Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of inulin and oligofructose on performance and bone characteristics of broiler chickens fed on diets with different concentrations of calcium and phosphorus

1. In a 6-week experiment with broilers, the effect of diet supplementation, using prebiotic fructans, on the performance and biomechanical and geometrical parameters of the tibia and femur bones was evaluated. 2. A total of 240, 1-d-old, Ross 308 chickens were randomly assigned to 1 of 6 treatments, each comprising 5 replicate cages, with 8 birds (4♀ and 4♂) per cage. A 2 x 3 factorial arrangement was employed, with two dietary concentrations of calcium and available phosphorus (standard: 9·4/9·2 g Ca/kg and 4·3/4·0 g P available/kg; or reduced: 8·3/8·1 g Ca/kg and 3·7/3·5 g P available/kg, for the starter/finisher feeding phases, respectively), and with three diets supplemented by selected prebiotics (none; inulin, 7·0 g/kg; oligofructose, 7·0 g/kg). 3. The concentration of Ca and available P in the diet had no effect on performance parameters at 21 and 42 d of age. At 42 d, reducing the dietary concentrations of Ca and P significantly decreased such biomechanical parameters of bones as tibia stiffness (by 9·2%); and femur breaking strength (by 5·8%) and stiffness (by 5·1%). The diet with a lower concentration of Ca and P negatively affected such geometrical parameter of the tibia as the cross section area, but had no effect on cortex thickness, or bone weight and length. 4. At 21 or 42 d of age, broilers fed on diets supplemented with inulin or oligofructose displayed a performance similar to those fed on the unsupplemented diet. The prebiotics under study also had no statistically significant effects on the biomechanical and geometrical parameters of either bone. There were no significant Ca and P concentration × prebiotics interaction effects, on either performance parameters or on bone quality indices. 5. It was thus concluded that inulin and oligofructose do not improve the performance and bone quality of broilers, either when fed on diets with a standard concentration of Ca and available P, or with reduced concentrations of these macrominerals.
Current Issues in Self-Regulation Research and Their Significance for Therapeutic Intervention in Offender Groups.

During the last decade, theory and research on human self-regulation has made significant progress. While self-regula tion may be understood as a generic term comprising a range of different cognitive, emotional, and behavioral processes, most research pertains to a subcomponent of selfregulation, namely emotional self-regulation, or emotional regulation. The focus of published research is usually on the functional role of self-regulation and emotional regulation in normal behavior, and in behaviors that can easily be quantified with experimental methods, such as eating disorders, alcohol consumption, or sexual behavior. Little is known about specific functional components of self-regulation in more complex dysfunctional behaviors such as personality disorders, or, more specifically, offending behavior , which is often associated with antisocial and borderline personality disorder. If self-regulation research is to successfully inform therapeutic intervention on offender groups, two steps are necessary. First, more research must be conducted focussing on the identification of specific self-regulatory patterns or mechanisms of offender groups, and second, the findings must translate into practical suggestions for the modification of known behavioral intervention strategies. Based on the most important contemporary research lines in self- and emotional regulation, suggestions are made on where and how to incorporate
Insulin-induced endothelin release and vasoreactivity in hypertriglyceridemic and hypertensive rats

Nava, Pilar, Verónica Guarner, Rosalinda Posadas, Israel Pérez, and Guadalupe Baños. Insulin-induced endothelin release and vasoreactivity in hypertriglyceridemic and hypertensive rats. Am. J. Physiol. 277 (Heart Circ. Physiol. 46): H399–H404, 1999. —Insulin-elicited endothelin release in hypertriglyceridemic, hypertensive, hyperinsulinemic (HTG) rats was shown. Weanling male Wistar rats were given 30% sucrose in their drinking water for 20–24 wk. In vitro contractions of aorta and femoral arteries were elicited with 40 mM KCl. Endothelin release induced with KCl plus 50 μU/ml insulin resulted in increases in contractile responses: 41 6 5.9 and 57 6 6% for control and 65.5 6 6 and 95 6 9% for HTG aortas and femoral arteries, respectively. The endothelin ETB-receptor blocker BQ-788 decreased responses to KCl 1 insulin by 39 6 8 and 53 6 5% in control and 48 6 13 and 79 6 3.5% in HTG aortas and femoral arteries, respectively. The ETA-receptor antagonist PD-151242 inhibited these responses by 12 6 10 and 1 6 9% in control and by 51.5 6 9 and 58.5 6 1% in HTG aortas and femoral arteries, respectively. These results suggest that endothelin may contribute to the hypertension in this model.
Reviewing Business-IT Alignment Instruments Under SAM Dimensions

Business-IT alignment has been on the top of the concerns of IT executives for many years and how to assess it has been under research. Among many proposals, one of the best known and cited in the literature, showing some relevant empirical work, is the Luftman's Strategic Alignment Maturity SAM categories assessment. Taking it as a framework, seven other proposals are examined using SAM categories as dimensions of business-IT alignment: communications, competency/value measurements, governance, partnership, technology scope and skills. Except for one proposal revealing a tactical level approach, this review shows that business-IT alignment assessment has been studied essentially at the strategic level. Among the examined dimensions across the several proposals, governance is the best covered one while the human resource skills dimension is considerably neglected. Having still room for improvements, either in the governance or the technology scope dimensions, the SAM assessment seems a well balanced instrument. The empirical work already found on SAM provides a good starting point to get an acceptable validated instrument. However, if in terms of content validity, SAM is one of the most promising instruments, there is still much work to do on what concerns its operationalization. Future research should strive for a rigorous, strong instrument on every component of construct validity, namely, the convergent, discriminant and nomological components.
What Makes a Blog a Blog? Exploring User Conceptualizations of an Old "New" Online Medium

What is a blog? While this may seem like a basic question, it is the subject of dispute among researchers, and hardly settled among users of the medium. We return to this fundamental inquiry by asking 89 blog-reading college students how they conceptualize the term and what purpose blogs serve for them. Our findings suggest that perceptions of blogs are varied and ambiguous, and definitions largely fail to distinguish blogs from other online media. We discuss what this means for the study of blogs and other “new” media and argue that more constructionist approaches are necessary to develop ecologically valid theories of media perceptions and use.
Nonlinear System Identification Using Extreme Learning Machine

System identification is a very important part in control theory for nonlinear analysis and optimization. In the past years, neural identification of dynamic systems gains great interest because of its powerful mapping capability. In this paper, a learning algorithm for the feedforward neural network named extreme learning machine (ELM) is applied for nonlinear system identification problem. The simulation results show that ELM can achieve very satisfying identification performance and fast learning speed
PATTERNS OF PIGMENTATION IN EXPERIMENTALLY PRODUCED MOUSE CHIMAERAE.

A General description of the development of mouse chimaerae and an account of the techniques for their production were given in previous reports (Tarkowski, 1961, 1963). The chimaeric character of the embryos and young obtained was tentatively claimed in the first of these publications because (1) the actual union of two eggs into one blastocyst was seen in culture in vitro , (2) of the occurrence of intersexes, (3) pigment synthesis of the types of the dark component occurred in the majority of individuals developed from pairs of eggs differing genetically in factors for pigmentation. The last criterion was met only by macroscopic search for pigment in the eyes. The present report gives a more detailed description of the distribution of pigment forming cells in these animals, based on histological analysis. Some remarks on the validity and applicability of such a criterion for estimating the degree of chimaerism were made at the 13th Annual Meeting of the Tissue Culture Association (Tarkowski 1963).
Oral contraceptives, postmenopausal hormones, and risk of asynchronous bilateral breast cancer: the WECARE Study Group.

PURPOSE To investigate whether oral contraceptive (OC) use and postmenopausal hormones (PMH) are associated with an increased risk of developing asynchronous bilateral breast cancer among women diagnosed with breast cancer younger than 55 years. PATIENTS AND METHODS The WECARE (Women's Environment, Cancer, and Radiation Epidemiology) study is a population-based, multicenter, case-control study of 708 women with asynchronous bilateral breast cancer and 1,395 women with unilateral breast cancer. Risk factor information collected during a telephone interview focused on exposures before and after the first breast cancer diagnosis. Treatment and tumor characteristics were abstracted from medical records. Multivariable conditional logistic regression was used to estimate rate ratios (RR) and 95% CIs. RESULTS OC use before the first breast cancer diagnosis was not associated with risk of asynchronous bilateral breast cancer (RR = 0.88; 95% CI, 0.67 to 1.16). OC use after breast cancer diagnosis was also not significantly associated with risk (RR = 1.56; 95% CI, 0.71 to 3.45). Risk did not increase with longer duration of use or among women who had begun using OCs at a younger age. No evidence of an increased risk of asynchronous bilateral breast cancer was observed with PMH use before (RR = 1.21; 95% CI, 0.90 to 1.61) or after breast cancer diagnosis (RR = 1.10; 95% CI, 0.67 to 1.77). Neither duration nor type of PMH were associated with risk. Age at and time since first breast cancer diagnosis did not substantially affect these results. CONCLUSION This study provides no strong evidence that OC or PMH use increases the risk of a second cancer in the contralateral breast.
Development and Validation of a Questionnaire to Measure Iranian Nurses' Knowledge, Attitude and Practice Regarding Disaster Preparedness.

INTRODUCTION Despite the key role of Iranian nurses throughout disaster management, there is no instrument available to examine nurses' current disaster preparation levels. AIM The aim of this study was to develop and analyse the reliability and validity of a questionnaire on the nurses' knowledge, attitude and practice of disaster preparedness. MATERIALS AND METHODS The scale was developed based on a comprehensive literature review and applied to 112 nurses in three public educational center affiliated to Ilam University of Medical Sciences, Ilam, Iran. Relibility was obtained using the test-retest method. Cronbach's alpha was used to verify internal consistency. Exploratory factor analysis was used to assess the validity of the questionnaire. RESULTS Explanatory factor analysis using varimax rotation revealed seven main factors associated with the nurses' knowledge, attitude and practice regarding disaster preparedness. The questionnaire overall internal consistency using Cronbach's alpha was 0.785, showing acceptable internal consistency. The intraclass correlation coefficient using Test-retest method was 0.82. Total variance was 67.57%. CONCLUSION The instrument has satisfactory reliability and validity indices and can be used to measure nurses' knowledge, attitude and practice regarding disaster preparedness.
Reduced levels of testosterone and dehydroepiandrosterone sulphate in the serum and synovial fluid of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis patients correlates with disease severity.

OBJECTIVE The status of androgen levels and their significance in the pathogenesis of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (JRA) has not been fully investigated. In the present study serum and synovial fluid (SF) from 20 JRA patients (grouped as pre-pubertal and pubertal) were analyzed for their content of testosterone, dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) and its sulphated conjugate DHEA-S, progesterone and 17 beta-estradiol. RESULTS Comparison of the results from JRA patients with that of age-matched controls indicated no significant differences in progesterone and DHEA. Similarly, 17 beta-estradiol levels from the pubertal group were comparable to those of the controls; however, prepubertal patients had no detectable levels of this hormone. DHEA-S values were significantly lower in the pubertal JRA group, 1388.3 +/- 291.8 and 1663.9 +/- 354.1 nmol/l in the serum and SF, respectively (compared to 8206.6 +/- 848.12 in the serum of matching controls). These patients also presented with a much lower testosterone content in their SF than in their serum, 0.09 +/- 0.036 and 0.56 +/- 0.068 nmol/l, respectively (compared to 1.35 +/- 0.146 in the serum of corresponding controls). CONCLUSION The data presented in this paper demonstrate for the first time an association between low androgen levels and disease in JRA patients. The significance of hypoandrogenicity with respect to the pathogenic mechanisms of arthritic disease and the possible therapeutic strategies that these imply warrants further investigation.
Architecture and regulation of negative-strand viral enzymatic machinery

Negative-strand (NS) RNA viruses initiate infection with a unique polymerase complex that mediates both mRNA transcription and subsequent genomic RNA replication. For nearly all NS RNA viruses, distinct enzymatic domains catalyzing RNA polymerization and multiple steps of 5′ mRNA cap formation are contained within a single large polymerase protein (L). While NS RNA viruses include a variety of emerging human and agricultural pathogens, the enzymatic machinery driving viral replication and gene expression remains poorly understood. Recent insights with Machupo virus and vesicular stomatitis virus have provided the first structural information of viral L proteins, and revealed how the various enzymatic domains are arranged into a conserved architecture shared by both segmented and nonsegmented NS RNA viruses. In vitro systems reconstituting RNA synthesis from purified components provide new tools to understand the viral replicative machinery, and demonstrate the arenavirus matrix protein regulates RNA synthesis by locking a polymerase–template complex. Inhibition of gene expression by the viral matrix protein is a distinctive feature also shared with influenza A virus and nonsegmented NS RNA viruses, possibly illuminating a conserved mechanism for coordination of viral transcription and polymerase packaging
Development of 'revertant' myotubes in cultures of Rous sarcoma virus transformed avian myogenic cells.

Abstract Embryonic chick and quail skeletal myogenic cells were infected with several temperature-sensitive mutants of Rous sarcoma virus (tsRSV). Cultures were passaged at least four times at permissive temperature (35° C) to ensure transformation of the entire population. When maintained at 35° C, the transformed myogenic cells were indistinguishable from transformed fibroblasts. However, upon subculturing at nonpermissive temperature (41° C) many of the infected cells lost their transformed phenotype and withdrew irreversibly from the cell cycle. Many developed into mononucleated myoblasts, whereas others fused into typical elongated, smooth contoured, multinucleated myotubes. These postmitotic myoblasts and myotubes initiated the synthesis of muscle-specific myosin and assembled these molecules into typical striated myofibrils. They also initiated the synthesis of desmin, the muscle-specific intermediate-sized 10 nm filaments, acetylcholine receptors (AChR), and the MM-isozyme of creatine-phosphokinase (MM-CPK). Upon subculturing at permissive temperature the great majority of cells continued to replicate and retained their transformed phenotype. Nevertheless, even at permissive temperature a small number of transformed cells ‘spontaneously’ withdrew from the cell cycle and formed morphologically atypical postmitotic myoblasts and/or myotubes. These atypical postmitotic myotubes were exceedingly flat with irregular contours and centrally clustered nuclei. The muscle-specific myosin synthesized in these cells was largely confined to a diffuse perinuclear zone and the desmin filaments exhibited an intracellular distribution characteristic of immature myogenic cells. By altering culture conditions, the number of myotubes formed at permissive temperature could be greatly augmented. This was correlated positively with higher levels of AChR and MMCPK. Clearly, the degree of suppression of the differentiation program of myogenic cells by RSV can be modulated by environmental conditions.
Prison Work-Release Programs and Incarcerated Women’s Labor Market Outcomes

This article examines whether the work-release program in Illinois prisons increases women’s earnings and employment. Using a large matched adminis-trative database, we find that a longer time served in an Adult Transition Center (ATC) increases total earnings and the probability of being employed during the time in an ATC, for both ATC parolees and dropouts. Furthermore, ATC parolees and dropouts with a longer stay in an ATC had sizable increases in their earnings and employment rates after incarceration. However, the incompletion of the ATC terms by ATC dropouts seemed to carry stigma that reduces their post-incarceration earnings or employment rates.
Binary subchannel decomposition of lattice-based multiple access schemes

Lattice codes used under the Compute-and-Forward paradigm suggest an alternative strategy for the standard Gaussian multiple-access channel (MAC). It has been proven that decoding an integer linear combination of the transmitted codewords enables higher data rates compared to decoding the messages individually. Recent work of Gasptar et al. proposed a new multiple access channel technique that they called Compute- and-Forward Multiple Access Channel (CFMA). The authors proved that, in the case of a two-user MAC and without time sharing, the entire capacity region is achieved using CFMA and a single-user decoder for signal to noise ratios above 1 + √2. Throughout this paper, we will work within the Compute- and-Forward framework. The strategy relies on lattice codes, here we will construct lattices using a multi-level coding based construction called construction D. To decode the lattice points, a multi-stage decoder (MSD) should be implemented at the receiver part. In this paper, we propose a new decoding strategy that helps to perform the standard MSD algorithm in a less complex way. The new technique is called Binary Subchannel Decomposition (BSCD). Since, we make use of MSD, we need at each level of the decoder to compute soft-inputs: Log-Likelihood ratios. However the calculations are very complex since we must compute infinite sums of exponentials at each stage. Hereinafter we give efficient LLR approximation for multi-stage decoders. Simulation results about the performance of BSCD are included and compared to the performance of the standard multi-stage decoder.
Training an Agent for FPS Doom Game using Visual Reinforcement Learning and VizDoom

Because of the recent success and advancements in deep mind technologies, it is now used to train agents using deep learning for first-person shooter games that are often outperforming human players by means of only screen raw pixels to create their decisions. A visual Doom AI Competition is organized each year on two different tracks: limited death-match on a known map and a full death-match on an unknown map for evaluating AI agents, because computer games are the best test-beds for testing and evaluating different AI techniques and approaches. The competition is ranked based on the number of frags each agent achieves. In this paper, training a competitive agent for playing Doom’s (FPS Game) basic scenario(s) in a semi-realistic 3D world ‘VizDoom’ using the combination of convolutional Deep learning and Q-learning by considering only the screen raw pixels in order to exhibit agent’s usefulness in Doom is proposed. Experimental results show that the trained agent outperforms average human player and inbuilt game agents in basic scenario(s) where only move left, right and shoot actions are allowed.
A Sentiment Analysis of Patient Safety Event Reports

Patient Safety Event (PSE) reporting systems are widely utilized by healthcare providers across the country as a method for gathering information from front-line healthcare providers about patient safety. Automated processes that utilize natural language processing (NLP) techniques have been developed and applied to analyze these reports. The objective of this study was to explore and solidify methods on how to build a sentiment analysis (SA) library specific to patient safety event reports. Our hypothesis is that application of such a library to large data sets would illuminate trends in the relationship between workplace culture and patient safety that could lead to actionable interventions by decision-makers. We examined PSE reports, gathered from a single system over a period of approximately 15 months. The analysis uncovered 36 unique keywords that vary in degree of sentiment, and can serve as a basis for a PSE-specific sentiment library, including context specific keywords such as “hung up”, “volatile”, and “throw”. SA is a useful technique that, when used in combination with other indicators, may paint a picture of an institution's safety culture.
Formulation Design Of Green Tea Chocolate's Product Development Using Integration Of Product Quality And Kano Model In Arafa Tea

Abstract Arafa Tea is one of SMEs in Bandung that engaging in tea specialty, with Green Tea Chocolate (GTC) as its excellent product. GTC’s income has the largest contribution in revenue and has the most rapid turnover compared with others. Seeing this opportunity, Arafa Tea intends to expand its developed market by positioning GTC as specialty snack from Bandung. The study was conducted using integration of Product Quality and Kano Model to determine the needs and customer satisfaction of GTC. This study generated true customer needs output that should be improved by Arafa Tea. There are 21 attributes used as customer requirement attributes to measure the performance of GTC and categorized them based on the given satisfaction impact. The result shows ten true customer needs attributes with weak satisfaction value, including three attractive, five must-be and two one-dimensional attributes. All attributes are analyzed and adjusted according Arafa Tea’s ability to obtain the final recommendation of true customer needs. The analysis shows eight true customer needs, including higher intensity cocoa flavor, flavors combination suitability, higher sweetness intensity, attractive green color, lower green tea intensity, clear inclusion of expiration date period, lower bitterness intensity and clear inclusion of attractive brand’s name in packaging. Keywords: customer satisfaction, product quality, kano model