Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Performance and muscle fiber adaptations to creatine supplementation and heavy resistance training.

PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of creatine supplementation in conjunction with resistance training on physiological adaptations including muscle fiber hypertrophy and muscle creatine accumulation. METHODS Nineteen healthy resistance-trained men were matched and then randomly assigned in a double-blind fashion to either a creatine (N = 10) or placebo (N = 9) group. Periodized heavy resistance training was performed for 12 wk. Creatine or placebo capsules were consumed (25 g x d(-1)) for 1 wk followed by a maintenance dose (5 g x d(-1)) for the remainder of the training. RESULTS After 12 wk, significant (P < or = 0.05) increases in body mass and fat-free mass were greater in creatine (6.3% and 6.3%, respectively) than placebo (3.6% and 3.1%, respectively) subjects. After 12 wk, increases in bench press and squat were greater in creatine (24% and 32%, respectively) than placebo (16% and 24%, respectively) subjects. Compared with placebo subjects, creatine subjects demonstrated significantly greater increases in Type I (35% vs 11%), IIA (36% vs 15%), and IIAB (35% vs 6%) muscle fiber cross-sectional areas. Muscle total creatine concentrations were unchanged in placebo subjects. Muscle creatine was significantly elevated after 1 wk in creatine subjects (22%), and values remained significantly greater than placebo subjects after 12 wk. Average volume lifted in the bench press during training was significantly greater in creatine subjects during weeks 5-8. No negative side effects to the supplementation were reported. CONCLUSION Creatine supplementation enhanced fat-free mass, physical performance, and muscle morphology in response to heavy resistance training, presumably mediated via higher quality training sessions.
Brain Stimulation Techniques in the Treatment of Nicotine Dependence: A Review of the Literature

Background: Nicotine dependence accounts for significant mortality, morbidity, and socioeconomic burdens. Its use remains a significant public health concern since it is among the leading causes of mortality worldwide and is the leading cause of preventable death in developed countries. Despite the availability of approved medications to treat nicotine dependence along with cognitive-behavioral therapy, only 6% of the total number of smokers who report wanting to quit each year are successful in doing so for more than a month along with poor abstinence rates. Among alternative therapeutic approaches, attenuation of cue-elicited craving with neurostimulation techniques is a growing area of attention. Methods: We reviewed the literature on repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, intermittent theta-burst stimulation and deep transcranial magnetic stimulation in the treatment of nicotine addiction. Results: Most of these studies found that neurostimulation techniques are safe and effective in the reduction of craving to nicotine as well as in the reduction of cigarette consumption. Conclusions: Given these promising results, future controlled studies with larger samples and optimal stimulus parameters should be designed to confirm these findings.
Phosphoproteomic Analysis of Protein Phosphorylation Networks in Tetrahymena thermophila, a Model Single-celled Organism*

Tetrahymena thermophila is a widely used unicellular eukaryotic model organism in biological research and contains more than 1000 protein kinases and phosphatases with specificity for Ser/Thr/Tyr residues. However, only a few dozen phosphorylation sites in T. thermophila are known, presenting a major obstacle to further understanding of the regulatory roles of reversible phosphorylation in this organism. In this study, we used high-accuracy mass-spectrometry-based proteomics to conduct global and site-specific phosphoproteome profiling of T. thermophila. In total, 1384 phosphopeptides and 2238 phosphorylation sites from 1008 T. thermophila proteins were identified through the combined use of peptide prefractionation, TiO2 enrichment, and two-dimensional LC-MS/MS analysis. The identified phosphoproteins are implicated in the regulation of various biological processes such as transport, gene expression, and mRNA metabolic process. Moreover, integrated analysis of the T. thermophila phosphoproteome and gene network revealed the potential biological functions of many previously unannotated proteins and predicted some putative kinase–substrate pairs. Our data provide the first global survey of phosphorylation in T. thermophila using a phosphoproteomic approach and suggest a wide-ranging regulatory scope of this modification. The provided dataset is a valuable resource for the future understanding of signaling pathways in this important model organism.
The Interleukin-8–251 A Allele is Associated With Increased Risk of Noncardia Gastric Adenocarcinoma in Helicobacter pylori-infected Koreans

Background and Goals Chronic inflammation associated with Helicobacter pylori infection is a risk factor of gastric adenocarcinoma. Interleukin-8 (IL-8) plays an important role in gastric mucosal inflammation induced by H. pylori infection. Recently, studies on the association of genetic polymorphisms of various proinflammatory cytokines with gastric carcinogenesis showed varying results on the basis of the ethnicity. We conducted this study to investigate the association of IL-8–251 A/T polymorphism with gastric carcinogenesis in H. pylori-infected Koreans. Study The IL-8–251 A/T polymorphism was identified by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism using DNA from a total of 605 H. pylori-infected subjects; 206 controls, 149 chronic atrophic gastritis and/or intestinal metaplasia, 97 gastric dysplasia, and 153 gastric adenocarcinoma. Degrees of gastric mucosal inflammation and mucosal IL-8 level were also assessed. Results The IL-8–251 A carriers showed a higher risk of gastric adenocarcinoma (adjusted odds ratio 2.06, 95% confidence interval 1.16-3.68) than IL-8–251 T/T genotypes. The IL-8–251 A allele was also significantly associated with the degree of neutrophil infiltration, atrophy, and intestinal metaplasia in a younger age group. Among the chronic atrophic gastritis and/or intestinal metaplasia group, mucosal IL-8 level was significantly higher in subjects with IL-8–251 A allele than those with IL-8–251 T/T genotypes (P=0.011). Conclusions The IL-8–251 A allele is associated with higher IL-8 production, more severe inflammation, mucosal atrophy, and intestinal metaplasia than IL-8–251 T/T genotype in H. pylori-infected hosts. The IL-8–251 A allele may also increase the risk of gastric adenocarcinoma through an enhanced inflammatory process in H. pylori-infected Koreans.
In the Race Towards High-Speed Mobile Broadband Spectrum Allocation is Not Only a Matter of Auction Revenue

Inspired by the Colombian mobile telecommunications market, this paper reviews the process by which a government’s spectrum agency decides on the allocation of new spectrum bands to the mobile communications markets, including 4G and mobile broadband. It discusses the elements the spectrum agency needs to consider in order to build an analytical framework that helps assess the most important issues that may have a potential impact on the efficient allocation of spectrum and, consequently, on future market development.
Investigation of the Performance of an Ergonomic Handrim as a Pain-Relieving Intervention for Manual Wheelchair Users

Manual wheelchair users commonly experience pain in their hands and wrists associated with the repetitive stress of propulsion. The objective of this research was to examine the effect of an ergonomic wheelchair handrim as an intervention designed to reduce pain in the hands and wrists and improve functional outcomes for manual wheelchair users. Three studies were conducted to achieve this objective. In the first study, 10 individuals with paraplegia underwent a biomechanical analysis before and after a 2-week practice period with a Natural-Fit (NF) prototype ergonomic handrim. The biomechanical results showed that grip moments were reduced with the NF handrim prototype as compared with the subjects' current handrim (p < .1). Other biomechanical findings were mixed. In the second study, 46 manual wheelchair users who replaced their standard handrim with the commercially available NF handrim completed a questionnaire of retrospective measures of symptom severity. Average duration of use of the NF was 6 months. When asked to compare propelling with the NF to propelling with their prior handrims, 85% of respondents reported less pain in their hands and 80% reported less pain in their wrists. The third study was a replication and extension of Study 2: 82 manual wheelchair users who replaced their standard handrim with the NF completed retrospective symptom severity and functional status scales after using the NF for an average of 9 months. Results again confirmed that using the NF led to a reduction in the severity of symptoms and to improved functional outcomes.
Free to punish: a motivated account of free will belief.

Belief in free will is a pervasive phenomenon that has important consequences for prosocial actions and punitive judgments, but little research has investigated why free will beliefs are so widespread. Across 5 studies using experimental, survey, and archival data and multiple measures of free will belief, we tested the hypothesis that a key factor promoting belief in free will is a fundamental desire to hold others morally responsible for their wrongful behaviors. In Study 1, participants reported greater belief in free will after considering an immoral action than a morally neutral one. Study 2 provided evidence that this effect was due to heightened punitive motivations. In a field experiment (Study 3), an ostensibly real classroom cheating incident led to increased free will beliefs, again due to heightened punitive motivations. In Study 4, reading about others' immoral behaviors reduced the perceived merit of anti-free-will research, thus demonstrating the effect with an indirect measure of free will belief. Finally, Study 5 examined this relationship outside the laboratory and found that the real-world prevalence of immoral behavior (as measured by crime and homicide rates) predicted free will belief on a country level. Taken together, these results provide a potential explanation for the strength and prevalence of belief in free will: It is functional for holding others morally responsible and facilitates justifiably punishing harmful members of society.
Mass Displacement Networks

Despite the large improvements in performance attained by using deep learning in computer vision, one can often further improve results with some additional post-processing that exploits the geometric nature of the underlying task. This commonly involves displacing the posterior distribution of a CNN in a way that makes it more appropriate for the task at hand, e.g. better aligned with local image features, or more compact. In this work we integrate this geometric post-processing within a deep architecture, introducing a differentiable and probabilistically sound counterpart to the common geometric voting technique used for evidence accumulation in vision. We refer to the resulting neural models as Mass Displacement Networks (MDNs), and apply them to human pose estimation in two distinct setups: (a) landmark localization, where we collapse a distribution to a point, allowing for precise localization of body keypoints and (b) communication across body parts, where we transfer evidence from one part to the other, allowing for a globally consistent pose estimate. We evaluate on large-scale pose estimation benchmarks, such as MPII Human Pose and COCO datasets, and report systematic improvements when compared to strong baselines.
Effect of silica on virus infections in mice and mouse tissue culture

Silica injections of mice have been reported to kill macrophages, thus allowing herpes simplex virus (HSV) to spread rapidly and leading to an increased severity of HSV infection. Thus, silica presumably could be used to eliminate lactic dehydrogenase virus (LDV) (a model for slow viruses), which is known to multiply exclusively in macrophages. Contrary to expectation, it was found that the LDV titers were increased in silica-injected mice as compared to the titers in control mice. Counts of peritoneal cells at different periods after silica injection showed that silica-induced macrophage damage in vivo resulted in proliferation and migration of macrophages, thus providing additional target cells for LDV replication and leading to high LDV titers. In vitro, silica ingestion also damaged the macrophages, but since no replacement of cells could occur by infiltration, decreased LDV titers were found. Similar findings were obtained with HSV. It is suggested that all persistent viruses multiplying in macrophages will show a similar recrudescence under comparable conditions.
A Retrospective Study of Balanced Chromosomal Translocations in a Turkish Population

Abstract The balanced translocations are accepted as chromosomal rearrangements that do not generally reflect any phenotypic evidence. However, phenotypical influences can be seen in children of balanced translocation carriers due to the formation of partial monosomy and partial trisomy of any related chromosome. In this study, 25 cases that detected to have balanced translocation by cytogenetic analyses were evaluated with regard to their phenotypic features. Karyotype analyses of cases were taken out by using conventional peripheral blood culture method. It is estimated that 14 (56%) of these balanced translocation carriers had recurrent miscarriage, 5 (20%) had children with mental retardation, 3 (16%) had infertility, 2 (8%) had amenorrhea and 1 (4%) had mental retardation. When the cases were examined, it is understood that the increase in the frequency of miscarriage is the most frequent phenotypic feature in balanced translocation carriers as a result of the formation of unbalanced gametes.
Expanding to direct channel: Market coverages as entry barrier

A direct marketer can be either a manufacturer selling directly to the final consumers or a retailer that sells an assortment of products from multiple manufacturers. From a manufacturer's point of view, expanding to an online direct channel seems very attractive because intermediaries can be bypassed in reaching final consumers, while the Internet has substantially lowered the entry barrier. With the rapid diffusion of electronic commerce, numerous manufacturers have been considering a direct online channel as an alternative or a supplement to existing retailer channels. However, we observe in the real market that not many manufacturers are fully engaged in online retailing. One major factor frequently mentioned is the conflict with existing dealers who will not be pleased with a manufacturer's attempt to cannibalize their sales. This paper attempts to provide another explanation by comparing theoretical market coverage of manufacturers in a direct channel and a channel with intermediaries. We show that the direct channel can support fewer firms than the traditional retailer channel does, which becomes an effective entry barrier to latecomers. In equilibrium, the products are positively but finitely differentiated in their qualities, and the top two quality tiers would capture more than 75% of the direct channel's market potential (i.e., the “finiteness property”). Thus latecomers would find it difficult to gain a substantial market share against the existing pioneers in the competitive direct market unless they can find other meaningful ways to differentiate horizontally. The sales data of the online retail industry supports our finding.
Takagi-Sugeno control of the elevation channel of a twin-rotor system using closed-loop empirical data

In this paper, design of Takagi-Sugeno controllers for a twin-rotor system from empirical data is addressed. First, identification of linear models using Prediction Error Method in the presence of nonlinear distortions and in feedback systems is revisited, and it is demonstrated that feedback nonlinear systems with an integral action can be locally represented by linear models rather than affine models. Moreover, it is demonstrated that how the consistency and unbiasedness of the identified models can be improved by proper design of the experiments. In order to ensure that the unmodeled contributions in the resulting piecewise linear model are sufficiently small, a criterion is proposed based on the small-gain theorem that can be used for unfalsification of the piecewise linear model. Finally, by taking advantage of the separation principle, design of fuzzy Takag-Sugeno state feedback and observer is formulated in terms of Linear Matrix Inequalities (LMIs). The implementation results on the actual system demonstrate significant improvements with respect to the initial controller and previous work on similar systems.
ECG Data Compression Using Fourier Descriptors

The method of Fourier descriptors (FD's) is presented for ECG data compression. The two-lead ECG data are segmented into QRS complexes and S-Q intervals, expressed as a complex sequence, and are Fourier transformed to obtain the FD's. A few lower order descriptors symmetrically situated with respect to the dc coefficient represent the data in the Fourier (compressed) domain. While compression ratios of 10:1 are feasible for the S-Q interval, the clinical information requirements limit this ratio to 3:1 for the QRS complex. With an overall compression ratio greater than 7, the quality of the reconstructed signal is well suited for morphological studies. The method is resistant to noisy signals and is simple, requiring implementation of forward and inverse FFT. The results of compression of ECG data obtained from more than 50 subjects with rhythm and morphological abnormalities are presented.
Evaluations of branding alliances between non‐profit and commercial brand partners: the transfer of affect

There is growing interest in the trend towards co-branding alliances between non-profit and commercial entities,which are undertaken by these organisations to transfer associations and affect between each brand partner. Certainly, it makes sense that commercial entities want to gain more from their brands and that non-profits want secured funding, however, in the same way that the joining of two brands can be beneficial, it can also bring with it major risks when the brand alliance is not well received and evaluations of the alliance are not favourable. This research supports the notion that both commercial entities and non-profit organisations can benefit from a branding alliance, however, an understanding of how these brand alliances are evaluated is important. This research investigates evaluations of brand alliances and the resulting spillover effects for original brand partners that result from brand alliances. This research provides empirical support relating to reactions to brand alliances between a non-profit organisation and a commercial business in terms of how original brand attitudes, familiarity of original brands and perceived brand fit impact on evaluations. While collaboration is important and has potential benefits for each partner—they rest on partner selection and fit between alliance partners. Managerial implications and future research directions are also provided. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Power and trust in supply chain collaboration

Previous research indicates that power and trust play a critical role in creating a mutual competitive advantage of collaboration. Very often chain members exercise power in an opportunistic way to appropriate value for themselves rather than creating better value. The goal of this paper is to scrutinise the roles of power and trust in collaboration through the intermediation of interaction mechanisms for value creation and appropriation. The methodology used in this study is to synthesize the concepts from relevant theories which acknowledge the interplay between power and trust in the process of value creation and appropriation. Propositions are drawn to explain the interplay of power and trust in formatting interaction mechanisms and how interaction mechanisms contribute to value creation and appropriation. This research provides a new insight into the roles of power and trust that facilitate chain members to pool their capabilities to create and appropriate value for customers and for themselves.
Entrepreneurial competencies as an entrepreneurial distinctive: An examination of the competency approach in defining entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurship is of critical importance to the modern economy. Researchers have studied entrepreneurship for decades. In recent years, significant relationship between entrepreneurial competencies and firm performance has been reported in empirical studies. Applying the competency approach, researchers have assumed that entrepreneurial competency differentiates entrepreneurs from non-entrepreneurs without empirically examining if this is the case. The research conducted under this thesis addresses this gap. Drawing upon a thorough literature review regarding the components, antecedents and performance outcomes of the entrepreneurial competency, we propose the following hypothesis: the entrepreneurs generally possess higher level of entrepreneurial competencies than the non-entrepreneurs, and the entrepreneurs and the non-entrepreneurs can be discriminated based on their entrepreneurial competency
WHO Statement on Caesarean Section Rates

In 1985 when a group of experts convened by the World Health Organization in Fortaleza, Brazil, met to discuss the appropriate technology for birth, they echoed what at that moment was considered an unjustified and remarkable increase of caesarean section (CS) rates worldwide.1 Based on the evidence available at that time, the experts in Fortaleza concluded: ‘there is no justification for any region to have a caesarean section rate higher than 10–15%’. 1 Over the years, this quote has become ubiquitous in scientific literature, being interpreted as the ideal CS rate. Although this reference range was intended for ‘populations’, which are defined by geopolitical boundaries, in many instances it has been mistakenly used as the measurement for healthcare facilities regardless of their complexity or other characteristics. In addition to the case mix of the obstetric population served, the use of CS at healthcare facilities is also affected by factors such as their capacity to handle cases, availability of resource and the clinical management protocols used locally.
Delay‐discounting rewards from consumer sales promotions

Purpose – Rewards from sales promotions may be either immediate (e.g. instant savings, coupons, instant rebates) or delayed (e.g. rebates, refunds). The latter type is of interest in this study. The purpose of this paper is to present the hyperbolic discounting framework as an explanation for how consumers delay‐discount rewards, and test whether this holds for both high‐price and low‐price product categories.Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected by administering two online surveys to respondents. One survey presented choice scenarios between sales promotion formats for a high‐priced product (a laptop, n=154) and the other for a low‐priced product (a cell phone, n=98). Hyperbolic and exponential functions were then fitted to the data.Findings – The hyperbolic function had a better fit than the exponential function for the low‐priced product. However, this effect was not evident in the case of the high‐priced product; no significant difference was found between the functions. The rate of discou.