Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of Active Versus Passive Recovery on Performance During Intrameet Swimming Competition

Background: During competition, high-performance swimmers are subject to repeated physical demands that affect their final performance. Measurement of lactate concentration in blood seeks to indirectly gauge physiologic responses to the increase in physical exercise. Swimmers face multiple maximal-exertion events during competition. Strenuous physical exercise leads to fatigue and, thus, a decrease in sports performance. Hypothesis: Regeneration exercises in swimming increase the clearance of blood lactate and therefore improve athletic performance within a single day of competition. Study Design: Crossover study. Level of Evidence: Level 1. Methods: Of 25 swimmers, 21 were included, with a mean age of 17 years. They performed exercises that increased blood lactate on 2 days. The protocol was a warm-up, followed by a 100-m freestyle workout at full speed. Swimming exercises followed that were increasingly demanding, during which serial lactatemia measurements were taken. On the first day, regeneration exercises were performed; on the second day, the swimmers rested. Next, lactatemia was measured, and a timed 100-m freestyle workout was performed at maximum speed. Results: The stress exercises increased the mean lactate concentration by 4.6 mmol/L, which corresponds to 78% of the initial basal level. The postregeneration lactatemia level was lower than that after resting (mean, 2.76 vs 6.51 mmol/L). The time to swim 100 m after regeneration was 68.11 seconds, while that after rest was 69.31 seconds. Conclusion: Blood lactate levels rose by up to 78% after the intensity of the training sessions was progressively increased. Regeneration exercises increased the rate in which blood lactate dissipated, in comparison with passive recuperation. The rate of lactate dissipation for regeneration exercises was 68%. This factor may have improved the physical performance of swimmers. Clinical Relevance: Regeneration exercises improved the performance of swimmers in maximal-exertion competition in a single day. The blood lactate level correlated with physical exercise load.
Edinburgh Research Explorer Development of Real Time PCR to Study Experimental Mixed Infections of T. congolense Savannah and T. b. brucei in Glossina morsitans morsitans

Tsetse flies are able to acquire mixed infections naturally or experimentally either simultaneously or sequentially. Traditionally, natural infection rates in tsetse flies are estimated by microscopic examination of different parts of the fly after dissection, together with the isola-tion of the parasite in vivo . However, until the advent of molecular techniques it was difficult to speciate trypanosomes infections and to quantify trypanosome numbers within tsetse flies. Although more expensive, qPCR allows the quantification of DNA and is less time con-suming due to real time visualization and validation of the results. The current study evaluated the application of qPCR to quantify the infection load of tsetse flies with T. b. brucei and T. congolense savannah and to study the possibility of competition between the two species. The results revealed that the two qPCR reactions are of acceptable efficiency (99.1% and 95.6%, respectively), sensitivity and specificity and can be used for quantification of infection load with trypanosomes in experimentally infected Glossina morsitans morsitans . The mixed infection of laboratory Glossina species and quantification of the infection suggests the possibility that a form of competition exists between the isolates of T. b. brucei and T. congolense savannah that we used when they co-exist in the fly midgut.
Intravesical protrusion of the prostate as a predictive method of bladder outlet obstruction.

OBJECTIVE Pressure-flow study is the gold standard for diagnosis of bladder outlet obstruction (BOO). A prospective study was carried out to compare urodynamic evaluation and measurement of intravesical protrusion of the prostate for diagnosing BOO. MATERIALS AND METHODS Patients presenting with lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) associated with benign prostatic hyperplasia and suspected BOO were prospectively evaluated through conventional urodynamics and classified according to the bladder outlet obstruction index (BOOI). They also underwent abdominal ultrasound measurement of the intravesical prostatic protrusion (IPP) and prostatic volume. The IPP was classified into three stages: grade I under 5 mm; grade II, between 5 and 10 mm; and grade III over 10 mm. RESULTS Forty-two patients, mean age 64.8 +/- 8.5 years were enrolled. Transabdominal ultrasound determined a mean prostatic volume of 45 +/- 3.2 mL. Achieved IPP's values were the following: grade I - 12 (28.5%), grade II - 5 - (12%) and grade III - 25 (59.5%). The results of prostate volume differed significantly between obstructed and non-obstructed men (p = 0.033) and for IPP among obstructed, inconclusive and non-obstructed men (p = 0.016). For IPP, the area under ROC curve was 0.758 (95% confidence interval - 0.601 to 0.876), and the cutoff point to indicate BOO was 5 mm with 95 % sensitivity (75.1 - 99.2) and 50 % specificity (28.2 - 71.8). CONCLUSION IPP and prostatic volume measured through abdominal ultrasound are noninvasive and accessible methods that significantly correlate to urinary BOO, and are useful in the diagnosis of male urinary obstructive problems.
Knowledge Expansion of a Statistical Machine Translation System using Morphological Resources

Translation capability of a Phrase-Based Statistical Machine Translation (PBSMT) system mostly depends on parallel data and phrases that are not present in the training data are not correctly translated. This paper describes a method that efficiently expands the existing knowledge of a PBSMT system without adding more parallel data but using external morphological resources. A set of new phrase associations is added to translation and reordering models; each of them corresponds to a morphological variation of the source/target/both phrases of an existing association. New associations are generated using a string similarity score based on morphosyntactic information. We tested our approach on En-Fr and Fr-En translations and results showed improvements of the performance in terms of automatic scores (BLEU and Meteor) and reduction of out-of-vocabulary (OOV) words. We believe that our knowledge expansion framework is generic and could be used to add different types of information to the model. are highly affected by the presence of OOV words. The other way around, the number of source phrases covered during the translation is higher, but target sentences contain more incorrect translated words. Adding more data is the most obvious solution, but this has well-known drawbacks: it heavily increases the dimension of the tables, which reduces the translation speed, and parallel data are not always available for all the language pairs. In case of low quality parallel data, it can be even harmful because more data imply a bigger number of unreliable or incorrect associations built during the training phase. In this paper, we address the problem of expanding the knowledge of an SMT system without adding parallel data, but extending the knowledge produced during the training phase. The main idea consists of inserting artificial entries in the phrase and reordering models using external morphological resources; the goal is to provide more translation options to the system during the construction of the target sentence.
Distinctive Genome Reduction Rates Revealed by Genomic Analyses of Two Coxiella-Like Endosymbionts in Ticks

Genome reduction is a hallmark of symbiotic genomes, and the rate and patterns of gene loss associated with this process have been investigated in several different symbiotic systems. However, in long-term host-associated coevolving symbiont clades, the genome size differences between strains are normally quite small and hence patterns of large-scale genome reduction can only be inferred from distant relatives. Here we present the complete genome of a Coxiella-like symbiont from Rhipicephalus turanicus ticks (CRt), and compare it with other genomes from the genus Coxiella in order to investigate the process of genome reduction in a genus consisting of intracellular host-associated bacteria with variable genome sizes. The 1.7-Mb CRt genome is larger than the genomes of most obligate mutualists but has a very low protein-coding content (48.5%) and an extremely high number of identifiable pseudogenes, indicating that it is currently undergoing genome reduction. Analysis of encoded functions suggests that CRt is an obligate tick mutualist, as indicated by the possible provisioning of the tick with biotin (B7), riboflavin (B2) and other cofactors, and by the loss of most genes involved in host cell interactions, such as secretion systems. Comparative analyses between CRt and the 2.5 times smaller genome of Coxiella from the lone star tick Amblyomma americanum (CLEAA) show that many of the same gene functions are lost and suggest that the large size difference might be due to a higher rate of genome evolution in CLEAA generated by the loss of the mismatch repair genes mutSL. Finally, sequence polymorphisms in the CRt population sampled from field collected ticks reveal up to one distinct strain variant per tick, and analyses of mutational patterns within the population suggest that selection might be acting on synonymous sites. The CRt genome is an extreme example of a symbiont genome caught in the act of genome reduction, and the comparison between CLEAA and CRt indicates that losses of particular genes early on in this process can potentially greatly influence the speed of this process.
Estimation of (near) low-rank matrices with noise and high-dimensional scaling

We study an instance of high-dimensional statistical inference in which the goal is to use N noisy observations to estimate a matrix Θ+ ∈ ℝk×p that is assumed to be either exactly low rank, or "near" low-rank, meaning that it can be well-approximated by a matrix with low rank. We consider an M-estimator based on regularization by the trace or nuclear norm over matrices, and analyze its performance under high-dimensional scaling. We provide non-asymptotic bounds on the Frobenius norm error that hold for a general class of noisy observation models, and apply to both exactly low-rank and approximately low-rank matrices. We then illustrate their consequences for a number of specific learning models, including low-rank multivariate or multi-task regression, system identification in vector autoregressive processes, and recovery of low-rank matrices from random projections. Simulations show excellent agreement with the high-dimensional scaling of the error predicted by our theory.
Prognostic value of pre-operative serum CA 15.3 levels in breast cancer.

BACKGROUND CA15.3 (also known as MUCI) is the most widely used marker in breast cancer. The aim of the present work was the evaluation of the prognostic value of preoperative serum CA15.3 levels in patients with primary breast cancer. PATIENTS AND METHODS This study included 818 women with a histologically verified diagnosis of invasive breast cancer. The serum values of CA15.3 were investigated at the time of primary diagnosis by means of an immunoradiometric assay based on the "sandwich" principle. The median follow-up period of patients free of recurrence was 38 months. RESULTS Pre-operative CA15.3 serum levels ranged from 6 to 452 U/ml. Elevated CA15.3 levels (>30 U/ml) were found in 15.2% of patients. Statistical analysis showed that pre-operative CA15.3 serum levels were significantly higher in patients with large size tumors (T3 or T4) (p = 0.0001), as well as in those with node-positive tumors (p = 0.0001). In the univariate analysis, high CA15.3 levels were significantly associated with a lower probability of both relapse-free and overall survival in the overall group of patients (p = 0.0001 and p = 0.004, respectively) and in the subgroup with node-positive breast cancer (p = 0.001 and p = 0.03, respectively). In addition, multivariate analysis demonstrated that pre-operative levels of the antigen were significantly and independently associated with relapse-free survival in the overall group of patients, as well as in the subgroup of patients with node-positive breast cancer (p = 0.02 and p = 0.01, respectively). CONCLUSION These results show that high pre-operative CA15.3 levels correlate with large size tumors and the presence of lymph node metastases and suggest that this antigen could be used as an additional prognostic marker.
Towards a design theory for reducing aggression in psychiatric facilities

The paper proposes a tentative theory for designing psychiatric environments to foster reduced aggression and violence. A basic premise underlying the design theory is that environmental and psycho-social stressors mediate and trigger aggression. The theory posits that aggression will be reduced if the facility has been designed with an evidence-based bundle of stress-reducing environmental characteristics that are identified and discussed. To make possible a tentative empirical evaluation of the theory, findings are described from a study that compared aggressive incidents in three Swedish psychiatric hospitals of different design. A newer hospital was evaluated as superior to both an old hospital it replaced and another comparison hospital (control) with respect to having nearly all the environmental features identified in the stress-reducing bundle of the design theory. Findings from restraint use data were consistent with the design theory prediction that aggression would be lower in the newer hospital having several stress-reducing environmental features than in either the old or control hospitals. The use of chemical and physical restraints decreased substantially in the new hospital compared to the old hospital it replaced. By contrast, restraint use increased in the control hospital that cared for comparable psychiatric patients according to similar treatment protocols during the same period. The design theory and preliminary findings suggest the possibility that providing better psychiatric buildings with design guided by the best available evidence and theory can play an important role in reducing the serious patient and staff safety problem of aggressive behavior.
Stress responsiveness of hypothalamic corticotrophin-releasing factor and pituitary pro-opiomelanocortin mRNAs following high-dose glucocorticoid treatment and withdrawal in the rat.

In-situ hybridization with synthetic oligonucleotide probes was used to determine the mRNA content of corticotrophin-releasing factor (CRF) and proenkephalin A mRNA in the paraventricular nucleus, and of pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC) mRNA in the anterior pituitary gland of male rats immediately after, and during recovery from, chronic high-dose prednisolone treatment. Levels of transcripts for mRNA for both CRF and POMC were markedly reduced after the treatment, but there was a rapid return to control values for CRF mRNA within 18 h of steroid withdrawal. In untreated animals, the stressful stimulus of i.p. hypertonic saline increased CRF and proenkephalin A mRNA within 4 h with no significant difference in response seen whether the tissues were removed at 13.00 or 20.00 h. The increase in POMC mRNA did not reach statistical significance in these animals. Although prednisolone resulted in a marked reduction of basal CRF mRNA, the stress-induced increment of CRF mRNA remained comparable with that found in untreated animals. On the day following cessation of prednisolone treatment at 09.00 h, basal and stress levels of CRF mRNA were significantly higher in rats killed at 20.00 h than at 13.00 h. Proenkephalin A mRNA transcripts were below quantifiable levels of detection in control or non-stressed prednisolone-treated animals at all the time-points studied. Stress, however, resulted in the accumulation of proenkephalin A mRNA in control animals. This response was inhibited by prednisolone treatment and only returned 18 h after withdrawal. Prednisolone treatment reduced POMC mRNA below the levels detected in untreated animals, with no detectable response to stress. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Dietary PUFA intakes in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms

Research has shown associations between attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and erythrocyte long-chain n-3 PUFA (LC n-3 PUFA) levels, with limited evidence for dietary LC n-3 PUFA intake and ADHD. The aims of the present study were to assess dietary PUFA intakes and food sources in children with ADHD, to compare these intakes to previously published Australian National Nutrition Survey (NNS) data and determine any relationships between intakes and ADHD symptoms. Eighty-six 3-d-weighed food records (FR) were analysed from children with ADHD. The median (interquartile range) daily intakes of fatty acids (mg/d) were: linoleic acid (18 : 2n-6), 7797 (6240–12 333); arachidonic acid (20 : 4n-6), 55 (27·0–93); total n-6 PUFA, 7818 (6286–10 662); α-linolenic acid (18 : 3n-3), 1039 (779–1461); EPA (20 : 5n-3), 18 (6·0–32·0); docosapentaenoic acid (22 : 5n-3), 17 (6·3–39·3); DHA (22 : 6n-3), 16 (8·5–445); total LC n-3 PUFA (addition of 20 : 5n-3, 22 : 5n-3 and 22 : 6n-3), 65 (28·3–120·1); total n-3 PUFA, 1151 (876–1592). In comparison to the NNS data, 18 : 3n-3 intakes were higher and 20 : 4n-6 were lower (P < 0·05). Children with ADHD consumed half the amount of fish/seafood, meat and eggs when compared to the NNS (P < 0·05). No significant correlations were found between fatty acids and ADHD symptoms. Children with ADHD met the adequate intake for LC n-3 PUFA, but fell short of other recommendations.
MASTR: multiple alignment and structure prediction of non-coding RNAs using simulated annealing

MOTIVATION As more non-coding RNAs are discovered, the importance of methods for RNA analysis increases. Since the structure of ncRNA is intimately tied to the function of the molecule, programs for RNA structure prediction are necessary tools in this growing field of research. Furthermore, it is known that RNA structure is often evolutionarily more conserved than sequence. However, few existing methods are capable of simultaneously considering multiple sequence alignment and structure prediction. RESULT We present a novel solution to the problem of simultaneous structure prediction and multiple alignment of RNA sequences. Using Markov chain Monte Carlo in a simulated annealing framework, the algorithm MASTR (Multiple Alignment of STructural RNAs) iteratively improves both sequence alignment and structure prediction for a set of RNA sequences. This is done by minimizing a combined cost function that considers sequence conservation, covariation and basepairing probabilities. The results show that the method is very competitive to similar programs available today, both in terms of accuracy and computational efficiency. AVAILABILITY Source code available from http://mastr.binf. ku.dk/
Grothendieck Inequalities for Semidefinite Programs with Rank Constraint

Grothendieck inequalities are fundamental inequalities which are frequently used in many areas of mathematics and computer science. They can be interpreted as upper bounds for the integrality gap between two optimization problems: a difficult semidefinite program with rank-1 constraint and its easy semidefinite relaxation where the rank constraint is dropped. For instance, the integrality gap of the Goemans-Williamson approximation algorithm for MAX CUT can be seen as a Grothendieck inequality. In this paper we consider Grothendieck inequalities for ranks greater than 1 and we give two applications: approximating ground states in the n-vector model in statistical mechanics and XOR games in quantum information theory.
Connectivity Properties of Matroids

The bases-exchange graph of a matroid is the graph whose vertices are the bases of the matroid, and two bases are connected by an edge if and only if one can be obtained from the other by the exchange of a single pair of elements. In this paper we prove that a matroid is "connected" if and only if the "restricted bases-exchange graph" (the bases-exchange graph restricted to exchanges involving only one specific element e) is connected. This provides an alternative definition of matroid connectivity. Moreover, it shows that the connected components of the restricted bases-exchange graph satisfy a "ratios-condition", namely, that the ratio of the number of bases containing e to the number of bases not containing e is the same for each connected component of the restricted bases-exchange graph. We further show that if a more general ratios-condition is also true, namely, that any fraction a of the bases containing e is adjacent to at least a fraction a of the bases not containing e (where a is any real number between 0 and 1), then the bases-exchange graph has the following expansion property: "For any bipartition of its vertices, the number of edges incident to both partition classes is at least as large as the size of the smaller parti".
Neuropsychological and Neuroimaging Characteristics of Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment Subtypes: A Selective Overview

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive age‐related neurodegenerative disease. Amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) is considered to represent early AD. Various aMCI clinical subtypes have been identified as either single domain (SD) or multidomain (MD). The various subtypes represent heterogeneous syndrome, indicating the different probability of progression to AD. Understanding the heterogeneous concept of aMCI can help to construct potential biomarkers to monitor the progression of aMCI to AD. This review provides an overview of various neuroimaging measures for subtypes of aMCI. Focusing on neuropsychological, structural, and functional neuroimaging findings, we found that aMCI showed differences in clinical progression and the abnormalities in MD‐aMCI were distributed across temporal, frontal, and parietal cortices, which is similar to AD. This is also compatible with the notion that MD‐aMCI is a transition stage between SD‐aMCI and AD. Our review provided a framework for the diagnosis of clinical subtypes of aMCI and early detection and intervention of the progression from aMCI to AD.