Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effectiveness of Folic Acid Fortified Flour for Prevention of Neural Tube Defects in a High Risk Region

Despite efforts to tackle folate deficiency and Neural Tube Defects (NTDs) through folic acid fortification, its implementation is still lacking where it is needed most, highlighting the need for studies that evaluate the effectiveness of folic acid fortified wheat flour in a poor, rural, high-risk, NTD region of China. One of the most affected regions, Shanxi Province, was selected as a case study. A community intervention was carried out in which 16,648 women of child-bearing age received fortified flour (eight villages) and a control group received ordinary flour (three villages). NTD birth prevalence and biological indicators were measured two years after program initiation at endline only. The effect on the NTD burden was calculated using the disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) method. In the intervention group, serum folate level was higher than in the control group. NTDs in the intervention group were 68.2% lower than in the control group (OR = 0.313, 95% CI = 0.207–0473, p < 0.001). In terms of DALYs, burden in intervention group was approximately 58.5% lower than in the control group. Flour fortification was associated with lower birth prevalence and burden of NTDs in economically developing regions with a high risk of NTDs. The positive findings confirm the potential of fortification when selecting an appropriate food vehicle and target region. As such, this study provides support for decision makers aiming for the implementation of (mandatory) folic acid fortification in China.
Disturbances in Pro-Oxidant-Antioxidant Balance after Passive Body Overheating and after Exercise in Elevated Ambient Temperatures in Athletes and Untrained Men

The aim of the study was to investigate pro-oxidant-antioxidant balance in two series of examinations with two types of stressors (exogenous heat and the combined exogenous and endogenous heat) in trained and untrained men. The exogenous stressor was provided by Finnish sauna session, whereas the combined stressor was represented by the exercise in elevated ambient temperature. The men from the two groups performed the physical exercise on a cycle ergometer with the load of 53±2% maximal oxygen uptake at the temperature of 33±1°C and relative humidity of 70% until their rectal temperature rose by 1.2°C. After a month from completion of the exercise test the subjects participated in a sauna bathing session with the temperature of 96±2°C, and relative humidity of 16±5%. 15-minutes heating and 2-minute cool-down in a shower with the temperature of 20°C was repeated until rectal temperature rose by 1.2°C compared to the initial value. During both series of tests rectal temperature was measured at 5-minute intervals. Before both series of tests and after them body mass was measured and blood samples were taken for biochemical tests. Serum total protein, serum concentration of lipid peroxidation products and serum antioxidants were determined. The athletes were characterized by higher level of antioxidant status and lower concentration of lipid peroxidation products. Physical exercise at elevated ambient temperature caused lower changes in oxidative stress indices compared to sauna bathing. Sauna induced a shift in pro-oxidant-antioxidant balance towards oxidation, which was observed less intensively in the athletes compared to the untrained men. This leads to the conclusion that physical exercise increases tolerance to elevated ambient temperature and oxidative stress.
Cognitive ageing in everyday life

Les objectifs de cette these sont multiples: 1. concevoir un nouvel outil d'echantillonnage des experiences utilisant les technologies mobiles, qui soit durable et evolutif, et qui permette d'implementer des tests cognitifs mobiles; 2. utiliser cet outil pour obtenir des informations ecologiques sur les comportements et les performances cognitives; 3. valider la methode; 4. analyser les interactions entre comportement et performance afin d'identifier les comportements sains ou a risque.
Regularization of Irregular Migrants and Social Policies: Comparative Perspectives

Abstract This paper examines the social policy implications of the regularization of irregular immigrants. As an act of legal integration regularization arguably is about irregular migrants’ inclusion into mainstream social and legal structures and, as a corollary, has important implications for migrants’ access to social rights. Based on a recent comparative study of regularizations and their impact in seven EU Member-States, the study finds that access to social rights associated with regularizations indeed are reported as the most important impacts of regularization by regularized migrants themselves, next to access to work and related welfare entitlements.
Objective knowledge about Huntington's disease and attitudes towards predictive tests of persons at risk.

The task of genetic counselling of people at risk for Huntington's disease might be facilitated by increased knowledge of relevant population characteristics. The aim of the present study was to clarify select socioeconomic characteristics, knowledge concerning the disease, and attitudes towards predictive tests of people at 50% risk of inheriting Huntington's disease in the state of Victoria. A random sample of subjects was drawn from the Huntington's disease register and 50 questionnaires were analysed. Respondents completed three questionnaires which covered their socioeconomic characteristics, the extent and accuracy of their knowledge about the genetic, progress, and treatment of Huntington's disease, and their attitude and acceptance of predictive tests as well as their intentions about future reproduction. A very positive attitude was found to be held by the respondents towards a predictive test if it was safe, reliable, and non-invasive. Resultant problems which would arise, should a reliable test be found, are discussed. The respondent's knowledge concerning the disease was found to be adequate generally.
Towards a model of interprofessional preparation to enhance partnering between educators and families

Abstract Interprofessional education (IPE) involves cross disciplinary learning, teaching, and supervision to foster greater interdisciplinary collaboration. In the field of medicine, this training approach has been adopted to improve collaboration amongst health care professionals. Rarely has this approach been adopted in regard to the preparation of student teachers. Yet professionals from the disciplines of general and special education, school social work, and school psychology often must work together and with families and pupils. A rationale will be forwarded for offering IPE to graduate students in these fields before they graduate. A multi departmental project was undertaken to design a new IPE training programme to foster collaborative knowledge of, dispositions towards, and skills in family school partnering. The components of the programme, the proposed criteria to gauge the success an initial pilot of the programme, and challenges faced in setting up such cross-discipline training will be described with lessons learned for the future.
Learning Finite-State Transducers: Evolution Versus Heuristic State Merging

Finite-state transducers (FSTs) are finite-state machines (FSMs) that map strings in a source domain into strings in a target domain. While there are many reports in the literature of evolving FSMs, there has been much less work on evolving FSTs. In particular, the fitness functions required for evolving FSTs are generally different from those used for FSMs. In this paper, three string distance-based fitness functions are evaluated, in order of increasing computational complexity: string equality, Hamming distance, and edit distance. The fitness-distance correlation (FDC) and evolutionary performance of each fitness function is analyzed when used within a random mutation hill-climber (RMHC). Edit distance has the strongest FDC and also provides the best evolutionary performance, in that it is more likely to find the target FST within a given number of fitness function evaluations. Edit distance is also the most expensive to compute, but in most cases this extra computation is more than justified by its performance. The RMHC was compared with the best known heuristic method for learning FSTs, the onward subsequential transducer inference algorithm (OSTIA). On noise-free data, the RMHC performs best on problems with sparse training sets and small target machines. The RMHC and OSTIA offer similar performance for large target machines and denser data sets. When noise-corrupted data is used for training, the RMHC still performs well, while OSTIA performs poorly given even small amounts of noise. The RMHC is also shown to outperform a genetic algorithm. Hence, for certain classes of FST induction problem, the RMHC presented in this paper offers the best performance of any known algorithm
Building a Discourse-annotated Dutch Text Corpus

We are compiling a corpus of Dutch texts annotated with discourse structure and lexical cohesion, containing initially 80 texts from expository and persuasive genres. We are using this resource for corpus-based studies of discourse relations, discourse markers, cohesion, and genre differences. We are also exploring the possibilities of automatic text segmentation and semi-automatic discourse annotation. This paper discusses our design choices in text selection and segmentation and in the annotation of discourse structure and lexical cohesion.
BLUE: an alternative approach to active queue management

This paper exposes an inherent weakness in current active queue manage ment techniques such as<italic>Red</italic>in that they rely on queue lengths to indicate the severity of congestion. In light of this observation, a fundamentally different active queue management algorithm called<italic>Blue</italic>is proposed. <italic>Blue</italic>uses packet loss and link utilization to manage congestion. Using simulation and controlled experiments,<italic>Blue</italic>is shown to significantly outperform<italic>Red</italic>in providing lower packet loss rates and smaller queuing delays to networked applications such as interactive audio and video.
The in vivo use of the stable isotope-labelled biomarkers lactose-[15N]ureide and [2H4]tyrosine to assess the effects of pro- and prebiotics on the intestinal flora of healthy human volunteers

Amongst the various claimed beneficial effects of pro- and prebiotics for the human host, it has been hypothesised that functional foods are able to suppress the generation and accumulation of toxic fermentation metabolites (NH3, p-cresol). Direct evidence supporting this hypothesis is lacking mainly because of the unavailability of reliable biomarkers. Preliminary data indicate that lactose-[15N]ureide and [2H4]tyrosine may be potential biomarker candidates. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effect of pro- and prebiotics on the colonic fate of these biomarkers in a randomised, placebo-controlled, cross-over study with nineteen healthy volunteers. At the start of the study and at the end of each 2-week study period, during which they were administered either a probiotic (n 10; 6·5×109Lactobacillus casei Shirota cells twice daily) or a prebiotic (n 9; lactulose 10 g twice daily), the volunteers consumed a test meal containing the two biomarkers. Urine was collected during 48 h. Results were expressed as percentage of the administered dose. As compared with the placebo, the decrease in the percentage dose of p-[2H4]cresol in the 24–48 h urine fraction was significantly higher after probiotic intake (P=0·042). Similar changes were observed for the 15N tracer (P=0·016). After prebiotic intake, a significantly higher decrease in the percentage dose of p-[2H4]cresol (P=0·005) and 15N tracer (P=0·029) was found in the 0–24 h urine collection. The present results demonstrate that suppression of the generation and accumulation of potentially toxic fermentation metabolites by pro- and prebiotics can reliably be monitored in vivo by the use of stable isotope-labelled biomarkers.
Toward a Global Understanding of the Effects of the Idea Model for Designing Instructional Risk and Crisis Messages: A Food Contamination Experiment in Sweden

Communicating to publics at risk can be challenging for spokespersons during crises. Knowing what content to include in such messages can be instrumental in achieving effective behavioural results among disparate publics and may differ across cultures. Whereas the IDEA model has demonstrated itself to be an effective framework for designing instructional risk and crisis messages in the United States, this study builds on the conclusions drawn previously by examining the model's utility in Sweden. Results of the experiment confirm that messages constructed according to the IDEA model are effective in Sweden's state&#8208;oriented risk culture, as well. Future research should focus on the model's utility for various risk and crisis types among both Swedish populations and populations in additional countries.
Characterizing Search Behavior in Web Archives

Web archives are a huge source of information to mine the past. However, tools to explore web archives are still in their infancy, in part due to the reduced knowledge that we have of their users. We contribute to this knowledge by presenting the first search behavior characterization of web archive users. We obtained detailed statistics about the users’ sessions, queries, terms and clicks from the analysis of their search logs. The results show that users did not spend much time and effort searching the past. They prefer short sessions, composed of short queries and few clicks. Full-text search is preferred to URL search, but both are frequently used. There is a strong evidence that users prefer the oldest documents over the newest, but mostly search without any temporal restriction. We discuss all these findings and their implications on the design of future web archives.
EVIDENCE FOR THE EXPRESSION OF Ia (H-2-ASSOCIATED) ANTIGENS ON THYMUS-DERIVED LYMPHOCYTES

We have demonstrated in an anti-Ia serum the presence of specific antibodies reacting with T cells, as well as with B cells, using a highly sensitive dye exclusion test. This antiserum reacts with both spleen and lymph node in a characteristic biphasic titration curve killing up to 70% of these cells. It also reacts with cortisone-resistant thymocytes. The A.TH-α-A.TL serum can be absorbed with spleen, lymph node, cortisone-resistant thymus, or normal thymus cells. Further in vivo absorptions in BALB/c nude cannot remove all of the cytotoxic activity for normal BALB lymph node lymphocytes, while completely removing the activity for nude cells. A Thy-1 positive cell line derived from a C57Br leukemia is reactive with this anti-Ia serum.
Social support and mortality in seniors.

OBJECTIVES This article investigates the effect of social support on mortality among Canadian seniors. DATA SOURCE The analysis is based on longitudinal household data from the National Population Health Survey (NPHS) for 2,422 people aged 65 or older in 1994/95. Vital status and date of death were established using data collected in 2000/01. ANALYTICAL TECHNIQUES Multivariate proportional hazards models were used to study associations between four indicators of social support (marital status; social contacts; participation in organizations; and perceived emotional support) in 1994/95 and death by 2000/01. Separate analyses were performed for men and women. MAIN RESULTS When the influence of age, socio-economic status, stress, health-related behaviours and physical/mental health status was taken into account, no association between social support and mortality emerged for women, but such a relationship was evident for men. Married men had a 40% lower hazard of death, compared with their non-married counterparts. Participation in organizations also conferred a reduced likelihood of dying for men.
Fungal-Induced Cell Cycle Impairment, Chromosome Instability and Apoptosis via Differential Activation of NF-κB

Microbial pathogens have developed efficient strategies to compromise host immune responses. Cryptococcus neoformans is a facultative intracellular pathogen, recognised as the most common cause of systemic fungal infections leading to severe meningoencephalitis, mainly in immunocompromised patients. This yeast is characterized by a polysaccharide capsule, which inhibits its phagocytosis. Whereas phagocytosis escape and macrophage intracellular survival have been intensively studied, extracellular survival of this yeast and restraint of host innate immune response are still poorly understood. In this study, we have investigated whether C. neoformans affected macrophage cell viability and whether NF-κB (nuclear factor-κB), a key regulator of cell growth, apoptosis and inflammation, was involved. Using wild-type (WT) as well as mutant strains of C. neoformans for the pathogen side, and WT and mutant cell lines with altered NF-κB activity or signalling as well as primary macrophages for the host side, we show that C. neoformans manipulated NF-κB-mediated signalling in a unique way to regulate macrophage cell fate and viability. On the one hand, serotype A strains reduced macrophage proliferation in a capsule-independent fashion. This growth decrease, which required a critical dosage of NF-κB activity, was caused by cell cycle disruption and aneuploidy, relying on fungal-induced modification of expression of several cell cycle checkpoint regulators in S and G2/M phases. On the other hand, C. neoformans infection induced macrophage apoptosis in a capsule-dependent manner with a differential requirement of the classical and alternative NF-κB signalling pathways, the latter one being essential. Together, these findings shed new light on fungal strategies to subvert host response through uncoupling of NF-κB activity in pathogen-controlled apoptosis and impairment of cell cycle progression. They also provide the first demonstration of induction of aneuploidy by a fungal pathogen, which may have wider implications for human health as aneuploidy is proposed to promote tumourigenesis.
Which Processes Do Users Not Want Online? Extending Process Virtualization Theory

Following the advent of the Internet more and more processes are provided virtually, i.e., without physical interactions between involved people and objects. For instance, E-Commerce has virtualized shopping processes since products are bought without physical inspection and interaction with sales staff. This study is founded on the key idea of process virtualization theory (PVT) that from the users’ perspective not all processes are equally amenable for virtualization. We investigate characteristics of processes, which are causing users’ resistance toward the virtualized process. Surveying 501 individuals regarding 10 processes, this study constitutes the first quantitative test evaluating the prediction capabilities of PVT by analysis of varying processes. Moreover, it introduces and successfully tests the extended PVT (EPVT), which integrates PVT with multiple, related constructs from extant literature in a unified model with multi-order causal relations. Thereby, it clearly enhances our understanding of human behavior with regard to the frequent phenomenon process virtualization.
Exchange interactions, spin waves, and transition temperatures in itinerant magnets

This contribution reviews an ab initio two-step procedure to determine exchange interactions, spin-wave spectra, and thermodynamic properties of itinerant magnets. In the first step, the self-consistent electronic structure of a system is calculated for a collinear spin structure at zero temperature. In the second step, parameters of an effective classical Heisenberg Hamiltonian are determined using the magnetic force theorem and the one-electron Green functions. The Heisenberg Hamiltonian and methods of statistical physics are employed in subsequent evaluation of magnon dispersion laws, spin-wave stiffness constants, and Curie/Néel temperatures. The applicability of the developed scheme is illustrated by selected properties of various systems such as transition and rare-earth metals, disordered alloys including diluted magnetic semiconductors, ultrathin films, and surfaces. A comparison to other ab initio approaches is presented as well.
Odor-conditioned rheotaxis of the sea lamprey: modeling, analysis and validation

Mechanisms for orienting toward and locating an odor source are sought in both biology and engineering. Chemical ecology studies have demonstrated that adult female sea lamprey show rheotaxis in response to a male pheromone with dichotomous outcomes: sexually mature females locate the source of the pheromone whereas immature females swim by the source and continue moving upstream. Here we introduce a simple switching mechanism modeled after odor-conditioned rheotaxis for the sea lamprey as they search for the source of a pheromone in a one-dimensional riverine environment. In this strategy, the females move upstream only if they detect that the pheromone concentration is higher than a threshold value and drifts down (by turning off control action to save energy) otherwise. In addition, we propose various uncertainty models such as measurement noise, actuator disturbance, and a probabilistic model of a concentration field in turbulent flow. Based on the proposed model with uncertainties, a convergence analysis showed that with this simplistic switching mechanism, the lamprey converges to the source location on average in spite of all such uncertainties. Furthermore, a slightly modified model and its extensive simulation results explain the behaviors of immature female lamprey near the source location.
Lipoprotein(a): A Promising Marker for Residual Cardiovascular Risk Assessment

Atherosclerotic cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are still the leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide, although optimal medical therapy has been prescribed for primary and secondary preventions. Residual cardiovascular risk for some population groups is still considerably high although target low density lipoprotein-cholesterol (LDL-C) level has been achieved. During the past few decades, compelling pieces of evidence from clinical trials and meta-analyses consistently illustrate that lipoprotein(a) (Lp(a)) is a significant risk factor for atherosclerosis and CVD due to its proatherogenic and prothrombotic features. However, the lack of effective medication for Lp(a) reduction significantly hampers randomized, prospective, and controlled trials conducting. Based on previous findings, for patients with LDL-C in normal range, Lp(a) may be a useful marker for identifying and evaluating the residual cardiovascular risk, and aggressively lowering LDL-C level than current guidelines' recommendation may be reasonable for patients with particularly high Lp(a) level.