Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Association of Serum C-reactive Protein Levels with Gamma Glutamyl Transferase and Cardiometabolic Risk Factors in Middle Aged People

C-reactive protein (CRP) is an inflammatory marker shown to predict future cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. The aim of the present study was to investigate the association of serum CRP level as a marker of chronic inflammation with gamma glutamyl transferase (GGT) as early marker of oxidative stress and their association with cardiometabolic risk factors among a diverse community sample of mid-life people, also to examine whether these relationships might vary by age, sex and body mass index. The investigation was based on data derived from 100 apparently healthy volunteers (male 40, female 60) aged 20-50 years, had a BMI between 24.2 and 37.7 kg/m. Fasting serum CRP, GGT, uric acid and cardiovascular risk factors were measured and assessed in relation to CRP. Significant gender differences exist in the population distribution of CRP and GGT. In addition, higher BMI was significantly associated with higher CRP and uric acid. There was linear trend for increased prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors across CRP categories representing medium (1-<3mg/L) and high (3-10 mg/L). After adjustment for sex, age and body mass index, serum concentration of CRP was positively associated with serum concentration of GGT and Uric acid (P<0.05). Body mass index and systosolic blood pressure had the strongest association with CRP. The prevalence of metabolic syndrome (MS) progressively increased with elevated CRP levels. In conclusion, these data suggest that CRP is associated with two markers of oxidative stress, GGT and UA and elevation of both CRP and GGT may be worsening the atherogenic state. Furthermore, elevated CRP levels were associated with adverse lipid profiles and metabolic syndrome.
Knowledge of Causes, Management and Prevention of Childhood Diarrhoea among Nursing Mothers in Two Selected Primary Health Centers in Oyo State, Nigeria

Diarrhoea is widely recognized as a major cause of childhood morbidity and mortality in many developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. The objective of this study is to assess the knowledge of causes, management and prevention of diarrhoea among nursing mothers of under-two children in two selected primary health centers in Ibadan North Local Government, Oyo state. A descriptive non-experimental research design was used for the study. One hundred and sixty nursing mothers were selected from the two primary health centers. A structured self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from participants while descriptive statistics of frequencies and percentages were used to analyze the data on the objectives.The study findings revealed that majority (89.4%) of respondents have heard of diarrhoea before, many of them (45%) had it from health centers and (10.6%) from past experience of diarrhoea occurrence. Majority (78.1%) of respondents had knowledge of diarrhoea, having been able to define what diarrhoea is in their own perspective and were able to identify some causes of diarrhoea. Over half (63.8%) of them claimed their index child had diarrhoea out of which less than half (38.8%) of them managed it with ORS. Less than half of them (34.4%) managed the occurrence at home while (25.5%) took their children to health center. In conclusion, mothers had knowledge of diarrhoea, but knowledge translation to prevention action was very poor. It is recommended that, health education of mothers on prevention should be intensified while mass media should assist in disseminating health information on diarrhoea prevention. Government should provide vaccine against rotavirus which should be included in the routine immunization schedule.
Trends and Determinants of Attitudes Towards People Living with HIV/AIDS Among Women of Reproductive Age in Tajikistan

Introduction Despite having one of lowest rates of newly diagnosed HIV infections among former Soviet countries, Tajikistan has a substantial level of discriminatory attitudes towards people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA). While initial attempts were made to explore discriminatory attitudes of a wide range of professionals, women’s general attitudes towards PLWHA received less scholarly attention. Employing a nationally representative sample from the 2000 and 2005 Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS), sociodemographic determinants of HIV-related discriminatory attitudes of women aged 15–49 in Tajikistan were identified and examined over time. Methods A representative sample included 5,453 women of reproductive age from the capital city and four regions of Tajikistan. Two dichotomized scenarios representing the agreement to let an HIV-infected teacher continue teaching in school and the willingness to buy food from an HIV-infected cashier were constructed. Univariate and multivariable analyses of HIV-related discriminatory attitudes were obtained using Stata 14. Results Insignificant but positive changes were observed in the women’s attitudes between 2000 and 2005. Logistic regression models showed that negative attitudes were associated with the lack of knowledge of HIV/AIDS prevention methods, endorsement of HIV/AIDS transmission misconceptions, and never having been tested for HIV (p≤0.001). Women living in the rural areas, married, with lower education, and from low income households were less tolerant towards PLWHA. Conclusions The data from Tajikistan underscore the persistence of HIV-related discriminatory attitudes among low socioeconomic status women. The study findings can be potentially used to target the disadvantaged groups and guide the design and implementation of programs that promote voluntary HIV-testing, raise awareness about HIV/AIDS prevention methods, and help dispel transmission misconceptions.
The use of blood-flow restriction to enhance high-intensity endurance performance and skeletal muscle adaptation

Post-exercise blood flow restriction (BFR) is a novel training method which, through alterations to the haemodynamic, metabolic and hypoxic stimulus, could augment skeletal muscle adaptation in endurance trained individuals. The studies described in this thesis investigated the combined effect of post-exercise BFR and interval training on angiogenic and mitochondrial biogenic molecular and adaptive responses and high-intensity endurance performance. It was initially demonstrated that a very strong correlation exists between critical power (CP), an important parameter of endurance performance, and indices of skeletal muscle capillarity (r = 0.94), implying that skeletal muscle capillarity is an important determinant of CP (Chapter 3). Chapter 4 investigated the efficacy of combining post-exercise BFR with 4 weeks of sprint interval training (SIT) (4-7 x 30 s maximal bouts) in trained individuals. SIT increased CP by ~3.5% in trained individuals, but the addition of BFR did not enhance this further. In contrast, neither skeletal muscle capillarity or mitochondrial protein content increased following SIT with or without BFR. However, there was a trend (P = 0.06) for an increase in proliferating endothelial cells after four weeks of SIT only with post-exercise BFR, tentatively suggesting that post-exercise BFR could elicit an enhanced angiogenic response when undertaken with a greater training duration and/or volume. This was investigated in Chapter 6 in which the time course of transient transcriptional changes during two weeks of post-exercise BFR combined with a higher volume high intensity interval training (HIIT) modality was examined. BFR did not enhance the transient increases in VEGF, PGC-1α of HIF-1α mRNA following HIIT during two-weeks of training and did not increase VEGF protein content. There was however, an increase in resting eNOS mRNA after two weeks only when HIIT was combined with post-exercise BFR, suggesting BFR elicited an increased shear stress stimulus. There was no increase in mitochondrial protein content or citrate synthase activity following 2 weeks of HIIT with or without post-exercise BFR. Collectively the findings from these studies imply that post-exercise BFR does not increase mitochondrial content, but although there was no increase in skeletal muscle capillarity, there were suggestions that post-exercise BFR could elicit an enhanced angiogenic stimulus when undertaken with higher training volumes and could subsequently increase performance.
Detection of equine herpesvirus type1and type 4 associated with abortion and respiratory manifestation in horses during 2016 in Cairo, Egypt

Background: Equine herpesvirus 1 (EHV-1) and Equine herpesvirus 4 (EHV-4) are endemic in equine population worldwide. EHV-1 is a major cause of abortion in pregnant mares, also it can cause neurological disorders in horses and respiratory disease in young horses. EHV- 4 is an important equine virus which cause respiratory disease and occasionally abortion. Methods: In the present study, 75 serum samples collected from aborted mares, growing foals and, adult horses suffered from respiratory manifestation were tested using indirect ELISA technique. A total of 33 nasal swabs and 4 vaginal swabs were tested using real time PCR. Results: Out of 75 tested serum samples, 56 samples were positive for the presence of antibodies against EHVs. EHV-1 DNA was detected in two vaginal swabs, one nasal swab of adult horse and four nasal swabs of growing foals. EHV-4 DNA was detected in one vaginal swab and one nasal swab from growing foal. Conclusion: The study reports the infection with two types of EHV and their continuous circulation among Egyptian horses during 2016.
Optimal transmission schemes in wireless networks and their comparison with simple ALOHA based scheme

We present our analysis and results that allow us to conjecture that maximum capacity in wireless networks can be achieved if nodes transmitting simultaneously are positioned in a hexagonal grid pattern. But obviously, it is very difficult to realize such a protocol which ensures that active transmitters in the network are positioned in any specific grid pattern. We compare the optimal capacity in networks with grid positioned transmitters with the capacity of wireless networks where nodes are dispatched according to uniform distribution and use very simple ALOHA-based protocol for channel access. We will also extend this analysis to multi-hop case and characterize the maximum throughput achievable in wireless networks with ALOHA-based protocols and TDMA and grid based TDMA protocols.
Prevention of cognitive decline in old age-varying effects of interventions in different populations.

Along with global population aging, dementia has posed tremendous challenges to the sustainable development of worldwide economy and society. In the past 3–4 decades, global extensive efforts have been made to develop new drugs for Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. However, effective curative treatments or even disease-modifying therapies are still not available for the devastating neurodegenerative disease (1). In the recent randomized clinical trial, Rovner and colleagues showed evidence that behavioural activation might prevent cognitive and functional decline among older black individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) (2). In this commentary and mini-review, we highlighted the global burden of dementia and briefly summarized the evidence supporting the potential of non-pharmacological interventions to reduce the risk of cognitive disorders in old age, while a special attention was given to ethnic or racial variations.
Effect of dietary estrogens on cellular markers of colon cancer in mice

39 Key ~vo rd s 4 0 Introduction 41 Materials and Methods 44 Results 48 Discussion 49 Literature cited for chapter 3 56 4. DISCUSSION 6g LITERATURE CITED FOR CHAPTERS 1, 2, AND 4 80 APPENDIX 94
A cross sectional study on the practise of self-medication among 2nd year medical and dental students

Introduction: Most of the common health ailments are treated by general population themselves without medical supervision, which is termed as self-medication. There are potential risks of self-medications like adverse drug reaction, disease aggravation, drug dependence, drug resistance etc. The undergraduate medical and dental students have easy access to information from various sources to self-diagnose and self-medicate. So, we conducted the study to assess the practice of self-medication among 2nd year medical and dental students studying at Basaveshwara Medical College & S.J.M. Dental College, Chitradurga. Materials: This was an observational, cross-sectional study based on a semi-structured, pre-validated questionnaire. Descriptive statistics was used for analysing the data. The result was analysed using the software Microsoft Excel sheet. Results: The study included 172 students (medical & dental), out of which 57.5% were females and 42.4% were males. 82.5% of participants had practised self-medication at some point in their life. 85% felt that there was no need to consult physician for simple ailments. The source of information for self-medication was pharmacist (61.6%), followed by google & internet (46.5%), senior (32.5%). Most common conditions for which self-medication was practiced included cold (93%), cough (85%), diarrhea (80%). Drugs commonly used for self-medication included Paracetamol (94%), Antacids (59%), Antibiotics (41%). Conclusions: Our study revealed that there is a high prevalence of self-medication among medical and dental students. We as the healthcare professionals need to raise the awareness regarding the ill effects of self-medication among undergraduates and also stress on various measures to curb its growing trend. Keywords: Self-medication, Medical, Dental, Questionnaire, Over the counter drug
Network-Coded Content Delivery in Femtocaching-Assisted Cellular Networks

Next-generation cellular networks are expected to be assisted by femtocaches (FCs), which collectively store the most popular files for the clients. Given any arbitrary non-fragmented placement of such files, a strict no-latency constraint, and clients' prior knowledge, new file download requests could be efficiently handled by both the FCs and the macrocell base station (MBS) using opportunistic network coding (ONC). In this paper, we aim to find the best allocation of coded file downloads to the FCs so as to minimize the MBS involvement in this download process. We first formulate this optimization problem over an ONC graph, and show that it is NP-hard. We then propose a greedy approach that maximizes the number of files downloaded by the FCs, with the goal to reduce the download share of the MBS. This allocation is performed using a dual conflict ONC graph to avoid conflicts among the FC downloads. Simulations show that our proposed scheme almost achieves the optimal performance and significantly saves on the MBS bandwidth.
Prevalence and Risk Factors of Human Herpes Virus Type 8 (HHV-8), Human Immunodeficiency Virus-1 (HIV-1), and Syphilis among Female Sex Workers in Malindi, Kenya

The prevalence of Human Herpes Virus type 8 (HHV-8), Human Immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and syphilis is high in Sub-Saharan Africa. Studies on HHV-8 in Kenya are few and data on its coinfection with HIV and syphilis scanty. This cross-sectional study among female sex workers (FSWs) in Malindi, Kenya, aimed to determine the prevalence of HHV-8, HIV, and syphilis mono/coinfections and identify associated risk factors. A total of 268 FSWs consented and were administered a structured questionnaire and screened for antibodies against HHV-8, HIV, and syphilis following the National Guidelines. FSWs positive for HHV-8 were 67/268 (25%), HIV 44/268 (16.4%), and 6/268 (2.24%) for syphilis. Eight out of 67 (12%) tested positive for HHV-8/HIV and 2/67 (3%) for HHV-8/syphilis coinfections. Married FSWs had higher odds of HHV-8 infection (OR 2.90, 95%, and P=0.043). Single marital status was inversely associated (OR 0.46, 95% CI 0.23-0.94, and P=0.034) with HIV infection. HIV was associated with increasing age (OR 14.79, P<0.001), inconsistent condom use (OR 2.69, P=0.004), increased duration as sex worker ≥6 (OR 3.0, P=0.002) and clients ≥4 (OR 4.0, P<0.001), intravenous drug use (OR 2.5, P=0.043), and early sex debut (P=0.049) unlike HHV-8 which was not associated with high risk sexual behavior. HHV-8/HIV coinfection was associated with increasing age (OR 11.21, P=0.027). Infection by HHV-8 was not significantly associated with HIV (OR 0.62; P=0.257) or syphilis (OR 1.52; P=0.636). There was a high likelihood of infection with HHV-8 compared to HIV (OR 8.6, P=0.014) and syphilis (OR 14.6, P<0.001). The lack of association of HHV-8 with high risk sexual behavior suggests that sexual transmission may not play a significant role in transmission of HHV-8 among FSWs in Malindi.
PERBEDAAN EFEKTIVITAS INTERVENSI MICROWAVE DIATHERMY DAN DEEP TISSUE MASSAGE LEBIH EFEKTIF DARIPADA MICROWAVE DIATHERMY DAN MCKENZIE NECK EXERCISE UNTUK KOREKSI POSTUR PADA PENDERITA FORWARD HEAD POSTURE

Background: Forward Head Posture (FHP) is a posture deviation consisting of an increase in angular excursion in the upper and lower aspects of the cervical spine. A popular method used by physiotherapists to reduce muscle tightness is massage. The massage used is Deep Tissue Massage (DTM) with deeper pressure and slow motion. As an effort to correct posture, physiotherapists can use the McKenzie Neck Exercise method. The standard for managing physiotherapy at the clinic provides a modality, namely Microwave Diathermy (MWD). Method: Research with experimental pre and post-test two groups design. The study was divided into 2 groups, consisting of group 1 with Microwave Diathermy and Deep Tissue Massage exercises and group 2 with Microwave Diathermy and McKenzie Neck Exercise. The number of samples in this study were 16 samples each group, so that the total sample in the two groups amounted to 32 respondents.Results: Group 1 with a value of p = 0.001 (p <0.05) which means an increase in perspective before and after the intervention of microwave diathermy and deep tissue massage. Group 2 obtained a value of p = 0.001 (p <0.05) which means an increase in the craniovertebra viewpoint which means the cervical joint before and after the intervention of microwave diathermy and McKenzie's neck training. Calculation results of mean differences Increased craniovertebra angle obtained p value = 0.001 (p <0.05) on the difference between before and after intervention. Microwave diathermy and deep tissue massage compared with microwave diathermy and McKenzie neck exercise against craniovertebral angleConclusion: Intervention of Microave Diathermy and Deep Tissue Massage better than Microave Diathermy and McKenzie Neck Cervical Exercises in correcting posture in patient with Forward Head Posture.Keywords: Forward head posture, Microwave Diathermy, Deep Tissue Massage, McKenzie Neck Exercise, posture
Global downregulation of pigmentation-associated genes in human premature hair graying

Premature hair graying, or canities, is a complex multi-factorial process with negative effects on affected individuals. The aim of the present study was to investigate the possible underlying mechanisms of premature hair graying at the genetic level. A total of 5 unrelated Han Chinese individuals presenting with premature hair graying (25–40 years old, with >1% hair affected) were enrolled in the present study. RNA sequencing was performed to identify gene expression changes between the follicular cells of grey and black hair from the cohort. A total of 127 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified. These DEGs were overrepresented in categories associated with the pigmentation pathway, with a decreased expression of key genes responsible for melanin synthesis. Of note, the decreased expression of certain transcription factors and the increased expression of certain precursor microRNAs observed may explain for the downregulation of certain other DEGs, which were identified as their targets via Starbase v2 and Integrated Motif Activity Response Analysis. The DEGs were also enriched in terms associated with the nervous system, indicating that neural disturbances may also have certain roles in premature hair graying. Of note, five of the downregulated DEGs were associated with aging according to the JenAge Aging Factor Database. To the best of our knowledge, the present study was the first genome-wide survey of the gene expression profile associated with premature hair graying. Dysfunction of the melanin biosynthesis pathway is probably the direct cause of hair graying and the present results provide valuable clues for further functional and mechanistic investigation.
Orchestration of Logical Resources in Software Defined Infrastructures

The diffusion of ultra-broadband (in terms of high bandwidth and low latency) connection, IT hardware advances, and growing availability of open-source software are causing a paradigm shift in the world of network architectures. In the last years, the number of devices and smart-objects connected to the network has grown exponentially and the so-called "machine intelligence'' has become part of the life-cycle of industries, agriculture, smart cities, and eventually public institutions. In this context, the initiative to integrate heterogeneous networks, including wired/wireless networks and smart-objects, from both the service management and control viewpoints is considered a critical aspect of Future Networks. The effect of all these drivers is the so-called "Softwarization" of telco infrastructures, where the approach to this integration is through the deployment of a flexible and programmable network infrastructure supporting software-driven network features that can be instantiated on-demand. These instantiations will be addressing the changing service requirements and resource constraints, yet be scalable across multiple services and multiple domains, can maintain QoS for end-users of a service, and that provide a level of isolation and security from one service to another. Research and development activities are currently clearly focused on several concepts such as programmable networks, network virtualisation, open interfaces and platforms, and increasing the degree of intelligence inside the network. The next generation of Software Defined Infrastructures needs to move from being merely Defined by software to be Driven by software and must be capable of supporting a multitude of players that exploit an environment in which services are dynamically deployed and quickly adapt over a heterogeneous physical infrastructure, according to chaining requirements. One of the main challenges includes the design and the implementation of specific mechanisms for run-time orchestration of logical resources in wired environments. In addition to mechanisms for controlling virtual resources in Software Defined Infrastructures, another challenge includes the design and implementation of specific algorithms for the efficient mapping of virtual resources onto physical resources. This thesis shows how network architectures based on open network features and resources abstraction offers innovative solutions addressing some of the challenges of Future Networks.