Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Development and Evaluation of pH-Dependent Micro Beads for Colon Targeting

The purpose of this research was to develop and evaluate multiparticulates of alginate and chitosan hydrogel beads exploiting pH sensitive property for colon-targeted delivery of theophylline. Alginate and chitosan beads were prepared by ionotropic gelation method followed by enteric coating with Eudragit S100. All formulations were evaluated for particle size, encapsulation efficiency, swellability and in vitro drug release.In vitro dissolution studies performed following pH progression method demonstrated that the drug release from coated beads depends on coat weights applied and pH of dissolution media. Mechanism of drug release was found to be swelling and erosion-dependent. The studies showed that formulated alginate and chitosan beads can be used effectively for the delivery of drug to colon and a coat weight of 20% weight gain was sufficient to impart an excellent gastro resistant property to the beads for effective release of drug at higher pH values.
ASSESSMENT OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ANTERIOR COMMUNICATING ANEURYSMS.

A CONSIDERABLE nmnber of patients with ruptured aneurysms arising from the junction of the anterior communicating and anterior cerebral arteries will survive and not bleed again. There is some variation between series but generally a 50 per cent mortal i ty has been found, a The object of this s tudy was to determine the factors that distinguish the patients that will rebleed from those that will not, so that operation entailing a considerable mortal i ty can be restricted to the former group. A method is presented by which the prognosis of an individual patient can be determined with some degree of accuracy. Although the subject mat ter here is aneurysms of the anterior communicating artery, this method of analysis is potentially applicable to other aneurysms, other diseases and other treatments.
Association of Obesity and Smoking With PSA and PSA Velocity in Men With Prostate Cancer

Significant number of prostate tumors are slow growing and could probably be left untreated. However, many are aggressive and can spread rapidly causing patient suffering and/or death. Current technology does not allow physicians to differentiate between slow growing and aggressive tumors at diagnosis. Hence, many patients are exposed to invasive treatment and its associated morbidities such as incontinence and impotence. Markers that enable differentiation between slow and fast progressing cancer will allow physicians to prevent unnecessary treatments on men who may not need them, and focus on the men with aggressive disease. A longitudinal study was conducted (N = 140) using mixed effects regression models to determine the association of obesity and smoking toward prostate cancer progression. These models account for correlation because of repeated measures over time, thus, using maximum amount of information provided by the subject. Estimates thus obtained are more robust and reliable than those obtained using data from a single time point. Rate of change of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) over time (PSA velocity) was used as a measure of prostate cancer progression. Results indicate that PSA velocity of overweight and obese subjects (0.59 and 1.05 ng/mL/year) was not significantly different as compared with normal weight subjects (p values .91 and .31, respectively). For men in the highest tertile of pack-years of smoking, PSA velocity was significantly higher as compared with never smokers 1.57 ng/mL/year ( p = .04). Further studies with larger sample sizes and study designs specific to above exposures are needed before recommendations can be made to reduce weight or reduce/quit smoking.
Physiological Responses of Acropora cervicornis to Increased Solar Irradiance †

The effects of increased UV radiation (UV‐B [280–320 nm] + UV‐A [320–400 nm]; hereafter UVR) on the growth, production of photosynthetic pigments and photoprotective mycosporine‐like amino acids (MAAs) were studied in the threatened Caribbean coral Acropora cervicornis transplanted from 20 to 1 m depth in La Parguera, Puerto Rico. The UVR exposure by the transplanted colonies was significantly higher than that at 20 m, while photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) only increased by 9%. Photosynthetic pigments, quantified with HPLC, as well as linear extension rates and skeletal densities, were significantly reduced 1 month after transplantation to 1 m depth, while MAAs increased significantly despite immediate paling experienced by transplanted colonies. While these colonies showed a significant reduction in photosynthetic pigments, there were no significant reductions in zooxanthellae densities suggesting photoacclimation of the coral’s symbionts to the new radiation conditions. The results suggest that while corals might be able to survive sudden increases in UVR and PAR, their skeletal structure can be greatly debilitated due to a reduction in the photosynthetic capacity of their symbionts and a possible relocation of resources.
Intake of fish and marine n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids and risk of breast cancer: meta-analysis of data from 21 independent prospective cohort studies

Objectives To investigate the association between intake of fish and n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3 PUFA) and the risk of breast cancer and to evaluate the potential dose-response relation. Design Meta-analysis and systematic review of prospective cohort studies. Data sources PubMed and Embase up to December 2012 and references of retrieved relevant articles. Eligibility criteria for selecting studies Prospective cohort studies with relative risk and 95% confidence intervals for breast cancer according to fish intake, n-3 PUFA intake, or tissue biomarkers. Results Twenty six publications, including 20 905 cases of breast cancer and 883 585 participants from 21 independent prospective cohort studies were eligible. Eleven articles (13 323 breast cancer events and 687 770 participants) investigated fish intake, 17 articles investigated marine n-3 PUFA (16 178 breast cancer events and 527 392 participants), and 12 articles investigated alpha linolenic acid (14 284 breast cancer events and 405 592 participants). Marine n-3 PUFA was associated with 14% reduction of risk of breast cancer (relative risk for highest v lowest category 0.86 (95% confidence interval 0.78 to 0.94), I2=54), and the relative risk remained similar whether marine n-3 PUFA was measured as dietary intake (0.85, 0.76 to 0.96, I2=67%) or as tissue biomarkers (0.86, 0.71 to 1.03, I2=8%). Subgroup analyses also indicated that the inverse association between marine n-3 PUFA and risk was more evident in studies that did not adjust for body mass index (BMI) (0.74, 0.64 to 0.86, I2=0) than in studies that did adjust for BMI (0.90, 0.80 to 1.01, I2=63.2%). Dose-response analysis indicated that risk of breast cancer was reduced by 5% per 0.1g/day (0.95, 0.90 to 1.00, I2=52%) or 0.1% energy/day (0.95, 0.90 to 1.00, I2=79%) increment of dietary marine n-3 PUFA intake. No significant association was observed for fish intake or exposure to alpha linolenic acid. Conclusions Higher consumption of dietary marine n-3 PUFA is associated with a lower risk of breast cancer. The associations of fish and alpha linolenic acid intake with risk warrant further investigation of prospective cohort studies. These findings could have public health implications with regard to prevention of breast cancer through dietary and lifestyle interventions.
Soft Tissue Sarcomas of the Extremities

Soft tissue sarcomas are a diverse group of neoplasms that arise in the connective tissues throughout the body. They account for approximately 1% of adult malignancies and 7% to 15% of pediatric malignancies. About 50% to 60% of sarcomas occur in the extremities, and although they are rare, they are responsible for more deaths than testicular cancer, Hodgkin's disease, and thyroid cancer combined (1). These tumors are notorious for recurring and metastasizing—often with devastating results—despite apparently complete resection.
Phonological Knowledge Guided HMM State Mapping for Cross-Lingual Speaker Adaptation

Within the HMM state mapping-based cross-lingual speaker adaptation framework, the minimum Kullback-Leibler divergence criterion has been typically employed to measure the similarity of two average voice state distributions from two respective languages for state mapping construction. Considering that this simple criterion doesn't take any language-specific information into account, we propose a data-driven, phonological knowledge guided approach to strengthen the mapping construction -- state distributions from the two languages are clustered according to broad phonetic categories using decision trees and mapping rules are constructed only within each of the clusters. Objective evaluation of our proposed approach demonstrates reduction of mel-cepstral distortion and that mapping rules derived from a single training speaker generalize to other speakers, with subtle improvement being detected during subjective listening tests.
Replication of restless legs syndrome loci in three European populations

Background: Restless legs syndrome (RLS) is associated with common variants in three intronic and intergenic regions in MEIS1, BTBD9, and MAP2K5/LBXCOR1 on chromosomes 2p, 6p and 15q. Methods: Our study investigated these variants in 649 RLS patients and 1230 controls from the Czech Republic (290 cases and 450 controls), Austria (269 cases and 611 controls) and Finland (90 cases and 169 controls). Ten single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within the three genomic regions were selected according to the results of previous genome-wide scans. Samples were genotyped using Sequenom platforms. Results: We replicated associations for all loci in the combined samples set (rs2300478 in MEIS1, p = 1.26×10−5, odds ratio (OR) = 1.47, rs3923809 in BTBD9, p = 4.11×10−5, OR = 1.58 and rs6494696 in MAP2K5/LBXCOR1, p = 0.04764, OR = 1.27). Analysing only familial cases against all controls, all three loci were significantly associated. Using sporadic cases only, we could confirm the association only with BTBD9. Conclusion: Our study shows that variants in these three loci confer consistent disease risks in patients of European descent. Among the known loci, BTBD9 seems to be the most consistent in its effect on RLS across populations and is also most independent of familial clustering.
The Temporal Pattern of Changes in Serum Biomarker Levels Reveals Complex and Dynamically Changing Pathologies after Exposure to a Single Low-Intensity Blast in Mice

Time-dependent changes in blood-based protein biomarkers can help identify the pathological processes in blast-induced traumatic brain injury (bTBI), assess injury severity, and monitor disease progression. We obtained blood from control and injured mice (exposed to a single, low-intensity blast) at 2-h, 1-day, 1–week, and 1-month post-injury. We then determined the serum levels of biomarkers related to metabolism (4-HNE, HIF-1α, ceruloplasmin), vascular function (AQP1, AQP4, VEGF, vWF, Flk-1), inflammation (OPN, CINC1, fibrinogen, MIP-1a, OX-44, p38, MMP-8, MCP-1 CCR5, CRP, galectin-1), cell adhesion and the extracellular matrix (integrin α6, TIMP1, TIMP4, Ncad, connexin-43), and axonal (NF-H, Tau), neuronal (NSE, CK-BB) and glial damage (GFAP, S100β, MBP) at various post-injury time points. Our findings indicate that the exposure to a single, low-intensity blast results in metabolic and vascular changes, altered cell adhesion, and axonal and neuronal injury in the mouse model of bTBI. Interestingly, serum levels of several inflammatory and astroglial markers were either unchanged or elevated only during the acute and subacute phases of injury. Conversely, serum levels of the majority of biomarkers related to metabolic and vascular functions, cell adhesion, as well as neuronal and axonal damage remained elevated at the termination of the experiment (1 month), indicating long-term systemic and cerebral alterations due to blast. Our findings show that the exposure to a single, low-intensity blast induces complex pathological processes with distinct temporal profiles. Hence, monitoring serum biomarker levels at various post-injury time points may provide enhanced diagnostics in blast-related neurological and multi-system deficits.
Relative metabolite concentrations and ratios determined by use of 3-T region-specific proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy of the brain of healthy Beagles.

OBJECTIVE To determine relative concentrations of selected major brain tissue metabolites and their ratios and lobar variations by use of 3-T proton (hydrogen 1 [(1)H]) magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) of the brain of healthy dogs. ANIMALS 10 healthy Beagles. PROCEDURES 3-T (1)H MRS at echo times of 144 and 35 milliseconds was performed on 5 transverse slices and 1 sagittal slice of representative brain lobe regions. Intravoxel parenchyma was classified as white matter, gray matter, or mixed (gray and white) and analyzed for relative concentrations (in arbitrary units) of N-acetylaspartate (NAA), choline, and creatine (ie, height at position of peak on MRS graph) as well as their ratios (NAA-to-choline, NAA-to-creatine, and choline-to-creatine ratios). Peak heights for metabolites were compared between echo times. Peak heights for metabolites and their ratios were correlated and evaluated among matter types. Yield was calculated as interpretable voxels divided by available lobar voxels. RESULTS Reference ranges of the metabolite concentration ratios were determined at an echo time of 35 milliseconds (NAA-to-choline ratio, 1.055 to 2.224; NAA-to-creatine ratio, 1.103 to 2.161; choline-to-creatine ratio, 0.759 to 1.332) and 144 milliseconds (NAA-to-choline ratio, 0.687 to 1.788; NAA-to-creatine ratio, 0.984 to 2.044; choline-to-creatine ratio, 0.828 to 1.853). Metabolite concentration ratios were greater in white matter than in gray matter. Voxel yields ranged from 43% for the temporal lobe to 100% for the thalamus. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE Metabolite concentrations and concentration ratios determined with 3-T (1)H MRS were not identical to those in humans and were determined for clinical and research investigations of canine brain disease.
Constrained eigenfilter design

The design of linear phase FIR filter with constraints in frequency domain and/or time domain is considered. An iterative eigenfilter design method is proposed to design linear phase FIR filter with various design constraints. The eigenfilter formulation allows the filter design specification to incorporate time domain constraints and spectral constraints simultaneously. Various design examples are presented to illustrate the versatility of the proposed filter design method.
Digital Peers to Help Children's Text Comprehension and Perceptions

Affable Reading Tutor (ART) is an online reading lesson designed for children who are starting to comprehend reading. A digital, human-like character (virtual peer) in ART serves as a peer model that demonstrates the use of the reading comprehension strategy called questioning to help improve the learners’ comprehension of expository texts. This study, with 141 boys and girls in the fourth and fifth grades in the United States, examined the effects of virtual-peer presence (presence, absence, and control) on learners’ text comprehension and also the effects of learner gender and virtual-peer attributes (human-like male, human-like female, robot still image) on learners’ perceptions of their peer and on their text comprehension. The results revealed that the virtual-peer presence group outperformed both the absence group and the control group in the immediate and delayed posttests text comprehension. There were mixed results in the impacts of learner gender and virtual-peer attributes on text comprehension. The learners’ perceptions of their agent were not differentiated by neither learner gender nor virtual-peer attributes. The findings are discussed with virtual-peer design implications.
Enhancing Shared Understanding in Collaborative Online Shopping

This study explores the emerging phenomenon of collaborative online shopping by comparing three navigation support designs: separate navigation with location cue, split screen navigation, and tightly-bonded shared navigation. The impacts of the three navigation support designs on collaborative customers’ actual and perceived shared understanding were investigated in a laboratory experiment. The moderating effect of shopping group structure was also examined. The experimental results show that (1) split screen navigation leads to more actual shared understanding than separate navigation with location cue; (2) tightly-bonded shared navigation leads to less perceived shared understanding than split screen navigation; (3) in terms of actual shared understanding, the superiority of split screen navigation over tightly-bonded shared navigation is less prominent for customers in co-buyers structure than for those in buy/advisor structure. The results also indicate that perceived shared understanding influences the perceived decision quality, which further affects customers’ intentions to revisit the online store.
Structural basis for cardiac function.

ARMOUR, J. A. , AND W. C. RANDALL. Structural basis for cardiac function. Am. J. Physiol. 218(6): 1517-1523. 1970. -In nine species of,mammals, anatomic evaluation of fresh specimens demonstrated that the ventricles of the heart are grossly structured as a continuum of muscle strands. These strands originate and insert into a basal fibrous skeleton consisting of four interconnected, triangular accumulations of fibrous tissue surrounding the aortic valve. They undergo a slow right-angular directional change as they course from the epicardium to the endocardium. Vertically directed strands of the endocardium and the papillary muscles originate from these innermost strands, the latter playing an important role in the formation of inflow and outflow tracts within the left ventricle. Right ventricular sinus musculature is anatomically similar to that of the left, but the conus strands run more nearly parallel to form a potentially separate cylindrical chamber at the base of the pulmonary artery. Incisions following the direction of the muscle strands do not grossly alter cardiac function, whereas cutting across the strands seriously interferes with normal activity. It is concluded that anatomic considerations are of paramount importance in determining the specific effectiveness of each individual portion of the ventricles in performing its particular function.
Modifications of EEG power spectra in mesial temporal lobe during n-back tasks of increasing difficulty. A sLORETA study

The n-back task is widely used to investigate the neural basis of Working Memory (WM) processes. The principal aim of this study was to explore and compare the EEG power spectra during two n-back tests with different levels of difficulty (1-back vs. 3-back). Fourteen healthy subjects were enrolled (seven men and seven women, mean age 31.21 ± 7.05 years, range: 23–48). EEG was recorded while performing the N-back test, by means of 19 surface electrodes referred to joint mastoids. EEG analysis were conducted by means of the standardized Low Resolution brain Electric Tomography (sLORETA) software. The statistical comparison between EEG power spectra in the two conditions was performed using paired t-statistics on the coherence values after Fisher's z transformation available in the LORETA program package. The frequency bands considered were: delta (0.5–4 Hz); theta (4.5–7.5 Hz); alpha (8–12.5 Hz); beta (13–30 Hz); gamma (30.5–100 Hz). Significant changes occurred in the delta band: in the 3-back condition an increased delta power was localized in a brain region corresponding to the Brodmann Area (BA) 28 in the left posterior entorhinal cortex (T = 3.112; p < 0.05) and in the BA 35 in the left perirhinal cortex in the parahippocampal gyrus (T = 2.876; p < 0.05). No significant differences were observed in the right hemisphere and in the alpha, theta, beta, and gamma frequency bands. Our results indicate that the most prominent modification induced by the increased complexity of the task occur in the mesial left temporal lobe structures.
Fault-tolerant scheduling on a hard real-time multiprocessor system

Fault-tolerance is an important issue in hard real-time systems due to the critical nature of the supported tasks. One way of providing fault-tolerance is to schedule multiple copies of a task on different processors. If the primary copy of a task cannot be completed due to a fault, the scheduled backup copy is run and the task is completed. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm for fault-tolerant scheduling on multiprocessor systems. The algorithm guarantees the completion of a scheduled task before its deadline in the presence of processor failures. Our algorithm schedules several backup tasks overlapping one another and dynamically deallocates the backups as soon as the original tasks complete executions, thus increasing the utilization of processors. Simulation results show that our method achieves higher task schedulability compared to using a spare processor as a backup to be invoked in the event of a failure. Further, we show that the cost, in terms of schedulability, of guaranteeing fault tolerance for dynamic systems is quite low. <<ETX>>
Endurance Exercise Training Reduces Cardiac Sodium/Calcium Exchanger Expression in Animals Susceptible to Ventricular Fibrillation

Increased Na+/Ca2+ exchanger activity (NCX1, an important regulator of cardiomyocyte cystolic Ca2+) may provoke arrhythmias. Exercise training can decrease NCX1 expression in animals with heart failure, improve cytosolic Ca2+ regulation, and could thereby reduce the risk for ventricular fibrillation (VF). To test this hypothesis, a 2‐min coronary occlusion was made during the last min. of exercise in dogs with healed myocardial infarctions; 23 had VF (S, susceptible) and 13 did not (R, resistant). The animals were randomly assigned to either 10‐wk exercise training (progressively increasing treadmill running) (S n = 9; R n = 8) or 10‐wk sedentary (S n = 14; R n = 5) groups. At the end of the 10‐wk period, the exercise + ischemia test provoked VF in sedentary but not trained susceptible dogs. After euthanasia, cardiac tissue was harvested and NCX1 protein expression was determined by Western blot. In the sedentary group, NCX1 expression was 4 fold higher in susceptible (4.2 ± 1.3 AU) compared to resistant (1.0 ± 0.1 AU) dogs. In contrast, post‐training NCX1 levels were similar in the resistant and susceptible animals (S = 1.7 ± 0.3 AU). Thus, exercise training can restore a more normal NCX1 level in VF susceptible dogs and could improve cystolic Ca2+ regulation reducing the risk for sudden death.