Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of oil-pulling on dental caries causing bacteria

The effect of oil-pulling on the reduction of total count of bacteria was determined. There was a remarkable reduction in the total count of bacteria. The process of oil-pulling reduced the susceptibility of a host to dental caries. The in-vitro antibacterial activity of sesame oil against dental caries causing bacteria was determined. Streptococcus mutans and Lactobacillus acidophilus were found to be moderately sensitive to the sesame oil. Key words: Antibacterial activity, Streptococcus mutans and Lactobacillus acidophilu.
Qualitative Analysis of Factors Affecting Adherence to the Phenylketonuria Diet in Adolescents

Purpose/Objective: Phenylketonuria (PKU) is an inborn error of metabolism that is primarily treated with a severely restricted, low-protein diet to prevent permanent neurological damage. Despite the recognition of the importance of strict dietary adherence in the prevention of intellectual impairment in individuals with PKU, apathy and attrition from diet, especially during adolescence, remain a threat to normal development in this population. This study’s aim was to examine adolescents’ perception of factors that encourage or inhibit their dietary adherence. Design: This was a qualitative study, with the authors using thematic analysis to interpret the findings. Setting: The study was conducted as part of a Metabolic Disorders Association conference. Sample: Eight adolescents with PKU were recruited through convenience sampling. Methods: A focus group was conducted with the adolescents to gather information about factors that encourage and discourage dietary adherence. Findings: Thematic analysis revealed that the adolescents encountered problems explaining the nature and food requirements of their condition to other people. Friends, family, and wanting to maintain “normal” cognitive abilities were identified as factors that encouraged dietary adherence. Conclusion: Adolescents with PKU appear to share several barriers and incentives for maintaining the strict dietary regimen. Implications: Considering such perceptions may aid future interventions aiming to reduce diet attrition rates among adolescents.
Cell‐cell adhesion in limb‐formation, estimated from photographs of cell sorting experiments based on a spatial stochastic model

We developed a new method to estimate the magnitude of differential cell‐cell adhesion of two tissues based on the spatial patterns in cell‐sorting experiments, and applied it to experimental data on progress‐zone cells of avian limb bud at stages 20–26. The change in cell distribution in the experiment was recorded, and statistics qB/B for the degree of cell sorting was calculated from the photographs. Based on extensive computer simulations of spatial Markov processes on a 2‐D lattice, we derived a formula for qB/B increasing with time. Using least square fitting, differential adhesion A and cell motility m are estimated from the time series data of qB/B obtained from the experiment. The estimated A was close to 0 (the spatial pattern remained random) if the mixed cells were from two tissues of the same stage. If the mixed cells were from different stages, and the estimated A was positive (cell sorting occurred). Estimated A increased with the difference in the stage number of the two tissues from which the cells were sampled. This result can be explained both by the stage‐specific change in adhesion molecules and by a linear increase (or decrease) in the amount of adhesion molecules on cell surface. Dev. Dyn. 1998;211: 204–214. © 1998 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Gratitude and mental health: differences between religious and general gratitude in a Muslim context

The present study examined the relation of religious gratitude and dispositional gratitude with mental health, subjective well-being and personality among a sample of 256 Iranian students. The two types of gratitude were associated with higher levels of mental health and well-being. Agreeableness and Conscientiousness were the strongest personality correlates of both types of gratitude. Dispositional gratitude showed stronger relationship with mental health, subjective well-being and personality factors. Dispositional gratitude also out-predicted the religious gratitude in relation with mental health and subjective well-being, showing that religious gratitude compared to dispositional gratitude has less effect on mental health and well-being.
A community of differences: Social relations, popular culture and leisure in a multicultural suburb, in “Rudenga”, East side Oslo

Abstract In recent leisure research, the need to broaden the understanding of the relationship between leisure and ethnicity by focusing more explicitly upon the dynamic and emergent properties of the latter, has been pointed out. Based on a case study of a multicultural youth club in Norway, the aim of the present article is to explore how some elements from popular culture and other available signs and practices “at hand” in the reflexive and joy-oriented sphere of leisure, interact with impulses from the traditions of the families of the youngsters and serve as central “building blocks” for the development of a local community. This, in turn, reflects a certain competence and creativity in the handling of ethnic difference and identity in a multicultural situation. The author argues that these processes also enhance patterns of identification that largely seem to justify the use of the notion of “hybridization”, and that in this case clearly exemplify a dynamic and “elastic” handling of ethnic identity.
Dynamic competition of DsrA and rpoS fragments for the proximal binding site of Hfq as a means for efficient annealing

Hfq is a key regulator involved in multiple aspects of stress tolerance and virulence of bacteria. There has been an intriguing question as to how this RNA chaperone achieves two completely opposite functions—annealing and unwinding—for different RNA substrates. To address this question, we studied the Hfq-mediated interaction of fragments of a non-coding RNA, DsrA, with its mRNA target rpoS by using single-molecule fluorescence techniques. These experiments permitted us to observe the mechanistic steps of Hfq-mediated RNA annealing/unwinding at the single-molecule level, for the first time. Our real-time observations reveal that, even if the ring-shaped Hfq displays multiple binding sites for its interaction with RNA, the regulatory RNA and the mRNA compete for the same binding site. The competition makes the RNA-Hfq interaction dynamic and, surprisingly, increases the overall annealing efficiency by properly aligning the two RNAs. We furthermore reveal that when Hfq specifically binds to only one of the two RNAs, the unwinding process dominates over the annealing process, thus shedding a new light on the substrate selectivity for annealing or unwinding. Finally, our results demonstrate for the first time that a single Hfq hexamer is sufficient to facilitate sRNA–mRNA annealing.
Assessment and Analysis of Behavior State and Related Variables among Students with Profoundly Handicapping Conditions

Behavior state is potentially a major variable that affects the level of alertness and responsiveness of persons with profoundly handicapping conditions. Two studies were conducted involving 50 students with severe, profound, and multiply handicapping conditions who ranged in age from 1 year and 8 months up to 21 years. In Study 1, behavior slate conditions for each student were observed across 20 sessions in classroom settings. Data were analyzed according to profile groups that reflected similarities and differences in behavior state conditions. The analyses also included short and long term measures of state stability. Results indicated that these stability measures further differentiated the profile groups. The data also showed that the students were observed to spend an average of 42% of their classroom time in slate conditions that were not judged optimal for learning. In Study 2, developmental, medical, environmental, and student characteristic data were compared statistically for the profile groups identified in Study 1. These results showed some different characteristics and conditions associated with each of the behavior state profiles. Overall results suggested that behavior state conditions have significant implications for the education and treatment of students with the most profound handicaps.
Migraine Mediates the Influence of C677T MTHFR Genotypes on Ischemic Stroke Risk With a Stroke-Subtype Effect

Background and Purpose— The objective was to investigate the role of C677T MTHFR polymorphism in migraine pathogenesis and in the migraine–ischemic stroke pathway. Methods— A first genotype–migraine association study was conducted on 100 patients with migraine with aura (MA), 106 with migraine without aura (MO), and 105 subjects without migraine, which provided evidence in favor of association of the TT677 MTHFR genotype with increased risk of MA compared with both control subjects (OR, 2.48; 95% CI, 1.11 to 5.58) and patients with MO (OR, 2.21; 95% CI, 1.01 to 4.82). Based on these findings, mediational models of the genotype–migraine–stroke pathway were fitted on a group of 106 patients with spontaneous cervical artery dissection, 227 young patients whose ischemic stroke was unrelated to a spontaneous cervical artery dissection (noncervical artery dissection), and 187 control subjects, and a genotype–migraine partial mediation model was selected. Results— Both migraine and the TT genotype were more strongly associated to the subgroup of patients with spontaneous cervical artery dissection (OR, 4.06; 95% CI, 1.63 to 10.02 for MA; OR, 5.45; 95% CI, 3.03 to 9.79 for MO; OR, 2.87; 95% CI, 1.45 to 5.68 for TT genotype) than to the subgroup of patients with noncervical artery dissection ischemic stroke (OR, 2.22; 95% CI, 1.00 to 4.96 for MA; OR, 1.81; 95% CI, 1.02 to 3.22 for TT genotype) as compared with controls. Conclusions— Migraine may act as mediator in the methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase–ischemic stroke pathway with a more prominent effect in the subgroup of patients with spontaneous artery dissection.
Optimal privacy-preserving policy using constrained additive noise to minimize the fisher information

The problem of preserving the privacy of individual entries of a database with constrained additive noise is considered. An adversary can submit linear queries to an agent possessing the entire database. The agent returns a response to the query that is corrupted by an additive random noise whose support is a subset or equal to a constraint set. The Cramér-Rao bound is used to bound the variance of the estimation error of the database, which may be used by the adversary, to the trace of the inverse of the Fisher information matrix. A measure of privacy using the Fisher information matrix is developed. The probability density that minimizes the Fisher information (as a proxy for maximizing the measure of privacy) is computed.
Mother and Infant Activity and Interaction in Japan and in the United States: II. A Comparative Microanalysis of Naturalistic Exchanges Focused on the Organisation of Infant Attention

This study compares and contrasts activities and interactions related to maternal organisation of infant attention toward mother and toward the environment in Japanese and U.S. American mother-infant dyads. Observational data derived from 48 Tokyo and New York City mothers and their 5month-old infants seen at home were submitted to microanalysis. Relations among selected mother and infant activities, notably maternal control of and responsiveness to attentional focus in infants, are evaluated using cooccurrence and lag-sequential analyses. American and Japanese mothers and babies engaged in most activities at similar rates. However, American mothers appear to respond to environmental involvement in their infants by further encouraging infants to attend to properties, objects, or events in the environment, whereas it is during periods of decreased environmental interest and increased social interest that Japanese mothers deploy didactic encouragement. The results reveal activity and interaction patterns which are similar between these two cultures, as well as patterns which are culturespecific.
Acute Postoperative Pain in Trauma Patients - The Fifth Vital Sign

AIM: To determine average pain intensity perceived by trauma patients at hospital admission, lowest and highest pain intensity during their hospitalisation and their satisfaction with provided pain treatment. PATIENTS AND METHODS: The research included 114 operated patients at the Clinical Department of Trauma Surgery. We used the standard Numerical Rating Scale (NRS) for a clinical measure of pain. RESULTS: The average pain intensity at hospital admission was NRS median 7 (range 4–10), the severest perceived rate of pain during hospitalisation was NRS median 5 (range 4–7). Ninety-four percent of our respondents were satisfied with provided pain treatment. Thirty-two percent of patients were not asked to assess their pain during their hospitalisation, and 40.4% of patients assessed their pain occasionally. CONCLUSION: Female patients, as well as patients admitted to the emergency department, reported higher NRS scores. Those respondents who perceived severe pain answered more often that medical staff didn’t ask them to assess their pain on any occasion. Good communication between medical staff and patients, together with adequate assessment and evaluation of acute pain are of great importance in its treatment.
Randomized dynamic graph algorithms with polylogarithmic time per operation

This paper solves a longstanding open problem in fully dynamic algorithms: We present the first fully dynamic algorithms that maintain connectivity, bipartiteness, and approximate minimum spanning trees in polylogarithmic time per edge insertion or deletion. The algorithms are designed using a new dynamic technique that combines a novel graph decomposition with randomization. They are Las-Vegas type randomized algorithms which use simple data structures and have a small constant factor. Let n denote the number of nodes in the graph. For a sequence of V(m0) operations, where m0 is the number of edges in the initial graph, the expected time for p updates is O( p log 3 n) (Throughout the paper the logarithms are base 2.) for connectivity and bipartiteness. The worst-case time for one query is O(log n/log log n). For the k-edge witness problem ("Does the removal of k given edges disconnect the graph? ") the expected time for p updates is O( p log 3 n) and the expected time for q queries is O(qk log 3 n). Given a graph with k different weights, the minimum spanning tree can be maintained during a sequence of p updates in expected time O( pk log 3 n). This implies an algorithm to maintain a 1 1 e-approximation of the minimum spanning tree in expected time O((p log 3 n log U)/e) for p updates, where the weights of the edges are between 1 and U.
Outcome after arthroscopic labral surgery in patients previously treated with periacetabular osteotomy: a follow-up study of 43 patients

Abstract To identify factors predicting failure after hip arthroscopy in patients with previous periacetabular osteotomy (PAO) defined as a conversion to total hip replacement (THR) and to evaluate the patient reported outcome scores. Of 55 hips treated with hip arthroscopy after PAO from Aug 2008 to 2012 at Aarhus University Hospital, 43 hips were included (median age: 36.1 yrs, range 16.3–56.9 yrs). Indications were unacceptable pain, a positive FABER and impingement test and signs of labral damage on MR-arthrography. Outcomes were evaluated with mHHS and HOS. Failure was defined as conversion to a THR. Nine hips were converted to a THR. Kaplan-Meier survival rate was 52.8% (95% CI, 10%–83.8%) at 6.5 years follow-up. Statistically significant predictors of failure: joint space width after PAO <3.0 mm and Tönnis grade of 2. Fourteen hips needed revision hip arthroscopy. Labral damage was present in 84% of the hips. In 42% of the hips cartilage lesions of Becks grade >3 were found. Mean mHHS and HOS were 65.7 and 68.8 respectively at follow-up. A NRS pain score of >3 in rest and during activity were present in respectively, 43% and 62% of the patients. Hip arthroscopy after PAO demonstrated limited clinical benefit with no decrease in pain levels and 21% of patients needing reoperation to THR. Radiographic signs of joint degeneration after PAO are predictors of faiElure. Further studies are needed to clarify what role hip arthroscopy should play in this patient group.
Ligand-based targeted therapy: a novel strategy for hepatocellular carcinoma

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common primary liver cancer with high morbidity and mortality worldwide. Chemotherapy is recommended to patients with intermediate or advanced stage cancer. However, the conventional chemotherapy yields low desired response rates due to multidrug resistance, fast clearance rate, nonspecific delivery, severe side effects, low drug concentration in cancer cells, and so on. Nanoparticle-mediated targeted drug delivery system can surmount the aforementioned obstacles through enhanced permeability and retention effect and active targeting as a novel approach of therapeutics for HCC in recent years. The active targeting is triggered by ligands on the delivery system, which recognize with and internalize into hepatoma cells with high specificity and efficiency. This review focuses on the latest targeted delivery systems for HCC and summarizes the ligands that can enhance the capacity of active targeting, to provide some insight into future research in nanomedicine for HCC.
Comparison of Pulmonary Hydatid Disease between Children and Adults

Background: Hydatid disease is a parasitic infestation which is endemic in many sheep and cattle raising areas and is still an important health hazard in the world. The aim of this study was to compare the clinical features, radiologic accuracy, and the surgical approaches of pulmonary hydatid cysts among children and adults in Northwestern Iran. Materials and Methods: 445 patients treated for pulmonary hydatid cysts over the last ten years, were retrospectively evaluated. The patients were arranged in two groups. There were 383 adults (86%) and 62 children (14%) and their clinical, radiological and surgical characteristics of the pulmonary hydatid cysts were compared. Results: Unlike adults, in children the frequency of pulmonary hydatid cysts in males was significantly (p=0.0036) higher than in females (65% vs. 36%). Cough was the most common symptom in both groups. The frequency of hemoptysis was more common (p=0.0042) in adults (38%) than in children (19%). However, giant pulmonary hydatid cysts were more commonly found in children (p<0.05). Cystotomy with or without capitonnage was the most preferred method used in both groups. Postoperative complications (pneumothorax) developed in five adults and one child, and were more frequent in noncapitonnage procedures. Only one recurrence was observed in the adult group. The accuracy of chest x-ray was 84% and 74% in children and adults, respectively. Conclusion: Due to the high accuracy of chest x-ray in diagnosis of hydatid cysts of the lung in both groups, it is recommended as the preferred method of diagnosis in endemic regions. (Tanaffos 2007; 6(1): 13-18)
Discretization as the enabling technique for the Naïve Bayes and semi-Naïve Bayes-based classification

Abstract Current classification problems that concern data sets of large and increasing size require scalable classification algorithms. In this study, we concentrate on several scalable, linear complexity classifiers that include one of the top 10 voted data mining methods, Naïve Bayes (NB), and several recently proposed semi-NB classifiers. These algorithms perform front-end discretization of the continuous features since by design they work only with nominal or discrete features. We address the lack of studies that investigate the benefits and drawbacks of discretization in the context of the subsequent classification. Our comprehensive empirical study considers 12 discretizers (two unsupervised and 10 supervised), seven classifiers (two classical NB and five semi-NB), and 16 data sets. We investigate the scalability of the discretizers and show that the fastest supervised discretizers fast class-attribute interdependency maximization (FCAIM), class-attribute interdependency maximization (CAIM), and information entropy maximization (IEM) provide discretization schemes with the highest overall quality. We show that discretization improves the classification accuracy when compared against the two classical methods, NB and Flexible Naïve Bayes (FNB), executed on the raw data. The choice of the discretization algorithm impacts the significance of the improvements. The MODL, FCAIM, and CAIM methods provide statistically significant improvements, while the IEM, Class-attribute contingency coefficient (CACC), and Khiops discretizers provide moderate improvements. The most accurate classification models are generated by the Averaged one-dependence estimators (AODEsr) classifier followed by AODE and HNB (Hidden Naïve Bayes). AODEsr run on data discretized with MODL, FCAIM, and CAIM provides statistically significantly better accuracies than both the classical NB methods. The worst results are obtained with the NB, FNB, and LBR (Lazy Bayes rule) classifiers. We show that although the time to build the discretization scheme could be longer than the time to train the classifier, the completion of the entire process (to discretize data, compute the classifier, and predict test instances) is often faster than the NB-based classification of the continuous instances. This is because the time to classify test instances is an important factor that is positively influenced by discretization. The biggest positive influence, both on the accuracy and the classification time, is associated with the MODL, FCAIM, and CAIM algorithms.