Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Evaluation by Elderly People Living at Home of the Prepared Meals Distributed by Their Municipality – A Study With Focus on the Swedish Context

Prepared meals distributed by municipalities is a service to elderly people, or persons with health related impairments, who live in their own home, have difficulties preparing their own food and cannot meet their food requirements in any other way. This study aimed to provide a brief picture of how elderly people living at home perceive the food they receive through their municipal food service and what is important to them. The data was collected using questionnaires. 274 out of 276 participants answered the questionnaire (n=173 women 62% and n=101 man 37%). The data was analyzed using Principal Component Analysis (PCA). The results showed that the elderly persons receiving meals through the service were often satisfied, especially with the size of the portions and the delivery time. Those who had been using the food delivery service for a longer time were not satisfied with the alternative dishes they were been offered. There was no significant difference between the views of either gender. Further, those who were receiving special food were, in general, unsatisfied with the meals delivered. Development of the food distribution service by systematic quality insurance and interactive knowledge exchange between the producers and consumers seems to be a way to promote a more holistic and individual adjusted service. Evaluation of the municipal FD service is a powerful tool that can contribute to the development of this service. The food service can be improved and consequently even the quality of life and health of its receivers. The present survey should be revisited and developed in order to detect differences between genders.
β-Amyloid1–42 Peptide Directly Modulates Nicotinic Receptors in the Rat Hippocampal Slice

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a human neurological disorder characterized by an increasing loss of cognitive function and the presence of extracellular neuritic plaques composed of the beta-amyloid peptide (Abeta(1-42)). However, the link between these molecular correlates of AD and the loss of cognitive function has not been established. The pathology associated with AD includes the loss of basal forebrain cholinergic neurons, presynaptic terminals in the neocortex and hippocampus, and a decrease in the total amount of neuronal nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs). This leads to the hypothesis that failure in the cholinergic system underlies the dementia seen in AD. Cognitive performance has been linked to nAChR function in the hippocampus, and the interneurons expressing nAChRs coordinate the activity of large numbers of principal cells and therefore have a powerful role in the regulation of hippocampal activity. We have found that Abeta(1-42) inhibits whole-cell and single-channel nicotinic currents from rat hippocampal interneurons by directly blocking the postsynaptic nAChR channels at concentrations as low as 100 nm. This inhibition appears specific for peptide sequence and neuronal nAChRs, and the magnitude of Abeta(1-42) inhibition is dependent on the nAChR channel subtype expressed. Thus, chronic inhibition of cholinergic signaling by Abeta(1-42) could contribute to the cognitive deficits associated with AD.
A Survey of Scheduling Policies in Cloud Computing Environment

Cloud computing has created a new perception of computation with all its features and characteristics. With its profound computational capabilities, it provides a platform for solving complex computational problems. Cloud computing deals with different kinds of virtualized resources and scheduling plays a vital role in cloud computing. This paper focuses on that various scheduling policies with their features and utility. We give an elaborate idea of cloud computing and elaborate the advantages and disadvantages of various scheduling policies. Keywords— Cloud Computing, Grid Computing, Data centre, Virtualization, Analytic Hierarchy process (AHP) model, Quality of Service (QoS), Gang Scheduling, Market Oriented Scheduling
The LISA optimal sensitivity

The multiple Doppler readouts available on the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) permit simultaneous formation of several interferometric observables. All these observables are independent of laser frequency fluctuations and have different couplings to gravitational waves and to the various LISA instrumental noises. Within the functional space of interferometric combinations LISA will be able to synthesize, we have identified a triplet of interferometric combinations that show optimally combined sensitivity. As an application of the method, we computed the sensitivity improvement for sinusoidal sources in the nominal, equal-arm LISA configuration. In the part of the Fourier band where the period of the wave is longer than the typical light travel-time across LISA, the sensitivity gain over a single Michelson interferometer is equal to $\sqrt{2}$. In the mid-band region, where the LISA Michelson combination has its best sensitivity, the improvement over the Michelson sensitivity is slightly better than $\sqrt{2}$, and the frequency band of best sensitivity is broadened. For frequencies greater than the reciprocal of the light travel-time, the sensitivity improvement is oscillatory and $\sim \sqrt{3}$, but can be greater than $\sqrt{3}$ near frequencies that are integer multiples of the inverse of the one-way light travel-time in the LISA arm.
Fixation, Counting, and Manipulation of Heterotrophic Nanoflagellates

Quantitative effects of several fixatives on heterotrophic nanoflagellates (HNAN) and phototrophic nanoflagellates (PNAN) were investigated by hemacytometer and epifluorescence counting techniques. Counts of Monas sp. cultures before and after fixation with unbuffered 0.3% glutaraldehyde and 5% formaldehyde showed no loss of cells during fixation, and cell concentrations remained constant for several weeks after fixation. Buffering of fixatives with borax caused severe losses, up to 100% within 2 h. Field samples from Lake Vechten showed no decline of HNAN and total nanoflagellate concentrations for at least 1 week after fixation with 5% formaldehyde and with 1% glutaraldehyde. With 1% glutaraldehyde, the chlorophyll autofluorescence of PNAN was much brighter than with 5% formaldehyde, although it was lost after a few days and thus limited the storage time of samples. However, when primulin-stained slides were prepared soon after fixation and stored at −30°C, the loss of autofluorescence was prevented and PNAN and HNAN concentrations were stable for at least 16 weeks. Effects of filtration and centrifugation on HNAN were also studied. Filtration vacuum could not exceed 3 kPa since 10 kPa already caused losses of 15 to 20%. Similar losses were caused by centrifugation, even at low speed (500 × g).
Curative effect of earthworm extract, Lampito mauritii (Kinberg) on inflammation, oxidation and blood profiles in rats.

Information is available on the therapeutic properties of different natural herbal products and formulations and very few studies have been made on the sources from animal origin, especially earthworms. Therefore our aim was to investigate, in vivo, the potential of Lampito mauritii as anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidative agent and further its positive influence on blood profiles of inflamed rats. Male albino Wistar rats were used for the study. The inflammation of subcutaneous dorsal granuloma pouch was induced by injecting 25 ml of sterile air, followed by injection of 0.5 ml of turpentine oil for 7 days. Rats were treated with earthworm extract (EE) at three different doses (50, 100 and 200 mg/kg body weight) orally. The anti-inflammatory property of EE was studied by weighing the granuloma pouch and the anti-oxidant property of EE was studied by assessing levels of reduced glutathione (GSH), glutathione peroxidase (GPx), catalase (CAT), superoxide dismutase (SOD) and thio barbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS). The haematological studies included differential cell counts and haemoglobin content along with measurements of serum protein albumin, cholesterol and alkaline phosphatase in inflamed rats. The administration of indomethacin (10 mg/kg) or different doses of earthworm extract (50, 100 and 200 mg/kg), reduced inflammation, normalized activity of glutathione peroxidase, catalase, superoxide dismutase, reduced glutathione and thio barbituric acid reactive substances in liver and normalized the blood cell count and haemoglobin content. The serum protein, albumin, cholesterol and alkaline phosphatases (ALP) reached the normal level in inflamed rats after treatment. Significant results were obtained in 200 mg/kg of earthworm extract/kg body weight administered rats. The potential of anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant nature of earthworm extract can be attributed to the presence of phenolic substances in the earthworm tissue. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Aging‐dependent changes in the effect of daily melatonin supplementation on rat metabolic and behavioral responses

Pineal melatonin secretion has been reported to commonly decrease with aging, whereas intra‐abdominal adiposity, plasma insulin and plasma leptin levels tend to increase. We recently demonstrated that daily melatonin administration starting at middle age suppressed male rat intra‐abdominal fat, plasma leptin and plasma insulin to youthful levels, suggesting that aging‐related changes in pineal melatonin secretion and in energy regulation may be functionally related. Accordingly, we have now investigated the effects of daily melatonin treatment on energy regulation in young versus middle‐aged male Sprague–Dawley rats. Addition of melatonin to the drinking water (0.2 μg/mL) produced nocturnal and diurnal plasma melatonin concentrations in middle‐aged rats (12 months) equivalent to those of young adult (5 months) rats. Administration of this melatonin dosage every day for 10 wk starting at 10 months of age suppressed (P<0.01) relative intra‐abdominal fat, non‐fasted plasma insulin and plasma leptin by 27, 39, and 51%, respectively (vs. vehicle‐treated controls). In contrast, administration of melatonin for 10 wk starting at 3 months of age did not significantly alter (P>0.10) any of these parameters. The melatonin administration stimulated (102%, P<0.001) behavioral responsiveness of the middle‐aged rats in a test of response to novelty, restoring youthful levels, but did not significantly alter behavioral responsiveness of the young rats. These results suggest that suppression of intra‐abdominal adiposity and plasma leptin and insulin levels and stimulation of behavioral responsiveness in response to daily exogenous melatonin begins at middle age, coincident with and likely dependent upon the aging‐associated decline in endogenous pineal melatonin secretion. These results further suggest that appropriate melatonin supplementation may potentially provide therapy or prophylaxis not only for the insulin resistance, increased intra‐abdominal fat and resulting pathologies that occur with aging, but also for some aging‐associated behavioral changes.
Principles of ad hoc networking

Principles of Ad Hoc Networking presents a systematic introduction to the fundamentals of ad hoc networks. An ad-hoc network is a small network, especially one with wireless or temporary plug-in connections. Typically, some of the network devices are part of the network only for the duration of a communications session or, in the case of mobile or portable devices, while in some close proximity to the rest of the network. These networks can range from small and static systems with constrained power resources to larger-scale dynamic and mobile environments. Wireless ad hoc networks facilitate numerous and diverse applications for establishing survivable dynamic systems in emergency and rescue operations, disaster relief and intelligent home settings. Principles of Ad Hoc Networking: Introduces the essential characteristics of ad hoc networks such as: physical layer, medium access control, Bluetooth discovery and network formation, wireless network programming and protocols. Explains the crucial components involved in ad-hoc networks in detail with numerous exercises to aid understanding. Offers key results and merges practical methodologies with mathematical considerations. Principles of Ad Hoc Networking will prove essential reading for graduate students in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Applied Mathematics and Physics as well as researchers in the field of ad hoc networking, professionals in wireless telecoms, and networking system developers. Check out www.scs. carleton.ca/~barbeau/pahn/index.htm for further reading, sample chapters, a bibliography and lecture slides!
A Virtual Measurement Approach for Robust Planar Tracking

This thesis studies the classical problem of planar tracking. It requires the real-time estimation of the position of an object which is moving onto a plane, using noisy measurements of range and direction. A tracking algorithm may be used in several scientific and technological fields, such as aerospace, bioengineering, and robotics, to cite a few. Moreover, it is considered as a challenging problem by the system identification community and often used as benchmark for checking general nonlinear filtering methods. Because of its relevance, a great amount of literature is dedicated to planar tracking and lots of solutions have been developed using different approaches to dealt with the nonlinearity of measurements, which constitutes the main difficulty to be addressed. The classical strategy consists on applying a linear Kalman filter to the linearized system. This often causes divergence and inconsistency. As a consequence, research is moving toward methods able to avoid linearization. The approach here proposed is based on the idea of considering, as system output, a vector of “virtual” measurements directly obtained from the actual ones. In this way, the measurement map is split into the sum of a linear time-varying transformation of the state and an uncorrelated white noise process, which is generally nongaussian. The resulting model is amenable for applying standard linear and polynomial Kalman-like algorithms, avoiding any linearization procedure of the measurement map. The proposed algorithms are checked through numerical simulations which show improvements with respect to the existing methods in terms of robustness and computational complexity.
Liberalización comercial agrícola con costos de transporte y transacción elevados: evidencia para América Latina

Resumen En este documento, se reune evidencia sugiriendo que, tanto la magnitud como la naturaleza de los efectos de la liberalizacion comercial del sector agricola en America Latina, dependen crucialmente de los costos de transporte y de transaccion asociados a la ubicacion de compradores y proveedores en el espacio, y que aquellos afectan de forma diferente a los productores en funcion de su escala de produccion. Por un lado, se constata que, para los productos agropecuarios, los costos de transporte representan una proporcion no despreciable del valor de los flujos comerciales externos, y superior en muchos casos al peso de los aranceles. Por otro, la deficiente infraestructura vial en muchos paises de la region conlleva costos de transporte internos significativos y, por ende, para una buena parte de los agricultores, los canales de comercializacion son los regionales, cuando no los locales. Asimismo, pareciera que las barreras relacionadas con el costo de obtener informacion sobre mercados, buscar clientes y negociar contratos son por lo menos tan relevantes como las barreras impuestas por los costos de transporte. Ambas son proporcionalmente mas importantes para la pequena agricultura familiar y explican decisiones aparentemente ineficientes, como la inelasticidad de la oferta frente a variaciones en los precios u otros incentivos de mercado""
In vivo Release of Lectins from the Green Alga Ulva fasciata

The green alga Ulva fasciata Delile (Ulvaceae), after thawing from storage at −20oC, has been used to study the in vivo biosynthesis and release of lectins. The alga was made to resume viable growth by immersion in a PBS buffer, pH 7.4, containing 0.01% w/v sodium azide and irradiating with a halophosphate lamp. The growing alga readily took up 14C leucine, when this was added to the buffer, as seen by a decrease in a sample count rate of ~ 8000 cpm over a period of twenty minutes. The transfer of the radioactivity fed algae into fresh PBS buffer resulted in 14C labeled proteins being subsequently released into solution. As well as observing changes in levels of radioactivity, the release of proteins was also monitored by UV absorption at 280 nm. Both techniques indicated an initial steady release over the first twelve hours, followed by a slower approach to a plateau value. Transfer of the algae that had undergone an initial period of protein release into a subsequent second and third volume of fresh PBS buffer produced similar UV absorption profiles, but the total quantities of material released were reduced. Identification of the released proteins was obtained from their ability to agglutinate red blood cells, which was inhibited by L-fucose, and their electrophoretic mobilities when compared with earlier isolated samples of the U. fasciata lectin. The reference lectin was obtained by affinity chromatography, following the selective precipitation of the water soluble algal proteins with ammonium sulfate. We postulate that the observed release profiles support the previously suggested concept that lectins have the ability to function as protection agents for living marine algae.
Finding a Stable Allocation in Polymatroid Intersection

The stable matching model of Gale and Shapley (1962) has been generalized in various directions such as matroid kernels due to Fleiner (2001) and stable allocations in bipartite networks due to Baiou and Balinski (2002). Unifying these generalizations, we introduce the concept of stable allocations in polymatroid intersection. Our framework includes both integer- and real-variable versions. The integer-variable version corresponds to a special case of the discrete-concave function model due to Eguchi, Fujishige, and Tamura (2003), who established the existence of a stable allocation by showing that a simple extension of the deferred acceptance algorithm of Gale and Shapley finds a stable allocation in pseudo-polynomial time. It has been open to develop a polynomial-time algorithm even for our special case. In this paper, we present the first strongly polynomial algorithm for finding a stable allocation in polymatroid intersection. To achieve this, we utilize the augmenting path technique for polymatroid intersection. In each iteration, the algorithm searches for an augmenting path by simulating a chain of proposes and rejects in the deferred acceptance algorithm. The running time of our algorithm is O(n3γ), where n and γ respectively denote the cardinality of the ground set and the time for computing the saturation and exchange capacities. This is as fast as the best known algorithm for the polymatroid intersection problem.
The impact of external donor support through the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief on the cost of red cell concentrate in Namibia, 2004-2011.

BACKGROUND External assistance can rapidly strengthen health programmes in developing countries, but such funding can also create sustainability challenges. From 2004-2011, the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) provided more than $ 8 million to the Blood Transfusion Service of Namibia (NAMBTS) for supplies, equipment, and staff salaries. This analysis describes the impact that support had on actual production costs and the unit prices charged for red cell concentrate (RCC) units issued to public sector hospitals. MATERIAL AND METHODS A costing system developed by NAMBTS to set public sector RCC unit prices was used to describe production costs and unit prices during the period of PEPFAR scale-up (2004-2009) and the 2 years in which PEPFAR support began to decline (2010-2011). Hypothetical production costs were estimated to illustrate differences had PEPFAR support not been available. RESULTS Between 2004-2006, NAMBTS sold 22,575 RCC units to public sector facilities. During this time, RCC unit prices exceeded per unit cost-recovery targets by between 40.3% (US$ 16.75 or N$ 109.86) and 168.3% (US$ 48.72 or N$ 333.28) per year. However, revenue surpluses dwindled between 2007 and 2011, the final year of the study period, when NAMBTS sold 20,382 RCC units to public facilities but lost US$23.31 (N$ 170.43) on each unit. DISCUSSION PEPFAR support allowed NAMBTS to leverage domestic cost-recovery revenue to rapidly increase blood collections and the distribution of RCC. However, external support kept production costs lower than they would have been without PEPFAR. If PEPFAR funds had not been available, RCC prices would have needed to increase by 20% per year to have met annual cost-recovery targets and funded the same level of investments as were made with PEPFAR support. Tracking the subsidising influence of external support can help blood services make strategic investments and plan for unit price increases as external funds are withdrawn.
Health and safety hazards in Northwest agriculture: setting an occupational research agenda.

BACKGROUND Agriculture is among the most hazardous occupations in the United States. Research can provide new insights about disease and injury and serve as the foundation for occupational health and safety policies. The determination of research priorities can be problematic. Public participation approaches offer opportunities to identify and integrate various perspectives. METHODS The agenda process was modeled on the NIOSH National Occupational Research Agenda. Center staff contacted representatives of producer groups, labor, health care, academia, and public agencies to participate in telephone interviews and a daylong workshop. RESULTS Twelve research priorities were identified: musculoskeletal disorders; respiratory disease; skin disease; traumatic injuries; chemical exposures; special populations at risk; social and economic foundations of workplace safety; risk communication barriers; diagnostic approaches; hazard control technology; intervention effectiveness; and surveillance research methods. CONCLUSIONS The agenda process engaged stakeholders in priority setting. The resulting document is a useful guide for occupational safety and health in agriculture.
Routing's algorithms and considerations

In routing, which is an important step in designing an IC, related nets should be connected together in the best way according to the design rules. The importance of routing is due to its effect on delay and noise specification of the design. An overview on routing is presented in this paper, which overall flow of the information are base on reference [3] and by comparing and competing in other research papers. In this paper a general routing flow is described by common algorithms used for routing, router and fabrication considerations, and also angled routing. It's shown routing does not need any complicated mathematics but based on a few algorithms that are common in different subjects which are discussed and explained. On the other hand the precise selection of heuristic estimations acts as a crucial factor in success of routing.