Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Oxidative stress response in trained men following repeated squats or sprints.

PURPOSE The purpose of this investigation was to measure the oxidative stress response to similarly matched work bouts of squat and sprint exercise. METHODS Twelve anaerobically trained men performed six 10-s sprints and, on a separate occasion, repeated barbell squats to approximately equal the amount of work performed during the sprints. Blood lactate, heart rate, and perceived exertion was measured before and following each exercise bout. Muscle soreness, muscle force, and creatine kinase activity was determined preexercise and through 48 h of recovery. Desmin cytoskeletal protein was determined via muscle biopsy of the vastus lateralis before and at 24 h following each exercise. Plasma protein carbonyls (PC) and malondialdehyde (MDA) were measured as biomarkers of oxidative stress. RESULTS Heart rate and perceived exertion was not different between exercise sessions (P > 0.05), although lactate was higher following sprinting compared with squatting (P = 0.002). Muscle soreness was greater for squatting than sprinting (P = 0.003) and reached a peak immediately postexercise for both sessions (P = 0.0003). Muscle force was unaffected by either exercise session (P > 0.05), and creatine kinase activity was elevated to a similar extent following both sessions. Desmin-negative fibers were virtually nonexistent after either exercise bout, indicating no loss of this cytoskeletal protein. Neither PC nor MDA was affected by the exercise (P > 0.05). CONCLUSION These results suggest that in anaerobically trained men, the oxidative stress and muscle injury response to similarly matched anaerobic exercise bouts is minimal, and not different between exercise modes. Furthermore, when compared with previous literature on untrained subjects, the response is significantly attenuated, possibly because of adaptations occurring as a result of chronic, strenuous anaerobic training.
Desalination of seawater through gas hydrate process: An overview

1 Department of Chemical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Bandar Seri Iskandar 32610, Malaysia 2 CO2 Research Centre (CO2RES), Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Bandar Seri Iskandar 32610, Malaysia 3 Institute of Petroleum Engineering, School of Energy, Geoscience, Infrastructure and Society, Heriot-Watt University Malaysia, No 1 Jalan Venna P5/2, Precinct 5, 62200 Putrajaya, Malaysia 4 Center of Excellence in Desalination Technology, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Role of endogenous peptides in murine allogenic cytotoxic T cell responses assessed using transfectants of the antigen-processing mutant 174xCEM.T2.

One model to explain the high frequency of alloreactive T cells proposes that allogeneic MHC molecules are recognized together with host cell-derived peptides. A model system was developed to investigate the relevance of this mechanism by expression of H-2Dd or H-2Ld in 174xCEM.T2 (T2) cells. This human cell line contains a mutation in its Ag-processing pathway that should restrict the association of endogenous peptides with cell surface class I molecules. CTL generated by stimulating C57BL/6 (H-2b) responder cells with H-2Dd or H-2Ld transfectants of the human B cell line C1R or the murine T cell lymphoma EL4 were assayed for their ability to recognize alloantigenic determinants on these transfectants. The major fraction of the H-2Dd-specific allogeneic CTL response, generated in a MLC or under clonal limiting dilution conditions, was composed of T cells that recognized H-2Dd expressed on C1R or EL4 cells, but failed to recognize this molecule on T2 cells. Clonal analysis indicated that approximately one-third of these CTL recognized determinants that were unique to H-2Dd expressed on C1R stimulator cells whereas the remainder recognized determinants that were also found on EL4 transfectants. Less than 10% of H-2Dd-reactive CTL recognized the T2 transfectant, and these clones also killed C1R-Dd and EL4-Dd. This result suggests that the great majority of H-2Dd-specific alloreactive CTL recognize determinants that are formed by a complex of H-2Dd with endogenous peptides that are absent or significantly reduced in T2 cells. Based on recognition of human or murine transfectants, these CTL exhibit some level of specificity for the structure or composition of the bound peptides. Examination of allogeneic CTL specific for H-2Ld revealed populations similar to those described for H-2Dd. In addition, a major new population was present that recognized determinants shared between C1R-Ld and T2-Ld but not present on EL4-Ld. These results are consistent with the idea that the alloreactive response to H-2Ld is also largely dependent on the presence of bound peptide. However, they also may indicate that the H-2Ld molecule expressed on T2 cells is occupied by one or more peptides that are shared with other human, but not murine, cells. The significance of these results to current models of alloreactivity is discussed.
Evaluating security controls against HTTP-based DDoS attacks

Distributed Denial of Service attacks generally require a botmaster controlling a large number of infected systems (bots) in order to take down a target service. However, more recent DDoS attacks targeting at the HTTP layer can be very effective even with a small number of infected bots. In this paper we analyze DDoS attacks which require only a small number of bots to render a web server unavailable. In order to study their behavior, we implement a Botnet system in a test environment. We simulate bots by using both Linux and Windows-based systems infected with Slowloris, an HTTP syn-flooder, targeting to a vulnerable Apache web server. We apply several security controls in order to test their effectiveness against such attacks. Our results show that only a combination of carefully selected anti-DDoS controls can significantly reduce the exposure to such attacks without affecting the provided service.
An Empirical Study on the Health of Retirement to the Working Population—Based on China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study

With the aging of Chinese intensified, the demographic dividend is gradually less, the phenomenon of large pension gap, delay retirement to discuss fiercer. Most of the articles on the study of retirement problems, from a healthy perspective are often neglected on the basis of combing the theory of the relationship between retirement with health and the literature on the impact of retirement on health from the perspective of health empirical analysis on the effect of retirement for the elderly health. In this paper, using the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), mandatory retirement ages as instrumental variable, to study the effect of retirement for the elderly health by fuzzy regression discontinuity design (FRD). The main conclusions of this paper: First, Chinese compulsory retirement system has a significant negative impact on male health; there is no impact on female health. Second, the impact of retirement on men is mainly caused by the impact of male mental health; retirement will increase the degree of depression in men and lead to mental health decline. Thirdly, based on men’s health behavior, time use and medical use, we found that retirement does not improve the utilization medical of male; it also does not change men smoking habits and their physical exercise, but retirement will change male drinking habits, and increase their leisure time. Finally, this paper raises corresponding policy recommendations to improve personal health and better implementation of delayed retirement policies.
A security-preserving compiler for distributed programs: from information-flow policies to cryptographic mechanisms

We enforce information flow policies in programs that run at multiple locations, with diverse levels of security. We build a compiler from a small imperative language with locality and security annotations down to distributed code linked to concrete cryptographic libraries. Our compiler splits source programs into local threads; inserts checks on auxiliary variables to enforce the source control flow; implements shared distributed variables using instead a series of local replicas with explicit updates; and finally selects cryptographic mechanisms for securing the communication of updates between locations. We establish computational soundness for our compiler: under standard assumptions on cryptographic primitives, all confidentiality and integrity properties of the source program also hold with its distributed code, despite the presence of active adversaries that control all communications and some of the program locations. We also present performance results for the code obtained by compiling sample programs.
Technical Efficiency Measurement and Their Differential in Wheat Production : The Case of Smallholder Farmers in South Wollo

This study was aimed to measure the level of technical efficiency and identify its determinants in wheat crop for smallholder farmers in south Wollo zone, Ethiopia. A multi-stage sampling technique was employed to select 68 wheat growing sample households. The Stochastic Production Frontier (SPF) result revealed that area allocated under wheat, seed, fertilizer applied and labor in man days were appeared to be significantly influencing wheat production at less than 1 percent probability level. The estimated gamma parameters indicated that 73% of the total variation in wheat output was due to technical inefficiency. The average technical efficiency was 78% while return to scale was 1.17% implying that farmers are operating at an increasing return to scale. Thus, ample scope existed to realize higher output with existing resources and level of production technology. The socio-economic variables that exercised important role for variations in technical efficiency were age, education, farm size, and livestock holding in Tropical Livestock Unit, number of oxen holding, access to irrigation and access to credit. Nevertheless, participation on off farm income, and interaction of off farm income and education was found to decrease efficiency significantly among farm household. Therefore, innovative institutional arrangement, education and farmers training accompanied with more access to fertilizer and improved seed were likely to enhance production efficiency in the study area. Access to irrigation through small and large scale irrigation must be ensured to increase productivity and hence reduce and then alleviate poverty in the region. This would help to adapt to the increasing climate change the country is facing. People are poor due to shortage of resources or inability to use them. Therefore, farm household asset formation and provision of institutional services should be given priority. Such actions may, in turn, alleviate the current problem of food insecurity and lead in the long run to economic development. Copyright © IJEBF, all rights reserved.
MELCOR and SCDAP Analyses of Loss-of-Coolant Accidents During Cooldown in a Westinghouse 2-Loop PWR

Operation of pressurised water reactors involves shutdown periods for refuelling and maintenance. In preparation for this, the reactor system is cooled down, depressurised and partially drained. Although reactor coolant pressure is lower than during full-power operation, there remains the possibility of a Loss-of-Coolant Accident (LOCA), with a certain but low probability. While the decay heat to be removed is lower than that from a LOCA at full power, the reduced availability of safety systems implies a risk of failing to maintain core cooling, and hence of core damage. This is recognised though probabilistic safety analyses (PSA), which identify low but non-negligible contributions to core damage frequency from accidents during cooldown and shutdown. Analyses are made for a typical two-loop Westinghouse PWR of the consequences of a range of LOCAs during hot and intermediate shutdown, 4 and 5 hours after reactor shutdown respectively. The accumulators are isolated, while power to some of the pumped safety injection systems (SIs) is racked out. The study assesses the effectiveness of the nominally assumed SIs in restoring coolant inventory and preventing core damage, and the margin against core damage where their actuation is delayed. The calculations use the engineering-level MELCOR1.8. 5 code, supplemented by the SCDAPSIM and SCDAP/RELAP5 codes, which provide a more detailed treatment of coolant system thermal hydraulics and core behaviour. Both treatments show that the core is readily quenched, without damage, by the nominal SI which assumes operation of only one pump. Margins against additional scenario and model uncertainties are assessed by assuming a delay of 900 s (the time needed to actuate the remaining pumps) and a variety of assumptions regarding models and the number of pumps available in conjunction with both MELCOR and versions of SCDAP. Overall, the study provides confidence in the inherent robustness of the plant design with respect to LOCA during cooldown to cold shutdown, and in the validity of a two-tier calculational method. The results have been directly used in updating the plant shutdown PSA, by changing the success criteria for core cooling during cooldown of the plant and showing a reduction in overall risk.
Temperature adaptive IGBT gate-driver design

This paper is about the development of a temperature-dependent driving strategy for a 3.3 kV-1200 A planar-gate non-punch-through (NPT) insulated-gate-bipolar-transistor (IGBT) power module. In particular, the proposed strategy aims at counterbalancing the effect of variations in ambient temperature on the power losses of the semiconductor devices by regulating the amplitude of the applied gate-emitter drive signal correspondingly. The concept is developed with the help of accurate simulation models and is then demonstrated experimentally. Although not yet optimized, the validity of the proposed solution in well demonstrated by the results presented.
Indoor Sonic Boom Reproduction Using ANC

The European programs for development of supersonic air-flights involve new studies on the human perception of sonic boom. Because this noise includes high-level components at very low-frequency, the usual psycho-acoustic tests with headphones are not relevant; instead, the original sound-field can be reproduced with many loudspeakers in a small room, but the loudspeakers must be controlled for an accurate reproduction, both in time and space, in an area large enough to enclose a listener's head. In this paper, Active Noise Control is applied to sonic boom reproduction through Boundary Surface Control (as named by S.Ise) of the acoustic pressure around a listener. A small room was built at LMA with sixteen powerful low-frequency acoustic sources in the walls. Frequency and time-domain numerical simulations of sonic boom reproduction in this room are given, including a sensitivity study of the coupling between a listener's head and the incident sonic boom wave which combine into the effective sound-field to be reproduced.
Amiodarone-induced thyroid dysfunction.

To purchase electronic or print reprints, contact The InnoVision Group, 101 Columbia, Aliso Viejo, CA 92656. Phone, (800) 809-2273 or (949) 362-2050 (ext 532); fax, (949) 362-2049; e-mail, reprints@aacn.org. stated that he did not feel well, and before admission, he had had an episode of unexplained profuse diaphoresis, rapid heart beat, and shortness of breath. He also said that he had lost about 4.5 kg (10 lb) in the preceding 2 months even though his appetite had been good and he had eaten well. His medications before admission included amiodarone 200 mg/d, metoprolol, enalapril, simvastatin, aspirin, folic acid, and warfarin. Upon admission, a 12-lead electrocardiogram showed normal sinus rhythm at a heart rate of 95/min with no acute changes; blood pressure was 140/70 mm Hg. The findings on physical examination were unremarkable. Admission laboratory results were all within the normal reference ranges. Initially, no serum levels of thyroid hormones were determined. Myocardial infarction and heart failure were ruled out, and his preadmission medications were continued. Because Mr W. had somewhat vague signs and symptoms and a history of cardiac disease, he underwent a coronary angiogram. On the basis of the results, he had stenting of a vein graft to the diagonal coronary artery and stenting of the right coronary artery. On the day after placement of the stents, he continued to have intermittent diaphoresis Renate Porsche, APRN, BC, NP Zara R. Brenner, APRN, BC Amiodarone is often used to treat both ventricular and atrial arrhythmias. Although its cardiac side effects are less frequent than those associated with other antiarrhythmics, it has potentially marked effects on thyroid physiology; it can cause both thyrotoxicosis and hypothyroidism. Nursing care of patients receiving amiodarone includes recognizing and monitoring for these potential complications and teaching patients preventive measures to avoid these problems. In this article, we review the pharmacokinetics of amiodarone and the thyroid dysfunctions that can occur as side effects of its use.
A novel channel handover strategy to improve the throughput in cognitive radio networks

Cognitive radio (CR) is the most promising solution to spectrum scarcity and spectrum underutilization problems. Most of the research in CR design ignores the cost of channel handover process (CHP) in cognition cycle. However, CHP can be a time consuming process that consists of spectrum sensing, spectrum decision, negotiation through control channel, and adjustment of frequency and modulation settings. Taking all of these steps into account, we deduce that the frequency of CHP is one of the most critical CR design issues. In this sense, initiating the CHP after detecting each primary user (PU) activity can decrease the aggregated spectrum utilization. In this paper, we analyze the trade-off between initiating a CHP to find an idle channel and staying in the current data channel for a while to catch free slots when some PU activity is detected. We propose a novel channel handover strategy (CHS) to balance this trade-off. In this CHS, secondary users (SUs) track only their current data channel and do not need information about the whole spectrum environment to determine whether to start CHP or not. Simulation results show that the proposed CHS can clearly decrease the frequency of handovers and increase the aggregated SU utilization.
The Basin Edge Effect on Dynamic Response: Dinar Basin Model

Earthquake ground motion is affected from local soil conditions, geological structures as well as earthquake source properties. The amplitude and frequency content of the strong ground motion can be changed by local site effects. Local site conditions such as seismic bedrock depth, bedrock slope of the edge, geometry and characteristics of soil layers and topographical irregularities are the most important factors affecting soil amplification. One dimensional (1D) equivalent linear dynamic analysis method is the simplest approach to investigate local site effects. 1D approach becomes valid especially for the sites far from edges or in shallow and wide valley models. In narrow and deep basins, body waves transform into surface waves especially at the edges during earthquakes and two dimensional (2D) resonance modes occur, the frequency content and amplitude of strong ground motion may vary with the distance from basin edge to its center. In this study, to investigate the effects of basin edge on the variation of surface motion under different strong ground motion acceleration records, one and two dimensional dynamic analyses were performed by using the Dinar basin edge model and the results were compared. The variations of the spectral acceleration ratios (2D/1D) were evaluated for the different points on the ground surface with the changing distance from the valley edges. A relationship between the results of one and two dimensional dynamic analyses was established. Shear wave velocity profile and bedrock depth in Dinar were obtained from microtremor array measurements.
The Performance of Two Data-Generation Processes for Data with Specified Marginal Treatment Odds Ratios

Monte Carlo simulation methods are increasingly being used to evaluate the property of statistical estimators in a variety of settings. The utility of these methods depends upon the existence of an appropriate data-generating process. Observational studies are increasingly being used to estimate the effects of exposures and interventions on outcomes. Conventional regression models allow for the estimation of conditional or adjusted estimates of treatment effects. There is an increasing interest in statistical methods for estimating marginal or average treatment effects. However, in many settings, conditional treatment effects can differ from marginal treatment effects. Therefore, existing data-generating processes for conditional treatment effects are of little use in assessing the performance of methods for estimating marginal treatment effects. In the current study, we describe and evaluate the performance of two different data-generation processes for generating data with a specified marginal odds ratio. The first process is based upon computing Taylor Series expansions of the probabilities of success for treated and untreated subjects. The expansions are then integrated over the distribution of the random variables to determine the marginal probabilities of success for treated and untreated subjects. The second process is based upon an iterative process of evaluating marginal odds ratios using Monte Carlo integration. The second method was found to be computationally simpler and to have superior performance compared to the first method.
Globalization and the sociology of Immanuel Wallerstein: A critical appraisal

By the turn of the 21st century the concept of globalization had earned its place in the social sciences and debate turned more squarely to the theoretical significance of globalization. Yet not all scholars were happy with the notion of globalization. Some claim that is merely a new name for earlier theories and concepts. Among those who reject new paradigmatic thinking on the current age is Immanuel Wallerstein, the world-renowned sociologist and ‘father’ of the world-system paradigm. This article is intended as an appraisal of Wallerstein’s œuvre in the context of the debate on global transformations in the late 20th and early 21st centuries and from the vantage point of the present author’s own critical globalization perspective. The first three parts summarize and assess Wallerstein’s theoretical system and his many contributions to macro, historical and comparative sociology, to development studies and international political economy. The fourth discusses Wallerstein’s assessment of the evolution of the world capitalist system in recent decades, including his views on the concept of globalization, and the fifth focuses on earlier and more recent critical appraisals of his work, including the present author’s own, in light of the recent transformations in world capitalism identified with globalization.
Automated Detection of Sex in Mutant Mice Using Convolutional Neural Networks Applied to X-ray Images

In this study we train a convolutional neural network (CNN) using a dataset of 3,104 X-ray images of wildtype mice generated by the International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium (IMPC) to classify males and females. Our model achieves over 97% accuracy on the test set and on 10,400 images from knockout mice lines. By investigating class activation maps of the misclassified images, we observed potential abnormalities in the pelvis in one knockout line. This study suggests that CNNs can be trained for the purpose of quality control in addition to the discovery of novel genotype-phenotype associations.