Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Assessment of Nutritional Intake, Body Mass Index and Glycemic Control in Patients with Type-2 Diabetes from Northern Tanzania

Background/Aims: Little information is available about the nutrition of people with diabetes from Africa. For the treatment and prevention of diabetes by nutrition, we have assessed the major local foods in a baseline study. Methods: The staple foods and meal frequencies of 53 outpatients with type-2 diabetes were assessed in a 24-hour dietary recall based on a questionnaire at a diabetes clinic in northern Tanzania in November and December 1999. In addition, data on weight and height, casual blood glucose, urinary glucose and diabetes therapy were ascertained. Results: 72% of the patients had a body mass index of ≧25 kg/m2; 64% of patients had casual blood glucose levels of >7.8 mmol/l, 47% had >11.1 mmol/l, and most of them were treated by sulfonylureas or conventional insulin therapy. The test for urinary glucose highly correlated with the blood glucose values, and was positive in 59% of patients. 36% of the patients had ≤3 meals/day. The foods stated most frequently were stiff porridge, plantains, bread, rice, beef, milk, amaranth leaves, orange and sunflower oil. The main beverages were water, tea and milk. Conclusions: The baseline data obtained enable more precise dietary assessment and emphasize the need to collect more data on local food consumption in areas where pharmacological diabetes treatment is limited.
Noninvasive Diagnosis of Deep Venous Thrombosis: Lesson from the Debate about Computerized Impedance Plethysmography

We read with great interest the recent reports by Prandoni et al. which showed 1) that computerized impedance plethysmography (CIP) had a high accuracy for diagnosing deep venous thrombosis (DVT) in suspected outpatients when compared with venography (1) and 2) CIP failed in a subsequent so-called management study to accurately discriminate between patients with or without DVT, which resulted in a 3.2% occurrence of symptomatic venous thromboembolism during the 6-month follow-up of the patients with normal CIP and no anticoagulant treatment (2). In his accompanying editorial, Hirsh pointed out that the disappointing results of the management study with CIP should not be generalized to the standard impedance plethysmography (IPG) or to real-time B-mode ultrasound imaging techniques since both methods have been shown to be safe and effective in the management of patients with clinically suspected DVT (3). This point was also emphasized in Dr. Lensing's letter to the Editor in the December 1991 issue of this journal (4). We believe that 1) the bad results of Prandoni (2) with CIP directly derive from the intrinsic performances (sensitivity and specificity against the gold standard) which they published in their initial study (1) and 2) results of "management studies" can be accurately anticipated from these intrinsic characteristics and from the prevalence of DVT in the population submitted to the test, as demonstrated in Table 1. Assuming a prevalence of DVT of 25% in a population of 1,000 suspected patients, the diagnosis of proximal DVT would have been missed in 15-35 (95% confidence interval) subjects with CIP, 13-18 cases with IPG and 0-13 patients with B-mode echography (B-US). These figures are entirely consistent with the reported rates of clinically manifest thromboembolic recurrences in the patients in whom anticoagulation was withheld on the basis of a negative CIP (3.2%, 1.6%-6%) (2) or IPG (1.2%, 0,5%-2.1%) (4). Thus, emphasis should be put on skilled and extensive testing of the intrinsic performances of new tests rather than on "management trials" which usually include too few patients to accurately study the clinical endpoint of recurrent thromboembo-
Interpleural infusion of 2% lidocaine with 1:200,000 epinephrine for postthoracotomy analgesia.

The value of intrapleural analgesia after thoracotomy is still controversial. We investigated the pharmacokinetics of interpleural analgesia in 14 patients with and without thoracic drainage (Groups TD+ and TD-, respectively) to determine the safety of the technique. The infusion led to a high steady-state concentration (Css) of 5.91 +/- 2.46 mg/mL in Group TD-. We then performed a placebo-controlled double-blind study on 16 patients to evaluate the analgesic effects of an interpleural infusion of 2% lidocaine using intravenous patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) with morphine and a visual analog scale score (VAS). In both studies an initial bolus of 3 mg/kg of 2% lidocaine was followed by an infusion of 1 mg.kg-1.h-1 for 48 h. The VAS score was slightly reduced after the bolus (6.6 +/- 1.0 vs 8.7 +/- 0.3; P < 0.05 vs the placebo group) but the cumulative doses of morphine were similar in both groups. There was a slight, but not sustained, improvement in pulmonary function test. In conclusion, interpleural analgesia by continuous infusion of lidocaine is poor after thoracotomy and may lead to blood levels in the toxic range.
Tobacco smoking and periodontal microflora in a Saudi Arabian population.

OBJECTIVES To explore the subgingival periodontal microflora in a Saudi Arabian population with a special focus on its relationship with various smoking habits. MATERIAL AND METHODS A total of 198 individuals in the age range 17-60 years were included in the study. 29% were water-pipe smokers, 18% cigarette smokers, 13% smokers of both water pipe and cigarettes (mixed smokers) and 40% non-smokers. For each individual, a subgingival plaque sample from the deepest site in each quadrant was obtained. The checkerboard DNA-DNA hybridization technology was used to determine the presence of Porphyromonas gingivalis, Prevotella intermedia, Prevotella nigrescens, Tannerella forsythensis, Actinobacillus actinomycetemcomitans, Fusobacterium nucleatum, Treponoma denticola, Peptostreptococcus micros, Campylobacter rectus, Eikenella corrodens, Selenomonas noxia and Streptococcus intermedius. Two cut-off levels for detection were used, score 1(10(5) bacteria) and score 3 (10(6) bacteria). RESULTS The prevalence of individuals positive for the different microorganisms at score 1 cut-off varied from 7% to 95%. At score 3 cut-off the prevalence varied from 0% to 30%. The depth of sample site was a key factor for detection. When the depth of sample site was taken into account, no statistically significant differences were observed between cigarette smokers, water-pipe smokers, and non-smokers with regard to occurrence of the microorganisms studied. CONCLUSIONS No major differences were observed between cigarette smokers, water-pipe smokers, and non-smokers regarding the occurrence of the periodontal microorganisms studied suggesting that this portion of the subgingival periodontal microflora is independent of tobacco smoking.
Parents ’ Reactions to the Diagnosis of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy : Associations Between Resolution , Family Functioning , and Child Behavior Problems

Introduction Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is the most common inherited form of muscular dystrophy, affecting approximately 1 of every 5,000 live male births (Mah et al., 2014; Piccini et al., 2014). DMD is a severe, progressive disease that results in skeletal muscle weakness that is caused by a mutation in the gene that encodes for dystrophin (Bushby et al., 2010). ChildrenwithDMD initially have no symptoms; the parents may notice early symptoms from the age of 6 months onward, but the diagnosis is often delayed until the male child is about 5 years old (Ciafaloni et al., 2009). During childhood, parents may observe that their child has problems with standing up, running, or climbing. After the age of 8 years, the relative weakness in the leg muscles becomes more apparent, and a wheelchair is needed (Pane et al., 2014). Over the past 20 years, many patients with DMDhave lived until 40 years old (Yiu & Kornberg, 2015). Current therapeutic strategies for DMD are largely based on symptomatic treatment with corticosteroids that have anti-inflammatory effects. Experiencing a mistaken diagnosis often makes parents more resistant to accepting or adjusting to a diagnosis of DMD because the adaptive process to the progressive nature ABSTRACT
Pregnancy‐induced changes in insulin‐like growth factor I (IGF‐I), insulin‐like growth factor binding protein 3 (IGFBP‐3), and acid‐labile subunit (ALS) in patients with growth hormone (GH) deficiency and excess

Background. Under most circumstances with altered growth hormone (GH) secretion, the changes of insulin‐like growth factor I (IGF‐I), insulin‐like growth factor binding protein 3 (IGFBP‐3), and acid‐labile subunit (ALS) are in parallel. The aim of the present study was to compare the effects of pregnancy in a hypopituitary patient with those of pregnancy in an acromegalic patient on IGF‐I, IGFBP‐3, and ALS. Methods and results. IGF‐I and ALS were low before pregnancy in the hypopituitary patient under glucocorticoid and thyroxine treatment. Gonadotropin treatment allowed her to become pregnant; IGF‐I and ALS levels rose in the second half of pregnancy and fell again after delivery. IGF‐I concentrations were elevated in the patient with persistent acromegaly before and dropped into the normal range during the first half of pregnancy. In the second half of pregnancy and following delivery, IGF‐I levels increased again. IGFBP‐3 levels (as assessed by immunoblot analysis as well as by 125I‐IGF II ligand blotting) decreased markedly during pregnancy in both patients, suggesting that the placenta rather than pituitary GH regulates IGFBP‐3 proteolysis in human pregnancy. The increase of IGF‐I (and ALS) during the second half of pregnancy in the individual with pituitary GH deficiency may be attributed to placental GH. The fall of IGF‐I (and ALS) into the normal range in the acromegalic patient during the first trimester of pregnancy may be related to decreased production or decreased half‐life of these proteins. Conclusion. Our data suggest that measures to continuously replace GH or to suppress GH secretion during pregnancy in patients with GH deficiency or excess, respectively, may not be warranted.
Using grayscale images for object recognition with convolutional-recursive neural network

There is a common tendency in object recognition research to accumulate large volumes of image features to improve performance. However, whether using more information contributes to higher accuracy is still controversial given the increased computational cost. This work investigates the performance of grayscale images compared to RGB counterparts for visual object classification. A comparison between object recognition based on RGB images and RGB images converted to grayscale was conducted using a cascaded CNN-RNN neural network structure, and compared with other types of commonly used classifiers such as Random Forest, SVM and SP-HMP. Experimental results showed that classification with grayscale images resulted in higher accuracy classification than with RGB images across the different types of classifiers. Results also demonstrated that utilizing a small receptive field CNN and edgy feature selection on grayscale images can result in higher classification accuracy with the advantage of reduced computational cost.
A review study on medicinal plants used in the treatment of learning and memory impairments

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive brain disorder that gradually impairs the person's memory and ability to learn, reasoning, judgment, communication and daily activities. AD is characterized clinically by cognitive impairment and pathologically by the deposition of β amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles, and the degeneration of the cholinergic basal forebrain. During the progression of AD patients may produce changes in personality and behavior, such as anxiety, paranoia, confusion, hallucinations and also to experience delusions and fantasies. The first neurotransmitter defect discovered in AD involved acetylcholine as cholinergic function is required for short-term memory. Oxidative stress may underlie the progressive neurodegeneration characteristic of AD. Brain structures supporting memory are uniquely sensitive to oxidative stress due to their elevated demand for oxygen. The neurodegenerative process in AD may involve β amyloid toxicity. Neurotoxicity of β amyloid appears to involve oxidative stress. Currently, there is no cure for this disease but in new treatments, reveals a new horizon on the biology of this disease. This paper reviews the effects of a number of commonly used types of herbal medicines for the treatment of AD. The objective of this article was to review evidences from controlled studies in order to determine whether herbs can be useful in the treatment of cognitive disorders in the elderly.
Phencyclidine‐induced stereotyped behaviour and social isolation in rats: a possible animal model of schizophrenia

Phencyclidine (PCP) can induce a model psychosis in humans that mimics the positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia. The purpose of the present study was to determine whether PCP can induce similar behavioural effects in rats and whether these effects can be alleviated by neuroleptic drug treatment. Rats were tested in the social interaction test, and their behaviour was quantified by an automated video-tracking system and manual scorings of stereotyped behaviour and ataxia. The behavioural effects of different dose- and administration regimes of PCP were initially determined, and it was found that PCP dose-dependently induced stereotyped behaviour and social isolation in the rats. Comparison to clinical studies suggests that these behaviours correspond to certain aspects of the positive and negative symptoms, respectively, of a PCP psychosis in humans. Subsequently, the effects of 3 or 21 days of administration of the antipsychotic drugs antipsychotic or clozapine on the behaviour of either vehicle- or PCP-treated rats were determined. Haloperidol did not produce a selective antagonism of PCP, whereas chronic clozapine selectively inhibited the PCP-induced stereotyped behaviour and social isolation. These effects of haloperidol and clozapine suggest that this animal model can determine the effects of neuroleptic drugs on positive and negative symptoms, onset of action, and side-effect profile, including effects on the motor system. Together these data suggest that this may be a possible animal model of the positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia.
Prostaglandin E2 Induces Oncostatin M Expression in Human Chronic Wound Macrophages through Axl Receptor Tyrosine Kinase Pathway

Monocytes and macrophages (mϕ) are plastic cells whose functions are governed by microenvironmental cues. Wound fluid bathing the wound tissue reflects the wound microenvironment. Current literature on wound inflammation is primarily based on the study of blood monocyte-derived macrophages, cells that have never been exposed to the wound microenvironment. We sought to compare pair-matched monocyte-derived macrophages with mϕ isolated from chronic wounds of patients. Oncostatin M (OSM) was differentially overexpressed in pair-matched wound mϕ. Both PGE2 and its metabolite 13,14-dihydro-15-keto-PGE2 (PGE-M) were abundant in wound fluid and induced OSM in wound-site mϕ. Consistently, induction of OSM mRNA was observed in mϕ isolated from PGE2-enriched polyvinyl alcohol sponges implanted in murine wounds. Treatment of human THP-1 cell-derived mϕ with PGE2 or PGE-M caused dose-dependent induction of OSM. Characterization of the signal transduction pathways demonstrated the involvement of EP4 receptor and cAMP signaling. In human mϕ, PGE2 phosphorylated Axl, a receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK). Axl phosphorylation was also induced by a cAMP analogue demonstrating interplay between the cAMP and RTK pathways. PGE2-dependent Axl phosphorylation led to AP-1 transactivation, which is directly implicated in inducible expression of OSM. Treatment of human mϕ or mice excisional wounds with recombinant OSM resulted in an anti-inflammatory response as manifested by attenuated expression of endotoxin-induced TNF-α and IL-1β. OSM treatment also improved wound closure during the early inflammatory phase of healing. In summary, this work recognizes PGE2 in the wound fluid as a potent inducer of mϕ OSM, a cytokine with an anti-inflammatory role in cutaneous wound healing.
Approaching the control of viral hepatitis type B.

Since the original observations by Blumberg [1] and Prince [2] that indicated the presence of a unique antigen in the circulation of individuals with viral hepatitis type B, the hepatitis B virus (HBV) and a number of virus-specific by-products have been identified [3-15]. Electron microscopy revealed the presence of three major morphologic forms in varying ratios in infected blood; these forms included (1) spherical particles with a diameter of approximately 22 nm; (2) filaments with a diameter of 22 nm and an average length of 200-400 nm; and (3) double-membraned, virus-like particles with a diameter of approximately 42 nm, which have been termed Dane particles (figure 1, top) [3-6]. Purified 22-nm particles are shown in the lower left portion of figure 1. The inner core of the Dane particle or nonenveloped cores derived from nuclei of infected liver have a diameter of 24-27 nm (figure 1, lower right) [4, 11, 16, 17]. A schematic illustration of the components of the coat protein and of Dane particles is shown in figure 2 [18]. The antigenic determinants of the 22-nm spheres, the filaments, and the envelope of the Dane particle are related and are collectively termed hepatitis B surface antigen (HB, Ag). Further analysis of HB, Ag reveals that it is com-
PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF IPv 4 AND IPv 6 INTERNET TRAFFIC

The gigantic growth of the internet communication technology has illustrated its value and benefits to private businesses, government organizations, worldwide professionals, academic institutes and individuals over the past few years. The size and range of computing devices connected to the internet, substantially increased because of IPv6 and offers the potential to establish a much more powerful internet compared to the IPv4. IPv6 developed by the IETF to deal with a shortage of IP addresses under IPv4. New features of IPv6 enhance packet processing speeds over routers, switches and end systems. These improved features will have different traffic characteristics than IPv4. The internet traffic which was earlier assumed as Poisson is now shown to have fractal characteristics as; heavy tailedness, self-similarity and long range dependency. Internet traffic showing above characteristics are found to have burstiness at multiple timescales. This behavior impacts network performance and degrades it substantially. It also increases complexity for network design and create difficulties to maintain desired QoS. IPv4 traffic has been well established as self-similar traffic. Nowadays, IPv6 forming a larger share of the internet traffic and it is pivotal to asses IPv6 with regards to fractal behavior. This will enable network designers to do necessary changes in the existing network to reconcile with IPv6. In this paper we compared IPv4 and IPv6 with respect to fractal behavioral characteristics. It is found that IPv6 shows higher degree of heavy tailedness, higher values of Hurst parameter values, higher fractal dimension values i.e. it is more self-similar, greater autocorrelation achieved even at larger lag and thus showing more burstiness.
Ambulatory care visits to physician offices, hospital outpatient departments, and emergency departments: United States, 1999--2000.

OBJECTIVE This report describes ambulatory care visits to physician offices, hospital outpatient departments (OPDs), and hospital emergency departments (EDs) as well as factors that may affect where care is sought. Ambulatory medical care utilization is described in terms of patient, practice/facility, and visit characteristics. Visits to office-based physicians are divided into the categories of primary care, surgical specialties, and medical specialties. METHODS Data from the 1999 and 2000 National Ambulatory Medical Care Surveys (NAMCS) and National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Surveys (NHAMCS) were combined to produce averaged annual estimates of ambulatory medical care utilization. To examine changes over time, current data were compared with data from the 1993 and 1994 NAMCS and NHAMCS. RESULTS Patients in the United States made an estimated 979 million visits per year in 1999 and 2000 to physician offices, hospital OPDs, and EDs, an annual rate of 3.6 visits per person. The distribution of visits by patient age, sex, race, expected source of payment, geographic region, and metropolitan statistical area (MSA) status varied across settings. The percentage of visits to office-based primary care physicians was similar for the characteristics studied, but the percentage of visits to office-based surgical and medical specialists varied considerably. Black persons had higher visit rates than white persons to hospital OPDs and EDs but lower rates to office-based surgical and medical specialists. ED visits were more likely to be patient-paid or no charge than were visits to office-based physicians. Visit rates to office-based medical specialists decreased between 1993--94 and 1999--2000. Visit rates increased for hypertension and diabetes diagnoses, as did prescription rates for central nervous system, hormonal, pain relief, and respiratory tract drugs.
Returns to Elite Higher Education in the Marriage Market: Evidence from Chile

In this paper we estimate the marriage market returns to being admitted to a higher ranked (i.e. more ”elite”) university by exploiting unique features of the Chilean university admission system.This system centrally allocates applicants based on their university entrance test score, which allows us to identify causal effects by using a regression discontinuity approach. Moreover, the Chilean context provides us with the necessary data on the long run outcome ‘partner quality’. We find that being admitted to a higher ranked university has substantial returns in terms of partner quality for women, while estimates for men are about half the size and not significantly different from zero. JEL-Classification: I23, I24, J12. Keywords: Returns to education quality, higher education, marriage market, regression discontinuity, Chile.