Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Assessment of quality of life in equine patients.

I am writing in response to an interesting review article entitled “Assessment of quality of life in equine patients” published in the March 2012 issue of Equine Veterinary Journal [1]. The author encouraged feedback and as a welfare charity with a large number of elderly equines we felt obliged to respond and let readers know what we are doing to tackle the issues at The Donkey Sanctuary. The Donkey Sanctuary has a large population of equines which are either geriatric, affected by chronic conditions or, often, both. Conditions frequently causing concern are laminitis, arthritis, sarcoids, blindness, respiratory and dental disease. These donkeys need individual close monitoring for any sign of deterioration to avoid unnecessary suffering. In order to do this they are put on a list for quality of life (QOL) assessments. A table is used to record weight, body condition, appetite, mobility, behaviour and progress of the condition affecting the individual. The usual vet and relevant carer will usually do this monthly. This not only demonstrates any deterioration more clearly but communicates to a different vet, perhaps seeing the donkey for the first time, that treatment may not be appropriate and euthanasia is the next step. Deciding on the appropriate time to euthanase is made harder by the stoic nature of donkeys forcing us to rely on subtle indicators. We have undertaken a 3 year study on pain expression in the donkey with the RVC. The origins of the donkey explain the trait of hiding pain, as this may improve survival in the wild by deflecting the attention of waiting predators. The study noticed an initial increase in activity as the animal fell sick. As the condition continued the animal would spend increasing time alone. Once it was terminally ill it would take itself way from the herd completely to protect the other animals. When monitoring an individual causing concern with respect to an acutely painful condition, then the following indicators are used and behaviour recorded at appropriate intervals in conjunction with clinical examination:
The effect of attribute pairings in intrusion detection

As Network Intrusions have become larger and more pervasive the methods of detection have changed, a number of systems use ensemble methods to improve upon results from single classifiers or algorithms. The solutions proposed in the literature achieve good results, which primarily focus on classification of Network Intrusions by tailoring classification algorithms and feature selection. However fewer studies focus on investigation of relation between pairs of attributes, such as IP address and Port, as a single attribute. This paper proposes an effect analysis of pairs of attributes in order to improve intrusion detection using an ensemble-based classification approach.
Automatic generation of injective modular mappings

Many optimizations (of programs with loops) used in parallelizing compilers and systolic array design are based on linear transformations of loop iteration spaces. Additional important optimizations and designs are possible by using recently proposed modular mappings, which are described by linear transformations modulo a constant vector. Previous work on modular mappings focused an conditions that guarantee injectivity of a modular mapping for algorithms with rectangular index sets. This paper generalizes previous work by providing new injectivity conditions that cover the cases when the program index set has arbitrary shape and size, and the target processor array and the mapping moduli are of arbitrary size. A systematic technique to efficiently generate modular mappings is also proposed. The complexity of the proposed generation technique is O(n/sup 2/n! ) for a nested loop of depth n with a rectangular index set and a target processor array with as many processors as required. A bounded search scheme is also provided for general cases. Each trial is formulated as an integer linear programming problem with at most 3n variables.
Aggressive Versus Moderate Lipid-Lowering Therapy in Hypercholesterolemic Postmenopausal Women: Beyond Endorsed Lipid Lowering With EBT Scanning (BELLES)

Background—Women have been underrepresented in statin trials, and few data exist on the effectiveness and safety of statins in this gender. We used sequential electron-beam tomography (EBT) scanning to quantify changes in coronary artery calcium (CAC) as a measure of atherosclerosis burden in patients treated with statins. Methods and Results—In a double-blind, multicenter trial, we randomized 615 hyperlipidemic, postmenopausal women to intensive (atorvastatin 80 mg/d) and moderate (pravastatin 40 mg/d) lipid-lowering therapy. Patients also submitted to 2 EBT scans at a 12-month interval (mean interval 344±55 days) to measure percent change in total and single-artery calcium volume score (CVS) from baseline. Of the 615 randomized women, 475 completed the study. Mean±SD percent LDL reductions were 46.6%±19.9% and 24.5%±18.5 in the intensive and moderate treatment arms, respectively (P<0.0001), and National Cholesterol Education Program Adult Treatment Panel III LDL goal was reached in 85.3% and 58.8% of women, respectively (P<0.0001). The total CVS% change was similar in the 2 treatment groups (median 15.1% and 14.3%, respectively; P=NS), and single-artery CVS% changes and absolute changes were also similar (P=NS). In both arms, there was a trend toward a greater CVS progression in patients with prior cardiovascular disease, diabetes mellitus, and hypertension, whereas hormone replacement therapy had no effect on progression. Conclusions—In postmenopausal women, intensive statin therapy for 1 year caused a greater LDL reduction than moderate therapy but did not result in less progression of coronary calcification. The limitations of this study (too short a follow-up period and the absence of a placebo group) precluded determination of whether progression of CVS was slowed in both arms or neither arm compared with the natural history of the disease.
Association of workplace and population characteristics with prevalence of hypertension among Brazilian industry workers: a multilevel analysis

Background Exposure to risk factors for hypertension may be influenced by the characteristics of the workplace, where workers spend most of their daily time. Objectives To evaluate the association between features of the companies, particularly the presence of facilities to provide meals, and of population characteristics and the prevalence of hypertension, taking into account individual risk factors for hypertension. Material and methods This multilevel analysis was based on a cross-sectional study with individual and company data from the SESI (Serviço Social da Indústria–Social Service of Industries) study and population-based data from the national census statistics. Workers aged ≥15 years were randomly selected from small (20–99), medium (100–499) and large (≥500 employees) companies per state using multistage sampling. Logistic regression was used to analyse the association between hypertension and individual, workplace and population variables, with odds ratios (ORs; 95% CI) adjusted for three-level variables. Results 4818 Workers from 157 companies were interviewed and their blood pressure, weight and height were measured. Overall, 77% were men, aged 35.4 ±10.7 years, with 8.7 ±4.1 years of schooling and mostly worked in companies with a staff canteen (66%). Besides individual characteristics—being male, ageing, low schooling, alcohol abuse and higher BMI—a workplace with no staff canteen (OR=1.28; 95% CI 1.08 to 1.52), small companies (OR=1.31; 95% CI 1.07 to 1.60) and living in cities with higher economic inequality (OR=1.47; 95% CI 1.23 to 1.76) were associated with a higher risk for hypertension. Conclusion Among Brazilian workers, the prevalence of hypertension is associated with individual risk factors, lack of a canteen at the workplace, small companies and higher economic inequalities of cities. These three-level characteristics help to interpret differences in the prevalence of hypertension between regions or countries.
Genetic variation in TYMS in the one-carbon transfer pathway is associated with ovarian carcinoma types in the Ovarian Cancer Association Consortium.

BACKGROUND We previously reported the risks of ovarian carcinoma for common polymorphisms in one-carbon transfer genes. We sought to replicate associations for DPYD rs1801265, DNMT3A rs13420827, MTHFD1 rs1950902, MTHFS rs17284990, and TYMS rs495139 with risk of ovarian carcinoma overall and to use the large sample of assembled cases to investigate associations by histologic type. METHODS Associations were evaluated in the Ovarian Cancer Association Consortium, including 16 studies of 5,593 epithelial ovarian carcinoma cases and 9,962 controls of white non-Hispanic origin. Odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were adjusted for age and study site. RESULTS The five polymorphisms were not associated with ovarian carcinoma overall (P(trend) > 0.13); however, associations for the minor allele at TYMS rs495139 were observed for carcinomas of mucinous type (OR, 1.19; 95% CI, 1.03-1.39; P = 0.02), clear cell type (OR, 0.86; 95% CI, 0.75-0.99; P = 0.04), and endometrioid type (OR, 0.90; 95% CI, 0.81-0.99; P = 0.04; P(heterogeneity) = 0.001). Restriction to low-grade mucinous carcinomas further strengthened the association for the mucinous type (OR, 1.32; 95% CI, 1.07-1.62; P = 0.01). TYMS rs495139 was not associated with serous type (OR, 1.06; 95% CI, 1.00-1.13; P = 0.05). CONCLUSIONS TYMS rs495139 may be associated with a differential risk of ovarian carcinoma types, indicating the importance of accurate histopathologic classification. IMPACT Biomarkers that distinguish ovarian carcinoma types are few, and TYMS rs495139 may provide a novel clue to type etiology.
In vitro characterization of prostanoid EP‐receptors in the non‐pregnant human myometrium

1 Prostaglandin receptors of the PGE type have been characterized in the non‐pregnant human myometrium in vitro according to the scheme of Coleman et al. (1984) by use of the agonists PGE2, sulprostone, rioprostil, AY23626, butaprost, misoprostol, 16,16‐dimethylprostaglandin E2, enprostil and iloprost, and, the antagonist AH6809. 2 All prostanoids tested were active in non‐pregnant human myometrium either as stimulators and/or inhibitors of spontaneous activity or both. Biphasic responses to PGE2 indicate that at least two receptor types of the EP‐receptor exist, one mediating relaxation and the other mediating contraction. 3 Further evidence for the EP‐receptor mediating excitation and relaxation was provided by the action of the EP2‐/EP3‐receptor selective prostanoids rioprostil, AY23626 and misoprostol, and the EP1‐/EP2‐receptor selective agonist 16,16‐dimethylprostaglandin E2. 4 Butaprost, an EP2‐receptor selective agonist, produced potent inhibition of spontaneous activity in the tissue which was generally longer‐lasting than that evoked by the natural prostanoid PGE2. 5 The EP1‐/EP3‐receptor selective agonist sulprostone and the EP3‐receptor agonist enprostil produced potent contractile responses supporting the presence of contractile EP3‐receptors in the non‐pregnant human myometrium in vitro. 6 The EP1‐/IP‐receptor selective agonist, iloprost, produced mixed responses in non‐pregnant human myometrium. The contractile response was inhibited by the EP1‐receptor antagonist AH6809. However, responses to the EP1‐/EP3‐receptor selective agonist sulprostone were unaffected by AH6809 which may indicate that only a small population of EP1‐receptors is present. 7 Therefore it would seem that a heterogeneous population of EP‐receptors is present in the non‐pregnant human myometrium.
Vitamin D in Children’s Health

Knowledge of vitamin D in the health of children has grown greatly over the years, extending past the importance for calcium homeostasis and bone growth. There is growing recognition of the role vitamin D plays in health impacting the innate immune system to prevent infections and the adaptive immune system to modulate autoimmunity. Other studies are starting to reveal the neurohormonal effects of vitamin D on brain development and behavior, with a link to mental health disorders. Many of these effects start well before the birth of the child, so it is important that each pregnant woman be assessed for vitamin D deficiency and supplemented for the best possible health outcome of the child. It is recommended that targeting a 25(OH)D level of 40–70 ng/mL for each individual would provide optimal health benefits and reduce health care costs. Current recommended doses of vitamin D supplementation fall short of what is needed to obtain ideal serum levels. A vitamin D supplementation program to prevent disease, much like the current vaccination program, could potentially have a dramatic impact on overall health worldwide.
Decay-Accelerating Factor Binding Determines the Entry Route of Echovirus 11 in Polarized Epithelial Cells

ABSTRACT The interaction between echovirus 11 strain 207 (EV11-207) and decay-accelerating factor (DAF or CD55) at the apical surface of polarized Caco-2 cells results in rapid transport of the virus to tight junctions and in its subsequent uptake. A virus mutant (EV11-207R) which differs at 6 amino acids and whose affinity for DAF is apparently significantly lower remains at the apical surface, from where its uptake occurs. Binding of EV11-207 to DAF and its transport to tight junctions result in a loss of function of the junctions. In contrast, the mutant virus EV11-207R is not transferred to tight junctions, nor does it impair the integrity of these junctions. Cholesterol depletion from the apical membrane leads to DAF aggregation and, presumably, internalization and inhibits infection by EV11-207. However, infection by EV11-207R is significantly less sensitive to cholesterol depletion than infection by EV11-207, confirming the DAF requirement for EV11-207, but not EV11-207R, to infect cells. These data strongly indicate that in the case of infection of polarized epithelial cells by echovirus 11, DAF binding appears be a key determinant in the choice of entry pathway, at least in cell culture.
HAWKING ’ S LOCAL RIGIDITY THEOREM WITHOUT

We prove the existence of a Hawking Killing vector-field in a full neighborhood of a local, regular, bifurcate, non-expanding horizon embedded in a smooth vacuum Einstein manifold. The result extends a previous result of Friedrich, Rácz and Wald, see [13, Proposition B.1], which was limited to the domain of dependence of the bifurcate horizon. So far, the existence of a Killing vector-field in a full neighborhood has been proved only under the restrictive assumption of analyticity of the space-time. Using this result we provide the first unconditional proof that a stationary black hole solution must posess an additional, rotational Killing field in an open neighborhood of the event horizon. This work is accompanied by a second paper, where we prove a uniqueness result for smooth stationary black hole solutions which are close (in a very precise, geometric sense) to the Kerr family of solutions, for arbitrary 0 < a < m.
New Visualization Model for Large Scale Biosignals Analysis

The development of new resources in the medical field, such as wearable sensors, allowed the improvement of biosignals monitoring. Acquired data is then an important source of information to clinicians and researchers. Thus, extracting useful information from data is a task of the greatest importance that involves a variety of concepts and methods, from which stands out data visualization. However, these methods present several limitations mainly when dealing with big data. In this paper we present an innovative web-based application for biosignals visualization and exploration in a fast and user friendly way overcoming the detected limitations. Three case studies are presented and a usability study supports the reliability of the implemented work.
The Impact of Pasture Insurance on Farmland Values

This study examines the impact of publicly supported insurance on agricultural land values. The analysis employs confidential, nationally representative panel data on field-level pastureland values and exploits a natural experiment provided by gradual introduction of the Pasture, Rangeland, and Forage Insurance Pilot Program. We use a field-level fixed-effects model that controls for several time-variant factors. We find that insurance availability is associated with an increase of at least 4 percent in pastureland values. This increase is comparable with increases generated by other government programs but is much smaller than total farmland value increases experienced in recent years.
Predicting RNA-protein interactions using a novel method

Given the sequence of a protein, a biologist may wish to know whether it interacts with a given RNA sequence or not. Protein-RNA interactions play an important role in a number of fundamental cellular processes, such as RNA splicing, transport and translation, protein synthesis and certain RNA-mediated enzymatic processes. In this paper, novel feature extraction methods are proposed to predict protein-RNA interactions with a SVM classifier. The results indicate that the performance of the feature extraction method is superior to other approaches.
Gesture Classification Using Hidden Markov Models and Viterbi Path Counting

Human-Machine interfaces play a role of growing importance as computer technology continues to evolve. Motivated by the desire to provide users with an intuitive gesture input system, our work presented in this paper describes a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) based framework for hand gesture detection and recognition. The gesture is modeled as a Hidden Markov model. The observation sequence used to characterize the states of the HMM are obtained from the features extracted from the segmented hand image by Vector Quantization. In the recognition system, we try several different HMM models and training algorithms to find the algorithms with high recognition rate and low computational complexity.
A rotating black ring solution in five dimensions.

The vacuum Einstein equations in five dimensions are shown to admit a solution describing a stationary asymptotically flat spacetime regular on and outside an event horizon of topology S1xS2. It describes a rotating "black ring. " This is the first example of a stationary asymptotically flat vacuum solution with an event horizon of nonspherical topology. The existence of this solution implies that the uniqueness theorems valid in four dimensions do not have simple five-dimensional generalizations. It is suggested that increasing the spin of a spherical black hole beyond a critical value results in a transition to a black ring, which can have an arbitrarily large angular momentum for a given mass.
Synthesis, Characterization and Cytotoxicity of Alkylated Quercetin Derivatives

Quercetin, a ubiquitous flavonol, represents a promising leading drug for development of new chemotherapeutic agents. However, its limited cytotoxicity to cancer cells hampers its clinical use. In order to obtain novel quercetin derivatives with superior cytotoxicity, seven alkylated quercetin derivatives were synthesized. Solubility of these derivatives was determined by turbidimetry. Cytotoxicity of the high-soluble derivatives against MCF-7 cells and caco-2 cells was determined using MTT assay. Among these seven products, 7-O-butylquercetin had the highest solubility in DMEM medium and 7-O-geranylquercetin had the most potent cytotoxicity. Further study on cytotoxicity of 7-O-geranylquercetin on NCI-H446, A549, MGC-803 and SGC-7901 cell lines revealed potential antiproliferative effects. The 7-O-geranylquercetin is a broad spectrum cytotoxic agent and it may be a promising leading drug for cancer chemotherapy.
Diagnosis of helicobacter pylori infection.

We read the article “Azithromycin based triple therapy versus standard clarithromycin-based triple therapy in eradication of Helicobacter pylori infection in Iran: A randomized controlled clinical trial,” written by Seyed Saeid Sarkeshıkıan et al. (1), with great interest. The authors concluded that azithromycin-based triple therapy is no better than standard clarithromycin triple therapy in H. pylori (HP) eradication (1). We thank the authors for their contribution of such a well-designed and well-presented study. We believe that these findings will encourage further studies for H. pylori eradication.
PCOAT: positional correlation analysis using multiple methods

UNLABELLED PCOAT (Positional COrrelation Analysis Tool) is a program to perform positional correlation analysis for protein multiple sequence alignment in order to identify structurally or functionally important interactions between positions in a protein family. We implement different statistical methods to detect highly correlated position pairs, amino acid pairs, individual positions and networks of correlated positions, and utilize multiple sequence weighting and sampling methods to eliminate background correlations caused by phylogeny and stochastic events. Our program runs relatively fast and is suitable for analyzing alignments containing large number of sequences. AVAILABILITY ftp://iole.swmed. edu/pub/PCOAT/. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION The PCOAT ftp site contains a detailed description of the program, and the results of PCOAT analysis on C2H2 alignment and ACT domain alignment.
Spike-Based Reinforcement Learning in Continuous State and Action Space: When Policy Gradient Methods Fail

Changes of synaptic connections between neurons are thought to be the physiological basis of learning. These changes can be gated by neuromodulators that encode the presence of reward. We study a family of reward-modulated synaptic learning rules for spiking neurons on a learning task in continuous space inspired by the Morris Water maze. The synaptic update rule modifies the release probability of synaptic transmission and depends on the timing of presynaptic spike arrival, postsynaptic action potentials, as well as the membrane potential of the postsynaptic neuron. The family of learning rules includes an optimal rule derived from policy gradient methods as well as reward modulated Hebbian learning. The synaptic update rule is implemented in a population of spiking neurons using a network architecture that combines feedforward input with lateral connections. Actions are represented by a population of hypothetical action cells with strong mexican-hat connectivity and are read out at theta frequency. We show that in this architecture, a standard policy gradient rule fails to solve the Morris watermaze task, whereas a variant with a Hebbian bias can learn the task within 20 trials, consistent with experiments. This result does not depend on implementation details such as the size of the neuronal populations. Our theoretical approach shows how learning new behaviors can be linked to reward-modulated plasticity at the level of single synapses and makes predictions about the voltage and spike-timing dependence of synaptic plasticity and the influence of neuromodulators such as dopamine. It is an important step towards connecting formal theories of reinforcement learning with neuronal and synaptic properties.