Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Characterization of the solid components of three desensitizing toothpastes and a mouth wash

The solid components of three toothpastes and a mouth wash which are intended to enhance the remineralization of teeth and occlusion of dentinal tubuli were isolated and analyzed. Samples of the toothpaste BioRepair®, the mouth wash BioRepair®, the toothpaste nanosensitive® hca, and the toothpaste Theramed® S.O. S. Sensitive were characterized by dynamic light scattering (DLS), nanoparticle tracking analysis (NTA), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy‐dispersive X‐ray spectroscopy (EDX), X‐ray powder diffraction (XRD), atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS), thermogravimetric analysis (TG), and elemental analysis. All samples contained primary particles in the size range of 30–60 nm, that were all agglomerated in aqueous dispersion to particles in the size range of 200 to 400 nm. BioRepair® contained a zinc‐substituted hydroxyapatite and amorphous silica, nanosensitive®hca contained TiO2 (anatase) and an amorphous Na‐Ca‐Si‐P bioglass, and Theramed® S.O. S. Sensitive contained TiO2 (anatase), amorphous silica and traces of a calcium‐containing phase. The size of the mineral particles was in all cases suitable to fit into dentinal tubuli, especially after breaking up the agglomerated nanoparticles by mechanical forces, e. g. during tooth brushing.
Managing breast cancer in younger women: challenges and solutions

Breast cancer in young women is relatively rare compared to breast cancer occurring in older women. Younger women diagnosed with breast cancer also tend to have a more aggressive biology and consequently a poorer prognosis than older women. In addition, they face unique challenges such as diminished fertility from premature ovarian failure, extended survivorship periods and its attendant problems, and the psychosocial impact of diagnosis, while still raising families. It is therefore imperative to recognize the unique issues that younger women face, and plan management in a multidisciplinary fashion to optimize clinical outcomes. This paper discusses the challenges of breast cancer management for young women, as well as specific issues to consider in diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up of such patients.
Cerebral Vascular Dysfunction Mediated by Superoxide in Hyperhomocysteinemic Mice

Background and Purpose— Hyperhomocysteinemia is an emerging risk factor for stroke, but little is known about effects of hyperhomocysteinemia on cerebral vascular function. We tested the hypothesis that chronic hyperhomocysteinemia in mice causes endothelial dysfunction in cerebral arterioles through a mechanism that involves superoxide. Methods— Mice heterozygous for a targeted disruption of the cystathionine β-synthase gene (Cbs +/−) and their wild type littermates (Cbs +/+) were fed either a control diet or a high-methionine diet for 10 to 12 months. Results— Plasma total homocysteine was elevated with the high-methionine diet compared with the control diet for both Cbs +/+ (7.9±1.0 versus 5.0±0.5 μmol/L; P <0.05) and Cbs +/− (20.5±3.1 versus 8.2±0.9 μmol/L; P <0.001) mice. Dilatation of cerebral arterioles (≈30 μm baseline diameter) was measured in vivo in response to the endothelium-dependent dilator acetylcholine or the endothelium-independent dilator nitroprusside. Vasodilatation to acetylcholine was impaired with the high-methionine diet compared with the control diet for both Cbs +/+ and Cbs +/− mice (P <0.01). Dilatation of arterioles to acetylcholine was restored toward normal by the superoxide scavenger tiron (P <0.05). Vasodilatation to nitroprusside was not influenced by Cbs genotype or diet. Dihydroethidium (DHE) staining for vascular superoxide was elevated in Cbs +/− mice fed the high-methionine diet and was inhibited by apocynin or Nω-nitro-l-arginine methyl ester, implicating NAD(P)H oxidase and nitric oxide synthase as potential sources of superoxide. Conclusions— Superoxide is a key mediator of endothelial dysfunction in the cerebral circulation during diet-induced hyperhomocysteinemia.
Sentiment classification for Indonesian message in social media

Nowadays, social media has grown rapidly. This growth makes people enjoy sharing their activities in social media, including complains about products or services from companies. This behaviour is a big opportunity for a company to know sentiments of customer toward their company. However, classifying sentiments from messages in social media has several challenges. First, the language used in social media often does not have formal structure in their sentence, such as the use of abbreviations, change of letters to numbers, lack of punctuation marks, etc. Second, sentences in social media are domain independent so it's hard to classify the sentence. Related with these challenges, this paper discusses a method to classify sentiments on social media, which is written in Indonesian language. The method we use is to classify each sentence into several classes of sentiment. Before the classification, sentence transformation is done to transform the informal words in the sentence into formal words. The transformation method that we use is the deletion of punctuation mark, the tokenization, the conversion of number to letter, the reduction of repetition letter, the Levensthein distance and using corpus to formalize abbreviation. Formalized sentence will be the input to the classification model for data training and classification process. We classify the message into four classes: Neutral (fact, greetings, etc.), Question, Positive Sentiment, and Negative Sentiment. SVM (Support Vector Machine) and Maximum Entropy are used as the classification algorithms with machine learning features of count of positive, negative, and question word in sentence. From our experimental result, the best classification method is SVM that yields 86,66% accuracy.
Factors affecting the acceptability and consumption of Corn Soya Blend Plus as a prenatal dietary supplement among pregnant women in rural Cambodia

Abstract Objective Undernutrition is prevalent among pregnant women in Cambodia. The provision of fortified dietary supplements is one strategy to help pregnant women meet their nutritional needs. Corn Soya Blend Plus (CSBP) is a widely used prenatal dietary supplement in areas with high rates of undernutrition and food insecurity. However, little is known about its acceptability during pregnancy. The present study aimed to identify factors that affected the acceptability and consumption of CSBP supplements among pregnant women. Design Women completed a structured interview designed to provide information on facilitators of and barriers to utilization. In addition, six focus groups were conducted with a subset of women (n 70) to further explore attitudes, perceptions and experiences related to CSBP use. Setting Two districts in Kampong Chhnang Province, Cambodia. Subjects Pregnant women (n 288) participating in a cluster-randomized trial of CSBP. Results The acceptability of CSBP was influenced by sensory attributes, family support, peer influences, and attitudes related to diet, nutritional status and weight gain in pregnancy. Attaining adequate nutrition was considered less important than other concerns during pregnancy, particularly anxiety related to the costs of delivery and postpartum care. Acceptance was lower among new mothers due to fears of weight gain. Health benefits were common reasons for continued use and minor side-effects, such as nausea, were not major barriers to consumption. Conclusions CSBP was generally well accepted in this population. However, organoleptic factors and perceptions regarding nutrition and weight gain in pregnancy, particularly for first-time mothers, were barriers to increasing acceptance among Cambodian women.
Role of Semantic Paradigms for Optimization of Language Mapping in Clinical fMRI Studies

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: The optimal paradigm choice for language mapping in clinical fMRI studies is challenging due to the variability in activation among different paradigms, the contribution to activation of cognitive processes other than language, and the difficulties in monitoring patient performance. In this study, we compared language localization and lateralization between 2 commonly used clinical language paradigms and 3 newly designed dual-choice semantic paradigms to define a streamlined and adequate language-mapping protocol. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Twelve healthy volunteers performed 5 language paradigms: Silent Word Generation, Sentence Completion, Visual Antonym Pair, Auditory Antonym Pair, and Noun-Verb Association. Group analysis was performed to assess statistically significant differences in fMRI percentage signal change and lateralization index among these paradigms in 5 ROIs: inferior frontal gyrus, superior frontal gyrus, middle frontal gyrus for expressive language activation, middle temporal gyrus, and superior temporal gyrus for receptive language activation. RESULTS: In the expressive ROIs, Silent Word Generation was the most robust and best lateralizing paradigm (greater percentage signal change and lateralization index than semantic paradigms at P < .01 and P < .05 levels, respectively). In the receptive region of interest, Sentence Completion and Noun-Verb Association were the most robust activators (greater percentage signal change than other paradigms, P < .01). All except Auditory Antonym Pair were good lateralizing tasks (the lateralization index was significantly lower than other paradigms, P < .05). CONCLUSIONS: The combination of Silent Word Generation and ≥1 visual semantic paradigm, such as Sentence Completion and Noun-Verb Association, is adequate to determine language localization and lateralization; Noun-Verb Association has the additional advantage of objective monitoring of patient performance.
Interference in Visual Working Memory

This paper uses the theoretical distinction that has recently developed between the passive visual store and the active spatial rehearsal mechanism of the visuo-spatial component of working memory (VSSP). It examines the circumstances under which visual fields gain functional access to the passive visual store and seeks to cast light on the circumstances under which irrelevant visual fields interfere with concurrent visual processing. Experiment 1 contrasts a dynamic visual noise field with a static noise field and shows that the static field, in contrast to the dynamic noise field, causes no interference when presented concurrently with a visual task. Experiment 2 investigates the reason for this contrast and concludes that the static field is susceptible to decay and so fails to cause interference. Experiment 3 investigates further the circumstances under which dynamic visual noise causes interference and shows that manipulation of the number of changes within the noise field is also of importance in causing interference. The results allow further consideration of the characteristics of the VSSP.
Don't sweat the small stuff: formal verification of C code without the pain

We present an approach for automatically generating provably correct abstractions from C source code that are useful for practical implementation verification. The abstractions are easier for a human verification engineer to reason about than the implementation and increase the productivity of interactive code proof. We guarantee soundness by automatically generating proofs that the abstractions are correct. In particular, we show two key abstractions that are critical for verifying systems-level C code: automatically turning potentially overflowing machine-word arithmetic into ideal integers, and transforming low-level C pointer reasoning into separate abstract heaps. Previous work carrying out such transformations has either done so using unverified translations, or required significant proof engineering effort. We implement these abstractions in an existing proof-producing specification transformation framework named AutoCorres, developed in Isabelle/HOL, and demonstrate its effectiveness in a number of case studies. We show scalability on multiple OS microkernels, and we show how our changes to AutoCorres improve productivity for total correctness by porting an existing high-level verification of the Schorr-Waite algorithm to a low-level C implementation with minimal effort.
Anti-chromatin antibodies in systemic lupus erythematosus: a useful marker for lupus nephropathy

Background: Anti-chromatin antibodies have recently been described in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and it has been suggested that their presence is associated with lupus nephritis. Objective: To assess the prevalence and clinical associations of these antibodies in SLE. Methods: The presence of anti-chromatin antibodies in 100 patients with SLE was investigated by an enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). To determine the specificity of these antibodies, 100 patients with primary Sjögren’s syndrome, 30 with primary antiphospholipid syndrome (APS), 10 with systemic sclerosis, and 100 normal controls were also tested. Results: Positive levels were detected in 69/100 (69%) patients with SLE. In contrast, they were found in only 8/100 (8%) of those with primary Sjögren’s syndrome, in 1/10 (10%) with systemic sclerosis, in 2/30 (7%) with primary APS, and in none of the 100 healthy controls. Patients with anti-chromatin antibodies had a twofold higher prevalence of lupus nephropathy than those without these antibodies (58% v 29%, p<0.01). A significant correlation was found between the levels of anti-chromatin antibodies and disease activity score as measured by the European Consensus Lupus Activity Measurement (ECLAM; p=0.011). Conclusions: The measurement of anti-chromatin antibodies appears to be a useful addition to the laboratory tests that can help in the diagnosis and treatment of SLE. These antibodies are both sensitive and specific for SLE, and are a useful marker for an increased risk of lupus nephritis.
A Genome Wide Association Study of Mathematical Ability Reveals an Association at Chromosome 3q29, a Locus Associated with Autism and Learning Difficulties: A Preliminary Study

Mathematical ability is heritable, but few studies have directly investigated its molecular genetic basis. Here we aimed to identify specific genetic contributions to variation in mathematical ability. We carried out a genome wide association scan using pooled DNA in two groups of U.K. samples, based on end of secondary/high school national academic exam achievement: high (n = 419) versus low (n = 183) mathematical ability while controlling for their verbal ability. Significant differences in allele frequencies between these groups were searched for in 906,600 SNPs using the Affymetrix GeneChip Human Mapping version 6.0 array. After meeting a threshold of p<1.5×10−5, 12 SNPs from the pooled association analysis were individually genotyped in 542 of the participants and analyzed to validate the initial associations (lowest p-value 1.14 ×10−6). In this analysis, one of the SNPs (rs789859) showed significant association after Bonferroni correction, and four (rs10873824, rs4144887, rs12130910 rs2809115) were nominally significant (lowest p-value 3.278 × 10−4). Three of the SNPs of interest are located within, or near to, known genes (FAM43A, SFT2D1, C14orf64). The SNP that showed the strongest association, rs789859, is located in a region on chromosome 3q29 that has been previously linked to learning difficulties and autism. rs789859 lies 1.3 kbp downstream of LSG1, and 700 bp upstream of FAM43A, mapping within the potential promoter/regulatory region of the latter. To our knowledge, this is only the second study to investigate the association of genetic variants with mathematical ability, and it highlights a number of interesting markers for future study.
Effective Multi-Modal Retrieval based on Stacked Auto-Encoders

Multi-modal retrieval is emerging as a new search paradigm that enables seamless information retrieval from various types of media. For example, users can simply snap a movie poster to search relevant reviews and trailers. To solve the problem, a set of mapping functions are learned to project high-dimensional features extracted from data of different media types into a common low-dimensional space so that metric distance measures can be applied. In this paper, we propose an effective mapping mechanism based on deep learning (i.e., stacked auto-encoders) for multi-modal retrieval. Mapping functions are learned by optimizing a new objective function, which captures both intra-modal and inter-modal semantic relationships of data from heterogeneous sources effectively. Compared with previous works which require a substantial amount of prior knowledge such as similarity matrices of intra-modal data and ranking examples, our method requires little prior knowledge. Given a large training dataset, we split it into mini-batches and continually adjust the mapping functions for each batch of input. Hence, our method is memory efficient with respect to the data volume. Experiments on three real datasets illustrate that our proposed method achieves significant improvement in search accuracy over the state-of-the-art methods.
A Drosophila model of myeloproliferative neoplasm reveals a feed-forward loop in the JAK pathway mediated by p38 MAPK signalling

ABSTRACT Myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs) of the Philadelphia-negative class comprise polycythaemia vera, essential thrombocythaemia and primary myelofibrosis (PMF). They are associated with aberrant numbers of myeloid lineage cells in the blood, and in the case of overt PMF, with development of myelofibrosis in the bone marrow and failure to produce normal blood cells. These diseases are usually caused by gain-of-function mutations in the kinase JAK2. Here, we use Drosophila to investigate the consequences of activation of the JAK2 orthologue in haematopoiesis. We have identified maturing haemocytes in the lymph gland, the major haematopoietic organ in the fly, as the cell population susceptible to induce hypertrophy upon targeted overexpression of JAK. We show that JAK activates a feed-forward loop, including the cytokine-like ligand Upd3 and its receptor, Domeless, which are required to induce lymph gland hypertrophy. Moreover, we present evidence that p38 MAPK signalling plays a key role in this process by inducing expression of the ligand Upd3. Interestingly, we also show that forced activation of the p38 MAPK pathway in maturing haemocytes suffices to generate hypertrophic organs and the appearance of melanotic tumours. Our results illustrate a novel pro-tumourigenic crosstalk between the p38 MAPK pathway and JAK signalling in a Drosophila model of MPNs. Based on the shared molecular mechanisms underlying MPNs in flies and humans, the interplay between Drosophila JAK and p38 signalling pathways unravelled in this work might have translational relevance for human MPNs. Summary: Pro-tumourigenic crosstalk occurs between the p38 MAPK pathway and JAK signalling in a Drosophila model of myeloproliferative neoplasm.
Enhancing the Sensitivity of a Sustained Attention Task to Frontal Damage: Convergent Clinical and Functional Imaging Evidence

Despite frequent reports of poor concentration following traumatic brain injury, studies have generally failed to find disproportionate time-on-task decrements using vigilance measures in this patient group. Using a rather different definition, neuropsychological and functional imaging research has however linked sustained attention performance to right prefrontal function – a region likely to be compromised by such injuries. These studies have emphasized more transitory lapses of attention during dull and ostensibly unchallenging activities. Here, an existing attention measure was modified to reduce its apparent difficulty or ‘challenge’. Compared with the standard task, its capacity to discriminate traumatically head-injured participants from a control group was significantly enhanced. Unlike existing functional imaging studies, that have compared a sustained attention task with a no-task control, in study 2 we used positron emission tomography to contrast the two levels of the same task. Significantly increased blood flow in the dorsolateral region of the right prefrontal cortex was associated with the low challenge condition. While the results are discussed in terms of a frontal system involved in the voluntary maintenance of performance under conditions of low stimulation, alternative accounts in terms of strategy application are considered.
The recycling of thermoplastics: Prediction of the properties of mixtures of virgin and reprocessed polyolefins

A theoretical basis for the prediction of the properties of mixtures of virgin and reprocessed polymers is presented. The concept is developed using equations that describe the loss of polymer properties as a function of processing cycles. These equations correspond to properties that are important in characterization and quality control, such as melt flow index and tensile and impact strengths. Experimental data were determined and used to test the models derived. For glass-fiber-reinforced thermoplastics, the data on the degradation of fiber lengths and mechanical properties can help to understand the effect of reprocessing on the fiber-matrix interaction.
A comparison of voice controlled and mouse controlled web browsing

Voice controlled web browsers allow users to navigate by speaking the text of a link or an associated number instead of clicking with a mouse. One such browser is Conversa, by Conversational Computing. This within subjects study with 18 subjects compared voice browsing with traditional mouse-based browsing. It attempted to identify which of three common hypertext forms (linear slide show, grid/tiled map, and hierarchical menu) are well suited to voice navigation, and whether voice navigation is helped by numbering links. The study shows that voice control adds approximately 50% to the performance time for certain types of tasks. Subjective satisfaction measures indicate that for voice browsing, textual links are preferable to numbered links.
Personality-Relationship transaction in young adulthood.

Personality and social relationships were assessed twice across a 4-year period in a general population sample of 489 German young adults. Two kinds of personality-relationship transaction were observed. First, mean-level change in personality toward maturity (e.g., increase in Conscientiousness and decrease in Neuroticism) was moderated by the transition to partnership but was independent of other developmental transitions. Second, individual differences in personality traits predicted social relationships much better than vice versa. Specifically, once initial correlations were controlled for, Extraversion, Shyness, Neuroticism, self-esteem, and Agreeableness predicted change in various qualities of relationships (especially with friends and colleagues), whereas only quality of relationships with preschool children predicted later Extraversion and Neuroticism. Consequences for the transactional view of personality in young adulthood are discussed.
Genetic diversity of Anaplasma species major surface proteins and implications for anaplasmosis serodiagnosis and vaccine development

Abstract The genus Anaplasma (Rickettsiales: Anaplasmataceae) includes several pathogens of veterinary and human medical importance. An understanding of the diversity of Anaplasma major surface proteins (MSPs), including those MSPs that modulate infection, development of persistent infections, and transmission of pathogens by ticks, is derived in part, by characterization and phylogenetic analyses of geographic strains. Information concerning the genetic diversity of Anaplasma spp. MSPs will likely influence the development of serodiagnostic assays and vaccine strategies for the control of anaplasmosis.