Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Estimation of Reservoir Discharges from Lake Nasser and Roseires Reservoir in the Nile Basin Using Satellite Altimetry and Imagery Data

This paper presents the feasibility of estimating discharges from Roseires Reservoir (Sudan) for the period from 2002 to 2010 and Aswan High Dam/Lake Nasser (Egypt) for the periods 1999–2002 and 2005–2009 using satellite altimetry and imagery with limited in situ data. Discharges were computed using the water balance of the reservoirs. Rainfall and evaporation data were obtained from public domain data sources. In situ measurements of inflow and outflow (for validation) were obtained, as well. The other water balance components, such as the water level and surface area, for derivation of the change of storage volume were derived from satellite measurements. Water levels were obtained from Hydroweb for Roseires Reservoir and Hydroweb and Global Reservoir and Lake Monitor (GRLM) for Lake Nasser. Water surface areas were derived from Landsat TM/ETM+ images using the Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI). The water volume variations were estimated by integrating the area-level relationship of each reservoir. For Roseires Reservoir, the water levels from Hydroweb agreed well with in situ water levels (RMSE = 0.92 m; R2 = 0.96). Good agreement with in situ measurements were also obtained for estimated water volume (RMSE = 23%; R2 = 0.94) and computed discharge (RMSE = 18%; R2 = 0.98). The accuracy of the computed discharge was considered acceptable for typical reservoir operation applications. For Lake Nasser, the altimetry water levels also agreed well with in situ levels, both for Hydroweb (RMSE = 0.72 m; R2 = 0.81) and GRLM (RMSE = 0.62 m; R2 = 0.96) data. Similar agreements were also observed for the estimated water volumes (RMSE = 10%–15%). However, the estimated discharge from satellite data agreed poorly with observed discharge, Hydroweb (RMSE = 70%; R2 = 0.09) and GRLM (RMSE = 139%; R2 = 0.36). The error could be attributed to the high sensitivity of discharge to errors in storage volume because of the immense reservoir compared to inflow/outflow series. It may also be related to unaccounted spills into the Toshka Depression, overestimation of water inflow and errors in open water evaporation. Therefore, altimetry water levels and satellite imagery data can be used as a source of information for monitoring the operation of Roseires Reservoir with a fairly low uncertainty, while the errors of Lake Nasser are too large to allow for the monitoring of its operation.
A new instrument to measure patient satisfaction with mammography. Validity, reliability, and discriminatory power.

OBJECTIVES The benefit of mammography depends on repeated use. Therefore, surveying the mammographic quality as judged by the users addresses an important topic. The authors assess the practicality, validity, reliability, and discriminatory power of a new, brief, multidimensional questionnaire for measuring patient satisfaction with mammography. Items measuring discomfort and attitudes toward repeat adherence were included. METHODS A self-administered questionnaire was given to women from six radiology departments in Norway. Four hundred eighty-eight out of 550 women referred for screening or diagnostic mammography were included. Seventy-seven patients also completed the test/retest study, and 44 women additionally completed an Australian questionnaire. Scores for patient satisfaction on the structure, process, discomfort, and general satisfaction scales of the questionnaire were used as the main outcome measures. RESULTS Response rate was 89%, and rate of completion was more than 95%. Strict psychometric criteria for construct validity and reliability were satisfied. Because lower levels of satisfaction were detectable with the new questionnaire but not with the Australian questionnaire and because an acceptable degree of variability in response was detected, support for discriminatory power was found. CONCLUSIONS The discomfort dimension contributed substantially to validity and discriminatory power. Patient behavior with time may be monitored with the new questionnaire, thus representing a valuable tool for scientific and practical purposes.
USE OF ANALGESICS IN ELDERLY NURSING HOME RESIDENTS

To the Editor: We have read with interest the article by Wong et al. about the use of analgesics for residents in nursing homes in which they demonstrate that patients are either undertreated or treated with analgesics with potential side effects in elderly patients. However, we noted that, even though there is a high prevalence of pain secondary to fractures and musculoskeletal causes in their database, calcitonin, a known treatment for osteoporotic fractures, was not mentioned in the list of patterns of analgesic drug at baseline. Consequently, two questions come to mind. First, was it possible that some of the patients considered to be ‘‘undertreated’’ were actually being treated with calcitonin as the analgesic treatment for their pain associated to either osteoporotic fractures or musculoskeletal causes? Second, is it possible that physicians are not considering calcitonin as a choice for analgesic treatment in these specific situations? Salmon calcitonin provides an effective analgesic effect in several nonmalignant painful conditions that happen frequently in elderly patients, including sympathetic dystrophy syndrome, adhesive capsulitis, osteoporotic vertebral micro fractures, and evident crush fractures. Although its use in the treatment of osteoporosis remains controversial, several reports have documented its ability to bring rapid and effective relief, due most likely to the release of b endorphin. The effect is rapid, and the undesirable effects are infrequent. In summary, it would be interesting to know whether calcitonin was included as an analgesic treatment in Dr. Wong’s database and whether this analgesic treatment is really known to be a safe and effective choice for specific indications such as osteoporotic fracture and musculoskeletal conditions that occur frequently in the nursing home population.
Memory system characterization of commercial workloads

This paper presents a detailed performance study of three important classes of commercial workloads: online transaction processing (OLTP), decision support systems (DSS), and Web index search. We use the Oracle commercial database engine for our OLTP and DSS workloads, and the AltaVista search engine for our Web index search workload. This study characterizes the memory system behavior of these workloads through a large number of architectural experiments on Alpha multiprocessors augmented with full system simulations to determine the impact of architectural trends. We also identify a set of simplifications that make these workloads more amenable to monitoring and simulation without affecting representative memory system behavior. We observe that systems optimized for OLTP versus DSS and index search workloads may lead to diverging designs, specifically in the size and speed requirements for off-chip caches.
Diet and Lifestyle in the Prevention of Ovulatory Disorder Infertility

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the relation of a dietary pattern and other lifestyle practices to risk of ovulatory disorder infertility. METHODS: We followed a cohort of 17,544 women without a history of infertility for 8 years as they tried to become pregnant or became pregnant. A dietary score based on factors previously related to lower ovulatory disorder infertility (higher consumption of monounsaturated rather than trans fats, vegetable rather than animal protein sources, low glycemic carbohydrates, high fat dairy, multivitamins, and iron from plants and supplements) and other lifestyle information was prospectively related to the incidence of infertility. RESULTS: Increasing adherence to a “fertility diet” pattern was associated with a lower risk of ovulatory disorder infertility. The multivariable-adjusted relative risk of ovulatory disorder infertility comparing women in the highest with women in the lowest quintile of the “fertility diet” pattern score was 0.34 (95% confidence interval 0.23–0.48; P for trend<.001). This inverse relation was similar in subgroups defined by women’s age, parity, and body weight. A combination of five or more low-risk lifestyle factors, including diet, weight control, and physical activity was associated with a 69% lower risk of ovulatory disorder infertility and an estimated population attributable risk of 66% (95% confidence interval 29–86%). CONCLUSION: Following a “fertility diet” pattern may favorably influence fertility in otherwise healthy women. Further, the majority of infertility cases due to ovulation disorders may be preventable through modifications of diet and lifestyle. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: II
Misguided Instructions: Do Jurors Accurately Understand the Law in Death Penalty Trials?

Misguided Instructions: Do Jurors Accurately Understand The Law In Death Penalty Trials? by Chasity Stoots-Fonberg The Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees individuals’ right to trial by an impartial jury. However, empirical research indicates that the jury system is flawed, especially regarding judicial sentencing instructions. More specifically, jurors frequently misunderstand or misinterpret State-patterned instructions. On a more encouraging note, there is evidence that comprehension of jury instructions can be improved. Thus, this research assessed improvement in juror comprehension using revised sentencing instructions. For the current investigation, participants included 201 volunteers called for jury duty in Western Tennessee. Data were generated via a questionnaire that allowed for the collection of information relating to participants’ understanding of the sentencing instructions. Findings suggest that comprehension is low when jurors are only exposed to instructions written by the State. Furthermore, when jurors were given a more detailed explanation of certain problematic terminology, comprehension significantly increased. Policy implications of this research and directions for future improvement are discussed.
A study on speaker-adaptable multilingual synthesis

This thesis introduces a new method for synthesizing multiple languages with the voice of any speaker, so that for example Japanese speech can be synthesized with the voice of a Russian monolingual speaker. This approach is based on the hypothesis that the average voice created by mixing a sufficient number of speakers is the same for all languages, i.e., the average voice is equivalent to a polyglot speaker. To create such an average voice, we use HMM-based speech synthesis. In our method, first data from multiple speakers of different languages is combined to create a speaker independent (SI) model. In the second step, this model is adapted to a given speaker to create a speaker dependent (SD) model that imitates the voice of that speaker. The adaptation is performed by means of supervised Maximum Likelihood Linear Regression with some minutes of speech data from the target speaker. Using such SD model, any of the languages used to train the SI model can be synthesized with the voice of the target speaker, regardless of the target speaker’s own language. In general, better results are obtained when the language of the target speaker is one of the languages included in the training of the average voice. However, the method also works for speakers of other languages. The results of several subjective evaluations showed that when the language to be synthesized and the language of the target speaker are different, our approach performs clearly better in terms of perceptual intelligibility and internal similarity than other possible approaches to polyglot synthesis based on monolingual models and phone mapping. Furthermore, in the standard case, that is to say, when the language of the target speaker is the same as the language to be synthesized, the performance of our approach in terms of perceptual intelligibility is equivalent to that of a standard monolingual synthesizer in that language. An additional application of our approach is the implementation of low cost speech synthesizers for new languages. The synthesis of new languages for which no speech resource is available is usually based on phone mapping. Under this condition, the experiments showed that our polyglot synthesizer performs equal to or better than any of the monolingual synthesizers in the languages used to train the polyglot one. Moreover, the quality of the synthetic speech for a new language can be easily improved by just adding to the training of the polyglot synthesizer some amount of speech data from that new language. This capability of our method makes it especially interesting for minority languages for which usually very limited or no available speech resources exist.
Metformin treatment reduces ovarian cytochrome P-450c17alpha response to human chorionic gonadotrophin in women with insulin resistance-related polycystic ovary syndrome.

It has recently been proposed that hyperinsulinaemic insulin resistance and increased ovarian cytochrome P-450c17alpha activity, two features of the polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), are pathogenetically linked. The aim of the present study was to test the hypothesis of the linkage between hyperinsulinaemia and supranormal activity of cytochrome P-450c17alpha using the human chorionic gonadotrophin (HCG) challenge, which is a more direct ovarian stimulus than gonadotrophin-releasing hormone (GnRH) in detecting modifications in ovarian steroidogenesis. Eleven women with insulin resistance-related PCOS were studied. HCG (10 000 IU) was given i.m. , and blood samples were obtained 0, 8, 12, 16 and 24 h thereafter. Next day, metformin was given at a dose of 500 mg three times a day for 30-32 days, at which time the pretreatment study was repeated. Two women ovulated after metformin treatment. The administration of metformin was associated with a decrease in area under the curve for insulin during a 2h, 75g oral glucose tolerance test, in plasma free testosterone concentrations and an increase in plasma sex hormone binding globulin concentration. The plasma 17-hydroxyprogesterone response to HCG was significantly lower after metformin treatment. The present study gives a direct demonstration that metformin leads to a reduction in stimulated ovarian cytochrome P-450c17alpha activity in women with polycystic ovary syndrome.
Infectivity of Cryptosporidium andersoni and Cryptosporidium muris to Normal and Immunosuppressive Cynomolgus Monkeys

ABSTRACT Cryptosporidium andersoni and Cryptosporidium muris infections have been found in the mice and/or cattle. The oocysts of C. andersoni and C. muris have been sporadically detected in human feces, but the infectious capacity and features have been unknown, because of the scarcity of reports involving human infections. To assess the infectivity and the clinical and pathological features of C. andersoni and C. muris in primates, an experimental infectious study was conducted using cynomolgus monkeys. The monkeys were orally inoculated with oocysts of two different C. andersoni Kawatabi types and C. muris RN-66 under normal and immunosuppressive conditions. The feces of the monkeys were monitored for about 40 days after the administration of oocysts using the flotation method, but no shedding oocysts were observed under either both normal or immunosuppressive conditions. Gross and histopathological examinations were performed on the immunosuppressive monkeys, but these revealed no evidence of Cryptosporidium infections, even though the monkeys were subjected to immunosuppressive conditions. It is hypothesized that C. andersoni and C. muris pose little danger of infection in primates even under immunosuppressive conditions.
Extent of Knowledge about HIV and Its Determinants among Men in Bangladesh

Background Bangladesh is currently a low human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevalent country. However, the risk factors are widespread and the number of at-risk population is also rising, which warrants special policy attention. The risks of transmission were shown to be correlated with the level of HIV knowledge of individuals. In this study, we aimed to explore the level and influencing factors of HIV knowledge among adult men in Bangladesh. Methodology Data for the present study were collected from the sixth round of Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey. Participants were 3305 men between 15 and 54 years of age regardless of HIV status. The primary outcome variable was the HIV knowledge score, which was calculated by responses to questions regarding general concepts and the mode of transmission of HIV. Association between the HIV knowledge score and the explanatory variables were analyzed by binary logistic regression methods. Result The mean HIV knowledge score was 7.2 (SD 1.3). Results indicate that being an urban resident [p < 0.001; odds ratios (OR) = 0.56, 95% confidence intervals (CI) = 0.48–0.64], having secondary/higher educational level (p < 0.001 OR = 0.56, 95%CI = 0.48–0.64), reading newspaper [p = 0.006; OR = 0.76, 95%CI = 0.62–0.92], and communication with community health workers (CHWs) (p = 0.05; OR = 0.77, 95%CI = 0.60–10.00) were significantly associated with a high (equal or above mean value) HIV knowledge level. Conclusion The level of HIV knowledge among Bangladeshi men is low. Leveraging HIV awareness programs targeting adult men to prevent future expansion of the epidemic should be a high priority. Revitalization and restructuring of the education sector and strengthening CHW’s engagement to improve knowledge about HIV transmission among men could generate beneficial returns for HIV prevention programs.
Tumor Suppressors TSC1 and TSC2 Differentially Modulate Actin Cytoskeleton and Motility of Mouse Embryonic Fibroblasts

TSC1 and TSC2 mutations cause neoplasms in rare disease pulmonary LAM and neuronal pathfinding in hamartoma syndrome TSC. The specific roles of TSC1 and TSC2 in actin remodeling and the modulation of cell motility, however, are not well understood. Previously, we demonstrated that TSC1 and TSC2 regulate the activity of small GTPases RhoA and Rac1, stress fiber formation and cell adhesion in a reciprocal manner. Here, we show that Tsc1−/− MEFs have decreased migration compared to littermate-derived Tsc1+/+ MEFs. Migration of Tsc1−/− MEFs with re-expressed TSC1 was comparable to Tsc1+/+ MEF migration. In contrast, Tsc2−/− MEFs showed an increased migration compared to Tsc2+/+ MEFs that were abrogated by TSC2 re-expression. Depletion of TSC1 and TSC2 using specific siRNAs in wild type MEFs and NIH 3T3 fibroblasts also showed that TSC1 loss attenuates cell migration while TSC2 loss promotes cell migration. Morphological and immunochemical analysis demonstrated that Tsc1−/− MEFs have a thin protracted shape with a few stress fibers; in contrast, Tsc2−/− MEFs showed a rounded morphology and abundant stress fibers. Expression of TSC1 in either Tsc1−/− or Tsc2−/− MEFs promoted stress fiber formation, while TSC2 re-expression induced stress fiber disassembly and the formation of cortical actin. To assess the mechanism(s) by which TSC2 loss promotes actin re-arrangement and cell migration, we explored the role of known downstream effectors of TSC2, mTORC1 and mTORC2. Increased migration of Tsc2−/− MEFs is inhibited by siRNA mTOR and siRNA Rictor, but not siRNA Raptor. siRNA mTOR or siRNA Rictor promoted stress fiber disassembly in TSC2-null cells, while siRNA Raptor had little effect. Overexpression of kinase-dead mTOR induced actin stress fiber disassembly and suppressed TSC2-deficient cell migration. Our data demonstrate that TSC1 and TSC2 differentially regulate actin stress fiber formation and cell migration, and that only TSC2 loss promotes mTOR- and mTORC2-dependent pro-migratory cell phenotype.
Characterization of ion channels and O2 sensitivity in gill neuroepithelial cells of the anoxia-tolerant goldfish (Carassius auratus).

The neuroepithelial cell (NEC) of the fish gill is an important model for O2 sensing in vertebrates; however, a complete picture of the chemosensory mechanisms in NECs is lacking, and O2 chemoreception in vertebrates that are tolerant to anoxia has not yet been explored. Using whole cell patch-clamp recording, we characterized four types of ion channels in NECs isolated from the anoxia-tolerant goldfish. A Ca2+-dependent K+ current (IKCa) peaked at ~20 mV, was potentiated by increased intracellular Ca2+, and was reduced by 100 μM Cd2+ A voltage-dependent inward current in Ba2+ solution, with peak at 0 mV, confirmed the presence of Ca2+ channels. A voltage-dependent K+ current (IKV) was inhibited by 20 mM tetraethylammonium and 5 mM 4-aminopyridine, revealing a background K+ current (IKB) with open rectification. Mean resting membrane potential of -45.2 ± 11.6 mV did not change upon administration of hypoxia (Po2 = 11 mmHg), nor were any of the K+ currents sensitive to changes in Po2 during whole cell recording. By contrast, when the membrane and cytosol were left undisturbed during fura-2 or FM 1-43 imaging experiments, hypoxia increased intracellular Ca2+ concentration and initiated synaptic vesicle activity. 100 μM Cd2+ and 50 μM nifedipine eliminated uptake of FM 1-43. We conclude that Ca2+ influx via L-type Ca2+ channels is correlated with vesicular activity during hypoxic stimulation. In addition, we suggest that expression of IKCa in gill NECs is species specific and, in goldfish, may contribute to an attenuated response to acute hypoxia.NEW & NOTEWORTHY This study provides the first physiological characterization of oxygen chemoreceptors from an anoxia-tolerant vertebrate. Neuroepithelial cells (NECs) from the gills of goldfish displayed L-type Ca2+ channels and three types of K+ channels, one of which was dependent upon intracellular Ca2+ Although membrane currents were not inhibited by hypoxia during patch-clamp recording, this study is the first to show that NECs with an undisturbed cytosol responded to hypoxia with increased intracellular Ca2+ and synaptic vesicle activity.
Specific Binding of Alzheimer's Aβ Peptide Fibrils to Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes

Amyloids constitute a class of protein and protein fragments believed to be involved in the pathologies associated with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Creutzfeldt-Jakob diseases. These proteins can self-assemble into unique fibrillar structures that are resistant to normal protein degradation. Interesting recent developments in the study of amyloid fibrils demonstrate that they bind carbon allotropes. In this study using single-walled carbon nanotube field-effect transistors (SWCNT-FETs), we show that the fibrillar form of Alzheimer's amyloid β (1–40) and (1–42) peptides specifically bind non-functionalized SWCNT in a saturable manner. Both peptides exhibited near identical binding curves with half-maximal binding concentrations of approximately 12 μg/ml. Binding of the peptides to SWCNTs was diminished by including dimethyl sulphoxide (DMSO) at concentrations that inhibits fibril formation. Lastly a monoclonal antibody (BAM-10), which binds to the N-terminal region of Alzheimer's amyloid fibrils, recognize.