Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Nigella sativa Fixed and Essential Oil Supplementation Modulates Hyperglycemia and Allied Complications in Streptozotocin-Induced Diabetes Mellitus

In the recent era, diabetes mellitus has emerged as one of the significant threats to public health and this situation demands the attention of the researchers and allied stakeholders. Dietary regimens using functional and nutraceutical foods are gaining wide range of acceptance and some traditional medicinal plants are of considerable importance. The main objective of this instant study was to explore the antidiabetic potential of Nigella sativa fixed oil (NSFO) and essential oil (NSEO). Three experimental groups of rats received diets during the entire study duration, that is, D1 (control), D2 (NSFO: 4.0%), and D3 (NSEO: 0.30%). Experimental diets (NSFO & NSEO) modulated the lipid profile, while decreasing the antioxidant damage. However, production of free radicals, that is, MDA, and conjugated dienes increased by 59.00 and 33.63%, respectively, in control. On the contrary, NSFO and NSEO reduced the MDA levels by 11.54 and 26.86% and the conjugated dienes levels by 32.53 and 38.39%, respectively. N. sativa oils improved the health and showed some promising anti-diabetic results.
The role of prosodic sensitivity in children’s reading development

While the critical importance of phonological awareness (segmental phonology) to reading ability is well established, the potential role of prosody (suprasegmental phonology) in reading development has only recently been explored. This study examined the relationship between children’s prosodic skills and reading ability. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses examined the unique contribution of word-level and phrase-level prosodic skills to the prediction of three concurrent measures of reading ability in 81 fourth-grade children (mean age 9;3 years). After controlling for phonological awareness and general rhythmic sensitivity, children’s prosodic skills predicted unique variation in word-reading accuracy and in reading comprehension. Phrase-level prosodic skills, assessed by means of an reiterative speech task, predicted unique variance in reading comprehension, after controlling for word reading accuracy, phonological awareness, and general rhythmic sensitivity. These results add to the growing body of evidence of the importance of prosodic skills in reading development.
Development of English Skills Need Not Suffer as a Result of Immersion: Grades 1 and 2 Writing Assessment in a Korean/English Two‐Way Immersion Program

A long-time detractor of immersion education has been the concern that a substantial proportion of teaching in and about a language other than English might potentially lead to irreparable damage to immersion students' development in English and, hence, their ability to function in an English-dominant society. The assessment in this article, however, indicates that the English language development of immersion students should not be a source of concern. Specifically, this study evaluates narrative English writing skills (coherence, grammar, content, and text length) evidenced by two groups in the Korean/English Two-Way Immersion Program during an early phase of elementary immersion (K to grade 2) in the United States: One group consists of Korean-American second-generation children and the other consists of English-dominant non-Korean-American students. The results show that the English writing skills are similar among the three second-grade groups in the experiment: the two immersion groups and the English-proficient students from typical all-English classes. The results indicate that comparable English-writing skills show up as early as the second grade (i.e., after 3 years of two-way immersion education starting from kindergarten). Additionally, the second-graders are found to perform significantly better than the first graders. The results of the study increase our understanding of immersion students' English development in light of the following unique features of this research: the less typical academic language combination (Korean/English), the study of writing development in earlier school grades, and the testing procedure developed and used.
Shape Optimization With Surface-Mapped CPPNs

Shape optimization techniques are becoming increasingly important in design and engineering. This growing significance reflects the need to exploit advances in digital fabrication technologies, and the desire to create new types of surface designs for various engineering applications. Evolutionary algorithms (EAs) offer several key advantages for shape optimization, but they can also be restricted, especially as design problems scale up in size. A key challenge for evolutionary shape optimization is to overcome these challenges in order to apply EAs to large-scale, “real-world” engineering problems. This paper presents a new evolutionary approach to shape optimization using what we call “surface-mapped compositional pattern producing networks (CPPNs). ” Our method outperforms a state-of-the-art gradient-based method on a simple benchmark problem, and scales well as degrees of freedom are added to the design problem. Our results demonstrate that surface-mapped CPPNs offer practical ways of approaching large-scale, real-world engineering problems with EAs, opening up exciting new opportunities for engineering design.
Mapping the expansion of Google's serving infrastructure

Modern content-distribution networks both provide bulk content and act as "serving infrastructure" for web services in order to reduce user-perceived latency. Serving infrastructures such as Google's are now critical to the online economy, making it imperative to understand their size, geographic distribution, and growth strategies. To this end, we develop techniques that enumerate IP addresses of servers in these infrastructures, find their geographic location, and identify the association between clients and clusters of servers. While general techniques for server enumeration and geolocation can exhibit large error, our techniques exploit the design and mechanisms of serving infrastructure to improve accuracy. We use the EDNS-client-subnet DNS extension to measure which clients a service maps to which of its serving sites. We devise a novel technique that uses this mapping to geolocate servers by combining noisy information about client locations with speed-of-light constraints. We demonstrate that this technique substantially improves geolocation accuracy relative to existing approaches. We also cluster server IP addresses into physical sites by measuring RTTs and adapting the cluster thresholds dynamically. Google's serving infrastructure has grown dramatically in the ten months, and we use our methods to chart its growth and understand its content serving strategy. We find that the number of Google serving sites has increased more than sevenfold, and most of the growth has occurred by placing servers in large and small ISPs across the world, not by expanding Google's backbone.
El mobbing o acoso moral en el trabajo

Los expertos en salud prevén un incremento del número de afectados por patologías mentales debido a ciertas condiciones de trabajo que tienen lugar actualmente en nuestra sociedad. Se han producido grandes cambios tanto en el mercado de trabajo como fuera de él que apuntan a un protagonismo cada vez mayor de éste como uno de los principales problemas de salud laboral. En relación con el mercado de trabajo, se ha producido una terciarización de la economía con un predominio creciente del sector servicios, la sustitución progresiva del trabajo manual por el del conocimiento del sector servicios, la sustitución progresiva del trabajo manual por el del conocimiento, la introducción de nuevas tecnologías que cambian cada vez más rápidamente, mientras la inestabilidad laboral y la fuerte competitividad son la norma. Estos cambios en el mercado de trabajo suponen la exposición a factores de riesgo que hasta hace pocos años tenían escasa relevancia. El estudio «Mental health in the workplace: introduction», realizado en octubre de 2000 por la Organización Internacional del Trabajo (OIT) mostró un aumento del nivel de estrés y de depresión en Europa y EE.UU. a lo largo de la última década, hasta el punto de que uno de cada diez trabajadores sufre depresión, ansiedad estrés o cansancio, que en ciertos casos lleva al desempleo y a la hospitalización. El mobbing se encuentra dentro del grupo de los llamados riesgos sicosociales que son los que menor tratamiento legislativo han tenido hasta ahora en nuestro ordenamiento jurídico.
A Study of Students’ Learning Styles in a Medical Institution in Pakistan

Objectives: To determine the learning styles of medical students in a medical college in Pakistan and to match the learning styles of students with the instructional strategies in clinical classes. Methods: The cross-sectional descriptive study involved medical students of the Islamic International Medical College (IIMC), in clinical classes. Both male and female students were administered a questionnaire based on Kolb’s learning style inventory. Instructions to fill the questionnaire were given verbally to all students. Results: Majority of students had the accommodators learning style (N=83, 54.6%) while convergers, divergers and assimilators were less in number. The learning scheme consists mainly of lecture based learning (42 hours per week) and case based learning (31 hours per week) Conclusions: Majority of students of clinical classes of IIMC had the accommodator learning style, followed by converger, diverger, and assimilator learning styles. The learning scheme of IIMC provided learning opportunities for all styles of learning and consisted of adequate instructional strategies. (Rawal Med J 2008;33:239-241).
Family Endowments and the Achievement of Young Children with Special Reference to the Underclass

This paper investigates the factors underlying cognitive achievement among young children using a Becker-Tomes model of intergenerational transmission adapted to incorporate transmission of a family's cultural orientation toward achievement. The model relates a child's achievement to parental income and cognitive skills as well as to grandparent's income and education. Using data on PPVT scores for children born to women in the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth, we find large and significant positive effects of the mother's AFQT score, her schooling, and the grandparents' schooling. We also find that increases in the mother's hours at work bear significant negative effects on her child's achievement. This effect is only partially compensated for by higher money income among these young children. A mother's welfare dependence is associated with a reduction in her child's PPVT score, an effect that is not explained by poverty persistence. Evidence that welfare participation signals transmission of low achievement orientation while variables such as maternal education signal positive values is reinforced through the use of a mediating variable measuring the time a mother spends reading to her children.
What Are Complex eHealth Innovations and How Do You Measure Them?

Summary Objectives: eHealth and innovation are often regarded as synonyms – not least because eHealth technologies and applications are new to their users. This position paper challenges this view and aims at exploring the nature of eHealth innovation against the background of common definitions of innovation and facts from the biomedical and health informatics literature. A good understanding of what constitutes innovative eHealth developments allows the degree of innovation to be measured and interpreted. Methods: To this end, relevant biomedical and health informatics literature was searched mainly in Medline and ACM digital library. This paper presents seven facts about implementing and applying new eHealth developments hereby drawing on the experience published in the literature. Results: The facts are: 1. eHealth innovation is relative. 2. Advanced clinical practice is the yardstick. 3. Only used and usable eHealth technology can give birth to eHealth innovatio. 4. One new single eHealth function does not make a complex eHealth innovation. 5. eHealth innovation is more evolution than revolution. 6. eHealth innovation is often triggered behind the scenes; and 7. There is no eHealth innovation without sociocultural change. Conclusions: The main conclusion of the seven facts is that eHealth innovations have many ingredients: newness, availability, advanced clinical practice with proven outcomes, use and usability, the supporting environment, other context factors and the stakeholder perspectives. Measuring eHealth innovation is thus a complex matter. To this end we propose the development of a composite score that expresses comprehensively the nature of eHealth innovation and that breaks down its complexity into the three dimensions: i) eHealth adoption, ii) partnership with advanced clinical practice, and iii) use and usability of eHealth. In order to better understand the momentum and mechanisms behind eHealth innovation the fourth dimension, iv) eHealth supporting services and means, needs to be studied. Conceptualising appropriate measurement instruments also requires eHealth innovation to be distinguished from eHealth sophistication, performance and quality, although innovation is intertwined with these concepts. The demanding effort for defining eHealth innovation and measuring it properly seem worthwhile and promise advances in creating better systems. This paper thus intends to stimulate the necessary discussion.
Brief report: parental burden and grief one year after the birth of a child with a congenital anomaly.

OBJECTIVE To assess parental burden and grief one year after having a child with a congenital anomaly. METHOD Twenty-five couples completed the Impact on Family Scale (IFS) and 22 couples answered the Perinatal Grief Scale (PGS). In addition, 27 mothers completed the Functional Health Status Scale (FSII-R). RESULTS Mothers and fathers showed no significant differences in overall burden (IFS) and grief (PGS). Regarding the subscales, mothers reported significantly more personal strain. Foreknowledge from prenatal diagnosis about the anomaly, a low perceived functional health status of the child, and multiple congenital anomalies increased the burden and grief. CONCLUSIONS A perinatal counseling team that provides clear and consistent information about the anomalies, the treatment, and the prognosis would help to reduce unnecessary stress and uncertainty, particularly for parents who received prenatal information and whose infant has multiple congenital anomalies.
Cytotoxic T lymphocyte-associated antigen-4 +49A>G polymorphism and the risk of non-small cell lung cancer in a Chinese population.

BACKGROUND CTLA-4 is a potent immunoregulatory molecule and plays a pivotal role in the negative regulation of T-cell proliferation and activation. Previously, the association between CTLA-4 +49A>G polymorphism and the risk of NSCLC has been investigated in several studies, however, their results were inconsistent. Therefore, we aimed to investigated the association between CTLA-4 +49A>G polymorphism and the risk of NSCLC in a Chinese population. METHODS We recruited 231 NSCLC patients and 250 healthy controls in the present case-control study. PCR-RFLP was used to analyze the polymorphism of CTLA-4. The chi-squared test was used to examine differences between NSCLC patients and controls. The odds ratio (OR) and its 95% confidence interval (95% CI) were obtained by logistic regression methodology to determine correlations between the CTLA-4 polymorphism and the incidence of NSCLC. RESULTS When the AA genotype was used as the reference group, the GG genotype was significantly associated with increased risk for NSCLC (OR=2.181, 95% CI: 1.244-5.198; P=0.007), however, the AG genotype was not significantly associated with increased risk for NSCLC (OR=2.018, 95% CI: 0.826-3.881; P=0.099). Under the dominant model of inheritance, the AG+GG genotype was significantly associated with increased risk for NSCLC (OR=3.271, 95% CI: 1.827-4.559; P=0.015). In addition, the G allele had a 2.754-fold higher risk of NSCLC in comparison with the A allele (OR=2.754, 95% CI: 1.365-6.891, P=0.005). CONCLUSIONS Our data provided evidence that the CTLA-4 +49A>G polymorphism is associated with increased risk of NSLCL in Chinese population.
Determining Content Power Users in a Blog Network: An Approach and Its Applications

In a blog network, there are special users who induce other users to actively utilize blogs. Identifying such influential users is important when establishing business policy and business models for the blog network. This paper defines the users whose contents exhibit significant influence over other users as content power users (CPUs) and proposes a method of identifying them. We analyze the performance of the proposed method by applying it to an actual blog network and comparing its results with those of preexisting methods for determining power users. The experimental results demonstrate that the definition of CPUs is adequate to address the dynamic nature of the blogosphere and the main concerns of the blog industry. We also discuss the business models based on CPUs that could be used to stimulate user activities in a blog network.
A Sparse Coding Model with Synaptically Local Plasticity and Spiking Neurons Can Account for the Diverse Shapes of V1 Simple Cell Receptive Fields

Sparse coding algorithms trained on natural images can accurately predict the features that excite visual cortical neurons, but it is not known whether such codes can be learned using biologically realistic plasticity rules. We have developed a biophysically motivated spiking network, relying solely on synaptically local information, that can predict the full diversity of V1 simple cell receptive field shapes when trained on natural images. This represents the first demonstration that sparse coding principles, operating within the constraints imposed by cortical architecture, can successfully reproduce these receptive fields. We further prove, mathematically, that sparseness and decorrelation are the key ingredients that allow for synaptically local plasticity rules to optimize a cooperative, linear generative image model formed by the neural representation. Finally, we discuss several interesting emergent properties of our network, with the intent of bridging the gap between theoretical and experimental studies of visual cortex.
ProtTest 3: fast selection of best-fit models of protein evolution

UNLABELLED We have implemented a high-performance computing (HPC) version of ProtTest that can be executed in parallel in multicore desktops and clusters. This version, called ProtTest 3, includes new features and extended capabilities. AVAILABILITY ProtTest 3 source code and binaries are freely available under GNU license for download from http://darwin.uvigo.es/software/prottest3, linked to a Mercurial repository at Bitbucket (https://bitbucket.org/). CONTACT dposada@uvigo.es SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Knowledge Mobilization as Design: The Case of the Canadian Homelessness Research Network

The Canadian Homelessness Research Network (CHRN) was established to create a stronger link between homelessness research, policy, and practice. The knowledge mobilization strategy of the CHRN encompasses engaged scholarship, networking, and innovative dissemination practices. Part of the learning of the CHRN has been the need to reimagine and redefine the traditional relationship between content creation and dissemination. Using a “design thinking” perspective, the CHRN has nurtured a practice that integrates collaborative processes of knowledge and content development with a more assertive involvement in different aspects of publishing (and modes of publication), including graphic design, marketing, communications, and dissemination, with the goal of increasing the impact of research. This article explores this shift, using examples of work the CHRN produced and disseminated through the Homeless Hub.
Relative Contributions of Cystathionine β-Synthase and γ-Cystathionase to H2S Biogenesis via Alternative Trans-sulfuration Reactions*

In mammals, the two enzymes in the trans-sulfuration pathway, cystathionine β-synthase (CBS) and cystathionine γ-lyase (CSE), are believed to be chiefly responsible for hydrogen sulfide (H2S) biogenesis. In this study, we report a detailed kinetic analysis of the human and yeast CBS-catalyzed reactions that result in H2S generation. CBS from both organisms shows a marked preference for H2S generation by β-replacement of cysteine by homocysteine. The alternative H2S-generating reactions, i.e. β-elimination of cysteine to generate serine or condensation of 2 mol of cysteine to generate lanthionine, are quantitatively less significant. The kinetic data were employed to simulate the turnover numbers of the various CBS-catalyzed reactions at physiologically relevant substrate concentrations. At equimolar concentrations of CBS and CSE, the simulations predict that H2S production by CBS would account for ∼25–70% of the total H2S generated via the trans-sulfuration pathway depending on the extent of allosteric activation of CBS by S-adenosylmethionine. The relative contribution of CBS to H2S genesis is expected to decrease under hyperhomocysteinemic conditions. CBS is predicted to be virtually the sole source of lanthionine, and CSE, but not CBS, efficiently cleaves lanthionine. The insensitivity of the CBS-catalyzed H2S-generating reactions to the grade of hyperhomocysteinemia is in stark contrast to the responsiveness of CSE and suggests a previously unrecognized role for CSE in intracellular homocysteine management. Finally, our studies reveal that the profligacy of the trans-sulfuration pathway results not only in a multiplicity of H2S-yielding reactions but also yields novel thioether metabolites, thus increasing the complexity of the sulfur metabolome.
On‐the‐job learning in the nursing profession: Developing and validating a classification of learning activities and learning themes

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to gain more insight into employees' on‐the‐job learning. Its specific purpose is to develop and validate a classification of on‐the‐job learning activities and learning themes, focusing on the nursing profession in particular.Design/methodology/approach – Two successive studies were conducted for this purpose. In the first study in‐depth interviews with 20 Dutch nurses were analysed using a grounded theory approach. The content validity of the categories found in the first study was investigated in the second study by interviewing 17 supervisors and eight educators from different hospitals in The Netherlands.Findings – The paper finds that the main categories of learning activities are: learning by doing one's regular job, learning by applying something new in the job, learning by social interaction with colleagues, learning by theory or supervision, and learning by reflection. First‐order learning activities and second‐order learning activities can be distinguished.
Does soccer ball heading cause retinal bleeding?

OBJECTIVES To define forces of youth soccer ball heading (headers) and determine whether heading causes retinal hemorrhage. SETTING Regional Children's Hospital, youth soccer camp. PATIENTS Male and female soccer players, 13 to 16 years old, who regularly head soccer balls. MEASUREMENTS Dilated retinal examination, after 2-week header diary, and accelerometer measurement of heading a lofted soccer ball. RESULTS Twenty-one youth soccer players, averaging 79 headers in the prior 2 weeks, and 3 players who did not submit header diaries lacked retinal hemorrhage. Thirty control subjects also lacked retinal hemorrhage. Seven subjects heading the ball experienced linear cranial accelerations of 3.7 +/- 1.3g. Rotational accelerations were negligible. CONCLUSIONS Headers, not associated with globe impact, are unlikely to cause retinal hemorrhage. Correctly executed headers did not cause significant rotational acceleration of the head, but incorrectly executed headers might.