Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Temperature-Dependent Bionomics and Modeling of Anarsia lineatella (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae) in the Laboratory

Abstract Laboratory studies were conducted to assess the effect of constant temperatures (15, 20, 25, 30, and 35°C) on life history traits of peach twig borer, Anarsia lineatella Zeller (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae). Developmental rate, survival, longevity, and fecundity were studied in environmental chambers from individuals reared on peach, Prunus persica L. , twigs until adulthood. Temperature-dependent relationships of various developmental events were characterized, and applied models were evaluated. Total developmental time ranged from 20.4 d (30°C) to 124 d (15°C). Lower developmental thresholds for egg-to-adult development assessed to 11.2 or 11.8°C, according to a linear weighted regression or the reduced major axis method, whereas development required on average 400 degree days (DD) or 424.4, respectively. Survival was substantially reduced at lower (15°C) and higher (35°C) temperatures. First-instar larvae exhibited higher sensitivities during development in all treatments. Mean longevity ranged from 12.1 d (35°C) to 45.8 d (15°C) and from 10.4 d (15°C) to 50.3 d (35°C) for females and males, respectively. A significantly higher number of eggs was laid at the moderate temperatures (126.9 at 25°C), whereas at the extremes, females laid the fewest (40.4 and 26.3 at 15 and 35°C, respectively). A new model, based on a β type distribution function, fitted on the temperature-dependant developmental data to predict population dynamics. Relative accuracy of the above-mentioned formula was validated using root mean square error (RMSE), index of agreement (d) and the mean square error quotient (E1,2) with respect to a proved model.
Tear film and ocular surface dysfunction in diabetes mellitus in an Indian population

Purpose: Ophthalmic complications in diabetes such as retinopathy, cataract, and infections have been extensively studied. Recently, attention has been drawn toward ocular surface changes in diabetes mellitus (DM). This study has been carried out to investigate the tear film and ocular surface abnormalities in type II DM patients. Materials and Methods: A total of 83 participants (130 eyes) were enrolled: 53 diabetics (80 eyes) and 30 healthy controls (50 eyes). Of the 53 diabetics, 24 patients (42 eyes) had some diabetic retinopathy. The tear film and ocular surface were evaluated using Schirmer test, tear film break-up time (TBUT), keratoepitheliopathy score (KES), Rose Bengal Staining (RBS) test, and conjunctival impression cytology. Results: When compared with the healthy controls, diabetics showed significantly reduced Schirmer, TBUT measurements and the higher grades of KES and RBS test (P < 0.001). Impression cytology analysis showed goblet cell loss and conjunctival squamous metaplasia in diabetics. Conclusion: Tear film abnormality is a significant feature of diabetic ocular surface diseases. These abnormalities are likely on account of poor quality and function of tears, combined with the subnormal ocular surface. Therefore, all diabetic patients especially those with evidence of retinopathy changes should undergo routine early examination and follow-up of tear function and ocular surface parameters.
Five-year follow-up of a food-based vitamin A intervention in Tanzania

Abstract Objective To evaluate the long-term effects of a horticultural and nutrition education intervention in rural Tanzania. Design A quasi-experimental post-test design was used. Setting The research was carried out in 10 villages in Singida region, Tanzania. Subjects Mothers and their children aged 6–71 months (n = 236) from an experimental (Ilongero) and control (Ihanja) area were interviewed regarding knowledge and practices related to vitamin A nutrition. Intake of vitamin A-rich foods by the children during the 7 days prior to the interview was recorded. Stools were examined for helminths and serum samples were analysed for retinol and C-reactive protein (CRP) (n = 146) for the children aged 12–71 months. Results Knowledge and practices were more favourable to vitamin A intake in the experimental area than in the control area, and an increased frequency of intake of green leaves was associated with higher serum retinol values. The experimental area had lower mean serum retinol levels (13.7 μg dl−1, n = 75) than the control area (19.3 μg dl−1, n = 71). One likely confounder was the higher helminth infestation in the experimental area (n = 75, 79%) than in the control area (n = 71, 49%) (P > 0.001). Children with helminths (n = 94) had a lower mean serum retinol level than those without (n = 52) (12.3 ± 5 vs. 24 ± 10 μg dl−1; P = 0.001). Conclusions Food-based vitamin A programmes can make sustainable improvements in knowledge and dietary practices but these may not necessarily be reflected in increases in serum retinol. Programme implementation and evaluation should take confounders into consideration as, in this case, helminth infestation.
The impact of different fructose loads on insulin sensitivity, inflammation, and PSA-NCAM-mediated plasticity in the hippocampus of fructose-fed male rats

Abstract Objectives High fructose diet has been shown to have damaging effects on the hippocampus, a brain region critical for learning and memory. Fructose-induced hippocampal dysfunction may arise from insulin resistance and inflammation, and from concomitant changes in plasticity-related presynaptic proteins. We hypothesized that long-term access to fructose (10% and 60% solutions over a period of 9 weeks) affects insulin sensitivity, hippocampal inflammation, and synaptic plasticity in male Wistar rats. Methods We used the area under curve (AUC) glucose value and inhibitory Ser307 phosphorylation of hippocampal insulin receptor substrate 1 (IRS-1) as hallmarks of insulin resistance. To examine inflammatory state, we analysed protein levels and intracellular redistribution of glucocorticoid receptor and nuclear factor-κB (NFκB), as well as mRNA levels of tumour necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), interleukin-6 (IL-6), and interleukin-1β (IL-1β). Polysialylated neural cell adhesion molecule (PSA-NCAM) protein was used as a synaptic plasticity marker. Results The results indicate different impacts of diverse fructose-enriched diets on insulin sensitivity and hippocampal inflammation and plasticity. Long-term ingestion of 10% fructose solution led to increase in AUC glucose value, as well as to elevation in hippocampal IRS-1 Ser307 phosphorylation and increase in IL-6 mRNA. In rats consuming 60% fructose, the level of PSA-NCAM was reduced, in parallel with augmented glucocorticoid signalization. Discussion The results showed that long-term consumption of 10% fructose solution induces hippocampal insulin resistance and inflammation, with no concomitant plasticity changes. Interestingly, rats fed with higher concentrations of fructose displayed impaired plastic response of the hippocampus, coinciding with augmented glucocorticoid signalling, which may provide a basis for cognitive deficits associated with metabolic syndrome.
Assessment of serum chemerin, vaspin and omentin-1 levels in patients with polycystic ovary syndrome

Objective To determine serum chemerin, vaspin and omentin-1 in overweight and normal weight patients with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and investigate the possible relationship between these adipokines and metabolic syndrome. Methods This cross sectional study enrolled women with PCOS and healthy women. Serum chemerin, vaspin and omentin-1 were assessed by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay methods. Results Forty patients with PCOS and 30 healthy controls were included in the study. In the PCOS group, 18 women were overweight (body mass index [BMI] = 25.0–29.9 kg/m2) and 22 had normal weight (BMI = 18.5–24.9 kg/m2). Chemerin, total cholesterol, dehydroepiandrosterone sulphate and free androgen index (FAI) were significantly higher; and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol and sex hormone binding globulin were significantly lower in overweight PCOS patients compared with normal weight PCOS patients. A positive correlation was found between chemerin and BMI, triglyceride, insulin, homeostatic model assessment of insulin resistance and FAI in the PCOS group. There was no difference in serum chemerin, vaspin and omentin-1 between PCOS patients and healthy controls. Conclusion Circulating chemerin was increased in overweight compared with normal weight PCOS patients. The most predictive variables for circulating chemerin in PCOS patients were BMI, FAI and age.
Risk factors for multiple suicide attempts among Roma in Hungary

In recent years, suicide rates in Hungary have been among the highest in the European Union. Attempted suicide rates in the Roma population are 2–3 times higher than in the non-Roma population. Since individuals making multiple attempts have a higher pro-bability of eventual death by suicide, and there are limited data on suicidal behaviour of the Roma population, the aim of this study was to explore the sociodemographic and psychological background factors of multiple suicide attempts in the Hungarian Roma population. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 150 individuals admitted to hospital toxicology departments, who made suicide attempts by deliberate self-poisoning, 65 of whom were multiple attempters. Detailed information regarding the current attempt and previous suicidal acts was recorded. Patients also completed the Shortened Beck Depression, the Beck Hopelessness Questionnaire, and the Social Support Questionnaire. Independent samples t-tests were used to evaluate differences in psychological variables between the Roma (N = 90) and non-Roma (N = 60) groups. Stepwise linear regression and odds ratios analyses were performed to identify potential background factors of multiple suicide attempts. There was a significantly higher level of previous suicidal events among the Roma in the sample population (3.53 vs. 0.84, p < .001). Roma ethnicity was found to be a strong predictor of multiple suicide attempts. Current major depression, hopelessness, and diagnosed mood disorder were identified as significant risk factors of repeated attempts. Smoking (OR = 5.4), family history of suicide (OR = 4.9), and long-term unemployment (OR = 4.6) were additional risk factors among Roma patients. A thorough understanding of the ethnicity-specific risk factors for multiple suicide attempts could facilitate the development of effective intervention and postvention programmes.
Nisin resistance distinguishes Mycoplasma spp. from Acholeplasma spp. and provides a basis for selective growth media

The sensitivity of 11 Mycoplasma and 5 Acholeplasma species to the bacteriocin nisin was determined. When applied on filter paper discs to lawns of acholeplasma cells, nisin (20 nmol per disc) gave 3.5- to 7.0-mm zones of growth inhibition. The inclusion of 0.2 mM nisin in agar medium reduced the number of Acholeplasma laidlawii colonies by a factor of more than 10(6), and in a salts solution, 75 microM nisin killed more than 99.9% of cells within 1 min. Under similar conditions, nisin had no significant effect upon the growth or survival of Mycoplasma species. At low concentrations (1 to 3 microM), nisin stimulated glucose oxidation by A. laidlawii and Acholeplasma oculi. However, in comparison with carbonyl cyanide m-chlorophenylhydrazone (CCCP), a recognized protonophore and uncoupler of respiration, the maximum extent of stimulation was low, < or = 20%, compared with up to 180% for CCCP. Also, in contrast to results obtained with CCCP, at concentrations only slightly above those causing stimulation of acholeplasma oxygen uptake, nisin strongly inhibited respiration. Inhibition of oxygen uptake was greater for A. laidlawii cells grown in the absence of cholesterol, and on agar medium, growth inhibition by nisin decreased with increasing concentrations of cholesterol. Nisin resistance may be a valuable characteristic in the selection and identification of Mycoplasma spp.
Initial trust and online buyer behaviour

Purpose – Online trust is one of the key obstacles to vendors succeeding on the internet medium; a lack of trust is likely to discourage online consumers from participating in e‐commerce. This research aims to investigate how online consumers develop their initial trust and purchase intentions. The research in conducted in the context of Taiwanese online bookstores.Design/methodology/approach – The research examines consumers' online initial trust by using four major categories of determinants: perceived technology, perceived risk, company competency, and trust propensity. It also investigates the impacts of both online initial trust and familiarity with online purchasing on purchase intention. The research model is statistically tested using the web sites of four online bookstores in Taiwan. The web site selected by each respondent is unfamiliar.Findings – It is found that perceived usefulness, perceived security, perceived privacy, perceived good reputation, and willingness to customise are the importan.
Late Onset Neonatal Gram-Negative Bacillary Infection in Australia and New Zealand: 1992–2002

Background: Late onset neonatal Gram-negative bacillary infection is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality. Objective: To determine the incidence and mortality from late onset Gram-negative bacillary infections in neonatal units. Methods: An 11-year longitudinal prospective surveillance study. Clinicians in 20 neonatal units in Australia and New Zealand collected data. Late onset sepsis was defined as clinical signs of infection starting more than 48 hours after birth, with laboratory evidence supporting sepsis and pure growth of a pathogen from blood and/or cerebrospinal fluid. Results: Overall, 702 of 3113 (22.5%) episodes of late onset sepsis in 681 infants were from Gram-negative bacilli. Overall mortality was 20.8% (142 of 681 infants) and significantly related to maturity, birth weight and infecting organism. Mortality was 25% for infants <30 weeks compared with 11.5% for infants ≥30 weeks gestation (P < 0.0001) and 24.2% for infants with birth weights <1500 g versus 12.7% if ≥1500 g (P < 0.0001). Infection by Pseudomonas aeruginosa was associated with 52.3% mortality (46 of 88 infants), significantly higher than the 13.7% to 23.8% fatality from other Gram-negative bacilli (P < 0.0001). During the surveillance, the late onset Gram-negative bacillary infection rate remained stable at 1.14 per 1000 live births (range 0.87–1.5). Similarly, mortality was unchanged, being 0.25 per 1000 live births (range 0.12–0.43). Conclusions: Gram-negative bacilli remain important causes of late onset neonatal sepsis, especially among very low birth weight infants, and result in a high mortality, particularly with P. aeruginosa infections.
The Positive Economics of Labor Market Rigidities and Investor Protection

This paper presents a positive model which shows that institutional setups on capital and labor markets might be intertwined by politicoeconomic forces. Some countries especially in continental Europe exhibit a corporatist politicoeconomic equilibrium with a substantial protection of insiders on both markets. The more important money is in political decision-making, the more divided the workforce is, and the more globalized capital markets are, the more likely is a capitalist politicoeconomic equilibrium with little employment and substantial investor protection. Our prediction of a negative cross-country relationship between labor market rigidities and of competition on capital markets receives considerable empirical support.
Backscatter model for the unusual radar properties of the Greenland Ice Sheet

A number of planetary objects exhibit large radar reflectivity and polarization ratios, and more recently, a similar behavior has been observed over a vast portion of the Earth's surface: the percolation facies of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Surface-based ranging radar data and snow stratigraphy studies demonstrated that the radar properties of that portion of Greenland are caused by enhanced scattering from massive, large, solid-ice bodies buried in the top few meters of the dry, cold, clean snowy surface of the ice sheet and created by seasonal melting and refreezing events. -from Author
Entrepreneurial self‐efficacy and business start‐up: developing a multi‐dimensional definition

Purpose – The aims of this paper are to: critically review and identify gaps in current literature on entrepreneurial self‐efficacy, provide a definition of entrepreneurial self‐efficacy that addresses some of those gaps, and explore the role of entrepreneurial self‐efficacy during the phases of a business start‐up process. The research seeks to define entrepreneurial self‐efficacy using three sources of dimensionality. The first includes the particular aspect of entrepreneurship to which self‐efficacy is applied, whether to business start‐up or business growth activities. The second sources of dimensionality refers to the content of self‐efficacy beliefs (task or outcome goal beliefs), and the third source to the valence of entrepreneurial self‐efficacy beliefs (positive or negative control beliefs). Design/methodology/approach – The authors build from the origins and mechanisms of the self‐efficacy construct in social cognitive theory and a synthesis of that work with prior use of self‐efficacy in entrep.
Work Stress and New-Onset Migraine in a Female Employee Population

This prospective cohort study examined whether work stress, as indicated by the job strain model and the effort-reward imbalance model, predicts new-onset migraine among 19 469 female employees with no history of migraine at study entry. A baseline survey between 2000 and 2002 assessed work stress and demographic factors. Self-reported newly diagnosed migraine was measured at follow-up between 2004 and 2005 and 1281 new cases of migraine were detected. In logistic regression analysis adjusted for age, socioeconomic position and depression at baseline, no association between job strain and migraine was found. In contrast, high effort-reward imbalance was associated with slightly increased risk of migraine at follow-up, odds ratio 1.23 (95± confidence interval 1.04, 1.45). The proportion of new migraine cases attributable to high effort-reward imbalance was 6.2±. If the observed association is causal, our findings suggest that high effort-reward imbalance might function as a modifiable risk factor for new-onset migraine.
EVOLUTION OF CONDITION‐DEPENDENT SEX ORNAMENTS AND MATING PREFERENCES: SEXUAL SELECTION BASED ON VIABILITY DIFFERENCES

The possibility that the evolution of mating preferences and secondary sex traits can be based on heritable differences in viability is examined with a three‐locus model. Earlier genetic models suggested that viability‐based processes alone cannot explain the evolution of mate choice and sex ornaments that reduce survival; a Fisherian mating advantage seemed necessary. The present model is based on a monogamous mating system that precludes such a mating advantage. A key assumption is that ornament development depends on the phenotypic condition and overall genotype of the possessor; there is evidence that secondary sex traits often mirror nutritional status and health, sometimes through hormonal mediation. Ornament and preference can then hitchhike slowly to high frequency with alleles that confer a slight survival advantage, provided that such alleles become available often enough. The evolution of mating preferences and secondary sex traits that reflect overall genotypic constitution therefore can be based solely on viability differences, no Fisherian mating advantage being required. In practice, these and several other mechanisms of sexual selection may occur together.
Total cerebral blood flow and oxygen consumption using the dye-dilution method. A study of occulusive arterial disease and cerebral infarction.

ENEWED interest in cerebrovascular insufficiency has been brought about by a measure of success in the surgical t rea tment of certain forms of associated arteriosclerosis; however, relationships between cerebral ischenfia and demonstrable arterial pathology have not been elucidated by assessment of the functional s tatus of the circulation with available methods. Cerebral blood flow (CBF) and cerebral metabolic rate for oxygen (CMRO2) so far reported in patients suffering from cerebrovascular insufficiency, utilizing the widely accepted inert-gas technique, have, in general, shown aberrations from normal only when hypotension was present or mentat ion was reduced. 1,2,s,lI Serial studies, using the Fick principle for determination of cerebral blood flow, carried out during therapeutic carotid ligation, detected a significant decrease in cerebral blood flow only when severe neurological deficit and altered state of consciousness resulted. 9 I t is not surprising tha t the information obtained may be limited in the
Role of cell cycle regulators in lung carcinogenesis

Cellular division is an ordered, tightly regulated process involving multiple checkpoints that assess extracellular growth signals, cell size, and DNA integrity. Progression throughout the cell cycle is based on the activation of different CDK-cyclin complexes that prevent cells from entering into a new phase until thay have successfully complete the previous one. In addition, a series of cell cycle checkpoints are designed to preserve genome integrity and chromosomal stability. Neoplastic lung cells develop the ability to bypass several of these checkpoints, and tumor cell proliferation is frequently associated with genetic or epigenetic alterations in key regulators of the cell cycle. The goal of this review is to summarize the knowledge about the dysregulation of major cell-cycle regulators in lung cancer pathogenesis, and to discuss the use of these proteins as targets for therapeutic intervention.
Behavior and testability preservation under the retiming transformation

Recently, it has been shown that retiming has a very strong impact on the run time required for sequential, structural automatic test pattern generators (ATPG's), as well as the levels of fault coverage and fault efficiency attained. In this paper, we show that, for circuits with no hardware reset or a global reset state, retiming preserves testability with respect to a single stuck-at fault test set by adding a prefix sequence of a predetermined number of arbitrary input vectors. We show that this result holds for test sets derived based on structural and functional methods, and based on the conventional and multiple observation time testing strategies. Furthermore, we derive the conditions under which synchronizing sequences are preserved under retiming. We show that a structural synchronizing sequence for a circuit drives any of its corresponding retimed circuits to an equivalent state. In addition, we show that functional synchronizing sequences are preserved under retiming by adding a prefix sequence of a predetermined number of arbitrary input vectors. The impact of retiming on ATPG complexity and test-set preservation under retiming suggest a new approach for enhancing the performance of structural, sequential ATPG's. Experimental results show that high fault coverages can be achieved on high-performance circuits optimized by retiming with much less CPU time (a reduction of two orders of magnitude in several instances) than if ATPG is attempted directly on those circuits.