Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Predictors of Fat Intake Behavior Differ between Normal-Weight and Obese WIC Mothers

Purpose. To determine whether predictors of fat intake behavior were the same for normal-weight and obese WIC mothers when applying the PRECEDE-PROCEED model and to identify predictors for each group. Design. Proportional stratified convenience sampling. Subjects. Five hundred eighty-one nonpregnant, black and white normal-weight (n = 180) or obese (n = 401) women. Settings. The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children in six counties in southern Wisconsin. Measures. The independent variables were predisposing, enabling, and reinforcing factors. Predisposing factors included beliefs in diet and health, beliefs in diet and body shape, health concerns in food choice, health concerns in nutrition, and eating habits. Enabling factors were cost of food, availability of time to prepare food, and accessibility to purchase food. Reinforcing factors were weight control intentions, sensory appeal, and mood. The dependent variable was fat intake behavior. Structural equation modeling was performed. Results. When controlling for covariates, certain factors affecting fat intake behavior differed between the normal-weight and the obese groups. For the normal-weight group, only reinforcing factors were positively associated with fat intake behavior. For the obese group, reinforcing and enabling, but not predisposing, factors were positively associated with fat intake behavior. Conclusions. Interventions to modify low-income women's fat intake behavior might benefit from targeting behavioral predictors that differ with body size. Messages that emphasize weight control intentions, sensory appeal, and mood are likely to affect both normal-weight and obese women. Information about cost of food, availability of time to prepare food, and accessibility to purchase food is likely to be more effective with obese women.
Wogonin Suppresses the Activity of Matrix Metalloproteinase-9 and Inhibits Migration and Invasion in Human Hepatocellular Carcinoma

As one of the major active ingredients in Radix Scutellariae, wogonin has been shown to be associated with various pharmacological activities on cancer cell growth, apoptosis, and cell invasion and migration. Here, we demonstrated that wogonin may harbor potential anti-metastatic activities in hepatocarcinoma (HCC). The anti-metastasis potential of wogonin and its underlying mechanisms were evaluated by ligand–protein docking approach, surface plasmon resonance assay, and in vitro gelatin zymography studies. Our results showed that wogonin (100 μM, 50 μM) suppressed MHCC97L and PLC/PRF/5 cells migration and invasion in vitro. The docking approach and surface plasmon resonance assay indicated that the potential binding affinity between wogonin and matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9) may lead to inhibition of MMP-9 activity and further leads to suppression of tumor metastasis. This conclusion was further verified by Western blot results and gelatin zymography analysis. Wogonin might be a potent treatment option for disrupting the tumor metastasis that favors HCC development. The potential active targets from computational screening integrated with biomedical study may help us to explore the molecular mechanism of herbal medicines.
Advances in Polymer Composites: Biocomposites–State of the Art, New Challenges, and Opportunities

Environmental compatibility of polymer composites has become an important characteristic as the need to reduce environmental hazards is increasing worldwide. Many incidents taking place around the world are enough to bring us around to this point of view. A catastrophic earthquake and tsunami devastated the Pacific coast of north-eastern Japan on 11 March 2011. The earthquake, which was the most powerful earthquake ever measured in Japan, was of magnitude 9.0 on the Richter scale. About 19 000 were dead and missing. Three prefectures in the Tohoku (north-eastern) region of Japan, Miyagi, Iwate, and Fukushima, were most severely damaged. Reconstruction is yet to take place in many of the affected cities and towns. The area around the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant was evacuated owing to radioactive contamination. It is said that complete restoration will take more than 30 years, because the influence of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster, which happened more than 25 years ago, continues to be felt. In Fukushima prefecture, many residents are still forced to lead lives as long-term refugees, and the residents in certain areas outside the refuge zone continue to live under threat of radiation that is much higher than is normal. The damage caused by radioactivity has also been considerable: it has already affected the soil of schoolyards, tapwater, grass, agricultural products, marine products, and so on, in large areas within the Fukushima prefecture. It is not clear how much of this damage is due to sea pollution and how long its effects will last in the future. Against such a background, a planned conversion to renewable natural power sources as recommended by the energy policy, depending on nuclear power generation, attracts attention. For instance, it has been decided to abolish nuclear power generation systems in Germany; they propose to convert from 16% of total energy generation from the natural power sources at present to 35% by 2020 and to 80% by 2050 [1]. In the report ‘‘The Green New Deal’’ published in 2009 [2], promotion of use and development of alternative and renewable energy, improvement in energy efficiency, greenhouse gas reduction, and so on, have also been proposed. Today,
Abdominal fat and blood pressure in healthy young children

Objectives: High blood pressure (BP) and obesity are well known risk factors for cardiovascular diseases. Both risk factors exert an influence early in life, and BP is related to body weight. However, the effect of abdominal fat accumulation on BP in childhood is still unclear. We aimed to determine the relation between visceral adipose tissue (VAT), subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) and BP in young children. Methods: In 862 healthy 5-year-old children of the Wheezing-Illnesses-Study-Leidsche-Rijn birth cohort, VAT and SAT were measured ultrasonographically. SBP and DBP were measured in sitting and supine postures using a semi-automatic oscillometric device. General linear regression analyses were performed to assess associations between abdominal fat and BP adjusted for confounders. Further explanatory models were run to explore if associations with localized abdominal fat distributions were independent of measures of overall body adiposity. Results: Each millimeter increase in VAT was related to 0.17 mmHg (95% confidence interval: 0.08; 0.3) and 0.11 mmHg (0.02; 0.2) higher sitting SBP and DBP, respectively. These associations remained after additional adjustment for BMI (SBP: 0.14 mmHg/mm, 0.05; 0.2; DBP: 0.11 mmHg/mm, 0.02; 0.2), waist circumference (SBP: 0.16 mmHg/mm, 0.06; 0.3; DBP: 0.12 mmHg/mm, 0.03; 0.2) or early life growth (SBP: 0.16 mmHg/mm, 0.07; 0.3; DBP: 0.115 mmHg/mm, 0.03; 0.2). Associations between VAT and supine SBP and DBP were, respectively, 0.14 mmHg/mm (0.06; 0.2) and 0.08 mmHg/mm (0.004; 0.2), which remained after further explanatory analyses. SAT was not associated to SBP or DBP. Conclusion: Independent of body size, children with more VAT have higher BP, especially when measured in sitting posture.
A Solvable Two-Dimensional Degenerate Singular Stochastic Control Problem with Non Convex Costs

In this paper we provide a complete theoretical analysis of a two-dimensional degenerate non convex singular stochastic control problem. The optimisation is motivated by a storage-consumption model in an electricity market, and features a stochastic real-valued spot price modelled by Brownian motion. We find analytical expressions for the value function, the optimal control and the boundaries of the action and inaction regions. The optimal policy is characterised in terms of two monotone and discontinuous repelling free boundaries, although part of one boundary is constant and and the smooth fit condition holds there.
Characteristics of Arctic low-tropospheric humidity inversions based on radio soundings

Abstract. Humidity inversions have a high potential importance in the Arctic climate system, especially for cloud formation and maintenance, in wide spatial and temporal scales. Here we investigate the climatology and characteristics of humidity inversions in the Arctic, including their spatial and temporal variability, sensitivity to the methodology applied and differences from the Antarctic humidity inversions. The study is based on data of the Integrated Global Radiosonde Archive (IGRA) from 36 Arctic stations between the years 2000 and 2009. The results indicate that humidity inversions are present on multiple levels nearly all the time in the Arctic atmosphere. Almost half (48%) of the humidity inversions were found at least partly within the same vertical layer with temperature inversions, whereas the existence of the other half may, at least partly, be linked to uneven vertical distribution of horizontal moisture transport. A high atmospheric surface pressure was found to increase the humidity inversion occurrence, whereas relationships between humidity inversion properties and cloud cover were generally relatively weak, although for some inversion properties they were systematic. For example, humidity inversions occurred slightly more often and were deeper under clear sky than in overcast conditions for almost all stations. The statistics of Arctic humidity inversion properties, especially inversion strength, depth and base height, proved to be very sensitive to the instruments and methodology applied. For example, the median strength of the strongest inversion in a profile was twice as large as the median of all Arctic inversions. The most striking difference between the Arctic and Antarctic humidity inversions was the much larger range of the seasonal cycle of inversion properties in the Arctic. Our results offer a baseline for validation of weather prediction and climate models and also encourage further studies on humidity inversions due to the vital, but so far poorly understood, role of humidity inversions in Arctic cloud processes.
Phosphine Resistance in North American Field Populations of the Lesser Grain Borer, Rhyzopertha dominica (Coleoptera: Bostrichidae)

Abstract Phosphine is the most widely used fumigant for stored grain insect pests, and resistance to phosphine has evolved in several species worldwide. This study was designed to determine the presence of phosphine resistance in 34 populations of Rhyzopertha dominica (F.) collected from the United States and Canada. Adult R. dominica were sampled and subjected to a discriminatory dose toxicity assay of exposure to 20 ppm of phosphine for 20 h of exposure to distinguish a susceptible R. dominica adult by death from a resistant beetle that survives the treatment. All but two of the 34 geographic populations surveyed had some beetles that were resistant to phosphine, and the frequency of resistance varied from 97% in a population from Parlier, California to 0% in beetles from both Carnduff, Saskatchewan and Starbuck, Manitoba. Probit analyses of dose-mortality bioassays with beetles from a laboratory-susceptible strain and those from five of the populations sampled were used to calculate resistance ratio factors (RRs) based on the ratio of LC50 (estimate for the concentration to kill 50% of a test group) in the sampled population to the LC50 for the susceptible strain.The highest RR for the five resistant populations was nearly 596-fold in beetles from Belle Glade, Florida, whereas the lowest RR in that group was 9-fold in Wamego, Kansas.This study revealed that phosphine resistance in R. dominica is common across North America and some populations have levels of resistance that may pose challenges for continued use of phosphine for their management.
A Novel Bottom-Up Saliency Detection Method for Video With Dynamic Background

After years of extensive studies, the salient motion detection problem has gained plausible performance improvement that was primarily propelled by the rapid development of self-adaptive top-down modeling techniques. Nevertheless, almost all the conventional solutions are still not robust enough to handle video sequences captured by hand-hold cameras. This is mainly due to the absence of the position alignment information that is indispensable for top-down background modeling. In contrast, the bottom-up video saliency detection methods, though achieving excellent salient motion detection in either stationary or nonstationary videos, still have rather poor detection performance in scenarios with massive dynamic background. In this letter, we explore a bottom-up saliency framework by introducing a novel spatial-temporal regional filter method to handle the dynamic background problem. Our key rationale is to assign large saliency value to those regions with stable spatial-temporal coherency while eliminating irregular, repeating dynamic background. As far as we know, this is the first work to address the dynamic background problem from the perspective of the bottom-up video saliency. We conduct massive quantitative evaluations over public available benchmarks to validate the effectiveness and robustness of our method.
Influence of Suboptimally and Optimally Presented Affective Pictures and Words on Consumption-Related Behavior

Affective stimuli can influence immediate reactions as well as spontaneous behaviors. Much evidence for such influence comes from studies of facial expressions. However, it is unclear whether these effects hold for other affective stimuli, and how the amount of stimulus processing changes the nature of the influence. This paper addresses these issues by comparing the influence on consumption behaviors of emotional pictures and valence-matched words presented at suboptimal and supraliminal durations. In Experiment 1, both suboptimal and supraliminal emotional facial expressions influenced consumption in an affect-congruent, assimilative way. In Experiment 2, pictures of both high- and low-frequency emotional objects congruently influenced consumption. In comparison, words tended to produce incongruent effects. We discuss these findings in light of privileged access theories, which hold that pictures better convey affective meaning than words, and embodiment theories, which hold that pictures better elicit somatosensory and motor responses.
Immunohistological localization of regenerating protein in ocular structures.

PURPOSE To investigate the presence of pancreatic stone protein (PSP)/reg (regenerating) protein in eyes and extraocular structures of rabbits, monkeys and man, according to species and age. METHODS Rabbit eyes, with normal or de-epithelialized corneas, were taken from albino and pigmented animals. Monkey eyes were taken from cynomolgus monkeys, 2 years old. Stillborn and adult human eyes were obtained after autopsy. They were studied by immunohistochemistry methods, using a monoclonal antibody raised against human PSP. RESULTS On rabbit ocular structures, the anti-PSP monoclonal antibody showed a strong reactivity at the level of basement membranes and basal poles of the cells of corneal and conjunctival epithelia and on basement membranes of skin and palpebral conjunctiva in eyelids. On de-epithelialized rabbit eyes, the remaining basement membrane was labeled while, along the re-epithelialization, the anti-PSP reactivity appeared with the migrating cells which cover the denuded cornea. On young monkeys, the whole corneal epithelium was reactive. Similar results were obtained from stillborn eyes, whereas no reactivity was detected on autopsy specimens from aged persons. CONCLUSIONS As in other tissues and organs, the reg protein, in the eye, is found in structures known for their continuous and rapid renewal. This protein seems not to exist (or persist) in eyes from aged donors while it is strongly expressed in young donor eyes (monkey, stillborn baby) as well as in regenerating corneal epithelium. These findings enforce the hypothesis about the involvement of reg protein in cell proliferation and differentiation phenomena and its probable correlation with aging.
In vitro evaluation of gelatin and chitosan electrospun fibres as an artificial guide in peripheral nerve repair: a comparative study

Random and aligned gelatin (GL) and chitosan (CS) nano‐fibres have been prepared by electrospinning tuning the collector rotation speed. The effect of fibre alignment on cell adhesion and proliferation was assessed in vitro by using different Schwann cell (SC) and neuronal models. Moreover, actin cytoskeleton organization, lamellipodia and filipodia formation, and axon outgrowth were evaluated. GL and CS fibres induced similar adhesion and proliferation rates. GL and CS random fibres promoted higher adhesion and proliferation rates induction in comparison to the aligned ones, although GL and CS fibres alignment resulted in SC and axon‐oriented growth. Filipodia formation was higher on aligned fibres, suggesting that these substrates can promote higher cell migration in comparison to random ones. 50B11 (neuronal cell line) differentiation was higher on GL fibres, whereas no differences were observed in dorsal root ganglia explants model. These data suggest that both GL and CS fibres can be promising substrates to be used in peripheral nerve reconstruction. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Extending 3-bit Burst Error-Correction Codes With Quadruple Adjacent Error Correction

The use of error-correction codes (ECCs) with advanced correction capability is a common system-level strategy to harden the memory against multiple bit upsets (MBUs). Therefore, the construction of ECCs with advanced error correction and low redundancy has become an important problem, especially for adjacent ECCs. Existing codes for mitigating MBUs mainly focus on the correction of up to 3-bit burst errors. As the technology scales and cell interval distance decrease, the number of affected bits can easily extend to more than 3 bit. The previous methods are therefore not enough to satisfy the reliability requirement of the applications in harsh environments. In this paper, a technique to extend 3-bit burst error-correction (BEC) codes with quadruple adjacent error correction (QAEC) is presented. First, the design rules are specified and then a searching algorithm is developed to find the codes that comply with those rules. The ${H}$ matrices of the 3-bit BEC with QAEC obtained are presented. They do not require additional parity check bits compared with a 3-bit BEC code. By applying the new algorithm to previous 3-bit BEC codes, the performance of 3-bit BEC is also remarkably improved. The encoding and decoding procedure of the proposed codes is illustrated with an example. Then, the encoders and decoders are implemented using a 65-nm library and the results show that our codes have moderate total area and delay overhead to achieve the correction ability extension.
The GPI-Phospholipase C of Trypanosoma brucei Is Nonessential But Influences Parasitemia in Mice

In the mammalian host, the cell surface of Trypanosoma brucei is protected by a variant surface glycoprotein that is anchored in the plasma membrane through covalent attachment of the COOH terminus to a glycosylphosphatidylinositol. The trypanosome also contains a phospholipase C (GPI-PLC) that cleaves this anchor and could thus potentially enable the trypanosome to shed the surface coat of VSG. Indeed, release of the surface VSG can be observed within a few minutes on lysis of trypanosomes in vitro. To investigate whether the ability to cleave the membrane anchor of the VSG is an essential function of the enzyme in vivo, a GPI-PLC null mutant trypanosome has been generated by targeted gene deletion. The mutant trypanosomes are fully viable; they can go through an entire life cycle and maintain a persistent infection in mice. Thus the GPI-PLC is not an essential activity and is not necessary for antigenic variation. However, mice infected with the mutant trypanosomes have a reduced parasitemia and survive longer than those infected with control trypanosomes. This phenotype is partially alleviated when the null mutant is modified to express low levels of GPI-PLC.
Immune Landscape of Breast Cancers

Breast cancer is a very heterogeneous disease, both at a molecular and a histological level. Five intrinsic subtypes were initially identified—Luminal-A, Luminal-B, HER2+, Triple negative/basal like (TNBC) and normal like—subsequently expanded to seven (Basal-like-1 and 2, mesenchymal, mesenchymal stem-like, luminal androgen receptor, immuno-modulatory and unstable). Although genetic and epigenetic changes are key pathogenic events, the immune system plays a substantial role in promoting progression and metastasis. This review will discuss the extent to which immune cells can be detected within the tumor microenvironment, as well as their prognostic role and relationship with the microbiome, with an emphasis on TNBC.
Safety of hepatic resections in obese veterans.

OBJECTIVE To determine the effects of body mass index (BMI; calculated as weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared) on outcomes after liver resection performed at Veterans Affairs medical centers. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PATIENTS We queried the Veterans Affairs Surgical Quality Improvement Program database for liver resections (2005-2008) and grouped the patients into 5 BMI categories: normal weight (BMI 18.5-24.9), overweight (BMI 25.0-29.9), obese class 1 (BMI 30.0-34.9), obese class 2 (BMI 35.0-39.9), and obese class 3 (BMI ≥ 40.0). Differences in risk factors and perioperative complications across groups were analyzed in univariate and multivariate analyses. RESULTS Of 403 patients who underwent hepatectomy, 106 (26%) were normal weight, 161 (40%) were overweight, 94 (23%) were obese class 1, 31 (8%) were obese class 2, and 11 (3%) were obese class 3. Among these groups, higher BMI was associated with increased rates of hypertension (52%, 61%, 77%, 77%, and 73%, respectively; P = .002) and diabetes (18%, 27%, 36%, 39%, and 45%, respectively; P = .04) and lower incidence of smokers (53%, 35%, 30%, 16%, and 9%, respectively; P < .001). The BMI groups were similar in demographic characteristics and metrics correlating with preexisting liver disease. There were no differences across BMI groups in overall and specific morbidity or in length of stay. Compared with the other groups, obese class 3 patients received more blood transfusions (mean [SD], 4.3 [2.7] in obese class 3 patients vs 1.1 [0.2] in normal-weight patients; P = .02) and had a higher 30-day mortality (27% in obese class 3 patients vs 6% in normal-weight patients; P = .05). Multivariate analyses confirmed obese class 3 as an independent predictor of postoperative mortality. CONCLUSIONS Obesity did not increase postoperative complications after liver resection in veterans. After adjusting for other clinical factors, extreme obesity (BMI ≥ 40.0) was an independent risk factor for increased mortality.