Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Osteoporosis Is Associated with Deteriorating Clinical Status in Adults with Cystic Fibrosis

Background Cystic fibrosis (CF) patients are in increased risk of osteoporosis. We aimed to determine the osteoporosis prevalence in an adult CF cohort and investigate calcium metabolic parameters and clinical status' association with bone mineral density evaluated by dual X-ray absorptiometry scan. Methods We performed a cross section database study of adults at a tertiary CF Center. Z scores were applied for patients < 50 years of age and T scores for patients > 50 years of age. Results One hundred twenty-five patients were included. Compared to nonosteoporotic patients, osteoporotic patients (15%) had significantly lower percent predicted forced expiratory volume in 1 second (ppFEV1), lower body mass index, higher frequency of CF-related diabetes and chronic lung infection, and higher high-sensitive C-reactive protein and glycated hemoglobin levels. Vitamin D was not associated with any outcome. In multivariate analyses, only ppFEV1 and female gender were independently associated with Z scores. Conclusions Osteoporosis in CF occurs with deteriorating clinical status while the role of calcium metabolism seems minor. Gender specific and dysglycemic impact on bone status should be investigated further.
Larvicidal Potential of Leaf Extracts and Purified Fraction Ocimum Gratissimum against Culex Quinquefasciatus Mosquito Larva

Purification and structural identificationof the mosquito larvicidal compounds present in Ocimum gratissimum leaf extracts against Culex quinquefasciatus mosquito larvae. The larvicidal potential of the aqueous, ethanol, ethtylacetate, n-hexane and purified fractions of O. gratissimum were tested against the early fourth and third instars larvae of C.quinquefasciatus Mosquito species. Larvicidal toxicity assay were performed using different concentrations and larval mortality was observed after 12 hr, 24 hr and 48 hr of treatment respectively. Thin layer and Column chromatography were used to purify the fraction with the highest larvicidal activity while FTIR and GC-MS were used for structural identification of the phytoconstituents. The result of phytochemical studies revealed the presence of sterols, flavonoids, alkaloids and saponins in O. gratissimum n-Hexane extract. The effective larvicidal activity was observed in O. gratissimum n-hexane extract against C. quinquefasciatus mosquito larvae with percentage mortality of 96% at 25ppm after 24hr whereas LC50 and LC90 2.57 and 2.52ppm respectively. Following the bioactivity-guided fractionation,the active constituent was found in Fraction three of O. gratissimum n-Hexane extract(F3) with percentage mortality of 100% at 100ppm after 24hr whereas LC50 and LC90 of (1.28 and 4.28ppm) respectively.Isolated from O. gratissimum n-Hexane fraction(F3) was characterized as caryophylleneoxide in band C by spectroscopic analyses. The Lethal concentration LC50 of the isolated caryophylleneoxide was 2.21ppm and with percentage mortality of 100%. These work showed that Caryophyllene oxides might be a potent larvicidal agent for mosquito control.
Aerobic exercise improves cardiorespiratory fitness but does not reduce blood pressure in prehypertensive African American women.

OBJECTIVE To determine the effectiveness of a 10-week aerobic exercise training intervention on blood pressure, cardiorespiratory fitness, and workload in African American women with prehypertension. DESIGN After we obtained informed consent and medical clearance, each participant underwent baseline measurements, an aerobic exercise-training regimen, and postintervention assessments. SETTING This investigation took place in Columbus, Ohio, on the campus of The Ohio State University. PARTICIPANTS Twelve sedentary African American women with prehypertension volunteered to participate. INTERVENTIONS Study participants trained three days per week for 30 minutes per session at an intensity of 70% maximal oxygen consumption (VO2 peak) for 10 weeks. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Blood pressure, cardiorespiratory fitness, and workload achieved. RESULTS Exercise training resulted in a significant improvement in cardiorespiratory fitness and workload capacity. However, no significant reductions in blood pressure were seen after the 10-week aerobic exercise period. CONCLUSIONS Ten weeks of 30 minutes of aerobic exercise, three times a week at 70% VO2 peak, is a sufficient stimulus to improve cardiorespiratory fitness and workload achieved. However, this exercise regimen was not adequate in eliciting a simultaneous reduction in systolic, diastolic, or mean arterial blood pressure in this cohort of prehypertensive African American women. Additional studies are needed to determine specific exercise protocols that would be effective in lowering blood pressure in various populations. These exercise protocols may vary across ethnicity, sex, and disease status.
Development of a criteria set and a structured interview for disorders of extreme stress (SIDES).

Data regarding the development of a structured interview measuring alterations that may accompany extreme stress are presented. A list of 27 criteria often seen in response to extreme trauma and not addressed by DSM-IV criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were generated based on a systematic review of the literature and a survey of 50 experts. A structured interview for disorders of extreme stress (SIDES) measuring the presence of these criteria was administered to 520 subjects as part of the DSM-IV PTSD field trials. Inter-rater reliability as measured by Kappa coefficients for lifetime Disorders of Extreme Stress was . 81. Internal consistency using coefficient alpha ranged from . 53 to . 96. Results indicate that the SIDES is a useful tool for investigation of response to extremes stress.
Entrepreneurial and Consumer Demand Theories for Commodity Spectra: Part I

1. Deference to the reader calls for a blueprint of the article's contents. Its contributions are of two distinct varieties. The first and prime contribution consists in the extension of existing analyses for finite numbers of commodities to the case of infinitely many. Hotelling and others have emphasized the desirability of stating the results of entrepreneurial and consumer demand theories for infinite numbers of goods. Apart from its utility in treating commodity groups embracing large, though not necessarily infinite, numbers of items, the economic properties of which shade from one member to the next, the extension is stamped with true intellectual concinnity. The finite theories are contained, as very special cases, in the infinite analyses. A more distinctly economic flavor breathes from the second species of offering. It includes propositions and economic tools novel even to the finite analyses. The theorem that an entrepreneur's derived demand functions for factors of production are stable in the sense of Hicks' extension of the classical definition is an example. ' Evolution of the inverse utility function (more properly functional), described in ? 2, is another. Unlike its counterpart, the inverse utility function is a function of prices. Economically, it is the negative of the maximum utility attainable by the consumer, income specified, when a stated price regime prevails in the competitive market. Noteworthy operational properties characterize the inverse utility function. Designate the consumer's budgetary limitation, prices constant and quantities varying, direct. Term it inverse when quantities remain constant and prices vary. Maximization of the utility function subject to the direct budgetary limitation results in individual consumer demand functions. Maxi-
Estimation of Age from Face Images

An important personal trait is human age, can be directly inferred by the different patterns appear on the face. The recently use topics are the computer-based age synthesis and estimation from faces and has the various applications such as in customer relationship management, biometrics, security control, cosmetology. Face recognition is challenging and interesting area in real time applications. An age estimation is the estimation of age from the face image with the exact age in year or the age range. In this paper we survey the complete age synthesis from face images techniques. Existing models, various algorithms, face images databases, protocols, techniques, future discussion are discussed in this paper.
Uveoretinitis Induced by the y-Subunit of Cyclic Guanosine Monophosphate Phosphodiesterase in Rats

Methods. Bovine Py was expressed in Escherichia coli cells and purified by fast protein liquid chromatography. Lewis rats were immunized by a single footpad injection of Py emulsified in complete Freund's adjuvant. Clinical and histopathologic changes in the eye and pineal gland were examined. Lymphocytes were prepared from the lymph nodes of rats with uveitis and transferred by intraperitoneal injection to naive recipient rats.
Conceptualising schools as a source of social capital for HIV affected children in southern Africa

Many AIDS-affected African children lack forms of adult support and guidance traditionally provided by families. There is growing policy attention to the role schools might play in caring for children in extreme adversity in ways that go far beyond traditional education. We use the concept of the “HIV competent school,” which incorporates bonding, bridging and linking social capital, to frame a selective review of the literature on school responses to HIV/AIDS in southern African countries, and an in-depth case study of indigenous school responses in eastern Zimbabwe. We call for greater attention to the ethic of care emerging from the interaction between AIDS-affected children and relevant peers and adults in the school setting and the way in which this is limited or enabled in particular social settings.
Foraging in a Complex World: From Individual Flight Performance to Collective Behavior in Bumblebees (Bombus Impatiens)

Foraging is a crucial and remarkably complex behavior that is key to survival. For social insects such as bumblebees, successful foraging depends on a combination of individual traits (e.g. physiological and biomechanical performance of individual workers) and collective behavioral strategies for regulating food intake at the colony level. Here, I use foraging behavior in bumblebees as a lens to explore how insects cope with challenging, natural environments, scaling from individual performance to group dynamics. First, I explore how bumblebee foragers cope with structural clutter, with particular emphasis on the allometry of maneuverability and flight performance (Chapter 1). Next, I investigate how the variable, turbulent wind flows that characterize natural environments affect flight stability (Chapter 2) and landing behavior (Chapter 3) of bumblebee foragers. Moving from the individual to the colony level, I then develop an automated, high throughput behavioral tracking system (Chapter 4) capable of following uniquely identified individuals in visually complex environments, and use this system to explore the distribution and regulation of foraging activity across entire bumblebee colonies (Chapter 5). Finally, I use this same tracking system to examine the effects of exposure to a common neonicotinoid pesticide (imidacloprid) encountered during foraging, and show that it disrupts aspects of social behavior and communication in bumblebee colonies (Chapter 6).
A Comparative Study between PCA and SOM for Plastic Surgery Face Recognition

: Now a day, people are using various advanced technologies to solve their real life problem; affordability and the speed with which these procedures can be performed are one of the reasons. Plastic surgery is an example of one of the advanced technologies, which is used to transform a person’s physical feature or rather appearance of various facial features (some time non-face features). In this paper we will explain how plastic surgery can affect the process of face recognition [1] [2] [3] and also describe two very popular face recognition techniques, PCA (Principal Component Analysis) and SOM (Self Organizing Map) for plastic surgery face recognition. We will also compare their performance. In case of a face recognition technique, we use database of face images where we can store face images of different expression, pose for the same person. Now for a given input image with different expression and pose the above two approaches PCA (Appearance based method) and SOM (Pattern recognition based) will work properly. Whereas, in case of plastic surgery face recognition, they may not give satisfactory result, but between these two techniques SOM is better than PCA and perform more accurately.
Mayfair Mei-hui Yang, Gifts, Favors and Banquets. The Art of Social Relationships in China

societe. La place laissee au developpement d'une economie non etatique a permis non seulement aux « nouveaux entrepreneurs » de s'enrichir mais aussi a une fraction de la bureaucratie de beneficier d'une position de rentier. Cette interpretation de la sphere bureaucratique dans F economie non etatique a pour le connaisseur de la Chine contemporaine un petit air de deja vu. II faut done en recommander la lecture a tous les adeptes de la « specificite chinoise ». Plus loin, Shaoguang Wang aborde le theme du declin du pouvoir central a travers F explosion des fonds extra-budgetaires qu'il met en perspective avec l'accroissement de F autonomic des provinces chinoises. Le montant de ces fonds depassent aujourd'hui le budget officiel de FEtat. Ces fonds destines a Forigine a donner aux entreprises et aux autorites locales une plus grande flexibilite dans leur gestion, sont aujourd'hui Fun des principaux vecteurs de F autonomic provinciale. Si, depuis longtemps, les sinologues insistent sur le role croissant des provinces, ce constat s'appuie ici sur des donnees chiffrees. D. L. Wank centre son analyse sur les relations entre entrepreneurs et bureaucrates dans la ville de Xiamen au Fujian. II decrit le passage de relations clientelistes a un « clientelisme symbiotique ». 11 definit cette nouvelle relation comme un type de clientelisme ou la dependance du client est grandement reduite du fait des ressources dont il dispose. Puis il passe en revue les differents moyens qu'ont les entrepreneurs pour influer sur les bureaucrates : donations, embauche de membres de la parente, partenariat. Cette etude, probablement Fune des meilleures du livre, eclaire aussi d'un jour nouveau l'affaiblissement du pouvoir central. « Having lost control over the most lucrative rewards and opportunities, the central state is less able to maintain the loyalty of officials and responsiveness of its bureaucracy » (p. 179).
Multi-Touch Tabletop System Using Infrared Image Recognition for User Position Identification

A tabletop system can facilitate multi-user collaboration in a variety of settings, including small meetings, group work, and education and training exercises. The ability to identify the users touching the table and their positions can promote collaborative work among participants, so methods have been studied that involve attaching sensors to the table, chairs, or to the users themselves. An effective method of recognizing user actions without placing a burden on the user would be some type of visual process, so the development of a method that processes multi-touch gestures by visual means is desired. This paper describes the development of a multi-touch tabletop system using infrared image recognition for user position identification and presents the results of touch-gesture recognition experiments and a system-usability evaluation. Using an inexpensive FTIR touch panel and infrared light, this system picks up the touch areas and the shadow area of the user’s hand by an infrared camera to establish an association between the hand and table touch points and estimate the position of the user touching the table. The multi-touch gestures prepared for this system include an operation to change the direction of an object to face the user and a copy operation in which two users generate duplicates of an object. The system-usability evaluation revealed that prior learning was easy and that system operations could be easily performed.
Intelligent intrusion detection in external communication systems for autonomous vehicles

ABSTRACT Self-driving vehicles are known to be vulnerable to different types of attacks due to the type of communication systems which are utilized in these vehicles. These vehicles are becoming more reliant on external communication through vehicular ad hoc networks. However, these networks contribute new threats to self-driving vehicles which lead to potentially significant problems in autonomous systems. These communication systems potentially open self-driving vehicles to malicious attacks like the common Sybil attacks, black hole, Denial of Service, wormhole attacks and grey hole attacks. In this paper, an intelligent protection mechanism is proposed, which was created to secure external communications for self-driving and semi-autonomous cars. The protection mechanism is based on the Proportional Overlapping Scores method, which allows to decrease the number of features found in the Kyoto benchmark dataset. This hybrid detection system uses Back Propagation neural networks to detect Denial of Service (DoS), a common type of attack in vehicular ad hoc networks. The results from our experiment revealed that the proposed intrusion detection has the ability to identify malicious vehicles in self-driving and even in semi-autonomous vehicles.
A broader understanding of care managers’ attitudes of advance care planning: A concurrent nested design

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES To examine barriers of advance care planning (ACP) experienced by care managers (CMs) through a mixed methods approach. A concurrent nested design was used to acquire a deeper understanding of ACP and to identify nuances between quantitative and qualitative data. BACKGROUND Past quantitative studies on providers have identified barriers related to time, culture, knowledge, responsibility and availability of legal documents. These barriers, and accompanying attitudes and feelings, have been taken at face value without rich qualitative data to identify under what conditions and to what extent a barrier impacts care. DESIGN A two-part multisite, mixed methods study was conducted using surveys and focus groups. METHODS Surveys were completed by 458 CMs at 10 Area Agencies on Aging and 62 participated in one of eight focus groups. Data were analysed using a concurrent nested design with individual data analysis and a merged data approach. RESULTS There were three main distinctions between the quantitative and qualitative data. First, while CMs reported on the survey that ACP was not too time consuming, focus group data revealed that time was an issue especially related to competing priorities. Second on the survey 60% of the CMS reported they had enough knowledge, but qualitative data revealed about more nuances. Last, the reported comfort levels in the quantitative data were less overt in the qualitative date where additional feelings and attitudes were revealed, for example, frustration with families, preferences for more physician involvement. CONCLUSIONS Care managers reported their attitudes about ACP, clarified through a rigorous mixed methods analysis. Care managers can successfully lead ACP discussions, but require further education, resources and team-based guidance. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE Advance care planning is essential for reducing emotional, social and financial burdens associated with healthcare decision-making, and CMs can positively impact ACP discussions when appropriately supported by the clinical community. The many nuances in the ACP process that we found illustrate the need for ongoing discussions, education and research on this important topic.
In vitro fungistatic activity of 36 traditional oriental medicines and their synergistic effect against Trichophyton rubrume

Objective: To investigate the fungistatic activity and synergistic effects of natural products and their constituents, including traditional oriental medicines (TOMs). Methods: Fungistatic activities of TOMs prepared by hot-water (115 °C) or ethanol (70%; 40 °C) extraction were determined by their minimum inhibitory concentration. To assess possible synergistic effects, minimum inhibitory concentrations of various combinations were evaluated. Results: By evaluating antifungal susceptibility of Trichophyton rubrum, which is a major causative fungus for several types of dermatophytosis, we confirmed that ethanol extracts were more active than hot-water extracts in 25 of the 36 TOMs, suggesting that the constituents with high hydrophobicity tend to contribute significantly to fungistatic activity. We selected four TOMs with high fungistatic activity, including Aucklandiae radix, Gentianae macrophyllae radix, Scutellariae radix, and Galla rhois, and their synergistic effects were investigated through the combination studies between TOMs or TOM-conventional drug terbinafine. In combinations between four TOMs, partial synergistic effects were observed in Aucklandiae radix–Galla rhois and Gentianae macrophyllae radix–Galla rhois combinations, as supported by the lowest fractional inhibitory concentration index value of 0.66 for both combinations. Furthermore, Galla rhois showed the strongest synergistic effect on growth inhibition of Trichophyton rubrum with a fractional inhibitory concentration index value of 0.50 in combination with terbinafine. Conclusions: Our findings indicate that the combination of TOMs and TOM-terbinafine may be effective on treatment for chronic and recurrent dermatophytosis by improving fungistatic activity and led to decrease systemic toxicity in clinical practice.
Large-scale mapping of bioactive peptides in structural and sequence space

Health-enhancing potential bioactive peptide (BP) has driven an interest in food proteins as well as in the development of predictive methods. Research in this area has been especially active to use them as components in functional foods. Apparently, BPs do not have a given biological function in the containing proteins and they do not evolve under independent evolutionary constraints. In this work we performed a large-scale mapping of BPs in sequence and structural space. Using well curated BP deposited in BIOPEP database, we searched for exact matches in non-redundant sequences databases. Proteins containing BPs, were used in fold-recognition methods to predict the corresponding folds and BPs occurrences were mapped. We found that fold distribution of BP occurrences possibly reflects sequence relative abundance in databases. However, we also found that proteins with 5 or more than 5 BP in their sequences correspond to well populated protein folds, called superfolds. Also, we found that in well populated superfamilies, BPs tend to adopt similar locations in the protein fold, suggesting the existence of hotspots. We think that our results could contribute to the development of new bioinformatics pipeline to improve BP detection.
Monitoring Passive Film Growth on Steel Using Fe-C Coated Long Period Grating Fiber Sensor

Fe-C coating is electroplated on the surface of a long period grating (LPG) optical fiber, and the growth of passive film on its surface is monitored through the change of transmitted spectrum. The test is performed in saturated calcium hydroxide solution for ~ 50 h, during which the passivation of the Fe-C coating is monitored with electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, and the change of the transmission spectrum of Fe-C coated LPG fiber is recorded with an optical spectrum analyzer (OSA). Results indicate that an increase is observed in open-circuit potential (OPC), passive film resistance, and transmission intensity while a decrease is present in passive film capacitance and resonant wavelength, all of which are associated with the growth of passive film. This Fe-C coated LPG optical sensor can be used to monitor the growth of passive film on steel in aqueous environment with varying sensitivity from 0.04 to 0.12 nm thickness increase corresponding to 1.0 nm decrease in the resonant wavelength.