Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Intake of 25 g of soybean protein with or without soybean fiber alters plasma lipids in men with elevated cholesterol concentrations.

Twenty-one mildly hypercholesterolemic men consumed a diet that was low in fat (< 30% of energy) and cholesterol (300 mg/d) and were given muffins containing 25 g protein + 20 g dietary fiber daily from either isolated soybean protein + soybean cotyledon fiber, isolated soybean protein + cellulose, casein + soybean cotyledon fiber or casein + cellulose. All subjects progressed through the low fat, low cholesterol baseline period, lasting 2 wk, and then through all four dietary treatments, lasting 4 wk each, according to a Latin square design. Plasma concentrations of total, LDL, HDL and VLDL cholesterol, total and VLDL triacylglycerols, and apolipoprotein A-I and B were measured at the end of each period. When data from all subjects were analyzed, dietary treatments did not influence lipemia; however, in subjects with initial total cholesterol concentrations > 5.7 mmol/L, both isolated soybean protein treatments resulted in significantly lower total cholesterol compared with the two casein treatments (P < 0.05). In addition, a negative linear relationship was observed when a subject's total or LDL cholesterol change after each of the soybean treatments was regressed against the subject's baseline cholesterol concentration (P < 0.05). Apolipoprotein A-I varied dependent on baseline cholesterol with no apparent pattern, whereas apolipoprotein B levels were not affected. Results indicate that consumption of 25 g soybean protein/d is associated with lower total cholesterol concentrations in individuals with initial cholesterol concentrations > 5.7 mmol/L.
Nonperturbative calculation of partial differential rates for multiphoton ionization of a hydrogen atom in a strong laser field.

We show how the multiphoton-ionization matrix element for an atom in a laser field at intensities beyond the regime of perturbation theory can be calculated from the standard Floquet expansion of the electron wave function. We expand the harmonic components in a discrete complex Sturmian basis set, and we evaluate the resulting (divergent) sum for the matrix element by using the Pade method. We present results for partial rates and angular distributions for hydrogen.
Highly Efficient Boundary Element Analysis of Whispering Gallery Microcavities

We demonstrate that the efficiency of the boundary element method, as applied to whispering gallery microcavity analyses, can be improved by orders of magnitude with the inclusion of the Fresnel technique. Using a scalar formulation, simulations of a microdisk with wavenumber-radius product as large as kR ≈ 8000 are achieved in contrast to a previous record of kR ≈ 100. In addition to its high accuracy for computing the modal field distributions and resonant wavelength, this technique yields a relative error of 10% when employing a direct root searching approach to calculate quality factors as high as 1011 (which are otherwise unattainable by a conventional boundary element method, due to computational limitations). Quadrupole-shaped and double disk cavities as large as 100 μm in diameter are also modeled by employing as few as 512 boundary elements, where simulations of such cavities using the conventional boundary element method have yet to be reported.
Using distraction to reduce reported pain, fear, and behavioral distress in children and adolescents: a multisite study.

ISSUES AND PURPOSE Distraction during painful procedures has been shown to be effective in previous studies, yet this simple intervention is not used routinely. This study examined the effectiveness and feasibility of distraction in reducing behavioral distress, pain, and fear during venipuncture or intravenous insertion. DESIGN AND METHODS A two-group randomized design with 384 children in 13 children's hospitals. RESULTS Age was a significant factor in observed behavioral distress, reports of fear, and self-reported pain. The use of a kaleidoscope, however, did not significantly reduce pain or distress during venipuncture or i.v. insertion. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS Failure of the distraction intervention to reach statistical significance in this study is puzzling, given anecdotal reports of clinical efficacy. Methodological issues may have obscured actual differences between experimental and control groups.
A high-coverage artificial chromosome library for the genome-wide screening of drug-resistance genes in malaria parasites

The global spread of drug-resistant parasites is a serious problem for the treatment of malaria. Although identifying drug-resistance genes is crucial for the efforts against resistant parasites, an effective approach has not yet been developed. Here, we report a robust method for identifying resistance genes from parasites by using a Plasmodium artificial chromosome (PAC). Large genomic DNA fragments (10–50 kb) from the drug-resistant rodent malaria parasite Plasmodium berghei were ligated into the PAC and directly introduced into the drug-sensitive (i.e., wild-type) parasite by electroporation, resulting in a PAC library that encompassed the whole genomic sequence of the parasite. Subsequently, the transformed parasites that acquired resistance were selected by screening with the drug, and the resistance gene in the PAC was successfully identified. Furthermore, the drug-resistance gene was identified from a PAC library that was made from the pyrimethamine-resistant parasite Plasmodium chabaudi, further demonstrating the utility of our method. This method will promote the identification of resistance genes and contribute to the global fight against drug-resistant parasites.
Ready-to-eat cereal consumption and the School Breakfast Program: relationship to nutrient intake and weight.

BACKGROUND Children in the United States exhibit high rates of nutrient inadequacy and overweight/obesity; other international studies report similar associations. The School Breakfast Program (SBP) may help alleviate these conditions for youth in the United States. This research examined the association of ready-to-eat (RTE) breakfast cereal consumption with students' (SBP participants and nonparticipants) dietary nutrient intake and weight status. METHODS Data were from the third School Nutrition Dietary Assessment Study (SNDA-III), conducted in 2004-2005. Analyses included all 2298 SNDA-III participants (ages 5-18 years), who completed a dietary recall and whose parents completed an interview. Students were categorized as skipping versus eating breakfast; students eating breakfast were categorized by SBP participation (SBP participant vs nonparticipant) and breakfast type (with vs without RTE cereal). Analyses estimated the association of these categorizations with total daily nutrient intake and weight-related measures, after adjusting for covariates. RESULTS RTE cereal breakfast consumers (regardless of SBP participation) had greater intake of vitamin A, iron, and whole grain, compared with noncereal breakfast eaters. Breakfast consumers (regardless of SBP participation and type) had greater intake of vitamins A and C, calcium, iron, dietary fiber, and whole grain, relative to breakfast skippers. CONCLUSIONS The SBP increases opportunity for improved nutrient intake and healthier body weight through breakfast consumption, especially whole grain RTE cereals, as recommended by the Dietary Guidelines 2010.
[The hepatitis C virus among the prison population of Valencia].

AIM To know the prevalence of anti-VHC in the Valencia Male Penitentiary Centre. DESIGN A prospective study in which a representative sample of the inmates is included. In each case the anti-VHC and the ALT are studied. Serological results were correlated with history of intravenous drug addiction, alcohol abuse and duration and number of internments. INMATES: 750 inmates are included; they represent 41% of the people interned in this Centre during 1991. RESULTS A high prevalence (45%) of the serological marker for VHC infection was observed. The prevalence of anti-VHC+ among the drug addict inmates is around 90% and this situation was already found during the first year of drug addiction. Among non-drug addict inmates the prevalence is 14%. Hepatitis C virus infection has a correlation with the duration and number of internments; 75% of the inmates with high ALT values have anti-VHC+. CONCLUSIONS Nearly half of the inmates are infected with hepatitis C virus. The drug addict inmates are infected during the first year of their habit. The majority of the inmates with elevated ALT has anti-VHC+.
Evaluation of proton inelastic reaction models in Geant4 for prompt gamma production during proton radiotherapy

During proton beam radiotherapy, discrete secondary prompt gamma rays are induced by inelastic nuclear reactions between protons and nuclei in the human body. In recent years, the Geant4 Monte Carlo toolkit has played an important role in the development of a device for real time dose range verification purposes using prompt gamma radiation. Unfortunately the default physics models in Geant4 do not reliably replicate the measured prompt gamma emission. Determining a suitable physics model for low energy proton inelastic interactions will boost the accuracy of prompt gamma simulations. Among the built-in physics models, we found that the precompound model with a modified initial exciton state of 2 (1 particle, 1 hole) produced more accurate discrete gamma lines from the most important elements found within the body such as 16O, 12C and 14N when comparing them with the available gamma production cross section data. Using the modified physics model, we investigated the prompt gamma spectra produced in a water phantom by a 200 MeV pencil beam of protons. The spectra were attained using a LaBr3 detector with a time-of-flight (TOF) window and BGO active shield to reduce the secondary neutron and gamma background. The simulations show that a 2 ns TOF window could reduce 99% of the secondary neutron flux hitting the detector. The results show that using both timing and active shielding can remove up to 85% of the background radiation which includes a 33% reduction by BGO subtraction.
Fuzzy Kohonen clustering networks

The authors propose a fuzzy Kohonen clustering network which integrates the fuzzy c-means (FCM) model into the learning rate and updating strategies of the Kohonen network. This yields an optimization problem related to FCM, and the numerical results show improved convergence as well as reduced labeling errors. It is proved that the proposed scheme is equivalent to the c-means algorithms. The new method can be viewed as a Kohonen type of FCM, but it is self-organizing, since the size of the update neighborhood and the learning rate in the competitive layer are automatically adjusted during learning. Anderson's IRIS data were used to illustrate this method. The results are compared with the standard Kohonen approach. <<ETX>>
Estudio teórico, desarrollo, implementación y evaluación de un entorno de enseñanza colaborativa con soporte informático (CSCL) para matemáticas

Los tres pilares que confluyen en este trabajo son: la Didactica de las Matematicas, el aprendizaje colaborativo y las tecnologias de la informacion y la comunicacion. El primero como eje central y de referencia, el segundo como apuesta didactica y el tercero como soporte y herramienta de puesta en practica. La introduccion de las tecnologias de la informacion y la comunicacion colaborativas en el ambito de la didactica de las matematicas comporta un cambio de paradigma en su conceptualizacion y modificaciones en su desarrollo didactico. En esta experiencia se trabajan diferentes aspectos relacionados, como: el cambio de paradigma en la ensenanza y aprendizaje matematicos que la tecnolgoia ha ocasionado, las teorias psicopedagogicas educativas que deben fundamentar este tipo de ensenanza, la conceptualizacion de entornos virtuales de aprendizaje desde un punto de vista matematico, la mejora en la construccion del conocimiento matematico a traves de medios tecnologicos, las dificultades y/o facilidades que aporta este tipo de desarrollos o las dudas se pueden formular alrededor de la calidad de la ensenanza colaborativa de las matematicas con soporte TIC
Infectious complications and duration of intracranial pressure monitoring

We studied 65 children with acute brain injury to determine how the risk of infectious complications changed with duration of intracranial pressure (ICP) monitoring. More than half of the 72 monitors inserted in these patients were in place at least 7 days (range 1 to 28). Nine infections occurred on days 2 through 11. The overall risk was 1.5 infections per 100 monitor-days. After day 6 the risk of subsequent infection diminished, as did the percent of monitors which subsequently became infected. The declining risk of infection over time suggests that infection is introduced at the time of monitor insertion. These findings justify a protocol in which a single ICP monitoring device is used as long as necessary, with reinsertion of a new monitor only if a malfunction occurs, or if daily surveillance cultures demonstrate an infection. Routine reinsertion of a new monitor might increase risk by unnecessarily re-exposing the patient to contamination at the time of insertion.
Assessment of Quadratic Nonlinear Cardiorespiratory Couplings During Tilt-Table Test by Means of Real Wavelet Biphase

<italic>Objective:</italic> In this paper, a method for assessment of quadratic phase coupling (QPC) between respiration and heart rate variability (HRV) is presented. <italic>Methods:</italic> First, a method for QPC detection is proposed named real wavelet biphase (RWB). Then, a method for QPC quantification is proposed based on the normalized wavelet biamplitude (NWB). A simulation study has been conducted to test the reliability of RWB to identify QPC, even in the presence of constant delays between interacting oscillations, and to discriminate it from quadratic phase uncoupling. Significant QPC was assessed based on surrogate data analysis. Then, quadratic cardiorespiratory couplings were studied during a tilt-table test protocol of 17 young healthy subjects. <italic>Results:</italic> Simulation study showed that RWB is able to detect even weak QPC with delays in the range of <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{0-2}$</tex-math></inline-formula> s, which are usual in the autonomic nervous system (ANS) control of heart rate. Results from the database revealed a significant reduction (<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$p <\text{0.05}$</tex-math></inline-formula>) of NWB between respiration and both low and high frequencies of HRV in head-up tilt position compared to early supine. <italic>Conclusion:</italic> The proposed technique detects and quantifies robustly QPC and is able to track the coupling between respiration and various HRV components during ANS changes. <italic>Significance:</italic> The proposed method can help to assess alternations of nonlinear cardiorespiratory interactions related to ANS dysfunction and physiological regulation of HRV in cardiovascular diseases.
Transcriptional activation of rat creatine kinase B by 17β‐estradiol in MCF‐7 cells involves an estrogen responsive element and GC‐rich sites

The rat creatine kinase B (CKB) gene is induced by estrogen in the uterus, and constructs containing rat CKB gene promoter inserts are highly estrogen‐responsive in cell culture. Analysis of the upstream −568 to −523 region of the promoter in HeLa cells has identified an imperfect palindromic estrogen response element (ERE) that is required for hormone inducibility. Analysis of the CKB gene promoter in MCF‐7 breast cancer cells confirmed that pCKB7 (containing the −568 to −523 promoter insert) was estrogen‐responsive in transient transfection studies. However, mutation and deletion analysis of this region of the promoter showed that two GC‐rich sites and the concensus ERE were functional cis‐elements that bound estrogen receptor α (ERα)/Sp1 and ERα proteins, respectively. The role of these elements was confirmed in gel mobility shift and chromatin immunoprecipitation assays and transfection studies in MDA‐MB‐231 and Schneider Drosophila SL‐2 cells. These results show that transcriptional activation of CKB by estrogen is dependent, in part, on ERα/Sp1 action which is cell context‐dependent. J. Cell. Biochem. 84: 156–172, 2002. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
A major mitochondrial gene rearrangement among closely related species.

The sequential order of genes in animal mitochondrial DNA tends to be conserved at high taxonomic levels. Consequently, when mitochondrial gene rearrangements occur, they can provide compelling markers of ancient phylogenetic history (see reviews in Boore, Daehler, and Brown [1999], Saccone et al. [1999], and references therein). Such gene order characters have proven particularly useful for resolving deep-branching events characterizing superphyla, phyla, and classes, a scale over which nucleotide sequence analysis has often proven problematic (e.g., Smith et al. 1993; Boore and Brown 1994a, 1998, 2000; Boore et al. 1995; Boore, Lavrov, and Brown 1998; Stechmann and Schlegel 1999). Most frequently, these rearrangements are associated with the movement of tRNA genes which, based on their stem-and-loop structure, may also have an underlying role as mobilizing elements within the mitochondrial genome (Moritz and Brown 1987; Stanton et al. 1994; Saccone et al. 1999). Gene rearrangements involving ribosomal and protein-encoding genes (hereinafter referred to as ‘‘major’’ genes), however, are much rarer. Here we report a mitochondrial gene rearrangement involving major genes that has occurred within a genus of marine vermetid gastropods that diversified within the Cenozoic. Based on data from the fossil record and an independent molecular calibration, we estimate that this gene order change may have occurred within the last 38–48 Myr, making this a very recent major gene order rearrangement. This finding thus has important implications for the use of gene order characters in metazoan phylogeny, in terms of both understanding the mechanism of gene order rearrangements and determining the taxonomic level and timescale over which these major rearrangements may prove useful. The family Vermetidae comprises seven genera with ;100 extant species of sessile, uncoiled, suspension-feeding gastropods found in shallow marine waters in warm temperate to tropical latitudes throughout the world (Keen 1961; Morton 1965; unpublished data). Based on our current understanding of gastropod evolution, vermetid gastropods radiated from a basal caenogastropod stock sometime in the early Cenozoic (Keen 1961; unpublished data). As part of a study to investi-
Physiological consequences of the complete loss of phosphoryl-transfer proteins HPr and FPr of the phosphoenolpyruvate:sugar phosphotransferase system and analysis of fructose (fru) operon expression in Salmonella typhimurium

Mutants of Salmonella typhimurium defective in the proteins of the fructose operon [fruB(MH)KA], the fructose repressor (fruR), the energy-coupling enzymes of the phosphoenolpyruvate:sugar phosphotransferase system (PTS) (ptsH and ptsI), and the proteins of cyclic AMP action (cya and crp) were analyzed for their effects on cellular physiological processes and expression of the fructose operon. The fru operon consists of three structural genes: fruB(MH), which encodes the enzyme IIIFru-modulator-FPr tridomain fusion protein of the PTS; fruK, which encodes fructose-1-phosphate kinase; and fruA, which encodes enzyme IIFru of the PTS. Among the mutants analyzed were Tn10 insertion mutants and lacZ transcriptional fusion mutants. It was found that whereas a fruR::Tn10 insertion mutant, several fruB(MH)::Mu dJ and fruK::Mu dJ fusion mutants, and several ptsHI deletion mutants expressed the fru operon and beta-galactosidase at high constitutive levels, ptsH point mutants and fruA::Mu dJ fusion mutants retained inducibility. Inclusion of the wild-type fru operon in trans did not restore fructose-inducible beta-galactosidase expression in the fru::Mu dJ fusion mutants. cya and crp mutants exhibited reduced basal activities of all fru regulon enzymes, but inducibility was not impaired. Surprisingly, fruB::Mu dJ crp or cya double mutants showed over 10-fold inducibility of the depressed beta-galactosidase activity upon addition of fructose, even though this activity in the fruB::Mu dJ fusion mutants that contained the wild-type cya and crp alleles was only slightly inducible. By contrast, beta-galactosidase activity in a fruK::Mu dJ fusion mutant, which was similarly depressed by introduction of a crp or cya mutation, remained constitutive. Other experiments indicated that sugar uptake via the PTS can utilize either FPr-P or HPr-P as the phosphoryl donor, but that FPr is preferred for fructose uptake whereas HPr is preferred for uptake of the other sugars. Double mutants lacking both proteins were negative for the utilization of all sugar substrates of the PTS, were negative for the utilization of several gluconeogenic carbon sources, exhibited greatly reduced adenylate cyclase activity, and were largely nonmotile. These phenotypic properties are more extreme than those observed for tight ptsH and ptsI mutants, including mutants deleted for these genes. A biochemical explanation for this fact is proposed.
Antimycobacterial Activity of Lipodepsipeptides Produced by Pseudomonas Syringae Pv Syringae B359

Some lipodepsipeptides produced by Pseudomonas syringae pv. syringae showed strong antimycobacterial activity towards Mycobacterium smegmatis . MIC values found were between 1.5-3.2 µg/ml, which is comparable to some primary drugs for tuberculosis. Among the lipodepsipeptides, Syringomycin E (SRE) appears to be the most potent antimycobacterial agent.
Perception and usage of e-resources and the internet by Indian academics

Purpose – This paper aims to examine the perception and use of e‐resources and the internet by the engineering, medical and management academics in Bangalore City, India. The prime objective is to find out how academics compare e‐sources with print sources and how they perceive the advantages of e‐sources and problems for accessing them. It further aims to establish the extent of internet use, the purpose of such use and factors influencing it.Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from 300 students and faculty members in selected engineering, medical and management colleges of Bangalore City. The questionnaire consists of 15 main questions with many of them having a number of subsidiary questions. The questions are designed for the students and faculty members to elicit their experience with the e‐sources and internet use for their study and research work.Findings – Study results show that the students and faculty who participated in this survey are aware of e‐sources and also the internet. Ev.