Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of streptozotocin, fructose and sucrose-induced insulin resistance on plasma and urinary electrolytes in male Sprague-Dawley rats.

BACKGROUND Several groups in recent times have related the pathogenesis of renal haemodynamic changes in diabetes and most of the experimental diabetic conditions studied so far were carried out using streptozotocin injection only. OBJECTIVE The aim of the present study was to examine the effects of streptozotocin, fructose and sucrose induced insulin resistance on plasma and urinary electrolytes. Closely related to this aim, was the view to suggest which profoundly potentiate insulin resistance more between fructose and sucrose. METHODS Thirty-six male Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly divided into 6 groups Group 1 > control group. Group 2 > served as streptozotocin group, rendered diabetic by a single dose IP injection of Streptozotocin 45 mg/kg in 0.1 M freshly dissolved in Na+ citrate buffer pH 4.5. Hyperglycaemia confirmed after 48 hours. Groups 3 and 4 > served as 25% fructose and 50% fructose groups respectively; fed on a diet containing 25% and 50% fructose (W/W) for 12 weeks. Groups 5 and 6 > served as 25% sucrose and 50% sucrose groups respectively; fed on a diet containing 25% and 50% sucrose (W/W) for 12 weeks. Hyperglycaemia confirmed at the 12th week. RESULTS Plasma and urinary sodium and potassium were significantly higher (P < 0.05) in the 25% and 50% sucrose groups compared to the other groups. Plasma and urinary chloride was significantly higher (P < 0.05) in the 25% and 50% fructose groups compared to the other groups. Plasma creatinine and urea was significantly higher (P < 0.05) in the streptozotocin, 25% and 50% Sucrose groups compared to all the other groups. Urinary creatinine and urea was significantly higher (P < 0.05) in the streptozotocin, and 25% Fructose groups compared to all the other groups. CONCLUSION The elevated levels of plasma and urinary electrolytes are presumptive markers of diabetes associated lesions in the kidneys of rats. Fructose potentiated insulin resistance effect more than sucrose though sucrose might have more effect on renal sodium handling.
Isolation and Characterization of Dimethoate Degrading Phytopathogen Fungus from Soil

Lots of dimethoate are applied annually in world with the remainder released to environment has brought terrible contamination. Microorganisms play an important role in the biodegradation of pesticide residues in nature. Two fungal strains with dimethoate degradation capability were isolated and named as F1 and F2 after gradual adaptation and enrichment from soil. The further tests were carried out to confirm the biodegradation activity of fungal strains on dimethoate by HPLC. Results showed that strain Fl exhibited more than five times biodegrading activity as high as strain F2 in 100 mg/L dimethoate and nineteen times in 200 mg/L dimethoate and more tolerant in 400 mg/L dimethoate. The strain Fl was capable of degrade 100 mg/L dimethoate completely in 7 days without any other carbon source supplements, but the degradation capability was weaken with the decrease of complexity of carbon source supplements. It seems that strain Fl held highest capability of dimethoate degradation in the condition of hunger. This strain was characterized and identified as Fusarium sp. by ITS sequence analysis. Fusarium is a well-known and widely distributed soil-borne phytopathogen fungus. As well as its damage to agricultural production, Fusarium also hold potential application in environment protection, so we should exploit it reasonable.
Guidelines for Diagnostic Imaging During Pregnancy and Lactation

Imaging studies are important adjuncts in the diagnostic evaluation of acute and chronic conditions. However, confusion about the safety of these modalities for pregnant and lactating women and their infants often results in unnecessary avoidance of useful diagnostic tests or the unnecessary interruption of breastfeeding. Ultrasonography and magnetic resonance imaging are not associated with risk and are the imaging techniques of choice for the pregnant patient, but they should be used prudently and only when use is expected to answer a relevant clinical question or otherwise provide medical benefit to the patient. With few exceptions, radiation exposure through radiography, computed tomography scan, or nuclear medicine imaging techniques is at a dose much lower than the exposure associated with fetal harm. If these techniques are necessary in addition to ultrasonography or magnetic resonance imaging or are more readily available for the diagnosis in question, they should not be withheld from a pregnant patient. Breastfeeding should not be interrupted after gadolinium administration.
R wave detection using Coiflets wavelets

Accurate detection of QRS complexes is important for ECG signal analysis. In this paper, a generic algorithm using Coiflet wavelets is introduced to improve the detection of QRS complexes in Arrhythmia ECG Signals that suffer from: 1) non-stationary effects, 2) low Signal-to-Noise Ratio, 3) negative QRS polarities, 4) low QRS amplitudes, and 5) ventricular ectopics. The algorithm achieves high detection rates by using a signal-to-noise ratio threshold instead of predetermined static thresholds. The performance of the algorithm was tested on 48 records of the MIT/BIH Arrhythmia Database. It was shown that this adaptive approach results in accurate detection of the QRS complex and that Coiflet1 achieves better detection rate than the other Coiflet wavelets.
HPV16/18 vaccination to prevent cervical cancer in The Netherlands: Model‐based cost‐effectiveness

We evaluated the cost‐effectiveness of HPV16/18 vaccination for girls aged 12 years in The Netherlands in addition to cervical cancer screening. For this purpose, we developed a simulation model that describes the relation between each of the high‐risk human papillomavirus (hrHPV) types and cervical disease, allowing the occurrence of multiple type‐specific infections. Model parameters were derived from Dutch cohort studies, including a large population‐based screening trial, and from the national cervical cancer registry. The model satisfactorily reproduced Dutch data on HPV infection and the presence of cervical lesions. For our base‐case scenario in which 85% of the girls aged 12 years were vaccinated against types 16/18 (95% efficacy, lifelong protection), the model predicted a decrease of 60% in the number of cervical cancer cases and cervical cancer deaths indicating that substantial health benefits can be achieved. Health savings were robust against changes in the vaccine efficacy (varied from 85% to 98%) but savings showed a substantial reduction when the efficacy started waning 10 years after vaccination. The discounted costs per quality‐adjusted life year (QALY) were € 19,500/QALY (range € 11,000 to € 25,000/QALY) and lied near the cost‐effectiveness threshold of € 20,000/QALY used in The Netherlands. The simulations further showed that vaccination cannot replace screening because vaccination without screening was less effective than screening in preventing cancer in women over 40 years of age. In conclusion, our model results support the implementation of HPV16/18 vaccination in young women in addition to cervical cancer screening. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Asymmetric Methylation in the Hypermethylated CpG Promoter Region of the Human L1 Retrotransposon*

We have investigated the function and sequence specificity of DNA methylation in the hypermethylated CpG island promoter region of the endogenous human LINE-1 (L1) retrotransposon family. In nontransformed human embryonic fibroblasts, inhibition of DNA methylation with 5-azadeoxycytidine induced a greater than 4-fold increase in transcription from potentially functional L1 elements without increasing the transcription level of the majority of degenerate elements, implicating hypermethylation in the repression of L1 activity. Using bisulfite genomic sequencing to assess the pattern of methylation in a subset of nondegenerate L1 elements, we found 29 sites within a 460-base pair region of the noncoding (top) DNA strand of the L1 promoter in which cytosine methylation was maintained with high efficiency. Of these, 25 were at CG dinucleotides and four were in non-CG sites. When the methylation sites were analyzed for the complementary (bottom) strand, the only highly conserved sites of methylation were in CG dinucleotides. Several of these sites of CG methylation in the bottom (coding) strand were at positions where top (noncoding) strand-derived sequences were unmethylated, suggesting that these sites might be maintained in a hemi-methylated state. Hence, there is a subset of human L1 elements in which methylation is efficiently maintained in asymmetric non-CG sites and further that this non-CG methylation may be part of a wider phenomenon involving hemi-methylation at CG dinucleotides. Maintenance of asymmetric methylation at non-CG sites (and possibly at hemi-methylated CG dinucleotides) could be through a novel DNA methyltransferase activity. Alternatively, the promoter region of L1 elements may be induced by factor binding to form some type of secondary structure that presents as a highly efficient substrate for de novo methylation.
Secular change in cardiorespiratory fitness of men: Cooper Center Longitudinal Study.

UNLABELLED Cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) has been shown to be an independent predictor of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality, as well as health outcomes such as cardiovascular disease, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and metabolic syndrome. During the last four decades, national guidelines for physical activity and fitness have emerged in an ongoing effort to improve health outcomes through enhanced CRF risk profiles. PURPOSE The purpose of the study was to describe the secular trend in CRF as a function of decade and age in a large cohort of men during the past 40 yr. METHODS A cross-sectional analysis of baseline fitness data collected during comprehensive medical examinations of 52,785 men age 20-74 yr evaluated at the Cooper Clinic in Dallas, TX, from 1970 to 2009 who completed a maximum treadmill exercise test for estimation of aerobic capacity was conducted. Comparisons were made between mean fitness levels in each decade stratified by five age groups. RESULTS Mean CRF in MET from estimated V·O 2max has increased overall approximately 1 MET during a 40-yr period for each of the five age groups (P < 0.0001). The greatest change occurred during the 1970s to 1980s with minimal subsequent increase and a small decline commencing in the last decade especially in younger men. CONCLUSIONS In a large cohort of men, average CRF has improved during the last 40 yr with a slight decline in the favorable trend notable in the most recent decade.
Stimulation of the Efferent Limb Before Ileostomy Closure: A Randomized Clinical Trial

BACKGROUND:Postoperative ileus is the most common complication after ileostomy closure with an increase in morbidity, hospital stay, and health care costs. OBJECTIVE:The aim of this study is to assess the utility of a new technique for reducing postoperative ileus after protective ileostomy closure. DESIGN:This is a prospective randomized study registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT01881594). Patients were randomly assigned to undergo either stimulation through the efferent limb of the ileostomy before surgery or nonstimulation before surgery. SETTING:This study was conducted at the Department of Surgery of the Virgen de la Arrixaca Clinical University Hospital (Murcia). PATIENTS:Seventy patients underwent surgery for ileostomy closure. In 35 patients, during the 2 weeks before surgery, daily stimulation of the defunctionalized stomal segment was performed by using a thick solution (500 mL of physiological saline associated with 30 g of thickening agent, Nestle Resource, Vevey, Switzerland). In the other 35 patients, stimulation was not performed before surgery. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES:The primary outcome was postoperative ileus. The secondary outcomes included time to tolerating a diet and postoperative stay. RESULTS:Both groups of patients were homogenous for demographic data, characteristics of the first rectal cancer operation, and intersurgery periods. After ileostomy closure, the stimulated group of patients had an earlier return to oral tolerance (1.06 vs 2.57 days; p = 0.007) and passage of flatus or stool (1.14 vs 2.85 days; p <0.001) than the nonstimulated group of patients. The incidence of postoperative ileus (2.85% vs 20%; p = 0.024) and hospital stay (2.49 vs 4.61 days; p = 0.002) was also lower in the stimulated patients. LIMITATIONS:Small numbers of patients means that no definitive statements can be made regarding the effectiveness of this technique. CONCLUSIONS:Stimulation of the efferent limb of the ileostomy before closure is a safe technique that reduces postoperative ileus and fosters early intestinal transit and oral tolerance with a shorter postoperative hospital stay.
Minimum Information Quantity Partition based fast semantic feature subset selection

Processing of web text clustering data usually results in more than ten thousand features. The traditional dimensionality reduction methods and optimal feature subset selection methods increase the time complexity. To reduce the time complexity, we propose a Minimum Information Quantity Partition (MIQP) method. First, MIQP selects a useful feature subset by determining the best partition according to the diminishing trend of feature weight curve. Second, to remove the feature independent assumption and compute the semantic relation between selected features, Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) is used to eliminate noisy data and extend the missed semantic of each sample. This approach reduces the time complexity from O(mn3) to O(mn2). The experimental results show that the performance of MIQP is close to the best clustering results of selecting top k features, and the speed of MIQP is much faster than clustering with all features in our experiment data.
Flux-line shear through narrow constraints in superconducting films.

Flux-line-lattice flow has been studied in a novel superconducting device containing straight, nanometer-scale, weak-pinning channels in a strong-pinning environment. The shear strength of a two-dimensional, triangular lattice has been directly probed on length scales of order of the lattice parameter by variation of the magnetic field. Good agreement is found with a continuum-approximation model for shear flow. Unusual oscillations in shear strength and history effects were observed and explained by the (in)commensurability between flux-line lattice and channel.
Wear measurement of retrieved polyethylene ABG 1 cups by universal-type measuring microscope and X-ray methods.

BACKGROUND Polyethylene wear is considered a most important part of periprosthetic osteolysis development. Thus, its measurement is central to contemporary orthopaedics. AIMS The aim of this paper was to compare the accuracy of three radiographic techniques for wear measurement. Secondly, the influence of the abduction angle of the cup on measurement accuracy was investigated. METHODS Wear was measured manually in 80 patients by a single observer according to the Livermore, Charnley, and Dorr description. A multi-component statistical analysis was used to test the hypothesis that the Livermore technique was superior. In vitro data obtained from a Universal-type measuring microscope served as a gold standard. RESULTS In vitro measurements showed an average linear wear of 0.363 mm per year (0.000-0.939, SD 0.241) with a corresponding volumetric wear rate of 161 mm3 per year (0-467, SD 118.2). The Livermore technique showed the least deviation from the optical reference standard and a superior position from the viewpoint of error analysis but the correlation coefficient was slightly less (r = 0.761) than for the Dorr and Charnley techniques (r = 0.795 and r = 0.778, respectively). In addition, the mean error of the Dorr method differed significantly from zero (p = 0.036). Overall, the Livermore technique was the most accurate method for polyethylene wear measurement regardless of the abduction angle of the cup. CONCLUSIONS The Livermore technique performed manually was more accurate than the Charnley and Dorr methods. Nevertheless, we consider the Dorr technique an adequate tool for day-to-day wear measurements, mainly due to its simplicity.
Budesonide delivered by dosimetric jet nebulization to preterm very low birthweight infants at high risk for development of chronic lung disease

We investigated the effect of an aerosolized corticosteroid (budesonide) on the oxygen requirement of infants at high risk for developing chronic lung disease (CLD) in a randomized, double‐blind study. The study objective was to attain a 30% decrease in FiO2 levels in the budesonide treatment group after 14 d of therapy. Thirty very low birthweight (VLBW) infants (median (range)) gestational age 26 wk (23–29) and birthweight 805 g (525–1227) were randomized. Inclusion criteria were mechanical ventilation on day 6 of life, or if extubated on nasal continuous positive airway pressure with FiO2± 0.3. The budesonide (Pulmicort™ dose was 500 μg bid, or placebo. The aerosol was delivered with a dosimetric jet nebulizer, with variable inspiratory time and breath sensitivity. Inhalations were started on day 7 of life. Twenty‐seven patients completed the study. A significant lowering of the FiO2 levels at 21 d of life was not detected. Infants who received budesonide were more often extubated during the study period (7/8 vs 2/9) and had a greater relative change from baseline in their oxygenation index (budesonide decreased 26% vs placebo increased 60%). Subsequent use of intravenous dexamethasone or inhaled budesonide in the treatment group was significantly less. All patients required O2 supplementation on day 28 of life. At 36 wk postconceptual age, 61% of infants in the budesonide group needed supplemental O2 as opposed to 79% in the placebo group. No side effects on growth or adrenal function were observed
Sliding Mode Control of a Quadrotor Helicopter

In this paper, we present a new design method for the flight control of an autonomous quadrotor helicopter based on sliding mode control. Due to the under-actuated property of a quadrotor helicopter, the controller can make the helicopter move three positions (x, y, z) and the yaw angle to their desired values and stabilize the pitch and roll angles. A sliding mode control is proposed to stabilize a class of cascaded under-actuated systems. The global stability analysis of the closed-loop system is presented. The advantage of sliding mode control is its insensitivity to the model errors, parametric uncertainties and other disturbances. Simulations show that the control law robustly stabilizes a quadrotor
Unified Equivalent Circuit Model and Optimal Design of $V^{2}$  Controlled Buck Converters

V2 control has advantages of simple implementation and fast transient response and is widely used in industry for point-of-load applications. This control scheme is elegant when output capacitors with large RC time constant are employed, such as OSCON capacitors. However, in most cases using capacitors with small RC time constant, such as ceramic capacitors, instability problem will occur. Previous modeling methods including sampled-data modeling, discrete-time analysis, time-domain analysis, and describing function are all very mathematical and difficult to apply for practical engineers as little physical insight can be extracted. Up to now, no equivalent circuit model is proposed which is able to predict the instability issue and serve as a useful design tool for V2 control. This paper proposes a unified equivalent circuit model which is applicable to all types of capacitors by considering the effect of capacitor voltage ripple. The equivalent circuit provides the physical insight of V2 control as a nonideal voltage source, a dual concept of previous nonideal current source for current-mode control. The equivalent circuit model is a simple yet accurate complete model and is very helpful for design purpose. Optimal design guidelines for point-of-load applications are provided. The proposed equivalent circuit model is applicable to both variable frequency modulation and constant frequency modulation. The equivalent circuit model and design guidelines are verified with Simplis simulation and experimental results.
An audit framework to support information system security management

The widespread adoption of information and communication technology has promoted an increase dependency of organisations from the performance of their information systems. As a result, adequate security procedures to properly manage information security must be established by the organisations, in order to protect their valued or critical resources from accidental or intentional attacks, and ensure their normal activity. A conceptual security framework to manage and audit information system security is proposed and discussed. The proposed framework intends to assist organisations firstly, to understand what assets precisely need to be protect and what are their weaknesses (vulnerabilities), enabling to perform an adequate security management. Secondly, enabling a simple security auditing process to support the organisation to assess the efficiency of the controls and policy adopted to prevent or mitigate attacks, threats and vulnerabilities, promoted by the advances of new technologies and new internet-enabled services. The presented framework is based on a conceptual model approach, comprising the semantic description of the concepts defined in information security domain, based on the ISO/IEC_JCT1 standards.
Compressive Super-Resolution Imaging Based on Scrambled Block Hadamard Ensemble

Recent advances in the field of compressive sensing indicate that it is possible to robustly reconstruct images from judicious compressive samples. In this paper, we propose a novel model to achieve compressive super-resolution imaging based on an optical realization of scrambled block Hadamard ensemble sensing operation. We further demonstrate that the proposed model can achieve a four-time higher spatial resolution imaging with a small number of measurements in a single-shot acquisition process.
Factor VIII Gene Haplotypes and Linkage Disequilibrium for the Indirect Genetic Analysis of Hemophilia A in India

Genomic consequences of factor VIII gene haplotypes for the indirect genetic analysis of haemophilia A has not been done in India hitherto. Consequently, BclI/intron18, HindIII/intron 19, and XbaI/intron 22 restriction sites were investigated in 159 individuals from 42 families with hemophilia A. The frequencies of haplotype II, IV, VI, that is, BclI (+)-HindIII (−)- XbaI (+), BclI (+)HindIII (+)-XbaI (−), and BclI (−)-HindIII (−)-XbaI (+) were 0.312, 0.198, and 0.164 respectively. The high heterogeneity of haplotype II highlighted its potential for indirect genetic diagnosis of factor VIII. Analysis revealed strong but incomplete linkage disequilibrium (D′ = 0.76, 0.68, and 0.51) between BclI/HindIII, HindIII/XbaI, and BclI/XbaI, respectively. The overall cumulative polymorphism information content (PIC) of these three markers increased from 0.36 to 0.80. Escalation of PIC up to 80% in the present study suggests that haplotyping of factor VIII gene determines better prognosis in the direction of indirect genetic analysis of hemophilia A.