Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Vitamin A and E Supplementation in Breast-Fed Newborns

Background Vitamins A and E are two potent antioxidant nutrients that play a significant role in immune function. In contrast to the numerous studies of vitamin A and E status in children, adolescents, and adults, information on term infants, particularly breast-fed infants, is scarce. The goals of the present investigation were to examine the vitamins A and E nutritional status of term breast-fed infants at birth and to assess retinol and tocopherol plasma levels during a 3-month supplementation trial. Methods The study was a prospective, blinded comparison of a supplementation protocol with a placebo in a group of consecutively recruited term newborns. The supplemented group received 3000 IU vitamin A and 5 IU vitamin E orally. The placebo group received a solution of similar viscosity and organoleptic characteristics. Vitamin A and E were separated by reverse-phase high-performance liquid chromatography on a C18 Spectrasyl column and quantified by ultraviolet spectrophotometry. Results Vitamin A and E levels steadily increased with age in both groups of infants. However, levels at 3 months were higher in the supplemented than in the control group. Conclusion The data show that supplementation with 3000 IU vitamin A and 5 IU vitamin E for 3 months increases circulating vitamin levels in newborn term babies compared with those in nonsupplemented infants.
Character-level language modeling with hierarchical recurrent neural networks

Recurrent neural network (RNN) based character-level language models (CLMs) are extremely useful for modeling out-of-vocabulary words by nature. However, their performance is generally much worse than the word-level language models (WLMs), since CLMs need to consider longer history of tokens to properly predict the next one. We address this problem by proposing hierarchical RNN architectures, which consist of multiple modules with different timescales. Despite the multi-timescale structures, the input and output layers operate with the character-level clock, which allows the existing RNN CLM training approaches to be directly applicable without any modifications. Our CLM models show better perplexity than Kneser-Ney (KN) 5-gram WLMs on the One Billion Word Benchmark with only 2% of parameters. Also, we present real-time character-level end-to-end speech recognition examples on the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) corpus, where replacing traditional mono-clock RNN CLMs with the proposed models results in better recognition accuracies even though the number of parameters are reduced to 30%.
Bundle adjustment in large-scale 3D reconstructions based on underwater robotic surveys

In this paper we present a technique to generate highly accurate reconstructions of underwater structures by employing bundle adjustment on visual features, rather than relying on a filtering approach using navigational sensor data alone. This system improves upon previous work where an extended information filter was used to estimate the vehicle trajectory. This filtering technique, while very efficient, suffers from the shortcoming that linearization errors are irreversibly incorporated into the vehicle trajectory estimate. This drawback is overcome by applying smoothing and mapping to the full problem. In contrast to the filtering approach, smoothing and mapping techniques solve for the entire vehicle trajectory and landmark positions at once by performing bundle adjustment on all the visual measurements taken at each frame. We formulate a large nonlinear least-squares problem where we minimize the pixel projection error of each of the landmark measurements. The technique is demonstrated on a large-scale underwater dataset, and it is also shown that superior results are achieved with smoothing and mapping as compared to the filtering approach.
Outcome of unstable fractures of metacarpal and phalangeal bones treated by bone tie

Background Unstable fractures of the metacarpal and phalangeal bones of the hand need surgical stabilization which should be rigid enough for early active mobilization. Conventional methods of open reduction and stabilization in the form of composite fixation or screws with or without plates have served the purpose but can be definitely improvised addressing both biological and mechanical principles of fixation. Materials and Methods 34 patients (29 males and 5 females) with an average age of 32 years (range 10–64 years) with unstable fractures of the metacarpal and phalangeal bones of hand who were treated with the modified bone tie between June 2009 and June 2013 were included in this study. 42 fractures, involving the 31 metacarpals and 11 phalanges were included. We have not used this technique in fractures involving the terminal phalanges. Thirty nine of the fractures were treated with K-wires along with the modified bone tie, whereas the other two cases were treated with modified bone tie alone and in one case the bone tie has been used along with the external fixator. The nature of injuries were Road Traffic Accident ( n = 24), domestic/industrial injuries ( n = 8) and blast ( n = 2) injuries. Etiology was crush ( n = 24), blunt ( n = 7) and incised ( n = 3) injuries, respectively. Twenty seven patients were involved with single fractures (either metacarpal or the phalanges), 6 patients had two fractures (both metacarpals or phalanges or one each of metacarpal and phalanx), and 1 patient had three fractures in this study. Dominant hand was involved in 14 patients (40%). Results We achieved excellent to good results in 83% of 42 fractures within an average period of 10 weeks. Postoperative grip strength of 85% was achieved with in an average period of 12 weeks. Twenty six (20 metacarpals and 6 phalanges) of the 42 fractures regained >85% of the total active movements (TAMs) compared to the contralateral side were considered excellent results. All patients were followed up for a minimum of 1 year. Conclusion This method of composite fixation allowed the surgeon to remove the concomitantly used axial K-wire at or <3 weeks clearly explaining the biomechanical basis for better results with minimum complication rates.
Alterations of motor cortical excitability and anatomy in Unverricht‐Lundborg disease

Unverricht‐Lundborg disease is the most common form of progressive myoclonus epilepsies. In addition to generalized seizures, it is characterized by myoclonus, which usually is the most disabling feature of the disease. Classically, the myoclonus has been attributed to increased excitability of the primary motor cortex. However, inhibitory cortical phenomena have also been described along with anatomical alterations. We aimed to characterize the relationship between the excitability and anatomy of the motor cortex and their association with the severity of the clinical symptoms. Seventy genetically verified patients were compared with forty healthy controls. The symptoms were evaluated with the Unified Myoclonus Rating Scale. Navigated transcranial magnetic stimulation was applied to characterize the excitability of the primary motor cortex by determining the motor thresholds and cortical silent periods. In addition, the induced cortical electric fields were estimated using individual scalp‐to‐cortex distances measured from MRIs. A cortical thickness analysis was performed to elucidate possible disease‐related anatomical alterations. The motor thresholds, cortical electric fields, and silent periods were significantly increased in the patients (P < 0.01). The silent periods correlated with the myoclonus scores (r = 0.48 to r = 0.49, P < 0.001). The scalp‐to‐cortex distance increased significantly with disease duration (r = 0.56, P < 0.001) and correlated inversely with cortical thickness. The results may reflect the refractory nature of the myoclonus and indicate a possible reactive cortical inhibitory mechanism to the underlying disease process. This is the largest clinical series on Unverricht‐Lundborg disease and the first study describing parallel pathophysiological and structural alterations associated with the severity of the symptoms. © 2013 International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society
Topic-Based Clusters in Egocentric Networks on Facebook

Homophily suggests that people tend to befriend others with shared traits, such as similar topical interests or overlapping social circles. We study how people communicate online in term of conversation topics from an egocentric viewpoint using a dataset from Facebook. We find that friends who favor similar topics form topic-based clusters; these clusters have dense connectivities, large growth rates, and little overlap.
Mifepristone for induction of labour.

BACKGROUND The steroid hormone, progesterone, inhibits contractions of the uterus. Antiprogestins (including mifepristone) have been developed to antagonise the action of progesterone, and these have a recognised role in medical termination of early or mid-pregnancy. Animal studies have suggested that mifepristone may also have a role in inducing labour in late pregnancy. OBJECTIVES To determine the effects of mifepristone for third trimester cervical ripening or induction of labour. SEARCH STRATEGY We searched the Cochrane Pregnancy and Childbirth Group trials register, the Cochrane Controlled Trials Register, and reference lists of relevant papers. SELECTION CRITERIA Selection criteria included: (1) clinical trials comparing mifepristone used for third trimester cervical ripening or labour induction with placebo/no treatment or other labour induction methods; (2) random allocation to the treatment or control group; (3) adequate allocation concealment; (4) violations of allocated management not sufficient to materially affect conclusions; (5) clinically meaningful outcome measures reported; (6) data available for analysis according to the random allocation; (7) missing data insufficient to materially affect the conclusions. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS This is one of a series of reviews of methods of cervical ripening and labour induction using standardised methodology. Data were extracted by the reviewer and, independently, by a colleague. MAIN RESULTS Seven trials, that recruited 594 women, are included. All trials compared mifepristone with placebo, except for one that compared mifepristone with no treatment. Compared to placebo, mifepristone treated women were less likely to have an unfavourable cervix at 48 hours (relative risk [RR] 0.36, 95% confidence intervals [CI] 0.2-0.63) or 96 hours (RR 0.39, 95% CI 0.23-0.66). Mifepristone treated women were more likely to have delivered within 48 and 96 hours of treatment than were placebo treated/no treatment women - 48 hours: RR 2.82, 95% CI 1.82-4.36; 96 hours: RR 3.40, 95% CI 1.96-5.92. Mifepristone treated women were less likely to undergo caesarean section (RR 0.71, 95% CI 0.53-0.95). There is little information about fetal outcome, although there was no evidence that neonatal hypoglycaemia might be more common after exposure to mifepristone. Similarly, there is little information about maternal side-effects although some nausea and vomiting was reported in one trial. REVIEWER'S CONCLUSIONS There is insufficient information available from clinical trials to support the use of mifepristone to induce labour. However, available data do show that mifepristone is better than placebo at ripening the cervix, and inducing labour. There is evidence of a possible reduction in the incidence of caesarean section following mifepristone treatment (compared to placebo) that would justify further trials. We found no trials that compared mifepristone with alternative methods of inducing labour e.g. prostaglandins.
Age-related changes in expression and function of Toll-like receptors in human skin

Toll-like receptors (TLRs) initiate innate immune responses and direct subsequent adaptive immunity. They play a major role in cutaneous host defense against micro-organisms and in the pathophysiology of several inflammatory skin diseases. To understand the role of TLRs in the acquisition of immunological competence, we conducted a comprehensive study to evaluate TLR expression and function in the developing human skin before and after birth and compared it with adults. We found that prenatal skin already expresses the same spectrum of TLRs as adult skin. Strikingly, many TLRs were significantly higher expressed in prenatal (TLRs 1-5) and infant and child (TLRs 1 and 3) skin than in adult skin. Surprisingly, neither dendritic cell precursors in prenatal skin nor epidermal Langerhans cells and dermal dendritic cells in adult skin expressed TLRs 3 and 6, whereas the staining pattern and intensity of both TLRs in fetal basal keratinocytes was almost comparable to those of adults. Stimulation of primary human keratinocytes from fetal, neonatal and adult donors with selected TLR agonists revealed that the synthetic TLR3 ligand poly (I:C) specifically, mimicking viral double-stranded RNA, induced a significantly enhanced secretion of CXCL8/IL8, CXCL10/IP-10 and TNFα in fetal and neonatal keratinocytes compared with adult keratinocytes. This study demonstrates quantitative age-specific modifications in TLR expression and innate skin immune reactivity in response to TLR activation. Thus, antiviral innate immunity already in prenatal skin may contribute to protect the developing human body from viral infections in utero in a scenario where the adaptive immune system is not yet fully functional.
Evolution and Revolution as Organizations Grow

Foreword This author maintains that growing organizations move through five distinguishable phases of development, each of which contains a relatively calm period of growth that ends with a management crisis. He argues, moreover, that since each phase is strongly influenced by the previous one, a management with a sense of its own organization's history can anticipate and prepare for the next developmental crisis. This article provides a prescription for appropriate management action in each of the five phases, and it shows how companies can turn organizational crises into opportunities for the future growth. Mr. Greiner is associate professor of organizational behavior at the Harvard Business School and the author of several Harvard Business Review articles on organization development.
Achievable rates for discrete memoryless relay channels with generalised feedback

This paper considers three‐node discrete memoryless relay channels with generalised feedback. In particular, two generalised feedback configurations are investigated. In the first configuration, the source is assumed to be able to actively collect feedback signals from the channel, whereas in the second one, the destination is assumed to be able to actively transmit feedback signals to the relay. For both configurations, new coding schemes that are based on the notions of decode and forward and compress and forward are developed to exploit the feedback, and corresponding achievable rates are derived. For the first configuration, the proposed coding schemes exploit the feedback by allowing the source to cooperate with the relay in the process of forwarding the compressed version of the channel output sequence at the relay to the destination. For the second configuration, the proposed coding schemes allow the destination to perform compress and forward to enhance the decoding power at the relay which applies partial decode and forward, thereby improving the overall transmission rate. The derived achievable rates are also shown to generalise several existing results for corresponding settings with perfect feedback as special cases. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Model checking the AMBA protocol in HOL

The Advanced Microcontroller Bus Architecture (AMBA) is an open Systemon-Chip bus protocol for high-performance buses on low-power devices. In this report we implement a simple model of AMBA and use model checking and theorem proving to verify latency, arbitration, coherence and deadlock freedom properties of the implementation. Typical microprocessor and memory verifications assume direct connections between processors, peripherals and memory, and zero latency data transfers. They abstract away the data transfer infrastructure as it is not relevant to the verification. However, this infrastructure is in itself quite complex and worthy of formal verification. The Advanced Microcontroller Bus Architecture (AMBA) is an open System-on-Chip bus protocol for high-performance buses on low-power devices. In this report we implement a simple model of AMBA and verify latency, arbitration, coherence and deadlock freedom properties of the implementation. The verification is conducted using a model checker for the modal μ-calculus Lμ, that has been embedded in the HOL theorem prover [3]. This allows results from the model checker to be represented as HOL theorems for full compositionality with more abstract theorems proved in HOL using a formal model theory of Lμ that we have also developed [4]. This tight connection between model checking and theorem proving is exploited in section 4 of this report.
Evidence to Support Including Lifestyle Light-Intensity Recommendations in Physical Activity Guidelines for Older Adults

Purpose. The purpose of this study was to examine the association of objectively measured lifestyle light-intensity physical activity (LLPA) and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) with various biological markers and chronic diseases among a nationally representative sample of U.S. older adults (65+ years). Design. A cross-sectional design was used for this study. Setting. Data were obtained from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2003–2006. Subjects. Subjects were 1,496 older U.S. adults. Measures. Participants wore an accelerometer for at least 4 days and completed questionnaires to assess sociodemographics and chronic disease information. Blood samples were taken to assess biological markers. Analysis. Adjusted Wald tests and Poisson regression were used to examine the association of LLPA and MVPA with biological markers and chronic disease. Results. Older adults engaging in ≥300 min/wk of LLPA had lower observed values for body mass index, waist circumference, C-reactive protein, and insulin resistance compared to those engaging in <300 min/wk of LLPA. Additionally, those engaging in <300 min/wk of LLPA had a rate 1.18 times greater for having chronic disease compared to those engaging in ≥300 min/wk of LLPA. Conclusion. In this national sample of older U.S. adults, participation in at least 300 min/wk of LLPA was associated with more favorable health outcomes. Future experimental studies are warranted to confirm these findings.
Phylogeography of the Bothrops jararaca complex (Serpentes: Viperidae): past fragmentation and island colonization in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest

The Brazilian Atlantic Forest is one of the world's major biodiversity hotspots and is threatened by a severe habitat loss. Yet little is known about the processes that originated its remarkable richness of endemic species. Here we present results of a large‐scale survey of the genetic variation at the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene of the pitviper, jararaca lancehead (Bothrops jararaca), and two closely related insular species (Bothrops insularis and Bothrops alcatraz), endemic of this region. Phylogenetic and network analyses revealed the existence of two well‐supported clades, exhibiting a southern and a northern distribution. The divergence time of these two phylogroups was estimated at 3.8 million years ago, in the Pliocene, a period of intense climatic changes and frequent fragmentation of the tropical rainforest. Our data also suggest that the two groups underwent a large size expansion between 50 000 and 100 000 years ago. However, the southern group showed a more marked signal of population size fluctuation than the northern group, corroborating evidences that southern forests may have suffered a more pronounced reduction in area in the late Pleistocene. The insular species B. alcatraz and B. insularis presented very low diversity, each one sharing haplotypes with mainland individuals placed in different subclades. Despite their marked morphological and behavioural uniqueness, these two insular species seem to have originated very recently and most likely from distinct costal B. jararaca populations, possibly associated with late Pleistocene or Holocene sea level fluctuations.
Stability of mitochondrial DNA against reactive oxygen species (ROS) generated in diabetes

Increased production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in mitochondria has been proposed as the pathogenic mechanism for chronic complications of diabetes. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is more vulnerable to reactive oxygen species. However, there are few data on the mitochondrial DNA damage in diabetes and these are available only from patients with different duration of the disease and tissues not relevant to the chronic complications of diabetes. We therefore proposed to study the stability of mitochondrial DNA under controlled experimental conditions, to understand its contribution to chronic complications of diabetes.
Data-Aided Synchronization for MF-TDMA Multi-Carrier Demultiplexer/Demodulator (MCDD)

In this paper, a data-aided (DA) synchronization method is developed to jointly recover symbol-timing, frequency offset, and carrier phase for MF-TDMA on-board processing (OBP) satellite system. The estimates, which are obtained from a block of symbols transmitted through an Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) channel and a fast Rayleigh fading channel, can be obtained with reduced computational complexity and fast acquisition time. The estimation accuracy in terms of MSE is derived and illustrated. Its effect on the overall system BER performance is also discussed. Furthermore, the relationships between timing synchronization, frequency offset recovery, and carrier phase error compensation are also analyzed respectively. It is apparent that the proposed estimation method is not only accurate and efficient, but it makes the communication system robust to impairment parameters as well.
Effect of Ghrelin on Glucose-Insulin Homeostasis: Therapeutic Implications

Ghrelin is a 28-amino-acid peptide that displays a strong growth hormone- (GH-) releasing activity through the activation of the growth hormone secretagogue receptor (GHSR). The first studies about role of ghrelin were focused on its orexigenic ability, but despite indisputable pharmacological data, the evidence for a physiological role for ghrelin in the control of appetite is much less clear. Mice with targeted deletion of either ghrelin or the GHSR exhibit an essentially normal metabolic phenotype when fed a regular chow diet, suggesting that ghrelin may have a redundant role in the regulation of food intake. RNAs for ghrelin as well as GHSR are expressed in the pancreas of rats and humans and several studies propose that ghrelin could have an important function in glucose homeostasis and insulin release, independent of GH secretion. Low plasma ghrelin levels are associated with elevated fasting insulin levels and insulin resistance, suggesting both physiological and pathophysiological roles for ghrelin. For this reason, at least theoretically, ghrelin and/or its signalling manipulation could be useful for the treatment or prevention of diseases of glucose homeostasis such as type 2 diabetes.