Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
How to institute the low‐FODMAP diet

A diet low in poorly absorbed, fermentable, short chain carbohydrates (FODMAPs) is an effective strategy to manage symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). The diet has gained traction since its original description in Australia 10 years ago and is now an internationally accepted dietary management strategy for IBS. Randomized controlled trials have raised the profile of the low‐FODMAP diet to become a viable first‐line therapy for IBS, when implemented under a dietitian's guidance. Importantly, the diagnosis of IBS should be confirmed before commencement of the dietary approach. The skill set of the dietitian is then paramount to the success of the diet. Experience in gastrointestinal disorder management, consideration of symptom types, severity, baseline FODMAP intake, and overall nutritional content and meal pattern are vital in the assessment of the patient. If a strict low‐FODMAP diet is deemed necessary, it should only be for an initial period of 4 to 6 weeks. Research suggests that a strict long‐term, low‐FODMAP diet may negatively impact intestinal microbiome. After the initial strict period, follow up with the dietitian should be conducted to achieve the overall goal—a relaxed FODMAP restriction that enables inclusion of prebiotic FODMAPs while still maintaining symptom relief. The diet will be effective in the vast majority of patients. For those in which it fails, FODMAPs should be reintroduced to the diet, and other dietary (or non‐dietary) approaches should be considered.
μ-Bromido-bis{μ-2,2′-[4,7-diazadecane-1,10-diylbis(nitrilomethanylylidene)]diphenolato}tricopper(II) bromide dimethylformamide disolvate

The complex molecule of the title compound, [Cu3Br(C22H28N4O2)2]Br·2C3H7NO, contains three copper atoms, two of which are five-coordinate within a square-pyramidal environment and linked by a bridging Br atom occupying the apical position in each square pyramid. The remaining Cu atom is four-coordinate but with considerable tetrahedral disortion [the dihedral angle between the two chelate planes is 69.21 (7)°]. There are two molecules of dimethylformamide (DMF) present as solvent molecules, one of which is disordered over two equivalent conformations with occupancies of 0.603 (5) and 0.397 (5). The amine H atoms are involved in both inter- and intramolecular hydrogen-bonding interactions with the Br and O atoms of the cation, as well as with the O atom of the ordered DMF molecule.
Involving relatives in aphasia therapy: an application of Language Enrichment Therapy

A programme of therapy for aphasia devised in Finland, Language Enrichment Therapy, was tested in an English version, particularly in respect of its co-operative use by speech therapists and the patients' relatives at home. Although a number of changes were recommended, the method was approved of by therapists and relatives. The majority of patients showed improvement, as assessed by the Western Aphasia Battery, over a period of less than three months with a regimen of one hour a week with the therapist supplemented by an average of five hours of help by a relative at home. These results should encourage the development of programmes such as Language Enrichment Therapy as an economic way of enabling speech therapists to use volunteer helpers.
Development and optimization of press coated tablets of release engineered valsartan for pulsatile delivery

Abstract The present work is aimed to develop and optimize pulsatile delivery during dissolution of an improved formulation of valsartan to coordinate the drug release with circadian rhythm. Preliminary studies suggested that β cyclodextrin could improve the solubility of valsartan and showed AL type solubility curve. A 1:1 stoichiometric ratio of valsartan to β cyclodextrin was revealed from phase solubility studies and Job’s plot. The prepared complex showed significantly better dissolution efficiency (p < 0.05) compared to pure drug, which could be due to the formation of inclusion complex as revealed from FTIR and DSC studies. Continuous dissolution-absorption studies revealed that absorption of drug from valsartan β cyclodextrin complex was significantly higher (p < 0.05) compared to pure drug, in second part press-coated tablets of valsartan β cyclodextrin complex were subsequently prepared and application of the Plackett–Burman screening design revealed that HPMC K4M and EC showed significant effect on lag time. A 32 full factorial design was used to measure the response of HPMC K4M and EC on lag time and time taken for 90% drug release (T90). The optimized batch prepared according to the levels obtained from the desirability function had a lag time of 6 h and consisted of HPMC K4M:ethylcellulose in a 1:1.5 ratio with 180 mg of coating and revealed a close agreement between observed and predicted value (R2 = 0.9694).
Droop controller design methods for isolated DC-DC converter in DC grid battery energy storage applications

Droop control is a potential solution to assign the power share for multiple DC power sources such as battery energy storage systems in a DC micro-grid, without demanding communication requirement. The design objective of the droop controller is to regulate the DC-DC converter virtual output impedance. As the major contribution of this paper, two types of DC droop controllers are proposed for the isolated DC-DC converter in battery energy storage applications in DC grid. One method provides cost effective solution by only designing the output voltage compensator without current sensor. The other method requires a current-feedback loop but provides accurate and linear output droop. An isolated DC-DC converter prototype was built and the test results were reported for both droop controller designs.
Cluster identification and scaling methods based on comparative quantification for dissimilarity data

This paper proposes two methods. One is the cluster identification method for 3-way dissimilarity data among objects over times (or subjects) and the other is the cluster scaling method for dissimilarity data among objects. Both methods are based on the comparative quantification model which can obtain the quantitative amount of relationship between a pair of clusters or relationship between a cluster and a basis which spans a subspace constructed a scale. The merits of these methods are that we can obtain “comparability” of obtained clusters over times (or subjects) and supply an “adaptable scale” for observed dissimilarity between a pair of objects, in order to reduce the number of dimensions of the observed data and explain the dissimilarity relationships among objects in the lower dimensional subspace. Numerical examples to investigate the educational effectiveness by using the cognitive 3-way dissimilarity data of students demonstrate a better performance for the proposed methods.
Discovery of Mouse Spleen Signaling Responses to Anthrax using Label-Free Quantitative Phosphoproteomics via Mass Spectrometry*

Inhalational anthrax is caused by spores of the bacterium Bacillus anthracis (B. anthracis), and is an extremely dangerous disease that can kill unvaccinated victims within 2 weeks. Modern antibiotic-based therapy can increase the survival rate to ∼50%, but only if administered presymptomatically (within 24–48 h of exposure). To discover host signaling responses to presymptomatic anthrax, label-free quantitative phosphoproteomics via liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry was used to compare spleens from uninfected and spore-challenged mice over a 72 h time-course. Spleen proteins were denatured using urea, reduced using dithiothreitol, alkylated using iodoacetamide, and digested into peptides using trypsin, and the resulting phosphopeptides were enriched using titanium dioxide solid-phase extraction and analyzed by nano-liquid chromatography-Linear Trap Quadrupole-Orbitrap-MS(/MS). The fragment ion spectra were processed using DeconMSn and searched using both Mascot and SEQUEST resulting in 252,626 confident identifications of 6248 phosphopeptides (corresponding to 5782 phosphorylation sites). The precursor ion spectra were deisotoped using Decon2LS and aligned using MultiAlign resulting in the confident quantitation of 3265 of the identified phosphopeptides. ANOVAs were used to produce a q-value ranked list of host signaling responses. Late-stage (48–72 h postchallenge) Sterne strain (lethal) infections resulted in global alterations to the spleen phosphoproteome. In contrast, ΔSterne strain (asymptomatic; missing the anthrax toxin) infections resulted in 188 (5.8%) significantly altered (q<0.05) phosphopeptides. Twenty-six highly tentative phosphorylation responses to early-stage (24 h postchallenge) anthrax were discovered (q<0.5), and ten of these originated from eight proteins that have known roles in the host immune response. These tentative early-anthrax host response signaling events within mouse spleens may translate into presymptomatic diagnostic biomarkers of human anthrax detectable within circulating immune cells, and could aid in the identification of pathogenic mechanisms and therapeutic targets.
Protein Kinase C-α Signals Rho-Guanine Nucleotide Dissociation Inhibitor Phosphorylation and Rho Activation and Regulates the Endothelial Cell Barrier Function*

The Rho-GDP guanine nucleotide dissociation inhibitor (GDI) complexes with the GDP-bound form of Rho and inhibits its activation. We investigated the role of protein kinase C (PKC) isozymes in the mechanism of Rho activation and in signaling the loss of endothelial barrier function. Thrombin and phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate induced rapid phosphorylation of GDI and the activation of Rho-A in human umbilical venular endothelial cells. Inhibition of PKC by chelerythrine chloride abrogated the thrombin-induced GDI phosphorylation and Rho activation. Depletion of PKC prevented the thrombin-induced GDI phosphorylation and Rho activation, thereby indicating that these events occurred downstream of phorbol ester-sensitive PKC isozyme activation. The depletion of PKC or inhibition of Rho by C3 toxin also prevented the thrombin-induced decrease in transendothelial electrical resistance (a measure of increased transendothelial permeability), thus indicating that PKC-induced barrier dysfunction was mediated through Rho-dependent pathway. Using inhibitors and dominant-negative mutants, we found that Rho activation was regulated by PKC-α. Moreover, the stimulation of human umbilical venular endothelial cells with thrombin induced rapid association of PKC-α with Rho. Activated PKC-α but not PKC-ε induced marked phosphorylation of GDI in vitro. Taken together, these results indicate that PKC-α is critical in regulating GDI phosphorylation, Rho activation, and in signaling Rho-dependent endothelial barrier dysfunction.
Crystal Structure of N-Glycosylated Human Glypican-1 Core Protein

Background: The glypican family of cell-surface proteoglycans regulates growth factor signaling during development through their core proteins and heparan sulfate chains. Results: The crystal structure of N-glycosylated human glypican-1 is described. Conclusion: The structure reveals the complete disulfide bond arrangement for the conserved Cys residues in glypicans. Significance: Increased structural knowledge of glypicans will help elucidate their important functions in shaping animal development. Glypicans are a family of cell-surface proteoglycans that regulate Wnt, hedgehog, bone morphogenetic protein, and fibroblast growth factor signaling. Loss-of-function mutations in glypican core proteins and in glycosaminoglycan-synthesizing enzymes have revealed that glypican core proteins and their glycosaminoglycan chains are important in shaping animal development. Glypican core proteins consist of a stable α-helical domain containing 14 conserved Cys residues followed by a glycosaminoglycan attachment domain that becomes exclusively substituted with heparan sulfate (HS) and presumably adopts a random coil conformation. Removal of the α-helical domain results in almost exclusive addition of the glycosaminoglycan chondroitin sulfate, suggesting that factors in the α-helical domain promote assembly of HS. Glypican-1 is involved in brain development and is one of six members of the vertebrate family of glypicans. We expressed and crystallized N-glycosylated human glypican-1 lacking HS and N-glycosylated glypican-1 lacking the HS attachment domain. The crystal structure of glypican-1 was solved using crystals of selenomethionine-labeled glypican-1 core protein lacking the HS domain. No additional electron density was observed for crystals of glypican-1 containing the HS attachment domain, and CD spectra of the two protein species were highly similar. The crystal structure of N-glycosylated human glypican-1 core protein at 2.5 Å, the first crystal structure of a vertebrate glypican, reveals the complete disulfide bond arrangement of the conserved Cys residues, and it also extends the structural knowledge of glypicans for one α-helix and two long loops. Importantly, the loops are evolutionarily conserved in vertebrate glypican-1, and one of them is involved in glycosaminoglycan class determination.
Impairment Charges and Market Value of Insurance Firms in Nigeria

The purpose of this study is to examine whether impairment of financial assets affects the behaviour of equity investors in the insurance industry in Nigeria. Using a sample of 102 firm-year observations drawn from 17 insurance firms, and another sample of insurance firms whose shares traded at more than par value, the study investigated whether share prices are associated with insurance receivables and with other financial assets. Findings show that share prices are not significantly associated with insurance receivables, or with other financial assets. This is possibly because the shares of many insurance firms in Nigeria traded mostly at par value within the sample period-2012 to 2017. Empirical results further reveal that for the sample of firms whose shares traded at more than par value, there is a significant negative relationship between impairment charges of financial assets and market value, suggesting that investors negatively view impairment charges and regard them as evidence of decline in the economic value of organisational assets. Even with the sample of firms whose shares traded at more than par value, there is an insignificant relationship between insurance receivables and market value, suggesting that investors do not regard the impairment of trade receivables as sufficiently reliable to include them in their assessment of firm value. Regulators of the insurance industry must therefore emphasise confidence-boosting strategies such as the merger of weak insurance firms. This will create larger firms with greater capacity and better performance, as well as improve investors’ perception of the insurance industry in Nigeria.
Noise induced oscillations in recurrent neural networks

It has been shown that oscillations can be generated by additive Gaussian white noise in a recurrent Hodgkin-Huxley neuron model. Type 1 oscillation was induced with Stochastic Resonance (SR) by additive Gaussian noise at lower amplitudes, while Type 2 oscillation was observed at higher amplitudes. However, the mechanism of Type 2 oscillation is not clear. In this article, we test the hypothesis through computer simulations that the period of the Type 2 oscillation can be affected by temperature in a recurrent neural network in which the recurrent model is constructed by four Hodgkin-Huxley (HH) neuron models. Each HH neuron model is driven by Gaussian noise and sub-threshold excitatory synaptic currents with an alpha function from another HH neuron model, and the action potentials (spike firings) of each HH neuron model are transferred to the other HH neuron model via sub-threshold synaptic currents. From spike firing times recorded, the inter spike interval (ISI) histogram was generated, and the periodicity of spike firings was detected from the ISI histogram at each HH neuron model. The results show that the probability of spike firings in the Type1 oscillation is maximized at a specific standard deviation (S.D.) of the Gaussian white noise with SR at 6.3, 15.0 and 25.0 oC, while the period of the Type 2 oscillation depends on temperature. It is concluded that the Type1 oscillation can be induced by additive Gaussian white noise on the basis of a synaptic delay in the recurrent HH neuron model, whereas ISIs of the Type 2 oscillation may be determined by refractory periods of HH neuron models.
Multifrequency Compressed Sensing for 2-D Near-Field Synthetic Aperture Radar Image Reconstruction

This paper investigates a new multifrequency compressed sensing (CS) model for 2-D near-field microwave and millimeter-wave synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging system, which usually collects multifrequency sparse data. Spatial data of each frequency are represented as a hierarchical tree structure under a wavelet basis and spatial data of different frequencies are modeled as a joint structure, because they are highly correlated. Based on the developed multifrequency CS model, a new CS approach is proposed by exploiting both the intrafrequency and interfrequency correlations, and enriches the existing CS approaches for 2-D near-field microwave and millimeter-wave SAR image reconstruction from undersampled measurements. Combining a splitting Bregman update with a variation of the parallel Fast Iterative Shrinkage-Thresholding Algorithm-like proximal algorithm, the proposed CS approach minimizes a linear combination of five terms: a least squares data fitting, a <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\textrm {multi-}\ell _{1}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> norm, a multitotal variation norm, a joint-sparsity <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\ell _{21}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> norm, and a tree-sparsity overlapping <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\ell _{21}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> norm. Simulation and experimental results demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed approach in terms of both efficiency and convergence speed.
A novel approach for high-quality microarray processing using third-dye array visualization technology

Historically, microarray image processing has been technically challenging in obtaining quality gene expression data. After hybridization of Cy3- and Cy5-labeled samples, images are collected and processed to obtain gene expression ratio measurements for each of the elements on the array. The hybridization process often brings in contaminating noise, which can make correct identification of the signal difficult. In addition, spot intensity levels are highly variable due to the expression differences of different genes, and weak spots are often difficult to detect. These conditions are further complicated by inherent irregularities in spot position, shape, and size commonly found on high-density microarrays, making image processing an often labor-intensive task that is difficult to reliably automate. We previously reported a novel third-dye array visualization (TDAV) technology that allows prehybridization visualization and quality control of printed arrays. Here, we present a new microarray image processing approach utilizing TDAV. By incorporating the third-dye image, we show that overall quality of the microarray data is significantly improved, and automation of processing is feasible and reliable. Furthermore, we demonstrate use of the third-dye image to better quality control microarray image analysis. Both the principle and implementation of the approach are presented in detail, with experimental results.
New evidence on fund performance in extreme events

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to compare the return performance and persistence of ethical and conventional mutual funds during two extreme events, the Asian and the global financial crises under Shariah constraints.Design/methodology/approachThe overall sample comprises of 129 Islamic mutual funds (IMFs) and 350 conventional mutual funds (CMFs) in Malaysia, and the average monthly data cover two periods of market cycles, before and during a financial crisis. The net of all expenses data is obtained from the Morningstar Database. This study employs various market risk-adjusted performance measures (ratios) to estimate the funds’ overall performance during the crises, and then it uses CAPM model to estimate the parameters via panel data approach. Moreover, paper employs the two persistence performance measures on IMFs and CMFs through contingency tables. It tests for the performance persistence effects for IMFs, CMFs using repeat winner and the cross-product ratio (CPR) tests proposed by Malkiel (1995) and Brown and Goetzmann (1995), respectively.FindingsThe main findings of the paper are: on average, both funds IMF and the CMF outperform the market return during the entire sample period; none of the funds is better than the “others” during the financial crises and the pre-crisis periods; the ethical fund – IMF outperforms the CMF over the study period. This outcome also indicates that ethical funds are more persistent especially during and the pre-crisis AFC and the GFC periods.Research limitations/implicationsThe finding of this study is limited to only Malaysian data because the objective was to guideline investors and market players in Malaysia to prefer investing in Islamic ethical funds to diversify their investment portfolio.Practical implicationsCautions to use existing ratio measures and CAPM model rather persistence measures may be used with existing methodologies in light of extreme events which influenced investor decision making for better returns at lower risks.Social implicationsA class of ethical funds consists of religious sustainable, socially responsible and impact-investing (SRI) funds but Shariah implications of halal investment must be observed to avoid prohibited practices within the class of SRI funds.Originality/valueThe work done in this paper are original in the sense that the authors employed various ratios to measure fund performance in conjunction with CAPM model and then tested for two persistence performance measures; the repeat winner and CPR tests.
A rate control algorithm for ×264 high definition video conferencing

Current rate control algorithms developed in the H.264 encoder are unable to address High Definition video streaming requirements over best effort networks such as the Internet. We propose a rate controller (RC) for H.264 high definition video conferencing (HDVC), specifically developed in the x264 codec: an open source and high performance H.264/AVC encoder. Called the Dynamic Constant Rate Factor (DCRF), our RC tries to provide the best possible quality in terms of the current bandwidth available at a given instance of video streaming. The proposed method is analyzed from different aspects including network bandwidth, frame size, PSNR and SSIM measurements. In addition to the objective tests, DCRF is evaluated by human observers for subjective performance evaluation. The results prove that DCRF provides better results than current RC methods for HDVC.