Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The prevalence of high sodium intake among hypertensive patients at hypertension clinic, Siriraj Hospital.

OBJECTIVE To find the prevalence of excessive salt intake among hypertensive patients in hypertension (HT) clinic at Siriraj Hospital. In addition, to correlate the epidemiologic characteristics of the studied group with high salt diet. MATERIAL AND METHOD A cross-sectional study was conducted among 320 hypertensive patients in HT clinic at Siriraj Hospital from September 2010 to January 2011. Epidemiologic data, e.g., age, sex, body mass index, duration of treatment, education level, salary, frequency of salty food consumed/week and clinical data, e.g., renal function, (creatinine clearance, CCr) and anti-hypertensive drug(s) received were collected using pre-defined questionnaires. All volunteers were asked to collect 24-hour urine for 2 days to determine average daily amount of urine sodium (UNa). Those 24-hour UNa > or = 100 mmol/ day were considered high salt intake. Correlations of high daily salt intake with all data collected were done. RESULTS The prevalence of high salt intake was 73.4%. The mean total daily Na intake was 148 mmol/day i.e. 3.4 g of Na/day When the influence of clinical characteristics on the risks of high salt intake was carried out, there were 2.42, 4.00 and 2.88 fold increases among those who have higher education level, those who have CCr > or = 60 ml/min/1.73 m2, and those who knew that salt could increase blood pressure (BP), respectively. About three-quarters (76.3%) of those patients who knew the effect of salt on BP consumed high salt diet. CONCLUSION The present study revealed that nearly three-quarters of hypertensive patients who attended the HT clinic still consumed high salt diet. Most patients who knew the effect of dietary salt on BP level ignored restriction about salt intake. In addition, those patients with higher education and CCr > or = 60 ml/min/1.73 m2 also consumed high Na diet.
Process-Specific Recruitment Cues in Marine Sedimentary Systems.

In marine sediments, many of the processes associated with high post-settlement mortality of infauna have similar effects on the sediment surface. In most cases the original sediment surface is either removed, buried, or mixed with subsurface sediment. The experiments reported here tested the ability of new juvenile infauna to discriminate between undisturbed and recently disturbed sediment surfaces (i.e., subsurface sediment exposed). Recently settled juveniles of two polychaete species (Nereis vexillosa and Arenicola cristata) and one bivalve species (Mercenaria mercenaria) were exposed to simulated erosional and mixing events as well as to fresh feces, burrow tailings, and feeding tracks. Where the disturbance buried or removed several millimeters of the sediment surface, the time to initiate burrowing or the percentage of individuals failing to burrow increased significantly over times and percentages for juveniles on undisturbed surfaces. In all cases the results were consistent with the hypothesis that new juveniles reject (or are significantly slower to burrow into) disturbed sediment surfaces, if the disturbance is less than several hours old. For example, 51% of nereid juveniles did not burrow when placed on subsurface sediments, whereas 100% burrowed into surface sediments; their average burrowing time on surface sediments was 29.3 s compared with 109.7 s on fecal mounds of arenicolid polychaetes or 106.1 s on burrow tailings of thalassinid crustaceans. Individuals that did not indicate acceptance of a sediment surface by burrowing were all rapidly eroded from the surface in the presence of flow. Erosion of nonburrowing individuals occurred within 90 s of initiation of flow. Burrowing individuals were not eroded. The decision as to the acceptability of a sediment was made within 30 s. These data imply that the new juveniles are utilizing cues associated with a process, the disturbance of surface sediments, in addition to the species-specific cues described elsewhere.
Sex differences in the genetic risk for schizophrenia: History of the evidence for sex‐specific and sex‐dependent effects

Although there is a long history to examinations of sex differences in the familial (and specifically, genetic) transmission of schizophrenia, there have been few investigators who have systematically and rigorously studied this issue. This is true even in light of population and clinical studies identifying significant sex differences in incidence, expression, neuroanatomic and functional brain abnormalities, and course of schizophrenia. This review highlights the history of work in this arena from studies of family transmission patterns, linkage and twin studies to the current molecular genetic strategies of large genome‐wide association studies. Taken as a whole, the evidence supports the presence of genetic risks of which some are sex‐specific (i.e., presence in one sex and not the other) or sex‐dependent (i.e., quantitative differences in risk between the sexes). Thus, a concerted effort to systematically investigate these questions is warranted and, as we argue here, necessary in order to fully understand the etiology of schizophrenia. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Haplotypes encoding the factor VIII 1241Glu variation, factor VIII levels and the risk of venous thrombosis

Summary Levels of factorVIII (FVIII) are associated with the risk of venous thrombosis.The FVIII variation D1241E has been reported to be associated with decreased levels of FVIII. Our objective was to study whether D1241E is associated with levels of FVIII and the risk of venous thrombosis and whether this association is caused by D1241E or another linked variation.We analyzed the association of three FVIII gene haplotypes encoding 1241E (further denoted as HT1, HT3, and HT5) with FVIII levels and thrombosis risk. This analysis was performed in the Leiden Thrombophilia Study (LETS). The control populations of two case-controls studies on arterial thrombosis in men and women, respectively, were used to confirm the effects observed on FVIII:C in the LETS.In men,HT1 was associated with a 6% reduction in FVIII:C and witha reduced risk of venous thrombosis [odds ratio 0.4 (CI95 0.2–0.8)]. Logistic regression showed that the risk reduction was only partially dependent of the reduction in FVIII levels. HT1 showed no effects in women on either FVIII:C or risk of thrombosis.The number of carriers of HT3 and HT5 was too low to make an accurate estimate of the risk of venous thrombosis. Neither HT3 nor HT5 showed effects on levels of FVIII:C.When we consider that all three haplotypes encoding 1241E show different effects on FVIII:C and thrombosis risk, it is possible that D1241E is not the functional variation. However, FVIII gene variations do contribute to both levels of FVIII and the risk of thrombosis.
Ventilatory Response to Carbon Dioxide after Intra muscular and Epidural Fentanyl

The authors compared the effects of administration of fentanyl 200 μg on the Ventilatory response to carbon dioxide in two groups of nine healthy unpremedicated subjects: one group received fentanyl as an intramuscular injection; in the other group, fentanyl was injected into the epidural space. In the intra muscular group, the slope of the venti-latory response to CO2 did not decrease significantly. In the epidural group, the slope of the Ventilatory response to CO2 decreased significantly from 2.48 ± 1.05 to 1.77 ± 0.7, 1.74 ± 0.7, and 2.07 ± 0.74 L·min-1·mm Hg−1 at 30, 60, and 120 min after injection (x ± SD, P ≤ 0.05), respectively. At each time of the study, plasma fentanyl levels were significantly lower in the epidural group than in the intramuscular group (P ≤ 0.05). These results suggest that epidural fentanyl induces a non systemic Ventilatory depression that may be due to the rostral spread of the drug.
The Contribution of Simulation Training in Enhancing Key Components of Laparoscopic Competence

This study aims to investigate how basic training contributes to the performance of complex laparoscopic tasks performed in a virtual reality (VR) environment. An assessment methodology is proposed based on quantitative error analysis of key components of laparoscopic competence. Twenty-five inexperienced surgeons were trained on four basic tasks. The effect of training was assessed on three independent scenarios (two procedural: adhesiolysis and bowel suturing, and a laparoscopic cholecystectomy [LC]). Several error parameters were post hoc analyzed to yield a quantitative performance index for two fundamental skills: proficiency and safety. Time and instrument path length were also measured and compared. Correlation analysis was performed to study how these indices correlate one another. Significant learning curves were demonstrated during training. For adhesiolysis, all four indices improved significantly (P < 0.05). Time and path length presented plateaus for all basic tasks, whereas proficiency and safety only for two and one task(s), respectively. For bowel suturing, only time and safety errors showed a decrease (P < 0.05). Significant performance enhancement was observed for LC in which errors and path length reduced after training (P < 0.05). Our results revealed also an increased number of correlations after training, especially for proficiency. This study finds it possible to assess key competence skills based on the quantitative analysis of various parameters generated by a VR simulator. The improvement in basic training is transferred to more complex tasks. The proposed methodology is useful for structured evaluation of laparoscopic performance demonstrating fundamental elements of surgical competence.
Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century

Toasted marshmallows stuffed with raisins? Green-and-white luncheons? Chemistry in the kitchen? This entertaining and erudite social history now in its fourth paperback edition tells the remarkable story of America's transformation from a nation of honest appetites into an obedient market for instant mashed potatoes. In "Perfection Salad", Laura Shapiro investigates a band of passionate but ladylike reformers at the turn of the twentieth century - including Fannie Farmer of the Boston Cooking School - who were determined to modernize the American diet through a 'scientific' approach to cooking. Shapiro's fascinating tale shows why we think the way we do about food today.
Flexible Folded-Patch Antenna With Serrated Edges for Metal-Mountable UHF RFID Tag

A folded-patch tag antenna (30 mm <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times 30$ </tex-math></inline-formula> mm <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times 3$ </tex-math></inline-formula> mm or <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$0.0912\lambda \times 0.0912 \lambda \times 0.009 \lambda $ </tex-math></inline-formula>) is designed for mounting on metallic objects. It consists of a serrated patch radiator, ground patch, and loop-shaped stub, which are made on a flexible inlay wrapping around soft foam. Digital serration is used for fine-tuning the resonant frequency. The proposed tag antenna is able to achieve a read range beyond 7 m on metal. It can also be read from at least 3.5 m when used on dielectrics with permittivity in the range from 1 to 12.
Production of the CYS3 regulator, a bZIP DNA-binding protein, is sufficient to induce sulfur gene expression in Neurospora crassa

The cys-3+ gene of Neurospora crassa encodes a bZIP (basic region-leucine zipper) regulatory protein that is essential for sulfur structural gene expression (e.g., ars-1+). Nuclear transcription assays confirmed that cys-3+ was under sulfur-regulated transcriptional control and that cys-3+ transcription was constitutive in sulfur controller (scon)-negative regulator mutants. Given these results, I have tested whether expression of cys-3+ under high-sulfur (repressing) conditions was sufficient to induce sulfur gene expression. The N. crassa beta-tubulin (tub) promoter was fused to the cys-3+ coding segment and used to transform a cys-3 deletion mutant. Function of the tub::cys-3 fusion in homokaryotic transformants grown under high-sulfur conditions was confirmed by Northern (RNA) and Western immunoblot analysis. The tub::cys-3 transformants showed arylsulfatase gene expression under normally repressing high-sulfur conditions. A tub::cys-3ts fusion encoding a temperature-sensitive CYS3 protein was used to confirm that the induced structural gene expression was due to CYS3 protein function. Constitutive CYS3 production did not induce scon-2+ expression under repressing conditions. In addition, a cys-3 promoter fusion to lacZ showed that CYS3 production was sufficient to induce its own expression and provides in vivo evidence for autoregulation. Finally, an apparent inhibitory effect observed with a strain carrying a point mutation at the cys-3 locus was examined by in vitro heterodimerization studies. These results support an interpretation of CYS3 as a transcriptional activator whose regulation is a crucial control point in the signal response pathway triggered by sulfur limitation.
Personal space in schizophrenic patients.

BACKGROUND Personal space is the area individuals maintain around themselves into which others cannot intrude without arousing discomfort. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to establish whether schizophrenic patients and mentally healthy adults differ in interpersonal distance preferences according to 1) mental health status 2) experimenter sex 3) approach direction and/or 4) type of disorder. SUBJECTS 114 patients who met the ICD-10 criteria for schizophrenia and 120 age and gender matching adults with no history of mental illness participated in the study. METHOD Personal space was assessed using stop-distance technique. All subjects were approached by female and male experimenter from four directions. RESULTS Personal space zone was significantly larger in the schizophrenic patients than in the comparison group. Subjects in both groups maintained larger interpersonal distances when approached by a male experimenter and when approached frontally. No significant difference in personal space preference was found between subjects manifesting paranoid and residual type of schizophrenia. CONCLUSIONS The results suggest that schizophrenic patients, presumably due to their mental health, demonstrate a stronger need for personal space. These results are consistent with the protective function of personal space.
Metabolic effects of chronic sleep restriction in rats.

STUDY OBJECTIVES Chronic partial sleep loss is associated with obesity and metabolic syndrome in humans. We used rats with lesions in the ventrolateral preoptic area (VLPO), which spontaneously sleep about 30% less than intact rats, as an animal model to study the consequences of chronic partial sleep loss on energy metabolism. PARTICIPANTS Adult male Sprague-Dawley rats (300-365 g). INTERVENTIONS We ablated the VLPO in rats using orexin-B-saporin and instrumented them with electrodes for sleep recordings. We monitored their food intake and body weight for the next 60 days and assessed their sleep-wake by 24-h EEG/EMG recordings on day 20 and day 50 post-surgery. On day 60, after blood samples were collected for metabolic profiling, the animals were euthanized and the brains were harvested for histological confirmation of the lesion site. MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS VLPO-lesioned animals slept up to 40% less than sham-lesioned rats. However, they showed slower weight gain than sham-lesioned controls, despite having normal food intake. An increase in plasma ghrelin and a decrease in leptin levels were observed, whereas plasma insulin levels remained unaffected. As expected from leaner animals, plasma levels of glucose, cholesterol, triglycerides, and C-reactive protein were reduced in VLPO-lesioned animals. CONCLUSIONS Chronic partial sleep loss did not lead to obesity or metabolic syndrome in rats. This finding raises the question whether adverse metabolic outcomes associated with chronic partial sleep loss in humans may be due to factors other than short sleep, such as circadian disruption, inactivity, or diet during the additional waking hours.
Viral agents causing acute lower respiratory tract infections in hospitalized children at a tertiary care center in Saudi Arabia.

OBJECTIVE To determine the load and importance of respiratory viruses in hospitalized Saudi children with acute lower respiratory tract infections (ALRIs). METHODS A retrospective study was performed at the Departments of Pediatrics, Pathology/Microbiology, King Khalid University Hospital, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from January 2005 to December 2010. Nasopharyngeal aspirates were collected from 643 children with ALRI. Viruses were detected by direct immunofluorescence, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), adenovirus (ADV), type 1 to 3 parainfluenza viruses (PIV), and type A and B influenza virus (flu). RESULTS Of the 643 children with ALRI, viruses were detected in 309 (48.1%) specimens. The viruses that were identified included RSV (n=295, 95.5%), PIV (n=8, 1.2%), ADV (n=2, 0.3%), flu A (n=2, 0.3%), and flu B (n=2, 0.3%). The RSV was predominated in 231 (75%) children less than one year of age. Only younger age and male gender were associated with severe illness. The peak frequency of the viruses detected was in the winter. Of the 309 virus positive samples, bronchiolitis was detected in 81.2% (n=251), and pneumonia in 14.2% (n=44) (p<0.0001). CONCLUSION Viruses are an important cause of ALRIs in Saudi children constituting approximately 48.1% of the total cases. The RSV is the most common pathogen (95.5%) causing ALRIs. Most of the children were younger than one year of age, and were more likely to present with bronchiolitis than pneumonia.
Global and Local Consistent Age Generative Adversarial Networks

Age progression/regression is a challenging task due to the complicated and non-linear transformation in human aging process. Many researches have shown that both global and local facial features are essential for face representation [1], but previous GAN based methods mainly focused on the global feature in age synthesis. To utilize both global and local facial information, we propose a Global and Local Consistent Age Generative Adversarial Network (GLCA-GAN). In our generator, a global network learns the whole facial structure and simulates the aging trend of the whole face, while three crucial facial patches are progressed or regressed by three local networks aiming at imitating subtle changes of crucial facial subregions. To preserve most of the details in age-attribute-irrelevant areas, our generator learns the residual face. Moreover, we employ an identity preserving loss to better preserve the identity information, as well as age preserving loss to enhance the accuracy of age synthesis. A pixel loss is also adopted to preserve detailed facial information of the input face. Our proposed method is evaluated on three face aging datasets, i.e., CACD dataset, Morph dataset and FG-NET dataset. Experimental results show appealing performance of the proposed method by comparing with the state-of-the-art.
FoxO1 Is Required for the Regulation of Preproglucagon Gene Expression by Insulin in Pancreatic αTC1-9 Cells*

Forkhead/winged helix box gene, group O-1 (FoxO1) is a member of a family of nuclear transcription factors regulated by insulin-dependent phosphorylation and implicated in the development of the endocrine pancreas. We show here firstly that FoxO1 protein is expressed in both primary mouse islet α and β cells. Examined in clonal αTC1-9 cells, insulin caused endogenous FoxO1 to translocate from the nucleus to the cytoplasm. Demonstrating the importance of nuclear exclusion of FoxO1 for the inhibition of preproglucagon gene expression, FoxO1 silencing by RNA interference reduced preproglucagon mRNA levels by >40% in the absence of insulin and abolished the decrease in mRNA levels elicited by the hormone. Electrophoretic mobility shift assay and chromatin immunoprecipitation revealed direct binding of FoxO1 to a forkhead consensus binding site, termed GL3, in the preproglucagon gene promoter region, localized –1798 bp upstream of the transcriptional start site. Deletion or mutation of this site diminished FoxO1 binding and eliminated transcriptional regulation by glucose or insulin. FoxO1 silencing also abolished the acute regulation by insulin, but not glucose, of glucagon secretion, demonstrating the importance of FoxO1 expression in maintaining the α-cell phenotype.
Large Species Shifts Triggered by Small Forces

Changes in species composition of communities seem to proceed gradually at first sight, but remarkably rapid shifts are known to occur. Although disrupting disturbances seem an obvious explanation for such shifts, evidence for large disturbances is not always apparent. Here we show that complex communities tend to move through occasional catastrophic shifts in response to gradual environmental change or evolution. This tendency is caused by multiple attractors that may exist in such systems. We show that alternative attractors arise robustly in randomly generated multispecies models, especially if competition is symmetrical and if interspecific competition is allowed to exceed intraspecific competition. Inclusion of predators as a second trophic level did not alter the results greatly, although it reduced the probability of alternative attractors somewhat. These results suggest that alternative attractors may commonly arise from interactions between large numbers of species. Consequently, the response of complex communities to environmental change is expected to be characterized by hysteresis and sudden shifts. Some unexplained regime shifts observed in ecosystems could be related to alternative attractors arising from complex species interactions. Additionally, our results support the idea that ancient mass extinctions may partly be due to an intrinsic loss of stability of species configurations.
Use of a standardized order set for achieving target temperature in the implementation of therapeutic hypothermia after cardiac arrest: a feasibility study.

OBJECTIVES Induced hypothermia (HT) after cardiac arrest improved outcomes in randomized trials. Current post-cardiac arrest treatment guidelines advocate HT; however, utilization in practice remains low. One reported barrier to adoption is clinician concern over potential technical difficulty of HT. We hypothesized that using a standardized order set, clinicians could achieve HT target temperature in routine practice with equal or better efficiency than that observed in randomized trials. METHODS After a multidisciplinary HT education program, we implemented a standardized order set for HT induction and maintenance including sedation and paralysis, intravenous cold saline infusion, and an external cooling apparatus, with a target temperature range of 33-34 degrees C. We performed a retrospective analysis of a prospectively compiled and maintained registry of cardiac arrest patients with HT attempted (intent-to-treat) over the first year of implementation. The primary outcome measures were defined a priori by extrapolating treatment arm data from the largest and most efficacious randomized trial: 1) successful achievement of target temperature for >or=85% of patients in the cohort and 2) median time from return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC) to achieving target temperature <8 hours. RESULTS Clinicians attempted HT on 23 post-cardiac arrest patients (arrest location: 78% out-of-hospital, 22% in-hospital; initial rhythm: 26% ventricular fibrillation/tachycardia, 70% pulseless electrical activity or asystole) and achieved the target temperature in 22/23 (96%) cases. Median time from ROSC to target temperature was 4.4 (interquartile range 2.8-7.2) hours. Complication rates were low. CONCLUSIONS Using a standardized order set, clinicians can achieve HT target temperature in routine practice.