Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Food Insufficiency and Physical and Mental Health in a Longitudinal Survey of Welfare Recipients∗

Food insufficiency is a significant problem in the United States, and poor African American women with children are at especially high risk. An inadequate household food supply can potentially affect the well-being of household members, but it is difficult to distinguish the effects of food insufficiency from risk factors for poor health that are also common among the food insufficient, such as poverty. We examined food insufficiency and physical and mental health among African American and white women (n = 676) who were welfare recipients in 1997. Controlling for common risk factors, women who reported food insufficiency in both 1997 and 1998 were more likely to report fair or poor health at the later date. Food insufficiency in 1998 was significantly associated with meeting the diagnostic screening criteria for recent major depression. Food insufficiency at both times and in 1998 only was related to women's sense of mastery. These findings add to growing evidence that household food insufficiency is associated with poor physical and mental health.
Cranberry juice for the prevention of recurrences of urinary tract infections in children: a randomized placebo-controlled trial.

BACKGROUND Cranberry juice prevents recurrences of urinary tract infections (UTIs) in adult women. The objective of this study was to evaluate whether cranberry juice is effective in preventing UTI recurrences in children. METHODS A double-blind randomized placebo-controlled trial was performed in 7 hospitals in Finland. A total of 263 children treated for UTI were randomized to receive either cranberry juice (n = 129) or placebo (n = 134) for 6 months. Eight children were omitted because of protocol violations, leaving 255 children for the final analyses. The children were monitored for 1 year, and their recurrent UTIs were recorded. RESULTS Twenty children (16%) in the cranberry group and 28 (22%) in the placebo group had at least 1 recurrent UTI (difference, -6%; 95% confidence interval [CI], -16 to 4%; P = .21). There were no differences in timing between these first recurrences (P = .32). Episodes of UTI totaled 27 and 47 in the cranberry and placebo groups, respectively, and the UTI incidence density per person-year at risk was 0.16 episodes lower in the cranberry group (95% CI, -.31 to -.01; P = .035). The children in the cranberry group had significantly fewer days on antimicrobials (-6 days per patient-year; 95% CI, -7 to -5; P < .001). CONCLUSIONS The intervention did not significantly reduce the number of children who experienced a recurrence of UTI, but it was effective in reducing the actual number of recurrences and related antimicrobial use.
High-throughput lensfree 3D tracking of human sperms reveals rare statistics of helical trajectories

Dynamic tracking of human sperms across a large volume is a challenging task. To provide a high-throughput solution to this important need, here we describe a lensfree on-chip imaging technique that can track the three-dimensional (3D) trajectories of > 1,500 individual human sperms within an observation volume of approximately 8–17 mm3. This computational imaging platform relies on holographic lensfree shadows of sperms that are simultaneously acquired at two different wavelengths, emanating from two partially-coherent sources that are placed at 45° with respect to each other. This multiangle and multicolor illumination scheme permits us to dynamically track the 3D motion of human sperms across a field-of-view of > 17 mm2 and depth-of-field of approximately 0.5–1 mm with submicron positioning accuracy. The large statistics provided by this lensfree imaging platform revealed that only approximately 4–5% of the motile human sperms swim along well-defined helices and that this percentage can be significantly suppressed under seminal plasma. Furthermore, among these observed helical human sperms, a significant majority (approximately 90%) preferred right-handed helices over left-handed ones, with a helix radius of approximately 0.5–3 μm, a helical rotation speed of approximately 3–20 rotations/s and a linear speed of approximately 20–100 μm/s. This high-throughput 3D imaging platform could in general be quite valuable for observing the statistical swimming patterns of various other microorganisms, leading to new insights in their 3D motion and the underlying biophysics.
Blue light from individual light masks directed at a single eye advances the breeding season in mares.

REASONS FOR PERFORMING STUDY Artificial lighting is commonly used to advance the breeding season in horses. Light masks have been developed that direct light at a single eye to inhibit the production of melatonin, the decoder of photoperiod for seasonally breeding animals. OBJECTIVES To investigate whether low-intensity blue light from light masks was effective at advancing the breeding season in mares. STUDY DESIGN Controlled experiment. METHODS Data on reproductive activity was collected from 3 groups of mares maintained on Kentucky horse farms under various lighting conditions between 20 November 2011 and 10 February 2012: 59 nonpregnant, healthy Thoroughbred mares were used. On 1 December 2011, Group 1 (n = 16) was housed indoors under barn lighting (250 Lux) until 23.00 h daily. Group 2 (n = 25) wore light masks programmed to turn on from 16.30 h until 23.00 h daily and was maintained outdoors. Group 3 (n = 19) was maintained outdoors under the natural photoperiod as control. At 2-week intervals, rectal ultrasound examinations were performed and blood was collected for progesterone analysis. Oestrous cyclicity was defined as the presence of follicles >20 mm diameter detected in conjunction with serum progesterone >1 ng/ml and confirmation of ovulation by transrectal ultrasound examination. RESULTS On 10 February, the number of mares exhibiting oestrous cyclicity was 14/16 (87.5%) in Group 1; 20/25 (80%) in Group 2; and 4/19 (21%), in Group 3. Pairwise comparison of groups revealed no difference in the number of cycling mares between Groups 1 and 2 (χ(2) test, P = 0.3348) whereas differences were observed between Groups 1 and 3 (χ(2) test, P<0.0001) and Groups 2 and 3 (χ(2) test, P<0.0003). CONCLUSIONS Low-intensity blue light to a single eye from a light mask is an effective alternative to maintenance of mares indoors under lights for advancing the breeding season. Mobile light therapy for horses could have economic benefits for the breeder by reducing the costs of maintaining mares indoors, and welfare benefits for horses by permitting outdoor maintenance.
Effect of Prolonged Intermittent Fasting in Ramadan on Biochemical and Inflammatory Parameters of Healthy Men

Introduction: Ramadan is an Islamic month during which Muslims abstain from eating, drinking and smoking from dawn to sunset. Ramadan is a model of prolonged intermittent fasting. Previous studies have shown that fasting has beneficial effects on human health. However, the results of these studies have been inconsistent. The aim of present study was to investigate the effect of fasting during Ramadan on biochemical parameters and inflammatory markers. Materials and Methods: This prospective observational study was conducted in July 2013. Thirty healthy men who were fasting during Ramadan were enrolled in the study. Anthropometric measurements were taken from each subject. Fasting venous blood samples were taken one week before Ramadan, during the last week of Ramadan and four weeks after Ramadan. Serum interleukin-6, high sensitivity C-reactive protein, fasting blood sugar (FBS), insulin, total cholesterol, triglycerides, low-density lipoprotein and high-density lipoprotein levels were measured. Results: No significant change was observed in serum total cholesterol, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, interleukin-6 and high sensitivity C-reactive protein. Fasting in Ramadan significantly decreased body mass index (P< 0.0001), FBS (P< 0.0001), triglycerides (P< 0.01), erythrocyte sedimentation rate (P< 0.01), insulin (P< 0.02), HOMA index (P< 0.001) and high-density lipoprotein-cholesterol (P < 0.0001). Conclusions: This study indicates that fasting during Ramadan has some positive effects on body mass index, serum triglycerides, high-density lipoprotein, FBS, insulin and HOMA index.
Dynamic Cloud Task Scheduling Based on a Two-Stage Strategy

To maximize task scheduling performance and minimize nonreasonable task allocation in clouds, this paper proposes a method based on a two-stage strategy. At the first stage, a job classifier motivated by a Bayes classifier’s design principle is utilized to classify tasks based on historical scheduling data. A certain number of virtual machines (VMs) of different types are accordingly created. This can save time of creating VMs during task scheduling. At the second stage, tasks are matched with concrete VMs dynamically. Dynamic task scheduling algorithms are accordingly proposed. Experimental results show that they can effectively improve the cloud’s scheduling performance and achieve the load balancing of cloud resources in comparison with existing methods. Note to Practitioners— Task scheduling is one of the challenging problems in cloud computing, especially when deadline and cost are considered. As an important actuator, virtual machines (VMs) play a vital role for cloud task scheduling. To meet task deadlines, one needs to save the time of creating VMs, task waiting time, and executing time. To minimize the task execution cost, one needs to schedule tasks onto their most suitable VMs for execution. We propose a cloud task scheduling framework based on a two-stage strategy to do so. It precreates VMs according to historical scheduling data, therefore saving time for tasks to wait for creating VMs. It matches tasks with their most suitable VMs dynamically, therefore saving their execution cost. Under the premise of meeting task deadlines, it minimizes the waiting time of VMs to schedule tasks, thus minimizing the cost to be paid by users who utilize VMs. The readily deployable algorithms are designed and illustrated to improve cloud task scheduling and execution results in comparison with those using traditional methods.
A correlation comparison between Altmetric Attention Scores and citations for six PLOS journals

This study considered all articles published in six Public Library of Science (PLOS) journals in 2012 and Web of Science citations for these articles as of May 2015. A total of 2,406 articles were analyzed to examine the relationships between Altmetric Attention Scores (AAS) and Web of Science citations. The AAS for an article, provided by Altmetric aggregates activities surrounding research outputs in social media (news outlet mentions, tweets, blogs, Wikipedia, etc.). Spearman correlation testing was done on all articles and articles with AAS. Further analysis compared the stratified datasets based on percentile ranks of AAS: top 50%, top 25%, top 10%, and top 1%. Comparisons across the six journals provided additional insights. The results show significant positive correlations between AAS and citations with varied strength for all articles and articles with AAS (or social media mentions), as well as for normalized AAS in the top 50%, top 25%, top 10%, and top 1% datasets. Four of the six PLOS journals, Genetics, Pathogens, Computational Biology, and Neglected Tropical Diseases, show significant positive correlations across all datasets. However, for the two journals with high impact factors, PLOS Biology and Medicine, the results are unexpected: the Medicine articles showed no significant correlations but the Biology articles tested positive for correlations with the whole dataset and the set with AAS. Both journals published substantially fewer articles than the other four journals. Further research to validate the AAS algorithm, adjust the weighting scheme, and include appropriate social media sources is needed to understand the potential uses and meaning of AAS in different contexts and its relationship to other metrics.
The Brain Basis of Positive and Negative Affect: Evidence from a Meta-Analysis of the Human Neuroimaging Literature.

The ability to experience pleasant or unpleasant feelings or to represent objects as "positive" or "negative" is known as representing hedonic "valence. " Although scientists overwhelmingly agree that valence is a basic psychological phenomenon, debate continues about how to best conceptualize it scientifically. We used a meta-analysis of 397 functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography studies (containing 914 experimental contrasts and 6827 participants) to test 3 competing hypotheses about the brain basis of valence: the bipolarity hypothesis that positive and negative affect are supported by a brain system that monotonically increases and/or decreases along the valence dimension, the bivalent hypothesis that positive and negative affect are supported by independent brain systems, and the affective workspace hypothesis that positive and negative affect are supported by a flexible set of valence-general regions. We found little evidence for the bipolar or bivalent hypotheses. Findings instead supported the hypothesis that, at the level of brain activity measurable by fMRI, valence is flexibly implemented across instances by a set of valence-general limbic and paralimbic brain regions.
The psychometric properties of the K10 and K6 scales in screening for mood and anxiety disorders in the South African Stress and Health study

Emerging research has provided support for the use of the Kessler Psychological Distress Scales in developing countries; however, this research has yet to be extended to southern Africa. This study sought to evaluate the performance of the Kessler scales in screening for depression and anxiety disorders in the South African population. The scales along with the Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI) were included in the South African Stress and Health study, a nationally representative household survey. The K10/K6 demonstrated moderate discriminating ability in detecting depression and anxiety disorders in the general population; evidenced by area under the receiver operating curves of 0.73 and 0.72 respectively. However, both scales failed to meet our acceptability criteria of high sensitivity and high positive predictive value. Examinations of differences in responding by race/ethnicity revealed that the K10/K6 [Kessler Psychological Distress Scale 10‐item (K10) and the abbreviated six‐item (K6)] had significantly lower discriminating ability with respect to depression and anxiety disorders among the Black group (0.71) than among the combined minority race/ethnic groups of White, Colored, and Indian/Asian (0.78; p = 0.016). The difference in time period assessed on the K10/K6 (past 30 days) versus the CIDI (past 12 months) was a notable limitation of this study. Additional validation studies using clinician diagnostic instruments are recommended. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
SOME PHYSICAL PROPERTIES AND NUTRITIONAL COMPOSITIONS OF COWPEA (Vigna sinensis L.) SEEDS

In this study, n utrient contents for human diet and some physical properties that are important for the design of equipments for sowing, harvesting, processing, transportation, sorting, separation and packaging of cowpea cv. Poyraz grown in Turkey were determined. The physical properties were evaluated as functions of moisture content in the moisture range from 13 to 35% d.b. for the rewetted cowpea seed. As a result, the average length, width, thickness, the geometric mean diameter, sphericity, unit mass and volume were 8.9, 6.2, 5.1, 6.61 mm, 73.9%, 0.27 g and 0.18 cm 3 , respectively. The bulk density decreased from 727.2 to 678.8 kg/m 3 , true density decreased from 1428.5 to 1000 kg/m 3 , porosity decreased from 48.8 to 32.1%, projected area increased from 0.5 to 0.73 cm 2 , terminal velocity increased from 7.2 to 8.5 m/s, one thousand seed mass increased from 230.7 g. to 327.4 g, the rupture strength of cowpea seed decreased from 88.2 to 37.6 N, the sphericity of cowpea seed decreased from 73.9 to 71.5% while the moisture content of cowpea seed increased from 13 to 35% d.b. Mineral contents of cowpea seeds including K, P, Ca, Na, Zn and Fe were determined 1.09%, 0.2%, 5.8%, 0.03%, 30ppm, 63ppm, respectively.
SEASONAL AND SPATIAL PATTERNS OF TOXIGENIC SPECIES OF Dinophysis AND Pseudo-nitzschia IN A SUBTROPICAL BRAZILIAN ESTUARY

This study investigated the spatial and temporal distributions of toxigenic phytoplankton species between October 2010 and April 2012 in Guaratuba Bay, Parana state, Brazil, where aquaculture has been intensified in recent years. The highest abundances of Pseudo-nitzschia calliantha and P. pungens (up to 7.3 x 104 cells L-1), diatoms which cause amnesic shellfish poisoning (ASP), were correlated with higher values of temperature (from December to April, salinity (>20) and silicate concentrations (ranging from 6.0 to 90.0 µm). The occurrence of these harmful diatoms in the bay also appeared to depend upon the development of seeding mechanisms in the adjacent coastal water and its subsequent advection by tidal currents to the interior of the estuary. During the study period, Pseudo-nitzschia cell abundance remained low to moderate probably as a result of growth limitation by phosphate shortage, especially in the outer area of the estuary. In addition, harmful species of Dinophysis, dinoflagellates responsible for diarrhetic shellfish poisoning (DSP) events, were recorded in every sampling campaign. The highest abundances of D. acuminata, D. caudata and D. tripos were associated with the upper halocline layer in regions of the bay where water column stratification was more frequent. On some occasions, cell abundances of D. acuminata (up to 3.2 x 103 cells L-1) exceeded levels considered harmful in areas used to cultivate bivalve mollusks for human consumption. These novel results strongly indicate the necessity of implementing a monitoring program for harmful microalgae in Guaratuba Bay.
Expansion of T regulatory Cells in Lepromatous Leprosy is Mediated by Phenolic Glycolipid-1

In leprosy, lepromatous form of the disease is more severe and results from suppression of T cell response. T regulatory cells which suppress T cell response has been found in higher frequency in blood and at the site of infection in leprosy. Therefore, present study was carried out to evaluate the role of Mycobacterium leprae antigens whole cell sonicate (WCS) and especially phenolic glycolipid-1 (PGL-1), which is known for its suppressive nature, in the induction of T regulatory cells expansion in peripheral blood of leprosy patients. For this purpose peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of different category of leprosy patients and healthy controls were stimulated with M. leprae antigens in vitro and percentage of T regulatory cells was determined by flow cytometry. We found higher frequency of T regulatory cells in PBMCs of untreated borderline lepromatous/lepromatous leprosy (BL/LL) patients. Further, PBMCs of untreated BL/LL patients also showed higher percentage of T regs after stimulation with PGL-1. Antigen mediated expansion of T regulatory cells was also supported by results of Carboxy fluorescein succinimidyl ester (CFSE) proliferation assay. None of the antigen induced T regs expansion in healthy controls, untreated tuberculoid/borderline tuberculoid (TT/BT) leprosy patients and treated leprosy patients. Therefore it is suggested that increased frequency of T regs in BL/LL patients may be due to the induction of T regs expansion mediated by PGL-1 of M. leprae and this high percentage of T regs resulted in T cell suppression in lepromatous disease.
Determine the Center of Mass Position in Human Undulatory Swimming: A Static Approach

The knowledge of the actual center of mass (CoM) position enables an estimation of human motion concerning cause-and-effect relations, e.g. using the principles of linear momentum. Although previous analytical methods are able to calculate the CoM, but its precision strongly depends on the quality of the used models and body segments inertial characteristics. Experimental methods provide a more precise location of body’s CoM, but often only in one dimension or with inadequate measurement errors. The aim of this study is primary (i) to show an experimental setup to determine swimmer’s CoM in 2D (sagittal plane) with small errors of the setup and secondary (ii) to show the location as well as (iii) the variation of swimmer’s CoM for different characteristic positions during an undulatory kick cycle. Five female and five male sport students imitated five different positions of an undulatory swimming kick cycle laying sagittal on a triangular platform. The presented method allows to determine the CoM of swimmer’s actual position with measurement errors of maximum 4 cm. Horizontal and vertical position of the CoM as well as the Euclidean distance significantly differs from the hip for all participants and during all investigated phases of a kick cycle.
Use of adjuvant chemotherapy in patients with stage III colon cancer in Puerto Rico: A population-based study

Objective This study aims to examine factors associated with the use of adjuvant chemotherapy and the use of oxaliplatin after curative resection in stage III colon cancer patients and assesses the effect of their use in three-year survival. Methods This retrospective cohort study was conducted using Puerto Rico Central Cancer Registry-Health Insurance Linkage Database. The study cohort consisted of stage III colon cancer patients with a curative surgery in the period 2008–2012. Multivariate logistic regression was used to estimate adjusted odds ratios. Kaplan-Meier methods and Cox proportional hazards models were used to assess the association between adjuvant chemotherapy and oxaliplatin use and overall survival and risk of death, respectively. Results Overall, 75% of the study population received adjuvant chemotherapy during the study period. Factors statistically associated with receiving adjuvant chemotherapy within four months after resection included being married (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] 1.64; 95% CI 1.18–2.28; p = 0.003), and being enrolled in Medicare (AOR 1.68; 95% CI: 1.03–2.75; p = 0.039) or Medicaid and Medicare dual eligible (AOR 1.66; 95% CI: 1.06–2.60; p = 0.028). However, patients aged ≥70 years were less likely to receive adjuvant chemotherapy (AOR 0.22; 95%CI 0.14–0.36; p<0.001). Discussion We observed a significant reduction in mortality in adjuvant chemotherapy treated patients. Similarly, patients <70 years treated with oxaliplatin had significantly lower risk of death than those who did not, although for patients ≥70 years no statistical significance was achieved. Future studies should assess effective interventions to reduce barriers to access guideline-based recommended colon cancer treatment.
Sparse Oracle Inequalities for Variable Selection via Regularized Quantization

We give oracle inequalities on procedures which combines quantization and variable selection via a weighted Lasso $k$-means type algorithm. The results are derived for a general family of weights, which can be tuned to size the influence of the variables in different ways. Moreover, these theoretical guarantees are proved to adapt the corresponding sparsity of the optimal codebooks, if appropriate. Even if there is no sparsity assumption on the optimal codebooks, our procedure is proved to be close to a sparse approximation of the optimal codebooks, as has been done for the Generalized Linear Models in regression. If the optimal codebooks have a sparse support, we also show that this support can be asymptotically recovered, giving an asymptotic upper bound on the probability of misclassification. These results are illustrated with Gaussian mixture models in arbitrary dimension with sparsity assumptions on the means, which are standard distributions in model-based clustering.