Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
How do diet and body mass index impact dental caries in Hispanic elementary school children?

PURPOSE The purpose of this observational study was to examine the association between body mass index and dental caries in Hispanic children. The research evaluated the influences of obesity, diet, parent education level, family acculturation, tooth brushing habits and gender as predictors of childhood caries. METHODS One examiner visually screened 177 third grade students from 3 elementary schools located in southern California's Coachella Valley. The children were screened for number of decayed, missing and filled teeth (DMFT). Height, weight, age and gender determined their body mass index. Primary caregivers completed a 30-point questionnaire for each participant. Multivariate analyses accessed the association between childhood dental caries and weight status and the influences of the measured variables. RESULTS Results indicate that those in the obese category had a statistically significant lower rate of DMFT than did children in the healthy weight category. Overweight children showed a higher DMFT than healthy weight children but the results were not statistically significant. Covariates that significantly influenced this association were diet and socioeconomic status. CONCLUSION Results from this study provide oral health professionals with baseline data and literature to support development of preventive programs for this population that concurrently address both obesity and oral health issues in scope and design.
Effects of Six-Week Ginkgo biloba Supplementation on Aerobic Performance, Blood Pro/Antioxidant Balance, and Serum Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor in Physically Active Men

Extracts of Ginkgo biloba leaves, a natural source of flavonoids and polyphenolic compounds, are commonly used as therapeutic agents for the improvement of both cognitive and physiological performance. The present study was aimed to test the effects of a six-week supplementation with 160 mg/day of a standardized extract of Ginkgo biloba or a matching placebo on aerobic performance, blood antioxidant capacity, and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) level in healthy, physically active young men, randomly allocated to two groups (n = 9 each). At baseline, as well as on the day following the treatment, the participants performed an incremental cycling test for the assessment of maximal oxygen uptake. Venous blood samples taken at rest, then immediately post-test and following 1 h of recovery, were analyzed for activities of antioxidant enzymes and plasma concentrations of non-enzymatic antioxidants, total phenolics, uric acid, lipid peroxidation products, ferric reducing ability of plasma (FRAP), and serum brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). Our results show that six weeks’ supplementation with Ginkgo biloba extract in physically active young men may provide some marginal improvements in their endurance performance expressed as VO2max and blood antioxidant capacity, as evidenced by specific biomarkers, and elicit somewhat better neuroprotection through increased exercise-induced production of BDNF.
Renal oxygenation and haemodynamics in acute kidney injury and chronic kidney disease

Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a major burden on health systems and may arise from multiple initiating insults, including ischaemia‐reperfusion injury, cardiovascular surgery, radiocontrast administration and sepsis. Similarly, the incidence and prevalence of chronic kidney disease (CKD) continues to increase, with significant morbidity and mortality. Moreover, an increasing number of AKI patients survive to develop CKD and end‐stage renal disease. Although the mechanisms for the development of AKI and progression to CKD remain poorly understood, initial impairment of oxygen balance likely constitutes a common pathway, causing renal tissue hypoxia and ATP starvation that, in turn, induce extracellular matrix production, collagen deposition and fibrosis. Thus, possible future strategies for one or both conditions may involve dopamine, loop diuretics, atrial natriuretic peptide and inhibitors of inducible nitric oxide synthase, substances that target kidney oxygen consumption and regulators of renal oxygenation, such as nitric oxide and heme oxygenase‐1.
A Wavelet Tour of Signal Processing : The Sparse Way

Mallat's book is the undisputed reference in this field - it is the only one that covers the essential material in such breadth and depth. - Laurent Demanet, Stanford University The new edition of this classic book gives all the major concepts, techniques and applications of sparse representation, reflecting the key role the subject plays in today's signal processing. The book clearly presents the standard representations with Fourier, wavelet and time-frequency transforms, and the construction of orthogonal bases with fast algorithms. The central concept of sparsity is explained and applied to signal compression, noise reduction, and inverse problems, while coverage is given to sparse representations in redundant dictionaries, super-resolution and compressive sensing applications. Features: * Balances presentation of the mathematics with applications to signal processing * Algorithms and numerical examples are implemented in WaveLab, a MATLAB toolbox * Companion website for instructors and selected solutions and code available for students New in this edition * Sparse signal representations in dictionaries * Compressive sensing, super-resolution and source separation * Geometric image processing with curvelets and bandlets * Wavelets for computer graphics with lifting on surfaces * Time-frequency audio processing and denoising * Image compression with JPEG-2000 * New and updated exercises A Wavelet Tour of Signal Processing: The Sparse Way, third edition, is an invaluable resource for researchers and R&D engineers wishing to apply the theory in fields such as image processing, video processing and compression, bio-sensing, medical imaging, machine vision and communications engineering. Stephane Mallat is Professor in Applied Mathematics at cole Polytechnique, Paris, France. From 1986 to 1996 he was a Professor at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University, and between 2001 and 2007, he co-founded and became CEO of an image processing semiconductor company. Companion website: A Numerical Tour of Signal Processing * Includes all the latest developments since the book was published in 1999, including its application to JPEG 2000 and MPEG-4 * Algorithms and numerical examples are implemented in Wavelab, a MATLAB toolbox * Balances presentation of the mathematics with applications to signal processing
Inhibitory phonetic priming: Where does the effect come from?

Both phonological and phonetic priming studies reveal inhibitory effects that have been interpreted as resulting from lexical competition between the prime and the target. We present a series of phonetic priming experiments that contrasted this lexical locus explanation with that of a prelexical locus by manipulating the lexical status of the prime and the target and the task used. In the related condition of all experiments, spoken targets were preceded by spoken primes that were phonetically similar but shared no phonemes with the target (/bak/–/d∊t/). In Experiments 1 and 2, word and nonword primes produced an inhibitory effect of equal size in shadowing and same–different tasks respectively. Experiments 3 and 4 showed robust inhibitory phonetic priming on both word and nonword targets in the shadowing task, but no effect at all in a lexical decision task. Together, these findings show that the inhibitory phonetic priming effect occurs independently of the lexical status of both the prime and the target, and only in tasks that do not necessarily require the activation of lexical representations. Our study thus argues in favour of a prelexical locus for this effect.
Comparative bone growth behavior in granules of bioceramic materials of various sizes.

Various bioceramic materials were implanted into 6-mm-diameter holes made in the femoral condyles of mature Japanese white rabbits using different-sized granules to find an optimal material and granule diameter for use as a bone graft. Bioceramics include a bioinert ceramic (Alumina), surface-bioactive ceramics [hydroxyapatite (HAp) and Bioglass(R)], and resorbable bioactive ceramics [alphatricalcium phosphate (alpha-TCP), beta-TCP, tetracalcium phosphate (TeCP), Te. DCPD, Te. DCPA, and low-crystalline HAp]. Granule sizes were 100-300, 10, and 1-3 microm. Bone growth behavior varied with the kind of bioceramic and the size used. For surface-bioactive ceramics, 45S5 Bioglass(R) led to more rapid bone proliferation than synthetic HAp. In resorbable bioactive ceramics, the order of resorption was: low-crystalline HAp and OCP > TeCP, Te DCPD, Te DCPA > alpha-TCP, beta-TCP. In terms of biocompatibility, alpha-TCP was better than beta-TCP.
The effect of intellectual capital on product innovativeness in SMEs

This paper examines the relationship between intellectual capital and different product innovation strategies based on a longitudinal study of Austrian firms assuming that intellectual capital is an important complementary asset for innovation activities. The data was collected in 1995 and 2003 using the same questionnaire among a firm sample of 91 small and medium-sized firms in manufacturing industries. The study delivers evidence for a positive association between human capital and product innovativeness. Moreover, firms, which have strength in both human and structural capital have a higher likelihood to be highly innovative. In addition, the research reveals that intellectual capital discriminates more strongly between highly and less innovative firms while the traditional measure of R&D expenditure has a stronger explanatory power in differentiating between not innovative and less innovative firms.
LOD modelling of polygonal models based on multiple choice optimisation

We propose a new automatic method for generating LODs of a given polygonal model that is based on edge collapse simplification operation and exploits a variant of multiple choice optimization (MCO) framework by J. Wu and L. Kobbelt (2002). In an edge collapse algorithm, the way how to measure the geometric deviation caused by an edge collapse transformation plays a key role. We introduce a new measure of local geometric deviation and a memory efficient method for its global evaluation; these local and global evaluation techniques are simple to implement, involve short execution times, and preserve geometric features and discontinuities automatically. Results and numerical comparisons show that our algorithm generates simplified models at different LODs of good visual fidelity, and consumes less memory and performs better in automatically preserving visually important features than other methods especially QSlim by M. Garland and P. S. Heckbert (1997).
INVESTIGATING TEOTIHUACAN THROUGH TMP SURFACE COLLECTIONS AND OBSERVATIONS

Abstract In the 1960s, the Teotihuacan Mapping Project (TMP) focused an ambitious, multiyear survey program on the pre-Columbian urban center of Teotihuacan. In addition to creating a highly detailed map, the TMP made systematic records of surface remains and collected nearly one million artifacts from roughly 5,000 provenience tracts. Taken together, the spatial, descriptive, and artifactual data collected by the TMP still constitutes one of the most extensive and most detailed records in existence for any ancient city. This paper characterizes and provides an update on TMP surface observations, particularly as they exist in digital format. Several analytical case studies illustrate substantive ways in which these data have been used in the decades since the TMP survey to investigate the culture and history of ancient Teotihuacan. The utility of extensive surface survey data for investigating key urban organizational elements such as neighborhoods and social districts is briefly considered, along with the growing importance of the TMP collections and records as increasingly large parts of Teotihuacan are lost to urban sprawl and destructive agricultural practices.
[Cognitive evoked potentials at the stages II and III of human immunodeficiency virus infection].

Neuropsychological and psychometric investigations have sometimes attested to and sometimes denied the existence of cognitive perturbations during the early phases of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection (stages II and III of the CDC classification): strictly asymptomatic seropositivity or generalized lymphadenopathy. Therein lies the basis of the debate concerning the neurotropism of the virus and its deleterious effects on the central nervous system (CNS). We hoped to contribute to the resolution of this discussion by recording late evoked auditory potentials, which are composed of two types of components: exogenous responses attesting to the reception of stimuli by specific sensory areas of the CNS, regardless of their informative value for the subject; and endogenous responses that occur later, appearing when the subject is required to distinguish between different stimuli, for example, counting high-pitched sounds randomly distributed among low-pitched ones. The latter responses, which have been most extensively studied for wave P300, are associated with cognitive functions, and alterations of the evoked cognitive potentials have been observed during the course of demential syndromes of various origins. Fifteen individuals were subjected to the protocol for recording long-latency, evoked auditory potentials. These studies were completed by a battery of psychometric tests, two methods for evaluating depression and an assessment of the anxiety level. The results showed a significant lengthening of the latency of wave P300 in the seropositive subjects. This prolongation also affected one of the exogenous components, i.e., wave P2. In addition, their intelligence quotients, regardless of whether the IQ explores the so-called crystallized component or the fluid component of intelligence, were not significantly different from those of the general population. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
ISC1-dependent Metabolic Adaptation Reveals an Indispensable Role for Mitochondria in Induction of Nuclear Genes during the Diauxic Shift in Saccharomyces cerevisiae*

Growth of Saccharomyces cerevisiae following glucose depletion (the diauxic shift) depends on a profound metabolic adaptation accompanied by a global reprogramming of gene expression. In this study, we provide evidence for a heretofore unsuspected role for Isc1p in mediating this reprogramming. Initial studies revealed that yeast cells deleted in ISC1, the gene encoding inositol sphingolipid phospholipase C, which resides in mitochondria in the post-diauxic phase, showed defective aerobic respiration in the post-diauxic phase but retained normal intrinsic mitochondrial functions, including intact mitochondrial DNA, normal oxygen consumption, and normal mitochondrial polarization. Microarray analysis revealed that the Δisc1 strain failed to up-regulate genes required for nonfermentable carbon source metabolism during the diauxic shift, thus suggesting a mechanism for the defective supply of respiratory substrates into mitochondria in the post-diauxic phase. This defect in regulating nuclear gene induction in response to a defect in a mitochondrial enzyme raised the possibility that mitochondria may initiate diauxic shift-associated regulation of nucleus-encoded genes. This was established by demonstrating that in respiratory-deficient petite cells these genes failed to be up-regulated across the diauxic shift in a manner similar to the Δisc1 strain. Isc1p- and mitochondrial function-dependent genes significantly overlapped with Adr1p-, Snf1p-, and Cat8p-dependent genes, suggesting some functional link among these factors. However, the retrograde response was not activated in Δisc1, suggesting that the response of Δisc1 cannot be simply attributed to mitochondrial dysfunction. These results suggest a novel role for Isc1p in allowing the reprogramming of gene expression during the transition from anaerobic to aerobic metabolism.
A NEW CENTRONUCLEAR MYOPATHY PHENOTYPE DUE TO A NOVEL DYNAMIN 2 MUTATION

Autosomal dominant centronuclear myopathy (CNM) is a rare congenital myopathy mostly characterized by delayed motor milestones, slowly progressive muscle weakness, and bilateral ptosis.1 Mutations in the DNM2 gene encoding dynamin 2 (DNM2), a large GTPase involved in membrane trafficking, have been identified in CNM.2,3 Mutations in the middle domain of the protein are mostly associated with the slowly progressive mild late-onset CNM,2 while mutations in the C-terminal part of the Pleckstrin homology (PH) domain cause a more severe neonatal phenotype.3 In addition, mutations in the N-terminal part of PH domain have been reported in intermediate and axonal Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (CMT). 4–6 Here, we report a novel DNM2 CNM mutation in the CMT region. Among the DNM2-related CNM, the phenotype appears intermediate, with an onset at the end of the first decade and a more rapid progression relative to the mild late-onset DNM2-CNM. ### Case report. The patient is a 34-year-old woman from a nonconsanguineous family from central Africa without history of neuromuscular disorders. She had a normal mental and motor postnatal development with independent ambulation acquired at 13 months. Symptoms started at the age of 7 years with difficulty walking and running. At 10 years, she had facial weakness, bilateral ptosis, and a marked weakness in paraspinal, upper, and lower limb muscles. Motor nerve conduction velocities of the left common peroneal (49.4 m/second) …
A Study on the Efficacy of the Addition of Low Dose Dexmedetomidine as an Adjuvant to Lignocaine in Intravenous Regional Anaesthesia (IVRA).

INTRODUCTION Intravenous Regional Anaesthesia (IVRA) is a simple, effective method of providing anaesthesia for short duration surgical procedures on the extremities, its chief drawbacks are tourniquet pain, short duration of block and absence of post-operative analgesia. Dexmedetomidine is known to reduce anaesthetic requirements and also provide analgesia to the patient. AIM To evaluate the efficacy of dexmedetomidine as an adjuvant to lignocaine in IVRA with respect to the quality of the block, tourniquet pain and post-operative analgesia. MATERIALS AND METHODS A prospective, randomized, double-blinded study was conducted on 60 patients scheduled for orthopaedic surgery of the upper limb, of American Society of Anaesthesiologist's physical status grades I and II. They were divided into two groups of 30 each. The control group C received 40ml of 0.5% lignocaine with saline and Group D received dexmedetomidine 0.5μg/kg added to 40ml of 0.5% lignocaine. The time taken for the onset and recovery of sensory and motor block, incidence of tourniquet pain, intra-operative and post-operative Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) scores, duration of post-operative analgesia and any side effects were noted. Student t-test was used for evaluation of the demographic data, haemodynamic variables, the onset and recovery times of block, duration of analgesia and intra-operative analgesic consumption and tourniquet pain. Friedman's test was used for intra-operative and post-operative VAS and sedation scores. RESULTS The onset time of both sensory and motor block were significantly shortened, the recovery of sensory and motor block was prolonged, the incidence of tourniquet pain was comparatively lesser and there was significantly increased duration of post-operative analgesia in the dexmedetomidine group. Haemodynamic parameters were similar in both groups. CONCLUSION The addition of 0.5μg/kg of dexmedetomidine as an adjuvant to IVRA effectively enhances the anaesthesia and post-operative analgesia obtained with lignocaine. The low dose of dexmedetomidine was effective and did not cause any major side effects.
THE IMPORTANCE OF TORSION IN THE DESIGN OF INSECT WINGS

A model insect wing is described in which spars of corrugated membrane which incorporate stiffening veins branch serially from a V-section leading edge spar. The mechanical behaviour of this model is analysed. The open, corrugated spars possess great resistance to bending, but are compliant in torsion. Torsion of the leading edge spar will result in torsion and relative movement of the rear spars. As a result camber will automatically be set up in the wing as it twists. Aerodynamic forces produced during the wing strokes will result in torsion and camber of the wing which should improve its aerodynamic efficiency. The effects of varying parameters of the wing model are examined. For given wing torsion, higher camber is given by spars branching from the leading edge at a lower angle, by spars which curve posteriorly, and by spars which diverge from each other. Wings of three species of flies were each subjected to two series of mechanical tests. Application of a force behind the torsional axis caused the wings to twist and to develop camber. Immobilizing basal regions of the leading edge greatly reduced compliance to torsion and camber, as predicted by the theoretical model. Aerodynamic forces produced during a half-stroke are sufficient to produce observed values of torsion and camber, and to maintain changes in pitch caused by inertial effects at stroke reversal.
Shell and core in monkey and human nucleus accumbens identified with antibodies to calbindin‐D28k

The neurochemical division of the rodent nucleus accumbens into shell and core is now a widely accepted concept. However, such divisions in the primate nucleus accumbens have yet to be fully clarified and described. In the present study, the forebrains of three primates—marmoset, rhesus monkey, and human—and a Wistar rat, were immunoreacted with antibodies directed against calbindin‐D28k. The patterns of immunoreactivity in the primates' ventral striatum were mapped and compared to that of rat. Calbindin staining was uneven in all species and there was no evidence of a bicompartmental organization, i.e., striosome/patch and matrix, in central parts of the nucleus. Nucleus accumbens in primates, as in rat, could be divided immunohistochemically into a crescent‐shaped outer shell—medially, ventrally and laterally—and an inner core. In general, medial parts of the shell stained less intensely for calbindin than did lateral parts. However, interspecific variation in the intensity of the immunoreactive staining and the mediolateral extent of the shell was obvious. The core, which immunostained unevenly, was consistently more intensely immunoreactive than either medial or lateral shell in all species except the marmoset. These results suggest that the neurochemical subdivisions of shell and core established for nucleus accumbens of rodents are also present in primates. However, further work is needed to establish whether these territories are homologous and, if so, the full extent of that homology. © 1996 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification enhances molecular diagnosis of Diamond-Blackfan anemia due to RPS19 deficiency

Diamond-Blackfan anemia (DBA,#MIM105650) is a rare congenital pure red cell aplasia characterized by nor-mochromic macrocytic anemia, reticulocytopenia, and normocellular bone marrow with a selective deficiency of erythroid precursors. Defects in the RPS19 gene on chromosome 19q13.2 are the main