Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists (AACE) consensus conference on the insulin resistance syndrome: 25-26 August 2002, Washington, DC.

This is the first of two articles on the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists (AACE) consensus conference on the insulin resistance syndrome (IRS), which was held in Washington, DC, on 25–26 August 2002. (See http://www.aace.com/pub/irscc/findings.php for summary.) Woody Kessel (Washington, DC), the Deputy Surgeon General, introduced the conference, by discussing “leading health indicators,” including physical activity, reduction of overeating, drug abuse, attention to sexual health, mental health, environmental health, injury prevention, and provision of access to care. The lifestyle factors underlying the metabolic syndrome are, he pointed out, highly prominent factors on this list. Earl S. Ford (Atlanta, GA) discussed public health aspects of the IRS. He characterized “public health” as engaging not only in the assessment and in monitoring of the health of communities, but also in the formulation of public policies and the assurance of access to health care. Addressing the question of whether the IRS is a public health problem, he pointed to its high prevalence and its association with increased morbidity and mortality. Persons with the IRS show higher all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease (CVD), diabetes, polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). The syndrome is likely to be very costly, with estimates that the related condition, obesity, leads to health costs in the U.S. of $100 billion yearly. Ford cited proposed AACE criteria defining persons as having the IRS if they do not have diabetes and if they meet two or more of the criteria of triglyceride ≥150 mg/dl, HDL <40 or 50 in men or women, respectively, blood pressure ≥130/85 mmHg or current use of antihypertensive medications, and 2-h glucose 140–199 mg/dl (with postload rather than fasting glucose chosen as being of greater sensitivity). He applied these criteria to data from the third National Health and Nutrition Evaluation Survey (NHANES III) carried out in …
Polynucleotide: Adenosine Glycosidase Activity of Immunotoxins Containing Ribosome-Inactivating Proteins

Abstract Polynucleotide:adenosine glycosidases (rRNA N-glycosidases, EC 3.2.2.22, more commonly known as ribosome-inactivating proteins, RIP) are a numerous family of plant and bacterial enzymes, shown to release also adenine from DNA in vitro. They are well suited for the preparation of specifically toxic conjugates with several carriers, including monoclonal antibodies (immunotoxins). Here we show that (i) immunotoxins containing various PNAG (dianthin, gelonin, momordin I, PAP-S, PDS-2, ricin A-chain, saporin-L1, saporin-S6) all act on DNA; (ii) activity on DNA in vitro is less compromised by disulphide linkage to antibody than is inhibition of cell-free protein translation; and (iii) specific cytotoxicity of immunotoxin does not correlate with substrate specificity.
Securing cognitive radio networks against belief manipulation attacks via trust management

Cognitive Radio (CR) provides cognitive, self-organizing, and reconfiguration features. When forming a network, namely Cognitive Radio Networks (CRNs), these features can further provide network agility and spectrum sharing. On the other hand, they also make the network much more vulnerable than other traditional wireless networks, e.g., ad hoc wireless or sensor networks. In particular, the malicious nodes may exploit the cognitive engine of CRs, and conduct belief manipulation attacks to degrade the network performance. Traditional security methods using cryptography or authentication cannot adequately address these attacks. In this paper, we propose to use trust management for a more robust CRN operation against belief manipulation attacks. Specifically, we first study the effects of malicious behaviors to the network performance, define trust evaluation metrics to capture malicious behaviors, and illustrate how trust management strategy can help to enhance the robustness of network operations in various network configurations.
Does Low Skilled Immigration Cause Human Capital Polarization? Evidence from Italian Provinces

While there is a vast literature considering the labour market effects of immigration, less has been done to investigate how immigration affects the educational choices of young natives. Using Italian provincial data and an instrumental variables strategy, we show that the recent increase in the immigration of low skilled labour has produced human capital polarization, i.e. the contemporaneous increase in the share of natives with less than high school and not enrolled in school and in the share with a college degree or enrolled in college. This evidence is stronger for males than for females. We adapt the standard Card's model of educational choice and spell out under what conditions human capital polarization occurs. We estimate wage equations by gender and find that these conditions are satisfied, especially for Italian males.
Aircraft navigation by means of image registration

Most aircraft, whether manned or unmanned, depend on the Global Positioning System (GPS) for navigation. However, GPS signals are susceptible to jamming and spoofing. A researcher recently demonstrated the use of spoofing to take control of a ship in the Mediterranean Sea. By feeding counterfeit signals to the ship, he was able to drive it far off course. All the time, the navigation system reported the vessel was moving calmly along its intended course. The same researcher also demonstrated the ability to spoof unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate a navigation system that does not rely on GPS. The only sensor required is a digital camera. The system works by taking a photograph of the ground and georegistering it to a reference image or digital elevation model (DEM) with the GeoMI™ georegistration software. By transferring geospatial information from the DEM to the photo, the system calculates the position and orientation of the aircraft. The process is fast enough to perform in real time and suitable for use as a primary or backup navigation system for aircraft, UAVs, and cruise missiles. For nighttime navigation, the system could be extended to infrared or radar imagery. Experimental results show that navigation accuracies of 2 meters CE90 can be achieved.
Adjusting Output-Limiter for Stable Haptic Rendering in Virtual Environments

This paper presents a control method using an adjusting output-limiter for stable haptic rendering in virtual environments. In a simulation of force-reflecting interaction with deformable objects in the virtual environment, a quick computation of the accurate impedance of deformable objects is rare. This is particularly true when physics-based models, such as tensor-mass models or mass-spring models, are used. The problem is aggravated if the simulation involves changes in the geometry and/or impedance of the deformation model, such as cutting or suturing. The proposed control method guarantees stable haptic interaction with deformable objects of unknown and/or varying impedance. The method is based on the time-domain passivity theorem and the two-port network model. The controller adjusts the maximum permissible force to guarantee the passivity of the haptic system at every sampling instant. The controller notes only the magnitude of the reflective force, and does not depend on properties of the employed force model. This allows the proposed control method applicable to haptic systems involving deformable objects with unknown, nonlinear, and/or time-varying impedance. Designs of the controllers are presented for impedance-type and admittance-type haptic systems. The method is also extended for multiple degrees-of-freedom.
The interaction between environmental temperature and hypoxia on central and peripheral fatigue during high-intensity dynamic knee extension

This study investigated causative factors behind the expression of different interaction types during 30 exposure to multi-stressor environments. Neuromuscular fatigue rates and time to exhaustion (TTE) 31 were investigated in active males (n=9) exposed to three climates (5°C,50%-rh/23°C,50%- 32 rh/42°C,70%-rh) at two inspired oxygen fractions (0.209/0.125 F I O 2 ; equivalent attitude=4100 m). 33 After 40-mins rest in the environmental conditions, participants performed constant workload (high- 34 intensity) knee extension exercise until exhaustion, with brief assessments of neuromuscular function 35 every 110-s. Independent exposure to cold, heat and hypoxia significantly (p<0.01) reduced TTE from 36 thermoneutral-normoxia (reduction of 190, 405, 505-s from 915-s respectively). The TTE decrease was 37 consistent with a faster rate of peripheral fatigue development (p<0.01) compared with thermoneutral- 38 normoxia (increase of 1.6, 3.1 and 4.9%.min -1 from 4.1%.min -1 respectively). Combined exposure to 39 hypoxic-cold resulted in an even greater TTE reduction (-589-seconds), likely due to an increase in the 40 rate of peripheral fatigue development (increased by 7.6%.min -1 ), but this without significant 41 interaction between stressors (p>0.198). In contrast, combined exposure to hypoxic-heat reduced TTE 42 by 609-s, showing a significant antagonistic interaction (p=0.003) similarly supported by an increased 43 rate of peripheral fatigue development (increased by 8.3%.min -1 ). A small decline (<0.4%.min -1 ) in 44 voluntary muscle activation was only observed in thermoneutral-normoxia. In conclusion, interaction 45 type is influenced by the impact magnitude of the individual stressors’ effect on exercise capacity, whereby the greater the stressors impact, the greater the probability that one stressor will be abolished by the other. This indicates humans respond to times, with 30-s rest) was ensured using a series of five incremental practice 344 contractions (2-s plateau at 50, 50, 50, 75 and 90% MVC). Each neuromuscular test was conducted 15- after potentiation. all MVC’s twitches delivered manually by the same experimenter.
CDVS feature selection on embedded systems

Mobile image retrieval and pairwise matching applications pose a unique set of challenges. As communicating large amount of data could take tens of seconds over a slow wireless link, MPEG defined the CDVS standard to transfer over the network only the data essential to the matching, and not the entire image. However, the extraction of salient image features is a very time consuming process, and it may still require times in the order of seconds when running on CPU of modern mobile devices. To reduce feature extraction computation times, we re-design the MPEG-CDVS feature selection algorithm for highly parallel embedded GPUs. We consider two different approaches compliant to the standard. In the first one, feature selection is performed before the orientation assignment stage. In the second one, it is performed after. We present a complete experimental analysis on a large test set. Our experiments show that our GPU-based approaches are remarkably faster than the CPU-based reference implementation of the standard, while maintaining a comparable precision in terms of true and false positive rates. To sum up, our solutions have been proved to be effective for real-time applications running on modern embedded systems.
NK Cells Regulate CD8+ T Cell Priming and Dendritic Cell Migration during Influenza A Infection by IFN-γ and Perforin-Dependent Mechanisms

An effective immune response against influenza A infection depends on the generation of virus-specific T cells. NK cells are one of the first-line defenses against influenza A infection. We set out to delineate the role of NK cells in T cell immunity using a murine model of influenza A infection with A/PR/8/34. We show that early T cell recruitment mainly occurs in the posterior mediastinal lymph node (pMLN). Depletion of NK cells significantly impaired both dendritic cell (DC) and T cell recruitment into the pMLN. A similar reduction of T cell recruitment was observed when migration was blocked by pertussis toxin, suggesting that migration of pulmonary NK cells and DCs regulates cell recruitment to the pMLN. T cell recruitment was dependent on IFN-γ, and transfer of IFN-γ–competent naive NK cells into IFN-γ−/− mice restored T cell recruitment, whereas IFN-γ–deficient NK cells failed to do so. In addition, NK cell depletion reduced the uptake and transport of influenza A virus by DCs, and significantly impaired the virus-specific T cell response. Both IFN-γ−/− and perforin−/− mice showed reduced viral Ag transport by DCs, suggesting that the ability of NK cells to influence virus transport depends on IFN-γ and perforin. In summary, our data suggest that NK cells play a critical role in the initiation and shaping of the T cell response after influenza A infection.
Development of a Compliance Framework for safety management practices in manufacturing companies in Trinidad and Tobago: An agenda and some findings

The Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act) of Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) was assented to in 2004 and amended in 2006. Due to limited resources, the T&T OSH Authority and Agency (OSHA) has largely limited its OSH Act enablement/enforcement efforts to the construction sector, and the manufacturing sector has not been sufficiently enabled to comply. Meanwhile, the thrust for manufacturing sector expansion and productivity improvement continues to place greater demands on these organisations' safety systems. Therefore, this paper presents an agenda and some findings of research that aims (1) to survey T&T's manufacturers to establish whether compliant safety management systems (SMS) exist, and to identify significant shortcomings, and (2) to develop an SMS Compliance Framework which T&T's manufacturers would use to enhance their SMS and evaluate their safety performance. Trial implementation of the SMS Compliance Framework would be done at two invited manufacturing facilities, with the aim of improving the framework's applicability in T&T. Beyond application within manufacturing companies, the research findings could assist OSHA's efforts to enable/enforce the OSH Act within the manufacturing sector, and there may be potential extensions in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) region.
The pharmacokinetics of escitalopram in patients with hepatic impairment

The effect of hepatic impairment on the pharmacokinetics of escitalopram was determined by means of nonlinear mixed effect modeling, considering both the Child-Pugh classification (and its components) and cytochrome P450 2C19 (CYP2C19) activity. Twenty-four subjects were grouped according to their Child-Pugh score as healthy, with mild hepatic impairment or with moderate hepatic impairment. The subjects were administered a single oral dose of escitalopram 20 mg, and blood was sampled up to 168 hours after dosage. The serum concentration of escitalopram was determined and the pharmacokinetics assessed by nonlinear mixed effect modeling. The CYP2C19 activity was measured from the urinary excretion ratio of S/R-mephenytoin. All subjects tolerated the treatment well, and no serious adverse events were reported. Predicted mean area under the curve from zero to infinity (AUCinf) values were 51% and 69% higher for patients with mild and moderate hepatic impairment (Child-Pugh classification), respectively, compared with healthy subjects. The best-fitting model showed an influence of CYP2C19 activity on clearance and body weight on the volume of distribution for escitalopram. CYP2C19 activity is a better predictor of escitalopram clearance than is Child-Pugh classification.
Improved linear predictive coding method for speech recognition

In this paper, the improved linear predictive coding (LPC) coefficients of the frame are employed in the feature extraction method. In the proposed speech recognition system, the static LPC coefficients + dynamic LPC coefficients of the frame were employed as a basic feature. The framework of linear discriminant analysis (LDA) is used to derive an efficient and reduced-dimension speech parametric speech vector space for the speech recognition system. Using the continuous hidden Markov model (HMM) as the speech recognition model, the speech recognition system was successfully constructed. Experiments are performed on the isolated-word speech recognition task. It is found that the improved LPC feature extraction method is quite efficient.
Automated Approach for Ribosomal Intergenic Spacer Analysis of Microbial Diversity and Its Application to Freshwater Bacterial Communities

ABSTRACT An automated method of ribosomal intergenic spacer analysis (ARISA) was developed for the rapid estimation of microbial diversity and community composition in freshwater environments. Following isolation of total community DNA, PCR amplification of the 16S-23S intergenic spacer region in the rRNA operon was performed with a fluorescence-labeled forward primer. ARISA-PCR fragments ranging in size from 400 to 1,200 bp were next discriminated and measured by using an automated electrophoresis system. Database information on the 16S-23S intergenic spacer was also examined, to understand the potential biases in diversity estimates provided by ARISA. In the analysis of three natural freshwater bacterial communities, ARISA was rapid and sensitive and provided highly reproducible community-specific profiles at all levels of replication tested. The ARISA profiles of the freshwater communities were quantitatively compared in terms of both their relative diversity and similarity level. The three communities had distinctly different profiles but were similar in their total number of fragments (range, 34 to 41). In addition, the pattern of major amplification products in representative profiles was not significantly altered when the PCR cycle number was reduced from 30 to 15, but the number of minor products (near the limit of detection) was sensitive to changes in cycling parameters. Overall, the results suggest that ARISA is a rapid and effective community analysis technique that can be used in conjunction with more accurate but labor-intensive methods (e.g., 16S rRNA gene cloning and sequencing) when fine-scale spatial and temporal resolution is needed.
Quetiapine and Breast Feeding

Objective: To quantify the relative infant dose of quetiapine during breast feeding, describe the milk:plasma (M:P) ratio, and determine the well-being of the exposed infant. Case Summary: A 26-year-old mother and her 3-month-old son were studied over a 24 hour quetiapine dose interval at steady-state. Quetiapine concentrations were quantified by high-performance liquid chromatography. Infant exposure was calculated as the concentration in milk multiplied by an estimated milk production of 0.15 L/kg/day and normalized to the weight-adjusted maternal dose. The average concentration in milk was 41 μg/L, the M:P ratio (measured using average concentrations in the elimination phase) was 0.29, and the relative infant dose was 0.09% of the maternal weight-adjusted dose (7273 μg/kg/day). The infant plasma concentration of 1.4 μg/L was some 6% of the corresponding maternal plasma concentration. No adverse effects were noted in the infant. Discussion: Our findings of an infant exposure to quetiapine of less than 0.1% of the maternal dose and a lack of adverse effects confirm and extend the findings of 2 previous studies. Conclusions: Although limited, the data shown here support the prescription of quetiapine to a breast-feeding mother following a careful individual risk/benefit analysis. We suggest regular monitoring of infant progress and occasional measurement of quetiapine in the infant's plasma.
Dynamic stereo vision system for real-time tracking

Biologically-inspired dynamic vision sensors have been introduced in 2002 which asynchronously detect the significant relative light intensity changes in a scene and output them in a form of Address-Event representation. These vision sensors capture dynamical discontinuities on-chip for a reduced data volume compared to that from intensity images. Therefore, they support detection, segmentation and tracking of moving objects in the Address-Event space by exploiting the generated events, as a reaction to intensity changes, resulting from the scene dynamics. Object tracking has been previously demonstrated and reported in scientific publications using monocular dynamic vision sensors. This paper contributes with presenting and demonstrating a tracking algorithm using the 3D sensing technology based on the stereo dynamic vision sensor. This system is capable of detecting and tracking persons within a 4m range at an effective refresh rate of the depth map of up to 200 per second. The 3D system is evaluated for people tracking and the tests showed that up to 60k Address-Events/s can be processed for real-time tracking.
Pump-probe cathodoluminescence microscopy

In this paper we describe the technical implementation of pump-probe cathodoluminescence microscopy (PP-CL), a novel technique for studying ultrafast dynamics in materials using combined excitation of electron and laser pulses. The PP-CL setup is based on a commercial scanning electron microscope combined with a femtosecond laser. Here we discuss the design, technical details, and characterization of the PP-CL setup. The luminescence emitted by the sample (either photoluminescence, cathodoluminescence or a combination of both) can be analyzed in terms of spectrum, temporal statistics, and frequency-modulated intensity (lock-in detection). The laser spot on the sample is characterized by analyzing the changes in the secondary electron signal on a GaN substrate, from which we extract a laser spot size in the μm range. While this method ensures spatial overlap of laser and electron pulses on the sample, temporal alignment is achieved using time-correlated measurements of photoluminescence and cathodoluminescence. We also discuss some considerations to take into account when designing a PP-CL experiment, regarding temporal and spatial resolution. This paper provides a detailed reference for the development of any PP-CL microscope.
Satisfaction and Healthcare Utilization of Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Individuals in NYC: A Community-Based Participatory Study.

PURPOSE Transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC) individuals face high levels of discrimination and mistreatment, including within social and medical service settings, which may lead to negative health and psychosocial sequelae. Given the many barriers to competent care, we sought to determine points of intervention by assessing the current needs, satisfaction, and health care utilization of TGNC individuals in New York City as reported by TGNC individuals. METHODS In January 2013, fifty TGNC individuals were recruited via flyers and direct referrals from healthcare professionals within community spaces and pertinent venues. We administered a brief survey and conducted four focus groups exploring participants' health care utilization and perceived barriers to care, routine care, hormone and silicone use, and recommendations for improving transgender services. RESULTS Participants were 18- to 64-years-old, racially/ethnically diverse, and the majority were medically insured, underwent routine health care in the last year, and received an HIV test in their lifetime. A significant proportion reported taking hormones prescribed by a medical provider and were in the care of knowledgeable providers. Participants perceived four areas where barriers persisted: utilization of preventive services, access to transition-related procedures, access to legal assistance, and inclusion of TGNC individuals in public health education and campaigns. CONCLUSIONS Structural interventions are needed, such as comprehensive provider training programs for all level staff to better serve the needs of TGNC individuals, increase service utilization and improve wellbeing, while effecting lasting institutional change. Service provision establishments should hire more TGNC staff and integrate transgender care into existing practices.