Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
[Telephone versus face-to-face household interviews in the assessment of health behaviors and preventive practices].

OBJECTIVE This study examines the influence of the interview method (telephone or face-to-face in households) on the assessment of health behaviors and preventive practices. MATERIAL AND METHOD The same questionnaire was completed by two independent samples of the population aged 18-64 years living in the municipality of Madrid. One sample (n = 1,391 subjects) completed the questionnaire by telephone interview and the other (n = 739) by face-to-face interview in households. The results of the two samples for 28 variables related to anthropometry, physical activity, food consumption, tobacco and alcohol use, preventive practices and injuries were compared. RESULTS The telephone sample had a higher rate of failed contact (31.8% vs. 22.2%) but a greater degree of cooperation than the sample for the face-to-face interview (83.0% vs. 74.0%). In total, 19 of the 28 variables showed a relative variation of less than 10% between the two surveys; the differences found were between 10 and 20% for eight variables and were higher than 20% for one variable. Differences were statistically significant for only four variables (sedentary leisure time, consumption of vegetables, giving up smoking and cholesterol measurement), with a relative variation of 6.1% (p < 0.01), 10% (p < 0.001), 36.7% (p < 0.01) and 8.6% (p < 0.01), respectively. The total cost of the telephone interview was half that of the face-to-face household interview. CONCLUSIONS The results of both surveys were very similar. Because of its lower cost, the telephone interview is a good option in public health research when data collection by interview is required.
The Impact of Age at Time of Ileal Pouch Anal Anastomosis on Short and Long-Term Outcomes in Adults.

Background There is limited knowledge on ileal pouch anal anastomosis (IPAA) function when performed on patients older than age 50 years. The aim of this study was to determine if surgery on those older than age 50 years impacts short-term complications or long-term function. Methods A retrospective review of all patients undergoing IPAA for chronic ulcerative colitis at a single tertiary referral center between 2002 and 2013 was conducted. Short-term postoperative complications and long-term function and quality of life were analyzed according to age at pouch formation (age >50 vs age ≤50 years). Results A total of 911 patients who underwent IPAA (542 male) were included, with 178 patients (20%) age >50 years and 733 (80%) ≤50 years. Patients >50 years had higher American Society of Anesthesiology score (ASA) scores and increased rates of obesity and dysplasia or cancer at the time of colectomy, and were less often on steroids (all P < 0.01). Over a median follow-up of 5 years, older patients reported increased daytime incontinence (60% vs 37%, P < 0.01) and pad usage (34% vs 11%, P < 0.01) at up to 1.5 years post-IPAA, after which time the groups became similar. Other functional outcomes, including pouch failure and quality of life, were similar between the 2 groups across the follow-up periods. Conclusion Performing an IPAA on carefully selected patients older than age 50 years has minor, transient differences in pouch function compared with patients younger than age 50 years. Assuming appropriate patient selection, IPAA should continue to be offered to older patients without increased risk of compromised function or of pouch failure.
The Dynamic DNA Demethylation during Postnatal Neuronal Development and Neural Stem Cell Differentiation

Background DNA demethylation, the conversion of 5-methylcytosine (5mC) to 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC), 5-formylcytosine (5fC), and 5-carboxylcytosine (5caC), plays important roles in diverse biological processes and multiple diseases by regulating gene expression. Methods In this study, utilizing DNA dot blot, immunofluorescence staining, and qRT-PCR, we studied the expression pattern of Tets, the enzymes governing DNA demethylation, and the levels of 5hmC, 5fC, and 5caC during the postnatal neuronal development of mice. Results It was found that 5hmC, 5fC, and 5caC were highly enriched in multiple brain regions and aNSCs and displayed temporal and spatial patterns during postnatal neuronal development and the differentiation of aNSCs. Consistently, the expression of Tets also exhibited temporal and spatial patterns. Conclusion DNA demethylation displayed dynamic features during postnatal neuronal development and the differentiation of aNSCs of mice, which could contribute to appropriate gene expression.
Vertical distribution and morphology of small pelagic fish schools in the Gulf of California

In the Gulf of California, small pelagic fish like sardines, anchovies and mackerels are of ecological and economic importance. A particular feature of these species is their tendency to form schools, which can be described by their size, acoustic density, position and location in the water column. The aim of this work was to analyse the characteristics of the Gulf of California small pelagic schools and their dynamics in the water column in two different seasons during the same year. The information from two acoustic surveys was obtained with a scientific echosounder SIMRAD EK60 (split beam, 38 kHz) during the winter (February) and spring (May and June) 2014. To analyse the degree of grouping in the schools, echo-integration by shoal was done using Movies+ post-processing software, obtaining variables corresponding to morphological, energetic and bathymetric aspects of the detected schools. The analysis allowed the recognition of 301 acoustic schools, the majority of which (81 %) were observed during winter, while 67 % were detected at night, and 23 % during twilight periods. Spring schools showed higher mean volume backscattering strength (Sv, dB re 1 m−1) and a more compact morphology (lower length, height and area) compared to winter detections; only during night-time similar conditions of acoustic energy and morphology were observed in both seasons. The school vertical distribution in winter was similar to that commonly reported for small pelagic fish for other regions, where a great number of schools is observed at depth during the day. Winter detections were also observed at greater depths. On the other hand, during the spring, the diurnal schools showed higher values of Sv, nevertheless, in this season there seems to be no day and night differences between vertical distribution of the schools.
Multi-task Learning of Cascaded CNN for Facial Attribute Classification

Recently, facial attribute classification (FAC) has attracted significant attention in the computer vision community. Great progress has been made along with the availability of challenging FAC datasets. However, conventional FAC methods usually firstly pre-process the input images (i.e., perform face detection and alignment) and then predict facial attributes. These methods ignore the inherent dependencies among these tasks (i.e., face detection, facial landmark localization and FAC). Moreover, some methods using convolutional neural network are trained based on the fixed loss weights without considering the differences between facial attributes. In order to address the above problems, we propose a novel multi-task learning of cascaded convolutional neural network method, termed MCFA, for predicting multiple facial attributes simultaneously. Specifically, the proposed method takes advantage of three cascaded sub-networks (i.e., S_Net, M_Net and L_Net corresponding to the neural networks under different scales) to jointly train multiple tasks in a coarse-to-fine manner, which can achieve end-to-end optimization. Furthermore, the proposed method automatically assigns the loss weight to each facial attribute based on a novel dynamic weighting scheme, thus making the proposed method concentrate on predicting the more difficult facial attributes. Experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms several state-of-the-art FAC methods on the challenging CelebA and LFWA datasets.
Annotator Expertise and Information Quality in Annotation-based Retrieval

This paper investigates the annotation-based retrieval (AR) of World Wide Web (WWW) resources that has been annotated by users on Collaborative Tagging (CT) platforms as a form of user-generated content (UGC). Previous approaches have simply weight the WWW resources according to their popularity, in order to leverage on the inherent wisdom of the crowd (WotC). In this paper, we argue that the popularity alone is not a sufficient indicator of quality since (1) some users are better annotators than the others; (2) resource popularity can be easily inflated by malicious users; and (3) high quality but highly specific resources may exhibit lower popularity than more general ones. Thus, we investigate the indicators of information quality for WWW resources, particularly user annotations that can be used to describe them. This research estimates the user expertise of content annotators in order to infer the information quality of their contributions; by exploring the various signals available on social bookmarking platforms such as the temporal information of annotations. The evaluation in retrieval performance on social bookmarking data shows significant improvements with the estimated user expertise and inferred information quality.
Variability of aerosol delivery via spacer devices in young asthmatic children in daily life.

Pressurized metered dose inhalers (pMDI) are widely used together with spacers for the treatment of asthma in children. However, the variability of daily medication dose for pMDI/spacer combinations is not known. Electrostatic charge is a potential source of dose variability. Metal spacers have no static charge. This study assessed and compared within-subject variability of aerosol delivery of metal and plastic spacers. This was a randomized, crossover study in children with stable asthma aged 1-4 (group I, n=17) and 5-8 (group II, n=16) yrs. In both groups the amount of drug delivered to the mouth by a metal spacer (Nebuchamber) and one of two plastic (polycarbonate) spacers, i.e. Babyhaler in group I and Volumatic in group II was measured. The metal and plastic spacers were tested at home in a randomized order for 7 days each, using budesonide (200 microg b.i.d.). Aerosol was collected on a filter positioned between spacer and facemask or mouth. Budesonide on the filter was assessed by high performance liquid chromatography. The mean filter dose for each child (mean+/-SD) during the 7 days was expressed as a percentage of the nominal dose. Within-subject variability was expressed as coefficient of variation (CV). Mean filter dose in group I was 41.7+/-10.1% for Nebuchamber and 26.0+/-4.0% for Babyhaler (p<0.001). Mean filter dose in group II was 50.2+/-9.2% for Nebuchamber and 19.4+/-7.2% for Volumatic (p<0.001). Mean CV in group I was 34% for Nebuchamber and 37% for Babyhaler (p=0.44). Mean CV in group II was 23% for Nebuchamber and 34% for Volumatic (p=0.003). There was substantial within-subject dose variability in aerosol delivery in children using a pMDI/spacer at home. This variability was lower for the metal than for the plastic spacer in children 5-8 yrs of age. The dose delivered to the mouth was about two-fold higher for the metal than the plastic spacer independent of age.
On an Electric Scooter With G2V/V2H/V2G and Energy Harvesting Functions

This paper presents an electric scooter with grid-to-vehicle/vehicle-to-home (V2H)/vehicle-to-grid (V2G) and energy harvesting functions. First, the bilateral dc/dc converter-fed scooter dc motor drive is established. Good driving characteristics are achieved via proper control. In an idle case, the motor drive can be arranged to perform the V2H and V2G discharging operations. A front-end dc/dc converter is developed using the motor-drive-embedded components to establish the boosted and well-regulated dc-link voltage from battery. Then, an H-bridge single-phase inverter is established to yield the ac 110-V/60-Hz source for home appliances or emergency power use. Good output sine-wave voltage waveforms are yielded by the designed robust and proportional-plus-resonant controllers. Moreover, the V2G operation is also applicable. The battery can send power to the utility grid. In addition, a synchronous rectifier-based buck dc/dc converter is designed to establish a universal serial bus with 5-V dc for charging various peripheral devices. Conversely in charging mode, an H-bridge boost switch-mode-rectifier-based charger is formed using the same schematics. Good charging characteristics and line drawn power quality are obtained. As to the photovoltaic (PV) energy harvesting scheme, the energies of roof PV or possible dc sources can be harvested to make the battery auxiliary charging.
Development of a double monoclonal antibody sandwich ELISA test for Verticillium dahliae Kleb.

Abstract Verticillium dahliae causes wilt diseases in a wide range of horticultural and field crops in many parts of Turkey. In the Aegean region it has been a serious problem in cotton and vegetables for many years. More recently, it has become a major problem for olive growers in relatively newly established orchards. The fact that the only possible control methods of Verticillium wilt disease is the use of healthy and pathogen free propagating material has directed us to produce monoclonal antibodies against V. dahliae in order to apply rapid, sensitive and reliable serological detection methods. Verticillium spp. isolates were obtained from olive plantations, as well as from cotton and tomato fields in the Aegean and Marmara Regions. All suspected isolates were obtained as V. dahliae after determining microscopic morphological characteristics and pathogenicity tests on cotton seedlings. Immunizing antigens were prepared by three different methods including surface washing system, czapek dox agar and gel filtration methods. BALB/c mice were immunized with each antigenic form. Lymph node, spleen and bone marrow cells were used as sources of B-lymphocytes and 8D2 (IgM) and 7D6 (IgG1) were obtained from the spleen and lymph node fusion. The monoclonal antibodies were purified and immunoglobulin types were identified. 8D2 monoclonal antibody gave positive reaction with the V.dahliae isolates from olive, cotton, tomato and watermelon; however, it didn't give any cross reactivity with other epiphytic fungi. 7D6 antibody displayed cross-reactions with a few fungi. The monoclonal antibody (8D2) was conjugated with horseradish peroxidase (HRP). These monoclonal antibodies were characterized for use in the development of diagnostic kits based on double-monoclonal antibody sandwich ELISA test system for detecting V. dahliae in Turkish isolates. In this test, the first antibody was used as capture antibody and the second one was used for detection of antigens.
Export diversification, mean-reversion of exports, and stability of export–growth causality

ABSTRACT This study proposes a five-step statistical procedure to examine a linkage among export diversification, mean-reversion of exports, and stability of the export–growth causality. This linkage was assessed for France, Norway, and Switzerland between 1980Q1 and 2016Q4. The findings indicated that the mean-reversion tendency of the export sectors in France and Switzerland was stronger than in Norway, which highlighted the important role of export activities for economic growth in France and Switzerland. Also, the causal relationship between exports and economic growth in Norway was found to be more unstable than in France, but more stable than in Switzerland.
Factors affecting retail sales in small and mid-size cities

ABSTRACT Local public officials and community leaders in small and mid-size cities, especially those in non-metro areas, are facing major decisions regarding their economic future, especially about downtowns and retail businesses. These decisions are complex because of growing competition from internet sales and large retail centers that are undergoing changes as well due to demographic trends that are reshaping buying patterns and approaches. Understanding factors affecting local sales is critical to the future well-being of small communities because sales taxes are often a main revenue source used to finance local services needed to retain and attract residents. This article examines determinants of retail sales in non-metro cities below 50,000 population to help isolate factors that local policymakers can consider in development strategies. Multivariate regression analyses identify the importance of demographic, economic, locational, and business environment variables on sales. Implications for small and mid-size communities are then discussed.
Increased coagulation factor VIII, IX, XI and XII activities in non‐alcoholic fatty liver disease

Background and aims: Obesity and the metabolic syndrome are established risk factors of venous thromboembolism. As most coagulation factors are produced exclusively by the liver and non‐alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is tightly related to metabolic disorders, we aimed at studying the association of liver fat with various coagulation factor activities.
Mechanical properties of BiP protein determined by nano‐rheology

Immunoglobulin Binding Protein (BiP) is a chaperone and molecular motor belonging to the Hsp70 family, involved in the regulation of important biological processes such as synthesis, folding and translocation of proteins in the Endoplasmic Reticulum. BiP has two highly conserved domains: the N‐terminal Nucleotide‐Binding Domain (NBD), and the C‐terminal Substrate‐Binding Domain (SBD), connected by a hydrophobic linker. ATP binds and it is hydrolyzed to ADP in the NBD, and BiP's extended polypeptide substrates bind in the SBD. Like many molecular motors, BiP function depends on both structural and catalytic properties that may contribute to its performance. One novel approach to study the mechanical properties of BiP considers exploring the changes in the viscoelastic behavior upon ligand binding, using a technique called nano‐rheology. This technique is essentially a traditional rheology experiment, in which an oscillatory force is directly applied to the protein under study, and the resulting average deformation is measured. Our results show that the folded state of the protein behaves like a viscoelastic material, getting softer when it binds nucleotides‐ ATP, ADP, and AMP‐PNP‐, but stiffer when binding HTFPAVL peptide substrate. Also, we observed that peptide binding dramatically increases the affinity for ADP, decreasing it dissociation constant (KD) around 1000 times, demonstrating allosteric coupling between SBD and NBD domains.
Radio frequency "sutureless" fistulotomy- a new way of treating fistula in anus.

AIM To explore the effect of the classical lay open technique or fistulotomy with the radio frequency surgical device in the treatment of fistula in anus. METHODS In our study, the conventional 'lay open' technique, or 'fistulotomy' was performed by employing the radio frequency surgical device as an alternative to the traditional knife and scissors. In a span of 18 months starting from July 1999 to December 2000, 210 cases with fistula in anus of varied types were operated in our nursing home exclusively applying the radio frequency device. RESULTS The results of the study were not only encouraging but also were satisfactory. A follow up of the operated patients with radio frequency surgery over a period of 15 months, i.e. from December 2000 to March 2002 was summarized as below: (a) average time taken by the patient to resume routine - 7 days; (b) none of the patient had any interference with the continence; (c) the wounds were found healed within an average time of 47 days; (d) delayed wound healing was noticed only in 7 patients; (e) recurrence/ failure rate was reduced to as low as 1.5 percent. CONCLUSION This technique has been found superior to the conventional fistulotomy in the sense that the time taken for the whole procedure is reduced to almost half, chances of bleeding are reduced to a minimum and the use of suture material is dispensed with. The procedure can safely be called a "Sutureless fistulotomy".
Bitcoin and the World of Digital Currencies

A peer-to-peer system of blockchain, originally started for a cryptocurrency Bitcoin, has caused major disruptions in the stock market. It has affected many businesses if not all, but its significance in the financial world is magnanimous. Historical data (daily rates) for the past 23 months are analyzed to understand the market size, market capitalization and price volatility for Bitcoin. Time series data and financial model are applied to realize the shocks. Monte Carlo simulation is applied to assess the dynamic structure of Bitcoin. With greater volume and activity, the banks and financial intermediaries may become outdated, and the middleman will have no place. It seems like a distant thought, but the facts are pointing toward its reality.
Weight reduction, but not a moderate intake of fish oil, lowers concentrations of inflammatory markers and PAI‐1 antigen in obese men during the fasting and postprandial state

Background In obese subjects, chronic low‐grade inflammation contributes to an increased risk of metabolic abnormalities, which are reversed by weight loss. Sustained weight loss, however, is difficult to achieve and more insight into dietary approaches on anti‐inflammatory responses in obese subjects is needed. In this respect, fish oil deserves attention.
Enhancing image classification models with multi-modal biomarkers

Currently, most computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) systems rely on image analysis and statistical models to diagnose, quantify, and monitor the progression of a particular disease. In general, CAD systems have proven to be effective at providing quantitative measurements and assisting physicians during the decision-making process. As the need for more flexible and effective CADs continues to grow, questions about how to enhance their accuracy have surged. In this paper, we show how statistical image models can be augmented with multi-modal physiological values to create more robust, stable, and accurate CAD systems. In particular, this paper demonstrates how highly correlated blood and EKG features can be treated as biomarkers and used to enhance image classification models designed to automatically score subjects with pulmonary fibrosis. In our results, a 3-5% improvement was observed when comparing the accuracy of CADs that use multi-modal biomarkers with those that only used image features. Our results show that lab values such as Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate and Fibrinogen, as well as EKG measurements such as QRS and I:40, are statistically significant and can provide valuable insights about the severity of the pulmonary fibrosis disease.
Influence of the Ladder-Slit Secondary on Reducing the Edge Effect and Transverse Forces in the Linear Induction Motor

Electromagnetic characteristics of single-sided linear induction motors (SLIMs) will be changed when the primary is displaced sideways from the symmetrical position in the metro. The transverse force will be produced, and edge effect will increase. In order to reduce the influence of the transverse force on the stability of the vehicle guidance system, the construction of the ladder-slit secondary, which consists of the slit aluminum and solid back-iron plates, is proposed and analyzed. A 3-D finite-element model (FEM) of the linear induction motor with the ladder-slit secondary is developed. With the different transverse displacements, the air-gap flux density, eddy currents, and forces are calculated and compared with the linear induction motor with the flat-solid secondary. It shows that the ladder-slit secondary can reduce the transverse force and edge effect, as well as is a good method to achieve the transversal stabilization of the rail vehicle.