Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluation of a Pharmacist and Nurse Practitioner Smoking Cessation Program

Purpose: To evaluate the efficacy of a smoking cessation program led by a pharmacist and a nurse practitioner. Methods: During a 6-month period, patients attended 7 one-on-one face-to-face smoking cessation counseling sessions with a pharmacist and 1 to 2 one-on-one face-to-face smoking cessation counseling sessions with a nurse practitioner. The primary outcome was smoking cessation point prevalence rates at months 1, 3, and 5 post-quit date. Secondary outcomes included medication adherence rates at months 1, 3, and 5 post-quit date, nicotine dependence at baseline versus program end, and patient satisfaction. Results: Nine (47%) of 19 total participants completed the program. Seven of the 9 patients who completed the program were smoke-free upon study completion. Point prevalence rates at months 1, 3, and 5 post-quit date were 66%, 77%, and 77%, respectively, based on patients who completed the program. Medication adherence rates were 88.6%, 54.6%, and 75% at months 1, 3, and 5 post-quit date, respectively. Based on the Fagerstrom test, nicotine dependence decreased from baseline to the end of the study, 4.89 to 0.33 (P < .001). Overall, participants rated the program highly. Conclusion: A joint pharmacist and nurse practitioner smoking cessation program can assist patients in becoming smoke-free.
SMALL-SCALE FARMERS’ PERCEPTIONS TOWARDS DEMAND DRIVEN SYSTEM OF AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION SERVICE DELIVERY. CASE STUDY OF SIAYA AND KILIFI COUNTIES IN KENYA

The objective of present study was to assess the perception of small-scale farmer’s towards demand driven extension approach that was implemented by National Agricultural Extension Policy. The study used Ex-post facto survey design and multistage sampling procedure constituting proportionate and simple random sampling technique to select the study area and the sample. One set of questionnaire and one focus group discussion guide were used to collect data from three hundred households selected from the sampling frame obtained from the study area. Data were analysed using t-test and descriptive statistics with the help of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Findings revealed that after the implementation of NAEP reforms, there was observation of both positive and negative change in perceptions among small-scale farmers towards agricultural extension services. The positive change was due to improved availability of extension services among farmers attributed to use of farmers groups as meeting points for delivery of agricultural extension services by Frontline Extension Service Providers. The observed negative change was caused by the small-scale farmers’ inability to adopt modern agricultural practices due to promotion of costly agricultural technologies and information packages by the Frontline Extension Service Providers, farmers’ inability to identify problems on their farms and demand for services in time; and the stringent conditions for groups to access funds from credit institutions. The t-test results revealed that the observed general positive change in farmers’ perceptions was significantly weak. The paper recommends that policy makers in the field of agricultural extension should place more emphasis on building farmers’ capacity so that they are better placed to identify problems on their farms at optimal time and seek for assistance; address the stringent condition that limit farmers access to credit facilities; strengthen farmer groups so that they are effective as arenas for dissemination of agricultural information and technologies and ensure effective small-scale farmers’ participation in identification and development of appropriate agricultural technologies aimed at improving agricultural productivity.
Donor right hepatectomy in living donor liver transplantation: report of 143 cases.

BACKGROUND/AIMS To summarize the surgical techniques of liver resection for right hepatic lobe graft in living donor liver transplantation (LDLT). METHODOLOGY Data of 143 living donors of right hepatic lobe graft from January 2002 to February 2009 were retrospectively studied. The right lobe grafts were obtained by transecting the liver on the right side of the middle hepatic vein. Liver transection was done by using an ultrasonic dissector without inflow vascular occlusion. The standard liver volume (SLV) and the ratio of right lobe volume to SLV were calculated. RESULTS The weight of right hepatic lobe graft ranged from 310 g to 870 g, accounting for 39.7-69.5% of SLV with the ratio of residual left liver from 30.5% to 60.3%, corresponding to 31.7%-71.6% of the recipient SLV. The mean operative loss of blood was 428 ml. Complications included 2 cases of intraabdominal bleeding, 1 thrombosis of the portal vein, 1 liver function insufficiency, 3 bile leakages, 1 chyle leakage, 2 pleural effusions and 5 wound steatoses. At last, all donors restored to health. CONCLUSIONS Estimation of the liver volume by CT or formulae and accurate donor hepatectomy is of clinical importance in planning and performing successful living donor liver transplantation.
CXCR5‐deficient mice develop functional germinal centers in the splenic T cell zone

The chemokine receptor CXCR5 is thought to be essential for the migration of B cells into the network of follicular dendritic cells in the spleen. However, as shown here, B cells and follicular dendritic cells do co‐localize, albeit aberrantly, even in the absence of CXCR5. In mice lacking CXCR5 both cell types are found in a broad ring around the sinuses of the marginal zones. Upon immunization with the T cell‐dependent antigen 2‐phenyl‐oxazolone, ectopic germinal centers develop in the periarteriolar lymphocyte sheath. A network of follicular dendritic cells forms in the vicinity of the central arteriole within which the antigen‐activated B cells proliferate. The analysis of the expressed V gene repertoire revealed that during B cell proliferation, hypermutation is activated and V region genes accumulate somatic mutations. The pattern of somatic mutations suggests that affinity selection may occur. This analysis confirms that in CXCR5‐deficient mice, the organization of splenic primary follicles is severely impaired. However, within the T cell zone a micro‐environment is built up, which provides all requirements needed for the affinity maturation to take place.
Food intake, oral hygiene and gingival bleeding in pregnancy: does lifestyle make a difference? A cross sectional exploratory study.

OBJECTIVES To investigate the association between lifestyle factors (food intake, sugary snacks consumption and oral health practices) and gingival bleeding during pregnancy. METHODS A cross sectional exploratory study was conducted in the Maternity hospital, Dammam, Saudi Arabia. It included pregnant Saudi women selected using a convenience sample. Information was collected concerning participants' background, oral hygiene practices and visits to dentists. They were asked about the amount of food they consumed and their use of sugary snacks. Logistic regression analysis assessed the association between lifestyle factors and gingival bleeding. RESULTS Responses were obtained from 197 women (92.1% response rate). Most women brushed their teeth but had < the recommended intake in the various food groups. Brushing was associated with lower odd of gingival bleeding (odds ratio= 0.47, 95% confidence interval= 0.23, 0.93) whereas intake of fewer servings than the recommended amounts in all food groups was associated with higher odds (odds ratio = 3.64, 95% confidence interval = 1.12, 11.82). CONCLUSION Brushing and food intake during pregnancy are associated with gingival bleeding. Pregnant women can potentially improve their oral health by modifying their lifestyle and following healthier practices.
Infiltrating Myeloid Cells Exert Protumorigenic Actions via Neutrophil Elastase

Tissue infiltration and elevated peripheral circulation of granulocytic myeloid-derived cells is associated with poor outcomes in prostate cancer and other malignancies. Although myeloid-derived cells have the ability to suppress T-cell function, little is known about the direct impact of these innate cells on prostate tumor growth. Here, it is reported that granulocytic myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSC) are the predominant tumor-infiltrating cells in prostate cancer xenografts established in athymic nude mice. MDSCs significantly increased in number in the peripheral circulation as a function of xenograft growth and were successfully depleted in vivo by Gr-1 antibody treatment. Importantly, MDSC depletion significantly decreased xenograft growth. We hypothesized that granulocytic MDSCs might exert their protumorigenic actions in part through neutrophil elastase (ELANE), a serine protease released upon granulocyte activation. Indeed, it was determined that NE is expressed by infiltrating immune cells and is enzymatically active in prostate cancer xenografts and in prostate tumors of prostate-specific Pten-null mice. Importantly, treatment with sivelestat, a small-molecule inhibitor specific for NE, significantly decreased xenograft growth, recapitulating the phenotype of Gr-1 MDSC depletion. Mechanistically, NE activated MAPK signaling and induced MAPK-dependent transcription of the proliferative gene cFOS in prostate cancer cells. Functionally, NE stimulated proliferation, migration, and invasion of prostate cancer cells in vitro. IHC on human prostate cancer clinical biopsies revealed coexpression of NE and infiltrating CD33+ MDSCs. Implications: This report suggests that MDSCs and NE are physiologically important mediators of prostate cancer progression and may serve as potential biomarkers and therapeutic targets. Mol Cancer Res; 15(9); 1138–52. ©2017 AACR.
Attribution of malnutrition to cause-specific diarrheal illness: evidence from a prospective study of preschool children in Mirpur, Dhaka, Bangladesh.

We examined whether malnutrition (underweight [WAZ] < -2) increased the risk of diarrhea equally for all enteropathogens. The study was conducted prospectively between January 1999 and July 2002 in Mirpur, an urban slum in Dhaka. Two hundred eighty-nine Bangladeshi children (147 male and 142 female) 2-5 years of age were included in the study. Malnutrition was present in 39% of the children at the time of enrollment. The parents and children were visited and interviewed every other day by health care workers for details about any diarrheal episodes. Stool samples were successfully collected from 62% of episodes of diarrhea. Of the identified enteropathogens, only enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC), Cryptosporidium sp. , and Entamoeba histolytica were significantly more prevalent in malnourished children. We concluded that the malnutrition attributed risk is not equal for enteric pathogens associated with diarrheal illness.
Forty years of modelling rapid transit’s land value uplift in North America: moving beyond the tip of the iceberg

ABSTRACT Identifying and measuring the land value uplift (LVU) impacts of rapid transit are important for a number of reasons. However, despite the general notion that rapid transit does confer positive LVU benefits, our comprehensive and critical review of more than 130 analyses across 60 studies completed in North America over the past 40 years finds significant heterogeneity in research outcomes, leaving many significant questions unanswered. Beyond high-level differences in study inputs, we argue that a fundamental source of variability is a lack of empirical specificity from the use of proximity as the dominant way in which LVU benefits are captured. This use of a proxy leads to the potential for omitted variables and unobserved relationships, and exposes previous work to the potential for misvalued results. To overcome this issue, we outline recommendations for future research, namely a recognition of relative accessibility and the possibility of LVU impacts from transit-oriented development. Incorporating measures related to these factors into LVU models can reveal their implicit prices, resulting in research that is more theoretically inclusive, empirically comprehensive, comparable, and able to provide important information to inform policy analysis and prescription.
Restoration of randomly blurred images via the maximum a posteriori criterion

The maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation technique is applied to the problem of restoring images distorted by noisy point spread functions and additive noise. The resulting MAP estimator is nonlinear and is obtained by numerically maximizing a conditional probability density function. The energy nonnegativity constraint is incorporated in the optimization process. Although the deblurring results are slightly inferior to those obtained by applying the Wiener criterion, the advantage of the MAP estimator lies in its significant suppression of noise.
Role of Commodity Market in Price Discovery Mechanism in India: A Study of Silver

Price discovery is the important function of the commodity derivative market. The long run and causal relationship between two variables establish the price discovery mechanism between the two variables. The present treatise studied the price discovery by statistically testing the cointegration and causality between the spot returns and future returnsof silver. The present study is based on the spot and future prices of silver for a period of five years starting from 1 January 2008 and up to 31 December 2012. Data was studied for stationarity, cointegration and causality by applying Augmented Dickey-Fuller test, Johansen cointegration test and Granger casualty test respectively. The silver price series were found non stationary; and these series were transformed to stationary series by estimating their differentiated log.The results of Johansen cointegration test indicate that the cointegration exists between the spot returns and future returnsof silver. The result of Granger casualty test is unidirectional. The future market leads spot market but the spot market does not lead future market. So, the long run and causal relationship between the spot returns and future returns of silver indicates the virtuous performance of commodity market in the price discovery of silver.
Horizontal and Vertical Polarization: Task-Specific Technological Change in a Multi-Sector Economy

We analyze the effect of technological change in a novel framework that integrates an economy's skill distribution with its occupational and industrial structure. Individuals become managers or workers based on their managerial vs. worker skills, and workers further sort into a continuum of tasks (occupations) ranked by skill content. Our theory dictates that faster technological progress for middle-skill tasks not only raises the employment shares and relative wages of lower- and higher-skill occupations among workers (horizontal polarization), but also raises those of managers over workers as a whole (vertical polarization). Both dimensions of polarization are faster within sectors that depend more on middle-skill tasks and less on managers. This endogenously leads to faster TFP growth of such sectors, whose employment and value-added shares shrink if sectoral goods are complementary (structural change). We present several novel facts that support our model, followed by a quantitative analysis showing that task-specific technological progress--which was fastest for occupations embodying routine-manual tasks but not interpersonal skills--is important for understanding changes in the sectoral, occupational, and organizational structure of the U.S. economy since 1980.
Effects of extending the duration of postgrafting immunosuppression and substituting granulocyte-colony-stimulating factor-mobilized peripheral blood mononuclear cells for marrow in allogeneic engraftment in a nonmyeloablative canine transplantation model.

Stable mixed donor/host hematopoietic chimerism was uniformly achieved in dogs given 200 cGy total body irradiation (TBI) before and immunosuppression with mycophenolate mofetil (MMF) for 28 days and cyclosporine (CSP) for 35 days after transplantation of marrow from dog leukocyte antigen-identical littermates. When the TBI dose was lowered to 100 cGy, donor marrow engraftment in 6 dogs was only transient, lasting 3 to 12 weeks. In this study, we asked whether stable engraftment in this model could be achieved: (1) by substituting recombinant canine granulocyte-colony-stimulating factor-mobilized peripheral blood mononuclear cells (G-PBMCs) for marrow and (2) by extending CSP administration from 35 to 100 days. Eighteen dogs were given G-PBMC grafts and MMF for 28 days. Eight of the 18 dogs received CSP for 35 days and 10 for 100 days. We found that substituting G-PBMCs for marrow did not increase the incidence of stable allogeneic engraftment (P = .11). However, increasing the duration of posttransplantation immunosuppression with CSP from 35 to 100 days favorably influenced stable donor engraftment (P = .06).
Screening and Quantitation of 191 Mycotoxins and Other Fungal Metabolites in Almonds , Hazelnuts , Peanuts , and Pistachios Using UHPLC / MS / MS

This application note describes the development of a multitarget method for the determination of 191 mycotoxins and other fungal metabolites as well as its validation in almonds, hazelnuts, peanuts, and pistachios. In addition to all mycotoxins regulated in the European Union, the method includes many mycotoxins that are frequently found in food. The method comprises a simple extraction with an acidified acetonitrile-water mixture, a subsequent dilution of the raw extract, and measurement by UHPLC/MS/MS. Calibration was performed for all compounds with solvent standards. Furthermore, this application note presents parts of a validation for the 65 most important mycotoxins in the four tested matrixes. The method showed excellent sensitivity down to 0.04 μg/kg for enniatin B3 in peanuts, and good reproducibility with standard deviations below 10 % for the majority of analytes. Apparent recoveries of 70 to 120 % were obtained in approximately 60 % of the matrix-analyte combinations. In cases with lower recoveries, either extraction recoveries were low (for example, for fumonisins) or signal suppression was observed for several early eluting analytes. There was signal enhancement in a few cases, leading to higher apparent recoveries. The method was applied to the analysis of naturally contaminated nut samples and overall 40 different fungal metabolites could be identified. Interestingly, the most frequently found toxins were not the compounds currently regulated in the European Union but beauvericin, enniatin B, and macrosporin. The most contaminated hazelnut sample contained 26 different toxins. All results are presented in more detail in Varga et al. [1].
The effect of CB1 receptor antagonism in the right basolateral amygdala on conditioned fear and associated analgesia in rats

The endocannabinoid system mediates analgesia expressed following exposure to conditioned or unconditioned aversive stimuli, and controls the extinction of conditioned aversive behaviour. The present study investigated the effects of administration of the cannabinoid1 (CB1) receptor antagonist SR141716A into the right basolateral amygdala (BLA) on expression of conditioned fear, formalin‐evoked nociceptive behaviour, fear‐conditioned analgesia and associated alterations in monoamine levels in discrete rat brain areas. Re‐exposure to a context previously paired with footshock significantly reduced formalin‐evoked nociceptive behaviour. Intra‐BLA administration of SR141716A did not attenuate fear‐conditioned analgesia, but reduced formalin‐evoked nociceptive behaviour and attenuated the formalin‐induced decrease in freezing and 22‐kHz ultrasonic vocalizations in the early part of the trial. Furthermore, intra‐BLA SR141716A significantly prolonged the duration of these fear‐related behaviours in fear‐conditioned rats not receiving formalin. Fear‐conditioned analgesia was accompanied by increased homovanillic acid (HVA) : dopamine (DA) ratio and reduced serotonin (5‐HT) in the cerebellum, an effect not altered by SR141716A. SR141716A‐induced analgesia was accompanied by reduced DA, increased HVA : DA ratio and reduced 5‐HT levels in the cerebellum, increased hippocampal HVA levels and increased 5‐hydroxyindole‐3‐acetic acid (5‐HIAA) in the amygdaloid cortex. The SR141716A‐induced prolongation of contextually induced aversive behaviour was accompanied by reduced DA and 3,4‐dihyroxyphenylacetic acid (DOPAC), levels in the hippocampus, and increased DA and 5‐HIAA in the periaqueductal grey. These data suggest an important role for CB1 receptors in the right BLA in mediating short‐term extinction of conditioned aversive behaviour but not fear‐conditioned analgesia. The results also enhance our understanding of endocannabinoid–monoamine interactions of relevance to conditioned fear and associated analgesia.
Clinical and Brain Magnetic Resonance Imaging Features in a Cohort of Chinese Patients with Kearns-Sayre Syndrome

Background:Kearns-Sayre syndrome (KSS) is a mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) deletion disorder characterized by a triad of onset before 20 years of age, ophthalmoplegia, and pigmentary retinopathy. The heart and central nervous system are commonly involved. We summarized clinical and brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) features of a cohort of Chinese KSS patients. Methods:Nineteen patients confirmed by muscle biopsy and mtDNA analysis were enrolled. We examined clinical profiles, mainly focusing on changes in electrocardiogram (ECG) and brain MRI. The correlation between genotype and phenotype was statistically analyzed. Results:The mean age of onset was 9.6 ± 4.3 years, with all developing the classic triad at the time of diagnosis. Heart conduction block was detected in 63.2%, with four initially presenting as bundle branch block and developing into complete atrioventricular block over 3–72 months. Brain MRI showed symmetric high-T2 signals in 100% of cerebral and cerebellar white matter, as well as brainstem, 46.7% of basal ganglia, and 53.3% of thalamus. There were two patterns of cerebral white matter involvements, one with selective subcortical U-fibers and the other with periventricular white matter. The size of mtDNA deletion did not significantly correlate with age of onset or percentage of ragged blue fibers on muscle pathology. Conclusions:The clinical features of KSS evolve dynamically, affecting the cardiac conduction system predominantly, highlighting the significance of ECG monitoring. Brain MRI showed changes involving both the white matter and deep gray nuclei. Clinical presentation or severity of muscle pathological changes is not related to the size of mtDNA deletions.
Healthy Aging: Is Smaller Better? – A Mini-Review

A recent report of virtually complete protection from diabetes and cancer in a population of people with hereditary dwarfism revived interest in elucidating the relationships between growth, adult body size, age-related disease and longevity. In many species, smaller individuals outlive those that are larger and a similar relationship was shown in studies of various human populations. Adult body size is strongly dependent on the actions of growth hormone (GH) and the absence of GH or GH receptor in mice leads to a remarkable extension of longevity. Many mechanisms that may account for, or contribute to, this association have been identified. It is suggested that modest modifications of the diet at different ages may extend human healthspan and lifespan by reducing levels of hormones that stimulate growth.