Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reliability and Responsiveness of Cardiopulmonary Exercise Testing in Fatigued Persons with Multiple Sclerosis and Low to Mild Disability

Background Peak oxygen uptake (VO2peak) via cardiopulmonary exercise testing is considered the gold standard for testing aerobic capacity in healthy participants and people with various medical conditions. The reliability and responsiveness of cardiopulmonary exercise testing outcomes in persons with MS (PwMS) have not been extensively studied. Objective (1) to investigate the reliability of cardiopulmonary exercise parameters in PwMS; (2) to determine the responsiveness, in terms of the smallest detectable change (SDC), for each parameter. Design Two repeated measurements of cardiopulmonary exercise outcomes were obtained, with a median time interval of 16 days. Methods Thirty-two PwMS suffering from subjective fatigue performed cardiopulmonary exercise tests on a cycle ergometer, to voluntary exhaustion. We calculated the reliability, in terms of the intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC [2,k]; absolute agreement), and the measurement error, in terms of standard error of measurement (SEM) and SDC at individual (SDCindividual) and group level (SDCgroup). Results The ICC for VO2peak was 0.951, with an SEM of 0.131 L∙min−1 and an SDCindividual of 0.364 L∙min−1. When corrected for bodyweight, the ICC of VO2peak was 0.933, with an SEM of 1.7 mL∙kg−1∙min−1 and in an SDCindividual of 4.6 mL∙kg−1∙min−1. Limitations Generalization of our study results is restricted to fatigued PwMS with a low to mild level of disability. Conclusions At individual level, cardiopulmonary exercise testing can be used reliably to assess physical fitness in terms of VO2peak, but less so to determine significant changes. At group level, VO2peak can be reliably used to determine physical fitness status and establish change over time.
Evaluation of Bio-Mos® Mannan Oligosaccharide as a Replacement For Growth Promoting Antibiotics in Diets for Turkeys 1

A study was conducted to evaluate the use of Bio-Mos®, a mannan oligosaccharide derived from the cell wall of yeast, as a potential replacement for growth promoting antibiotics in the diet of growing turkeys. Bio-Mos® was added to nutritionally complete turkey diets at the rate of 0.05 and 0.10%. The growth-promoting antibiotics bambermycins and bacitracin methylene disalicylate (BMD) were added at 2.2 and 55 mg/kg , respectively. One group was fed the diet with no supplements and served as the negative control. Male turkeys of a commercial Large White strain were fed the test diets from day old to 20 wk of age. Birds were weighed at intervals through the trial and samples of birds processed at 20 wk for parts yield and determination of intestinal breaking strength. Body weight, mortality, breast meat yield, and intestinal breaking strength were not significantly (P < 0.05) influenced by dietary treatments. Feed conversion from 0 to 20 wk of age was significantly improved by both BMD and 0.10% Bio-Mos®. The addition of BMD significantly reduced the percentage of abdominal fat in the carcass. These results suggest that Bio-Mos® might be considered as a part of an overall feeding and management program to aid in overcoming potential loss of growth-promot ing antibiotics.
Integrating patterns of thermal tolerance and phenotypic plasticity with population genetics to improve understanding of vulnerability to warming in a widespread copepod

Differences in population vulnerability to warming are defined by spatial patterns in thermal adaptation. These patterns may be driven by natural selection over spatial environmental gradients, but can also be shaped by gene flow, especially in marine taxa with high dispersal potential. Understanding and predicting organismal responses to warming requires disentangling the opposing effects of selection and gene flow. We begin by documenting genetic divergence of thermal tolerance and developmental phenotypic plasticity. Ten populations of the widespread copepod Acartia tonsa were collected from sites across a large thermal gradient, ranging from the Florida Keys to Northern New Brunswick, Canada (spanning over 20 degrees latitude). Thermal performance curves from common garden experiments revealed local adaptation at the sampling range extremes, with thermal tolerance increasing at low latitudes and decreasing at high latitudes. The opposite pattern was observed in phenotypic plasticity, which was strongest at high latitudes. Over a large portion of the sampled range, however, we observed a remarkable lack of differentiation of thermal performance curves. To examine whether this lack of divergence is the result of selection for a generalist performance curve or constraint by gene flow, we analyzed cytochrome oxidase I mtDNA sequences, which revealed abundant genetic diversity and widely-distributed haplotypes. Strong divergence in thermal performance within genetic clades, however, suggests that the pace of thermal adaptation can be relatively rapid. The combined insight from the laboratory physiological experiments and genetic data indicate that gene flow constrains differentiation of thermal performance curves. This balance between gene flow and selection has implications for patterns of vulnerability to warming. Taking both genetic differentiation and phenotypic plasticity into account, our results suggest that local adaptation does not increase vulnerability to warming, and that low latitude populations in general may be more vulnerable to predicted temperature change over the next century.
The age, metallicity and α-element abundance of Galactic globular clusters from single stellar population models

Establishing the reliability with which stellar population parameters can be measured is vital to extragalactic astronomy. Galactic globular clusters (GCs) provide an excellent medium in which to test the consistency of single stellar population (SSP) models as they should be our best analogue to a homogeneous (single) stellar population. Here we present age, metallicity and α-element abundance measurements for 48 Galactic GCs as determined from integrated spectra using Lick indices and SSP models from Thomas, Maraston & Korn, Lee & Worthey and Vazdekis et al. By comparing our new measurements to independent determinations we are able to assess the ability of these SSPs to derive consistent results – a key requirement before application to heterogeneous stellar populations like galaxies. We find that metallicity determinations are extremely robust, showing good agreement for all models examined here, including a range of enhancement methods. Ages and α-element abundances are accurate for a subset of our models, with the caveat that the range of these parameters in Galactic GCs is limited. We are able to show that the application of published Lick index response functions to models with fixed abundance ratios allows us to measure reasonable α-element abundances from a variety of models. We also examine the age–metallicity and [α/Fe]–metallicity relations predicted by SSP models, and characterize the possible effects of varied model horizontal branch morphology on our overall results.
Systematic evaluation of cancer risk associated with rs2292832 in miR-149 and rs895819 in miR-27a: a comprehensive and updated meta-analysis

The aim of this study is to provide a precise quantification for the association between miR-149 T > C (rs2292832) and miR-27a A > G (rs895819) and the risk of cancer. We conducted a systematic literature review and evaluated the quality of included studies based on Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS). Pooled odds ratios (ORs) and corresponding 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) were calculated to assess the strengths of the associations. We identified 40 studies for pooled analyses. Overall, the results demonstrated that the rs2292832 polymorphism was subtly decrease the risk of breast cancer (CT + CC vs TT: OR = 0.83, 95% CI: 0.70–0.98, P = 0.03; CC vs CT + TT: OR = 0.80, 95% CI: 0.68–0.93, P = 0.00), and the rs895819 polymorphism wasassociated with significantly increased cancer risk in the Asian population (AG + GG vs AA: OR = 1.24, 95% CI: 1.03–1.50, P = 0.02) and in colorectal cancer subgroup (GG vs AA: OR = 1.45, 95% CI: 1.10–1.92, P = 0.00; AG + GG vs AA: OR = 1.35, 95% CI: 1.15–1.58, P = 0.00; GG vs AG + AA: OR = 1.36, 95% CI: 1.04–1.77, P = 0.02). In addition, a subtly decreased risk was observed in the Caucasian population and in breast cancer subgroup. In conclusion, the rs2292832 polymorphism was significantly associated with increased breast cancer risk, and the rs895819 polymorphism contributes to the susceptibility of colorectal and breast cancer.
A Genetic Algorithm for Node Localization in Wireless Sensor Networks

A wireless sensor network is a collection of nodes organised in into a cooperative network. Knowing the locations of the wireless sensor nodes is central to accurate information gathering. Conventional location detection technique such as global positioning system (GPS) and infrared are expensive to deploy. This paper proposes the use of a genetic algorithm (GA) to learn the environment impairments within a wireless sensor network for the purpose of localization for data management. For each coordinate in the grid network area, random perturbations of received signal strength (RSS) were supplied to the GA. The GA is able to learn the environment and reduce the possible errors inherent in the RSSI measurement taken per coordinate. Our simulation modeled in MATLAB shows that the GA can achieve acceptable node location detection with the aid of three anchors. Keywords— Wireless Sensor Networks, Genetic Algorithm, Received Signal Strength, Global Positioning System.
Journal of Internet Banking and Commerce the Relationship between E-service Quality and Ease of Use on Customer Relationship Management (crm) Performance: an Empirical Investigation in Jordan Mobile Phone Services

Electronic Customer relationship management performance CRM is a comprehensive business and marketing strategy that integrates people, process, technology and all business activities for attracting and retaining customers over the internet and mobile phone to reduce costs and increase profitability by consolidation the principles of customer loyalty. Therefore, the results of CRM performance are repeat purchase, word of mouth, retention, cross buying, brand loyalty and customer satisfaction. The keen competitive in the communication and mobile phone service market place and the increasing numbers of mobile phone users all over the world has influence the researchers to investigate ease of use and e-service quality as antecedents of electronic customer relationship management performance in mobile phone services industry. 488 questionnaires have returned and analyzed. Four factors been tested to investigate the relationship with CRM performance. The analysis shown that e-service quality, and ease of use was positively significant towards CRM performance. This paper makes a theoretical and methodological contribution and suggestion for the managers in improving their CRM performance in mobile phone service industry.
Gender and Age Differences in Safety-Oriented Personality Style or Phobicentric Psychopathology (SOPS/PCP)

This study investigates differences in gender and age in the Safety-Oriented Personality Style or Phobicentric Psychopathology (SOPS/PCP). Comparisons are made with Neuroticism in the Big 5 or Five Factor Model to further distinguish it from SOPS/PCP. The results show similarity in age but not gender differences between the two constructs. Also, the location of the participants (Canada or USA) was not significant. The study is an initial step in accumulating basic facts about SOPS/PCP.
Irrelevant Features of a Stimulus Can Either Facilitate or Disrupt Performance in a Working Memory Task: The Role of Fluid Intelligence

It has been shown that fluid intelligence (gf) is fundamental to overcome interference due to information of a previously encoded item along a task-relevant domain. However, the biasing effect of task-irrelevant dimensions is still unclear as well as its relation with gf. The present study aimed at clarifying these issues. Gf was assessed in 60 healthy subjects. In a different session, the same subjects performed two versions (letter-detection and spatial) of a three-back working memory task with a set of physically identical stimuli (letters) presented at different locations on the screen. In the letter-detection task, volunteers were asked to match stimuli on the basis of their identity whereas, in the spatial task, they were required to match items on their locations. Cross-domain bias was manipulated by pseudorandomly inserting a match between the current and the three back items on the irrelevant domain. Our findings showed that a task-irrelevant feature of a salient stimulus can actually bias the ongoing performance. We revealed that, at trials in which the current and the three-back items matched on the irrelevant domain, group accuracy was lower (interference). On the other hand, at trials in which the two items matched on both the relevant and irrelevant domains, the group showed an enhancement of the performance (facilitation). Furthermore, we demonstrated that individual differences in fluid intelligence covaries with the ability to override cross-domain interference in that higher gf subjects showed better performance at interference trials than low gf subjects. Altogether, our findings suggest that stimulus features irrelevant to the task can affect cognitive performance along the relevant domain and that gf plays an important role in protecting relevant memory contents from the hampering effect of such a bias.
Deformable Part Models with Individual Part Scaling

Current deformable part models such as the ones introduced by Felzenszwalb et al. let the parts deform only at a fixed predetermined scale relative to that of the root of the models (typically at twice the resolution). They do so because it allows them to find the optimal placement of each part efficiently, using a fast 2D distance transform algorithm. We demonstrate in this paper that if one settles for approximately optimal placements, it is possible to efficiently deform the parts across scales as well. Allowing parts to move in 3D increases the expressivity of the models, allowing them to compensate for a wider class of deformations, and might approximate an increase in the scanning resolution. As the number of parameters remains (nearly) constant, overfitting is not a problem.
The Role of Endophytic Fungi in the Anticancer Activity of Morinda citrifolia Linn. (Noni)

We hypothesize that the fungal endophytes of noni may possibly play a role in its overall pharmacological repertoire, especially since the perceived efficacy of the fruit in ethnomedicinal use is associated with the fermented juice. The foremost goal of this study is to explore the role of endophyte-derived secondary metabolites in the purported anticancer properties of noni. To that end, culturable endophytic fungi resident within the healthy leaves and fruit of the plant were isolated and identified by molecular sequence analysis of the 5.8S gene and internal transcribed spacers (ITS). Purified organisms were subjected to in vitro fermentation in malt extract broth for 8 weeks under anaerobic conditions at room temperature (25°C), in order to simulate the conditions under which traditional fermented noni juice is prepared. The cytotoxic potential of organic extracts derived from the fermented broths of individual endophytes was then tested against three major cancers that afflict humans. Twelve distinct endophytic fungal species were obtained from the leaves and 3 from the fruit. Three of the leaf endophytes inhibited the growth of human carcinoma cell lines LU-1 (lung), PC-3 (prostate), and MCF-7 (breast) with IC50 values of ≤10 μg/mL.
The strange history of B functions or how theoretical chemists and mathematicians do (not) interact

B functions are a class of relatively complicated exponentially decaying basis functions. Because the molecular multicenter integrals of the much simpler Slater-type functions are notoriously difficult, it is not at all obvious why B functions should offer any advantages. However, B functions have Fourier transforms of exceptional simplicity, which greatly simplifies many of their molecular multicenter integrals. This article discusses the historical development of B functions from the perspective of the interaction between mathematics and theoretical chemistry, which traditionally has not been very good. Nevertheless, future progress in theoretical chemistry depends very much on a fertile interaction with neighboring disciplines. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Quantum Chem, 2009
Implications of high species turnover on the south-western Australian sandplains

Species turnover and its components related to replacement and nestedness form a significant element of diversity that is historically poorly accounted for in conservation planning. To inform biodiversity conservation and contribute to a broader understanding of patterns in species turnover, we undertook a floristic survey of 160 plots along an 870 km transect across oligotrophic sandplains, extending from the mesic south coast to the arid interior of south-western Australia. A nested survey design was employed to sample distances along the transect as evenly as possible. Species turnover was correlated with geographic distance at both regional and local scales, consistent with dispersal limitation being a significant driver of species turnover. When controlled for species richness, species replacement was found to be the dominant component of species turnover and was uniformly high across the transect, uncorrelated with either climatic or edaphic factors. This high replacement rate, well documented in the mega-diverse south-west, appears to also be a consistent feature of arid zone vegetation systems despite a decrease in overall species richness. Species turnover increased rapidly with increasing extent along the transect reaching an asymptote at ca. 50 km. These findings are consistent with earlier work in sandplain and mallee vegetation in the south-west and suggests reserve based conservation strategies are unlikely to be practicable in the south-western Australia sandplains when communities are defined by species incidence rather than dominance.
In the company of my sister-colleagues: professional counterspaces for African American women student affairs administrators

ABSTRACT Although conceptual models exist that describe the role of counterspaces in promoting well-being among marginalised individuals, not enough is known about the composition of professional counterspaces for Black women employed in higher education. The African American Women’s Summit (AAWS) is a national professional development programme in the U.S. known as a professional counterspace. Semi-structured interviews were used in this study to explore the experiences of seven African American women student affairs administrators who consistently participated in the AAWS between 2006 and 2011. Participants described the AAWS as a culturally homogeneous experience, infused with a variety of culturally responsive resources, that was delivered via a culturally intentional curriculum. Included is a discussion of the characteristics of professional counterspaces situated in Black feminist thought and a Counterspace conceptual model, which are the frameworks that grounded this particular inquiry. Areas of future praxis are also presented.
Cooling down Lévy flights

Let L(t) be a Lévy flights process with a stability index α ∊ (0, 2), and U be an external multi-well potential. A jump diffusion Z satisfying a stochastic differential equation dZ(t) = −U′(Z(t−)) dt + σ(t) dL(t) describes an evolution of a Lévy particle of an ‘instant scale’ σ(t) in an external force field. The scale is supposed to decrease polynomially fast, i.e. σ(t) ≈ t−θ for some θ > 0. We discover two different decrease regimes. If θ < 1/α (slow cooling), the jump diffusion Z(t) has a non-trivial limiting distribution as t → ∞, which is concentrated at the potential's local minima. If θ > 1/α (fast cooling), the Lévy particle gets trapped in one of the potential wells.
Social location matters: Inequality in work and family life courses at the intersection of gender and race

Which constraints and privileges do members of empowered or disempowered groups face in combining work and family life courses? To address this timely and highly relevant question, we empirically analyze work and family life courses at the intersection of gender and race in the United States. We use longitudinal data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY) to study parallel work-family trajectories of white and African American men and women combining an intersectional comparison with a quantitative life course perspective. Results from recent innovations in sequence analysis including Mantel coefficients and multichannel sequence analysis show distinct work-family patterns for the four groups. Overall the association between work and family life courses for white men is weakest. They can combine any type of family trajectories with all possible work careers. In contrast, for black men high prestige careers are only accessible if they are in stable relationships with maximum one child. For black women we find the strongest association between family lives and careers characterized by high occupational prestige almost never occur for them. For white women the highest prestige work-family life course pattern goes along with late parenthood and / or childlessness. We contribute to the literature by identifying complex population level regularities in intersectional inequalities in longitudinal work and family life courses. Uncovering complex population level regularities that are not immediately visible are an important precondition for assessing the causes and consequences of social inequality in work-family life courses.
The Gaussian Z-Interference Channel with Rate-Constrained Conferencing Decoders

We derive achievable rate regions for a 2-user Gaussian Z-interference channel with conferencing decoders. We identify different cases where the rate-limitedness of the conference link from the interference-free receiver to the interfered receiver affects the conferencing strategy as well as the achievable rate region. Furthermore, an outer bound to the capacity region based on cut-set and genie-aided bounds is presented.
Performance Evaluation of DVMRP, ODMRP & PIM-DM Routing Protocol on the Basis of Quality of Service

Multicasting is intended for group-oriented communication services. One particularly challenging environment for multicast is a Mobile Ad-Hoc Network (MANET) where, the network topology can change randomly and rapidly, at unpredictable times. As a result, several specific multicast routing protocols for MANET have been proposed. Multicast approaches can generally be categories into two: proactive and On-Demand. The proactive approaches pre-computed and maintains routes to all nodes, including nodes to which no packets are being sent. The on-demand approach creates the routes between nodes that are solely determined when they are explicitly needed to route packets. Multicasting protocols can also be categorized based on the structure used to forward multicast packets which are tree and mesh based. The uses of on demand routing approaches have been shown to have significantly benefits in terms of reducing the routing protocol’s overhead. Therefore, this paper focuses on performance of tree and mesh based multicast routing protocols over MANET. This paper, evaluates well alone multicast routing protocol DVMRP, ODMRP & PIM-DM under a wide range network condition & realistic scenario more a specifically the concern is to categorized a merit tree & mesh based protocol over various ranges of MANET scenario based on representative performance metric . The simulation environment Qualnet 5.0. As a result this work investigates the relative strength weakness and applicability of each protocol to diverse situation.