Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Influence of repetitive hand movements on intracortical inhibition

Repetitive movements have been reported to induce task‐specific changes of intracortical inhibition and facilitation, but the mechanism operating shortly after hand movement is unclear. Transcranial magnetic single and paired stimuli (2 ms) were applied to 15 healthy subjects at rest and 1 s after repetitive (every 6 s) active and passive hand extensions. Motor evoked potentials (MEPs) were recorded from hand extensors (agonists) and flexors (antagonists). A strong overall inhibitory effect was observed after applying paired stimuli. In agonists only, active movements produced significantly larger MEPs. Inhibition, however, did not differ between active or passive movements and rest. This suggests that MEP increases produced by active movements in agonists are not caused by disinhibition, but are rather due to excitation (facilitation). This finding may also have implications for future studies evaluating the preferential activation of target muscles in physiotherapy. Muscle Nerve 29: 804–811, 2004
The lower body muscle activation of intermediate to experienced kayakers when navigating white water

Abstract In white-water kayaking, the legs play a vital part in turning, stabilising and bracing actions. To date, there has been no reported information on neuromuscular activation of the legs in an authentic white-water environment. The aim of the current study was to identify lower body muscle activation, using ‘in-boat’ electromyography (EMG), whilst navigating a white-water run. Ten experienced male kayakers (age 31.5 ± 12.5 yr, intermediate to advanced experience) completed three successful runs of an international standard white-water course (grade 3 rapids), targeting right and left sides of the course, in a zigzag formation. Surface EMG (sEMG) outputs were generated, bilaterally, for the rectus femoris (RF), vastus lateralis, biceps femoris and gastrocnemius, expressed as a percentage of a dynamic maximal voluntary contraction (dMVC). Only RF showed significantly higher activation than any muscle on the left side of the body, and only on the left side of the course (P = .004; ETA2 = 0.56). Other results showed no significant difference between muscle activation in the right and left legs during each run, nor when assessed at either the right or left side of the course (P > .05). These findings indicate that contralateral symmetry in lower limb muscle activation is evident during white-water kayaking. This symmetry may provide a stable base to allow more asymmetrical upper body and trunk movements to be fully optimised. Lower body symmetry development should be considered useful in targeted training programmes for white-water kayakers.
Hypocoristics: The Case of u-formation in Bernese Swiss German

This paper presents an OT analysis of hypocoristic (nickname) formation based on previously unanalyzed data from Bernese Swiss German. The Bernese data are compared to the much discussed pattern of i-formation in Standard German, from which they differ in two important ways: the Bernese hypocoristics have Umlaut, and the syllable retained from the full name in the hypocoristic is not consistently the leftmost. The Umlaut phenomenon is shown to be an effect of the underlying shape of the hypocoristic suffix. The choice of syllable, while appearing to be a more marked pattern, can be shown to arise from the satisfaction of high-ranking, position-sensitive markedness constraints, illustrating the “emergence of the unmarked” in truncations.Earlier versions of this paper appeared in the McGill Working Papers in Linguistics (Grüter 2002) and were presented at the Montréal-Ottawa-Toronto (MOT) Phonology Workshop (McGill University, February 2002) and the Berkeley Germanic Linguistics Roundtable (UC Berkeley, April 2002). I am grateful to these audiences as well as to two anonymous JGL reviewers for helpful questions and comments. Special thanks are due to Heather Goad, whose extensive advice and encouragement have made this paper possible. All errors are of course my own. This research was supported by a McGill Major Fellowship.
Intervertebral Disc Cells Exhibit Differences in Gene Expression in Alginate and Monolayer Culture

Study Design. The mRNA levels of aggrecan and collagen were quantified in intervertebral disc cells cultured under three conditions: primary alginate culture, monolayer culture, and re-encapsulation in alginate after monolayer culture. Objectives. To compare the phenotype of intervertebral disc cells under different culture conditions and to investigate the reversibility of cell phenotype after re-encapsulation in alginate after monolayer culture. Summary of Background Data. The intervertebral disc contains heterogeneous populations of cells that vary with anatomic region. These cells possess significant differences in phenotype that can be preserved in vitro, although the effect of culture conditions on the phenotype of these cells is poorly understood. Methods. The intervertebral disc cells of 4–5-month-old pigs were isolated enzymatically from three anatomic zones: anulus fibrosus (AF), transition zone (TZ), and nucleus pulposus (NP). Gene expression levels of aggrecan and collagen Types I and II were measured using a quantitative reverse transcriptase–polymerase chain reaction. Results. Gene expression levels of anulus fibrosus and transition zone cells were shifted in monolayer compared with alginate, although the shift was partially reversed when re-encapsulated in alginate. However, NP cells appeared to be insensitive to culture conditions. Furthermore, characteristic patterns of gene expression among AF, TZ, and NP cells in primary alginate culture did not exist in monolayer culture, but they were also observed after re-encapsulation in alginate. Conclusion. The findings of this study suggest that anulus fibrosus and transition zone cells undergo a reversible shift in phenotype when cultured in monolayer compared with alginate. These differences suggest that the culture system exerts a strong influence on cell phenotype and may play a role in the response of these cells to biophysical and biochemical stimuli in vitro.
Predicting percent body fat from circumference measurements.

All U.S. Navy service members are required to meet percent body fat (%BF) standards as a condition of military service. Naval personnel who exceed standards for %BF can be separated from active duty. Currently, %BF predictions are determined by circumference measurements and a prediction equation (circumference equation = CEQ). In view of the importance these prediction results have for personnel retention, a validation study was undertaken to determine the accuracy of %BF prediction for a population determined to be overfat by the CEQ. The population for the validation study comprised men with 22%BF or greater and women with 30%BF or greater. Values for %BF were determined for 49 men and 50 women by hydrostatic weighing (HW) and circumference measurements at the Naval Submarine Medical Research Laboratory (NSMRL) using a regression equation developed at the Naval Health Research Center (NHRC), San Diego, California. The HW and CEQ values were compared to a superset of the original NHRC population. The correlation coefficients for the NSMRL validation group were lower than those reported in the original NHRC group. The results are attributed to the restricted range of NSMRL data and greater error of prediction at extreme ranges of values. A medical diagnostic model was used to evaluate the sensitivity, specificity, and predictive value of CEQ. It shows that the Navy's current procedures produce a 6.8 to 18% false positive rate for individuals declared as having excess body fat. The data suggest that caution should be utilized when using the CEQ method for individual career decisions.
A Randomised Open Label Comparative Clinical Trial on the Efficacy of Latanoprost and Timolol in Primary Open Angle Glaucoma.

INTRODUCTION Timolol, a beta blocker, is the most commonly prescribed first line therapy in the treatment of primary open angle glaucoma. Latanoprost, a prostaglandin analogue, is a novel drug in glaucoma therapy. Its efficacy has to be proved for it to be included under the first line therapy in the treatment of primary open angle glaucoma. AIM To compare the efficacy of Latanoprost with that of Timolol in the treatment of primary open angle glaucoma (POAG). MATERIALS AND METHODS In this study the enrolled patients were randomly divided into two groups by block randomization. The sample size was determined to be 60 in each group. One group received 0.005% of Latanoprost once daily in the evening and the other group 0.5% of Timolol twice daily. The efficacy was measured in terms of intraocular pressure at scheduled follow up visits. RESULTS At the start of the study, intraocular pressures of both groups were comparable. At the end point, reduction of intraocular pressure among Latanoprost group was significantly greater than that of Timolol group (9.72 vs 7.27, p = 0.002). CONCLUSION Latanoprost was found to be superior to Timolol in reducing the intraocular pressure in treatment of patients with primary open angle glaucoma.
Shear bond strength of a "solvent-free" adhesive versus contemporary adhesive systems

Aim: To compare the shear bond strength (SBS) of a solvent free self-etch adhesive with solvent containing adhesives. Methods: Forty-five human teeth were sectioned longitudinally to expose superficial dentin and substrates polished with 600-grit SiC paper. The adhesive area was isolated with a cylindrical Teflon mold 3x4 mm. Fifteen specimens were prepared for each material. Were evaluated a solvent free self-etch adhesive (Bond 1 SF), an ethanol self-etch adhesive (Futurabond M), and a water-acetone-ethanol self-etch adhesive (Optibond All-In-One). All specimens were subjected to an aging procedure by thermo-cycling (5000 cycles). Thirty-six specimens were stressed in shear at a rate of 0.5mm/min. Mean data values were analyzed statistically using the Welch robust analysis of variance and the Games-Howell statistic. Failure patterns were analyzed using stereomicroscope and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Additional more dentin specimens were prepared for SEM. Results: The Bond 1 SF showed the statistically significant lowest SBS to dentin (Welch statistic p<0.001). Failures for Bond 1 SF were mainly adhesive failures with partial cohesive failures in the adhesive resin, while for Futurabond M and Optibond All-In-One were mainly mixed. SEM findings confirm the results. Conclusions: Eliminating solvents from self-etch adhesive systems may decrease the bonding strength to dentin.
Changing Incidence and Survival in Patients with AIDS-Related Non-Hodgkin's Lymphomas in the Era of Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART)

To determine role of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) and additional factors in incidence and outcome of patients with AIDS-related non-Hodgkin's lymphomas (NHL) we retrospectively analyzed 257 cases of AIDS-related NHL (24 low-grade, 168 high-grade B-cell, 6 high-grade T-cell, and 59 primary CNS lymphomas (PCNSL) among 2004 patients with HIV-infection treated at the University Hospital of Frankfurt, Germany from January 1983 to May 1999. Data were evaluated by univariate and multivariate analyses, using overall survival as end point. Patients received CHOP-like therapy as standard treatment. Until May 1999 incidence of all diagnosed cases of NHL was decreasing (1991–94: 14.2% versus 1995–5/99: 12.8%). Mainly, the incidence of low-grade NHL and PCNSL clearly decreased whereas the incidence of high-grade B-cell NHL increased compared to all diagnosed cases of NHL (1983–86: 53.3% versus 1995–5/99: 78.6%). One-year survival probability of all screened patients with AIDS related NHL was 54%, while 5-year survival rate remained 5%. We found age < 25 years, development of NHL in the years before 1990, IVDU, CD4 counts < 150/μ1, PCNSL as well as NHL as the AIDS index disease, to be highly significant independent predictors of poor survival, including increased hazard ratios. In the era of HAART incidence of NHL is decreasing, mainly the incidence of low-grade NHL and PCNSL. Overall survival of patients has been prolonged with HAART. This development is mainly due to improvement of antiretroviral therapy, rather than to any fundamental changes in the chemotherapeutic treatment of NHL. Therefore, new treatment approaches for AIDS-related NHL should focus on more efficient antiretroviral therapy in association with combination chemotherapy.
Clinical features and survival outcomes in patients with multiple myeloma: analysis of web-based data from the Korean Myeloma Registry.

AIM The Korean Multiple Myeloma Working Party performed a nationwide registration of multiple myeloma patients via a web-based data bank system. METHODS We retrospectively analyzed registered data from 3,209 patients since 1999. RESULTS The median overall survival (OS) was 50.13 months (95% confidence interval: 46.20-54.06 months). Patients < or =40 years demonstrated a longer OS than patients >65 years of age (median OS 71.13 vs. 36.73 months, p < 0.001). Patients who received novel agents at any time during their treatments showed a longer OS than patients who did not (median OS 42.23 vs. 55.50 months, p < 0.001). Response to treatment was associated with OS, with tandem autologous stem cell transplantation (SCT) producing longer OS than single autologous SCT. CONCLUSIONS We demonstrated associations between survival outcomes and treatment modalities as well as baseline disease characteristics in a registry of multiple myeloma patients using a web-based data analysis.
An Inverse Scattering Approach to Soft Fault Diagnosis in Lossy Electric Transmission Lines

In this paper, the diagnosis of soft faults in lossy electric transmission lines is studied through the inverse scattering approach, extending a recently reported study on lossless transmission lines. The considered soft faults are modeled as continuous spatial variations of distributed characteristic parameters of transmission lines. The diagnosis of such faults from reflection and transmission coefficients measured at the ends of a line can be formulated as an inverse problem. The relationship between this inverse problem and the inverse scattering theory has been studied by Jaulent in 1982 through transformations from the telegrapher's equations of transmission lines to Zakharov-Shabat equations. The present paper clarifies and completes the computation of the theoretic scattering data required by the inverse scattering transform from the practically measured engineering scattering data. The inverse scattering method is then applied to numerically simulated lossy transmission lines to confirm the feasibility of the studied approach to soft fault diagnosis.
Average word length dynamics as indicator of cultural changes in society

Dynamics of average length of words in Russian and English is analysed in the article. Words belonging to the diachronic text corpus Google Books Ngram and dated back to the last two centuries are studied. It was found out that average word length slightly increased in the 19th century, and then it was growing rapidly most of the 20th century and started decreasing over the period from the end of the 20th - to the beginning of the 21th century. Words which contributed mostly to increase or decrease of word average length were identified. At that, content words and functional words are analysed separately. Long content words contribute mostly to word average length of word. As it was shown, these words reflect the main tendencies of social development and thus, are used frequently. Change of frequency of personal pronouns also contributes significantly to change of average word length. The other parameters connected with average length of word were also analysed.
In Vivo Assessment of Protease Dynamics in Cutaneous Wound Healing by Degradomics Analysis of Porcine Wound Exudates*

Proteases control complex tissue responses by modulating inflammation, cell proliferation and migration, and matrix remodeling. All these processes are orchestrated in cutaneous wound healing to restore the skin's barrier function upon injury. Altered protease activity has been implicated in the pathogenesis of healing impairments, and proteases are important targets in diagnosis and therapy of this pathology. Global assessment of proteolysis at critical turning points after injury will define crucial events in acute healing that might be disturbed in healing disorders. As optimal biospecimens, wound exudates contain an ideal proteome to detect extracellular proteolytic events, are noninvasively accessible, and can be collected at multiple time points along the healing process from the same wound in the clinics. In this study, we applied multiplexed Terminal Amine Isotopic Labeling of Substrates (TAILS) to globally assess proteolysis in early phases of cutaneous wound healing. By quantitative analysis of proteins and protein N termini in wound fluids from a clinically relevant pig wound model, we identified more than 650 proteins and discerned major healing phases through distinctive abundance clustering of markers of inflammation, granulation tissue formation, and re-epithelialization. TAILS revealed a high degree of proteolysis at all time points after injury by detecting almost 1300 N-terminal peptides in ∼450 proteins. Quantitative positional proteomics mapped pivotal interdependent processing events in the blood coagulation and complement cascades, temporally discerned clotting and fibrinolysis during the healing process, and detected processing of complement C3 at distinct time points after wounding and by different proteases. Exploiting data on primary cleavage specificities, we related candidate proteases to cleavage events and revealed processing of the integrin adapter protein kindlin-3 by caspase-3, generating new hypotheses for protease-substrate relations in the healing skin wound in vivo. The data have been deposited to the ProteomeXchange Consortium with identifier PXD001198.
Interaction of FimB and FimE with the fim switch that controls the phase variation of type 1 fimbriae in Escherichia coli K‐12

The phase variation of type 1 fimbriae in Escherichia coli is associated with the site‐specific inversion of a short DNA element. Recombination at fim requires fimB and fimE, and their products are considered to be the fim recombinases. In this study, FimB and FimE were overproduced and extracts containing the proteins were shown to (i) bind to and (ii) invert the fim switch in vitro. Phenanthroline‐copper protection of DNA–protein complexes showed that both FimB and FimE bind to half‐sites that flank, and overlap with, the left and right inverted repeats (IRL and IRR, respectively) of the fim switch. Alignment of the four half‐sites identified a conserved 5′‐CA doublet; mutation of these two bases lowers the affinity of binding of both FimB and FimE to the inverted repeats, and greatly diminishes inversion of the fim switch in vivo. The specificity of the fim recombinases observed in vivo (FimB switching in both directions; FimE switching from on‐to‐off only) was maintained in vitroFurthermore, the different binding affinities of FimB and FimE for the various half‐site combinations suggests that the specificity of FimE could arise, in part, from the low affinity of FimE for IRL (off).
Effect of photoperiod length and light intensity on some welfare criteria, carcass, and meat quality characteristics in broilers

ABSTRACT - The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of photoperiod length and light intensity on leg and eye health, tonic immobility, some blood parameters, carcass, and meat quality characteristics in broilers. A total of 272 one-day-old male broiler chicks (Ross 308) were randomly assigned to four treatment groups based on the photoperiod length (23L:1D or increasing duration of light) and light intensity (20 lux vs. dim light) with four replicates. In this study, photoperiod lenght had no effect on incidence of foot pad and hock burn. On the other hand, the effect of photoperiod lenght had signiﬁcantinﬂuenceonthegaitscore. Theincidencesofgaitscore(3+4+5)inbrightanddimlightgroupswasfoundas21.4and41. 0%in broilers, respectively. In addition, the effect of light intensity had statistical signiﬁcanceongaitscore. Thetonicimmobilityduration in 20 lux and dim light groups were 271.53 and 226.78 s, respectively, and tonic immobility duration was unaffected by light intensity. All the blood parameters, except for triglyceride, were not affected by light intensity. The dim light had a negative effect on broiler welfare as demonstrated by increased eye weight and dimensions. Cold carcass yield and whole breast and wing yields were lower in the dim light group than in 20 lux light intensity. The broilers kept with dim light had lower breast meat ultimate pH (6.19) and L* values (54.30) than those reared with 20 lux. These ﬁndingshavealotofimplicationsonthe use of increasing photoperiod and bright light to improve leg an eye health beneﬁtsforthebroilerwelfareinbroilers. Key Words: carcass quality, corticosterone, eye and leg health, lighting
Evaluating Harmonic Distortions in Brushless Doubly Fed Induction Machines

The brushless doubly fed induction machine (DFIM) is a special machine type that is of interest as a generator in wind turbine drive trains. The brushless DFIM has a significant space-harmonic content compared with conventional machine types, due to its construction. This results in additional harmonic distortions, such as torque-ripple and time harmonics. This paper studies the causes and origins of harmonic distortions in the brushless DFIM. Using time- and space-harmonic analysis, an analytical evaluation method is derived to predict the torque ripple frequencies and time-harmonic frequencies in stator and rotor voltages and currents. The evaluation method is applied to a prototype brushless DFIM to demonstrate the severity of harmonic related distortions that can be present in the brushless DFIMs. The evaluation is validated by additional finite-element analysis and measurements. Furthermore, measures are proposed to reduce harmonic distortions. The insight into harmonic distortions in the brushless DFIM and the ability to predict and prevent them must lead to the improved brushless DFIM designs in the future.