Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cytokine mRNA Expression Is Decreased in the Subplantar Muscle of Rat Paw Subjected to Carrageenan-Induced Inflammation after Low-Level Laser Therapy

Objective: The objective of this work was to investigate the anti-inflammatory effects of low-level laser therapy, applied at different wavelengths (660 and 684 nm), on cytokine mRNA expression after carrageenan-induced acute inflammation in rat paw. Background Data: Low-level laser therapy (LLLT) has been observed to reduce pain in inflammatory disorders. However, little is known about the mechanisms behind this effect or whether it is wavelength-specific. Materials and Methods: The test sample consisted of 32 rats divided into four groups: A1 (control-saline), A2 (carrageenan-only), A3 (carrageenan 660 nm laser therapy), and A4 (carrageenan 684 nm laser therapy). The animals from groups A3 and A4 were irradiated 1 h after induction of inflammation by carrageenan injection. Continuous-wave red lasers with wavelengths of 660 and 684 nm and dose of 7.5 J/cm2 were used. Results: Both the 660 nm and 684 nm laser groups had 30%–40% lower mRNA expression for cytokines TNF, IL-1 , and IL-6 in the paw muscle tissue than the carrageenan-only control group. Cytokine measurements were made 3 h after laser irradiation of the paw muscle, and all cytokine differences between the carrageenan-only control group and the LLLT groups were statistically significant (p 0.001). Conclusions: LLLT at the 660-nm and 684-nm wavelengths administered to inflamed rat paw tissue at a dose of 7.5 J/cm2 reduce cytokine mRNA expression levels within 3 h in the laser-irradiated tissue.
Folate and methotrexate interactions in the rat kidney.

The mechanisms controlling the renal retention and urinary output of methotrexate and folates were studied in rats. 125I-Labeled folic acid administered i.v. was shown to be retained in the kidney through a system that could be inhibited by either folic acid or 5-methyltetrahydrofolate. Methotrexate also inhibited this system but required concentrations 50- to 100-fold greater than that required for folic acid and 5-methyltetrahydrofolate. Extracts from solubilized kidneys were shown to contain a folate binder with the same relative affinities for folates and methotrexate as the in vivo system. Methotrexate was shown to cause an increase in the urinary output of endogenous folates in rats when administered as equivalent doses to those used in treating human disease. Conversely, [3H]methotrexate administered i.v. was shown to be retained in the kidney through an additional system that could be inhibited by unlabeled methotrexate, but not by folates. This system was not demonstrable in solubilized kidney. These data demonstrate two systems for the renal retention of methotrexate.
Body image quality of life in eating disorders.

Purpose: The objective was to examine how body image affects quality of life in an eating-disorder (ED) clinical sample, a non-ED clinical sample, and a nonclinical sample. We hypothesized that ED patients would show the worst body image quality of life. We also hypothesized that body image quality of life would have a stronger negative association with specific ED-related variables than with other psychological and psychopathological variables, mainly among ED patients. On the basis of previous studies, the influence of gender on the results was explored, too. Patients and methods: The final sample comprised 70 ED patients (mean age 22.65 ± 7.76 years; 59 women and 11 men); 106 were patients with other psychiatric disorders (mean age 28.20 ± 6.52; 67 women and 39 men), and 135 were university students (mean age 21.57 ± 2.58; 81 women and 54 men), with no psychiatric history. After having obtained informed consent, the following questionnaires were administered: Body Image Quality of Life Inventory-Spanish version (BIQLI-SP), Eating Disorders Inventory-2 (EDI-2), Perceived Stress Questionnaire (PSQ), SelfEsteem Scale (SES), and Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R). Results: The ED patients’ ratings on the BIQLI-SP were the lowest and negatively scored (BIQLI-SP means: +20.18, +5.14, and −6.18, in the student group, the non-ED patient group, and the ED group, respectively). The effect of body image on quality of life was more negative in the ED group in all items of the BIQLI-SP. Body image quality of life was negatively associated with specific ED-related variables, more than with other psychological and psychopathological variables, but not especially among ED patients. Conclusion: Body image quality of life was affected not only by specific pathologies related to body image disturbances, but also by other psychopathological syndromes. Nevertheless, the greatest effect was related to ED, and seemed to be more negative among men. This finding is the opposite of that found in other groups studied previously.
A Study of Marine Sport Tourism Development on Island – A Case Study of Jibei in Penghu, Taiwan

Marine sport tourism in Taiwan has become one of the popular intensive tours in recent years. However, related research has focused on the economic and social issues, which overlooks factors contributing to the successful development of sport tourism. The main purpose of this study is to analyze the success factors for the development of the island's marine-sport tourism using Jibei Island as an object for investigation. Through qualitative methods of investigation, we found that a successful development of marine-sport tourism for an island is attributes to: 1. the coupling of natural environment and a variety of water activities; 2. the infrastructures such as transportation of island; 3. the image of the island; and 4. the support from the government. The findings in this study not only provide local government with recommendations for the development of tourism industry, but also serve as references for relevant future research.
Flow-Data Analysis with Geographical Information Systems: A Visual Approach

This paper takes a visual approach to flow-data analysis within geographical information systems, and uses spatial interaction data from the United Kingdom for illustrative purposes. As a subfield within GIS, flow mapping is something of a disciplinary laggard, despite significant advances elsewhere in the field. Therefore, the paper has three main aims. First, the intention is to show how complex spatial interaction data—frequently underutilised—can be converted into meaningful information using a GIS-based, visual approach. Second, it is hoped that the contribution will help popularise the subject and stimulate new research within spatial interaction studies and planning more broadly. The third aspect is to demonstrate that we can gain a better understanding, and knowledge of, complex spatial networks through a visual analytics approach to information generation. The paper begins by exploring some key developments in the presentation of flow data. The main body of the paper is comprised of five key geovisualisations which focus on identifying the various patterns of spatial interaction in the United Kingdom. Finally, some conclusions are drawn and direction for future development are highlighted.
[Pregnancy and medical follow-up of women living with HIV/AIDS in Guadeloupe and Martinique (French West Indies): medical progress and social problems].

After sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean is the region of the world most affected by HIV/AIDS. Guadeloupe and Martinique (French West Indies) are located in the heart of this region. Although the AIDS incidence here is lower than in other Caribbean countries, it is much higher than in mainland France. Transmission is mostly heterosexual, and the proportion of women infected is high, almost half of all those infected. Moreover, in Guadeloupe a large proportion of them are foreigners (mainly from Haïti). This qualitative study was conducted in 2009 among health professionals, advocacy and support groups, and women living with HIV/AIDS. It analysed the characteristics of women's follow-up during and after their pregnancy. It also analysed the practices that health professionals have developed to provide follow-up for these women, despite various obstacles. Antiretroviral therapy makes it possible to health professionals to reduce the risk of mother-to-child transmission of HIV infection. They inform their patients of the possibilities for infected women to have a child with less risk of infection provided that she has a medical follow-up and that she is treated. But they note that the pregnancies are rarely planned in consultation with them: patients are generally already pregnant when they discuss the subject with their doctors. The pregnancy is nevertheless a special moment for medical monitoring: women are particularly compliant during their pregnancy, because their priority is the protection of the child's health. After the child's birth, however, the social and administrative difficulties of many of these women serve as obstacles to their continued medical care. Some women stop treatment and medical follow-up after delivery, even when they make sure the child has medical follow-up. To continue the follow-up of women and their children, or to contact women who have been lost to follow-up, professionals resort to various practices: compliance consultations, house calls, hospitalization. These practices are based on multidisciplinary collaboration, between medical departments (infectious diseases, obstetrics/gynaecology, and paediatrics), as well as with social services and support groups for persons living with HIV/AIDS.
Faster in and faster out: accelerating insulin absorption and action by insulin infusion site warming.

OBJECTIVE This study was undertaken to investigate the effect of an insulin infusion site warming device, the InsuPatch(40)(™) (IP(40)) (InsuLine Medical Ltd., Petach-Tikvah, Israel), on insulin aspart pharmacodynamics (PD) and pharmacokinetics (PK) in adolescents with type 1 diabetes. SUBJECTS AND METHODS Seventeen subjects with type 1 diabetes (age, 15±1 years; hemoglobin A1c, 7.5±0.2% [58±2.2 mmol/mol]) underwent two euglycemic clamps performed on separate mornings with and without IP(40) activation with warming temperature at 40°C. On both days, the basal infusion was suspended, and glucose levels were maintained between 90 and 100 mg/dL by a variable rate dextrose infusion for up to 5 h after a 0.2 U/kg bolus of insulin aspart. RESULTS Time to peak insulin action and time to half-maximal action occurred earlier with a greater early glucodynamic effect (area under the curve [AUC] for glucose infusion rate from 0 to 30 min) with IP(40) than without the IP(40), whereas the AUC for the time-action profile and the peak action did not differ with and without infusion site warming. PK parameters were in agreement with PD parameters, namely, a significantly earlier time to reach the maximum increment in insulin concentrations and greater early bioavailability (AUC for the change in insulin concentration from 0 to 30 min) with the IP(40). The tail of the plasma insulin response curve was also shortened with infusion site warming, with the time to reach baseline insulin concentration occurring significantly earlier (P=0.04). CONCLUSIONS Our data demonstrate that skin warming around the infusion site to 40°C with the IP(40) is an effective means to accelerate absorption and action of rapid-acting insulin. These improvements in time-action responses have the potential to enhance the performance of open- and closed-loop insulin delivery systems.
Estimación y validación de puntos de corte de índice de masa muscular esquelética para la identificación de sarcopenia en adultos mayores chilenos

Objectives: To estimate and validate cut-off points of skeletal muscle mass index (SMI) in Chilean population, for using in an algorithm for a diagnosis of sarcopenia developed by European Working Group on Sarcopenia in Older People (EWGSOP). Methods: Secondary analysis of Cross-sectional data in 440 Chilean older subjects to estimate cut-off points of SMI determined by DEXA and predicted by an anthropometric equation. Afterward a cross-sectional validation in a sample of 164 older people was performed. Anthropometric measures, self-reported health status, physical performance tests and DEXA were carried out. Decreased muscle strength was defined as handgrip strength <15 kg in women and <27 kg in male. Cut-off points of SMI were defined as values under 20th percentile for DEXA measures and estimated through ROC curves for the anthropometric model. Biological validity of the algorithm was tested by contrasting the diagnosis with physical performance tests and functionality. Results: Cut-off points of SMI obtained by DEXA were 7.19 kg/m2 in men and 5.77 kg/m2 in women and 7.45 kg/ m2 and 5.88 kg/m2, respectively for the predicted by the model. Sensibility and specificity of estimations vs DEXA measures were 80% and 92% in men and 77% and 89% in women. Conclusions: We obtained cut-off points of SMI for DEXA and for a prediction equation for older adults Chilean, with good sensibility and specificity for the measurement by DEXA. It will allow to apply the EWGSOP algorithm to the early diagnosis of sarcopenia and to develop programs for prevention, delay or reversion this syndrome.
Advanced planning and scheduling based on precedence and resource constraints for e-plant chains

The e-plant chain is an extension of the integration beyond a production site by means of improved distribution management, electronic data interchange and coordination of multiple plants. The present paper proposes an advanced planning and scheduling model for the e-plant chain. The advanced planning and scheduling is the most important function when supporting flexible planning and scheduling in the e-plant chain. The problem is formulated as a mixed integer-programming model. The model includes the main features of the system including flexible operations’ sequences, resource requirements and alternative schedules. Since the problem is NP-hard, an intelligent search approach based on a genetic algorithm is developed. Numerical experiments show the proposed approach is satisfactory in its accuracy and efficiency.
Educational Research-iPad System vs Textbook System

The aim of article is to find out the benefits between iPad vs notebook and pick out the best between both. In the present world as the technology keeps on growing by introducing innovating iPads, tablets etc, this article is to find whether iPad is helpful for students in education or whether to stick with textbooks for ideal learning. To identify a survey is conducted for 100 students and questions were based on their option, opinion, usage, benefits, merits, advantages, disadvantages, and other ratings related to our topic. The objective of this research is to conduct a survey among the students about the two systems and find the best between them. The technology has been developing day to day which is highly useful in educational aspects for students like introducing the iPad system without carrying heavy textbooks or notebooks, without destroying mammoth trees. Where as iPad are environmentally beneficial still it carries a huge aspect on optic defects. Both the systems have advantages and disadvantages and both the systems above provides students with opportunities to deepen their learning from different techniques. So background of this research is to take survey on students and to find out which system is at its best. The main objective of this topic is to Conduct a survey by questioning the students and to knew which system gets higher ratings and to find out which one wins the battle.
Agent organization in the knowledge plane

In designing and building a network like the Internet, we continue to face the problems of scale and distribution. With the dramatic expansion in scale and heterogeneity of the Internet, network management has become an increasingly difficult task. Furthermore, network applications often need to maintain efficient organization among the participants by collecting information from the underlying networks. Such individual information collection activities lead to duplicate efforts and contention for network resources. The Knowledge Plane (KP) is a new common construct that provides knowledge and expertise to meet the functional, policy and scaling requirements of network management, as well as to create synergy and exploit commonality among many network applications. To achieve these goals, we face many challenging problems, including widely distributed data collection, efficient processing of that data, wide availability of the expertise, etc. In this thesis, to provide better support for network management and large-scale network applications, I propose a knowledge plane architecture that consists of a network knowledge plane (NetKP) at the network layer, and on top of it, multiple specialized KPs (spec-KPs). The NetKP organizes agents to provide valuable knowledge and facilities about the Internet to the spec-KPs. Each spec-KP is specialized in its own area of interest. In both the NetKP and the spec-KPs, agents are organized into regions based on different sets of constraints. I focus on two key design issues in the NetKP: (1) a regionbased architecture for agent organization, in which I design an efficient and non-intrusive organization among regions that combines network topology and a distributed hash table; (2) request and knowledge dissemination, in which I design a robust and efficient broadcast and aggregation mechanism using a tree structure among regions. In the spec-KPs, I build two examples: experiment management on the PlanetLab testbed and distributed intrusion detection on the DETER testbed. The experiment results suggest a common approach driven by the design principles of the Internet and more specialized constraints can derive productive organization for network management and applications. Thesis Supervisor: Karen R. Sollins Title: Principal Research Scientist, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Kernel-based empirical bayesian classification methods with applications to protein phosphorylation and non-coding RNA

With the advancement of high-throughput sequencing technologies, a new era of “big data” biological research has dawned. However, the abundance of biological data presents many challenges in their analysis and it has proven very difficult to extract important information out of the data. One approach to this problem is to use the methods of machine learning. In this dissertation, we describe novel probabilistic kernel-based learning methods and demonstrate their practical applicability by solving major bioinformatics problems at the transcriptome and proteome levels where the resulting tools are expected to help biologists further elucidate the important information contained in their data. The proposed binary classification method, the Classification Relevance Units Machine (CRUM), employs the theory of kernel and empirical Bayesian methods to achieve non-linear classification and high generalization. We demonstrate the practical applicability of CRUM by applying it to the prediction of protein phosphorylation sites, which helps explain the mechanisms that control many biochemical processes. Then we develop an extension of CRUM to solve multiclass problems, called the Multiclass Relevance Units Machine (McRUM). McRUM uses the error correcting output codes framework to decompose a multiclass problem into a set of binary problems. We devise a linear-time algorithm to aggregate the results into the final probabilistic multiclass prediction to allow for predictions in large scale applications. We demonstrate the practical applicability of McRUM through a solution to the identification of mature microRNA (miRNA) and piwi-interacting RNA (piRNA) in small RNA sequencing datasets. This provides biologists a tool to help discover novel miRNA and piRNA to further understand the molecular processes of the organisms they study.
Obesity and thyroid cancer: a clinical update.

BACKGROUND In the last decade, significant contributions have been made to our knowledge on the connection between the thyroid and adipose tissue. Modern society is faced with climbing rates of obesity and metabolic syndrome, and there is accumulating evidence of an association between obesity and increased cancer risk. The aim of this review is to summarize clinical data on the association between thyroid cancer (TC) and obesity and briefly to present plausible hypotheses explaining this interplay. SUMMARY We performed a search on the PubMed database for studies published in English from 1980 to March 2013 using the terms "thyroid cancer," "obesity," and "body mass index. " Although there is inconsistency among the clinical studies, it seems that overweight and obesity are related to a modestly increased TC risk. Various factors, such as sex, ethnicity, and body changes during certain life periods, for example adolescence, may influence the association between obesity and TC risk. There are preliminary data linking obesity with a less favorable clinicopathologic profile of TC. However, validation with larger multicenter studies is needed. The precise underlying mechanisms have not yet been elucidated, but the insulin-IGF axis and adipokines, such as leptin and adiponectin, might be implicated in the link between excess weight and TC. CONCLUSIONS Given the rising prevalence of TC and the development of obesity as an epidemic, it is important to clarify its connection with TC as well as the mediating pathways. However, unless this association is confirmed and causation proven, screening for TC in overweight and obese subjects-a rapidly increasing body of the general population-does not seem justified.
The Power of the Pill for the Next Generation

In this paper we ask how the diffusion of oral contraception to young unmarried women affected the number and maternal characteristics of children born to these women. Using census data, we find that early pill access led to an increase in the share of children whose mothers were married, college-educated, and had professional occupations. The pill's effects on the average mother are different from the pill's effects on the average woman, and the effects of the pill on maternal characteristics are in some instances different from the effects of abortion. We investigate the mechanisms by which the pill led to these differential effects and find that access to the pill led to falls in short-term fertility rates for young women and led to decreases in lifetime fertility at the intensive and extensive margins. The impacts of the pill on household characteristics are thus associated with retiming of births, changes in the characteristics of potential mothers, changes in which women become mothers, and by reductions in completed family size. Finally, while the pill affected maternal characteristics differently than abortion, we find suggestive results that availability of the pill lowered abortions among young women.
Virtual learning environments: three implementation perspectives

Universities worldwide offer web‐based courses distributed by virtual learning environments (VLEs). A common theoretical framework for implementing VLEs is the pedagogical perspective of instructional design. In this paper, three perspectives of implementation from information systems implementation research and organization theory are presented: implementation as technology acceptance, implementation as diffusion of innovations and implementation as a learning process. These perspectives focus on the VLE as an information system within an organization, the university. The models reviewed offer an important complementary perspective to the pedagogical view of instructional design. The three implementation perspectives are compared and a conclusion is made concerning their implications of successful use and implementation of VLEs.