Quotient (HQ). Significantly the lowest grain concentration of Cd was found in primitive wheat as compared to all other investigated genotype groups. Intake of HM by consumption of whole wheat grain was not found to pose a health risk to human for any of the investigated genotype groups. The bio-concentration factor of Cd for the different genotype groups indicated a lower ability to accumulate Cd for primitive wheat as compared to other genotype groups. The primitive wheat was found the most promising and might be of interest in future wheat breeding programs to develop wheat genotypes with low HMs concentration in the grain.
Prevention-oriented practice of Iranian senior dental students.

OBJECTIVES To investigate self-reported preventive practice of Iranian senior dental students in dental caries management. SUBJECTS AND METHODS To obtain an estimated sample size of 250 subjects, seven state dental schools were selected based on a stratified random sampling approach. All the senior dental students (n = 327) were asked to voluntarily fill in a self-administered pre-tested questionnaire during the spring term in 2005. In the questionnaire two hypothetical patient cases (a high-risk and a low-risk patient) were presented and the students were asked to express their conceptions on a five-point Likert scale about including each of nine given alternatives in the patients' treatment plans. The respondents' self-reported oral self-care (OSC), preventive knowledge, attitude towards prevention and self-perceived competency in giving preventive care were also assessed. Chi-squared test and logistic regression model served for statistical analyses. RESULTS A total of 270 students filled in the questionnaire (response rate = 82%). Acquiring high scores of preventive practice as assessed by patient cases was found to be more frequent among those reporting recommended OSC (P = 0.007) and those with higher attitude scores (P < 0.001). Also, those reporting being competent in giving preventive care had higher scores of preventive practice compared with the others (P = 0.02). In the regression model, recommended OSC (P = 0.05, OR = 1.9) and positive attitudes towards preventive dentistry (P = 0.001, OR = 3.3) showed significant association with acquiring highest scores of preventive practice. CONCLUSION To improve their preventive practice in the future, more emphasis should be placed on the dental students' own oral health behaviour and attitudes related to it.
Retinal Structural Changes in Systemic Arterial Hypertension: An OCT Study

Purpose To assess retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL), ganglion cell complex (GCC), and macular thickness changes in young adults with systemic arterial hypertension. Methods This study included 80 young patients (age 23.8 ± 2.8 years) with systemic hypertension (sHT) without any known systemic or ocular disease and 80 age-matched (23.5 ± 2.1 years) healthy controls. Retinal nerve fiber layer thickness, macular thickness, and GCC thickness were measured with spectral-domain optical coherence tomography. Results Mean disease duration was 3.45 ± 1.48 years (range 2-10). Differences in intraocular pressure, body mass index, axial length, and spherical equivalent between the groups were insignificant (p>0.05). The differences in RNFL thickness did not differ between the groups. Patients with sHT had significantly lower central macular thickness (p = 0.037), inner superior macular thickness (p = 0.045), and outer temporal superior and outer temporal inferior GCC (p<0.001 for both). The RNFL thickness did not differ significantly in all quadrants between the groups (p>0.05). Systolic and diastolic blood pressure were significantly correlated with inner temporal superior and inner temporal inferior GCC thickness in a negative manner (p<0.05 for all). Conclusions Ganglion cell complex thickness decrease is possibly a better retinal marker for hypertensive changes with respect to RNFL and macular thickness.
Epidemiology of cancer of the ovary

One hundred‐fifty ovarian cancer patients plus eight with a diagnosis other than adenocarcinoma and endometrioid cancers and 300 age‐matched control patients were interviewed in New York hospitals. There were no essential differences in marital status, nor in other marital or pregnancy factors. The study suggested a trend for more ovarian cancer patients to have dysmenorrhea. These data may be artifactitious and further studies in this area are indicated. Among the gynecologic findings, the ovarian cancer patient gave a more frequent history of heavy menstrual bleeding and earlier menopause than the control group. A comparison of mortality rates in Americans and Japanese Americans suggests possible differences in the etiologic background of pre‐ and postmenopausal ovarian cancer patients. The increase of ovarian cancer among Japanese immigrants to the U.S. represents a primary lead to the etiology of this type of cancer. It is suggested that further work done on Japanese, Japanese‐Americans, and other native Americans in terms of the effect of diet on steroids with particular reference to their effect on various target organs.
Altered distribution of interstitial cells and innervation in the rat urinary bladder following spinal cord injury

Changes in the distribution of interstitial cells (IC) are reportedly associated with dysfunctional bladder. This study investigated whether spinal cord injury (SCI) resulted in changes to IC subpopulations (vimentin‐positive with the ultrastructural profile of IC), smooth muscle and nerves within the bladder wall and correlated cellular remodelling with functional properties. Bladders from SCI (T8/9 transection) and sham‐operated rats 5 weeks post‐injury were used for ex vivo pressure–volume experiments or processed for morphological analysis with transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and light/confocal microscopy. Pressure‐volume relationships revealed low‐pressure, hypercompliance in SCI bladders indicative of decompensation. Extensive networks of vimentin‐positive IC were typical in sham lamina propria and detrusor but were markedly reduced post‐SCI; semi‐quantitative analysis showed significant reduction. Nerves labelled with anti‐neurofilament and anti‐vAChT were notably decreased post‐SCI. TEM revealed lamina propria IC and detrusor IC which formed close synaptic‐like contacts with vesicle‐containing nerve varicosities in shams. Lamina propria and detrusor IC were ultrastructurally damaged post‐SCI with retracted/lost cell processes and were adjacent to areas of cellular debris and neuronal degradation. Smooth muscle hypertrophy was common to SCI tissues. In conclusion, IC populations in bladder wall were decreased 5 weeks post‐SCI, accompanied with reduced innervation, smooth muscle hypertrophy and increased compliance. These novel findings indicate that bladder wall remodelling post‐SCI affects the integrity of interactions between smooth muscle, nerves and IC, with compromised IC populations. Correlation between IC reduction and a hypercompliant phenotype suggests that disruption to bladder IC contribute to pathophysiological processes underpinning the dysfunctional SCI bladder.
Learning Semantic Representations in a Bigram Language Model

This paper investigates the extraction of semantic representations from bigrams. The major obstacle to this objective is that while these word to word dependencies do contain a semantic component, other factors, e.g. syntax, play a much stronger role. An effective solution will therefore require some means of isolating semantic structure from the remainder. Here, the possibility of modelling semantic dependencies within the bigram in terms of the similarity of the two words is explored. A model based on this assumption of semantic coherence is contrasted and combined with a relaxed model lacking this assumption. The induced representations are evaluated in terms of the correlation of predicted similarities to a dataset of noun-verb similarity ratings gathered in an online experiment. The results show that the coherence assumption can be used to induce semantic representations, and that the combined model, which breaks the dependencies down into a semantic and a non-semantic component, achieves the best performance.
Non-pharmacologic interventions to improve sleep of medicine inpatients: a controlled study

ABSTRACT Background: Sleep quality in hospitalized medicine patients is poor, with environmental factors among the most frequently cited reasons. Objective: We tested the efficacy of a non-pharmacologic intervention on the sleep quality of medicine inpatients. Design/Methods: A controlled study to evaluate our non-pharmacologic multidisciplinary ‘TUCK-in’ protocol (which includes timed lights-off periods, minimizing night-time noise, distribution of earplugs at bedtime, cued toileting before bedtime, and identification and reduction of modifiable interruptions) was deployed on two of five identical medicine wards. Randomization was at the level of the ward. The main outcome measure was self-reported duration of night-time sleep within 48 hours prior to discharge. Additional outcome measures included the Verran–Snyder-Halpern (VSH) Sleep Score and inpatient sleep pharmaceutical use. Results: Self-reported duration of night-time sleep (median 5.0 vs. 5.0 hours, p = 0.29) and daytime sleep (1.0 versus 0.5 hours, p = 0.43) did not differ between the 40 intervention patients and the 41 control patients (p = 0.13 on multivariate analysis). Cumulative VSH sleep disturbance (median 420 versus 359, p = 0.19), efficacy (median 169 versus 192, p = 0.29), or supplementation (median 97 versus 100, p = 0.51) scales were also not different between study arms. Conclusions: Although staff reported the protocol to be achievable and worthwhile, there were no significant differences in any of the outcomes between intervention and control patients.
Transgenerational plasticity of reproduction depends on rate of warming across generations

Predicting the impacts of climate change to biological systems requires an understanding of the ability for species to acclimate to the projected environmental change through phenotypic plasticity. Determining the effects of higher temperatures on individual performance is made more complex by the potential for environmental conditions experienced in previous and current generations to independently affect phenotypic responses to high temperatures. We used a model coral reef fish (Acanthochromis polyacanthus) to investigate the influence of thermal conditions experienced by two generations on reproductive output and the quality of offspring produced by adults. We found that more gradual warming over two generations, +1.5°C in the first generation and then +3.0°C in the second generation, resulted in greater plasticity of reproductive attributes, compared to fish that experienced the same increase in one generation. Reproduction ceased at the projected future summer temperature (31.5°C) when fish experienced +3.0°C for two generations. Additionally, we found that transgenerational plasticity to +1.5°C induced full restoration of thermally affected reproductive and offspring attributes, which was not possible with developmental plasticity alone. Our results suggest that transgenerational effects differ depending on the absolute thermal change and in which life stage the thermal change is experienced.
On the Passage From Local to Global in Number Theory

Would a reader be able to predict the branch of mathematics that is the subject of this article if its title had not included the phrase “in Number Theory”? The distinction “local” versus “global”, with various connotations, has found a home in almost every part of mathematics, local problems being often a stepping-stone to the more difficult global problems. To illustrate what the earthy geometric terms local and global signify in Number Theory, let us consider any Diophantine equation, say,
Cantor meets Scott: semantic foundations for probabilistic networks

ProbNetKAT is a probabilistic extension of NetKAT with a denotational semantics based on Markov kernels. The language is expressive enough to generate continuous distributions, which raises the question of how to compute effectively in the language. This paper gives an new characterization of ProbNetKAT’s semantics using domain theory, which provides the foundation needed to build a practical implementation. We show how to use the semantics to approximate the behavior of arbitrary ProbNetKAT programs using distributions with finite support. We develop a prototype implementation and show how to use it to solve a variety of problems including characterizing the expected congestion induced by different routing schemes and reasoning probabilistically about reachability in a network.
Xylose Monomer and Oligomer Yields for Uncatalyzed Hydrolysis of Sugarcane Bagasse Hemicellulose at Varying Solids Concentration

Pretreatment is an essential, but expensive, step in biologically converting biomass to fuels and chemicals, and acids added or released during the reaction hydrolyze hemicellulose to sugars and expose cellulose for enzymatic digestion with good yields. Pretreatment by liquid flow past solids increases hemicellulose removal yields particularly at higher flow rates, but current first-order homogeneous kinetic models indicate that the amount of water should not be important. However, these models suffer from inconsistencies, and the effect of varying sugarcane bagasse concentrations on xylose monomer and oligomer yields was experimentally measured in a batch reactor without adding acids or other chemicals at 200 °C. A greater drop in pH was observed at higher solids concentrations, as anticipated. Furthermore, only about 7−13% of the total xylose recovered in solution was as monomers at the maximum total xylose yield point, with the rest being oligomers, and although monomer yields could be increased at lon.
Diabetes Mellitus and Glucagon Alter Ouabain-Sensitive Na+-K+-ATPase in Rat Small Intestine

Na+-K+-ATPase provides the driving force for cellular Na+ transport and exists in multiple isoforms that differ in ouabain sensitivities. We report that the Ki for ouabain inhibition of glucose-evoked short-circuit current, determined in intact rat ileal mucosa mounted in Ussing chambers, is higher in streptozocin-induced chronically diabetic rats than in age–matched controls. The changes in ouabain sensitivity seen in diabetes also occurred when intact ileum of age-matched controls was incubated in vitro with 2.8 × 10−5 M glucagon for at least 80 min. The effect of glucagon was blocked by cycloheximide, indicating a role for protein synthesis. This suggests that changes in ouabain sensitivity seen in diabetes are produced by glucagon, the serum concentration of which increases in diabetes. Ouabain-dependent phosphorylation of Na+-K+-ATPase (backdoor phosphorylation) revealed a higher Km for phosphate in intestinal basolateral membranes obtained from diabetic rats compared with age-matched controls, again confirming a decrease in ouabain sensitivity. Furthermore, the mRNA encoding the α1-isoform was upregulated 2.6-fold in chronically diabetic intestines. This suggests that the ouabain sensitivity seen during diabetes may be due to upregulation of the α1-isoform, known to be less sensitive to ouabain than the other isoforms.
Herpes Simplex Virus Immediate-Early Protein ICP22 Triggers Loss of Serine 2-Phosphorylated RNA Polymerase II

ABSTRACT During eukaryotic mRNA transcription, the synthetic activity and mRNA processing factor interactions of RNA polymerase II (RNAP II) are regulated by phosphorylation of its carboxyl-terminal domain (CTD), with modification occurring primarily on serines 2 and 5 of the CTD. We previously showed that herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) infection rapidly triggers the loss of RNAP II forms bearing serine 2 phosphorylation (Ser-2P RNAP II). Here we show that the HSV-1 immediate-early (IE) protein ICP22 is responsible for this effect during the IE phase of infection. This activity does not require the viral UL13 protein kinase, which is required for several other regulatory functions of ICP22. Additionally, we show that transient expression of ICP22 can trigger the loss of Ser-2P RNAP II in transfected cells. Thus, the ability of ICP22 to cause the loss of Ser-2 RNAP II does not require other viral factors or the context of the infected cell. Expression of the HSV-1 ICP22-related protein US1.5, which corresponds to residues 147 to 420 of ICP22, also triggers a loss of Ser-2P RNAP II in transfected cells, whereas expression of the varicella-zoster virus ICP22 homolog, ORF63, does not. Our study also provides evidence for a second, viral late gene-dependent pathway that triggers loss of Ser-2P RNAP II in infected cells, consistent with the recent work of Dai-Ju et al. (J. Q. Dai-Ju, L. Li, L. A. Johnson, and R. M. Sandri-Goldin, J. Virol. 80:3567-3581, 2006). Therefore, it appears that HSV-1 has evolved redundant mechanisms for triggering the loss of a specific phosphorylated form of RNAP II.
AnkyrinG Is Required for Clustering of Voltage-gated Na Channels at Axon Initial Segments and for Normal Action Potential Firing

Voltage-gated sodium channels (NaCh) are colocalized with isoforms of the membrane-skeletal protein ankyrinG at axon initial segments, nodes of Ranvier, and postsynaptic folds of the mammalian neuromuscular junction. The role of ankyrinG in directing NaCh localization to axon initial segments was evaluated by region-specific knockout of ankyrinG in the mouse cerebellum. Mutant mice exhibited a progressive ataxia beginning around postnatal day P16 and subsequent loss of Purkinje neurons. In mutant mouse cerebella, NaCh were absent from axon initial segments of granule cell neurons, and Purkinje cells showed deficiencies in their ability to initiate action potentials and support rapid, repetitive firing. Neurofascin, a member of the L1CAM family of ankyrin-binding cell adhesion molecules, also exhibited impaired localization to initial segments of Purkinje cell neurons. These results demonstrate that ankyrinG is essential for clustering NaCh and neurofascin at axon initial segments and is required for physiological levels of sodium channel activity.
Temperature Controlled Perfect Absorber Based on Metal-Superconductor-Metal Square Array

The optical properties of a single-band near-perfect absorber are studied numerically by using a finite element method in conjunction with a two-fluid model. Based on a metal-superconductor-metal (MSM) scheme, the proposed structure comprises a lossless superconducting layer sandwiched by a silver square array and ground silver plane. The simulation results clearly show that near-perfect absorption band can be realized and promptly tuned from green light to red light by the temperature of the system. The designed MSM absorber also presents the characteristics of polarization insensitivity and wide-angle incidence up to 50 degree. This prompt manipulation of the near-perfect absorption band makes this MSM absorber a great potential candidate when designing an in-situ absorption band selector in the visible light wavelength regime.
Evaluation of 12 blood glucose monitoring systems for self-testing: system accuracy and measurement reproducibility.

BACKGROUND Systems for self-monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG) have to provide accurate and reproducible blood glucose (BG) values in order to ensure adequate therapeutic decisions by people with diabetes. MATERIALS AND METHODS Twelve SMBG systems were compared in a standardized manner under controlled laboratory conditions: nine systems were available on the German market and were purchased from a local pharmacy, and three systems were obtained from the manufacturer (two systems were available on the U.S. market, and one system was not yet introduced to the German market). System accuracy was evaluated following DIN EN ISO (International Organization for Standardization) 15197:2003. In addition, measurement reproducibility was assessed following a modified TNO (Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research) procedure. Comparison measurements were performed with either the glucose oxidase method (YSI 2300 STAT Plus™ glucose analyzer; YSI Life Sciences, Yellow Springs, OH) or the hexokinase method (cobas(®) c111; Roche Diagnostics GmbH, Mannheim, Germany) according to the manufacturer's measurement procedure. RESULTS The 12 evaluated systems showed between 71.5% and 100% of the measurement results within the required system accuracy limits. Ten systems fulfilled with the evaluated test strip lot minimum accuracy requirements specified by DIN EN ISO 15197:2003. In addition, accuracy limits of the recently published revision ISO 15197:2013 were applied and showed between 54.5% and 100% of the systems' measurement results within the required accuracy limits. Regarding measurement reproducibility, each of the 12 tested systems met the applied performance criteria. CONCLUSIONS In summary, 83% of the systems fulfilled with the evaluated test strip lot minimum system accuracy requirements of DIN EN ISO 15197:2003. Each of the tested systems showed acceptable measurement reproducibility. In order to ensure sufficient measurement quality of each distributed test strip lot, regular evaluations are required.