Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Characterization of Health Related Quality of Life (HRQOL) for Patients With Functional Bowel Disorder (FBD) and Its Response to Treatment

BACKGROUND AND AIMS:Assessing health related quality of life (HRQOL) is becoming more important in research and clinical care. However, little information is available on the performance of HRQOL questionnaires for the functional bowel disorders (FBD). The aims of this study were to (a) understand the performance of the Sickness Impact Profile (SIP) and IBS-QOL for the functional bowel disorders at baseline and after treatment, (b) determine which HRQOL subscales best improve with treatment, (c) determine clinically meaningful improvement, and (d) determine the predictors of HRQOL at baseline and in response to treatment.METHODS:Women with moderate to severe FBD were evaluated using both medical (desipramine vs placebo) and psychological (cognitive-behavioral therapy vs education) treatments. Clinical and psychosocial questionnaires along with the SIP and IBS-QOL were given at baseline and after 12-wk treatment.RESULTS:(a) Patients with FBD experience functional limitations in social interactions, home management, and recreational activities, respond emotionally to the pain, feel helpless, out of control, depressed, and irritable, and perceive restrictions in lifestyle relating to toilet accessibility, and eating; (b) HRQOL is not different among the FBD diagnoses or IBS subgroups; (c) the IBS-QOL is more responsive to treatment than the SIP; (d) meaningful clinical improvement is 2.8 points for SIP and 14 for IBS-QOL; and (e) improvement is demonstrated primarily in psychosocial rather than physical domains. In addition, we found that expectation of benefit is greater for taking a pill over a psychological intervention, and the predictive effects of abuse history and pain on outcome is mediated by psychosocial factors.CONCLUSIONS:The data support the value of the IBS-QOL over the SIP, and provide new information on the profile of impairment in FBD, and the ways in which medical and psychological treatments produce improvement in HRQOL.
Candida albicans Airway Exposure Primes the Lung Innate Immune Response against Pseudomonas aeruginosa Infection through Innate Lymphoid Cell Recruitment and Interleukin-22-Associated Mucosal Response

ABSTRACT Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Candida albicans are two pathogens frequently encountered in the intensive care unit microbial community. We have demonstrated that C. albicans airway exposure protected against P. aeruginosa-induced lung injury. The goal of the present study was to characterize the cellular and molecular mechanisms associated with C. albicans-induced protection. Airway exposure by C. albicans led to the recruitment and activation of natural killer cells, innate lymphoid cells (ILCs), macrophages, and dendritic cells. This recruitment was associated with the secretion of interleukin-22 (IL-22), whose neutralization abolished C. albicans-induced protection. We identified, by flow cytometry, ILCs as the only cellular source of IL-22. Depletion of ILCs by anti-CD90.2 antibodies was associated with a decreased IL-22 secretion and impaired survival after P. aeruginosa challenge. Our results demonstrate that the production of IL-22, mainly by ILCs, is a major and inducible step in protection against P. aeruginosa-induced lung injury. This cytokine may represent a clinical target in Pseudomonas aeruginosa-induced lung injury.
A Strategy on Ecological Design of High-Rise Building under Cold Climate Conditions in Lanzhou City

It is an inevitable choice that intensive development of cities is popular in Chinese urbanization procession, so ecological design of building is trend in modern high-rise building design. This article is concerned with analyzing characteristics and environment of the high-rise building in Lanzhou , understanding ecological design of high-rise building environment problems in Lanzhou, and puts forward a strategy on ecological design of high-rise building under cold climate conditions in Lanzhou.
IVN-Based Joint Training Of GMM And HMMs Using An Improved VTS-Based Feature Compensation For Noisy Speech Recognition

In our previous work, we proposed a feature compensation approach using high-order vector Taylor series approximation for noisy speech recognition. In this paper, ﬁrst we improve the feature compensation in both efﬁciency and accuracy by boosted mixture learning of GMM, applying higher order information of VTS approximation only to the noisy speech mean parameters, acoustic context expansion, and modeling the convolutional distortion as a single Gaussian. Then we design a procedure to perform irrelevant variability normalization based joint training of GMM and HMM using the improved VTS-based feature compensation. The effectiveness of our proposed approach is conﬁrmed by experiments on Aurora3 tasks.
Binary code design for high-frequency ultrasound

This paper proposes an approach to designing binary codes suitable for high-frequency applications of coded excitation in medical ultrasound. For a high-frequency ultrasound system, transmitting well-designed binary codes with a low sampling ratio (i.e., the bit rate divided by the transducer center frequency) is a practical way to improve the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) because the challenge of implementing arbitrary-waveform generators for transmitting nonbinary codes increases with the frequency and the switching speed of square-wave pulsers are limited. One conventional approach designs codes using a base sequence that modulates wideband sequences up to the transducer passband. Because a major portion of codes is excluded as a candidate, codes designed using this approach typically need long compression filters for restoring the axial resolution, and they do not improve the SNR efficiently. In contrast, the approach proposed here searches all the codes that match the transducer passband; hence, the resultant codes exhibit better performance. The technique was tested using a bit rate of 50 MHz and a sampling ratio of 2. For a transducer with an ideal Gaussian frequency response with a center frequency of 25 MHz and a -6 dB bandwidth of 15 MHz, the SNR for the same side-lobe extent was 1 to 6 dB higher for the codes designed using the proposed approach compared with those designed using the conventional approach. When a real transducer response with a center frequency of 26.4 MHz and a one-way -6 dB bandwidth of 20.7 MHz was considered, the codes designed using the proposed approach were superior by 0.5 to 5 dB. Therefore, our approach is better than the conventional approach for designing binary codes for high-frequency ultrasound, with the results indicating that the moderate bit rate of 50 MHz will suffice when the ultrasonic center frequency is 25 MHz
Urban-Rural Differences in the Relationship Between Women's Employment and Fertility: A Preliminary study

Statistical study of data from the Egyptian census for 1960 shows that the child/woman ratio rises with the level of female employment in the rural areas, but falls as the level of employment rises in the urban areas. Subject to confirmation by more detailed methods, it seems that, in urban areas, provision of opportunities for women to work is of major importance in attempting to reduce national fertility levels, but this will have the opposite effect to what is intended in rural areas. Industrial or commercial work opportunities change a woman's pattern of living, and are essential to the permanent lowering of fertility to replacement levels. (Arabic summary, page 167.)
University of Groningen Experimental evidence for genetic heritability of maternal hormone transfer to offspring

In many animal species, embryos are exposed to maternal hormones that affect their development. Maternal hormone transfer varies with environmental conditions of the mother and is often interpreted as being shaped by natural selection to adjust the offspring to prevailing environmental conditions. Such hormone transfer requires genetic variability, which has not yet been experimentally demonstrated. Our study reports direct evidence for additive genetic variance of maternal androgens through a bidirectional selection on yolk testosterone (T) levels in Japanese quail. Lines selected for high egg T (HET) and low egg T (LET) concentration differed in yolk levels of this androgen, resulting in high realized heritability ( 2 h p ). Correlated responses to selection on other gonadal hormones 0.42 indicated that selection specifically targeted biologically active androgens. Eggs of HET quail contained higher androstenedione and lower estradiol concentrations than did those of LET quail, with no line differences in yolk progesterone concentration. Plasma T concentrations in adult females were not affected by selection, seriously challenging the hypothesis that transfer of maternal hormones to offspring is constrained by hormone levels in a mother’s circulation. Our results suggest that transfer of maternal T represents an indirect genetic effect that has important consequences for the evolution of traits in offspring.
Mutually Dependent Health Beliefs Associated With Breast Self-examination in British Female University Students

Abstract Objective: Whereas research suggests young women's beliefs about breast cancer (susceptibility/severity) and its early detection (barriers/benefits) reliably distinguish breast self-examiners from nonexaminers, this study assessed whether these impressions are interreliant, especially in the context of familial risk. Participants: The sample comprised over 200 female undergraduates from a university in England, United Kingdom. Methods: Participants completed a self-administered survey on their attitudes concerning breast cancer and early detection. Data were analyzed using logistic regression analysis. Results: Nonexaminers were distinguished by a combination of greater perceived hindrances to self-examinations and stronger appraisals of breast cancer severity, and also by a permutation of fewer perceived benefits in self-examinations and lower perceived susceptibility to breast cancer. The latter interaction persisted after accounting for family history. Conclusions: Interwoven attitudes may depict sophisticated efforts on the part of nonexaminers to justify inaction. Clinical implications for college health providers are considered.
Attitude Sensing in Text Based on A Compositional Linguistic Approach

In this article, we introduce a compositional linguistic approach for attitude recognition in text. There are several aspects that distinguish our attitude analysis model (@AM) from other systems. First, our method classifies sentences using fine‐grained attitude labels (nine for affective states, two for positive and negative judgment, and two for positive and negative appreciation), as compared against other methods that mainly focus on two sentiment categories (positive and negative) or basic emotions. Next, our @AM is based on the analysis of syntactic and dependence relations between words in a sentence, the compositionality principle, a novel linguistic approach based on the rules elaborated for semantically distinct verb classes, and a method considering the hierarchy of concepts. As distinct from the state‐of‐the‐art approaches, the proposed method extensively deals with the semantics of terms, processes sentences of different complexity, handles not only correctly written text but also informal messages, and encodes the strength and the level of confidence of attitude through numerical values. The performance of our @AM was evaluated on data sets represented by sentences from different domains. @AM achieved a high level of accuracy on sentences from personal stories about life experiences, fairy tales, and news headlines, outperforming other methods on several measures.
Differential Modulation and Demodulation for Decode-and-Forward Multiple Relay Systems

We consider differential modulation and demodulation in a decode-and-forward (DF) multiple relay system when channel state information (CSI) is unknown to any node. This paper first derives the maximum likelihood (ML) detector and proposes a low complexity pairwise-linear (PL) detector to well approximate the nonlinear ML detector. In both the ML and PL detectors, the receive signals at the destination from the source and all the relays are combined with different weights, since the transmission links in the relay system have different statistics. Then, the bit error rate (BER) for the PL detector is analyzed. For single relay systems, the exact BER is obtained as a simple function of signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs), the variances, and the fading rates of the transmission links. Based on the exact BER, a BER approximation at high SNR is derived, and explicitly shows the diversity order and the asymmetry between the source-relay link and the relay-destination link. For multiple relay systems, a Cherenoff upper bound on the BER is obtained. In addition, our results are applicable to the cases where all the transmission links have arbitrary fading rates.
Settlement and cell division of diatom Navicula can be influenced by light of various qualities and intensities

Diatom settlement and cell division is important in two major aspects. Firstly, biofouling is a costly problem in the shipping industry that necessitates the effective inhibition of diatom settlement and proliferation. Secondly, biological coatings on the basis of ordered and densely packed cell lawns of diatom are useful for nano‐ and biotechnology. This study demonstrated that the settlement and cell division of the marine unicellular diatom Navicula sp. can be influenced by light‐emitting diodes of various light qualities and intensities. Except for blue light, the settlement of diatoms was reduced by weak (approx. 0.14–6 µE m−2 s−1) green, yellow or red light. When the irradiance intensity, however, was higher than 8–9 µE m−2 s−1, the settlement was stimulated. This phenomenon could be explained by the hypothesis of spatial interference between a chloroplast and a holdfast‐like structure. Densely packed lawn of diatoms with uniform distribution can be fabricated for nanotechnologies, using blue light that stimulates diatom cell division.
Efficacy and safety of 0.75% ropivacaine instillation into subinguinal wound in patients after bilateral microsurgical varicocelectomy: a bi-center, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial

Objective To evaluate the efficacy and safety of 0.75% ropivacaine instillation into inguinal wound in patients who have undergone bilateral microsurgical varicocelectomy. Patients and methods Eighty-five men who were screened for bilateral varicoceles from March 2015 to July 2016 were randomized for the treatment. All patients underwent inguinal varicocelectomy by general anesthesia. After ligation of the internal spermatic veins from the spermatic cord, additional delivery of testis through inguinal incision site was done to ligate external spermatic veins and gubernacular veins. Before repairing external oblique aponeurosis, 6 mL of 0.75% ropivacaine and 6 mL of normal saline were instilled under the fascia and around the funiculus (spermatic cord) by a randomized and double-blind method. Visual analog scale (VAS) pain score and Prince Henry Pain Score (PHPS) were used for evaluating operative sites at 1, 2, 4, and 8 hours and 7 days after surgery. Safety and tolerability were evaluated throughout the course of this study by assessing adverse events. Results A total of 55 men completed the study. Of these 55 men, 31 received instillation of ropivacaine on the left operative site, while 24 received instillation of ropivacaine on the right operative site. VAS pain scores and PHPS in the ropivacaine-instilled operative site were significantly lower compared to those obtained with placebo at 2, 4, and 8 hours after surgery. In general, instillation of ropivacaine was safe and well tolerated in patients. Conclusion Ropivacaine instillation into inguinal surgical site wound significantly reduced postoperative pain after microsurgical varicocelectomy.
Rapid Purification and Properties of Betaine Aldehyde Dehydrogenase from Pseudomonas aeruginosa

ABSTRACT Betaine aldehyde dehydrogenase (BADH) (EC 1.2.1.8 ) catalyzes the last, irreversible step in the synthesis of the osmoprotectant glycine betaine from choline. In Pseudomonas aeruginosa this reaction is also an obligatory step in the assimilation of carbon and nitrogen when bacteria are growing in choline or choline precursors. We present here a method for the rapid purification to homogeneity of this enzyme by the use of ion-exchange and affinity chromatographies on 2′,5′-ADP–Sepharose, which results in a high yield of pure enzyme with a specific activity at 30°C and pH 7.4 of 74.5 U/mg of protein. Analytical ultracentrifugation, gel filtration, chemical cross-linking, and sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis suggest that BADH from P. aeruginosa is a homodimer with 61-kDa subunits. The amino acid composition and the N-terminal sequence of 21 amino acid residues showed significant similarity with those of the enzymes from Xanthomonas translucens andEscherichia coli. Neither BADH activity nor BADH protein was found in cell extracts from bacteria grown in the absence of choline. In contrast to other BADHs studied to date, thePseudomonas enzyme cannot use positively charged aldehydes other than betaine aldehyde as substrates. The oxidation reaction has an activation energy of 39.8 kJ mol−1. The pH dependence of the velocity indicated an optimum at pH 8.0 to 8.5 and the existence of two ionizable groups with macroscopic pK values of 7.0 ± 0.1 and 9.7 ± 0.1 involved in catalysis and/or binding of substrates. The enzyme is inactivated at 40°C, but activity is regained when the heated enzyme is cooled to 30°C or lower. At the optimum pH of 8.0, the enzyme is inactivated by dilution, but it is stable at pH 6.5 even at very low concentrations. Also, P. aeruginosa BADH activity is rapidly lost on removal of K+. In all cases studied, inactivation involves a biphasic process, which was dependent on the enzyme concentration only in the case of inactivation by dilution. NADP+ considerably protected the enzyme against these inactivating conditions.
Arginine 54 in the active site of escherichia coli aspartate transcarbamoylase is critical for catalysis: A site‐specific mutagenesis, NMR, and X‐ray crystallographic study

The replacement of Arg‐54 by Ala in the active site of Escherichia coli aspartate transcarbamoylase causes a 17,000‐fold loss of activity but does not significantly influence the binding of substrates or substrate analogs (Stebbins, J.W., Xu, W., & Kantrowitz, E.R., 1989, Biochemistry 28, 2592–2600). In the X‐ray structure of the wild‐type enzyme, Arg‐54 interacts with both the anhydride oxygen and a phosphate oxygen of carbamoyl phosphate (CP) (Gouaux, J.E. & Lipscomb, W.N., 1988, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 85, 4205–4208). The Arg‐54 → Ala enzyme was crystallized in the presence of the transition state analog N‐phosphonoacetyl‐l‐aspartate (PALA), data were collected to a resolution limit of 2.8 å, and the structure was solved by molecular replacement. The analysis of the refined structure (R factor = 0.18) indicates that the substitution did not cause any significant alterations to the active site, except that the side chain of the arginine was replaced by two water molecules. 31P‐NMR studies indicate that the binding of CP to the wild‐type catalytic subunit produces an upfield chemical shift that cannot reflect a significant change in the ionization state of the CP but rather indicates that there are perturbations in the electronic environment around the phosphate moiety when CP binds to the enzyme. The pH dependence of this upfield shift for bound CP indicates that the catalytic subunit undergoes a conformational change with a pKa ∼ 7.7 upon CP binding. Furthermore, the linewidth of the 31P signal of CP bound to the Arg‐54 → Ala enzyme is significantly narrower than that of CP bound to the wild‐type catalytic subunit at any pH, although the change in chemical shift for the CP bound to the mutant enzyme is unaltered. 31P‐NMR studies of PALA complexed to the wild‐type catalytic subunit indicate that the phosphonate group of the bound PALA exists as the dianion at pH 7.0 and 8.8, whereas in the Arg‐54 → Ala catalytic subunit the phosphonate group of the bound PALA exists as the monoanion at pH 7.0 and 8.8. Thus, the side chain of Arg‐54 is essential for the proper ionization of the phosphonate group of PALA and by analogy the phosphate group in the transition state. These data support the previously proposed proton transfer mechanism, in which a fully ionized phosphate group in the transition state accepts a proton during catalysis.
Internet, public space and contention in Cuba: bridging asymmetries of access to public space through transnational dynamics of contention

This paper explores the Cuban case to understand how contentious voices have managed to bridge asymmetries of access to public space thanks to their critical use of new information and communication technologies (NICTs) Internet. I argue that we need to look at how contentious uses of NICTs have reinforced existing processes on the island, while creating new channels of expression and linkage. The paper shows that the transnational dynamics of linkage put into place by a lively web of emigres, Cuban activists and intellectuals as well as foreign journalists and scholars have allowed for the convergence of contentious micro arenas which already existed but were formerly segmented. This process of convergence has in turn allowed for the emergence of a more intricate public space and for the creation of a somewhat autonomous contentious space. Although this evolution of the Cuban regime is positive as far as freedom of speech, it is clear that new inequalities in access to voice emerge: the protagonists of those new social spaces are limited to specific social categories, namely the urban, young and highly educated.
Addressing Population‐Specific Multiple Testing Burdens in Genetic Association Studies

The number of effectively independent tests performed in genome‐wide association studies (GWAS) varies by population, making a universal P‐value threshold inappropriate. We estimated the number of independent SNPs in Phase 3 HapMap samples by: (1) the LD‐pruning function in PLINK, and (2) an autocorrelation‐based approach. Autocorrelation was also used to estimate the number of independent SNPs in whole genome sequences from 1000 Genomes. Both approaches yielded consistent estimates of numbers of independent SNPs, which were used to calculate new population‐specific thresholds for genome‐wide significance. African populations had the most stringent thresholds (1.49 × 10−7 for YRI at r2 = 0.3), East Asian populations the least (3.75 × 10−7 for JPT at r2 = 0.3). We also assessed how using population‐specific significance thresholds compared to using a single multiple testing threshold at the conventional 5 × 10−8 cutoff. Applied to a previously published GWAS of melanoma in Caucasians, our approach identified two additional genes, both previously associated with the phenotype. In a Chinese breast cancer GWAS, our approach identified 48 additional genes, 19 of which were in or near genes previously associated with the phenotype. We conclude that the conventional genome‐wide significance threshold generates an excess of Type 2 errors, particularly in GWAS performed on more recently founded populations.