Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The causality between intestinal flora and allergic diseases: Insights from a bi-directional two-sample Mendelian randomization analysis

Background Growing evidence shows a significant association between intestinal flora and allergic diseases, specifically atopic dermatitis (AD), allergic rhinitis (AR), and allergic asthma (AA). However, the causality has not yet been clarified. Objective We conducted a bidirectional two-sample Mendelian randomization (TSMR) analysis to study the causal relationships between intestinal flora classification and AD, AR, or AA. Materials and methods We obtained summary data of intestinal flora, AD, AR, and AA from a genome-wide association research. The inverse-variance weighted method is the primary method for analyzing causality in the TSMR analysis. Several sensitivity analyses were conducted to examine the stability of TSMR results. Reverse TSMR analysis was also performed to assess whether there was a reverse causality. Results A total of 7 bacterial taxa associated with AD, AR, and AA were identified by the current TSMR analysis. Specifically, the genus Dialister(P=0.034)and genus Prevotella(P=0.047)were associated with a higher risk of AD, whereas class Coriobacteriia (P=0.034) and its child taxon, order Coriobacteriales (P=0.034) and family Coriobacteriaceae (P=0.034), all had a protective effect on AR. In addition, the family Victivallaceae (P=0.019) was identified as a risk factor for AR. We also noticed a positive association between the genus Holdemanella (P=0.046) and AA. The reverse TSMR analysis didn’t suggest any evidence of reverse causality from allergic diseases to the intestinal flora. Conclusion We confirmed the causal relationship between intestinal flora and allergic diseases and provided an innovative perspective for research on allergic diseases: targeted regulation of dysregulation of specific bacterial taxa to prevent and treat AD, AR, and AA.
Incorporation of Moringa oleifera Leaf Extract in Yoghurts to Mitigate Children’s Malnutrition in Developing Countries

Moringa oleifera, which is rich in bioactive compounds, has numerous biological activities and is a powerful source of antioxidants and nutrients. Therefore, M. oleifera can be incorporated into food to mitigate children’s malnutrition. In this work, the bioactive compounds were extracted from M. oleifera leaf powder by ultrasound-assisted solid-liquid extraction. The antioxidant and antimicrobial activities and the phenolic composition of the extract were evaluated. The extract presented a total phenolic content of 54.5 ± 16.8 mg gallic acid equivalents/g and IC50 values of 133.4 ± 12.3 mg/L for DPPH and 60.0 ± 9.9 mg/L for ABTS. Catechin, chlorogenic acid, and epicatechin were the main phenolics identified by HPLC-DAD. The obtained extract and M. oleifera leaf powder were incorporated into yoghurts and their physicochemical and biological properties were studied. The incorporation of M. oleifera did not impair the yoghurts’ stability over eight weeks when compared to both negative and positive controls. The extract presented higher stability regarding syneresis but lower stability regarding TPC compared to the powder. Also, the fortified yoghurts presented higher antioxidant properties than the negative control. These findings highlight the potential use of M. oleifera powder and extract as natural additives to produce fortified foods that can be used in the mitigation of malnutrition.
The orderability and suborderability of metrizable spaces

A space is defined to be suborderable if it is embeddable in a (totally) orderable space. It is shown that a metrizable space X is suborderable iff (1) each component of X is orderable, (2) the set of cut points of each component of X is open, and (3) each closed subset of X which is a union of components has a base of clopen neighborhoods. Note that condition (1) and hence this result is topological since there are many good topological characterizations of connected orderable spaces. In a space X let Q denote the union of all nondegenerate components each of whose noncut points has no compact neighborhood. It is also shown that a metrizable space X is orderable iff (1) X is suborderable, (2) X Q is not a proper compact open subset of X, and (3) if W is a neighborhood of p E X and K is the component in X containing p such that (W K) Q has compact closure and (p) is the intersection of the closures of (W K) -Q and (W K) n Q, then K is a singleton. Corollaries are given; every condition in each of these corollaries is concisely stated and sufficient for a space to be orderable when it is metrizable and suborderable. Both of these results are extended to a class properly containing the metrizable spaces.
Seyfert galaxy narrow-line regions. II - Kinematic models

A class of kinematic models for the narrow-line regions of active galactic nuclei is presented. The models incorporate continuity-constrained radial flow of emitting material in a bounded, spherical geometry. They are designed to represent the narrow-line regions in as simple a manner as is consistent with current knowledge. The systematic comparison of line profiles arising from the models to the spectra in the (O III) lambda5007 emission line which have been described in Paper I of this series is used as a probe of the line-emitting region kinematics: the model parameter areas of interest are identified and tested for consistency with the data. The results indicate heterogeneous kinematic conditions; the most common pattern is outflow of emitting material in a radially decelerating velocity field in the presence of distributed obscuration. However, some observed line profiles can be fitted by several model profiles from very different kinematic conditions, indicating that the information in a spatially unresolved line profile is insufficient to constrain uniquely the geometry and kinematics of the line-emitting region. Although the specific conclusions are model dependent, a predominantly radial pattern of velocities and a distribution of obscuring material are probably essential features of any successful kinematic model of themore » narrow-line regious. « less
Biomedical Applications of Lactoferrin on the Ocular Surface

Lactoferrin (LF) is a first-line defense protein with a pleiotropic functional pattern that includes anti-inflammatory, immunomodulatory, antiviral, antibacterial, and antitumoral properties. Remarkably, this iron-binding glycoprotein promotes iron retention, restricting free radical production and avoiding oxidative damage and inflammation. On the ocular surface, LF is released from corneal epithelial cells and lacrimal glands, representing a significant percentage of the total tear fluid proteins. Due to its multifunctionality, the availability of LF may be limited in several ocular disorders. Consequently, to reinforce the action of this highly beneficial glycoprotein on the ocular surface, LF has been proposed for the treatment of different conditions such as dry eye, keratoconus, conjunctivitis, and viral or bacterial ocular infections, among others. In this review, we outline the structure and the biological functions of LF, its relevant role at the ocular surface, its implication in LF-related ocular surface disorders, and its potential for biomedical applications.
Effects of a lifestyle intervention on the biomarkers of oxidative stress in non-communicable diseases: A systematic review

Oxidative stress plays a critical role in the pathogenesis of chronic diseases. Therefore, improvement of oxidative stress status through lifestyle intervention can play a vital role in preventing and treating chronic diseases. This systematic review aims to provide an overview of articles published in the last decade examining the association between lifestyle intervention and oxidative stress biomarkers in the context of non-communicable diseases. The electronic databases PubMed and Web of Science were searched for relevant studies, following the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting of Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines. This systematic review focused on the four important oxidative stress biomarkers; glutathione (GSH), superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase, and malondialdehyde. 671 articles were identified, of which nine met the inclusion criteria. A trend emerged, showing that lifestyle modifications that focus on diet and physical health can improve oxidative stress in the form of an increase in superoxide dismutase and CAT levels and a decrease in Malondialdehyde levels in participants with non-communicable diseases (NCDs), GSH levels were not affected. However, the results are difficult to compare because of the heterogeneity of the methods of the biomarkers studied. Our review indicates that oxidative stress can be influenced by lifestyle modifications and may be an effective tool for the prevention and management of non-communicable diseases. This review also elucidated the importance of analyzing multiple oxidative stress biomarkers to evaluate oxidative stress, it further highlights the need to conduct long-term lifestyle intervention studies on oxidative stress biomarkers to understand the connection between oxidative stress biomarkers, NCDs and Lifestyle intervention.
Effect of Arabinoxylan and Xylo-Oligosaccharide on Growth Performance and Intestinal Barrier Function in Weaned Piglets

Simple Summary The study was conducted to explore effects of xylose with different polymerizations on growth performance, intestinal barrier function, and gut microbial composition in weaned piglets. Results showed that dietary supplementation of 1% xylo-oligosaccharide (XOS) or 1% arabinoxylan (AX) reduced diarrhea incidence of piglets compared with the control group (CON) but increased intestinal villus height, antioxidase activity, and sIgA contents (p < 0.05). With in vitro fermentation assay, XOS showed a sharper reduction of the pH curve than AX (p < 0.05). XOS increased the abundance of Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium in the ileal digesta (p < 0.05), while AX increased the abundance of Bifidobacterium in the colonic digesta (p < 0.05). In conclusion, both XOS and AX improved the intestinal barrier function and reduced the diarrhea incidence of weaned piglets, and the XOS showed a faster microbial fermentation than the AX due to a lower polymerization and molecular mass. Abstract The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of xylose with different polymerizations on growth performance, intestinal barrier function, and gut microbial composition in weaned piglets. A total of 144 weaned piglets were assigned to 3 dietary treatments in a completely randomized design according to their body weight and sex. Dietary treatments included a corn-soybean meal basal diet (CON) and 2 additional diets formulated with 1% arabinoxylan (AX) and 1% xylo-oligosaccharide (XOS), respectively. Results showed that dietary supplementation of XOS or AX reduced diarrhea incidence of weaned piglets compared with the CON group (p < 0.05). XOS or AX increased the ileal villus height and intestinal activity of antioxidases in weaned piglets compared with the CON group (p < 0.05). XOS or AX reduced the ileal and colonic IL-6 content and increased the colonic sIgA and IL-10 concentrations in weaned piglets compared with the CON group (p < 0.05). XOS or AX increased the total organic acids concentrations in the ileum and in vitro fermentation (p < 0.05). XOS increased the abundance of Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium in the ileal digesta (p < 0.05), while AX increased the population of Lactobacillus in the ileal digesta and the abundance of Bifidobacterium in the colonic digesta of weaned piglets (p < 0.05). In conclusion, both XOS and AX reduce diarrhea incidence and improve antioxidant capacity, immune function, and populations of beneficial bacteria, while microbial fermentation of XOS with a lower polymerization and molecular mass can produce more organic acids and an increased abundance of Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium in the upper gut of weaned pigs compared with AX.
The Use of the Alberta Infant Motor Scale (AIMS) as a Diagnostic Scale for Infants with Autism

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a group of developmental disabilities presenting difficulties in social interaction and language and an increased occurrence of cognitive, sensory, and motor gaps. Early intervention has been reported to improve the function of children with ASD. However, motor screening for children with ASD is difficult, as there are no specific tools for identifying this specific population. This study reports the results of using the Alberta Infant Motor Scale (AIMS), which assesses gross infant motor skills from ages 0 to 18 months, as a screening tool for detecting motor developmental delay (MDD) in small children with ASD. Methods: This retrospective cohort study included all children registered at one health care organization in Israel born between 2011 and 2017 (N = 240,299). Early childhood MDD was defined as having at least one recorded developmental physiotherapy (DPT) visit before the age of 2 years. Reasons for referral to DPT and the results of using AIMS as an appropriate tool for revealing developmental delays in infants with ASD are presented. Results: ASD diagnosis was reported in 1821 children (prevalence rate 0.75%). Of those, 388 (odds ratio 4.1, 95% CI 3.6–4.6) children were referred to DPT. Children with ASD mostly received DPT for motor delays (46.19%), torticollis (19.52%), developmental delay (15.48%), and preterm birth (7.38%). The use of AIMS as an early detection tool suggests that more than 87% of children with ASD and MDD present with a developmental delay or risk for one when using this scale. Conclusions: The prevalence of ASD among children referred to DPT for MDD is higher than its prevalence within the general population. The most common reasons for a child with ASD to be referred for DPT services are MMDs. AIMS was found to be a sensitive tool to pinpoint relevant candidates for ASD screening among children treated in DPT. Possible effects of the study: The use of AIMS as a relevant assessment scale for this group of clients is recommended. Training DPTs in identifying initial ASD signs and developing their clinical reasoning abilities will increase the chance of implementing early intervention with this group of clients.
Effect of Agave Fructan Bioconjugates on Metabolic Syndrome Parameters in a Murine Model

Metabolic syndrome is a complex disorder that combines abdominal obesity, dyslipidemia, hypertension, and insulin resistance. Metabolic syndrome affects 25% of the world’s population. Agave fructans have shown positive effects on alterations related to metabolic syndrome, so some investigations have focused on their bioconjugation with fatty acids to increase their biological activity. The objective of this work was to evaluate the effect of agave fructan bioconjugates in a rat model with metabolic syndrome. Agave fructans enzymatically bioconjugated (acylated via food-grade lipase catalysis) with propionate or laurate were administered orally for 8 weeks in rats fed a hypercaloric diet. Animals without treatment were used as the control group, as well as animals fed with a standard diet. The data indicate that the group of animals treated with laurate bioconjugates showed a significant decrease in glucose levels, systolic pressure, weight gain, and visceral adipose tissue, as well as a positive effect of pancreatic lipase inhibition. These results allow us to demonstrate the potential of agave bioconjugates, particularly laurate bioconjugates, for the prevention of diseases associated with metabolic syndrome.
Frequency domain solution to the optimum multivariable tracking problem

A solution is obtained to the infinite time optimal tracking problem for a multivariable system. The derivation is more direct than the usual approach through Parseval's theorem and it relates Hilbert space gradient techniques to the complex frequency domain. where W * : Ln 2 (0, ∞) → L m 2 (- ∞, ∞). By considering the properties of the impulse response matrix it may be confirmed that the system represented by the operator W * has a response (W*y) (t) existing for negative time, even though y is zero for negative time. It is clear that W * represents a non-causal system.
Finite Section Method in some Algebras of Multiplication and Convolution Operators and a Flip

Abstract. This paper is concerned with the applicability of the ﬁnite section method to oper-ators belonging to the closed subalgebra of L(L 2 ( R )) generated by operators of multiplicationby piecewise continuous functions in R˙ , convolution operators – also with piecewise continuousgenerating functions – and the ﬂip operator (Ju)(x) = u(−x). For this, a larger algebra ofsequences is introduced, which contains the special sequences we are interested in. There is adirect relationship between the applicability of the ﬁnite section method for a given operatorand the invertibility of the corresponding sequence in this algebra. Exploring this relationship,the methods of essentialization, localization and identiﬁcation of the local algebras throughconstruction of locally equivalent representations are used and so useful invertibility criteriaare derived. Finally, examples are presented, including explicit conditions for the applicabilityof the ﬁnite section method to a Wiener-Hopf plus Hankel operator with piecewise continuoussymbols, and some relations between the approximation operators and the limit operator arediscussed.Keywords: Finite section method, Wiener-Hopf operators, Hankel operators.AMS subject classiﬁcation: 65R20, 47C15.
Temporal analysis and opinion dynamics of COVID-19 vaccination tweets using diverse feature engineering techniques

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has also triggered a tsunami of news, instructions, and precautionary measures related to the disease on social media platforms. Despite the considerable support on social media, a large number of fake propaganda and conspiracies are also circulated. People also reacted to COVID-19 vaccination on social media and expressed their opinions, perceptions, and conceptions. The present research work aims to explore the opinion dynamics of the general public about COVID-19 vaccination to help the administration authorities to devise policies to increase vaccination acceptance. For this purpose, a framework is proposed to perform sentiment analysis of COVID-19 vaccination-related tweets. The influence of term frequency-inverse document frequency, bag of words (BoW), Word2Vec, and combination of TF-IDF and BoW are explored with classifiers including random forest, gradient boosting machine, extra tree classifier (ETC), logistic regression, Naïve Bayes, stochastic gradient descent, multilayer perceptron, convolutional neural network (CNN), bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT), long short-term memory (LSTM), and recurrent neural network (RNN). Results reveal that ETC outperforms using BoW with a 92% of accuracy and is the most suitable approach for sentiment analysis of COVID-19-related tweets. Opinion dynamics show that sentiments in favor of vaccination have increased over time.
Note on the break-up of a charged liquid jet

The disintegration of a charged liquid jet is examined, and the break-up mechanism inferred from photographic evidence. Gravitational, molecular and electrical forces all contribute to the segmentation of the jet and determine the drop size distribution. The disintegration process is investigated from the point of view of drop generation. The segmentation of the charged jet differs from the known ways in which an uncharged jet is broken into drops.
Four Invasive Plant Species in Southwest Saudi Arabia Have Variable Effects on Soil Dynamics

Predicting the direction and magnitude of change in soil dynamics caused by invasive plant species has proven to be difficult because these changes are often reported to be species- and habitat-specific. This study was conducted to determine changes in three soil properties, eight soil ions, and seven soil microelements under established stands of four invasive plants, Prosopis juliflora, Ipomoea carnea, Leucaena leucocephala, and Opuntia ficus-indica. Soil properties, ions, and microelements were measured in sites invaded by these four species in southwest Saudi Arabia, and these values were compared to the results for the same 18 parameters from adjacent sites with native vegetation. Because this study was conducted in an arid ecosystem, we predict that these four invasive plants will significantly alter the soil properties, ions, and microelements in the areas they invaded. While the soils of sites with the four invasive plant species generally had higher values for soil properties and ions compared to sites with native vegetation, in most instances these differences were not statistically significant. However, the soils within sites invaded by I. carnea, L. leucocephala, and P. juliflora had statistically significant differences for some soil parameters. For sites invaded by O. puntia ficus-indica, no soil properties, ions, or microelements were significantly different compared to adjacent sites with native vegetation. Sites invaded by the four plant species generally exhibited differences in the 11 soil properties, but in no instance were these differences statistically significant. All three soil properties and one soil ion (Ca) were significantly different across the four stands of native vegetation. For the seven soil microelements, significantly different values were detected for Co and Ni, but only among stands of the four invasive plant species. These results indicate that the four invasive plant species altered soil properties, ions, and microelements, but for most of the parameters we assessed, not significantly. Our results do not support our initial prediction, but are in general agreement with previous published findings, which indicate that the effects of invasive plants on soil dynamics vary idiosyncratically among invasive species and among invaded habitats.
Supramolecular Organization in Salts of Riluzole with Dihydroxybenzoic Acids—The Key Role of the Mutual Arrangement of OH Groups

Intermolecular interactions, in particular hydrogen bonds, play a key role in crystal engineering. The ability to form hydrogen bonds of various types and strengths causes competition between supramolecular synthons in pharmaceutical multicomponent crystals. In this work, we investigate the influence of positional isomerism on the packing arrangements and the network of hydrogen bonds in multicomponent crystals of the drug riluzole with hydroxyl derivatives of salicylic acid. The supramolecular organization of the riluzole salt containing 2,6-dihydroxybenzoic acid differs from that of the solid forms with 2,4- and 2,5-dihydroxybenzoic acids. Because the second OH group is not at position 6 in the latter crystals, intermolecular charge-assisted hydrogen bonds are formed. According to periodic DFT calculations, the enthalpy of these H-bonds exceeds 30 kJ·mol−1. The positional isomerism appears to have little effect on the enthalpy of the primary supramolecular synthon (65–70 kJ·mol−1), but it does result in the formation of a two-dimensional network of hydrogen bonds and an increase in the overall lattice energy. According to the results of the present study, 2,6-dihydroxybenzoic acid can be treated as a promising counterion for the design of pharmaceutical multicomponent crystals.