Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multiple strains probiotics appear to be the most effective probiotics in the prevention of necrotizing enterocolitis and mortality: An updated meta-analysis

Background Some oral probiotics have been shown to prevent necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) and decrease mortality effectively in preterm very low birth weight (PVLBW) infants. However, it is unclear whether a single probiotic or a mixture of probiotics is most effective for the prevention of NEC. Objective A meta-analysis was conducted by reviewing the most up to date literature to investigate whether multiple strains probiotics are more effective than a single strain in reducing NEC and death in PVLBW infants. Data sources Relevant studies were identified by searches of the MEDLINE, EMBASE, and Cochrane CENTRAL databases, from 2001 to 2016. Data extraction and synthesis The inclusion criteria were randomized controlled trials of any enteral probiotic supplementation that was initiated within the first 7 days and continued for at least 14 days in preterm infants (≤ 34 weeks’ gestation) and/or those of a birth weight ≤1500 g. Results A total of 25 trials (n = 7345 infants) were eligible for inclusion in the meta-analysis using a fixed-effects model. Multiple strains probiotics were associated with a marked reduction in the incidence of NEC, with a pooled OR of 0.36 (95% CI, 0.24–0.53; P < .00001). Single strain probiotic using Lactobacillus species had a borderline effect in reducing NEC (OR of 0.60; 95% CI 0.36–1.0; P = .05), but not mortality. Multiple strains probiotics had a greater effectiveness in reducing mortality and were associated with a pooled OR of 0.58 (95% CI, 0.43–0.79; P = .0006). Trials using single strain of Bifidobacterium species and Saccharomyces boulardii did not reveal any beneficial effects in terms of reducing NEC or mortality. Conclusion This updated report found that multiple strains probiotics appear to be the most feasible and effective strategy for the prevention of NEC and reduction of mortality in PVLBW neonates. Further clinical trials should focus on which probiotic combinations are most effective.
Effectiveness of pharmacist intervention for asthma control improvement

Education on optimal medication use is an essential strategy to improve asthma control. The current authors investigated whether pharmacist interventions, focused on appropriate use of asthma medication and tailor-made to the patient's current asthma control, would improve asthma control in adult patients. A 6-month randomised, controlled, parallel-group trial was conducted in 66 community pharmacies in Belgium. Patients were randomly assigned to receive usual pharmacist care (n = 94) or a pre-defined pharmacist intervention (n = 107). This intervention mainly focused on improving inhalation technique and medication adherence. Primary outcome was the level of asthma control, as assessed by the Asthma Control Test® (ACT). Mean ACT scores did not change from baseline for both study groups. However, a pre-defined subgroup analysis of patients having insufficiently controlled asthma at baseline showed that the intervention had significantly increased the ACT score after 6 months compared with usual care. The intervention also reduced, for the complete study group, reliever medication use and the frequency of night-time awakenings due to asthma. Inhalation technique and adherence to controller medication were significantly better in the intervention group. In conclusion, pragmatic community pharmacy-based programmes can significantly improve therapeutic outcomes in adult asthma patients.
Millimeter-wave radar systems on-chip and in package: Current status and future challenges

In this work, we give an overview on recent developments that have been made in the field of mm-wave systems which are integrated on chip or in package. Several aspects like waveforms and signal generation, multi-channel systems for beamforming applications as well as integration of antennas into packages will be discussed. The focus of this work is put on approaches which are suitable for on-chip and in-package integration. The restrictions imposed by the integration into single devices are discussed and several prototype systems are presented.
Lipid composition of microdomains is altered in a cell model of Gaucher disease** This work was supported by a National Health and Medical Research Council project grant in Australia. Published, JLR Papers in Press, April 21, 2008.

The formation of cholesterol and sphingolipids into specialized liquid-ordered membrane microdomains (rafts) has been proposed to function in the intracellular sorting and transport of proteins and lipids. Defined by biochemical criteria, rafts resist solubilization in nonionic detergents, enabling them to be isolated as detergent-resistant membranes (DRM). In this study, we characterized the lipid composition of DRM from a cell model of the sphingolipid storage disorder, Gaucher disease, in which the catabolism of the sphingolipid glucosylceramide (GC) is impaired. In this cell model, we showed that GC accumulated primarily in the DRM, with smaller secondary increases in ceramide, dihexosylceramide, trihexosylceramide, and phosphatidylglycerol. This suggested that not only was lipid metabolism altered as a consequence of the cells' inability to degrade GC, but this affected the DRM rather than other regions of the membrane. This increase in lipids in the DRM may be responsible for the altered lipid and protein sorting seen in Gaucher disease. Analysis of individual lipid species revealed preservation of the shorter and fully saturated fatty acid species in the DRM, suggesting that the highly ordered and tightly packed nature of the DRM is maintained.
Lossless Image Compression Using Burrows Wheeler Transform (Methods and Techniques)

The burrows-wheeler transform (BWT) is a combinatorial algorithm originally created for text compression such as bzip2, and that has been recently applied to image compression field. This paper focuses on the impact of compression scheme based on the combinatorial transform on high-level resolution medical images. It overviews the original scheme and some improvements that have been develop in post processing of BWT in this context. The performances of these techniques are compared and discussed. Moreover, considerations on the imagepsilas sizes and data formats are also considered.
Itemset Mining in Noisy Contexts: A Hybrid Approach

A general task in data mining consists in finding all rectangles of 1 in a boolean matrix in which the order of the rows and columns is not important. However, most algorithms which have been developed to solve this task are unable to be adapted to real data that may contain noise. The effect of the noise is to shatter relevant item sets into a set of small irrelevant item sets, yielding an explosion in the number of resulting item sets. Recent algorithms that have been proposed to address this problem suffer from various limitations such as the large number of results, the execution time which remains very high and the inability to discover overlapping patterns. In this work, we propose a new heuristic approach based on a graph algorithm for the efficient extraction of item set patterns in noisy binary contexts. This method is based on maximal flow/minimal cut algorithms to find dense sub graphs of 1 in the graph associated to the boolean data matrix. To evaluate our approach, various experiments have been performed on both synthetic data and real datasets from bioinformatic applications. We have compared our results on various synthetic datasets and a gene-expression data with various methods and demontrate that i) our method is quite efficient ii) the patterns extracted by our algorithm have a better quality than the other methods.
Image Retrieval using Hash Code and Relevance Feedback Technique

Scalable image search based on similarity matching has been an active topic in recent years. Currently use of web has been increased significantly for information recovery and it is challenging to extract the relevance information in less time. Sometime Search engine does not able to recognize user search aim behind query. For this the State-of-the-art systems usually use hashing approaches to embed high-dimensional image features into given Hamming space, where result search may be executed in real time based on Hamming distance of compact binary hash codes. There are various methods based on account of query adaptive method to recover the image searching. But these methods fail to satisfy user’s requirement. Therefore in addition of the query adaptive method with relevance feedback can produce better results. Relevance feedback is the method of automatically changing the current query with the information feedback by the user about the relevance of previously recovered images. Analysis on a Flickr image dataset and relevance feedback for given output illustrates perfect improvements from our projected approach.
Superoxide Enhances Ca2+ Entry Through L-Type Channels in the Renal Afferent Arteriole

Reactive oxygen species regulate cardiovascular and renal function in health and disease. Superoxide participates in acute calcium signaling in afferent arterioles and renal vasoconstriction produced by angiotensin II, endothelin, thromboxane, and pressure-induced myogenic tone. Known mechanisms by which superoxide acts include quenching of nitric oxide and increased ADP ribosyl cyclase/ryanodine-mediated calcium mobilization. The effect(s) of superoxide on other calcium signaling pathways in the renal microcirculation is poorly understood. The present experiments examined the acute effect of superoxide generated by paraquat on calcium entry pathways in isolated rat afferent arterioles. The peak increase in cytosolic calcium concentration caused by KCl (40 mmol/L) was 99±14 nmol/L. The response to this membrane depolarization was mediated exclusively by L-type channels because it was abolished by nifedipine but was unaffected by the T-type channel blocker mibefradil. Paraquat increased superoxide production (dihydroethidium fluorescence), tripled the peak response to KCl to 314±68 nmol/L (P<0.001) and doubled the plateau response. These effects were abolished by tempol and nitroblue tetrazolium, but not by catalase, confirming actions of superoxide and not of hydrogen peroxide. Unaffected by paraquat and superoxide was calcium entry through store-operated calcium channels activated by thapsigargin-induced calcium depletion of sarcoplasmic reticular stores. Also unresponsive to paraquat was ryanodine receptor–mediated calcium-induced calcium release from the sarcoplasmic reticulum. Our results provide new evidence that superoxide enhances calcium entry through L-type channels activated by membrane depolarization in rat cortical afferent arterioles, without affecting calcium entry through store-operated entry or ryanodine receptor–mediated calcium mobilization.
A sub-0.5V, 1.5µW rail-to-rail constant gm opamp and its filter application

A low voltage, low power opamp utilizing normal NMOS and native transistor differential pairs as the input stage was implemented in a conventional 0. 18μm CMOS process. The undesired conduction path of the native transistor differential pair at high input common-mode voltages was eliminated using an improved current control stage such that a supply voltage of <;0.5V was achieved. The gm variations of the opamp input stage were measured to be <;6.9% for VDD ranging from 0.45V to 1V with a total current consumption of ~3μA. A Sallen-Key low-pass biquad filter with a cut-off frequency at 7.3kHz was designed based on the proposed opamp. For a 0.5V supply, a THD of <;-57dB at 1.25kHz was measured for a 400mVP-P output swing.
Constrained real-time model-predictive reference trajectory planning for rotary cranes

Two-degree-of-freedom control (2DOF), i. e. a combination of feedforward and feedback control, can give good tracking control performance on many large-scale robotic systems such as cranes. Every 2DOF control system needs a reference trajectory. The generation of this reference trajectory is crucial: Too slow reference trajectories decrease system performance, while too aggressive trajectories can easily violate state or input constraints. This degrades tracking performance and can even cause accidents. In case of operator-controlled rotary cranes, the trajectory generation needs to be done in real-time which limits the number of available algorithms. In this contribution, a real-time repetitive optimal control trajectory planner for rotary cranes is presented. It takes input and state constraints into account. A fallback-strategy is provided in case no optimal control solution is found. The results are validated with simulations as well as measurements on a Liebherr LHM 420 mobile harbour crane.
Acceptability and challenges of implementing voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) in rural Zimbabwe: evidence from the Regai Dzive Shiri Project

Abstract Voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) is an important component of HIV prevention and care. Little research exists on its acceptability and feasibility in rural settings. This paper examines the acceptability and feasibility of providing VCT using data from two sub-studies: (1) client-initiated VCT provided in rural health centres (RHCs) and (2) researcher-initiated VCT provided in a non-clinic community setting. Nurses provided client-initiated VCT in 39 RHCs in three Zimbabwean provinces (2004–2007). Demographic data and HIV status were collected. Qualitative data were also collected to assess rural communities’ impressions of services. In a second study in 2007, VCT was offered to participants in a population-based HIV prevalence survey. Quantitative data from clinic-based VCT show that of 3585 clients aged ≥18, 79.4% (95% CI: 78.0–80.7%) were female; young people (aged 18–24) comprised 21.1%. Overall, 32.9% (95% CI: 31.4–34.5%) tested HIV positive. Young people were less likely to be HIV positive 13.5% (95% CI: 11.1–16.1%) vs. 38.1% (95% CI: 36.3–39.9%). In the second study conducted in a non-clinic setting, 27.0% (n=1368/5052) of participants opted to test. Young people were as likely to test as adults (27.3% vs. 26.9%) and an equal proportion of men and women tested. Overall during the second survey, 18.8% (95% CI: 16.7–21.0%) of participants tested positive (youth = 8.4% (95% CI: 6.4–10.7%); adults = 29.1% (95% CI: 25.7–32.7%)). Qualitative data, unique to clinics only, suggested that adults identify RHCs as acceptable VCT sites, whereas young people expressed reservations around these venues. Males reported considering VCT only after becoming ill. While VCT offered through RHCs is acceptable to women, it seems that men and youth are less comfortable with this venue. When VCT was offered in a non-clinic setting, numbers of men and women testing were similar. These data suggest that it may be possible to improve testing uptake in rural communities using non-clinic settings.
Effects on blood pressure and autonomic nervous system function of a 12‐week exercise or exercise plus DASH‐diet intervention in individuals with elevated blood pressure

Aim: Hypertension is related to abnormalities in autonomic nervous system (ANS) function, with increased sympathetic output and decreased parasympathetic tone. Lifestyle interventions are the first line of treatment in hypertension, and decreased blood pressure (BP) effects may be related to changes in ANS function. Using heart rate recovery (HRR) from exercise as an index of parasympathetic tone and plasma noradrenaline as an index of sympathetic tone, we investigated the effects of lifestyle interventions on ANS function in patients with elevated BP.
Respiratory rate variability in sleeping adults without obstructive sleep apnea

Characterizing respiratory rate variability (RRV) in humans during sleep is challenging, since it requires the analysis of respiratory signals over a period of several hours. These signals are easily distorted by movement and volitional inputs. We applied the method of spectral analysis to the nasal pressure transducer signal in 38 adults with no obstructive sleep apnea, defined by an apnea‐hypopnea index <5, who underwent all‐night polysomnography (PSG). Our aim was to detect and quantitate RRV during the various sleep stages, including wakefulness. The nasal pressure transducer signal was acquired at 100 Hz and consecutive frequency spectra were generated for the length of the PSG with the Fast Fourier Transform. For each spectrum, we computed the amplitude ratio of the first harmonic peak to the zero frequency peak (H1/DC), and defined as RRV as (100 − H1/DC) %. RRV was greater during wakefulness compared to any sleep stage, including rapid‐eye‐movement. Furthermore, RRV correlated with the depth of sleep, being lowest during N3. Patients spent most their sleep time supine, but we found no correlation between RRV and body position. There was a correlation between respiratory rate and sleep stage, being greater in wakefulness than in any sleep stage. We conclude that RRV varies according to sleep stage. Moreover, spectral analysis of nasal pressure signal appears to provide a valid measure of RRV during sleep. It remains to be seen if the method can differentiate normal from pathological sleep patterns.
PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF IMAGE SEGMENTATION TECHNIQUES USED FOR QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF MEMBRANE

This paper presents the analysis and evaluation of different image segmentation techniques on the application of checking quality of membrane filter used for bacteria filtration. Quality of the membrane filter is determined by checking the uniformity of pores which can be done by calculating the area of pores in the filter. The performance of active contour method and mean shift algorithm used for segmentation is compared and evaluated for the area extraction. The simulation results exhibit the better performance of mean shift algorithm and helps in extracting the area of the pores more efficiently.
Phenotype of Microsatellite-Stable Colorectal Carcinomas With CpG Island Methylation

A distinctive pathway of colorectal carcinogenesis termed CpG island methylator phenotype is characterized by extensive DNA methylation in colorectal carcinoma (CRC) cells but not in nonneoplastic mucosa. Many CRCs with CpG island methylator phenotype have methylation of the hMLH1 mismatch repair gene and consequently have high levels of microsatellite instability (MSI-H). MSI-H confers distinctive clinical-pathologic features, but the phenotype of microsatellite-stable CRC with methylation has not been characterized in detail. We therefore examined the clinical-pathologic features of 87 sporadic microsatellite-stable CRCs that had been characterized for methylation of p16, p14, MGMT, hMLH1, MINT1, MINT2, and MINT31. Regression analyses of each clinical-pathologic characteristic were run against the individual and aggregated methylation markers to evaluate and quantify associations. CpG island methylation was associated with right-sided carcinoma (odds ratio = 6.9, P = 0.03). Paucity of gland formation, indicating poor differentiation, was strongly associated with methylation (beta = −42.6, P = 0.0008), as were presence of cribriform glands (beta = 34.3, P = 0.02) and lack of corkscrew/serrated glandular pattern (beta = −32.5, P = 0.03). Our epigenotype-phenotype correlation study shows that microsatellite-stable CRC with CpG island methylation have a distinctive pathologic phenotype with both similarities to and differences from MSI-H tumors.
The U . S . Military Unmanned Aerial Vehicle ( UAV ) Experience : Evidence-Based Human Systems Integration Lessons Learned

Background: This study was a 10-year cross sectional analysis of human factors in U.S. military UAV mishaps. Methods: Class A-C UAV mishap reports were reviewed and human factors coded using the Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS). HFACS codes were linked to human systems integration (HSI) domains. Binary logistic regression was used to create models predicting operator error. Results: /221 (60.2%) UAV mishaps involved human factors. Predictors of operator error were technological environment and cognitive factors in the Air Force (P < 0.010), organizational process, psycho-behavioral factors, and crew resource management in the Army (P < 0.001), and organizational process, inadequate supervision, planned inappropriate operations, physical and technological environments, and cognitive and psycho-behavioral factors in the Navy (P < 0.025). The frequency of specific types of unsafe acts differed between the services with skill-based errors more common in the Air Force (P = 0.001) and violations in the Army (P = 0.016). HSI failures associated with operator error involved the human factors (functional and cognitive interfaces) and personnel domains in the Air Force (P < 0.001), the human factors (cooperational, cognitive, and physical interfaces) and training domains in the Army (P < 0.001), and the human factors (environmental, cooperational, organizational, and cognitive interfaces) and training domains in the Navy (P < 0.001). Conclusion: Recurring latent failures at the organizational, supervisory, and preconditions levels contributed to more than half of UAV mishaps. The patterns of latent failures and unsafe acts differed between the services. HSI issues pertaining to the human factors domain were common to all services. Tvaryanas, A.P.; Thompson, W.T. ; Constable, S.H. (2005) The U.S. Military Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Experience: Evidence-Based Human Systems Integration Lessons Learned. In Strategies to Maintain Combat Readiness during Extended Deployments – A Human Systems Approach (pp. 5-1 – 5-24). Meeting Proceedings RTO-MP-HFM-124, Paper 5. Neuilly-sur-Seine, France: RTO. Available from: http://www.rto. nato.int/abstracts.asp. The U.S. Military Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Experience: Evidence-Based Human Systems Integration Lessons Learned 5 2 RTO-MP-HFM-124 1.0 INTRODUCTION
Dietary factors influencing zinc absorption.

Marginal zinc deficiency and suboptimal zinc status have been recognized in many groups of the population in both less developed and industrialized countries. Although the cause in some cases may be inadequate dietary intake of zinc, inhibitors of zinc absorption are most likely the most common causative factor. Phytate, which is present in staple foods like cereals, corn and rice, has a strong negative effect on zinc absorption from composite meals. Inositol hexaphosphates and pentaphosphates are the phytate forms that exert these negative effects, whereas the lower phosphates have no or little effect on zinc absorption. The removal or reduction of phytate by enzyme (phytase) treatment, precipitation methods, germination, fermentation or plant breeding/genetic engineering markedly improves zinc absorption. Iron can have a negative effect on zinc absorption, if given together in a supplement, whereas no effect is observed when the same amounts are present in a meal as fortificants. Cadmium, which is increasing in the environment, also inhibits zinc absorption. The amount of protein in a meal has a positive effect on zinc absorption, but individual proteins may act differently; e.g., casein has a modest inhibitory effect of zinc absorption compared with other protein sources. Amino acids, such as histidine and methionine, and other low-molecular-weight ions, such as EDTA and organic acids (e.g., citrate), are known to have a positive effect on zinc absorption and have been used for zinc supplements. Knowledge about dietary factors that inhibit zinc absorption and about ways to overcome or remove these factors is essential when designing strategies to improve the zinc nutrition of vulnerable groups.