Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The effects of whole body vibration on static balance, spinal curvature, pain, and disability of patients with low back pain

[Purpose] The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of whole body vibration (WBV) on static balance, spinal curvature, pain, and the disability of patients with chronic lower back pain. [Subjects and Methods] The subjects were of 40 patients, who were randomly assigned to WBV and control groups. Twenty-five minutes of lumbar stability training and 5 minutes of WBV were conducted for the WBV group, and 30 minutes of lumbar stability training was conducted for the control group. The training was conducted three times per week for a total of 6 weeks. Static balance, spinal curvature, pain, and disability were measured before and after the intervention. [Results] After the intervention, the WBV group showed a significant differences in static balance, spinal curvature, pain, and disability. The control group presented significant differences in pain, and disability. In the comparison of the two groups, the WBV group showed more significant improvements in the fall index and pain. [Conclusion] WBV can be recommended for the improvement of the balance ability and pain of chronic lower back pain patients.
Sequencing of DISC1 Pathway Genes Reveals Increased Burden of Rare Missense Variants in Schizophrenia Patients from a Northern Swedish Population

In recent years, DISC1 has emerged as one of the most credible and best supported candidate genes for schizophrenia and related neuropsychiatric disorders. Furthermore, increasing evidence – both genetic and functional – indicates that many of its protein interaction partners are also involved in the development of these diseases. In this study, we applied a pooled sample 454 sequencing strategy, to explore the contribution of genetic variation in DISC1 and 10 of its interaction partners (ATF5, Grb2, FEZ1, LIS-1, PDE4B, NDE1, NDEL1, TRAF3IP1, YWHAE, and ZNF365) to schizophrenia susceptibility in an isolated northern Swedish population. Mutation burden analysis of the identified variants in a population of 486 SZ patients and 514 control individuals, revealed that non-synonymous rare variants with a MAF<0.01 were significantly more present in patients compared to controls (8.64% versus 4.7%, P = 0.018), providing further evidence for the involvement of DISC1 and some of its interaction partners in psychiatric disorders. This increased burden of rare missense variants was even more striking in a subgroup of early onset patients (12.9% versus 4.7%, P = 0.0004), highlighting the importance of studying subgroups of patients and identifying endophenotypes. Upon investigation of the potential functional effects associated with the identified missense variants, we found that ∼90% of these variants reside in intrinsically disordered protein regions. The observed increase in mutation burden in patients provides further support for the role of the DISC1 pathway in schizophrenia. Furthermore, this study presents the first evidence supporting the involvement of mutations within intrinsically disordered protein regions in the pathogenesis of psychiatric disorders. As many important biological functions depend directly on the disordered state, alteration of this disorder in key pathways may represent an intriguing new disease mechanism for schizophrenia and related neuropsychiatric diseases. Further research into this unexplored domain will be required to elucidate the role of the identified variants in schizophrenia etiology.
SELF-SIMILAR CORRECTIONS TO THE ERGODIC THEOREM FOR THE PASCAL-ADIC TRANSFORMATION

Let T be the Pascal-adic transformation. For any measurable function g, we consider the corrections to the ergodic theorem sum_{k=0}^{j-1} g(T^k x) - j/l sum_{k=0}^{l-1} g(T^k x). When seen as graphs of functions defined on {0,. ,l-1}, we show for a suitable class of functions g that these quantities, once properly renormalized, converge to (part of) the graph of a self-affine function. The latter only depends on the ergodic component of x, and is a deformation of the so-called Blancmange function. We also briefly describe the links with a series of works on Conway recursive $10,000 sequence.
The development of erythropoietic agents in oncology

The erythropoietic agents have achieved a remarkable degree of success as products for the treatment of anaemia associated with cancer chemotherapy. Three agents, epoetin-α, epoetin-β and darbepoetin-α, share this global market and have demonstrated similar efficacy and share similar shortcomings, primarily a lower magnitude of cost/benefit than is the case for the dialysis patient. The continued success of these agents will depend on their ability to address the issue of resistance to therapy in the cancer setting, with the most promising and practical initiatives including cotherapy with parenteral iron, and earlier initiation of therapy. Recently, safety issues have arisen with respect to these agents in the cancer setting, particularly focused on possible promotion of tumour progression. A large body of data suggests that these agents are safe when used in accordance with the package inserts. The data bearing upon these issues will be reviewed and three new agents entering clinical development will be described.
An Enhanced Backbone-Assisted Reliable Framework for Wireless Sensor Networks

An extremely reliable source to sink communication is required for most of the contemporary WSN applications especially pertaining to military, healthcare and disaster-recovery. However, due to their intrinsic energy, bandwidth and computational constraints, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) encounter several challenges in reliable source to sink communication. In this paper, we present a novel reliable topology that uses reliable hotlines between sensor gateways to boost the reliability of end-to-end transmissions. This reliable and efficient routing alternative reduces the number of average hops from source to the sink. We prove, with the help of analytical evaluation, that communication using hotlines is considerably more reliable than traditional WSN routing. We use reliability theory to analyze the cost and benefit of adding gateway nodes to a backbone-assisted WSN. However, in hotline assisted routing some scenarios where source and the sink are just a couple of hops away might bring more latency, therefore, we present a Signature Based Routing (SBR) scheme. SBR enables the gateways to make intelligent routing decisions, based upon the derived signature, hence providing lesser end-to-end delay between source to the sink communication. Finally, we evaluate our proposed hotline based topology with the help of a simulation tool and show that the proposed topology provides manifold increase in end-to-end reliability.
Constraint satisfaction: a personal perspective

Attempts at classifying computational problems as polynomial time solvable, NP-complete, or belonging to a higher level in the polynomial hierarchy, face the di(cid:14)culty of undecidability. These classes, including NP, admit a logic formulation. By suitably restricting the formulation, one (cid:12)nds the logic class MMSNP, or monotone monadic strict NP without inequality, as a largest class that seems to avoid diagonalization arguments. Representative of this logic class is the class CSP of constraint satisfaction problems. Both MMSNP and CSP admit generalizations via alternations of quanti(cid:12)ers corresponding to higher levels in the hierarchy. Examining CSP from a computational point of view, one (cid:12)nds that the polynomial time solvable problems that do not have the bounded width property of Datalog are group theoretic in nature. In general, closure properties of the constraints characterize the complexity of the problems. When one restricts the number of occurrences of each variable, the problems that are encountered relate to delta-matroid intersection. When such a restriction forbidding copying is introduced in the context of input-output constraints, one (cid:12)nds nonexpansive mappings as characterizing this restriction. Both delta-matroid intersection and nonexpansive network stability problems yield polynomial time algorithms. When the general approach to the classi(cid:12)cation of constraint satisfaction problems is restricted to graphs and digraphs, one (cid:12)nds that the chordality of graphs plays a crucial role both for the structure of allowed constraints and for the structure of an instance.
Psychological outcomes in long-term survivors of childhood brain cancer: a report from the childhood cancer survivor study.

PURPOSE To evaluate and compare psychological outcomes in long-term survivors of pediatric brain cancer and siblings of childhood cancer survivors, and to identify significant correlates of psychological distress. METHODS One thousand one hundred one adult survivors of childhood brain cancer and 2,817 siblings completed a long-term follow-up questionnaire allowing assessment of symptoms associated with depression, somatization, and anxiety, as well as demographic, health, and medical information. RESULTS A large majority of siblings and survivors report few, if any, symptoms of psychological distress. The prevalence of distress approximating clinically significant levels for both survivors (11%) and siblings (5%) reflects rates found in the general population. Yet when accounting for significant sociodemographic, socioeconomic, and health-status variables, survivors of childhood brain cancer, in the aggregate, appear to report significantly higher global distress and depression scores than do siblings. As in the general population, higher levels of distress among survivors and siblings were associated with female sex, low household income, lower educational attainment, being unmarried, not being employed in the past 12 months, and poor physical health status. No diagnostic or treatment-related variables were directly and significantly associated with increases in distress symptoms for survivors of childhood brain cancer. CONCLUSION Cancer treatment does not appear to contribute directly to increased psychological distress. Instead, distress appears to be associated with diminished social functioning that may be related to cancer type or treatment. Implementation and evaluation of supportive interventions that enhance survivors' social and vocational skills should be considered.
Assessment of the anti-Salmonella activity of commercial formulations of organic acid products

Organic acid products are widely used in the UK poultry industry as feed or water additives. Claims for Salmonella control are made for some of these products, but there are few studies comparing the anti-Salmonella effect of the various products in tests that reflect field application. The present studies examined the effects of 13 commercial blends (four water products and nine feed products) on Salmonella Enteritidis and Typhimurium strains. Initial screening, in nutrient broth, of all products with all strains revealed little variation between strains in respect of maximum inhibitory and bactericidal dilutions of each product. However, between the products there was wide and significant variation in the maximum inhibitory and bactericidal dilutions, spanning a 700-fold range in the case of bactericidal dilutions for feed-associated products. Further tests were performed, examining reductions in inoculated Salmonella numbers in various matrices (water, feed, soiled litter, crop and caecal contents) following the addition of the products at recommended inclusion rates. One product, incorporating formaldehyde in addition to organic acid, was consistently most active in all matrices, exceeding reductions associated with other products by 1 to 3 log units at most time points. Many products showed only modest anti-Salmonella activity, amounting to 0 or 1 log unit above negative controls at many time points, and the most active products were not the same in all matrices. Tap water appeared to enhance the ability of products to reduce Salmonella, in comparison with bottled mineral or river water.
Reproducible and Consistent Quantification of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae Proteome by SWATH-mass spectrometry*

Targeted mass spectrometry by selected reaction monitoring (S/MRM) has proven to be a suitable technique for the consistent and reproducible quantification of proteins across multiple biological samples and a wide dynamic range. This performance profile is an important prerequisite for systems biology and biomedical research. However, the method is limited to the measurements of a few hundred peptides per LC-MS analysis. Recently, we introduced SWATH-MS, a combination of data independent acquisition and targeted data analysis that vastly extends the number of peptides/proteins quantified per sample, while maintaining the favorable performance profile of S/MRM. Here we applied the SWATH-MS technique to quantify changes over time in a large fraction of the proteome expressed in Saccharomyces cerevisiae in response to osmotic stress. We sampled cell cultures in biological triplicates at six time points following the application of osmotic stress and acquired single injection data independent acquisition data sets on a high-resolution 5600 tripleTOF instrument operated in SWATH mode. Proteins were quantified by the targeted extraction and integration of transition signal groups from the SWATH-MS datasets for peptides that are proteotypic for specific yeast proteins. We consistently identified and quantified more than 15,000 peptides and 2500 proteins across the 18 samples. We demonstrate high reproducibility between technical and biological replicates across all time points and protein abundances. In addition, we show that the abundance of hundreds of proteins was significantly regulated upon osmotic shock, and pathway enrichment analysis revealed that the proteins reacting to osmotic shock are mainly involved in the carbohydrate and amino acid metabolism. Overall, this study demonstrates the ability of SWATH-MS to efficiently generate reproducible, consistent, and quantitatively accurate measurements of a large fraction of a proteome across multiple samples.
Mosaicing Non-Rigid Dynamical Scenes

In this paper, we deal with the problem of spatially and temporally registering multiple video sequences of a non-rigid dynamical scene. For example, registering multiple videos of a fountain taken from different vantage points. Our approach is not based on frame-by-frame or volume-by-volume registration. Instead, we use the dynamic texture framework, which models the non-rigidity of the scene with linear dynamical systems encoding both the dynamics and the appearance of the scene. Our key contribution is to observe that a certain appearance matrix extracted from the dynamic texture model is invariant with respect to the non-rigid motions of the scene, thus it can be directly used to register the video sequences. Our framework is applicable to both synchronized videos as well as videos containing temporal lags. In the latter case, we also propose a method to synthesize novel sequences without the temporal lags. We then show how our model can be extended to the case where there is camera motion in the video sequences. The final result is a simple and flexible method that achieves state-ofthe-art performance with a significant reduction in computational complexity.
Nutrition standards for away‐from‐home foods in the USA

Away‐from‐home foods are regulated with respect to the prevention of food‐borne diseases and potential contaminants, but not for their contribution to dietary‐related chronic diseases. Away‐from‐home foods have more calories, salt, sugar and fat, and include fewer fruits and vegetables than recommended by national nutrition guidelines. Thus, frequent consumption of away‐from‐home foods contributes to obesity, hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. In light of this, many localities are already adopting regulations or sponsoring programs to improve the quality of away‐from‐home foods. We review the rationale for developing nutritional performance standards for away‐from‐home foods in light of limited human capacity to regulate intake or physiologically compensate for a poor diet. We offer a set of model performance standards to be considered as a new area of environmental regulation. Models for voluntary implementation of consumer standards exist in the environmental domain and may be useful templates for implementation. Implementing such standards, whether voluntarily or via regulations, will require addressing a number of practical and ideological challenges. Politically, regulatory standards contradict the belief that adults should be able to navigate dietary risks in away‐from‐home settings unaided.
Novel Cellular Organization in a Gliding Mycoplasma, Mycoplasma insons

ABSTRACT Mycoplasmas that are known to exhibit gliding motility possess a differentiated tip structure. This polar organelle mediates cytadherence and gliding motor activity and contains a cytoskeleton-like component that provides structural support. Here, we describe gliding motility and a unique cytoskeleton in Mycoplasma insons, which lacks any obviously differentiated tip structure.
Lower prevalence of tuberculosis infection in BCG vaccinees: a cross-sectional study in adult prison inmates

Objectives To address whether the effect of BCG vaccination against tuberculosis (TB) infection lasts to adulthood. Methods A cross-sectional study on the prevalence of latent TB infection (LTBI) among HIV-negative men, using QuantiFERON-TB Gold In-tube (QFT-IT), was conducted at a prison in northern Taiwan with >3000 inmates. A QFT-IT ≥0.35 IU/ml was defined as LTBI. A QFT-IT ≥0.7 IU/ml was defined as recent LTBI. The association between the number of BCG scars and LTBI stratified by age was analysed. The study procedure was approved by the institutional review board, and all participants gave written informed consent before receiving screening tests. Results Among the 2385 participants, 25% had a QFT-IT ≥0.35 IU/ml. Increasing LTBI (14%, 32% and 50%) was observed with increased age (18–34 years, 35–54 years and ≥55 years) (p<0.001 by the Cochran–Armitage Trend Test). The number of BCG scars were found to be inversely correlated with QFT-IT results for both LTBI and recent LTBI in all three age groups (p<0.001 by Cochran–Mantel–Haenszel statistics). Conclusions Our results suggest that BCG vaccine seems to have a protective effect in adults decades after vaccination according to the number of recent infections (QFT-IT ≥0.7 IU/ml). This finding has important implications for national policy of BCG vaccination. Further prospective cohort studies on the protective effect of BCG vaccination against TB infection in adults are warranted.
Influence of a Motor Skill Intervention on Fundamental Motor Skill Development of Disadvantaged Preschool Children

Abstract The influence of a 12-week (24, 45-min motor sessions) motor skill intervention on fundamental motor skill (FMS) development of disadvantaged preschoolers was examined. Pre-and postintervention measures of the object control (OC) and locomotor subscales of the Test of Gross Motor Development were obtained for both groups. Prior to the intervention, developmental delays in FMS were reported. Two separate 2×2 (Group × Pre-Postintervention) analyses of variance with repeated measures yielded a significant Group × Pre-Postintervention interaction for locomotor, F(l, 57) = 134.23, p = . 000, h2=. 70, and OC, F(1, 5) = 161.55, p =. 000, h2 =. 74) skills. Compared to the Control group, the motor skill intervention group revealed significantly higher locomotor and OC scores following the intervention than prior to the intervention.
Streptococcus suis Bacterin and Subunit Vaccine Immunogenicities and Protective Efficacies against Serotypes 2 and 9

ABSTRACT Streptococcus suis causes numerous diseases in pigs, most importantly, meningitis, arthritis, septicemia, and bronchopneumonia. One of the major problems in modern swine production is the lack of a vaccine protecting against more than one S. suis serotype. The objective of this study was to determine the protective efficacy of a serotype 2 murein-associated protein (MAP) fraction subunit vaccine in comparison to that of a bacterin against experimental challenge with serotype 2 (containing muramidase-released protein [MRP], extracellular factor, and suilysin [SLY]) and serotype 9 (containing MRP variant MRP* and SLY) strains. MAP was shown to include different surface-associated proteins, such as the MRP and surface antigen one (SAO) expressed by both pathotypes used for challenge. The results of this study demonstrated that the serotype 2 bacterin induced protective immunity against homologous challenge. In contrast, the protective efficacy of the MAP subunit vaccine was low, though MAP immunization resulted in high serum immunoglobulin G2 titers against MRP and SAO. Importantly, immunization with bacterin but not with MAP induced opsonizing antibody titers against the serotype 2 strain, and these antibody titers were found to correlate with protection. However, after absorption with a nonencapsulated isogenic mutant, the sera from bacterin-immunized piglets failed to facilitate neutrophil killing, indicating that antibodies directed against capsule may not have been essential for opsonophagocytosis. Furthermore, induction of opsonizing antibodies against serotype 9 was not detectable in the group receiving bacterin or in the group receiving the MAP vaccine. In agreement, protection against the heterologous serotype 9 strain was low in both groups. Thus, identification of an antigen protecting against these two important S. suis pathotypes remains an important goal of future studies.
Dihydroaustrasulfone Alcohol (WA-25) Impedes Macrophage Foam Cell Formation by Regulating the Transforming Growth Factor-β1 Pathway

Atherosclerosis is considered an inflammatory disease. However, clinically used anti-atherosclerotic drugs, such as simvastatin, have many side effects. Recently, several unique marine compounds have been isolated that possess a variety of bioactivities. In a previous study, we found a synthetic precursor of the marine compound (austrasulfone), which is dihydroaustrasulfone alcohol (WA-25), has anti-atherosclerotic effects in vivo. However, the detailed mechanisms remain unclear. Therefore, to clarify the mechanisms through which WA-25 exerts anti-atherosclerotic activity, we used RAW 264.7 macrophages as an in vitro model to evaluate the effects of WA-25. In lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-stimulated RAW 264.7 cells, WA-25 significantly inhibited expression of the pro-inflammatory proteins, inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) and cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2). In contrast, simvastatin increased the COX-2 expression compared to WA-25. In addition, WA-25 impedes foam cell formation and up-regulated the lysosomal and cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) signaling pathway. We also observed that transforming growth factor β1 (TGF-β1) was up-regulated by WA-25 and simvastatin in LPS-induced RAW 264.7 cells, and the promising anti-atherosclerosis effects of WA-25 were disrupted by blockade of TGF-β1 signaling. Besides, WA-25 might act through increasing lipolysis than through alteration of lipid export. Taken together, these data demonstrate that WA-25 may have potential as an anti-atherosclerotic drug with anti-inflammatory effects.
Channel assignment in cellular communication using a great deluge hyper-heuristic

This paper proposes a methodology for the channel assignment problem in the cellular communication industry. The problem considers the assignment of a limited channel bandwidth to satisfy a growing channel demand without violating electromagnetic interference constraints. The initial solution is generated using a random constructive heuristic. This solution is then improved by using a hyper-heuristic technique based on the great deluge algorithm. Our experimental results, on benchmarks data sets, gives promising results.