Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hepatoprotective Effect of Low Doses of Caffeine on CCl4-Induced Liver Damage in Rats

ABSTRACT Several studies have shown the hepatoprotective effect of the consumption of coffee and tea, which is mainly attributed to caffeine. Many experimental studies have demonstrated this effect; however, these studies used high caffeine doses that are not related to human consumption. The aim of this study was to evaluate the hepatoprotective effect of low doses of caffeine on carbon tetrachloride (CCl4)-treated rats. Low doses of caffeine (CAFF) 5 and 10 mg/kg (CAFF5 and CAFF10) were evaluated in chronic liver damage induced by CCl4 (0.75 mL/kg) in rats. CAFF treatment was administered once a day and CCl4 administration was twice weekly for 10 weeks. Liver function tests (biochemical markers) and functional (sleeping time) and histological (hematoxylin-eosin and Masson trichrome stains) parameters were carried out at the end of damage treatment. Daily treatments of CAFF5 and CAFF10 exhibited a hepatoprotective effect supported by a decrease of alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), and alkaline phosphatase (AP) serum activities and bilirubin serum levels compared with control and also restored serum albumin levels and liver glutathione (GSH). Moreover, CAFF prevented CCl4-induced prolongation in pentobarbital sleeping time and a decrease of liver fibrosis and cell death. Our results demonstrated that low doses of CAFF exert a hepatoprotective effect against CCl4 -induced liver damage in rats.
Women and politics in Chile.

This discussion examines the obstacles to political involvement among women in Chile and considers 1) what womens active participation in politics would actually involve if it were based on their own experience and observation of their own specific needs and 2) how feminist political activity developed historically and how could it be developed now in view of the ways in which and the reasons for which it has been accepted transmitted distorted or rejected as a valid political option in the past. The lack of interest in the question of womens participation in political life highlights the inappropriateness of the alternative "popular" political stance on this issue and perhaps its responsibility for the fact that its stated policies persistently elicit from women responses directly hostile to democratic change. Instances of this politically reactionary mobilization of women can be found not only in Chile but also earlier in Argentina and Brazil where it encouraged the advent of totalitarian regimes. From a feminist point of view once it has been established what womens active participation in politics would involve if based on their own experience and observation of their own specific needs the next step might be to determine the subjective and objective obstacles to a specifically political formulation of that activity and to its subsequent realization. The basic issue is to be able to identify the political dimension of the exactions rrquisitions and various forms of alienation to which women are subjected in society. For the purposes of this discussion political activity means the establishment and organization fo the search for a means to achieve full realization of an entity conscious of its own potentiality. Feminism is genuinely developing into a movement for social liberation in Chile in that it is combing the ideological struggle and ensuing creation of ideology with the struggle waged against class oppression and patriarchal oppression. Knowledge of the themes of women and politics is almost totally nonexistent in Chile or at best vague. Yet the situation seems to be changing as evidenced by the growing interest within and outside the feminist movement in debating and drawing attention to the significance and forms of womens political activity whether actual or potential.
Fate of Intercellular Junctions in Isolated Adult Rat Cardiac Cells

Freeze fracture and thin section techniques have revealed morphological changes in gap junctions and intercalated discs of adult rat myocytes following enzymatic dissociation. Cell separation leaves behind small vesicular remnants of formerly adjacent cells connected to the intact cell by gap junctions; in contrast, desmosomes cleave at the region of intercellular contact. Apparently, the next step in gap junction breakdown is intemalization of the remnants. In thin section, lanthanum penetration reveals that the cleft of some apparently internalized gap junctions is in contact with the sarcolemma, while that of others is not. In freeze fracture replicas, cytoplasmic gap junctions frequently possess hexagonally packed domains of E-face pits separated by smooth regions that may correspond to separations of membranes of internalized junctions found in thin section. Study of material maintained overnight at 37°C showed no surface junctional remnants; topologies of cytoplasmic gap junctions were generally complex, and concentric membrane vesicles were common. These observations suggest that enzymatic dissociation initiates a progressive, defined sequence of junctional internalization that begins with attached cell remnants and may have as the last determinable step the separation into single membranes inside the intact cell.
Disability due to gouty arthritis

Purpose of reviewDisability, or activity limitation, is a common problem in patients with gout. This study explores recent studies examining the nature and extent of disability in gout and addresses the merits and limitations of current self-reported measures of disability. Recent findingsGout has a significant impact on patients’ ability to perform normal self-care activities, recreational and social activities, and work. Comparative studies indicate that gout patients’ physical functioning is strongly reduced and comparable to those with other severe rheumatic conditions. Moreover, gout has been shown to result in substantial work absence and reduced productivity. However, few studies have thoroughly examined the concept of disability in gout. Additionally, assessment of disability due to gout still seems particularly challenging and it is unclear whether current measurement instruments are sufficiently valid and accurate. SummaryGout-related disability is an underestimated and understudied problem. More qualitative and quantitative studies are needed that examine the concept of disability in gout and its impact on patients’ lives, both during and between disease flares. Moreover, future studies should try to identify gout-specific disability issues and examine the relevance and comprehensiveness of existing measures to further improve the assessment of disability in gout.
The Soul of Education: Helping Students Find Connection, Compassion, and Character at School

Now it's the last day of the retreat, and we are preparing for our closing ceremony. Suddenly I realize that Felicia, a beautiful but brittle 17-year-old student who is struggling with the final stages of bone cancer, will never make it down the hill on her crutches. She staunchly refuses our help. Except for hourly injections of painkillers that my colleague is giving her, she acts as if she wants to face death alone.
Effect of flexible pin on the dynamic behaviors of wind turbine planetary gear drives

Flexible pins eliminate the need for straddle mounting, and therefore enable the maximum possible number of planets to be used for any particular epicyclic ratio of power transmission systems. Having more planet gears will significantly increase the input torque density. In this type of design, the pin stiffness and position tolerances are important parameters as they affect the dynamic performances significantly. The present study addresses this issue by modeling, the design of double cantilevered flexible pin, and analyzing the contributions of pin stiffness and misalignment applying the lumped parameter approach. The proposed model formulates the coupled lateral-torsional dynamic response of a planetary spur gear, including the effects of mesh stiffness and phasing as a function of pin error. The resultant equations of motion are applied to examine the effects of pin stiffness and position errors on the natural modes and structural dynamic response. The effects of pin stiffness on deviation of the tooth contact forces of the sun-planet and ring-planet gear pairs are analyzed to understand the relationship between mesh characteristic and input speed variations. The calculated supporting forces of the planet gear are examined to understand the load sharing characteristic due to pin errors, pin stiffness and input load of the power transmission system.
Optimal trajectory generation for a glider in time-varying 2D ocean flows B-spline model

The problem of showing that Lagrangian Coherent Structures (LCS) are useful in determining near optimal trajectories for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) known as gliders is investigated. This paper extends our preliminary results in couple ways. First, the ocean current flows are modeled by 3D B-spline functions in which the input variables are latitude, longitude and time, and the output variable is the ocean current velocity in 2D. The 3D (2D and time-varying) B-spline model of the ocean current is utilized in the Nonlinear Trajectory Generation (NTG) algorithm to find the optimal trajectory of the glider. The trajectories found using the 2D and time-varying B-spline ocean flows model are compared with the trajectories from 2D B-spline model in which the time is assumed to be constant in the ocean current model. In the second part of the paper, the dynamical glider model is established and controlled by gyroscopic forces rather than the simplified kinematic glider model as in the previous work. Finally, numerical solutions of several scenarios and animations of glider trajectories are presented. The results show that the 2D and time-varying B-spline ocean model not only can make the whole trajectory generating process much easier, but also the glider can reach the same destination in a comparable time and with much less energy than it does with the previous 2D ocean current model for both the kinematic and dynamic glider models. Both of the kinematic and dynamic glider optimal trajectories, successfully generated with 2D and time varying ocean current B-spline models, are shown to correspond to LCS.
Epidemiology of alcohol and drug use in the elderly

Purpose of review Alcohol and drug abuse among older adults is a topic of growing public health concern. The authors review the recent epidemiological surveys of this emerging trend and outline some public health challenges for the coming future. Recent findings Relevant studies showed that prevalence of substance use disorders is increasing among American and European elders. Although treatment admissions involving use of alcohol have slightly decreased, rates involving misuse of prescription medications and illicit drugs have increased. As older adults were less likely than younger adults to recognize substance use as problematic or to use treatment services, elders were as likely to benefit from treatment as younger people. Healthcare settings should be prepared to treat this population. Summary There is robust epidemiological evidence showing that alcohol and drug abuse among the elderly are current health problems in developed regions. The number of older adults will increase in less developed regions in the next decades, but it is unclear whether this population subgroup will also seek treatment for substance use to a greater extent. Investigations of the sexual difference and cross-cultural variation can help tailor effective interventions. Routine screening programmes to address the needs of the ageing substance-using population are recommended.
STUDIES OF GENETIC TRANSMISSION OF MURINE LEUKEMIA VIRUS BY AKR MICE

AKR mice, which regularly contain infectious murine leukemia virus, were mated with four Fv-1n strains of mice which show little or no expression of virus. F1, F2, and first and second backcross generation hybrids were tested for virus in tail tissue at 2 and 6 wk of age. The segregation data indicate that the AKR mouse contains two unlinked, autosomal, chromosomal loci, either of which suffices to induce detectable levels of infectious virus in Fv-1n progeny by 6 wk of age. One of the loci (tentatively referred to as V1) is on linkage group I, 25–30 map units from the locus for albino; the gene order tentatively appears to be N1-c-Hbb.
Game-Theoretic Based Distributed Scheduling Algorithms for Minimum Coverage Breach in Directional Sensor Networks

A directional sensor network, where a lot of sensors are intensively and randomly deployed, is able to enhance coverage performances, since working directions can be partitioned into different K covers which are activated in a round-robin fashion. In this paper, we consider the problem of direction set K-Cover for minimum coverage breach in directional sensor networks. First, we formulate the problem as a game called direction scheduling game (DSG), which we prove as a potential game. Thus, the existence of pure Nash equilibria can be guaranteed, and the optimal coverage is a pure Nash equilibrium, since the potential function of DSGs is consistent with the coverage objective function of the underlying network. Second, we propose the synchronous and asynchronous game-theoretic based distributed scheduling algorithms, which we prove to converge to pure Nash equilibria. Third, we present the explicit bounds on the coverage performance of the proposed algorithms by theoretical analysis of the algorithms' coverage performance. Finally, we show experimental results and conclude that the Nash equilibria can provide a near-optimal and well-balanced solution.
Fast YOLO: A Fast You Only Look Once System for Real-time Embedded Object Detection in Video

Object detection is considered one of the most challenging problems in this field of computer vision, as it involves the combination of object classification and object localization within a scene. Recently, deep neural networks (DNNs) have been demonstrated to achieve superior object detection performance compared to other approaches, with YOLOv2 (an improved You Only Look Once model) being one of the state-of-the-art in DNN-based object detection methods in terms of both speed and accuracy. Although YOLOv2 can achieve real-time performance on a powerful GPU, it still remains very challenging for leveraging this approach for real-time object detection in video on embedded computing devices with limited computational power and limited memory. In this paper, we propose a new framework called Fast YOLO, a fast You Only Look Once framework which accelerates YOLOv2 to be able to perform object detection in video on embedded devices in a real-time manner. First, we leverage the evolutionary deep intelligence framework to evolve the YOLOv2 network architecture and produce an optimized architecture (referred to as O-YOLOv2 here) that has 2.8X fewer parameters with just a ~2% IOU drop. To further reduce power consumption on embedded devices while maintaining performance, a motion-adaptive inference method is introduced into the proposed Fast YOLO framework to reduce the frequency of deep inference with O-YOLOv2 based on temporal motion characteristics. Experimental results show that the proposed Fast YOLO framework can reduce the number of deep inferences by an average of 38.13%, and an average speedup of ~3.3X for objection detection in video compared to the original YOLOv2, leading Fast YOLO to run an average of ~18FPS on a Nvidia Jetson TX1 embedded system.
Adipose‐derived stem cells for clinical applications: a review

The use of stem cells derived from adipose tissue as an autologous and self‐replenishing source for a variety of differentiated cell phenotypes, provides a great deal of promise for reconstructive surgery. In this article, we review available literature encompassing methods of extraction of pluripotent adipose stem cells (ASCs) from lipoaspirate locations, their storage, options for culture, growth and differentiation, cryopreservation and its effect on stem cell survival and proliferation, and new technologies involving biomaterials and scaffolds. We will conclude by assessing potential avenues for developing this incredibly promising field.
Crowdsourcing Interface Feature Design with Bayesian Optimization

Designing novel interfaces is challenging. Designers typically rely on experience or subjective judgment in the absence of analytical or objective means for selecting interface parameters. We demonstrate Bayesian optimization as an efficient tool for objective interface feature refinement. Specifically, we show that crowdsourcing paired with Bayesian optimization can rapidly and effectively assist interface design across diverse deployment environments. Experiment 1 evaluates the approach on a familiar 2D interface design problem: a map search and review use case. Adding a degree of complexity, Experiment 2 extends Experiment 1 by switching the deployment environment to mobile-based virtual reality. The approach is then demonstrated as a case study for a fundamentally new and unfamiliar interaction design problem: web-based augmented reality. Finally, we show how the model generated as an outcome of the refinement process can be used for user simulation and queried to deliver various design insights.
Lactoferrin and ovotransferrin contribute toward antioxidative effects of Edible Bird’s Nest against hydrogen peroxide-induced oxidative stress in human SH-SY5Y cells

There are reports of improved redox outcomes due to consumption of Edible Bird’s Nest (EBN). Many of the functional effects of EBN can be linked to its high amounts of antioxidants. Interestingly, dietary components with high antioxidants have shown promise in the prevention of aging and its related diseases like Alzheimer’s disease. In this study, the antioxidative potentials of EBN and its constituents, lactoferrin (LF) and ovotransferrin (OVF), were determined and protective effects against hydrogen peroxide (H2O2)- induced toxicity on SH-SY5Y cells using 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay and acridine orange and propidium iodide (AO/PI) staining with microscopy were examined. Results showed that EBN and its constituents attenuated H2O2-induced cytotoxicity, and decreased radical oxygen species (ROS) through increased scavenging activity. Furthermore, LF, OVF, and EBN produced transcriptional changes in antioxidant related genes that tended towards neuroprotection as compared to H2O2-treated group. Overall, the results suggest that LF and OVF may produce synergistic or all-or-none antioxidative effects in EBN. Graphical abstract The Edible Bird’s Nest-induced neuroprotection activity was possibly related to its ability of antioxidant system as well as through activation of SOD1/SOD2/PARP1 transcriptional genes
Modeling Missing Data in Clinical Time Series with RNNs

We demonstrate a simple strategy to cope with missing data in sequential inputs, addressing the task of multilabel classification of diagnoses given clinical time series. Collected from the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, our data consists of multivariate time series of observations. The measurements are irregularly spaced, leading to missingness patterns in temporally discretized sequences. While these artifacts are typically handled by imputation, we achieve superior predictive performance by treating the artifacts as features. Unlike linear models, recurrent neural networks can realize this improvement using only simple binary indicators of missingness. For linear models, we show an alternative strategy to capture this signal. Training models on missingness patterns only, we show that for some diseases, what tests are run can be as predictive as the results themselves.
Non-expert listeners show decreased heart rate and increased blood pressure (fear bradycardia) in response to atonal music

Previous studies suggested that listening to different types of music may modulate differently psychological mood and physiological responses associated with the induced emotions. In this study the effect of listening to instrumental classical vs. atonal contemporary music was examined in a group of 50 non-expert listeners. The subjects’ heart rate and diastolic and systolic blood pressure values were measured while they listened to music of different style and emotional typologies. Pieces were selected by asking a group of composers and conservatory professors to suggest a list of the most emotional music pieces (from Renaissance to present time). A total of 214 suggestions from 20 respondents were received. Then it was asked them to identify which pieces best induced in the listener feelings of agitation, joy or pathos and the number of suggested pieces per style was computed. Atonal pieces were more frequently indicated as agitating, and tonal pieces as joyful. The presence/absence of tonality in a musical piece did not affect the affective dimension of pathos (being touching). Among the most frequently cited six pieces were selected that were comparable for structure and style, to represent each emotion and style. They were equally evaluated as unfamiliar by an independent group of 10 students of the same cohort) and were then used as stimuli for the experimental session in which autonomic parameters were recorded. Overall, listening to atonal music (independent of the pieces’ emotional characteristics) was associated with a reduced heart rate (fear bradycardia) and increased blood pressure (both diastolic and systolic), possibly reflecting an increase in alertness and attention, psychological tension, and anxiety. This evidence fits with the results of the esthetical assessment showing how, overall, atonal music is perceived as more agitating and less joyful than tonal one.
Investigating Knowledge Integration in Web-based Thematic Learning Using Concept Mapping Assessment

Theme-based learning (TBL) refers to learning modes which adopt the following sequence: (a) finding the theme; (b) finding a focus of interest based on the theme; (c) finding materials based on the focus of interest; (d) integrating the materials to establish shared knowledge; (e) publishing and sharing the integrated knowledge. We have created an on-line system which supports the TBL mode to provide elementary school students with Web-based thematic learning. This study investigated the learning process of 40 fifth grade students in the natural science unit, "Stars and Sun", through the construction of conceptual maps supplemented with structured interviews with both instructors and students on the process and results of the Web-based thematic learning. The following conclusions were reached: (a) the Web-based thematic learning. system has positive effect on learners’ concept learning; (b) the Web-based thematic learning first providing learners with a framework from which develops the related concepts, is a more stable learning mode; (c) the Web-based thematic learning system is suitable for students with different abilities. The middle achievement group of students is particularly suited to using a sharing and observation Web-based learning strategy.