Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Associations of cardiorespiratory fitness in children and adolescents with physical activity, active commuting to school, and screen time.

BACKGROUND The objective of this study was to analyze associations of cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) with physical activity, time spent watching television and using computer, mode of commuting to school (CS), and adiposity, by gender. METHODS Participants were 1708 students (53.8% girls), aged 11 to 19 years. CRF was evaluated with a 20-meter shuttle-run test using VO2max by previously published equation. Maturation stages determined by Tanner's criteria, body mass index, and skinfolds were measured, and a questionnaire used to assess socioeconomic status, PA, television and computer time, and mode of CS. We conducted a regression analysis using CRF as the dependent variable. RESULTS CRF was independent and positively associated with physical activity [β = 0.338 (95% CI = 0.119; 0.188); P < . 001] and with maturation [β = -0.876 (95% CI = 0.666; 1.087); P < . 001]; independent and negatively associated with television time [β = -0.003 (95% CI = -0.005; -0.002); P < . 001] and adiposity [β = -0.068 (95% CI = -0.076; -0.060); P < . 001]. CRF was positively associated with CS [β = 0.337; (95% CI = 0.014; 0.741); P = . 014]. No associations were found for computer time. CONCLUSIONS These findings suggest that increasing overall physical activity levels through interventions in different domains such as active CS, reducing sedentary activities, such as television time, might be effective strategies for improving CRF in youth.
Spectral Filtering Formalism and Its Application for Multi‐Phase Deep‐Water Wavetrains

A new formalism of spectral filtering for the description of the modulation processes is proposed. The method allows one to study the classical problem of multi‐phase modulations in dispersive systems. In the present paper, deepwater waves are considered. Spectral filtering results in a system of coupled equations that describe the modulations of the carrier wave and its harmonics. The formalism may find applications in a broad range of physical situations with multi‐phase dynamics.
Phase II study of sorafenib in patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma.

PURPOSE This phase II study of sorafenib, an oral multikinase inhibitor that targets Raf kinase and receptor tyrosine kinases, assessed efficacy, toxicity, pharmacokinetics, and biomarkers in advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients. METHODS Patients with inoperable HCC, no prior systemic treatment, and Child-Pugh (CP) A or B, received continuous, oral sorafenib 400 mg bid in 4-week cycles. Tumor response was assessed every two cycles using modified WHO criteria. Sorafenib pharmacokinetics were measured in plasma samples. Biomarker analysis included phosphorylated extracellular signal regulated kinase (pERK) in pretreatment biopsies (immunohistochemistry) and blood-cell RNA expression patterns in selected patients. RESULTS Of 137 patients treated (male, 71%; median age, 69 years), 72% had CP A, and 28% had CP B. On the basis of independent assessment, three (2.2%) patients achieved a partial response, eight (5.8%) had a minor response, and 46 (33.6%) had stable disease for at least 16 weeks. Investigator-assessed median time to progression (TTP) was 4.2 months, and median overall survival was 9.2 months. Grade 3/4 drug-related toxicities included fatigue (9.5%), diarrhea (8.0%), and hand-foot skin reaction (5.1%). There were no significant pharmacokinetic differences between CP A and B patients. Pretreatment tumor pERK levels correlated with TTP. A panel of 18 expressed genes was identified that distinguished "nonprogressors" from "progressors" with an estimated 100% accuracy. CONCLUSION Although single-agent sorafenib has modest efficacy in HCC, the manageable toxicity and mechanisms of action support a role for combination regimens with other anticancer agents.
New Insights into How Yersinia pestis Adapts to Its Mammalian Host during Bubonic Plague

Bubonic plague (a fatal, flea-transmitted disease) remains an international public health concern. Although our understanding of the pathogenesis of bubonic plague has improved significantly over the last few decades, researchers have still not been able to define the complete set of Y. pestis genes needed for disease or to characterize the mechanisms that enable infection. Here, we generated a library of Y. pestis mutants, each lacking one or more of the genes previously identified as being up-regulated in vivo. We then screened the library for attenuated virulence in rodent models of bubonic plague. Importantly, we tested mutants both individually and using a novel, “per-pool” screening method that we have developed. Our data showed that in addition to genes involved in physiological adaption and resistance to the stress generated by the host, several previously uncharacterized genes are required for virulence. One of these genes (ympt1.66c, which encodes a putative helicase) has been acquired by horizontal gene transfer. Deletion of ympt1.66c reduced Y. pestis' ability to spread to the lymph nodes draining the dermal inoculation site – probably because loss of this gene decreased the bacteria's ability to survive inside macrophages. Our results suggest that (i) intracellular survival during the early stage of infection is important for plague and (ii) horizontal gene transfer was crucial in the acquisition of this ability.
Comparison between landmark and surface-based three-dimensional analyses of facial asymmetry in adults.

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES To collect the reference values for facial asymmetry in adults using landmark and surface-based three-dimensional analyses and to compare their diagnostic abilities. MATERIALS AND METHODS Laser scans were taken from 85 British Caucasians, 29 males (23.9±5.7 years, range 19-44) and 56 females (28.1±9.5 years, range 19-54), students and staff of the Cardiff Dental Hospital, and three orthodontic patients with marked facial asymmetry. An asymmetry index (AI) was measured for 14 landmarks. The surface-to-surface average distance between the best-fit registered original and mirror scans (ADom) was measured for the whole face and six regions. Non-parametric descriptive statistics was used to obtain the reference values, and Mann-Whitney U-test was used for gender comparison. P values less than 0.05 were considered significant. Patients' values were compared to the reference values by calculating the corresponding percentiles. RESULTS The lowest AI was found for 'pronasale' in males [median 0.1 (interquartile range 0.0-0.3) mm] and the highest for 'cheilion' [3.5 (2.4-5.0) mm] in females. The ADom for the whole face was 0.7 (0.5-0.9) mm in males and 0.6 (0.5-0.7) mm in females and regionally between 0.4 (0.3-0.6) mm and 0.8 (0.4-1.2) mm. In orthodontic patients, AI did not always reveal asymmetry in a particular coordinate plane, and surface-based analysis was favourable in regions underrepresented by landmarks. CONCLUSIONS Facial asymmetry can be accurately quantified using landmark- and surface-based approaches. The latter offers a more comprehensive analysis of the face.
Canonicalization of database records using adaptive similarity measures

It is becoming increasingly common to construct databases from information automatically culled from many heterogeneous sources. For example, a research publication database can be constructed by automatically extracting titles, authors, and conference information from online papers. A common difficulty in consolidating data from multiple sources is that records are referenced in a variety of ways (e.g. abbreviations, aliases, and misspellings). Therefore, it can be difficult to construct a single, standard representation to present to the user. We refer to the task of constructing this representation as canonicalization. Despite its importance, there is little existing work on canonicalization. In this paper, we explore the use of edit distance measures to construct a canonical representation that is "central" in the sense that it is most similar to each of the disparate records. This approach reduces the impact of noisy records on the canonical representation. Furthermore, because the user may prefer different styles of canonicalization, we show how different edit distance costs can result in different forms of canonicalization. For example, reducing the cost of character deletions can result in representations that favor abbreviated forms over expanded forms (e.g. KDD versus Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining). We describe how to learn these costs from a small amount of manually annotated data using stochastic hill-climbing. Additionally, we investigate feature-based methods to learn ranking preferences over canonicalizations. These approaches can incorporate arbitrary textual evidence to select a canonical record. We evaluate our approach on a real-world publications database and show that our learning method results in a canonicalization solution that is robust to errors and easily customizable to user preferences.
Chinese CCGbank: extracting CCG derivations from the Penn Chinese Treebank

Automated conversion has allowed the development of wide-coverage corpora for a variety of grammar formalisms without the expense of manual annotation. Analysing new languages also tests formalisms, exposing their strengths and weaknesses. We present Chinese CCGbank, a 760,000 word corpus annotated with Combinatory Categorial Grammar (ccg) derivations, induced automatically from the Penn Chinese Treebank (pctb). We design parsimonious ccg analyses for a range of Chinese syntactic constructions, and transform the pctb trees to produce them. Our process yields a corpus of 27,759 derivations, covering 98.1% of the pctb.
Two‐dimensional electrophoresis of soluble leaf proteins, isolated from two wheat species (Triticum durum and Triticum aestivum) differing in sensitivity towards NaCl

Plants of two wheat species (Triticum aestivum cv. Tanit and T. durum cv. Ben Bachir), differing in their sensitivity to NaCl were cultivated in the presence or absence of 100 mM NaCl for 21 days. Soluble proteins extracted from leaves were analyzed by two‐dimensional electrophoresis in order to detect NaCl‐induced changes in the polypeptide patterns. In all, 500 spots were detected. Results showed species‐dependent differences. The greatest alterations in the polypeptide profiles following salt stress were found in the most sensitive cultivar: among the 12 spots (molecular mass, 15—31 kDa) specifically considered in the acidic region of the gel, 11 declined, even disappeared in the NaCl‐sensitive leaf profiles, while in the tolerant species only five spots were affected by the salt treatment and five remained untouched; moreover in the latter, two new polypeptides were shown to be induced by NaCl.
[Study on weight and height of the Chinese people and the differences between 1992 and 2002].

OBJECTIVE To describe the current situation and trends of mean weight and height of the Chinese people. METHODS Subjects of 71,971 households from 31 provinces were selected by stratified multi-stage cluster random sampling method. Height from 210 136 and weight from 202 749 subjects aged 2-79 years were used to describe their trends of development during 1992-2002. The height of children younger than 3 years of age was measured by infant height bed while the others were measured by metal height pole within 0.1 cm accuracy. Fasting body weight was measured to the nearest 0.1 kg. RESULTS Data on the mean height (cm) of Chinese children aged 2, 6, 11, 17 years were gathered which include: 1) in urban area: boys as 90.1 (2y), 118.4 (6y), 144.9 (11y), 170.2 (17y); girls as: 89.0 (2y), 117.0 (6y), 145.8 (11y), 158.6 (17y); 2) in rural area:boys as 87.6 (2y), 113.1 (6y), 139.2 (11y), 166.3 (17y) while girls as 86.2 (2y), 112.9 (6y), 140.0 (11y), 157.0 (17y). When compared to the results from 1992, the average height increased among all age groups. The values of increase among different groups aged 2-5 years were seen as: 3.6 cm of boys in urban and 3.0 cm of boys in rural areas while 3.8 cm of girls in urban and 3.0 cm of girls in rural areas. Among the aged 6-19 year groups, the average increasing values of height were 3.1 cm, 3.4 cm, 2.8 cm and 3.1 cm of city boys, rural boys, city girls and rural girls, respectively versus adults as 0.7 cm, 0.9 cm, 0.6 cm and 1.0 cm, respectively. The mean weight (kg) of Chinese children aged 2, 6, 11, 17 years were listed as below: boys in urban area: 13.5 (2y), 22.2 (6y), 37.4 (11y), 58.7 (17y); girls in urban area: 12.7 (2y), 21.2 (6y), 36.7 (11y), 51.9 (17y); boys in rural area: 12.8 (2y), 19.4 (6y), 31.9 (11y), 54.9 (17y); girls in rural area: 11.9 (2y), 18.7 (6y), 31.8 (11y), 51.2 (17y). The average weights of all age groups on 2002 were all higher than their same age counterparts in 1992. The average increasing values of weight among children aged 2-5 years were 1.0 kg, 0.6 kg, 0.8 kg and 0.5 kg for city boys, rural boys, city girls and rural girls, respectively. Among the aged 6-19 year groups, they were 2.0 kg, 1.5 kg, 1.4 kg and 1.1 kg, while among the adults aged 20-70 years, they were 3.2 kg, 3.0 kg, 1.6 kg and 2.9 kg, respectively. CONCLUSION Both mean weight and height had a remarkable increase and the physical status improved among all age groups for the last ten years.
Blood pressure destabilization on nonsteroidal antiinflammatory agents: acetaminophen exposed?

It has been conventional wisdom for some time now that nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), whether selective for inhibition of cyclooxygenase 2 (COX-2) or nonselective, increase blood pressure (BP) or interfere with BP control and that acetaminophen should not have this effect. 1–4 Controlled clinical trials have shown that NSAIDs have heterogeneous effects on clinic and 24-hour BP in normotensive and hypertensive subjects.3 The inhibition of COX-2 by NSAIDs results in decreased actions of both vasodilatory and natriuretic prostaglandins. 3 In most individuals, homeostasis of plasma volume is reestablished by small, nearly undetectable increases in BP, 5 whereas in patients with impaired excretory function, more substantial volume retention occurs that may be associated with hypertension, edema, and congestive heart failure. 3,5 Article see p 1789 Before 2002, little was known about the effects of NSAIDs on 24-hour BP in patients with arthritis who also had hypertension and/or vascular diseases. 6–8 Because ambulatory BP has improved reproducibility compared with clinic measurements, detection of small but clinically meaningful differences in drug treatment groups9,10 is more likely to occur. Ambulatory monitoring also allows improved evaluation of pharmacodynamic effects of any drug, including the NSAIDs. 6,7 For example, in the Celecoxib Rofecoxib Efficacy and Safety in Comorbidities Evaluation Trial (CRESCENT), destabilization of systolic BP control occurred for 18 of the 24 hours after dosing of rofecoxib at standard osteoarthritis doses of 25 mg each morning. 8 In contrast, no changes from baseline in 24-hour systolic BP were observed with celecoxib or naproxen at their respective standard dosing regimens for osteoarthritis. Of the NSAIDs studied with 24-hour BP monitoring and widely used in clinical practice, ibuprofen, indomethacin, and etoricoxib appear to cause the largest increases in BP, whereas celecoxib and naproxen seem to induce smaller increases in BP and destabilization of BP control (the Table).
Exploring the effects of trust, task interdependence and virtualness on knowledge sharing in teams

The sharing of knowledge within teams is critical to team functioning. However, working with team members who are in different locations (i.e. in virtual teams) may introduce communication challenges and reduce opportunities for rich interactions, potentially affecting knowledge sharing and its outcomes. Therefore, using questionnaire‐based data, this study examined the potential effects of different aspects of virtuality on a knowledge‐sharing model. Social exchange theory was used to develop a model relating trust to knowledge sharing and knowledge sharing to team effectiveness. The moderating effects of virtuality and task interdependence on these relationships were examined. A strong positive relationship was found between trust and knowledge sharing for all types of teams (local, hybrid and distributed), but the relationship was stronger when task interdependence was low, supporting the position that trust is more critical in weak structural situations. Knowledge sharing was positively associated with team effectiveness outcomes; however, this relationship was moderated by team imbalance and hybrid structures, such that the relationship between sharing and effectiveness was weaker. Organizations should therefore avoid creating unbalanced or hybrid virtual teams.
Studies on equine prematurity 3: Insulin secretion in the foal during the perinatal period.

The factors influencing beta cell function in the foetal and neonatal foal have been investigated in chronically catheterised foetal foals and in newborn foals delivered either spontaneously at term or by induction at different gestational ages. Insulin was detected in the foetal plasma from as early as 150 days of gestation (term = 340 days) and during the last third of gestation the foetal beta cells responded to exogenous administration of glucose and arginine and to endogenous variations in the glucose level. Insulin secretion by the foetal beta cells was depressed by anaesthesia and surgery. At birth, there was a significant positive correlation between the plasma concentrations of insulin and glucose irrespective of the maturity at birth or type of delivery (r = 0.86, n = 39, P less than 0.01). The slope of this relationship was significantly less than that relating the postoperative foetal concentration but only when delivery was difficult or prolonged was the beta cell sensitivity to glucose completely abolished. At birth, there were no significant differences in the plasma concentrations of insulin or glucose between full term foals delivered spontaneously or by induction. However, the spontaneously delivered foals showed a transient increase in the insulin concentration 15 mins after birth which was not observed in the full term foals delivered by induction. Plasma glucose concentrations were maintained during the 2 h after birth in the absence of sucking in both the induced and the spontaneously delivered full term foals. Premature foals had significantly lower plasma glucose concentrations at birth than full term foals. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Recombination Confounds the Early Evolutionary History of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1: Subtype G Is a Circulating Recombinant Form

ABSTRACT Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) is classified in nine subtypes (A to D, F, G, H, J, and K), a number of subsubtypes, and several circulating recombinant forms (CRFs). Due to the high level of genetic diversity within HIV-1 and to its worldwide distribution, this classification system is widely used in fields as diverse as vaccine development, evolution, epidemiology, viral fitness, and drug resistance. Here, we demonstrate how the high recombination rates of HIV-1 may confound the study of its evolutionary history and classification. Our data show that subtype G, currently classified as a pure subtype, has in fact a recombinant history, having evolved following recombination between subtypes A and J and a putative subtype G parent. In addition, we find no evidence for recombination within one of the lineages currently classified as a CRF, CRF02_AG. Our analysis indicates that CRF02_AG was the parent of the recombinant subtype G, rather than the two having the opposite evolutionary relationship, as is currently proposed. Our results imply that the current classification of HIV-1 subtypes and CRFs is an artifact of sampling history, rather than reflecting the evolutionary history of the virus. We suggest a reanalysis of all pure subtypes and CRFs in order to better understand how high rates of recombination have influenced HIV-1 evolutionary history.
Conjoint Measurement of Gloss and Surface Texture

The image of a material's surface varies not only with viewing and illumination conditions, but also with the material's surface properties, including its 3-D texture and specularity. Previous studies on the visual perception of surface material have typically focused on single material properties, ignoring possible interactions. In this study, we used a conjoint-measurement design to determine how observers represent perceived 3-D texture (“bumpiness”) and specularity (“glossiness”) and modeled how each of these two surface-material properties affects perception of the other. Observers made judgments of bumpiness and glossiness of surfaces that varied in both surface texture and specularity. We quantified how changes in each surface-material property affected judgments of the other and found that a simple additive model captured visual perception of texture and specularity and their interaction. Conjoint measurement is potentially a powerful tool for analyzing perception of surface material in realistic environments.
Socket Preservation: Allograft vs. Alloplast

Background: The volume shrinkage of the alveolar ridge might be minimized by the ridge preservation stagesand applied biomaterials, after tooth extraction. Objectives: The aim of this study is to compare alloplastic with allograft in terms of preservation and bone regeneration of the alveolar ridge after tooth extraction. Materials and Methods: This study clinically assessed this issue via the Split Mouth method which assessed 10 dental sockets filled with alloplasts and 9 others with allografts postextraction. The effectiveness of each material was clinically and histologically processed. The alveolar ridge width was measured by a gauge, before filling the socket and 2 months postextraction when inserting the dental implant. The histological process of bone samples were observed under light microscope at the time of fixture insertion to evaluate live and dead bone, trabecular, amorphous and non- osteoblastic. The changes in two groups in terms of the quantity underwent T-Test examination and the quality of bone regeneration was assessed using MANN-U-WHITNEY test. IRB and ethical approval was granted for our study. Results: Minimal reduction of alveolar ridge widths were observed in both groups (reduction of alveolar ridge in the allograft group: 0.61 mm ± 1.06 and in the alloplast group: 0.85 mm ± 0.88) but the difference was not significant statistically (P=0.6); no significant differences were noted in vital (P=0.9), nonvital (P<0.8), trabecular (P<0.7) or amorphous (P<0.4) bone. Conclusion: Both materials were equal in terms of the quantity and the quality of osteoblasts and both were the same in terms of live and dead bone. No major differences in the regenerated bone could be found between these two groups.