Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Total Antioxidant Concentrations of Breastmilk—An Eye-opener to the Negligent

The balance between free radical production and antioxidant defenses in the body has important systemic and oral health implications. There is convincing evidence that breastmilk containing antioxidants is important in the prevention of diseases in infancy. This study compared the total antioxidant concentration of human breastmilk expressed at different stages of lactation, stored at various temperatures and durations. Expressed breastmilk (EBM) samples of the third, seventh and 30th day were collected from women who had term and preterm deliveries (n=20). Another cohort of women (n=20) was also assessed; these women were more than five months postpartum and lactating. The total antioxidant capacity (TAC) of EBM was assessed at zero hours at room temperature, at 48 hours, one week post-refrigeration (4 °C), and freezing (-8 °C) respectively using the phosphomolybdenum method. The highest antioxidant levels were found in colostrum. The TAC of EBM reduced with time and at post-refrigeration and after freezing (p<0.0005). No significant difference in the mean TAC was observed between the EBM samples obtained from women with either term or preterm deliveries. The progressive loss of antioxidant content of EBM emphasizes the need of awareness and curtailment of the practice of storing and later use of EBM.
V2a and V2b neurons are generated by the final divisions of pair-producing progenitors in the zebrafish spinal cord

The p2 progenitor domain in the ventral spinal cord gives rise to two interneuron subtypes: V2a and V2b. Delta-Notch-mediated cell-cell interactions between postmitotic immature neurons have been implicated in the segregation of neuron subtypes. However, lineage relationships between V2a and V2b neurons have not been reported. We address this issue using Tg[vsx1:GFP] zebrafish, a model system in which high GFP expression is initiated near the final stage of p2 progenitors. Cell fates were followed in progeny using time-lapse microscopy. Results indicate that the vast majority, if not all, of GFP-labeled p2 progenitors divide once to produce V2a/V2b neuron pairs, indicating that V2a and V2b neurons are generated by the asymmetric division of pair-producing progenitor cells. Together with evidence that Notch signaling is involved in the cell fate specification process, our results strongly suggest that Delta-Notch interactions between sister cells play a crucial role in the final outcome of these asymmetric divisions. This mechanism for determining cell fate is similar to asymmetric divisions that occur during Drosophila neurogenesis, where ganglion mother cells divide once to produce distinct neurons. However, unlike in Drosophila, the divisional axes of p2 progenitors in zebrafish were not fixed. We report that the terminal division of pair-producing progenitor cells in vertebrate neurogenesis can reproducibly produce two distinct neurons through a mechanism that may not depend on the orientation of the division axis.
Non-pathogenic bacteria elicit a differential cytokine response by intestinal epithelial cell/leucocyte co-cultures

BACKGROUND AND AIM Intestinal epithelial cells (IEC) are thought to participate in the mucosal defence against bacteria and in the regulation of mucosal tissue homeostasis. Reactivity of IEC to bacterial signals may depend on interactions with immunocompetent cells. To address the question of whether non-pathogenic bacteria modify the immune response of the intestinal epithelium, we co-cultivated enterocyte-like CaCO-2 cells with human blood leucocytes in separate compartments of transwell cultures. METHODS CaCO-2/PBMC co-cultures were stimulated with non-pathogenic bacteria and enteropathogenic Escherichia coli. Expression of tumour necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α), interleukin (IL)-1β, IL-8, monocyte chemoattracting protein 1 (MCP-1), and IL-10 was studied by enzyme linked immunosorbent assays (cytokine secretion) and by semiquantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction. RESULTS Challenge of CaCO-2 cells with non-pathogenic E coli andLactobacillus sakei induced expression of IL-8, MCP-1, IL-1β, and TNF-α mRNA in the presence of underlying leucocytes. Leucocyte sensitised CaCO-2 cells produced TNF-α and IL-1β whereas IL-10 was exclusively secreted by human peripheral blood mononuclear cells. CaCO-2 cells alone remained hyporesponsive to the bacterial challenge. Lactobacillus johnsonii, an intestinal isolate, showed reduced potential to induce proinflammatory cytokines but increased transforming growth factor beta mRΝA in leucocyte sensitised CaCO-2 cells. TNF-α was identified as one of the early mediators involved in cellular cross talk. In the presence of leucocytes, discriminative activation of CaCO-2 cells was observed between enteropathogenicE coli and non-pathogenic bacteria. CONCLUSION The differential recognition of non-pathogenic bacteria by CaCO-2 cells required the presence of underlying leucocytes. These results strengthen the hypothesis that bacterial signalling at the mucosal surface is dependent on a network of cellular interactions.
Korean Version of the Overactive Bladder Symptom Score Questionnaire: Translation and Linguistic Validation

Purpose The overactive bladder symptom score (OABSS) consists of 4 questions regarding OAB symptoms. The aim of this study was to develop Korean version of the OABSS from the original Japanese version, with subsequent linguistic validation. Methods Between February and May 2008, the translation and linguistic validation process was performed as follows: a forward translation, reconciliation, backward translation, cognitive debriefing, and final proofreading. Results A forward translation from the original version of the OABSS to the Korean language was carried out by 2 native Korean speakers, who were also fluent in Japanese. Reconciliation was made after review of both translations by a panel consisting of both translators and one of the authors. Another bilingual translator who had never seen the original version of the OABSS carried out a translation of the reconciled version back into Japanese, and the original and backward-translated versions were subsequently compared. After discussion of all discrepancies between both versions by the panel, a second Korean version was produced. During cognitive debriefing, 5 outpatients with OAB reported that each question of the Korean version was significant and appropriate for their symptoms. However, 2 patients said that some parts of the questions or instructions were not clear or were not easy to understand. According to the cognitive debriefing, some words and phrases were revised into more understandable expressions. Conclusions A Korean version of the OABSS was developed and linguistic validation was performed. Further studies are needed to assess the reproducibility and validity of the questionnaire in Korean populations.
Lung Dendritic Cell Developmental Programming, Environmental Stimuli, and Asthma in Early Periods of Life

Dendritic cells (DCs) are important cells of our innate immune system. Their role is critical in inducing adaptive immunity, tolerance, or allergic response in peripheral organs-lung and skin. The lung DCs are not developed prenatally before birth. The DCs develop after birth presumably during the first year of life; exposures to any foreign antigen or infectious organisms during this period can significantly affect DC developmental programming and generation of distinct DC phenotypes and functions. These changes can have both short-term and long-term health effects which may be very relevant in childhood asthma and predisposition for a persistent response in adulthood. An understanding of DC development at molecular and cellular levels can help in protecting neonates and infants against problematic environmental exposures and developmental immunotoxicity. This knowledge can eventually help in designing novel pharmacological modulators to skew the DC characteristics and immune responses to benefit the host across a lifetime.
Homo Moralis: Preference Evolution under Incomplete Information and Assortative Matching

What preferences will prevail in a society of rational individuals when preference evolution is driven by their success in terms of resulting payoffs? We show that when individuals’ preferences are their private information, a convex combinations of selfishness and morality stand out as evolutionarily stable. We call individuals with such preferences homo moralis. At one end of the spectrum is homo oeconomicus, who acts so as to maximize his or her material payoff. At the opposite end is homo kantiensis, who does what would be “the right thing to do,” in terms of material payoffs, if all others would do likewise. We show that the stable degree of morality - the weight placed on the moral goal - equals the index of assortativity in the matching process. The motivation of homo moralis is arguably compatible with how people often reason, and the induced behavior agrees with pro-social behaviors observed in many laboratory experiments.
A new method for constructing kernel vectors in morphological associative memories of binary patterns

Kernel vectors represent an elegant representation for the retrieval of pattern associations, where the input patterns are corrupted by both erosive and dilative noise. However, their action completely fails when a particular kind of erosive noise, even of very low percentage, corrupts the input pattern. In this paper, a theoretical justification of this fact is given and a new method is proposed for the construction of kernel vectors for binary patterns associations. The new kernels are not binary but ‘gray’, because they contain elements with values in the interval [0, 1]. It is shown, both theoretically and experimentally that the new kernel vectors carry the good properties of conventional kernel vectors and, at the same time, they can be easily computed. Moreover, they do not suffer from the particular noise deficiency of the conventional kernel vectors. The recalling result is in general a gray pattern, which in the sequel undergoes a simple thresholding action and passes through a simple Hamming network to produce high recall rates, even in heavily corrupted patterns. Retrieval of pattern associations is very significant for a variety of scientific disciplines including data analysis, signal and image understanding and intelligent control.
Multiple target detection and tracking with guaranteed framerates on mobile phones

In this paper we present a novel method for real-time pose estimation and tracking on low-end devices such as mobile phones. The presented system can track multiple known targets in real-time and simultaneously detect new targets for tracking. We present a method to automatically and dynamically balance the quality of detection and tracking to adapt to a variable time budget and ensure a constant frame rate. Results from real data of a mobile phone Augmented Reality system demonstrate the efficiency and robustness of the described approach. The system can track 6 planar targets on a mobile phone simultaneously at framerates of 23fps.
Chronic orthostatic intolerance: part of a spectrum of dysfunction in orthostatic cardiovascular homeostasis?

Chronic orthostatic intolerance (COI, also known as postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome) is a disorder that most frequently affects young women (female-to-male ratio, 4:1). 1 Presenting symptoms include lightheadedness, palpitations, fatigue, blurred vision, dizziness, exercise intolerance, chest discomfort, cognitive impairment, and occasionally syncope.1 2 These symptoms usually occur after upright posture is assumed and are associated with rapid development of tachycardia. Heart rate increases by >30 bpm or exceeds 120 bpm. There is usually only a modest, if any, fall in blood pressure. Indeed, symptoms frequently occur in the absence of any blood pressure reduction and even in the setting of an increase in blood pressure on standing.2 3 The cause of COI is unknown. The onset of the disorder is often predated by a recent viral infection.1 2 Associated conditions include mitral valve prolapse, irritable bowel syndrome, and chronic fatigue.4 Proposed pathophysiological characteristics include abnormalities in sudomotor function3 and excessive gravitational pooling caused by impaired venous tone.5 It is generally accepted that autonomic dysfunction is a hallmark of this disorder. Autonomic dysfunction is often perceived as a black box of nebulous disorders, often not easily differentiated from variants of normality. There is a substantial incidence of false-negative and false-positive diagnoses. These difficulties are compounded by the heterogeneity of disease states in patients with orthostatic symptoms, spontaneous fluctuations in disease severity, and nonuniformity in nomenclature of disease classification. Inconsistencies in nosology complicate the study and delineation of pathophysiological mechanisms. These considerations are particularly applicable to studies of orthostatic intolerance. Our insights into disorders of orthostatic homeostasis have been enhanced by the advent of tilt table testing.6 This allows simulation of standing, in carefully monitored and controlled conditions. The dynamic interplay between postural changes, hemodynamic responses, and symptoms can therefore be followed closely. In addition …
The future is now

Mansi M. Kasliwal, the Principal Investigator of the Global Relay of Observatories Watching Transients Happen (GROWTH) collaboration, shares her enthusiasm about the future of multi-messenger astrophysics. Mansi M. Kasliwal discusses the Global Relay of Observatories Watching Transients Happen (GROWTH) collaboration and shares her enthusiasm about the future of multi-messenger astrophysics.
Determination of pelvic ring stability: A new technique using a composite hemi-pelvis

Traumatic disruption of the pelvic ring caused by high-energy impact is associated with significant mortality and morbidity. A variety of fixation techniques have been developed for treating these injuries with the main aims of restoring the stability of the pelvic ring and promoting recovery of normal function. The stability of fixation of these techniques is often analysed by cadaveric studies, which can introduce high variability into the results and have small sample numbers. This study presents a new method that uses a composite hemi-pelvis to enable stabilization of the pelvic ring to be accurately determined. The pelvis was loaded cyclically to simulate walking conditions and to assess the stability of the fixation, which was measured using a displacement transducer that monitors the motion of the pelvis in six degrees of freedom. The motions measured showed comparable results with previously published cadaveric studies. This reproducible method of testing with a hemi-pelvis composite model and rig allows valid analysis of pubic symphysis implants, obviating the difficulties of performing a cadaveric study.
Selective Factors Associated with the Evolution of Codon Usage in Natural Populations of Arboviruses

Arboviruses (arthropod borne viruses) have life cycles that include both vertebrate and invertebrate hosts with substantial differences in vector and host specificity between different viruses. Most arboviruses utilize RNA for their genetic material and are completely dependent on host tRNAs for their translation, suggesting that virus codon usage could be a target for selection. In the current study we analyzed the relative synonymous codon usage (RSCU) patterns of 26 arboviruses together with 25 vectors and hosts, including 8 vertebrates and 17 invertebrates. We used hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) and principal component analysis (PCA) to identify trends in codon usage. HCA demonstrated that the RSCU of arboviruses reflects that of their natural hosts, but not that of dead-end hosts. Of the two major components identified by PCA, the first accounted for 62.1% of the total variance, and among the 59 codons analyzed in this study, the leucine codon CTG had the highest correlation with the first principal component, however isoleucine had the highest correlation during amino acid analysis. Nucleotide and dinucleotide composition were the variables that explained most of the total codon usage variance. The results suggest that the main factors driving the evolution of codon usage in arboviruses is based on the nucleotide and dinucleotide composition present in the host. Comparing codon usage of arboviruses and potential vector hosts can help identifying potential vectors for emerging arboviruses.
Drinking Hydrogen Water Ameliorated Cognitive Impairment in Senescence-Accelerated Mice

Hydrogen has been reported to have neuron protective effects due to its antioxidant properties, but the effects of hydrogen on cognitive impairment due to senescence-related brain alterations and the underlying mechanisms have not been characterized. In this study, we investigated the efficacies of drinking hydrogen water for prevention of spatial memory decline and age-related brain alterations using senescence-accelerated prone mouse 8 (SAMP8), which exhibits early aging syndromes including declining learning ability and memory. However, treatment with hydrogen water for 30 days prevented age-related declines in cognitive ability seen in SAMP8 as assessed by a water maze test and was associated with increased brain serotonin levels and elevated serum antioxidant activity. In addition, drinking hydrogen water for 18 weeks inhibited neurodegeneration in hippocampus, while marked loss of neurons was noted in control, aged brains of mice receiving regular water. On the basis of our results, hydrogen water merits further investigation for possible therapeutic/preventative use for age-related cognitive disorders.
Uncovering the Honeypot Effect: How Audiences Engage with Public Interactive Systems

In HCI, the honeypot effect describes how people interacting with a system passively stimulate passers-by to observe, approach and engage in an interaction. Previous research has revealed the successive engagement phases and zones of the honeypot effect. However, there is little insight into: 1) how people are stimulated to transition between phases; 2) what aspects drive the honeypot effect apart from watching others; and 3) what constraints affect its self-reinforcing performance. In this paper, we discuss the honeypot effect as a spatiotemporal model of trajectories and influences. We introduce the Honeypot Model based on the analysis of observations and interaction logs from Encounters, a public installation that interactively translated bodily movements into a dynamic visual and sonic output. In providing a model that describes trajectories and influences of audience engagement in public interactive systems, our paper seeks to inform researchers and designers to consider contextual, spatial and social factors that influence audience engagement.
Everything you know about Dynamic Time Warping is Wrong

The Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) distance measure is a technique that has long been known in speech recognition community. It allows a non-linear mapping of one signal to another by minimizing the distance between the two. A decade ago, DTW was introduced into Data Mining community as a utility for various tasks for time series problems including classification, clustering, and anomaly detection. The technique has flourished, particularly in the last three years, and has been applied to a variety of problems in various disciplines. In spite of DTW’s great success, there are still several persistent “myths” about it. These myths have caused confusion and led to much wasted research effort. In this work, we will dispel these myths with the most comprehensive set of time series experiments ever conducted.
Efficacy of aneurysmectomy in patients with severe left ventricular dysfunction: favorable short‐ and long‐term results in ischemic cardiomyopathy

INTRODUCTION: The purpose of this study was to (1) identify the functional results after aneurysm surgery in patients with ischemic cardiomyopathy and (2) identify predictors of favorable outcomes. METHODS AND MATERIAL: Patients (n = 169) with angiographic left ventricular ejection fraction of 22±5% underwent aneurysm surgery and were prospectively followed for three years. Prior to surgery, 40% and 60% of the patients were in congestive heart failure NYHA class I/II and III/IV, respectively. Concomitant revascularization was performed on 95% of the patients. RESULTS: Cumulative in‐hospital and 36‐month mortalities were 7% and 15%, respectively. These respective rates varied according to preoperative parameters: CHF class I‐II, 4% and 13%; CHF class III‐IV, 8% and 16%; LVEF<20%, 12% and 26%; LVEF 21‐30%, 2% and 6%; gated LVEF exercise/rest >5%, <1% and 4%; and gated LVEF exercise/rest ≤5%, 17% and 38%. Higher LVEF ex/rest ratio (p = 0.01), male sex (p = 0.05), and a higher number of grafts (p = 0.01) were predictive of improvement in CHF class at follow‐up based on the results of a multivariate analysis. After three years of follow‐up, 84% of the patients were in class I/II, LVEF was 45±7%, and gated LVEF ex/rest ratio was 13% higher (p<0.01) compared to the beginning of the study. CONCLUSIONS: These data suggest that aneurysmectomy among patients with severe LV dysfunction result in short‐ and long‐term favorable functional outcome and survival. Selection of appropriate surgical candidates may substantially improve survival rates among these patients.
Measuring the allocation of control in a 6 degree-of-freedom docking experiment

Coordination definitions and metrics are reviewed from the motor control, biomedical, and human factors literature. This paper presents an alternative measurement called the M-metric, the product of the simultaneity and efficiency of a trajectory, as a means of quantifying allocation of control within a docking task. A 6 degree-of-freedom (DOF) longitudinal virtual docking task experiment was conducted to address how control is allocated across six DOFs, how allocation of control changes with extended practice, and if differences in the allocation of control are input device dependent. The results show that operators, rather than controlling all 6 DOFs equally, allocate their control to the rotational and translational DOFs separately, and switch control between the two groups. With practice, allocation of control within the translational and rotational subsets increases at a faster rate than across all 6 DOFs together.