Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Contribution of cerebellar intracortical inhibition to Purkinje cell response during vestibulo‐ocular reflex of alert rabbits.

Ionophoretic application of bicuculline, an antagonist of gamma‐aminobutyric acid (GABA), was used to examine the contribution of intracortical inhibition to vestibular responses of Purkinje cells in the cerebellar flocculus of alert rabbits. Purkinje cells were sampled extracellularly (with triple‐barrelled micropipettes) from the floccular area where electrical stimulation through the micro‐electrode evoked abduction of the ipsilateral eye, indicating its close functional relationship to the horizontal vestibulo‐ocular reflex. These cells exhibited frequency modulation of simple spike discharges in‐phase or out‐phase with sinusoidal head rotation (0.5 cycles/s, 5 degrees peak‐to‐peak) in the horizontal plane. Bicuculline was ejected ionophoretically through one barrel with a 20‐60 nA current. The pharmacological effectiveness of the ejected bicuculline was confirmed for each Purkinje cell by its blocking action upon the depressant action of GABA applied ionophoretically through another barrel. Bicuculline usually shifted the simple spike modulation in the in‐phase direction: it reduced the amplitude of out‐phase modulation in three cells, converted out‐phase modulation to the in‐phase type in four cells, and increased in‐phase modulation in five cells. In three other cells, however, bicuculline shifted the modulation in the out‐phase direction. Because bicuculline application usually increased the resting discharge level of a Purkinje cell, ionophoretic application of DL‐homocysteate was used in ten Purkinje cells to control for the effect of a generalized increase in excitability. In contrast to bicuculline, DL‐homocysteate generally induced a slight increase of the simple spike modulation regardless of the phase relationship. Since frequency modulation of the simple spike discharges of flocculus Purkinje cells is presumed to contribute to the control of vestibulo‐ocular reflexes, these results point to an important functional role of intracortical post‐synaptic inhibition in the cerebellar cortex.
The involvement of physico‐chemical interactions in the adhesion of Candida albicans and Candida dubliniensis to epithelial cells

Candida albicans and Candida dubliniensis are two pathogenic yeasts particularly hazardous to immunocompromised patients. Adhesion of yeast cells to epithelium is considered one of the virulence factors and its study is of major importance. The main aim of this study was the comparison of the influence of physico‐chemical properties on the adhesion of C. albicans and C. dubliniensis to epithelium. Two strains of each Candida species were used in the adhesion assays to HeLa cells. Adhered cells were enumerated by direct microscopic images observation. Yeast cell surface tension parameters and degree of hydrophobicity were determined by contact angle measurement. Pseudohyphae and hyphae formation was analysed by scanning electron microscopy. Yeast cells presented no statistical differences concerning their physico‐chemical surface properties. However, the extent of adhesion to epithelium was different among the four strains. As general conclusion, yeast adhesion to epithelium seems to be strain‐dependent and not directly correlated with pseudohyphae formation.
Fasciola gigantica: larval productivity of three different miracidial isolates in the snail Lymnaea truncatula

Abstract Bimiracidial infections of Lymnaea truncatula with three isolates of Fasciola gigantica, originating from China, Egypt and Madagascar, were carried out to determine the effect of geographic origin of the parasite on the larval productivity of redial generations. The prevalences of experimental infections in snails exposed to strains from Madagascar, China and Egypt were 20.8%, 60.0% and 80.0%, respectively. At day 49 post-exposure (p.e.), the total number of free rediae in snails infected with the Egyptian isolate was significantly higher than that recorded in the Madagascan group. On the other hand, at day 49 p.e. , the majority of cercariae in the Chinese and Egyptian groups were produced by R2a rediae (70.6% and 66.6% of cercariae produced by all live rediae), while, in the Madagascan group, the cercariae were produced mainly by the first redial generation. Snails infected with the Egyptian isolate of miracidia developed more live rediae and, consequently, could produce a higher number of cercariae. As a result, L. truncatula snails were highly adapted to infections with the Egyptian and Chinese isolates of F. gigantica.
The Intergenerational Transmission of Education: New Evidence from Adoptions in the USA

This paper examines the influence of parental education on children's grade-for-age using a large sample of adoptees drawn from the American Community Survey between 2008 and 2014. The results show that mother's education is not an important determinant of the education of adopted children, despite statistically significant effects for own-birth children. The results for fathers are different. Among adopted white children, the effect of father's education is shown to be a statistically significant determinant of grade retention. However, among black children, adoptive father's education does not appear to have any discernible effect on children's education. A range of sensitivity tests are undertaken to check the validity of these results. The differences in these patterns between white and black students suggest the presence of racial differences in the intergenerational transmission of education.
Hydro and Wind Power Coordination Using Interval Optimization To Attain Profit Intervals

In the deregulated electricity market, the power generators profit depends on its unit scheduling, bidding strategies and on the market price. The coordination of wind energy with other renewable resources serves an effective way for the generating companies to increase its payoff. Accordingly, the wind power with hydro power system coordination incur the enhancement of power dispatch and thereby reducing imbalance prices. This paper proposes an interval optimization technique to solve the price based unit commitment problem. It also suggests to solve the bidding strategy with the accurate intervals. Variations in wind hydro power, the volatilities in day ahead energy price, intra hour energy price are considered as periodic numbers. Comparing to the conventional technique it is easier to determine and optimizes the entire profit intervals. Henceforth, has an inherent advantage on computational complexity and associates under worst case scenarios.
The Spine Team Assessment for chronic back pain disability. Part 2: Team decision making and a preliminary outcome study

Purpose. Back pain disability is complex, involving medical, physical, functional, social, and financial issues. This study aims to develop the first codified decision making process for individualized treatment planning. Methods. In a multidisciplinary assessment protocol for chronic low back pain disability, the Spine Team Assessment (see Part I), a ‘case law’ qualitative approach to decision making began with a basic framework. Details were established over 103 cases at a community hospital. Through 500 more cases, a university spine program developed new exceptions, definitions, and rule clarifications. Results. The final framework includes physical deconditioning, psychosocial factors, and potential for cure, with dozens of subcategories. Seventeen different combinations of therapy were recommended. Of 68 persons referred to one multidisciplinary treatment protocol, at 6 – 12 months the 17 completers had less work disability (31 vs. 62%, p = 0.032) and tended towards fewer subsequent diagnostic tests (17.6 vs. 34.7%) and less surgery (0 vs. 4). Conclusions. The data suggests that the process is complex, that customization did occur, and that at least one team decision led to better outcomes. While derived qualitatively, this decision-making tree provides a road map for less experienced teams and a precedent for researchers who wish to study individualized treatment.
Evaluation of an Ontological Resource for Pharmacovigilance

In this work, we present a methodology for evaluating an ontology designed in a previous study to describe adverse drug reactions. We evaluate it in term of its fitness for grouping cases in pharmacovigilance. We define as gold standard the Standardized MedDRA Queries (SMQs) developed manually to group terms representing similar medical conditions. We perform an automatic search in the ontology in order to retrieve concepts related to the medical conditions. An optimal query is built for each medical condition. The evaluation relies on the comparison between the terms in the SMQ and the terms subsumed by the query. The result is quantified by sensitivity and specificity. We applied this methodology for 24 SMQs and we obtain a mean sensitivity of 0.82. This work allows validating the semantic resource and provides, in perspective, tools to maintain the ontology while the knowledge is evolving.
Functional performance on the six-minute walk test in patients with cystic fibrosis.

OBJECTIVE To compare patients with cystic fibrosis and healthy individuals in terms of their functional performance on the six-minute walk test (6MWT). METHODS A prospective, cross-sectional study involving healthy individuals and patients with cystic fibrosis treated at a referral university hospital in the city of Campinas, Brazil. The 6MWT was administered in accordance with the American Thoracic Society guidelines, and it was repeated after a 30-min rest period. For all of the participants, RR, HR, SpO2, and Borg scale scores were obtained. For the cystic fibrosis patients, nutritional status and spirometric values were determined. Patients with pulmonary exacerbation were excluded. Spearman's correlation coefficient and repeated measures ANOVA were used. RESULTS The cystic fibrosis group comprised 55 patients, and the control group comprised 185 healthy individuals. The mean ages were 12.2 ± 4.3 and 11.3 ± 4.3 years, respectively. The six-minute walk distance (6MWD) was significantly shorter in the cystic fibrosis group than in the control group for both tests (547.2 ± 80.6 m vs. 610.3 ± 53.4 m for the first and 552.2 ± 82.1 m vs. 616.2 ± 58.0 m for the second; p < 0.0001 for both). The 6MWD correlated with age, weight, and height only in the cystic fibrosis group. During the tests, SpO2 remained stable, whereas HR and RR increased. CONCLUSIONS In our sample, functional performance on the 6MWT was poorer among the cystic fibrosis patients than among the healthy controls in the same age bracket, and we found immediate repetition of the test to be unadvisable.
A cross-diagnostic validation of an instrument measuring participation in everyday occupations: The Occupational Gaps Questionnaire (OGQ)

Abstract The aim of this study was to validate the Occupational Gaps Questionnaire (OGQ) when used in samples of people with acquired brain injuries (ABI), stroke, stress-related disorders, concussion, and persons receiving rehabilitation after ABI to investigate whether the OGQ could be used as a generic scale. A total of 601 individuals answered the OGQ at various time points after illness/injury. A Rasch analysis was performed on the data to evaluate evidence of internal scale validity and person response validity, and the capability of the OGQ to separate people into different levels of participation in everyday occupations. The results provided evidence that the OGQ is a valid measure across different diagnostic groups. A generic version of the OGQ can separate at least two levels of perceived occupational gaps and is therefore recommended as a screening tool to be used by occupational therapists working with different diagnostic groups.
Low frequency electric properties utilization in agriculture and food treatment. A review

Determination of electrical properties is utilized in a wide range of disciplines and industries. A brief compendium of agricultural materials and food electrical properties exploitation is presented in this paper. The measurement of electrical conductivity or resistivity can be utilized at investigation of cell membrane properties on microscopic level. Moreover the electrical conductivity have utilization at the salinity of soils and irrigation water determination. Biological material properties are determined from their leachates too. The conductivity measurement are applied for determination of various characteristics of agricultural materials and food, for example for determination of the frost sensitiveness, of chilling and freezing tolerance, of moisture content, of seeds germination, of mechanical stress, of pasteurization, of other properties of grains, seeds, meat, sugar, milk, wood, soil, fruit and vegetable, infected food, . The utilization of dielectric properties are also described; for example in agricultural materials and food quality sensing (moisture content, maturity of fruit, freshness of eggs, potential insect control in seeds, radio frequency heating, .). The classification of permittivity measurement techniques at the low frequencies is mentioned.
Precision and Accuracy in UHF-RFID Power Measurements for Passive Sensing

In spite of analog radio frequency identification (RFID) sensors are gaining increasing attention from academic and industrial domains, their true applicability in the real world is still in question, since it is not clear whether and in which conditions the variation of the measured signals related to the sensing activity may be distinguished from the measurement uncertainties. The RFID platform for analog sensing, namely, with no dedicated sensing electronics, is here characterized in term of precision and accuracy with reference to the arrangement and the reproducibility of the setup. Numerical analysis and laboratory experimentations demonstrated that the precision of power metrics measurement is twice the resolution of low-cost readers and that the uncertainty on the distance and the alignment may play a major role on the data accuracy. The environment-independent indicator, such as the analog identifier, revealed once again to be a very stable and robust metric. In overall, the obtained results suggest that analog RFID devices can be used as indicative sensing platform to identify a few levels of the phenomenon under observation. The sensing granularity can be improved using low-power ICs, while classification algorithms could be applied to increase the robustness of the detection.
Toenail Manganese: A Sensitive and Specific Biomarker of Exposure to Manganese in Career Welders

Manganese (Mn) is an essential trace metal. It is also a component of welding fume. Chronic inhalation of manganese from welding fume has been associated with decreased neurological function. Currently, there is not a universally recognized biomarker for Mn exposure; however, hair and toenails have shown promise. In a cohort of 45 male welders and 35 age-matched factory control subjects, we assessed the sensitivity and specificity of toenail Mn to distinguish occupationally exposed subjects from unexposed controls. Further we examined the exposure time window that best correlates with the proposed biomarker, and investigated if non-occupational exposure factors impacted toenail Mn concentrations. Toenail clippings were analyzed for Mn using Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS). Exposure to respirable Mn-containing particles (<4 µm) was estimated using an exposure model that combines personal air monitoring, work history information, and dietary intake to estimate an individual's exposure to Mn from inhalation of welding fume. We assessed the group differences in toenail concentrations using a Student's t-test between welders and control subjects and performed a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis to identify a threshold in toenail concentration that has the highest sensitivity and specificity in distinguishing welders from control subjects. Additionally, we performed mixed-model regressions to investigate the association between different exposure windows and toenail Mn concentrations. We observed that toenail Mn concentrations were significantly elevated among welders compared to control subjects (6.87 ± 2.56 versus 2.70 ± 1.70 µg g-1; P < 0.001). Our results show that using a toenail Mn concentration of 4.14 µg g-1 as cutoff allows for discriminating between controls and welders with 91% specificity and 94% sensitivity [area under curve (AUC) = 0.98]. Additionally, we found that a threshold of 4.66 µg g-1 toenail Mn concentration enables a 90% sensitive and 90% specific discrimination (AUC = 0.96) between subjects with average exposure above or below the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienist (ACGIH) Threshold Limit Value (TLV) of 0.02 mg m-3 during the exposure window of 7-12 months prior to the nail being clipped. Investigating which exposure window was best reflected by toenail Mn reproduced the result from another study of toenail Mn being significantly (P < 0.001) associated with exposure 7-12 months prior to the nail being clipped. Lastly, we found that dietary intake, body mass index, age, smoking status, and ethnicity had no significant effect on toenail Mn concentrations. Our results suggest that toenail Mn is a sensitive, specific, and easy-to-acquire biomarker of Mn exposure, which is feasible to be used in an industrial welder population.
Vital impact of using ginger roots powder as feed additive to the rations of local Friesian dairy cows and its effect on production & economic efficiency of milk and physiological of blood

Three non pregnant local Friesian dairy cows were at same live weights, fourth production season and during first month of calving, they were divided into three treatments . 2nd and 3rd treatments were reared on standard ration supplemented with 75 or 150 g. of ginger roots powder /cow /day ,respectively, while the 1st treatment reared on standard ration only. Cows were fed individually on standard ration during three periods (28 days/period) in 3x3 Latin square design. The results indicated that feed intake, daily quantities of uncorrected, corrected milk yields , fat, protein and lactose ,milk lactose %, red & white blood cell counts, hemoglobin concentration, packed cell volume ,lymphocyte %, total protein and globulin were increased significantly, while the percentages of milk fat and blood glucose were decreased significantly in T2 and T3 s as compared to those in T1.The present study was carried out to determine the effect of supplementation of ginger root on milk production and composition and physiological of blood.
Processed nerve allografts for peripheral nerve reconstruction: A multicenter study of utilization and outcomes in sensory, mixed, and motor nerve reconstructions

Purpose: As alternatives to autograft become more conventional, clinical outcomes data on their effectiveness in restoring meaningful function is essential. In this study we report on the outcomes from a multicenter study on processed nerve allografts (Avance® Nerve Graft, AxoGen, Inc). Patients and Methods: Twelve sites with 25 surgeons contributed data from 132 individual nerve injuries. Data was analyzed to determine the safety and efficacy of the nerve allograft. Sufficient data for efficacy analysis were reported in 76 injuries (49 sensory, 18 mixed, and 9 motor nerves). The mean age was 41 ± 17 (18–86) years. The mean graft length was 22 ± 11 (5–50) mm. Subgroup analysis was performed to determine the relationship to factors known to influence outcomes of nerve repair such as nerve type, gap length, patient age, time to repair, age of injury, and mechanism of injury. Results: Meaningful recovery was reported in 87% of the repairs reporting quantitative data. Subgroup analysis demonstrated consistency, showing no significant differences with regard to recovery outcomes between the groups (P > 0.05 Fisher's Exact Test). No graft related adverse experiences were reported and a 5% revision rate was observed. Conclusion: Processed nerve allografts performed well and were found to be safe and effective in sensory, mixed and motor nerve defects between 5 and 50 mm. The outcomes for safety and meaningful recovery observed in this study compare favorably to those reported in the literature for nerve autograft and are higher than those reported for nerve conduits. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microsurgery, 2012.
Disclosure of Alzheimer's disease. Senior citizens' opinions.

OBJECTIVE To determine the proportion of elderly people without dementia who would want disclosure of a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD), for themselves or for their spouses, and to verify whether the availability of medication would influence their decision. DESIGN A cross-sectional survey with a semistructured questionnaire completed during face-to-face interviews. SETTING Medical and surgical outpatient clinics in St Mary's Hospital Center. PARTICIPANTS 204 subjects 65 years or older with at most mild cognitive impairment. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Percentage of positive responses for disclosure of a diagnosis of AD to self or to spouse, with or without medication. RESULTS Nearly all (98%) subjects wanted disclosure for themselves. Most (78%) wanted disclosure for their potentially afflicted spouses when medication was said to be unavailable. This proportion increased to 97%, however, if medication was available. CONCLUSION Most participants requested honesty for themselves. Most wanted disclosure to a potentially affected spouse when medication is said to be available.
Hydroxylated estrogen metabolites influence the proliferation of cultured human monocytes: possible role in synovial tissue hyperplasia.

INTRODUCTION 17Beta-estradiol, estrone, and several of their hydroxylated metabolites, have been found to be significantly increased in synovial fluid of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients. In this study, we investigated whether the estrogen metabolites are able to exert direct effects on monocyte cell proliferation, which is important in RA synovial tissue activation and growth. METHODS Human monocytes (THP-1) were treated with the following estrogen metabolites at different concentrations (from 10-8M, 10-9M, 10-10M to 10-11M) for 24, 48 and 72 hours: 16-hydroxyestrone (16OH-E1), 16-hydroxyestradiol (16OH-E2), 4-hydroxyestrone (4OH-E1), 4-hydroxyestradiol (4OH-E2), 2-hydroxyestrone (2OH-E1) and 2-hydroxyestradiol (2OH-E2). Monocytes were activated with interferon-gamma (INF-gamma). Cell cultures were also performed in presence of tamoxifen (10-7M) to evaluate whether the estrogen metabolites act through the estrogen receptors (ER). Cell growth was detected by MTT test and cell viability through the LDH release assay. RESULTS 4OH-E1 and 2OH-E1 significantly increased cell growth at low concentration (10-10M), whereas they significantly reduced cell proliferation at high concentrations (10-9M). 16OH-E2 and 4OH-E2 induced opposite effects: cell proliferation at high concentration and antiproliferative action at low doses. On the contrary, 16OH-E1 and 2OH-E2 were found to be estrogen metabolites that induced cell proliferative effects for most of the tested doses. Tamoxifen caused the loss of effects on cell proliferation for almost all the metabolites. CONCLUSION This study first demonstrates that different downstream estrogen metabolites interfere with monocyte proliferation and generally might modulate the immune response. Therefore, since estrogen metabolite/ratios are altered in the synovial fluid of RA patients, they might play important roles at least in RA synovial tissue hyperplasia.