Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
233 Faecal Calprotectin Levels At Two Months of Age in Healthy Infants and in Infants with Atopic and Gastrointestinal Disorders

Background: Recently the mielomonocytic calcium-binding protein calprotectin has been proposed as sensible marker in faeces for gastrointestinal inflammation, but there are only a few studies about this topic in infancy. The aim of the study was determining normal faecal calprotectin levels in healthy infants during the first 3 months of life and comparing differences between healthy infants and those with atopic diseases, gastroesophageal reflux or severe colic.Methods: Between September 2003 and January 2004 stools samples of 21 healthy infants (mean age 58±24 days) and 14 infants with atopic diseases (atopic dermatitis, cow's milk intolerance) and/or severe infantile colic and/or gastroesophageal reflux (mean age 59±19.1 days) diagnosed by clinical examination and laboratoristic analysis were collected at our Department. Exclusion criteria were infections and intake of anti-inflammatory drugs. Stool samples were stored at –20°C until they were analysed. Faecal calprotectin levels were detected using a quantitative ELISA (Calprest, Eurospital SpA, Trieste, Italy). The study protocol was approved by the hospital's ethic commette and parents gave written consent to inclusion of their infants in the study. Statistical analysis was performed using Student's t-test. A value of p<0.05 was used for statistical significance.Results: Calprotectin levels in healthy infants were significantly lower than those in infants with the detected diseases (157.9±86.9 mg/kg vs 770.1±287.4 mg/kg, p=0.000). No differences were found in relation to the kind of feeding (breast-fed: 408.4±327.2, formula-fed: 349.3±338.4; p=0.627). The two groups were equivalent for age (healthy infants: 58.3±23.6 days, infants with disorders: 58.7±19.1 days; p=0.958) and for gender (healthy infants: M/F=12/9, infants with disorders: M/F=6/8). Conclusion: It is well known that faecal calprotectin levels in infants during the first months of life are higher than in healthy adults and show a wide interindividual and age-dipendent variation. Surprisingly, contrary to previous published data, we have not found any difference between breast-fed and formula-fed infants. Anyway, our finding suggests that this marker might be useful not only to detect bowel inflammation, but also to identify gut involvement related to atopy. Alterations in calprotectin levels may be associated with specific disorders in infancy such as atopic dermatitis, cow's milk intolerance, severe infantile colic and gastroesophageal reflux. Fund of scientific research: MURST 60%.
The effect of physiological status on metabolic profile in Egyptian Zarabi does

The aim of this paper is to determine the influence of physiological status on blood metabolic profile in the blood of Egyptian Zarabi does. The experiment was carried out on 35 Egyptian Zarabi does (10 non-pregnant Egyptian Zarabi does, 10 pregnant Egyptian Zarabi does, 10 lactating Egyptian and 5 non-pregnant non-lactating Egyptian Zarabi does and this group act as control group). The experiment occurs during winterfeeding season. The Egyptian Zarabi does were average 2.5±0.5 years old and they were healthy. These Zarabi does were fed on green barseem and 150 g of feed mixture. The hematological examination of all groups indicated the presence of great increase of RBCs, Hg and PCV in pregnant Egyptian Zarabi does when compared to others. On the other hand, there was a decrease in WBCs and PLT than other groups. The biochemical analysis of serum indicated the presence of lower concentrations of glucose and urea and higher concentration of a higher concentrations of total protein, albumin n in relation to non-pregnant Egyptian Zarabi does and lactating Egyptian does and nonpregnant and non-lactating group. In the doe’s blood in lactation were determined higher concentrations of triglycerides, K, Na + and Cl in relation to pregnant Zarabi does. Also there were higher concentrations of urea, total bilirubin, AST and GGT activities determined in the blood of Egyptian Zarabi does in lactation compared to high pregnant and non-pregnant Zarabi does. The results obtained from blood indicators point out justification of the blood metabolic profile in improve feeding, management, detect health problems and prevent production disorders in Egyptian Zarabi does and ensuring good health in very demanding physiological states like high pregnancy and lactation.
Prevalence of acne and its impact on the quality of life in school-aged adolescents in Malaysia.

AIM The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of facial acne and its impact on the quality of life among adolescents attending secondary schools in Muar, Malaysia. METHODS A cross-sectional study was conducted where 409 samples were selected using stratified cluster random sampling from two secondary schools in Muar, involving Form 1 to Form 5 students. Students were diagnosed clinically and the severity of facial acne was assessed using Global Acne Grading System. A self-reported Cardiff Acne Disability Index was used to assess the quality of life among adolescents who had acne. RESULTS The prevalence of facial acne among the adolescents was 67.5% (n = 276). Facial acne increased with increasing age (p = 0.001). It was more common among males (71.1%) than females (64.6%), p = 0.165. The males also had a higher prevalence of severe acne (p = 0.001). The quality of life was affected by the severity of acne. Students with severe acne had higher levels of Cardiff Acne Disability Index (rho = 0.521). CONCLUSION Facial acne is a common disorder and appears to have a considerable impact on quality of life among adolescents. The above findings should alert health care professionals and the school authorities to actively identify, manage and educate adolescents with facial acne.
Assortative Mating between European Corn Borer Pheromone Races: Beyond Assortative Meeting

Background Sex pheromone communication systems may be a major force driving moth speciation by causing behavioral reproductive isolation via assortative meeting of conspecific individuals. The ‘E’ and ‘Z’ pheromone races of the European corn borer (ECB) are a textbook example in this respect. ‘Z’ females produce and ‘Z’ males preferentially respond to a ‘Z’ pheromone blend, while the ‘E’ race communicates via an ‘E’ blend. Both races do not freely hybridize in nature and their populations are genetically differentiated. A straightforward explanation would be that their reproductive isolation is a mere consequence of “assortative meeting” resulting from their different pheromones specifically attracting males towards same-race females at long range. However, previous laboratory experiments and those performed here show that even when moths are paired in a small box – i.e., when the meeting between sexual partners is forced – inter-race couples still have a lower mating success than intra-race ones. Hence, either the difference in attractivity of E vs. Z pheromones for males of either race still holds at short distance or the reproductive isolation between E and Z moths may not only be favoured by assortative meeting, but must also result from an additional mechanism ensuring significant assortative mating at close range. Here, we test whether this close-range mechanism is linked to the E/Z female sex pheromone communication system. Methodology/Principal Findings Using crosses and backcrosses of E and Z strains, we found no difference in mating success between full-sisters emitting different sex pheromones. Conversely, the mating success of females with identical pheromone types but different coefficients of relatedness to the two parental strains was significantly different, and was higher when their genetic background was closer to that of their male partner's pheromone race. Conclusions/Significance We conclude that the close-range mechanism ensuring assortative mating between the E and Z ECB pheromone races is unrelated to the difference in female sex pheromone. Although the nature of this mechanism remains elusive, our results show that it is expressed in females, acts at close range, segregates independently of the autosome carrying Pher and of both sex chromosomes, and is widely distributed since it occurs both in France and in the USA.
Older Adults ’ Inpatient and Emergency Department Utilization for Ambulatory-Care-Sensitive Conditions : Relationship With Alcohol Consumption

Objective: This study examined the relationship between drinking that exceeds guideline-recommended limits and acute-care utilization for ambulatory-care-sensitive conditions (ACSCs) by older Medicare beneficiaries. Method: This secondary data analysis used the 2001-2006 Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (unweighted n = 5,570 community dwelling, past-year drinkers, 65 years and older). Self-reported alcohol consumption at University of Tokyo on May 21, 2015 jah.sagepub. com Downloaded from
A new hybrid broadcast scheduling algorithm for asymmetric communication systems

It is believed that broadcast is an efficient way to transmit data in an asymmetric communication system. Most of the previous work focused on either pull-based or push-based scheduling. However, for systems with a very large number of data items, none of these schemes is efficient individually. We propose a novel hybrid scheduling algorithm which uses both pull- and push-based schemes. In our approach, data items are divided, by a suitable cut-off point, into two disjoint sets: one consisting of more-popular items and the other of less-popular items. The items in the former set are broadcast by a push-based schedule, while those in the latter set by a pull-based schedule. A cut-off point is said to be optimal when it minimizes the expected access time in the system. The optimal cut-off point is derived analytically and validated by simulation experiments. Results show that the proposed hybrid push- and pull-based scheduling performs always better than a pure push-based scheduling and improves on the expected access time of an existing hybrid scheduling scheme.
Systematic review and meta‐analysis of cutting diathermy versus scalpel for skin incision

Skin incisions have traditionally been made using a scalpel. Cutting diathermy, a more recent alternative, is thought to increase the risk of infection, impair healing and decrease cosmesis. Recent studies suggest otherwise, claiming that diathermy may offer potential advantages with respect to blood loss, incision time and postoperative pain. The aim of this meta‐analysis was to compare skin incisions made by either scalpel or cutting diathermy.
Investigation into Self-regulation, Engagement in Learning Mathematics and Science and Achievement among Bahrain Secondary School Students

Students’ view on themselves is the root of self-regulatory skills, and it will serve as an evaluator of their capability to succeed. This study attempts to find the relationship between students’ self-regulation in learning and academic achievements in Mathematics and Science in the secondary schools in Bahrain. ‘Engagement in Mathematics/Science Learning and Self-Regulation’ questionnaires adopted from TIMSS (2011) and administered to different sets of students. The data was analyzed to explore the reliability of the questionnaires and the association between self-regulation and academic achievement. The study found that there is a positive correlation between them in both cases.
Interaction alternatives for linking everyday presentations

Live experiences such as meetings and lectures can be captured in instrumented environments towards producing hyperdocuments corresponding to the information presented. Given that a captured presentation is usually related to many others, users can use linking facilities to support the identification of associated contents. We propose that searching and recommending operations be integrated in instrumented environments to support the identification of links among contents of captured sessions during a live session, when the user has the focus of attention on the underlying contents. Moreover, the user should be able to decide when any relevant results should be attached as annotations to the document corresponding to the live session. We present the model and associated implementation that support linking everyday presentations.
A review of ballast characteristics, geosynthetics, confining pressures and native vegetation in rail track stabilisation

Given the increased demand for freight transport for the mining and agriculture industries, and for greater public transport via trains due to increased fuel costs, heavier cyclic loading on existing tracks is now inevitable. Construction of rail tracks requires appropriate ballast specification to increase stability and performance of railway tracks. This paper aims to demonstrate and discuss some major aspects in relation to stabilisation of ballasted rail tracks overlying soft formation soils using geocomposites, prefabricated vertical drains and native vegetation. The use of geocomposites (ie. bonded geogrid-geotextile layers) for enhancing the performance of fresh and recycled ballast is described, with the aim of achieving reduced track settlement, increased resilient modulus and decreased ballast degradation. The effects of increasing the confining pressure on rail track behaviour, particularly with regard to particle breakage, have been studied using large-scale laboratory tests under cyclic loads. An elastoplastic stress-strain constitutive model for ballast was developed at the University of Wollongong, incorporating the degradation of particles as a particular feature, was introduced by capturing the breakage of particles during shearing, and the effects of cyclic loading on particle degradation and plastic deformation. In addition, numerical simulation using discrete element method has been carried out an assembly of irregular particles to investigate the mechanism of ballast breakage and to quantify breakage in relation to the ballast particle size distribution.
Contrasting interannual variability of atmospheric moisture over Europe during cold and warm seasons

Seasonality in the interannual variability of atmospheric moisture over Europe is investigated using precipitable water (PW) from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction/National Center for Atmospheric Research reanalysis data set for 1979–2004. Over Europe the summer PW and its interannual variability (expressed by standard deviations) are essentially larger than those of the winter season. The largest seasonal differences are found over eastern Europe and European Russia, where the summer PW climatology and magnitudes of its interannual variability exceed respective winter characteristics by a factor of 2.5–3.8. The first and second empirical orthogonal function (EOF) modes of winter PW over Europe are associated, respectively, with the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and the East Atlantic teleconnection pattern. During summer the leading EOFs of PW are not linked to the known regional teleconnection patterns. Our analysis revealed that EOF-1 of summer PW is associated with sea level pressure (SLP) pattern characterized by two action centres of opposite polarity over northwestern Siberia and over a broad region including southern Europe, the Mediterranean Sea and part of northern Africa. The EOF-2 of summer PW is associated with cyclonic/anticyclonic SLP anomalies over Scandinavia and southwestern Europe. It is shown that PW and precipitation variability are positively coupled during the cold season but not for the warm season. Instead, during the warm season we found a significant link between regionalPWand air temperature variability, indicating an important role of local heating in variability of summer PW over Europe.
Monocular Relative Depth Perception with Web Stereo Data Supervision

In this paper we study the problem of monocular relative depth perception in the wild. We introduce a simple yet effective method to automatically generate dense relative depth annotations from web stereo images, and propose a new dataset that consists of diverse images as well as corresponding dense relative depth maps. Further, an improved ranking loss is introduced to deal with imbalanced ordinal relations, enforcing the network to focus on a set of hard pairs. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed approach not only achieves state-of-the-art accuracy of relative depth perception in the wild, but also benefits other dense per-pixel prediction tasks, e.g., metric depth estimation and semantic segmentation.
Deep Learning Based Single Image Dehazing

This paper proposes a novel approach to remove haze degradations in RGB images using a stacked conditional Generative Adversarial Network (GAN). It employs a triplet of GAN to remove the haze on each color channel independently. A multiple loss functions scheme, applied over a conditional probabilistic model, is proposed. The proposed GAN architecture learns to remove the haze, using as conditioned entrance, the images with haze from which the clear images will be obtained. Such formulation ensures a fast model training convergence and a homogeneous model generalization. Experiments showed that the proposed method generates high-quality clear images.
Comment on “Glass Transition, Crystallization of Glass-Forming Melts, and Entropy” Entropy 2018, 20, 103

In a recent article, Schmelzer and Tropin [Entropy 2018, 20, 103] presented a critique of several aspects of modern glass science, including various features of glass transition and relaxation, crystallization, and the definition of glass itself. We argue that these criticisms are at odds with well-accepted knowledge in the field from both theory and experiments. The objective of this short comment is to clarify several of these issues.
Chemical composition, acute and sub-acute toxicity of Satureja khuzestanica essential oil in mice

Bitkilerin cesitli hastaliklarin tedavisi icin ilac gelistirme amaciyla kullanilan onemli kaynaklar oldugu bilinmektedir ancak bitkisel ilaclarin tedavi amaciyla kullanilabilmesi icin yan etki profillerinin belirlenmesi gereklidir. Bu calismada, Satureja khuzestanica ucucu yaginin (SKEO) kimyasal bilesiminin tespiti ve bir fare modelinde akut ve sub-akut toksisitesinin gosterilmesi amaclanmistir. Satureja khuzestanica ornekleri Iran’in batisindaki Lorestan bolgesinin kirsal alanlarindan toplanmistir. SKEO’nun kimyasal bilesimi gaz kromatografisi/ kutle spektrometrisi (GC/MS) yontemiyle belirlenmistir. Akut toksisitesinin belirlenmesi amaciyla SKEO, 0.5, 1, 2 and 4 ml/kg dozlarda 6’sar fareden olusan 4 gruba intraperitoneal enjeksiyonla uygulanmistir. Uygulamadan 24 saat sonra olen fareler sayilmistir. SKEO’nun sub-akut toksik etkilerinin belirlenmesi icin 14 gun boyunca oral yoldan 0.2, 0.4 and 0.8 ml/kg dozlarda SKEO uygulanan farelerin biyokimyasal ve hemotolojik parametreleri incelenmistir. GC-MS yontemiyle yapilan calismada SKEO iceriginde bulunan 23 bilesik tespit edilmis ve bu bilesikler icerisinde en yuksek miktarda bulunan turevin %64.4 oraniyla karvakrol oldugu gorulmustur. Intraperitoneal enjeksiyon yoluyla uygulanan SKEO’nun LD50 degeri 1.79 ml/kg, maksimum oldurucu olmayan dozu ise 1.13 ml/kg olarak bildirilmistir. SKEO’nun; 0.2 and 0.4 ml/kg dozlarda uygulandigi gruplarda olum tespit edilmezken bilesige 0.8 ml/kg dozda maruz falan farelerden sadece biri olmustur (%12.5). Oral yoldan 0.2, 0.4 and 0.8 ml/kg dozlarda SKEO uygulanan farelerin biyokimyasal ve hemotolojik parametreleri kontrol grubuna ait degerlerle karsilastirildiginda anlamli bir farklilik tespit edilmemistir (P>0.05). Bu calisma sonucunda elde edilen veriler; SKEO’nun, farelerin karaciger, bobrek dokulari ve kan parametreleri uzerinde belirgin bir toksistesi olmadigini gostermistir. Bu nedenle SKEO’nun belirtilen dozlarda diger memeliler icin de guvenli oldugu dusunulmektedir.
Bleomycin- induced flagellate dermatitis * Dermatite flagelada induzida pela bleomicina *

Bleomycin is an antineoplastic drug used in the treatment of different tumors. It has several side effects, including a cutaneous hyperpigmentation with a flagellate aspect, which is considered specific to Bleomycin. We report two cases of Bleomycin-induced flagel- late dermatitis and discuss the clinical and etiopathogenic aspects in a brief blibliographic revision. Resumo: A bleomicina e agente quimioterapico usado no tratamento de diferentes neopla- sias. Apresenta varios efeitos colaterais, sendo um deles a hiperpigmentacao cutânea de aspecto flagelado, considerada especifica dessa droga. Relatam-se dois casos de dermatite flagelada induzida pela bleomicina. Discutem-se os aspectos clinicos e etiopatogenicos em breve revisao bibliografica. Palavras-chave: Bleomicina; Doenca de Hodgkin; Quimioterapia
Examination of long‐wave radiative bias in general circulation models over North Africa during May–July

Satellite data are used to quantify and examine the bias in the outgoing long‐wave (LW) radiation over North Africa during May–July simulated by a range of climate models and the Met Office global numerical weather prediction (NWP) model. Simulations from an ensemble‐mean of multiple climate models overestimate outgoing clear‐sky long‐wave radiation (LWc) by more than 20 W m−2 relative to observations from Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) for May–July 2000 over parts of the west Sahara, and by 9 W m−2 for the North Africa region (20°W–30°E, 10–40°N). Experiments with the atmosphere‐only version of the High‐resolution Hadley Centre Global Environment Model (HiGEM), suggest that including mineral dust radiative effects removes this bias. Furthermore, only by reducing surface temperature and emissivity by unrealistic amounts is it possible to explain the magnitude of the bias.
Bank Capital , Nonbank Finance , and Real Estate Activity

Although there is considerable evidence that pressure on commercial banks' capital positions in the early 1990s reduced their real estate lending, there is little systematic evidence that real estate activity was appreciably affected by the bank capital crunch. Using data for 1986 through 1992 by state, we estimated the effects of the bank capital crunch and of national and local economic conditions on building permits, construction contracts, housing starts, mortgage originations, and sales. We found significant effects of the capital crunch and of various economic conditions on commercial and residential real estate activity. The estimated effects on permits and construction contracts in residential real estate markets were at least as large as those in commercial real estate markets. Although lending for residential development and construction apparently was reduced by the capital crunch, secondary markets for residential mortgages at least partially shielded mortgage originations and home sales from banks' capital shortfalls.