Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Newborns of mothers with intellectual disability have a higher risk of perinatal death and being small for gestational age

Objective. To study mode of birth, perinatal health and death in children born to mothers with intellectual disability (ID) in Sweden. Design. Population‐based register study. Setting. National registers; the National Patient Register linked to the Medical Birth Register. Sample. Children of first‐time mothers with ID (n = 326; classified in the International Classification of Diseases 8–10) were identified and compared with 340 624 children of first‐time mothers without ID or any other psychiatric diagnosis between 1999 and 2007. Methods. Population‐based data were extracted from the National Patient Register and the Medical Birth Register. Main outcome measures. Mode of birth, preterm birth, small for gestational age, Apgar score, stillbirth and perinatal death. Results. Children born to mothers with ID were more often stillborn (1.2 vs. 0.3%) or died perinatally (1.8 vs. 0.4%) than children born to mothers without ID. They had a higher proportion of cesarean section birth (24.5 vs. 17.7%) and preterm birth (12.2 vs. 6.1%), were small for gestational age (8.4 vs. 3.1%) and had lower Apgar scores (<7 points at five minutes; 3.7 vs 1.5%) compared with children born to mothers without ID. Logistic regression adjusted for maternal characteristics confirmed an increased risk of small for gestational age (odds ratio 2.25), stillbirth (odds ratio 4.53) and perinatal death (odds ratio 4.25) in children born to mothers with ID. Conclusions. Unborn and newborn children of mothers with ID should be considered a risk group, and their mothers may need better individual‐based care and support.
Megazol and its bioisostere 4H-1,2,4-triazole: comparing the trypanocidal, cytotoxic and genotoxic activities and their in vitro and in silico interactions with the Trypanosoma brucei nitroreductase enzyme

Megazol (7) is a 5-nitroimidazole that is highly active against Trypanosoma cruzi and Trypanosoma brucei, as well as drug-resistant forms of trypanosomiasis. Compound 7 is not used clinically due to its mutagenic and genotoxic properties, but has been largely used as a lead compound. Here, we compared the activity of 7 with its 4H-1,2,4-triazole bioisostere (8) in bloodstream forms of T. brucei and T. cruzi and evaluated their activation by T. brucei type I nitroreductase (TbNTR) enzyme. We also analysed the cytotoxic and genotoxic effects of these compounds in whole human blood using Comet and fluorescein diacetate/ethidium bromide assays. Although the only difference between 7 and 8 is the substitution of sulphur (in the thiadiazole in 7) for nitrogen (in the triazole in 8), the results indicated that 8 had poorer antiparasitic activity than 7 and was not genotoxic, whereas 7 presented this effect. The determination of Vmax indicated that although 8 was metabolised more rapidly than 7, it bounds to the TbNTR with better affinity, resulting in equivalent kcat/KM values. Docking assays of 7 and 8 performed within the active site of a homology model of the TbNTR indicating that 8 had greater affinity than 7.
High-Speed Hardware Implementations of BLAKE, Blue Midnight Wish, CubeHash, ECHO, Fugue, Gröstl, Hamsi, JH, Keccak, Luffa, Shabal, SHAvite-3, SIMD, and Skein

In this paper we describe our high-speed hardware implementations of the 14 candidates of the second evaluation round of the SHA-3 hash function competition. We synthesized all implementations using a uniform tool chain, standard-cell library, target technology, and optimization heuristic. This work provides the fairest comparison of all second-round candidates to date.
Comparison of Fresh and Commercial Pomegranate Juices from Mollar de Elche Cultivar Grown under Conventional or Organic Farming Practices

Abstract: Pomegranate juice has gained a high reputation for its health properties and consequently is now a highly demanded product. However, there is an interest in knowing if there are differences between conventional and organic agricultural practices. For that reason, total phenolic content, antioxidant capacity, punicalagin isomers and sensory analysis of pomegranate juices from Mollar de Elche cultivar were studied. A comparison between fresh and commercial pomegranate juice obtained by conventional and organic agricultural practices was conducted. The total phenolic content values ranged from 2285 to 2457 mg GAE L −1 ; however, there was no significant difference among conventional and organic juices. The antioxidant capacity evaluated by DPPH and ABTS methods showed significant differences ( p < 0.05) among conventional and organic juices. The antioxidant capacity values ranged from 17.7 to 35.9 mmol Trolox L −1 for DPPH and from 5.09 -to 27.9 mmol Trolox L
Back to the basics: how feelings of anger affect cooperation

Purpose The authors propose that angry individuals are much more likely to consider the emotional state of their partner than are neutral individuals. They then apply a lay theory dictating that anger decreases cooperation and react accordingly by lowering their own level of cooperation. Design/methodology/approach The authors report four experiments involving different samples, manipulations, payment schemes and interfaces. The methodological approach was to capitalize on the positives of experimental research (e.g. establishing causality) while also trying to conceptually replicate the findings in different settings. Findings The authors found evidence for a lay theory (i.e. expectation) that anger decreases cooperation, but that actual cooperation was lowest when angry individuals were paired with other angry individuals, supporting the hypotheses. Research limitations/implications Anger can spill over from unrelated contexts to affect cooperation, and incidental anger by itself is not enough to decrease cooperation. However, the findings are limited to anger and cannot necessarily be used to understand the effects of other emotions. Practical implications Before entering into a context that requires cooperation, such as a negotiation, be wary of the emotional state of both yourself and of your partner. This paper suggests that only if both parties are angry, then the likelihood of cooperation is low. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, they are the first researchers to address the question of how incidental anger affects single-round cooperation. By going back to the basics, the authors believe that the findings fill a gap in existing research and offer a building block for future research on anger and cooperation.
Rapid Screening Method for Detecting Ethinyl Estradiol in Natural Water Employing Voltammetry

17α-Ethinyl estradiol (EE2), which is used worldwide in the treatment of some cancers and as a contraceptive, is often found in aquatic systems and is considered a pharmaceutically active compound (PhACs) in the environment. Current methods for the determination of this compound, such as chromatography, are expensive and lengthy and require large amounts of toxic organic solvents. In this work, a voltammetric procedure is developed and validated as a screening tool for detecting EE2 in water samples without prior extraction, clean-up, or derivatization steps. Application of the method we elaborate here to EE2 analysis is unprecedented. EE2 detection was carried out using differential pulse adsorptive cathodic stripping voltammetry (DP AdCSV) with a hanging mercury drop electrode (HMDE) in pH 7.0 Britton-Robinson buffer. The electrochemical process of EE2 reduction was investigated by cyclic voltammetry at different scan rates. Electroreduction of the hormone on a mercury electrode exhibited a peak at −1.16 ± 0.02 V versus Ag/AgCl. The experimental parameters were as follows: −0.7 V accumulation potential, 150 s accumulation time, and 60 mV s−1 scan rate. The limit of detection was 0.49 μg L−1 for a preconcentration time of 150 s. Relative standard deviations were less than 13%. The method was applied to the detection of EE2 in water samples with recoveries ranging from 93.7 to 102.5%.
Characterization of Treponema denticola Mutants Defective in the Major Antigenic Proteins, Msp and TmpC

Treponema denticola, a gram-negative and anaerobic spirochete, is associated with advancing severity of chronic periodontitis. In this study, we confirmed that two major antigenic proteinswere Msp and TmpC, and examined their physiological and pathological roles using gene-deletion mutants. Msp formed a large complex that localized to the outer membrane, while TmpC existed as a monomer and largely localized to the inner membrane. However, TmpC was also detected in the outer membrane fraction, but its cell-surface exposure was not detected. Msp defects increased cell-surface hydrophobicity and secretion of TNF-α from macrophage-like cells, whereas TmpC defects decreased autoagglutination and chymotrypsin-like protease activities. Both mutants adhered to gingival epithelial cells similarly to the wild-type and showed slightly decreased motility. In addition, in Msp-defective mutants, the TDE1072 protein, which is a major membrane protein, was abolished; therefore, phenotypic changes in the mutant can be, at least in part, attributed to the loss of the TDE1072 protein. Thus, the major antigenic proteins, Msp and TmpC, have significant and diverse impacts on the characteristics of T. denticola, especially cell surface properties.
Modeling Percent Tree Canopy Cover: A Pilot Study

Tree canopy cover is a fundamental component of the landscape, and the amount of cover influences fire behavior, air pollution mitigation, and carbon storage. As such, efforts to empirically model percent tree canopy cover across the United States are a critical area of research. The 2001 national-scale canopy cover modeling and mapping effort was completed in 2006, and here we present results from a pilot study for a 2011 product. We examined the influence of two different modeling techniques (random forests and beta regression), two different Landsat imagery normalization processes, and eight different sampling intensities across five different pilot areas. We found that random forest out-performed beta regression techniques and that there was little difference between models developed based on the two different normalization techniques. Based on these results we present a prototype study design which will test canopy cover modeling approaches across a broader spatial scale.
Sitting Tai Chi Improves the Balance Control and Muscle Strength of Community-Dwelling Persons with Spinal Cord Injuries: A Pilot Study

Objective. To investigate the effects of sitting Tai Chi on muscle strength, balance control, and quality of life (QOL) among survivors with spinal cord injuries (SCI). Methods. Eleven SCI survivors participated in the sitting Tai Chi training (90 minutes/session, 2 times/week for 12 weeks) and eight SCI survivors acted as controls. Dynamic sitting balance was evaluated using limits of stability test and a sequential weight shifting test in sitting. Handgrip strength was also tested using a hand-held dynamometer. QOL was measured using the World Health Organization's Quality of Life Scale. Results. Tai Chi practitioners achieved significant improvements in their reaction time (P = 0.042); maximum excursion (P = 0.016); and directional control (P = 0.025) in the limits of stability test after training. In the sequential weight shifting test, they significantly improved their total time to sequentially hit the 12 targets (P = 0.035). Significant improvement in handgrip strength was also found among the Tai Chi practitioners (P = 0.049). However, no significant within and between-group differences were found in the QOL outcomes (P > 0.05). Conclusions. Twelve weeks of sitting Tai Chi training could improve the dynamic sitting balance and handgrip strength, but not QOL, of the SCI survivors.
Review article Metabolic dysfunction within the anterior limbic network in bipolar disorder: a model for studying new treatments

Bipolar disorder is a dynamic psychiatric condition that, early in its course, progresses to a recurrent and lifelong illness. Although a number of treatment options now exist, identifying effective medications for a specific bipolar individual requires trial-and-error in the absence of useful treatment response predictors. However, new imaging research suggests that bipolar disorder may result from hypermetabolism within specific brain regions constituting the anterior limbic network. This model of bipolar disorder may provide targets for monitoring treatment response and ultimately holds the promise of developing predictors of treatment response. This article provides a focused review of evidence supporting this neurophysiologic model of bipolar disorder and highlights how this model may lead to studies of medication effects and treatment response.
Stochastic modeling of epidemic diseases considering dynamic contact networks and genealogy information

Human life and diseases are inseparable. For millions of years, humans and their ancestors suffered from diseases, caused by infectious pathogens (e.g., bacteria, viruses, parasites) and caused by our own bodies as they age and degenerate. Within the last century, with the advent of public health measures, improved nutrition and medicine, such as antibiotics, some of the infectious diseases have been controlled. However, infectious diseases still lead to most of the non-age related deaths in the world, especially in nations with insufficient health support. My research has taken the complex and dynamic contact networks as well as heterogeneity in disease transmission and recovery into account. Real social networks among individuals were used to generate an adjacency matrix in my formulae. Both, transition and recovery rates have been used as unique variables for each individual. I have used the forward Kolmogorov equation to solve the system. To control and prevent the infectious diseases such as influenza and sexually transmitted diseases, we have to model the dynamics of a particular disease, estimate the parameters, and forecast the behavior of the disease over time. The estimated parameters help us to design and implement interventions, such as vaccination or closure of public places, to limit the spread of diseases. R0, the basic reproduction number, is an important parameter in epidemiology. R0 is the average number of secondary infections produced by a primary infection. If R0 is larger than one, an epidemic will most likely happen. An R0 smaller than one suggests that the disease outbreak is local and will die out. In this study I have shown that R0 estimators that only use the the number of contacts and some network features such as covariance of coefficient and clustering coefficient are not enough to estimate the epidemic threshold. I have formulated R0 to consider both node degree distribution as well as the spectral gap in the eigenvalue of a weighted adjacency matrix of a contact network. Only recently, researchers have developed theoretical approaches that can take into account
Effect of Dietary Supplementation of Red Ginseng By-product on Laying Performance, Blood Biochemistry, Serum Immunoglobulin and Microbial Population in Laying Hens

This study was carried out to investigate the effect of dietary supplementation of red ginseng by-product (RGB) on the laying performance, blood biochemistry, and microbial population in laying hens. A total of 120 Hy-Line Brown laying hens (75 weeks old) were randomly allotted to 1 of 3 dietary treatments with 4 replicates per treatment. A commercial-type basal diet was prepared, and 2 additional diets were prepared by supplementing 5.0 or 10.0 g/kg of RGB to the basal diet at the expense of corn. The diets were fed to hens on an ad libitum basis for 4 weeks. There were no differences in feed intake, egg weight, and feed conversion ratio during 4 weeks of the feeding trial. However, hen-day egg production was significantly greater (p<0.05) for the RGB treatment groups than that for the basal treatment group. There were no differences in triglyceride, aspartate aminotransferase, and alanine aminotransferase during the 4-week feeding trial. However, RGB supplementation increased (p<0.05) the serum immunoglobulin G (IgG) and IgM content compared with basal treatment group. The total cholesterol was lower (p<0.05) in the RGB treatments groups than that in the basal treatment group. The intestinal Lactobacillus population was greater (p<0.05) for the RGB treatments groups than that for the basal treatment group. However, the numbers of Salmonella and Escherichia coli were not different among dietary treatments. During the entire experiment, there was no significant difference in egg quality among all the treatments. In conclusion, in addition to improving hen-day production, there were positive effects of dietary RGB supplementation on serum immunoglobulin and cholesterol levels in laying hens.
Construction of Multi-Scale Consistent Brain Networks: Methods and Applications

Mapping human brain networks provides a basis for studying brain function and dysfunction, and thus has gained significant interest in recent years. However, modeling human brain networks still faces several challenges including constructing networks at multiple spatial scales and finding common corresponding networks across individuals. As a consequence, many previous methods were designed for a single resolution or scale of brain network, though the brain networks are multi-scale in nature. To address this problem, this paper presents a novel approach to constructing multi-scale common structural brain networks from DTI data via an improved multi-scale spectral clustering applied on our recently developed and validated DICCCOLs (Dense Individualized and Common Connectivity-based Cortical Landmarks). Since the DICCCOL landmarks possess intrinsic structural correspondences across individuals and populations, we employed the multi-scale spectral clustering algorithm to group the DICCCOL landmarks and their connections into sub-networks, meanwhile preserving the intrinsically-established correspondences across multiple scales. Experimental results demonstrated that the proposed method can generate multi-scale consistent and common structural brain networks across subjects, and its reproducibility has been verified by multiple independent datasets. As an application, these multi-scale networks were used to guide the clustering of multi-scale fiber bundles and to compare the fiber integrity in schizophrenia and healthy controls. In general, our methods offer a novel and effective framework for brain network modeling and tract-based analysis of DTI data.
Stellar Populations at the Center of IC 1613

We have observed the center of the Local Group dwarf irregular galaxy IC 1613 with the WFPC2 aboard the Hubble Space Telescope in the F439W, F555W, and F814W filters. We analyze the resulting color-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) using the main-sequence and giant-branch luminosity functions and comparisons with theoretical stellar models to derive a preliminary star formation history for this galaxy. We find a dominant old stellar population (age ≈7 Gyr), identifiable by the strong red giant branch (RGB) and red clump populations. From the (V-I) color of the RGB, we estimate a mean metallicity of the intermediate-age stellar population [Fe/H] = -1.38 ± 0.31. We confirm a distance of 715 ± 40 kpc using the I magnitude of the RGB tip. The main-sequence luminosity function down to I ≈ 25 provides evidence for a roughly constant star formation rate (SFR) of approximately 3.5 × 10-4 M⊙ yr-1 across the WFPC2 field of view (0.22 kpc2) during the past 250–350 Myr. Structure in the blue loop luminosity function implies that the SFR was ≈50% higher 400–900 Myr ago than today. The mean heavy-element abundance of these young stars is around one-tenth solar. The best explanation for a red spur on the main sequence at I ≈ 24.7 is the blue horizontal branch component of a very old stellar population at the center of IC 1613. We have also imaged a broader area of IC 1613 using the 3.5 m WIYN telescope under excellent seeing conditions. The WIYN CMD reveals a prominent sequence of asymptotic giant branch stars and red supergiants that is less prominent in the WFPC2 CMD because of the smaller field of view. The asymptotic giant branch star luminosity function is consistent with a period of continuous star formation over at least the age range 2–10 Gyr. We present an approximate age-metallicity relation for IC 1613, which appears to be similar to that of the Small Magellanic Cloud. We compare the Hess diagram of IC 1613 with similar data for three other Local Group dwarf galaxies and find that IC 1613 most closely resembles the nearby, transition-type dwarf galaxy Pegasus (DDO 216).
Problem Behavior and Heart Rate Reactivity in Adopted Adolescents: Longitudinal and Concurrent Relations

The present longitudinal study examined resting heart rate and heart rate variability and reactivity to a stressful gambling task in adopted adolescents with aggressive, delinquent, or internalizing behavior problems and adopted adolescents without behavior problems (total N=151). Early-onset delinquent adolescents showed heart rate hyporeactivity to the stress-eliciting gambling task compared to late-onset delinquent adolescents and adolescents without behavior problems. Heart rate, heart rate variability, and reactivity to stress were not related to environmental factors such as early-childhood parental sensitivity, parental socioeconomic status, or adoptee's health status at arrival. We conclude that the distinction between delinquency and aggression and between childhood-onset and adolescence-onset delinquency is important for the study of stress reactivity in adolescents. Copyright © 2008, Society for Research on Adolescence.
ERP evidence for spatial attention being directed away from disgusting locations

When we change sidewalks because we see vomit or dog feces, we are avoiding disgusting stimuli. However, it is unclear how we shift spatial attention itself away from disgusting stimuli. In the present study, we used a multisensory spatial-cuing paradigm as a tool to test if a disgusting sound is avoided by redirecting visual attention to the opposite side. Our results show that behavioral responses as well as the P3 component indicated an inverse validity effect when cued by disgust. Validity differences on the P3 were increased ipsilaterally instead of contralaterally over visual electrode sites. In contrast, the N1 component, time-locked to sound cues, indicated the typical contralateral attentional arousal effect. Thus, disgusting sound cues first attract attention toward their location and later, after the processing of their emotional content, direct spatial attention away from the location of their origin to the opposite location.
DPUP: a distributed processing utilities package

DPUP is a library of utilities that support distributed concurrent computing on a local area network of computers. The library is built upon the interprocess communication facilities in Berkeley Unix 4.2bsd. Thus it will run on any network, connected by an Ethernet, where each computer runs a version of the Unix operating system that supports the Berkeley Unix interprocess communication facilities. DPUP supports two models of distributed concurrent computation, a master-slave model based upon stream sockets, and a broadcast model based upon datagram sockets. With each model, facilities for creating and terminating remote processes, establishing communications between them, and sending and receiving data between these processes are provided. This paper describes the facilities provided in DPUP and gives examples of their use.