Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Limitations of estimating glomerular filtration rate from serum creatinine in the general population.

OBJECTIVE To compare estimated glomerular filtration rate (GFR) in the general population on the basis of equations derived from different subsets of the general population. PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS Adults (ages _45 years) were randomly selected from 1997 to 2000 from the Olmsted County, Minnesota, population and had their serum creatinine levels measured. The GFR was estimated using previously reported equations derived from a sample of patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD), a sample of healthy persons, and the combined samples. Serum creatinine was measured with the same assay used to derive these equations. RESULTS Of 4203 subjects, 2042 (47% participation rate) were enrolled and studied. Serum samples from 1982 subjects were used to measure creatinine levels. The prevalence of a reduced estimated GFR (<60 mL/min per 1.73 m2) was 12% (95% confidence interval [CI], 10%-13%) based on an equation derived with all CKD patients, and this finding was similar to prior reports. However, the prevalence of a reduced estimated GFR was 5.7% (95% CI, 4.8%-6.8%) based on an equation derived with both CKD patients and healthy persons and 0.2% (95% CI, 0.1%-0.5%) based on an equation derived with all healthy persons. Women had a higher risk of reduced estimated GFR according to an equation derived with all CKD patients, but men had a higher risk with an equation derived with both CKD patients and healthy persons.
Cell Death Pathways in Pancreatitis and Pancreatic Cancer

The understanding of the regulation of apoptosis and necrosis, the two principal cell death pathways, is becoming exceedingly important in investigations of the pathogenesis and treatment of pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer. For example, in acute pancreatitis significant amounts of pancreatic necrosis are associated with increased morbidity and mortality. Thus, determining the key steps regulating necrosis should provide insights into potential therapeutic strategies for improving outcome in these patients. On the other hand, in pancreatic cancer various survival mechanisms act to prevent cell death, resulting in promotion of tumor growth and metastasis. Resistance of pancreatic cancer to apoptosis is the key factor preventing responses to therapies. Investigations of the regulation of cell death mechanisms specific to pancreatic cancer should lead to improvements in our current therapies for this disease. The present review is designed to provide information about cell death pathways in pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer with reference to areas that need further investigation, as well as to provide measurement techniques adapted to pancreatic tissue and cells.
Random and coherent noise attenuation by empirical mode decomposition

We have devised a newfiltering technique for random and coherentnoiseattenuationinseismicdatabyapplyingempiricalmodedecompositionEMDonconstant-frequencyslicesinthefrequency-offsetf-xdomainandremovingthefirst intrinsicmodefunction.Themotivationbehindthisdevelopmentistoovercomethepotentiallowperformanceof f-x deconvolution for signal-to-noise enhancement when processinghighlycomplexgeologicsections,dataacquiredusingirregular trace spacing, and/or data contaminated with steeply dipping coherent noise. The resulting f-x EMD method is equivalent to an autoadaptive f-k filter with a frequency-dependent, high-wavenumber cut filtering property. Removing both random and steeply dipping coherent noise in either prestackorstacked/migratedsectionsisusefulandcompares well with other noise-reduction methods, such as f-x deconvolution,medianfiltering,andlocalsingularvaluedecomposition.Initssimplestimplementation, f-xEMDisparameterfree and can be applied to entire data sets without user interaction.
The accumulation of terpenoid oils does not incur a growth cost in Eucalyptus polybractea seedlings.

The deployment of secondary metabolites, such as terpenes, as anti-herbivore defences is thought to be costly for plants in terms of primary metabolism. Moreover, it is assumed that the cost of this deployment is modified by resource availability. In this study we examined the impact of terpenoid oil accumulation on the growth of Eucalyptus polybractea R.T. Baker seedlings from four maternal half-sib families, under conditions of sufficient and limiting nitrogen. The foliar oil concentration measured was extremely variable, varying almost 20-fold to a maximum of 13% (w / DW). Oil concentration was higher in plants grown under high nitrogen than in low-nitrogen plants, and it was positively correlated with foliar nitrogen concentration. Oil concentration was related to maternal concentration, although this relationship was weak because of the variation encountered. The composition of oil, dominated by monoterpenes, was also extremely variable, although this variation could not be adequately explained by either nitrogen availability or the seedling parentage. Importantly, we detected no negative correlations between oil concentration and relative growth rate (RGR), net assimilation rate (NAR), or leaf nitrogen productivity (LNP). Rather, under nitrogen limiting conditions, positive correlations were detected between oil concentration and all three indices. We conclude that oil accumulation is associated with factors that promote growth and if there is a cost to oil deployment, it could not be detected using the experimental design employed here.
Stressor Scale for Clinical Research Coordinators: development and psychometric testing.

AIM This article is a report of the development and psychometric testing of the Stressor Scale for Clinical Research Coordinators. BACKGROUND Job stress is viewed as a situation where working conditions interact with individual worker characteristics and result in disruption of psychological or physiological homeostasis. Clinical research coordinators, also known as research nurses, are professionals who play a central role in clinical trials. They face various problems associated with their responsibilities; however, few studies have reported on their stress. To manage their stress, it is necessary to identify the sources of stress (i.e. stressors). METHOD The 56-item preliminary instrument was developed based on literature review and expert discussions. A total of 589 clinical research coordinators in 186 hospitals in Japan were surveyed in 2011. Statistical analyses on construct and concurrent validity, internal consistency, and test-retest reliability were performed. RESULTS A six-factor solution with 23 items was selected using exploratory factor analysis: 'quantitative workload', 'conflict with investigators', 'ambiguity of work', 'conflict with other clinical research coordinators and with supervisors', 'demands from an affiliate other than the hospital', and 'difficulty in caring for trial participants'. Confirmatory factor analysis affirmed construct validity, with a demonstrated acceptable fit between the factor structure and the observed data. All factors had significant correlations with burnout and psychological distress, which indicated acceptable concurrent validity. Cronbach's alpha coefficients ranged from 0·73-0·82. Intra-class correlation coefficients indicated almost satisfactory test- retest reliability. CONCLUSION Our new instrument has acceptable validity and reliability for evaluating job stressors for clinical research coordinators.
In Vitro Spectral Analysis of Tattoo Pigments

BACKGROUND Absorption spectra of common tattoo pigments, their reaction to irradiation at 532 and 752 nm, and correlation with their titanium and iron component are important to the selection of an optimal laser device. OBJECTIVE The objectives were (1) to establish the absorption spectra of common tattoo pigments and India ink and (2) to determine their response to laser irradiation at 532 and 752 nm and correlate this to their composition. MATERIALS AND METHODS Samples of 28 tattoo pigments and India ink were mixed in agar and analyzed with a spectrophotometer. These agar plates were irradiated with Q-switched wavelengths of 532 and 752 nm. RESULTS The highest absorbance of red was in the complementary spectrum, while blue, yellow, and orange had peaks in the adjacent portion of the visible light spectrum. There is great variability in the absorbance of green tattoo material. Pigment darkening was noted at both wavelengths in all iron-containing pigments except black. It was variable in those containing titanium. Pigments tested responded with either clearance or darkening at 532 nm; however, response at 752 nm was more limited. CONCLUSION (1) Tattoo pigment absorption spectra can explain why some colors are more resistant to removal. (2) Pigment darkening is a complex process.
Isoparametric submanifolds of hyperbolic spaces

In this paper we prove a decomposition theorem for isoparametric submanifolds of hyperbolic spaces. And as a consequence we obtain all polar actions on hyperbolic spaces. We also prove that any isoparametric submanifold of infinite dimensional hyperbolic space is either totally geodesic, or finite dimensional
Widowhood and Well-Being: An Examination of Sex Differences within a Causal Model

National survey data (NCOA/Harris and Associates, 1974) are analyzed in a causal model to discern differences in the effects of widowhood on the well-being of older men and women. Based on previous research on mental illness, mortality differentials, and the quality of life, it is hypothesized that widowhood has an adverse impact on well-being, and that this relation is stronger for men than women. While the data support an overall decline in well-being of persons who are widowed, a direct effect of widowhood is substantial only for the negative dimension of the well-being of women. Widowed persons experience lower levels of well-being largely because they tend to be older, in poorer health, and less active in social life than their married counterparts. In the case of widowed women, low economic resources is also a key factor. A consistent pattern of greater reductions in levels of social participation in widowhood for men was not evident.
Internal Determinants and Effects of Firm-Level Environmental Performance: Empirical Evidences from Vietnam

The paper explores the internal determinants of a manufacturing firm’s environmental performance indexed by acquiring government or ISO 14001 certificate and its impacts on the firm’s competitiveness in Vietnam, using a panel logistic and a modified Cobb-Douglas model respectively. It is found that firm size; environmental management system (EMS), foreign ownership, environmental staff, high technology level and middle age are factors increasing a firm’s possibility conforming to the ISO 14001 standards while domestics’ private ownership and low-or medium technology levels are constraints. There is no conclusive relationship between firm’s environmental performance, state ownership and old, young age. Firm’s environmental performance has no significant impact on its competitiveness measured by labor productivity.
The Migrant Border Crossing Study: A methodological overview of research along the Sonora–Arizona border

Increased border enforcement efforts have redistributed unauthorized Mexican migration to the United States (US) away from traditional points of crossing, such as San Diego and El Paso, and into more remote areas along the US–Mexico border, including southern Arizona. Yet relatively little quantitative scholarly work exists examining Mexican migrants’ crossing, apprehension, and repatriation experiences in southern Arizona. We contend that if scholars truly want to understand the experiences of unauthorized migrants in transit, such migrants should be interviewed either at the border after being removed from the US, or during their trajectories across the border, or both. This paper provides a methodological overview of the Migrant Border Crossing Study (MBCS), a unique data source on Mexican migrants who attempted an unauthorized crossing along the Sonora–Arizona border, were apprehended, and repatriated to Nogales, Sonora in 2007–09. We also discuss substantive and theoretical contributions of the MBCS.
The angiogenic responses induced by release of angiogenic proteins from tumor cell‐activated platelets are regulated by distinct molecular pathways

There is mounting evidence that tumor angiogenesis can be regulated by platelets (Plts), which serve as major sources and delivery vehicles of many proangiogenic cytokines including transforming growth factor‐β and vascular endothelial growth factor. Although considerable progress has been made in understanding the role for Plt secretion in tumor angiogenesis, very little is known about the precise mechanisms underlying cancer cell induction of Plt granule release. Here, we demonstrated that nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cells directly induced Plt secretion of several angiogenic regulatory cytokines that promoted angiogenesis in concert. Moreover, we discovered that these Plt‐derived angiogenesis modulators were regulated by different molecular pathways and could be largely inhibited by combination of multiple signaling inhibitors. Our present studies indicated that manipulation of Plt secretion of angiogenic cytokines without compromising hemostatic functions could provide a novel option for management of tumor angiogenesis and metastasis in NSCLC patients with thrombocytosis. © 2015 IUBMB Life, 67(8):626–633, 2015
Factors Affecting Performance of Soil Termiticides

Although baits have increased in popularity in recent years, the application of liquid termiticide to soil remains the most widely used method for protecting structures against subterranean termites (Anonymous, 2008). In addition to fast acting, repellent toxicants such as bifenthrin and other pyrethroids that act as barriers to termite movement, non-repellent, slower acting compounds including fipronil, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam are now among the preferred soil treatments. Delayed toxicity can provide opportunity for horizontal transfer of the active ingredient, potentially reducing termite activity (Remmen & Su, 2005; Shelton & Grace, 2003). While there is some evidence of colony suppression or elimination following perimeter treatments with imidacloprid (Parman & Vargo, 2010), other studies have shown that a reduction in activity occurs over only a small portion of a colony’s foraging range, making it unlikely that soil treatments affect the overall termite population (Osbrink et al., 2005; Rust & Saran, 2006; Saran & Rust, 2007; Su, 2005). This limited potential for transfer emphasizes the importance of bioavailability of termiticides in soil over an extended period of time. Failure of soil termiticide treatments is often related to factors other than the active ingredient (Su & Scheffrahn, 1990b). Efficacy and longevity of soil treatments varies greatly with application rate, soil properties (Gold et al., 1996; Su & Scheffrahn, 1990b), termite pressure (Jones, 1990), and application technique (Forschler, 1994; Su et al., 1995). Factors influencing the performance of soil termiticides can be grouped into those that determine toxicity, bioavailability, or persistence. Each of these factors is affected by properties of the termiticide and soil (Gold et al., 1996; Spomer et al., 2009; Wiltz, 2010). Although some generalizations can be made about relative toxicity of different termiticides, susceptibility differences occur among species and colonies (Beal & Smith, 1971; Osbrink & Lax, 2002). Termiticide rate and application technique influence both bioavailability and long-term persistence (Peterson, 2010). Termite population pressure and satellite nests can reduce availability of the toxicant. Finally, other environmental factors such as moisture, temperature, and microbial communities affect termiticide degradation (Baskaran et al. 1999, Saran & Kamble 2008).
Action on Vascular Risk Factors: Importance of Blood Pressure and Lipid Lowering in Stroke Secondary Prevention

Introduction: Secondary stroke prevention comprises a broad spectrum of therapeutic actions that includes the appropriate management of risk factors and the action on blood pressure and serum lipids that are of great importance to decrease stroke recurrences. Methods: We conducted a review of the published studies analyzing the relevance of the treatment of blood pressure and serum lipids, with special attention to recent findings of clinical trials and current guidelines on stroke secondary prevention. Results: The relationship between blood pressure and stroke has been widely demonstrated; however, the role of serum lipids has been discussed for a long time. Recent results from epidemiological studies and clinical trials have demonstrated its role as modifiable risk factor for stroke. Blood pressure and lipid lowering are associated with significant reductions in recurrent strokes as well as in other vascular events in transient ischemic attack (TIA) or stroke patients. The PROGRESS and MOSES trials suggest that diuretics, angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers could confer additional benefits in stroke patients, and the SPARCL study did so for statins. These drugs are not only efficacious in the reduction of stroke recurrences, but also in other cardiovascular events. Conclusions: Blood pressure and serum lipids are two important and modifiable vascular risk factors that should be taken into consideration when planning secondary stroke prevention measures. This approach should include hypotensive drugs (mainly the combination of diuretics and ACE inhibitors) with the objective to maintain normal blood pressure, avoiding levels >130/80 mm Hg in all stroke patients, and statins (atorvastatin 80 mg) in patients with noncardioembolic TIA or stroke.
Human picornavirus and coronavirus RNA in nasopharynx of children without concurrent respiratory symptoms

The prevalence of human rhino‐, entero‐, and coronaviruses was investigated by RT‐PCR in nasopharyngeal aspirates from 107 children without concurrent respiratory symptoms. The children were admitted to the hospital for elective surgery. The parents filled a questionnaire about the occurrence of respiratory symptoms four weeks before and two weeks after the surgery. The rate of viral detection was 45% in children with related past or recent respiratory infection whereas 20% of the samples taken from children without any related past or recent respiratory infections were positive for picornavirus RNA, P = 0.008. Thirty‐one (29%) of the nasopharyngeal aspirates were positive for viral RNA, 18% for rhinovirus, and 11% for enterovirus RNA. Coronavirus RNA was not found in any of the children. Fifty‐five percent of the children with virus‐positive samples had an infection‐related diagnosis. In addition, 81% of the children with virus‐positive samples had had previously respiratory symptoms or there were concurrent respiratory symptoms in other family members. Only four of the 31 virus‐positive samples were from children without infection‐related diagnosis or recent past (or immediate future) respiratory symptoms. J. Med. Virol. 66:417‐420, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Identifying Deep Contrasting Networks from Time Series Data: Application to Brain Network Analysis

The analysis of multiple time series data, which are generated from a networked system, has attracted much attention recently. This technique has been used in a wide range of applications including functional brain network analysis of neuroimaging data and social influence analysis. In functional brain network analysis, the activity of different brain regions can be represented as multiple time series. An important task in the analysis is to identify the latent network from the observed time series data. In this network, the edges (functional connectivity) capture the correlation between different time series (brain regions). Conventional network extraction approaches usually focus on capturing the connectivity through linear measures under unsupervised settings. In this paper, we study the problem of identifying deep nonlinear connections under group-contrasting settings, where we have two groups of time series samples, and the goal is to identify nonlinear connections that are discriminative across the two groups. We propose a method called GCC (Graph Construction CNN) which is based on deep convolutional neural networks for the task of network construction. The CNN in our model learns a nonlinear edge-weighting function to assign discriminative values to the edges of a network. Experiments on a real-world ADHD dataset show that our proposed method can effectively identify the nonlinear connections among different brain regions. We also demonstrate the extensibility of our proposed framework by combining it with an autoencoder to capture subgraph patterns from the constructed networks.
Therapeutic Monitoring of Albendazole: A High‐Performance Liquid Chromatography Method for Determination of Its Active Metabolite Albendazole Sulfoxide

A sensitive and specific reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method is described for the quantitative determination of albendazole sulfoxide (ASOX); since albendazole sulfone (ASON) appears only in small amounts and albendazole (ABZ) normally does not appear in human plasma, only a qualitative determination of ASON and ABZ was made in human plasma. Plasma samples were extracted three times using ethylacetate and petroleum benzine; this yielded optically clear samples which after evaporation were dissolved in the HPLC solvent and injected onto an RP-C18 column, with ultraviolet detection at 290 nm. The detection limit of the main metabolite ASOX was 50 nM and that of ASON was 100 nM. The intraday coefficient of variation for ASOX was 3.3% at a concentration of 2.2 mUM, and the interday coefficients of variation were 14.5, 7.3, and 9.1% at ASOX concentrations of 0.5, 2.5 and 5.0 mUM, respectively. Calibration was linear in a concentration range of 0.05, 2.5 mUM for ASOX and 0.1–8 mUM for ASON, respectively. Pharmacokinetic data of a patient with echinococcosis are presented.
Disposal and disease rates in 340 British dairy herds

Data derived from 340 dairy herds, mainly in southern England, between April 1998 and March 1999, showed that the average total culling rate was 22.1 per cent, with 5.6 per cent for infertility, 3.6 per cent for mastitis, 1.7 per cent for lameness, 2.0 per cent for poor milk yield, 3.7 per cent for age and 5.5 per cent for miscellaneous reasons which included death. The average annual rate of assisted calvings was 8.7 per cent, of injury 0.9 per cent, digestive disease 1.3 per cent, ketosis 0.4 per cent, hypomagnesaemia 0.7 per cent, hypocalcaemia 5.3 per cent, mastitis 36.6 per cent, and lameness 23.7 per cent. There was a significant association (P<0.001) between higher rates of mastitis in cows housed in straw yards as opposed to cubicles and also between higher rates of lameness in cows housed in cubicles as opposed to yards (P<0.015). However, there were farms with low rates of mastitis in cows kept in straw yards and low rates of lameness in cows kept in cubicles. Larger herds tended to have more problems with lameness and higher bulk milk somatic cell counts (BMscc). There was a positive association between BMScc and mastitis rate.