Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prediction of Long-Term Municipal Solid Waste Landfill Settlement Using Constitutive Model

This paper proposes a generalized constitutive model for municipal solid waste, based on the framework derived from critical state concepts and incorporating the effects of mechanical creep and time-dependent biodegradation, to predict total landfill compression under incremental loading and with time. The model parameters are calculated based on laboratory one-dimensional compression and triaxial compression tests, and data available from published literature. To illustrate the applicability of the proposed model, settlements due to incremental loading of waste with time are predicted for typical landfill conditions. The predicted settlement results using the proposed model are compared with the predicted settlement results using 14 different reported models. It is shown that the predicted settlements can vary significantly depending on the model used and the parameter values selected. The proposed model predicts the total settlement in a range similar to the reported models that consider all three compo.
Different Types of Dietary Fibers Trigger Specific Alterations in Composition and Predicted Functions of Colonic Bacterial Communities in BALB/c Mice

Soluble dietary fibers (SDF) are fermented more than insoluble dietary fibers (IDF), but their effect on colonic bacterial community structure and function remains unclear. Thus, bacterial community composition and function in the colon of BALB/c mice (n = 7) fed with a high level (approximately 20%) of typical SDF, oat-derived β-glucan (G), microcrystalline cellulose (M) as IDF, or their mixture (GM), were compared. Mice in group G showed a lowest average feed intake (p < 0.05) but no change on the average body weight gain (p > 0.05) compared to other groups, which may be associated with the highest concentration of colonic propionate (p < 0.05) in these mice. The bacterial α-diversity of group G was significantly lower than other groups (p < 0.01). In group G, the relative abundance of bacteria belonging to the phylum Bacteroidetes was significantly increased, whereas bacteria from the phylum Firmicutes were significantly decreased (p < 0.01). The core bacteria for different treatments showed distinct differences. Bacteroides, Dehalobacterium, and Prevotella, including known acetogens and carbohydrate fermenting organisms, were significantly increased in relative abundance in group G. In contrast, Adlercreutzia, Odoribacter, and Coprococcus were significantly more abundant in group M, whereas Oscillospira, Desulfovibrio, and Ruminoccaceae, typical hydrogenotrophs equipped with multiple carbohydrate active enzymes, were remarkably enriched in group GM (p < 0.05). The relative abundance of bacteria from the three classes of Proteobacteria, Betaproteobacteria, Gammaproteobacteria (including Enterobacteriaceae) and Deltaproteobacteria, were significantly more abundant in group G, indicating a higher ratio of conditional pathogenic bacteria in mice fed dietary β-glucan in current study. The predicted colonic microbial function showed an enrichment of “Energy metabolism” and “Carbohydrate metabolism” pathways in mice from group G and M, suggesting that the altered bacterial community in the colon of mice with the two dietary fibers probably resulted in a more efficient degradation of dietary polysaccharides. Our result suggests that the influence of dietary β-glucan (SDF) on colonic bacterial community of mice was more extensively than MCC (IDF). Co-supplementation of the two fibers may help to increase the bacterial diversity and reduce the conditional pathogens in the colon of mice.
Maximum-Likelihood Estimation of Demographic Parameters Using the Frequency Spectrum of Unlinked Single-Nucleotide Polymorphisms

A maximum-likelihood method for demographic inference is applied to data sets consisting of the frequency spectrum of unlinked single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). We use simulation analyses to explore the effect of sample size and number of polymorphic sites on both the power to reject the null hypothesis of constant population size and the properties of two- and three-dimensional maximum-likelihood estimators (MLEs). Large amounts of data are required to produce accurate demographic inferences, particularly for scenarios of recent growth. Properties of the MLEs are highly dependent upon the demographic scenario, as estimates improve with a more ancient time of growth onset and smaller degree of growth. Severe episodes of growth lead to an upward bias in the estimates of the current population size, and that bias increases with the magnitude of growth. One data set of African origin supports a model of mild, ancient growth, and another is compatible with both constant population size and a variety of growth scenarios, rejecting greater than fivefold growth beginning >36,000 years ago. Analysis of a data set of European origin indicates a bottlenecked population history, with an 85% population reduction occurring ∼30,000 years ago.
Energy transfer at surfaces: Asymmetric line shapes and the electron-hole-pair mechanism.

Deduction d'expressions rigoureuses pour la forme des raies d'un mode vibrationnel isole d'un atome ou d'une molecule adsorbes sur une surface metallique, en presence d'un amortissement trou-electron. On montre que ce mecanisme produit des formes a raies asymetriques a longues queues
The influence of flexibility on the economy of walking and jogging

The relationship of 11 measures of trunk and lower limb flexibility to the economy of treadmill walking and jogging as measured by steady‐state oxygen consumption (VO2) was studied. Subjects (38 women, 62 men, aged 20–;62 years) were tested at six speeds between 53.6 and 187.7 m/min. By combining scores from all flexibility tests, and beginning at speeds of 107.3 m/min, the “tightest” third used significantly less O2/m/kg (9%, p < 0.05) than the “loosest” third, with “normals” in between. Two tests, trunk rotation and lower limb turnout, gave the best separation for walking/jogging economy, with the “tightest” third differing significantly from the “loosest” (8–12%) at all speeds tested (ANOVA with Scheffe). We conclude that nonpathological musculoskeletal tightness was associated with a decreased steady‐state VO2 for treadmill walking and jogging.
Targeting angiogenesis for the treatment of sarcoma

Purpose of review More therapeutic options are needed for bone and soft tissue sarcomas, especially for patients with metastatic disease. Recent randomized clinical trials conducted in colon, breast and lung cancer have shown the anti-vascular endothelial growth factor agent, bevacizumab, alone or in combination with chemotherapy, improves response and survival. Preclinical studies have demonstrated the anti-tumor effects of varied anti-angiogenic agents in sarcoma cell lines and tumor models. Recent findings Preclinical studies in sarcomas have evaluated the role of targeted agents including platelet-derived growth factor, matrix metalloproteinases, urokinase receptor and varied small-molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitors. Novel angiogenesis inhibitors are being studied in the treatment of sarcoma, including monoclonal antibodies against vascular endothelial growth factor, cis- and trans-retinoic acids, thalidomide, and tyrosine kinase inhibitors. Phase I, II and III clinical trials continue to evaluate these agents alone, in combinations together and combined with standard chemotherapy. We review herein the preclinical rationale and clinical trial results of anti-angiogenesis therapy in the treatment of soft tissue and bone sarcoma. Summary Preclinical mechanistic study and clinical trials are continuing in order to evaluate the therapeutic role and ultimately validate the efficacy of the varied anti-angiogenesis agents in soft tissue and bone sarcoma.
Comparison of serum and bronchoalveolar lavage galactomannan in diagnosing invasive aspergillosis in solid-organ transplant recipients.

OBJECTIVES This study sought to compare the sensitivities of serum galactomannan and bronchoalveolar lavage galactomannan in diagnosing invasive aspergillosis in solid-organ transplant recipients (lung and heart). MATERIALS AND METHODS This study took place in the lung transplant center of the National Research Institute for Tuberculosis and Lung Disease. All patients with clinical and radiologic manifestations suggestive of pulmonary infection were included. Serum and bronchoalveolar lavage galactomannan were measured. RESULTS Seventeen patients were included (lung, 15; heart, 1; heart-lung, 1). Probable or definite invasive aspergillosis was diagnosed in 9 patients. With a cutoff ≥ 0.5, serum galactomannan sensitivity and specificity for diagnosing invasive aspergillosis were 77.18% and 100%. Negative predictive value and positive predictive value were 80% and 100%. The sensitivity and specificity of bronchoalveolar lavage galactomannan for diagnosing invasive aspergillosis with cutoff of ≥ 0.5 was 100%. CONCLUSIONS Regarding the high levels of mortality and problems in diagnosing this disease, using bronchoalveolar lavage galactomannan could be a suitable option.
Multicentric adenomatoid tumors involving uterus, ovary, and appendix

A case of large, and multicentric adenomatoid tumors involving the uterus, right ovary and appendix is described. The uterine tumor was exceptionally large, about 15 cm in maximal diameter, and located in the right fundal region of the uterus with a short, thick pedicle as in a subserous pedunculated uterine fibroid.
Community Behaviour and Support towards Island Tourism Development

The tourism industry has been widely used to eradicate poverty, due to the ability to generate income, employment as well as improving the quality of life. The industry has faced rapid growth with support from local residents who were involved directly and indirectly in tourism activities. Their support and behaviour does not only facilitate in boosting tourists’ satisfaction levels, but at the same time it contributes to the word-of-mouth promotion among the visitors. In order to ensure the success of the industry, the involvement and participation of the local communities are pertinent. This paper endeavours on local community attitudes, benefit and their support toward future tourism development in Tioman Island. Through a series of descriptive and factor analyses, various useful understandings on the issues of interest revealed. The findings indicated that community with personal benefit will support future development. Meanwhile, the finding also revealed that the community with negative perception still supports future tourism development due to their over reliance on this sector as their main source of income and destination development means. Keywords—Personal benefit, perceived impact, future attitudes.
Respiratory Muscle Strength as a Predictive Biomarker for Survival in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

Rationale: Biomarkers for survival in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) would facilitate the development of novel drugs. Although respiratory muscle weakness is a known predictor of poor prognosis, a comprehensive comparison of different tests is lacking. Objectives: To compare the predictive power of invasive and noninvasive respiratory muscle strength assessments for survival or ventilator‐free survival, up to 3 years. Methods: From a previously published report respiratory muscle strength measurements were available for 78 patients with ALS. Time to death and/or ventilation were ascertained. Receiver operating characteristic analysis was used to determine the cutoff point of each parameter. Measurements and Main Results: Each respiratory muscle strength assessment individually achieved statistical significance for prediction of survival or ventilator‐free survival. In multivariate analysis sniff trans‐diaphragmatic and esophageal pressure, twitch trans‐diaphragmatic pressure (Tw Pdi), age, and maximal static expiratory mouth pressure were significant predictors of ventilation‐free survival and Tw Pdi and maximal static expiratory mouth pressure for absolute survival. Although all measures had good specificity, there were differing sensitivities. All cutoff points for the VC were greater than 80% of normal, except for prediction of 3‐month outcomes. Sequential data showed a linear decline for direct measures of respiratory muscle strength, whereas VC showed little to no decline until 12 months before death/ventilation. Conclusions: The most powerful biomarker for mortality stratification was Tw Pdi, but the predictive power of sniff nasal inspiratory pressure was also excellent. A VC within normal range suggested a good prognosis at 3 months but was of little other value.
Assessment of Patients' Perceptions and Beliefs Regarding Herbal Therapies

We evaluated the demographics and beliefs regarding safety and efficacy of herbal therapy among individuals in Iowa and assessed the willingness to discuss the use of these products with health care providers. We distributed 1300 surveys to two random samples: patients attending eight clinics, and residents of the state (mailing). Data were categorized according to herb use and compared between users and nonusers. The response rate was 61% (794 people), with 41.6% of respondents reporting herb use. They were predominately white women and were likely to have had education beyond high school (p<0.05). Their use of prescription drugs was high (p<0.05). Although users rated safety and efficacy of herbs higher than nonusers (p<0.05), both groups believed that health care providers should be aware of use and would provide this information.
Predictors of Screening for Hyperlipidemia in an Urban Pediatric Tertiary Care Center

Introduction. It is unknown how the conflicting recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the US Preventive Services Task Force on pediatric hyperlipidemia affect screening. Objectives. (a) Identify clinical predictors for screening for hyperlipidemia, (b) assess the adherence to the 2008 American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines, and (c) determine the efficacy of reminder cards in increasing the adherence to the aforementioned guidelines. Methods. Retrospective chart review in the resident, attending, and adolescent medicine clinics during a 3-month period. Reminder cards on each patient chart outlining guidelines for lipid screening for the same clinics were inserted and prospectively assessed for adherence during the following 3 months. Results. Older age and higher body mass index increased likelihood (odds ratio = 1.2 and 12.7, respectively) for lipid screening. Reminder cards improved adherence in the resident clinic only (χ2 P = .016). Conclusions. Age and body mass index were the most significant predictors for lipid screening. Reminder cards modestly improved adherence among resident physicians.
Hyperdoctrines, Natural Deduction and the Beck Condition

In the late sixties F. W. LAWVERE showed that the logical connectives and quantifiers were examples of the categorical notion of adjointness. In [9] and [lo] he amplified this notion by a more thorough discussion of the structure of a hyperdoctrine, which had much of the flavour of intuitionistic logic with equality. In this eontext it was natural to “stratify” formulae and proofs according to the free variables occurring in them, a procedure later to become standard in categorical logic. (See MAKKAIREYES [12], FOURMAN [l], KOCK-REYES [7], for example.) In this paper, we make the relationship between hyperdoctrines and logic precise, showing that hyperdoctrines are naturally equivalent to first order intuitionistic theories with equality, where here “theory” is intended to include some proof theoretic structure, and not merely the notion of entailment. Moreover, we will show that this equivalence restricts to one giving a natural logical interpretation to the BECK (or CHEVALLEY) condition: in a given hyperdoctrine, the Beck condition for a pullback diagram is just the condition that the corresponding theory “recognizes ” the pull back.
Influence of a stressing constraint on stiffness and damping functions of a ski simulator's platform motion

The aim of this study was to assess the effect of stress on a previously acquired motor coordination. Following a longitudinal learning experiment, four participants performed oscillations on a ski simulator, either in normal or stressful conditions. The results showed that the amplitude of the oscillations decreased under stress, but no significant effect was seen regarding coordination, suggesting the strong resistance to stress of overlearned behaviour. Nevertheless, for one participant, a transient regression towards a former stage of learning was observed. This result was consistent with the regression hypothesis formulated by Fuchs (1962).
Complementation of integrase function in HIV‐1 virions

Proviral integration is essential for HIV‐1 replication and represents an important potential target for antiviral drug design. Although much is known about the integration process from studies of purified integrase (IN) protein and synthetic target DNA, provirus formation in virally infected cells remains incompletely understood since reconstituted in vitro assays do not fully reproduce in vivo integration events. We have developed a novel experimental system in which IN‐mutant HIV‐1 molecular clones are complemented in trans by Vpr–IN fusion proteins, thereby enabling the study of IN function in replicating viruses. Using this approach we found that (i) Vpr‐linked IN is efficiently packaged into virions independent of the Gag–Pol polyprotein, (ii) fusion proteins containing a natural RT/IN processing site are cleaved by the viral protease and (iii) only the cleaved IN protein complements IN‐defective HIV‐1 efficiently. Vpr‐mediated packaging restored IN function to a wide variety of IN‐deficient HIV‐1 strains including zinc finger, catalytic core and C‐terminal domain mutants as well as viruses from which IN was completely deleted. Furthermore, trans complemented IN protein mediated a bona fide integration reaction, as demonstrated by the precise processing of proviral ends (5′‐TG…CA‐3′) and the generation of an HIV‐1‐specific (5 bp) duplication of adjoining host sequences. Intragenic complementation between IN mutants defective in different protein domains was also observed, thereby providing the first evidence for IN multimerization in vivo.
Modeling Asymmetry and Excess Kurtosis in Stock Return Data

This paper develops a flexible parametric approach to capture asymmetry and excess kurtosis along with conditional heteroskedasticity with a general family of distributions for analyzing stock returns data. Engle's (1982) autoregressive conditional heteroskedastic (ARCH) model and its various generalizations can account for many of the stylized facts, such as fat tails and volatility clustering. However, in many applications, it has been found that the conditional normal or Student's t ARCH process is not sufficiently heavy-tailed to account for the excess kurtosis in the data. Moreover, asymmetry in financial data is rarely modeled systematically. Therefore, there is a real need to find an asymmetric density that can be easily estimated and whose tails are heavier than the Student's t-distribution. Pearson type IV density is such a distribution, and it is much easier to handle than those that have been used in the literature, such as non-central t and Gram-Charlier distributions, to account for skewness and excess kurtosis simultaneously. Pearson type IV distribution has three parameters that can be interpreted as variance, skewness and kurtosis; and they can also be considered as different components of the risk premium. Modeling simultaneously time-varying behavior of mean, variance, skewness and kurtosis produces a better explanation of risk than mean-variance analysis only. These methodologies can also be used to analyze other financial data such as exchange rates, interest rates and spot and future prices.
Blue nevus presenting as an endocervical polyp.

We report herein a case of blue nevus of the uterine cervix presenting as an endocervical polyp. A 58-year-old Japanese female was presented with an endocervical polyp. The polyp was promptly excised, and histological examination revealed distribution of many melanin-loaded spindle-shaped cells in its stromal portion. Immunohistochemically, the cells were positive for S100 protein, SOX10, HMB45, and MART-1. Based on the characteristic cellular morphology and immunohistochemical findings, the lesion was diagnosed as a blue nevus, and malignant melanoma was denied. Endocervical blue nevi are relatively rare, and there are some discordance among previous publications about immunoreactivity against HMB45 and MART-1.
Ant Mimicry Lessens Predation on a North American Jumping Spider by Larger Salticid Spiders

ABSTRACT Ant-like appearance (myrmecomorphy) has evolved >70 times in insects and spiders, accounting for >2,000 species of myrmecomorphic arthropods. Most myrmecomorphic spiders are considered to be Batesian mimics; that is, a palatable spider avoids predation through resemblance to an unpalatable ant—although this presumption has been tested in relatively few cases. Here we explicitly examined the extent to which Peckhamia picata (Salticidae), a North American ant-mimicking jumping spider, is protected from four species of jumping spider predators, relative to nonmimetic salticids and model ants. In addition, we conducted focused behavioral observations on one salticid predator, Thiodina puerpera, to determine the point at which the predators' behaviors toward model, mimic, and nonmimic diverge. We also examined the behaviors of Peckhamia in the presence of Thiodina. We found that mimetic jumping spiders were consumed less than a third as often as nonmimetic jumping spiders, suggesting that Peckhamia does indeed gain protection as a result of its resemblance to ants, and so can be considered a Batesian mimic. Furthermore, our focal predator did not consume any ant-mimicking spiders, and seemed to categorize Peckhamia with its model ant early in the hunting sequence. Such early determination of prey versus nonprey may be the result of speed-accuracy trade-offs in predator decision-making.
Ionic and histological studies of salivary glands in rats with diabetes and their glycemic state after laser irradiation.

OBJECTIVES To evaluate the effect of laser irradiation (LI) on the glycemic state and the histological and ionic parameters of the parotid and submandibular glands in rats with diabetes. METHODS One hundred twenty female rats were divided into eight groups. Diabetes was induced by administration of streptozotocin and confirmed later according to results of glycemia testing. Twenty-nine days after the induction, the parotid and submandibular glands of the rats were irradiated with 5, 10, and 20 J/cm2 using a laser diode (660 nm/100 mW) (without diabetes: C5, C10, and C20; with diabetes: D5, D10, and D20, respectively). On the following day, the rats were euthanized, and blood glucose determined. Histological and ionic analyses were performed. RESULTS Rats with diabetes without irradiation (D0) showed lipid droplets accumulation in the parotid gland, but accumulation decreased after 5, 10, and 20 J/cm2 of laser irradiation. A decrease in fasting glycemia level from 358.97+/-56.70 to 278.33+/-87.98 mg/dL for D5 and from 409.50+/-124.41 to 231.80+/-120.18 mg/dL for D20 (p<0.05) was also observed. CONCLUSION LI should be explored as an auxiliary therapy for control of complications of diabetes because it can alter the carbohydrate and lipid metabolism of rats with diabetes.