Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Calorie Restriction Reduced Blood Pressure in Obesity Hypertensives by Improvement of Autonomic Nerve Activity and Insulin Sensitivity

Summary: Association between obesity and hypertension has been well recognized. A reduction in the body weight of overweight hypertensive patients is a recommended lifestyle modification. The purpose of our study is to examine the relationship of insulin sensitivity and autonomic nervous activity with reduction of blood pressure by the calorie restriction. We evaluated the heart rate variability, nocturnal change of blood pressure and insulin resistance before and after a short‐term low‐calorie diet in 12 overweight essential hypertensives. After a week of standard diet (2000 kcal), 2 weeks of low‐calorie diet (800 kcal) with normal sodium content induced a significant reduction in body mass index, triglyceride, fasting immunoreactive protein, homeostasis model assessment as an index of insulin resistance, and urinary excretion of sodium and potassium. Systolic blood pressure was significantly reduced both in daytime and night‐time after the low‐calorie diet (daytime, 134.5 ± 6.0 to 122.0 ± 4.1 mmHg; night‐time, 126.8 ± 5.2 to 113.4 ± 7.2 mmHg). In daytime, diastolic blood pressure was also reduced (90.3 ± 2.1 to 88.1 ± 4.8 mmHg). Although heart rate was not significantly reduced, a rise of high frequency in night‐time (346 ± 82 to 572 ± 108 ms2) and a fall of low frequency/high frequency in daytime (3.5 ± 0.4 to 2.6 ± 0.1) was significant after a low‐calorie diet. In conclusion, weight loss by low‐calorie diet with a constant intake of sodium, reduced blood pressure in obese hypertensives by improvement of vagal nervous activity and insulin resistance.
Genre Analysis of Applied linguistics Research Article Introductions Published in International and Iranian Local Journals

This study aimed to investigate the realizations of verbs’ syntactic and semantic features in moves of applied linguistics research article introductions published in international and Iranian local journals. To this end, a data of 30 research article introductions (15 published in Iranian local journals and 15 in high impact international journals) was selected. The research article introductions were analyzed for the move structures using Swales’s CARS (1990) model. The research article introductions were also analyzed for tense, aspect, voice (Syntactic features) and semantic meaning of verbs. The results indicated that simple present and active voice were the predominant tense and voice in both sets of research article introductions. Concerning the semantic meaning of verbs, the results showed that three kinds of semantic meanings of verbs were used more frequently. They are namely mental, activity, and existence or relationship verbs. This study could have implications for novice non-native writers in the Applied Linguistics.
Parkinson's disease duration determines effect of dopaminergic therapy on ventral striatum function

We investigated the hypothesis that variation in endogenous dopamine (DA) across brain regions explains dissimilar effects of dopaminergic therapy on aspects of cognition in early Parkinson's disease (PD). Extensive degeneration of DA‐producing cells in the substantia nigra cause dorsal striatum (DS) DA deficiency and movement abnormalities. Particularly in early PD, this contrasts with relative sparing of the dopaminergic cells of the ventral tegmental area (VTA). The hypothesis predicts that DS‐mediated cognitive functions are deficient at baseline and improved by DA replacement, whereas functions depending upon VTA‐innervated brain regions are normal off medication and worsen with treatment. The latter pattern presumably owes to overdose of relatively DA‐replete VTA‐supplied brain regions with medication levels titrated to DS‐mediated motor symptoms. As PD progresses, however, VTA degeneration increases. Impairment in cognitive operations performed by VTA‐innervated brain regions, such as the ventral striatum (VS), is expected. We compared the performance of early and late PD patients, on and off dopaminergic medication, relative to age‐matched controls, on reward learning, previously shown to implicate the VS. As expected, in early PD, stimulus‐reward learning was normal off medication, but worsened with DA replacement. At more advanced disease stages, PD patients learned stimulus‐reward contingencies more poorly than controls and early PD patients off medication. Furthermore, dopaminergic medication did not worsen reward learning in late PD patients, in line with the dopamine overdose hypothesis. Unlike its effect on DS‐mediated functions, however, DA‐replacement therapy did not improve reward learning in late PD patients. © 2012 Movement Disorder Society
A second trimeric complex containing homologs of the Sec61p complex functions in protein transport across the ER membrane of S. cerevisiae.

Yeast microsomes contain a heptameric Sec complex involved in post‐translational protein transport that is composed of a heterotrimeric Sec61p complex and a tetrameric Sec62‐Sec63 complex. The trimeric Sec61p complex also exists as a separate entity that probably functions in co‐translational protein transport, like its homolog in mammals. We have now discovered in the yeast endoplasmic reticulum membrane a second, structurally related trimeric complex, named Ssh1p complex. It consists of Ssh1p1 (Sec sixty‐one homolog 1), a rather distant relative of Sec61p, of Sbh2p, a homolog of the Sbh1p subunit of the Sec61p complex, and of Sss1p, a component common to both trimeric complexes. In contrast to Sec61p, Ssh1p is not essential for cell viability but it is required for normal growth rates. Sbh1p and Sbh2p individually are also not essential, but cells lacking both proteins are impaired in their growth at elevated temperatures and accumulate precursors of secretory proteins; microsomes isolated from these cells also exhibit a reduced rate of post‐translational protein transport. Like the Sec61p complex, the Ssh1p complex interacts with membrane‐bound ribosomes, but it does not associate with the Sec62‐Sec63p complex to form a heptameric Sec complex. We therefore propose that it functions exclusively in the co‐translational pathway of protein transport.
Integrating knowledge-based system in wellness community portal

Increasing awareness on personal wellness has shifted the concept of health from treatment of disease to prevention of health problems. When community become more health conscious, service improvement is needed to help users find relevant personalised wellness solution. In today's digital world, wellness information is not sufficient to meet the demand of users who tend to seek for wellness therapies that are suitable for themselves. Online wellness programmes such as personal dietary system, weight management system and others is created to improve a person's health. However, these programmes do not consider about users' medical history and health conditions. Therefore, wellness programmes tailored for individual needs are on high demands. Wellness industry should provide reliable and convenient solutions that customised to an individual needs. The industry needs a change from improving consultation protocols to tailoring programmes that are personalised towards individual preferences. This paper conveys web-based wellness system that enables users to search for personalised wellness therapy for them. We suggest an implementation of wellness community portal that supported by a case-based reasoning (CBR) wellness recommender system. CBR represents the reasoning process used by wellness consultants in proposing personalised wellness solution. CBR wellness recommender system is to be used by users in searching for personalised wellness therapy in the Internet.
An efficient approximation for Maximum Likelihood estimation of ADC parameters

Maximum Likelihood (ML) estimation is applied for estimating ADC parameters in several papers. However, none of them provided an efficient way to calculate the code transition levels for sine wave excitation signals. Due to the vast amount of data points and parameters, the complexity of the estimation for high resolution ADCs is overwhelming. The general ML cost function is already published in [1] [14] for Gaussian noise where the algorithm involves calculations with the erf function. In order to be able to accelerate the algorithm, approximations are needed. An efficient approximation is proposed below which applies Laplacian noise model. In this case the likelihood function consists of only exponentials which simplifies the calculation. After finding the parameters, which are close to those for the Gaussian distribution, they can be adjusted to the Gaussian noise model. This approach not necessarily requires a Gaussian noise distribution. Simulation results show the the bias of the code transition level estimation is not necessarily dependent on the shape of the noise distribution.
Large scale remote health monitoring in sparsely connected rural regions

Remote health monitoring and intervention systems including wearable sensors, smartphones and advanced communication technologies are slated to be a game changer in the delivery of quality healthcare services, especially in developing parts of the world. However, we are yet to see large scale adoption of remote health monitoring systems due to many factors such as: lack of reliable data network coverage, high power requirements for smartphone analytics, and unreliability in the timely delivery of critical data to remote doctors. In addition to these, the huge volume of sensor data and alerts from multiple remote patients are unmanageable for already overloaded doctors. In this paper, we attempt to address each of these issues. First, we propose a novel healthcare communication architecture that connects remotely stationed telemedicine nodes and village clinics with remote doctors in specialty hospitals. Second, we present the development of disease severity pattern discovery and summarization algorithms, the result of which is a Consensus Abnormality Motif (CAM) and an associated Alert Measure Index, which suggests the immediacy of the patient data for doctor's consultative time. By frequently sending CAM as SMS in the absence of data network, we ensure timely delivery of critical data. Through a Detailed Data on Demand (DD-on-D) pull data mechanism doctors can further investigate complete data from the cloud. The CAM and DD-on-D mechanisms result in energy savings of up to 25%, while the data usage is reduced tremendously. Furthermore, we present a pilot deployment of the systems using a continuous cardiac monitoring device coupled with an intervention framework including more than 60 telemedicine nodes station in villages across India.
Modeling of nonlinear active regions in TLM (distributed circuits)

A transmission line matrix (TLM) method for modeling distributed circuits containing nonlinear active elements and structures is demonstrated. The scattering properties of the nonlinear element are expressed in terms of differential equations that are solved by stepwise integration with the time step of the TLM algorithm. A cavity oscillator with an active diode with a finite cutoff frequency has been modeled. Spurious oscillations of the TLM mesh that regularly occur when including negative conductivity or pulse reflection coefficients larger than unity were effectively suppressed. <<ETX>>
Extraction of glottal closure and opening instants using zero frequency filtering

In this paper a simple method is proposed using zero frequency filtering (ZFF) of a close approximate glottal flow derivative (GFD) to extract glottal closure (GCI's) and opening instants (GOI's) from speech. The GFD is obtained from iterative adaptive inverse filtering (IAIF) which contains such instants. It is observed that GCI's can be located by positive zero crossings of zero frequency filtered signal (ZFFS) obtained from GFD. However, GOI's can be located using GFD from negative to positive zero crossing regions of ZFFS. The method is evaluated using CMU-Arctic databases and compared with other state of the art methods under clean and noisy conditions. The performance of the proposed methods are robust under noisy conditions and comparable to other existing methods.
Effects of feeding polyclonal antibody preparations on ruminal bacterial populations and ruminal pH of steers fed high-grain diets

ABSTRACT Three experiments with factorial arrangements of treatments were designed to test the efficacy of avian-derived polyclonal antibody preparations (PAP) against Streptococcus bovis (PAP-Sb) or Fusobacterium necrophorum (PAP-Fn) in reducing ruminal counts of target bacteria in beef steers supplemented or not with feed additives (300 mg of monensin/d and 90 mg of tylosin/d; MT). Feeding increasing doses of PAP-Sb in Exp. 1 or a single dose in Exp. 2 reduced S. bovis counts in a cubic fashion (P = 0.014). In Exp. 1 and 2, inclusion of MT in the diet had no effect (P > 0.05) on ruminal S. bovis counts. In Exp. 2, ruminal pH was increased (P < 0.05) by feeding PAP-Sb, MT, and PAP-Sb plus MT. Ruminal F. necrophorum counts were reduced by feeding PAP-Fn (P = 0.002) and MT (P < 0.001). Reduction in ruminal F. necrophorum counts was greater (P = 0.008) when feeding MT alone than when feeding PAP-Fn and MT together. In Exp. 3, ruminal S. bovis counts were not affected (P = 0.64) by PAP-Fn. Ruminal pH was not affected (P = 0.61) by feeding PAP-Fn, and the total anaerobic bacterial count was not affected (P > 0.05) by either PAP-Sb or PAP-Fn in Exp. 1 or Exp. 3. In conclusion, PAP of avian origin and against S. bovis or F. necrophorum were effective in reducing target ruminal bacterial populations. These PAP could be effective in preventing the deleterious effects associated with these bacteria, and possibly in enhancing animal performance.
Total factor productivity growth in Central and Eastern Europe before, during and after the global financial crisis

Abstract This article presents growth accounting results for 11 EU countries from Central and Eastern Europe for the years 1996–2016. Its contributions include the estimation of new capital stock series and adjustment for the utilisation of capital stock. Before the crisis, growth in total factor productivity (TFP) was the main contributor to output growth in Slovenia, Hungary and Slovakia, while capital deepening was more important in the Czech Republic, Croatia and Poland. During the global financial crisis the contributions of TFP and capital growth differed markedly across the countries, reflecting the very diverse dynamics of the crisis. After the crisis the contribution of TFP growth has been negligible in all of the sample countries coinciding with generally weak output growth. The results are generally robust to changes in estimation methods and parametrisations, but some assumptions regarding the construction of the capital stock series are critical for the results.
Drug susceptibility and molecular epidemiology of Escherichia coli in bloodstream infections in Shanghai, China, 2011–2013

Abstract Background: Prevention and management of Escherichia coli bloodstream infections (EC-BSIs) have become increasingly complicated by antimicrobial resistance and rapid dissemination. We investigated the antimicrobial epidemiology and phylogenetic background of clinical E. coli isolates from patients with bloodstream infections in Shanghai from 2011 to 2013. Methods: Escherichia coli isolates causing bloodstream infections were consecutively collected between June 2011 and June 2013. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing was performed by disk diffusion. Drug resistance genes coding for extended-spectrum β-lactamases (ESBLs) and carbapenemases, and phylogenetic groups were detected by polymerase chain reaction. eBURST was used for multilocus sequence typing. Results: Of the strains 128 collected, 80 produced ESBLs. No carbapenem-resistant isolates were found. The resistance rates to penicillins, fluoroquinolone, folate pathway inhibitors, tetracyclines and second generation cephalosporins were high. Molecular analysis showed that CTX-M-14 (40/80) was the most common β-lactamase, followed by CTX-M-55 (17/80) and CTX-M-15 (14/80). Phylogenetic group B2 predominated (37.5%), but phylogenetic group D exhibited the highest rates of ESBL production. ST131 (17/128) was the most common sequence type, followed by ST69 (12/128) and ST648 (10/128). Conclusions: The antimicrobial resistance rate was high among EC-BSI isolates, but amikacin, piperacillin–tazobactam and carbapenem could be options for empiric therapy. Genetic diversity showed no correlation with the nosocomial origin of the isolates.
Myocardial Assistance by Grafting a New Bioartificial Upgraded Myocardium (MAGNUM Clinical Trial): One Year Follow-Up

Cell transplantation for the regeneration of ischemic myocardium is limited by poor graft viability and low cell retention. In ischemic cardiomyopathy the extracellular matrix is deeply altered; therefore, it could be important to associate a procedure aiming at regenerating myocardial cells and restoring the extracellular matrix function. We evaluated intrainfarct cell therapy associated with a cell-seeded collagen scaffold grafted onto infarcted ventricles. In 15 patients (aged 54.2 ± 3.8 years) presenting LV postischemic myocardial scars and with indication for a single OP-CABG, autologous mononuclear bone marrow cells (BMC) were implanted during surgery in the scar. A 3D collagen type I matrix seeded with the same number of BMC was added on top of the scarred area. There was no mortality and no related adverse events (follow-up 15 ± 4.2 months). NYHA FC improved from 2.3 ± 0.5 to 1.4 ± 0.3 (p = 0.005). LV end-diastolic volume evolved from 142 ± 24 to 117 ± 21 ml (p = 0.03), and LV filling deceleration time improved from 162 ± 7 to 196 ± 8 ms (p = 0.01). Scar area thickness progressed from 6 ± 1.4 to 9 ± 1.5 mm (p = 0.005). EF improved from 25 ± 7% to 33 ± 5% (p = 0.04). Simultaneous intramyocardial injection of mononuclear bone marrow cells and fixation of a BMC-seeded matrix onto the epicardium is feasible and safe. The cell-seeded collagen matrix seems to increase the thickness of the infarct scar with viable tissues and helps to normalize cardiac wall stress in injured regions, thus limiting ventricular remodeling and improving diastolic function. Patients' improvements cannot be conclusively related to the cells and matrix due to the association of CABG. Cardiac tissue engineering seems to extend the indications and benefits of stem cell therapy in cardiology, becoming a promising way for the creation of a “bioartificial myocardium. ” Efficacy and safety of this approach should be evaluated in a large randomized controlled trial.
Chondrogenic differentiation of murine C3H10T1/2 multipotential mesenchymal cells: I. Stimulation by bone morphogenetic protein-2 in high-density micromass cultures.

Chondrogenic differentiation of mesenchymal cells is generally thought to be initiated by the inductive action of specific growth factors and depends on intimate cell-cell interactions. In this study, we have used multipotential murine C3H10T1/2 cells to analyze the effect and mechanism of action of bone morphogenetic protein 2 (BMP-2) on chondrogenesis. C3H10T1/2 cells have been previously shown to undergo multiple differentiation pathways. While chondrogenesis, osteogenesis, myogenesis and adipogenesis have been observed, chondrocytes appear significantly less frequently than the other cell types, and the appearance of chondrocytes exclusive of the other cell types has not been observed. We report here that the appearance of chondrocytes in C3H10T1/2 cells is markedly enhanced as a result of culture under conditions favorable for chondrogenesis, i.e. plating as high-density micromass and treatment with BMP-2. Such cultures contain chondrocyte-like cells, elaborate an Alcian blue stained cartilage-like matrix, express link protein and type II collagen, both cartilage matrix markers, and show increased [35S]sulfate incorporation. The appearance of Alcian blue positive material and increased sulfate incorporation are dependent on the dose of BMP-2, culture time, and cell plating density of the micromass cultures. Differentiation of cells within the micromass was specific to the chondrogenic lineage, as alkaline phosphatase staining revealed only faint staining in the micromass at the highest BMP-2 concentration. The importance of enhanced cell-cell interaction in the chondroinductive effects of BMP-2 on high-density C3H10T1/2 cultures was further implicated by the additional promotion of chondrogenesis in the presence of the polycationic compound, poly-L-lysine, which has been previously reported to enhance cellular interactions and chondrogenesis in embryonic limb mesenchymal cells. Taken together, these findings suggest that chondrogenesis in C3H10T1/2 cells is inducible by BMP-2 and requires cell-cell interaction.
Processed meat and colorectal cancer: a quantitative review of prospective epidemiologic studies

A tremendous amount of scientific interest has been generated regarding processed meat consumption and cancer risk. Therefore, to estimate the association between processed meat intake and colorectal cancer (CRC), a meta-analysis of prospective studies was conducted. Twenty-eight prospective studies of processed meat and CRC were identified, of which 20 represented independent nonoverlapping study populations. Summary relative risk estimates (SRREs) for high versus low intake and dose–response relationships were calculated. The SRRE for high (vs. low) processed meat intake and CRC was 1.16 [95% confidence interval (CI): 1.10–1.23] for all studies. Summary associations were modified considerably by sex; the SRRE for men was 1.23 (95% CI: 1.07–1.42) and the SRRE for women was 1.05 (95% CI: 0.94–1.16), based on nine and 13 studies, respectively. Sensitivity analyses did not indicate appreciable statistical variation by tumor site, processed meat groups, or study location. The SRRE for each 30-gram increment of processed meat and CRC was 1.10 (95% CI: 1.05–1.15) based on nine studies, and the SRRE for each incremental serving of processed meat per week was 1.03 (95% CI: 1.01–1.05) based on six studies. Overall, summary associations were weak in magnitude (i.e. most less than 1.20), processed meat definitions and analytical comparisons were highly variable across studies, and isolating the independent effects of processed meat intake is difficult, given the likely influence of confounding by other dietary and lifestyle factors. Therefore, the currently available epidemiologic evidence is not sufficient to support a clear and unequivocal independent positive association between processed meat consumption and CRC.