Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Agriculture Alters Gonadal Form and Function in the Toad Bufo marinus

Background Many agricultural contaminants disrupt endocrine systems of wildlife. However, evidence of endocrine disruption in wild amphibians living in agricultural areas has been controversial. Typically, studies on the effects of pollutants on wildlife attempt to compare polluted with unpolluted sites. Objectives We took a novel approach to address this question by explicitly quantifying the relationship between gonadal abnormalities and habitats characterized by differing degrees of agricultural activity. Methods We quantified the occurrence of gonadal abnormalities and measures of gonadal function in at least 20 giant toads (Bufo marinus) from each of five sites that occur along a gradient of increasing agricultural land use from 0 to 97%. Results The number of abnormalities and frequency of intersex gonads increased with agriculture in a dose-dependent fashion. These gonadal abnormalities were associated with altered gonadal function. Testosterone, but not 17β-estradiol, concentrations were altered and secondary sexual traits were either feminized (increased skin mottling) or demasculinized (reduced forearm width and nuptial pad number) in intersex toads. Based on the end points we examined, female morphology and physiology did not differ across sites. However, males from agricultural areas had hormone concentrations and secondary sexual traits that were intermediate between intersex toads and non-agricultural male toads. Skin coloration at the most agricultural site was not sexually dimorphic; males had female coloration. Conclusions Steroid hormone concentrations and secondary sexual traits correlate with reproductive activity and success, so affected toads likely have reduced reproductive success. These reproductive abnormalities could certainly contribute to amphibian population declines occurring in areas exposed to agricultural contaminants.
Outcomes of Thoracic Endovascular Aortic Repair for Acute Type B Dissection in Patients With Intractable Pain or Refractory Hypertension

Purpose: To compare uncomplicated acute type B aortic dissection (UATBAD) patients with intractable pain/refractory hypertension treated with thoracic endovascular aortic repair (TEVAR) to UATBAD subjects without these features receiving best medical therapy (BMT). Methods: Interrogation of the hospital database identified 101 consecutive UATBAD patients admitted between January 2011 and December 2014. Of these, 74 patients (mean age 62±13 years; 44 men) were treated with BMT; the other 27 UATBAD patients (mean age 63±13 years; 17 men) were subsequently treated with TEVAR for intractable pain (24, 89%) and/or refractory hypertension (3, 11%) at a mean 2.4±3.3 days (median 1, range 0–12) after admission. Mixed models were employed to determine differences in centerline measured aortic remodeling. Propensity analysis was employed to mitigate selection bias. Kaplan-Meier methodology was used to estimate reintervention and survival. Results: The groups were well matched; there was no difference in demographics, comorbidities, or proportion with visceral involvement (70% for TEVAR vs 86% for BMT, p=0.08). There was no significant difference in length of stay (9.6±6.3 for TEVAR vs 10.3±7.8 for BMT, p=0.3), complications (19% for TEVAR vs 24% for BMT, p=0.6), or 30-day mortality (0 for TEVAR vs 7% for BMT, p=0.1). One (4%) TEVAR patient experienced retrograde dissection. BMT resulted in greater mean increase in discharge antihypertensive medications (1.7±1.9 vs 0.7±1.7 for TEVAR, p=0.03), but there was no difference in narcotic utilization. Mean follow-up was greater in the TEVAR group (17.9±16.0 months) compared with BMT patients (11.5±10.8 months, p=0.05). TEVAR significantly improved rates of aortic diameter change (1.5% vs 12.9% for BMT, p=0.007), complete false lumen thrombosis (41% vs 11% for BMT, p=0.004), and true lumen expansion (85% vs 7% for BMT, p<0.01). However, there was no difference in reintervention (25.9% for TEVAR vs 23% for BMT, p=0.2) or survival (log-rank p=0.8). Conclusion: TEVAR for UATBAD with intractable pain/refractory hypertension is safe but offers no short-term outcome advantage when compared to UATBAD patients without these features receiving BMT. A significant improvement in aortic remodeling was identified after TEVAR. The potential long-term reintervention and aorta-related mortality benefits of this favorable remodeling have yet to be defined and randomized trials are warranted.
Comparison of Conventional and Microwave Assisted Heating on Carbohydrate Content, Antioxidant Capacity and Postprandial Glycemic Response in Oat Meals

Minimally processed cereal breakfast products from whole grain entered the market due to consumer demand of more nutritional food with more controlled sugar release. However, the subsequent processing of such products with different cooking methods in the consumer’s kitchen may lead to significant differentiation of their nutritional value. Therefore, the evaluation of the impact of frequently used cooking methods on a final quality of breakfast cereals meal is needed. The present study investigates how the two different methods of heating, conventional and microwave (MW) assisted, affect the carbohydrate content, profile and resulting glycemic index of so prepared food as well as the antioxidant activity of meals. Two products available on the market—oat bran and flakes—were used. The highest starch content in fluid phase of oatmeal was detected in samples heated for 3 min with microwaves, regardless the type. The lowest starch content was obtained for 5 min MW heated flakes sample. The total content of glucose was about 1.5 times lower in bran vs. flakes oatmeal. The highest β-glucan content in fluid fraction was also observed for bran meal but its release was independent of applied conditions.
Evaluation of critical parameters in micro machining of hardened tool steel

Micro mechanical milling plays a significant role in fabrication of miniature features in a variety of materials with capability for producing three dimensional (3D) freeform surfaces. A major challenge for micro machining of hardened material is a high tool wear rate and unpredictable tool life. In addition, surface roughness and burr formation are factors to be closely controlled. In this paper, the statistical analysis of critical parameters for micro milling of hardened tool steel is presented. The parameters included spindle speed, depth of cut, ratio of undeformed chip thickness to cutting edge radius and lubrication/environment conditions. The significance of these parameters on surface finish, burr formation and tool wear are reported. The study shows that machining environment is the most significant factor in controlling surface finish and tool wear. While, selection of appropriate spindle speed and the ratio of undeformed chip thickness to cutting edge radius is more critical in limiting burr size. The work reported in this paper is important, because industry needs to know key process variables (KPVs) that are critical in the control of micro machining performance. Additionally, the methodology enabled identification of optimum cutting values for these cutting parameters within the identified process window.
Expression Profiling of Strawberry Allergen Fra a during Fruit Ripening Controlled by Exogenous Auxin

Strawberry fruit contain the allergenic Fra a proteins, members of the pathogenesis-related 10 protein family that causes oral allergic syndrome symptoms. Fra a proteins are involved in the flavonoid biosynthesis pathway, which might be important for color development in fruits. Auxin is an important plant hormone in strawberry fruit that controls fruit fleshiness and ripening. In this study, we treated strawberry fruits with exogenous auxin or auxin inhibitors at pre- and post-harvest stages, and analyzed Fra a transcriptional and translational expression levels during fruit development by real-time PCR and immunoblotting. Pre-harvest treatment with 1-naphthaleneacetic acid (NAA) alone did not affect Fra a expression, but applied in conjunction with achene removal NAA promoted fruit pigmentation and Fra a protein accumulation. The response was developmental stage-specific: Fra a 1 was highly expressed in immature fruit, whereas Fra a 2 was expressed in young to ripe fruit. In post-harvest treatments, auxin did not contribute to Fra a induction. Auxin inhibitors delayed fruit ripening; as a result, they seemed to influence Fra a 1 expression. Thus, Fra a expression was not directly regulated by auxin, but might be associated with the ripening process and/or external factors in a paralog-specific manner.
In vitro antioxidant and antihemolytic effects of the essential oil and methanolic extract of Allium rotundum L.

OBJECTIVE A plethora of scientific evidence showed that several plant species from the genus Allium (Alliaceae) possess multiple therapeutic effects. Present paper aimed to examine the antioxidant and antihemolytic activities of the essential oil and methanol extract Allium rotundum L. through different in vitro assays. MATERIALS AND METHODS 1,1-diphenyl-2-picryl hydroxyl radical (DPPH), nitric oxide as well as hydrogen peroxide scavenging, Fe2+ chelating, reducing power and also hemoglobin-induced linoleic acid peroxidation assay systems have been utilized to examine antioxidant effects of these samples. Total amounts of phenolic and flavonoid contents were calculated. The antihemolytic effect was investigated against hemolysis induced by hydrogen peroxide in rat erythrocytes. Also, mineral contents of plant were evaluated by atomic absorption spectroscopy. RESULTS IC50 for DPPH radical-scavenging activity were 284 ± 11.64 for methanol extract and 1264 ± 45.60 µg ml-1 for essential oil, respectively. The extract has shown better reducing effects versus essential oil. The extract also demonstrated better activity in nitric oxide-scavenging activity. IC50 were 464 ± 19.68 for extract and 1093 ± 38.25 µg ml-1 for essential oil. The extract shows better activity than essential oil in Fe2+ chelating system. IC50 were 100 ± 3.75 for extract and 1223 ± 36.25 µg ml-1 for essential oil. The A. rotundum extract and essential oil showed significant H2O2 scavenging effects at dose-dependent manners. IC50 was 786 ± 29.08 mg ml-1 for essential oil. The amounts of eight elements were determined. The concentrations of elements were in the order: Mn> Fe> Zn> Cu> Ni> Cd. CONCLUSIONS The extract showed a higher antioxidant effect in all tested models including DPPH, nitric oxide, reducing power as well as iron chelating and antihemolytic activities than essential oil. The latter showed more potent antioxidant activity in scavenging H2O2 and lipid peroxidation model. Antioxidant activities of extract may be attributed at least in part, due to its phenolic and flavonoid contents.
Higher Status Honesty Is Worth More: The Effect of Social Status on Honesty Evaluation

Promises are crucial for maintaining trust in social hierarchies. It is well known that not all promises are kept; yet the effect of social status on responses to promises being kept or broken is far from understood, as are the neural processes underlying this effect. Here we manipulated participants’ social status before measuring their investment behavior as Investor in iterated Trust Game (TG). Participants decided how much to invest in their partners, who acted as Trustees in TG, after being informed that their partners of higher or lower social status either promised to return half of the multiplied sum (4 × invested amount), did not promise, or had no opportunity to promise. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded when the participants saw the Trustees’ decisions in which the partners always returned half of the time, regardless of the experimental conditions. Trustee decisions to return or not after promising to do so were defined as honesty and dishonesty, respectively. Behaviorally, participants invested more when Trustees promised than when Trustees had no opportunity to promise, and this effect was greater for higher status than lower status Trustees. Neurally, when viewing Trustees’ return decisions, participants’ medial frontal negativity (MFN) responses (250–310 ms post onset) were more negative when Trustees did not return than when they did return, suggesting that not returning was an expectancy violation. P300 responses were only sensitive to higher status return feedback, and were more positive-going for higher status partner returns than for lower status partner returns, suggesting that higher status returns may have been more rewarding/motivationally significant. Importantly, only participants in low subjective socioeconomic status (SES) evidenced an increased P300 effect for higher status than lower status honesty (honesty – dishonesty), suggesting that higher status honesty was especially rewarding/motivationally significant for participants with low SES. Taken together, our results suggest that in an earlier time window, MFN encodes return valence, regardless of honesty or social status, which are addressed in a later cognitive appraisal process (P300). Our findings suggest that social status influences honesty perception at both a behavioral and neural level, and that subjective SES may modulate this effect.
Short- and long-term outcomes of laparoscopic surgery in elderly patients with rectal cancer.

PURPOSE This study aimed to use propensity score matching (PSM) to compare the short- and long-term outcomes of laparoscopic surgery for the treatment of rectal cancer in elderly and middle-aged patients. METHODS Data were retrospectively obtained from 588 patients aged ≥60 years when they underwent laparoscopic surgery for rectal cancer in our hospital between January 2009 and December 2016. The patients were divided into an elderly group (≥70 years) or a middle-aged group (60-69 years), and were subsequently matched 1:1 using PSM for sex, body mass index, Charlson comorbidity index (CCI), tumor location, clinical stage, and American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) score. A total of 115 patients from each group were matched and included in the study, and their short-term and long-term outcomes were compared. RESULTS The elderly group had greater intraoperative blood loss and a higher surgical conversion rate, although the other outcomes were similar between the two groups (surgical time, pathology results, 30-day incidence of complications, and incidence of major complications). No patients died intraoperatively or within 30 days after surgery. There were no significant differences in the two groups' rates of tumor recurrence, 5-year overall survival, and 5-year disease-free survival. CONCLUSION Although elderly patients had greater intraoperative blood loss and a higher surgical conversion rate, laparoscopic surgery for rectal cancer provided similar short-term and long-term outcomes among middle-aged and elderly patients.
Extending Social Learning Theory to Explain Victimization Among Gang and Ex-Gang Offenders

This study is among the first to extend and test social learning theory’s ability to understand property and violent victimization. It specifically tests whether aspects of definitions, differential reinforcement, and differential association/modeling can explain the three types of victimization of gang members: actual experience, perception of likelihood, and fear. The sample consists of over 300 male and female gang members incarcerated in jails throughout Florida. The results show that all three types of victimization can be explained by the three aspects of social learning theory.
Subclinical Atherosclerosis, Statin Eligibility, and Outcomes in African American Individuals: The Jackson Heart Study

Importance Modern prevention guidelines substantially increase the number of individuals who are eligible for treatment with statins. Efforts to refine statin eligibility via coronary calcification have been studied in white populations but not, to our knowledge, in large African American populations. Objective To compare the relative accuracy of US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) and American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association (ACC/AHA) recommendations in identifying African American individuals with subclinical and clinical atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD). Design, Setting, and Participants In this prospective, community-based study, 2812 African American individuals aged 40 to 75 years without prevalent ASCVD underwent assessment of ASCVD risk. Of these, 1743 participants completed computed tomography. Main Outcomes and Measures Nonzero coronary artery calcium (CAC) score, abdominal aortic calcium score, and incident ASCVD (ie, myocardial infarction, ischemic stroke, or fatal coronary heart disease). Results Of the 2812 included participants, the mean (SD) age at baseline was 55.4 (9.4) years, and 1837 (65.3%) were female. The USPSTF guidelines captured 404 of 732 African American individuals (55.2%) with a CAC score greater than 0; the ACC/AHA guidelines identified 507 individuals (69.3%) (risk difference, 14.1%; 95% CI, 11.2-17.0; P < .001). Statin recommendation under both guidelines was associated with a CAC score greater than 0 (odds ratio, 5.1; 95% CI, 4.1-6.3; P < .001). While individuals indicated for statins under both guidelines experienced 9.6 cardiovascular events per 1000 patient-years, those indicated under only ACC/AHA guidelines were at low to intermediate risk (4.1 events per 1000 patient-years). Among individuals who were statin eligible by ACC/AHA guidelines, the 10-year ASCVD incidence per 1000 person-years was 8.1 (95% CI, 5.9-11.1) in the presence of CAC and 3.1 (95% CI, 1.6-5.9) without CAC (P = .02). While statin-eligible individuals by USPSTF guidelines did not have a significantly higher 10-year ASCVD event rate in the presence of CAC, African American individuals not eligible for statins by USPSTF guidelines had a higher ASCVD event rate in the presence of CAC (2.8 per 1000 person-years; 95% CI, 1.5-5.4) relative to without CAC (0.8 per 1000 person-years; 95%, CI 0.3-1.7) (P = .03). Conclusions and Relevance The USPSTF guidelines focus treatment recommendations on 38% of high-risk African American individuals at the expense of not recommending treatment in nearly 25% of African American individuals eligible for statins by ACC/AHA guidelines with vascular calcification and at low to intermediate ASCVD risk.
Interaction between moisture content and aeration rate in the vegetative and fruit waste composting: A kinetic approach

Massive vegetative and fruit wastes generated daily from fresh market are likely to cause environmental nuisances. Composting is an economical and most simple treating and stabilizing these wastes. Since large amount of organic component and moisture content in vegetative and fruit waste have enhanced rottening process. These cause a leaching of leachate as well as depletion in oxygen availability during composting process that lead to a failure in composting outcome. The efficiency of this biological process depends on various factors. Proper moisture content is one that is necessary to support microbial activity. Aeration provides oxygen for aerobic biodegradation as well as removes excess vapour, heat, and gases. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the effect of moisture content and degree of aeration on vegetative and fruit wastes composting amended with sawdust using kinetic approach. Batch culture experiments were performed in a bench scale reactor. The following 40%, 60% and 80% initial moisture contents were designed in combination with various aeration rates such as 0, 50, and 1200 ml/min. The results reveal that the moisture content could be a more important factor. Therefore, composting process could well be operated at initial moisture content of 40% without aeration whereas the 60% moisture content requires an aeration rate of at least 50 ml/min. Initial moisture content 80% indicated extremely inappropriate condition at any aeration rate operated. In conclusion, force aeration is necessary when the initial moisture content is started higher than 40%. A maximum constant rate of total organic carbon degradation (k = -0.1439 day -1 ) obtained is the highest when using the composting process with the initial moisture content of 40% and aeration rate of 50 ml/min. The study also demonstrates a zero order reaction and quadratic form in kinetic investigation. Composting; Compost kinetic; Forced aeration; Vegetable and fruit waste
DLibOS: Performance and Protection with a Network-on-Chip

A long body of research work has led to the conjecture that highly efficient IO processing at user-level would necessarily violate protection. In this paper, we debunk this myth by introducing DLibOS a new paradigm that consists of distributing a library OS on specialized cores to achieve performance and protection at the user-level. Its main novelty consists of leveraging network-on-chip to allow hardware message passing, rather than context switches, for communication between different address spaces. To demonstrate the feasibility of our approach, we implement a driver and a network stack at user-level on a Tilera many-core machine. We define a novel asynchronous socket interface and partition the memory such that the reception, the transmission and the application modify isolated regions. Our high performance results of 4.2 and 3.1 million requests per second obtained on a webserver and the Memcached applications, respectively, confirms the relevance of our design decisions. Finally, we compare DLibOS against a non-protected user-level network stack and show that protection comes at a negligible cost.
Neurobehavioral effects from exposure to dental amalgam Hgo: new distinctions between recent exposure and Hg body burden

Potential toxicity from exposure to mercury vapor (Hgo) from dental amalgam fillings is the subject of current public health debate in many countries. We evaluated potential central nervous system (CNS) toxicity associated with handling Hg‐con‐ taining amalgam materials among dental personnel with very low levels of Hgo exposure (i.e., urinary Hg <4 μg/l), applying a neurobehavioral test battery to evaluate CNS functions in relation to both recent exposure and Hg body burden. New distinctions between subtle preclinical effects on symptoms, mood, motor function, and cognition were found associated with Hg body burden as compared with those associated with recent exposure. The pattern of results, comparable to findings previously reported among subjects with urinary Hg >50 μg/l, presents convincing new evidence of adverse behavioral effects associated with low Hgo exposures within the range of that received by the general population. —Echeverria, D. , Aposhian, H. V. , Woods, J. S. , Heyer, N. J., Aposhian, M. M. , Bittner, A. C. , Jr. Mahurin, R. K. Neurobehavioral effects from exposure to dental amalgam Hgo: new distinctions between recent exposure and Hg body burden. FASEB J. 12, 971–980 (1998)