Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Quantifying the contribution of utility cycling to population levels of physical activity: an analysis of the Active People Survey

Abstract Background Population levels of physical activity are far below recommendations limiting its public health benefits. Utility cycling (i.e. cycling for transport purposes) may be a means of increasing this activity. Empirical evidence quantifying the contribution of utility cycling to the population levels of physical activity is sparse. Methods The English Active People Survey (APS) was analysed to assess the likelihood of meeting UK physical activity guidelines in those who reported utility cycling compared with those who did not. Odds ratios were adjusted for important socioeconomic confounders using a logistic regression model. Results In the full sample, unadjusted odds ratio for meeting physical activity guidelines in favour of utility cyclists was 5.21 (95% confidence interval (CI) 4.96–5.47) and adjusted odds ratio was 4.08 (95% CI 3.88–4.29). The odds were even higher for utility cyclists in inner London [adjusted OR: 6.08 (4.07–7.86)]. The pattern was consistent regardless of the number of activities through which people met the physical activity guideline. Conclusion Utility cycling can make a significant contribution to levels of physical activity. As an activity that can easily integrate into everyday life, utility cycling appears to be a pragmatic policy option for public health decision-makers.
Consistent Distribution-Free $K$-Sample and Independence Tests for Univariate Random Variables

A popular approach for testing if two univariate random variables are statistically independent consists of partitioning the sample space into bins, and evaluating a test statistic on the binned data. The partition size matters, and the optimal partition size is data dependent. While for detecting simple relationships coarse partitions may be best, for detecting complex relationships a great gain in power can be achieved by considering finer partitions. We suggest novel consistent distribution-free tests that are based on summation or maximization aggregation of scores over all partitions of a fixed size. We show that our test statistics based on summation can serve as good estimators of the mutual information. Moreover, we suggest regularized tests that aggregate over all partition sizes, and prove those are consistent too. We provide polynomial-time algorithms, which are critical for computing the suggested test statistics efficiently. We show that the power of the regularized tests is excellent compared to existing tests, and almost as powerful as the tests based on the optimal (yet unknown in practice) partition size, in simulations as well as on a real data example.
Emotion Homophily in Social Network Site Messages

Social network sites (SNS) like MySpace seem to play a role in friendships and wider relationships for many people. Emotion expression can be important in relationship maintenance but little is known about the role of emotion in SNSs, other than positive comments being widespread in MySpace. But is emotion typically reciprocated, and do Friends express and/or receive similar levels of emotion expression to each other? Based upon an analysis of over two million MySpace public comments associated with 2,990 pairs of UK and US Friends using a sentiment detection program, statistically significant evidence was found for a weak correlation between the strength of positive emotion exchanged between Friends and received by Friends. This is consistent with two separate hypotheses: members tend to Friend others with similar levels of public emotion expression, or the expression of emotion in MySpace is contagious. The results may help to identify non-optimal behaviour and at-risk individuals in SNSs.
Adult locomotory activity mediates intralocus sexual conflict in a laboratory-adapted population of Drosophila melanogaster

The strongest form of intralocus sexual conflict occurs when two conditions are met: (i) there is a positive intersexual genetic correlation for a trait and (ii) the selection gradients on the trait in the two sexes are in opposite directions. Intralocus sexual conflict can constrain the adaptive evolution of both sexes and thereby contribute to a species' ‘gender load’. Previous studies of adult lifetime fitness of the same sets of genes expressed in both males and females have established that there is substantial intralocus conflict in the LHM laboratory-adapted population of Drosophila melanogaster. Here, we investigated whether a highly dimorphic trait—adult locomotory activity—contributed substantially to the established intralocus sexual conflict. To measure the selection gradient on activity level, both this trait and adult lifetime fitness were measured under the same environmental conditions to which the flies were adapted. We found significant phenotypic variation in both sexes for adult locomotory activity, and that the selection gradients on this variation were large and in opposite directions in the two sexes. Using hemiclonal analysis to screen 99% of the entire genome, we found abundant genetic variation for adult locomotory activity and showed that this variation occurs on both the X and autosomes. We also established that there is a strong positive intersexual genetic correlation for locomotory activity. These assays revealed that, despite the strong, extant sexual dimorphism for the trait, locomotory activity continues to contribute strongly to intralocus sexual conflict in this population.
Effects of age and composition of field-produced biofilms on oyster larval setting

Lack of success in restoring the native Eastern oyster, Crassostrea virginica, to Chesapeake Bay has been linked to the low occurrence of oyster larval setting in tributaries to the Bay. Among the many potential factors that could affect efforts to produce oysters through aquaculture or supplementation of shell beds is substratum condition. The present study examined larval setting on field-produced biofilms from Little Wicomico River (Virginia, USA) to assess whether bacterial community structure (examined by terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism, T-RFLP) or other characteristics of contemporary biofilms in this tributary (biofilm age and mass, algal abundance, and percentage organic matter) inhibited setting of larval oysters. The structure of the natural and heterogenous bacterial community in the biofilms and the success of oyster set were correlated, suggesting that specific microbial species may play a role in oyster setting. Larval set increased with biofilm age and mass, suggesting that established field-produced biofilms have no inhibitory effect. In contrast, the percentage of organic matter was negatively correlated with oyster set, whereas chlorophyll a concentration had no observed effect. The study expands prior knowledge by providing a more realistic timeframe for biofilm development (weeks as opposed to days), recounting effects of biofilms that are more representative of the natural dynamic and disturbance processes that would be expected to occur on submerged structures, and by incorporating seasonal and spatial variation. An important negative effect observed during the study period was heavy predation by Stylochus ellipticus on newly set oysters. Overall, the results of this study, which is the first assessment of the effects of biofilms produced naturally within a Chesapeake Bay tributary, suggest that the absence of large numbers of oysters in Little Wicomico River is not related to microbes or other specific characteristics of biofilms that develop on suitable setting substrata, but rather to heavy predation of newly set larvae.
Myocardial Ablation of G Protein–Coupled Receptor Kinase 2 (GRK2) Decreases Ischemia/Reperfusion Injury through an Anti-Intrinsic Apoptotic Pathway

Studies from our lab have shown that decreasing myocardial G protein–coupled receptor kinase 2 (GRK2) activity and expression can prevent heart failure progression after myocardial infarction. Since GRK2 appears to also act as a pro-death kinase in myocytes, we investigated the effect of cardiomyocyte-specific GRK2 ablation on the acute response to cardiac ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury. To do this we utilized two independent lines of GRK2 knockout (KO) mice where the GRK2 gene was deleted in only cardiomyocytes either constitutively at birth or in an inducible manner that occurred in adult mice prior to I/R. These GRK2 KO mice and appropriate control mice were subjected to a sham procedure or 30 min of myocardial ischemia via coronary artery ligation followed by 24 hrs reperfusion. Echocardiography and hemodynamic measurements showed significantly improved post-I/R cardiac function in both GRK2 KO lines, which correlated with smaller infarct sizes in GRK2 KO mice compared to controls. Moreover, there was significantly less TUNEL positive myocytes, less caspase-3, and -9 but not caspase-8 activities in GRK2 KO mice compared to control mice after I/R injury. Of note, we found that lowering cardiac GRK2 expression was associated with significantly lower cytosolic cytochrome C levels in both lines of GRK2 KO mice after I/R compared to corresponding control animals. Mechanistically, the anti-apoptotic effects of lowering GRK2 expression were accompanied by increased levels of Bcl-2, Bcl-xl, and increased activation of Akt after I/R injury. These findings were reproduced in vitro in cultured cardiomyocytes and GRK2 mRNA silencing. Therefore, lowering GRK2 expression in cardiomyocytes limits I/R-induced injury and improves post-ischemia recovery by decreasing myocyte apoptosis at least partially via Akt/Bcl-2 mediated mitochondrial protection and implicates mitochondrial-dependent actions, solidifying GRK2 as a pro-death kinase in the heart.
Judgements of agency in schizophrenia: an impairment in autonoetic metacognition

We investigated judgements of agency in participants with schizophrenia and healthy controls. Participants engaged in a computer game in which they attempted to touch downward falling Xs and avoid touching Os. On some trials, participants were objectively in perfect control. On other trials, they were objectively not in complete control because the movement of the cursor on the screen was distorted with respect to the position of the mouse by random noise (turbulence), or it was lagged by 250 or 500 ms. Participants made metacognitive judgements of agency as well as judgements of performance. Control participants' judgements of agency were affected by the turbulence and lag variables—indicating that they knew they were objectively not in control in those conditions, and they were also influenced by their assessments of performance. The patients also used their assessments of performance but neither turbulence nor lag affected their judgements of agency. This indicated an impairment in agency monitoring. The patients, unlike the healthy controls, used only publically available external cues about performance in making judgements of ‘agency’ and did not rely on any additional access to internal self-relevant cues that were diagnostic in indicating whether or not they were, in fact, in control.
Mechanisms of Microbe–Host Interaction in Crohn’s Disease: Dysbiosis vs. Pathobiont Selection

Crohn’s disease (CD) is a systemic chronic inflammatory condition mainly characterized by discontinuous transmural pathology of the gastrointestinal tract and frequent extraintestinal manifestations with intermittent episodes of remission and relapse. Genome-wide association studies identified a number of risk loci that, catalyzed by environmental triggers, result in the loss of tolerance toward commensal bacteria based on dysregulated innate effector functions and antimicrobial defense, leading to exacerbated adaptive immune responses responsible for chronic immune-mediated tissue damage. In this review, we discuss the inter-related role of changes in the intestinal microbiota, epithelial barrier integrity, and immune cell functions on the pathogenesis of CD, describing the current approaches available to investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying the disease. Substantial effort has been dedicated to define disease-associated changes in the intestinal microbiota (dysbiosis) and to link pathobionts to the etiology of inflammatory bowel diseases. A cogent definition of dysbiosis is lacking, as well as an agreement of whether pathobionts or complex shifts in the microbiota trigger inflammation in the host. Among the rarely available animal models, SAMP/Yit and TNFdeltaARE mice are the best known displaying a transmural CD-like phenotype. New hypothesis-driven mouse models, e.g., epithelial-specific Caspase8−/−, ATG16L1−/−, and XBP1−/− mice, validate pathway-focused function of specific CD-associated risk genes highlighting the role of Paneth cells in antimicrobial defense. To study the causal role of bacteria in initiating inflammation in the host, the use of germ-free mouse models is indispensable. Unraveling the interactions of genes, immune cells and microbes constitute a criterion for the development of safe, reliable, and effective treatment options for CD.
The antimicrobial activity of thyme essential oil against multidrug resistant clinical bacterial strains.

AIM The aim of this work was to investigate the antimicrobial activity of thyme essential oil against clinical multidrug resistant strains of Staphylococcus, Enterococcus, Escherichia, and Pseudomonas genus. MATERIALS The antibacterial activity of oil was tested against standard strains of bacteria and 120 clinical strains isolated from patients with infections of the oral cavity, abdominal cavity, respiratory and genitourinary tracts, skin, and from the hospital environment. METHODS Agar diffusion was used to determine the microbial growth inhibition of bacterial growth at various concentrations of oil from Thymus vulgaris. Susceptibility testing to antibiotics was carried out using disk diffusion. RESULTS Thyme essential oil strongly inhibited the growth of the clinical strains of bacteria tested. CONCLUSIONS The use of phytopharmaceuticals based on an investigated essential oil from thyme in the prevention and treatment of various human infections may be reasonable.
Personality dimensions of people who suffer from visual stress

Personality dimensions of participants who suffer from visual stress were compared with those of normal participants using the Eysenck Personality Inventory. Extraversion–Introversion scores showed no significant differences between the participants who suffered visual stress and those who were classified as normal. By contrast, significant differences were found between the normal participants and those with visual stress in respect of Neuroticism–Stability. These differences accord with Eysenck’s personality theory which states that those who score highly on the neuroticism scale do so because they have a neurological system with a low threshold such that their neurological system is easily activated by external stimuli. The findings also relate directly to the theory of visual stress proposed by Wilkins which postulates that visual stress results from an excess of neural activity. The data may indicate that the excess activity is likely to be localised at particular neurological regions or neural processes.
On multistability of competitive neural networks with discontinuous activation functions

In this paper, we examine the problem of multi-stability for competitive neural networks associated with discontinuous non-monotonic piecewise linear activation functions. First, we derive certain sufficient conditions for coexistent multiple equilibrium points, which reveals that the n-neuron competitive neural networks under study can possess as many as 4n equilibrium points. Next, we investigate local stability of those multiple equilibrium points, which shows that 3n equilibrium points are locally stable. The new multistability results are obtained by virtue of the fixed point theorem and the theory of strict diagonal dominance matrix. The theoretical results are finally validated by a numerical example along with computer simulations.
Biometric Analysis of C-shaped Root Canals in Mandibular Second Molars Using Cone-Beam Computed Tomography

Introduction: The configuration of C-shaped root canals, root canal wall thickness and orientation of the thinnest area using CBCT in mandibular second molars were assessed. Methods and Materials: Seventy five CBCT scans were evaluated. Axial sections were evaluated to determine the configuration of C-shaped canals in the coronal, middle and apical regions. The root canal path from the orifice to the apex, the thinnest root canal wall and its orientation were all determined. Data were analyzed using one-way ANOVA and post hoc Tukey’s test. Results: The most common configurations were Melton's type I in the coronal and middle and types I and IV in the apical region. The mean thicknesses of the thinnest root canal wall were 1.94±0.43, 1.42±0.57 and 1.10±0.52 mm in the coronal, middle and apical regions, respectively. The lingual wall was the thinnest wall in the coronal, middle and apical regions and it was thinner in the apical than in the middle and coronal regions. The lingual wall was thinner in the middle third of the mesial root compared to the distal root (P<0.05). Conclusion: The lingual wall was the thinnest in C-shaped root canals of mandibular second molars of an Iranian population. Type, number and pathway of canals may vary from the orifice to the apex.
Derivation of the Mass Distribution of Extrasolar Planets with MAXLIMA, a Maximum Likelihood Algorithm

We construct a maximum likelihood algorithm, MAXLIMA, to derive the mass distribution of the extrasolar planets when only the minimum masses are observed. The algorithm derives the distribution by solving a numerically stable set of equations and does not need any iteration or smoothing. Based on 50 minimum masses, MAXLIMA yields a distribution that is approximately flat in log M. The frequency drops off very sharply as masses go higher than 10 MJ, although we suspect there is still a higher mass tail that extends up to probably 20 MJ. We estimate that 5% of the G stars in the solar neighborhood have planets in the range 1-10 MJ with periods shorter than 1500 days. For comparison we present the mass distribution of stellar companions in the range 100-1000 MJ, which is also approximately flat in log M. The two populations are separated by the "brown dwarf desert," a fact that strongly supports the idea that these are two distinct populations. Accepting this definite separation, we point out the conundrum concerning the similarities between the period, eccentricity, and even mass distribution of the two populations.
Chemical composition, protein profile, and isoflavones content in soybean genotypes with different seed coat colors.

This study aimed to evaluate the chemical composition, protein profile, and isoflavones content of soybean genotypes with different seed coat colors, intended for human consumption, for selection purposes regarding their nutritional properties. The cultivars BRSMG 800A, BRSMG 790A, and Conquista and the lineage MGBR07-7141 with matte brown, light yellow hilum, dark yellow hilum, and glossy black seed coats, respectively, were evaluated. Significant differences were observed between the genotypes in relation to moisture content, lipids, protein and crude fiber. Although the fractions albumin and globulin are the major protein fractions in leguminous plants, both the cultivar Conquista and BRSMG 800A showed albumin and glutelin as the main protein fractions. In all samples, the albumin fraction showed a great variety of proteins, with molecular weights in the range of 100 to 25 kDa. All globulins exhibited weights between 35 and 55 kDa. Considering the total isoflavones content, the cultivar BRSMG 790A with yellow seed coat had the highest isoflavones content (415.98 mg.100 g-1), while the cultivar Conquista presented the lowest content (220.88 g mg.100-1). All cultivars and lineage of the current study constituted high quality raw materials for food production and human consumption.
Three-month, randomized, parallel-group comparison of brimonidine–timolol versus dorzolamide–timolol fixed-combination therapy*

ABSTRACT Objective: Fixed combinations of 0.2% brimonidine–0.5% timolol and 2% dorzolamide–0.5% timolol are used to lower intraocular pressure (IOP). The objective of this study was to evaluate the IOP-lowering efficacy and ocular tolerability of brimonidine–timolol compared with dorzolamide–timolol when used as monotherapy or as adjunctive therapy to a prostaglandin analog (PGA) in patients with glaucoma or ocular hypertension. Study design and methods: Pooled data analysis of two randomized, investigator-masked, 3-month, parallel-group studies with identical protocols (ten sites). In all, 180 patients with open-angle glaucoma or ocular hypertension who were in need of lower IOP received topical brimonidine–timolol BID or dorzolamide–timolol BID as monotherapy (n = 101) or as adjunctive therapy to a PGA (latanoprost, bimatoprost, or travoprost) (n = 79). Clinical trial registration: The studies are registered with the identifiers NCT00822081 and NCT00822055 at http://www.clinicaltrials. gov. Main outcome measures: IOP was measured at 10 a.m. (peak effect) at baseline and at months 1 and 3. Tolerability/comfort was evaluated using a patient questionnaire. Results: There were no statistically significant between-group differences in patient demographics. Most patients were Caucasian, and the mean age was 68 years. There were also no statistically significant differences between treatment groups in baseline IOP. At month 3, the mean (SD) reduction from baseline IOP for patients on fixed-combination monotherapy was 7.7 (4.2) mmHg (32.3%) with brimonidine–timolol versus 6.7 (5.0) mmHg (26.1%) with dorzolamide–timolol (p = 0.040). The mean reduction from PGA-treated baseline IOP for patients on fixed-combination adjunctive therapy was 6.9 (4.8) mmHg (29.3%) with brimonidine–timolol versus 5.2 (3.7) mmHg (23.5%) with dorzolamide–timolol (p = 0.213). Patients on brimonidine–timolol reported less burning (p < 0.001), stinging (p < 0.001), and unusual taste (p < 0.001) than patients on dorzolamide–timolol. Conclusions: Fixed-combination brimonidine–timolol provided the same or greater IOP lowering compared with fixed-combination dorzolamide–timolol. Both fixed-combination medications were safe and well-tolerated. Brimonidine–timolol received higher ratings of ocular comfort than dorzolamide–timolol. The duration of the studies was 3 months, and additional studies will be needed to compare the efficacy and tolerability of brimonidine–timolol and dorzolamide–timolol during long-term treatment.
Mapping and change detection for boreal wetlands of North America based on JERS and PALSAR data

We have been developing high-resolution thematic maps of wetlands throughout the North American boreal regions. We assemble a wetlands map for each region based on data collected during the late 1990s, then construct a second map based on data collected during the late 2000s. Comparison of the two maps then makes it possible to assess changes that have occurred over the course of the intervening decade.