Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Substance Use on School Property among Students Attending Alternative High Schools in the United States

We analyzed nationally representative data from the 1998 National Alternative High School Youth Risk Behavior Survey, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to determine the prevalence of substance use on school property among alternative high school students in the United States, to describe the characteristics of students who use substances on school property, and to examine the interrelationships of substance-use behaviors. During the 30 days preceding the survey, nearly 48 percent of students used at least one substance on school property and 17 percent used more than one substance on school property. Males were more likely than females and white students were more likely than black or Hispanic students to have used substances on school property. The results of this and other studies suggest that school administrators, public health practitioners, and policy makers should work to improve strategies for reducing substance use in this heterogeneous, hard-to-reach population.
Amyloid Architecture: Complementary Assembly of Heterogeneous Combinations of Three or Four Peptides into Amyloid Fibrils

The amyloid fibril is a misfolded and undesirable state for proteins that has been proposed to be a causative agent for a variety of fatal diseases known as amyloid diseases, such as Alzheimer's and prion diseases. However, the fibril has a highly ordered tertiary structure in which numerous β‐strand polypeptide chains align in a regular pattern. Thus, this kind of fibril has the potential to be engineered into proteinaceous materials. Amyloid fibrils of misfolded proteins primarily comprise a single polypeptide species, that is, the self‐assembly is homogeneous. We here found that three or four designed peptides can assemble heterogeneously and cooperatively into amyloid fibrils, a process accompanied by a drastic secondary structural transition from α helix to β sheet. Heterogeneous assembly into fibrils is accomplished by complementary electrostatic interactions between three or four peptide species, each of which is not able to self‐assemble homogeneously. These findings will lead to a novel way to study the molecular details of amyloid formation and also to design β‐sheet peptidyl materials.
Optimality Conditions for Minimizers at Infinity in Polynomial Programming

In this paper we study necessary optimality conditions for the optimization problem $$\textrm{infimum}f_0(x) \quad \textrm{ subject to } \quad x \in S,$$ where $f_0 \colon \mathbb{R}^n \rightarrow \mathbb{R}$ is a polynomial function and $S \subset \mathbb{R}^n$ is a set defined by polynomial inequalities. Assume that the problem is bounded below and has the Mangasarian--Fromovitz property at infinity. We first show that if the problem does {\em not} have an optimal solution, then a version at infinity of the Fritz-John optimality conditions holds. From this we derive a version at infinity of the Karush--Kuhn--Tucker optimality conditions. As applications, we obtain a Frank--Wolfe type theorem which states that the optimal solution set of the problem is nonempty provided the objective function $f_0$ is convenient. Finally, in the unconstrained case, we show that the optimal value of the problem is the smallest critical value of some polynomial. All the results are presented in terms of the Newton polyhedra of the polynomials defining the problem.
Generalizing Quantile Regression for Counting Processes With Applications to Recurrent Events

In survival analysis, quantile regression has become a useful approach to account for covariate effects on the distribution of an event time of interest. In this article, we discuss how quantile regression can be extended to model counting processes and thus lead to a broader regression framework for survival data. We specifically investigate the proposed modeling of counting processes for recurrent events data. We show that the new recurrent events model retains the desirable features of quantile regression such as easy interpretation and good model flexibility, while accommodating various observation schemes encountered in observational studies. We develop a general theoretical and inferential framework for the new counting process model, which unifies with an existing method for censored quantile regression. As another useful contribution of this work, we propose a sample-based covariance estimation procedure, which provides a useful complement to the prevailing bootstrapping approach. We demonstrate the utility of our proposals via simulation studies and an application to a dataset from the U.S. Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Patient Registry (CFFPR). Supplementary materials for this article are available online.
Differential HIV risk for racial/ethnic minority trans*female youths and socioeconomic disparities in housing, residential stability, and education.

OBJECTIVES We examined HIV prevalence and risk behaviors of 282 trans*female youths aged 16 to 24 years participating in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, SHINE study from 2012 to 2013 to determine differences between racial/ethnic minority and White youths. METHODS We conducted the χ(2) test to determine distributional differences between racial/ethnic minority and White participants in sociodemographic factors, HIV-related risk behaviors, and syndemic factors. RESULTS Of the trans*female youths, 4.8% were HIV positive. Racial/ethnic minority and White trans*female youths differed significantly in gender identity and sexual orientation. Racial/ethnic minority youths also had significantly lower educational attainment, were less likely to have lived with their parents of origin as a child, and were significantly more likely to engage in recent condomless anal intercourse than were Whites. CONCLUSIONS Efforts to assess the impact of multiple-minority stress on racial/minority trans*female youths are needed imminently, and prevention efforts must address macrolevel disparities for trans*female youths, especially those from racial/ethnic minority groups, to reduce these disparities and prevent incident cases of HIV.
Optimal control of switched-mode dynamical systems

Abstract The subject of this presentation is the problem of optimal mode-scheduling in switched-mode hybrid dynamical systems. This problem is cast in the setting of optimal control, where it is desirable to optimize a cost functional, defined on the system's continuous state trajectory, as a function of the schedule of modes. The resultant optimal control problem has a special structure that yields effective iterative algorithms for its solution. This presentation discusses a computational framework that is based on gradient descent and the Armijo step size. The algorithms are analyzed in both off-line and real-time setting, and their convergence is established without assuming an upper bound on the system's switching rate.
On the Chacteristic numbers of Voting Games

This paper deals with the non-emptiness of the stability set for any proper voting game. We present an upper bound on the number of alternatives which guarantees the non emptiness of this solution concept. We show that this bound is greater than or equal to the one given by Le Breton and Salles (1990) for quota games.
Adjustable Decisions for Reducing the Price of Robustness of Capacity Expansion Planning

This paper proposes and implements robust optimization methodologies for making investment decisions in the capacity expansion planning (CEP) of power systems in an uncertain environment. Uncertainties of fuel prices, demand, and transmission capacity are captured in an uncertainty set. With adjustable robust optimization (ARO), we represent all the decision variables as affine functions of multiple uncertain data. This adjustability of decisions provides that the ARO solution has significant less price of robustness than in traditional robust optimization (RO). ARO models uncertainty in terms of parameter ranges, called “uncertainty sets. ” An attractive attribute of utilizing uncertainty sets is that they facilitate computational tractability when simulating scenarios with multiple uncertainties. We study the 40-year planning of a 5-region, 13-technology US energy portfolio. Results show that 1) by appropriately selecting the decision rules in ARO, the price of robustness can be significantly reduced while maintaining the same levels of robustness; and 2) the RO-based models maintain high levels of robustness even under operational conditions provided by data coming from larger sizes of the uncertainty sets.
B‐Type natriuretic peptide and the prediction of outcome in patients admitted to intensive care

B‐type natriuretic peptide is known to predict outcome in congestive cardiac failure and myocardial infarction. We aimed to determine whether measurement of B‐type natriuretic peptide would predict hospital mortality in patients admitted to an intensive care unit. We conducted a prospective observational cohort study in 78 consecutive patients. Demographics, clinical details and clinical outcomes were recorded. Admission and 24 h B‐type natriuretic peptide and cardiac troponin I levels were measured. B‐type natriuretic peptide and cardiac troponin I levels taken on intensive care admission and 24 h after admission did not accurately predict hospital mortality for all patients, including patients with severe sepsis or septic shock (all p > 0.05). B‐type natriuretic peptide levels were higher in patients with severe sepsis and septic shock (p = 0.02), in patients ≥ 65 years (p = 0.04) and in patients with raised creatinine ≥ 110 μmol. l−1 (p = 0.02). We concluded that B‐type natriuretic peptide, measured soon after admission to intensive care, does not usefully predict outcome after intensive care.
Antibacterial activity of Alchornea cordifolia leaves found in Ebonyi state , Nigeria

This research work was carried out to investigate the antibacterial effect of aqueous and ethylacetate leaf extracts of Alchornea cordifolia plant using inhibitory zones of inhibition and killing rate studies. Antimicrobial activities of the extracts were performed against selected bacterial strains. Results show that different leaf extracts exhibited different levels of activities which were dependent on the nature of the test organisms. Gram-positive bacteria showed more susceptibility to the leaf extracts than the Gram-negative bacteria. The water extract and the ethylacetate extract exerted highest activity against S. aureus while good inhibitory activities were exerted by Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Klebsiella on the ethylacetate extract. This study reveals that aqueous and ethylacetate leaf extracts of Alchornea cordifolia plant exhibited strong inhibitory activities; the effect was bacteriostatic on some organisms and bacteriocidal on others. These differences in the susceptibilities of the isolates to the plant extracts can be related to the cell wall composition of the organisms. Aqueous and ethylacetate leaf extracts of A. cordifolia have potential to improve human health through its antimicrobial activities. Therefore, development of alternative antibacterial treatment drugs from medicinal plants are urgently needed for the treatment of infectious diseases from different sources.
Tubular reabsorption and diabetes‐induced glomerular hyperfiltration

Elevated glomerular filtration rate (GFR) is a common observation in early diabetes mellitus and closely correlates with the progression of diabetic nephropathy. Hyperfiltration has been explained to be the result of a reduced load of sodium and chloride passing macula densa, secondarily to an increased proximal reabsorption of glucose and sodium by the sodium‐glucose co‐transporters. This results in an inactivation of the tubuloglomerular feedback (TGF), leading to a reduced afferent arteriolar vasoconstriction and subsequently an increase in GFR. This hypothesis has recently been questioned due to the observation that adenosine A1‐receptor knockout mice, previously shown to lack a functional TGF mechanism, still display a pronounced hyperfiltration when diabetes is induced. Leyssac demonstrated in the 1960s (Acta Physiol Scand58, 1963:236) that GFR and proximal reabsorption can work independently of each other. Furthermore, by the use of micropuncture technique a reduced hydrostatic pressure in Bowman’s space or in the proximal tubule of diabetic rats has been observed. A reduced pressure in Bowman’s space will increase the pressure gradient over the filtration barrier and can contribute to the development of diabetic hyperfiltration. When inhibiting proximal reabsorption with a carbonic anhydrase inhibitor, GFR decreases and proximal tubular pressure increases. Measuring intratubular pressure allows a sufficient time resolution to reveal that net filtration pressure decreases before TGF is activated which highlights the importance of intratubular pressure as a regulator of GFR. Taken together, these results imply that the reduced intratubular pressure observed in diabetes might be crucial for the development of glomerular hyperfiltration.
Light Dependence of [3H]Leucine Incorporation in the Oligotrophic North Pacific Ocean

ABSTRACT The influence of irradiance on bacterial incorporation of [3H]leucine was evaluated at Station ALOHA in the oligotrophic North Pacific subtropical gyre. Six experiments were conducted on three cruises to Station ALOHA to examine how [3H]leucine incorporation varied as a function of irradiance. Two experiments were also conducted to assess the photoautotrophic response to irradiance (based on photosynthetic uptake of [14C]bicarbonate) in both the upper and lower photic zones. Rates of [3H]leucine incorporation responded to irradiance in a photosynthesis-like manner, increasing sharply at low light and then saturating and sometimes declining with increasing light intensity. The influence of irradiance on bacterial growth was evaluated in both the well-lit (5 to 25 m) and dimly lit regions of the upper ocean (75 to 100 m) to determine whether the bacterial response to irradiance differed along the depth-dependent light gradient of the photic zone. [3H]leucine incorporation rates were analyzed with a photosynthesis-irradiance model for a quantitative description of the relationships between [3H]leucine incorporation and irradiance. Maximum rates of [3H]leucine incorporation in the upper photic zone increased 48 to 92% relative to those of dark-incubated samples, with [3H]leucine incorporation saturating at light intensities between 58 and 363 μmol of quanta m−2 s−1. Rates of [3H]leucine incorporation in the deep photic zone were photostimulated 53 to 114% and were susceptible to photoinhibition, with rates declining at light intensities of >100 μmol of quanta m−2 s−1. The results of these experiments revealed that sunlight directly influences bacterial growth in this open-ocean ecosystem.
IGF-I system responses during 12 weeks of resistance training in end-stage renal disease patients.

OBJECTIVE To examine the hypothesis that 12 weeks of resistance training would alter circulating concentrations of IGF-I system components in end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients. DESIGN Ten ESRD patients underwent 12 weeks of resistance training after a 6 week control period and had morning fasted blood drawn on four occasions (weeks - 6, 0, 6, 12). Immunoassays were performed for serum total and free IGF-I, IGF binding proteins (IGFBPs) 2 and 3, and the acid labile subunit (ALS). Immunoaffinity depletion of ALS-based complexes allowed measurement of non-ternary (i.e., binary) IGF-I and IGFBP-3. RESULTS Significant improvements in strength and functional performance were observed. All IGF-I measures were stable during the control period and no changes were observed for the first 6 weeks of resistance training. At week 12, total IGF-I (-15.4+/-28.9%), ternary IGF-I (-16.4+/-36.7%), and the IGF-I/IGFBP-3 ratio had significantly (p < or = 0.05) declined from week 0 values. No changes were observed for free IGF-I, IGFBPs 2 and 3, or the acid labile subunit. The proportion of IGF-I in ternary ( approximately 76.3+/-6.8%), non-ternary ( approximately 22.5+/-6.6%), and free ( approximately 1.2+/-0.5%) forms remained constant throughout the training. CONCLUSIONS 12 weeks of resistance training in ESRD patients induced a decline in total IGF-I, but did not alter the proportion of IGF-I circulating in free, ternary or non-ternary molecular complexes. The decline in IGF-I occurs in the presence of positive training adaptations on physical performance and we conclude that this response pattern appears to be reflective of favorable neuromuscular anabolic adaptations.
Analysis of non-derivatised bacteriohopanepolyols by ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry.

RATIONALE Traditional investigation of bacteriohopanepolyols (BHPs) has relied on derivatisation by acetylation prior to gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) or liquid chromatography/MS (LC/MS) analysis. Here, modern chromatographic techniques (ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography (UPLC)) and new column chemistries were tested to develop a method for BHP analysis without the need for derivatisation. METHODS Bacterial culture and sedimentary lipid extracts were analysed using a Waters Acquity Xevo TQ-S triple quadrupole mass spectrometer in positive ion atmospheric pressure chemical ionisation (APCI) mode. Waters BEH C18 and ACE Excel C18 were the central columns evaluated using a binary solvent gradient with 0.1% formic acid in the polar solvent phase in order to optimise performance and selectivity. RESULTS Non-amine BHPs and adenosylhopane showed similar performance on each C18 column; however, BHP-containing terminal amines were only identified eluting from the ultra-inert ACE Excel C18 column. APCI-MS/MS product ion scans revealed significant differences in fragmentation pathways from previous methods for acetylated compounds. The product ions used for targeted multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) are summarised. CONCLUSIONS UPLC/MS/MS analysis using an ACE Excel C18 column produced superior separation for amine-containing BHPs and reduced run times from 60 to 9 min compared with previous methods. Unexpected variations in fragmentation pathways between structural subgroups must be taken into account when optimising MRM transitions for future quantitative studies. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Implant and beta agonist impacts on beef palatability 1

The use of anabolic implants has a longstanding place in the cattle feeding industry, due to their positive impact on growth performance and subsequent profitability. However, implants can have adverse effects on carcass quality, shear force, and eating quality depending on the dose and frequency, or what some refer to as the aggressiveness of the implant regimen administered. Within the past decade, a new class of growth promotants, known as β-adrenergic agonists (βAA), has emerged in the beef feeding industry in the United States. Currently, 2 have gained U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for use in beef finishing diets to improve performance and carcass yields. Much like anabolic implants, these repartitioning agents can have negative effects on Warner-Bratzler shear force (WBSF), but the differences do not necessarily translate directly to consumer responses for palatability and acceptance in some instances, especially when tenderness is managed through proper postmortem aging. As researchers continued to investigate the mechanisms responsible for the impact of βAA, inevitably this led to consideration of the interaction between βAA and anabolic implants. Early work combining zilpaterol hydrochloride (ZH) with anabolic implants improved performance, carcass yield, and meat yield with additive negative effects on WBSF. Similar results were produced when pairing ZH with anabolic steroids equipped with various release patterns. As with any tool, the key to success is proper management. Certain cattle populations may be better suited to receive growth promotants such as implants and βAA, and postmortem management of subprimal cuts becomes vital when producers take more aggressive approaches to improve performance and yield. The objective of this review is to overview research findings related to the impact of growth promotant technologies on beef palatability, focusing specifically on the role of implants and βAA on carcass quality, beef tenderness, and consumer responses for meat palatability.
Removal of heavy metals from waste waters by vermiculites

Abstract The sorbent behaviour of (natural and exfoliated) vermiculite minerals was studied with respect to metal cations (Ni, Cu, Cd) commonly present in waste waters of the metal finishing industry. The Langmuir model was found to describe the sorption processes well, showing the maximum sorption capacities of natural vermiculite to be high enough (bCu = 26.0 mg g−1; bCd = 23.5 mg g−1; bNi = 19.3 mg g−1) for its use in metal waste water purification systems to be feasible. The column studies performed with this mineral show that a large volume of metal solutions with similar concentrations to those usually present in waste waters can be purified down to the legal limit of waste. These positive results are ratified when real waste waters are used at lab‐scale as well as at semi‐industrial scale, validating the use of this mineral as a cost‐effective treatment to purify such waste waters
Risk of venous thrombo-embolic events in pregnant patients with cancer

Abstract Objective: Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is one of the leading causes of pregnancy-associated death in the Western world. Cancer is a known risk factor for thrombosis outside of pregnancy. The objective of this study is to evaluate the effect of cancer on the risk of VTE, including deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE) in pregnancy. Methods: We conducted a retrospective population-based cohort study using the Health Care Cost and Utilization Project database from 2003 to 2011. Risk of developing DVT, PE and VTE among pregnant patients with the 10 most prevalent malignancies was measured using unconditional logistic regression analysis. Results: A total of 2826 women were identified with underlying malignancies, among our study cohort of 7 917 453 women. Risk of VTE was increased among pregnant patients with cervical cancer (OR 8.64, 95% CI (2.15–34.79)), ovarian cancer (OR 10.35, 95% CI (1.44–74.19)), Hodgkin’s disease (OR 7.87, 95% CI (2.94–21.05)) and myeloid leukemia (OR 20.75, 95% CI (6.61–65.12)). There was no increased risk of VTE among women with brain cancer, thyroid cancer, melanoma and lymphoid leukemia. Conclusion: Many cancers may increase risk of VTE in pregnancy. Appropriate thromboprophylaxis should be considered in some of these women, particularly those with hematological malignancies and gynecologic cancers.
Increased deaths from gastric cancer in communities living close to waste landfills

Background: Municipal waste landfills (MWLs) have been linked with some malignancies, but data about gastric cancer (GC) are still uncertain. Methods: Number of deaths from GC, death rates, and odds ratios (ORs) were calculated considering all residents in the 258 towns in the Apulia Region (4,099,547 subjects, years 2006–2009), living within 3 km from each of the 16 regional MWLs (n = 716,404) or in control areas (n = 3,383,143). Results: Males living close to MWLs showed a higher death rate for GC, a twofold higher mean number of GC deaths and higher adjusted ORs of GC, compared with controls areas. Conclusions: In a large population and over a wide time period, an increased risk of death from GC has been shown in males living in communities close to MWLs. Primary prevention policies acting through more sustainable waste management might probably partially reduce deaths from GC in areas with MWLs.