Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Low lean tissue mass is an independent risk factor for mortality in patients with stages 4 and 5 non-dialysis chronic kidney disease

Abstract Background: Mortality in patients with stages 4 and 5 chronic kidney disease (CKD) is higher than in the general population. Body composition predicts mortality. Our objective was to evaluate the effect of body composition on mortality in patients with stages 4 and 5 non-dialysis CKD. Methods: We performed a prospective study of 356 patients with stages 4 and 5 non-dialysis CKD. At baseline, we recorded general characteristics, history of cardiovascular events, body composition, serum inflammatory markers, nutrition and cardiac biomarkers. Body composition was analysed using bioimpedance spectroscopy. We recorded the lean tissue index (LTI), fat tissue index (FTI) and overhydration (OH). During a median (range) follow-up of 22 (3–49) months, we recorded mortality, cardiovascular events and progress to renal replacement therapy. Results: At baseline, mean (± standard deviation) age was 67 ± 13 years (men 64%; diabetes 36%). Mean body mass index was 28.2 ± 12.8 kg/m2, the FTI was 12.3 ± 5.6 kg/m2, the LTI was 15.7 ± 3.4 kg/m2 and median (interquartile range) OH was 0.6 (−0.4 to 1.5) L. Sixty-four (18%) patients died during follow-up. The univariate Cox analysis showed an association between mortality and age, low LTI, high Charlson comorbidity index, previous cardiovascular events, OH, low albumin and prealbumin levels, and high C-reactive protein levels. Kaplan–Meier analysis revealed higher survival in patients with a higher LTI (log-rank, 9.47; P = 0.002). The multivariate Cox analysis confirmed an association between mortality and low LTI (P = 0.031), previous cardiovascular events (P = 0.003) and high Charlson comorbidity index (P = 0.01). We did not find any association between body composition and cardiovascular events or renal replacement therapy. Conclusions: A low LTI is an independent factor for mortality in patients with stages 4 and 5 CKD.
Exercise in type 2 diabetes: genetic, metabolic and neuromuscular adaptations. A review of the evidence

The biological responses to exercise training are complex, as almost all organs and systems are involved in interactions that result in a plethora of adaptations at the genetic, metabolic and neuromuscular levels. To provide the general practitioner and the sports medicine professionals with a basic understanding of the genetic, metabolic and neuromuscular adaptations at a cellular level that occur with aerobic and resistance exercise in subjects with type 2 diabetes. For each of the three domains (genetic, metabolic and neuromuscular), the results of the major systematic reviews and original research published in relevant journals, indexed in PubMed, were selected. Owing to limitations of space, we focused primarily on the role of skeletal muscle, given its pivotal role in mediating adaptations at all levels. Generally, training-induced adaptations in skeletal muscle are seen as changes in contractile proteins, mitochondrial function, metabolic regulation, intracellular signalling, transcriptional responses and neuromuscular modifications. The main adaptation with clinical relevance would include an improved oxidative capacity derived from aerobic training, in addition to neuromuscular remodelling derived from resistance training. Both training modalities improve insulin sensitivity and reduce cardiovascular risk. Taken together, the modifications that occur at the genetic, metabolic and neuromuscular levels, work correlatively to optimise substrate delivery, mitochondrial respiratory capacity and contractile function during exercise.
The Effects of Triiodobenzoic Acid and Urea on the Response of Chlorotic Lemon (Citrus Limonia) Trees to Foliar Application of Iron Compounds.

The control of chlorosis due to faulty iron nutri- tion in citrus trees in alkaline and calcareous soils still presents many problems in several areas used for citrus production. of chelate trees with many other crops of iron chelates may, at best, produce only irregular green spotting of still chlorotic leaves. Soil applications of the iron chelate of hydroxyethylethyl-enediaminetetraacetic the applied
Error Performance of Ultrawideband Systems in a Poisson Field of Narrowband Interferers

This paper presents a mathematical model for ultrawideband (UWB) communication in the presence of narrowband (NB) interference. In particular, we derive a closed-form expression for the bit error probability of a UWB link, when a Rake receiver is employed and the NB interferers are approximated by sinusoidal tones. The spatial distribution of the NB interferers is accounted for by resorting to a Poisson point process in the two-dimensional plane. We consider a realistic scenario of slowly-moving, asynchronous nodes in a wireless environment subject to path loss, log-normal shadowing, and fast fading (flat Rayleigh fading for the NB nodes; frequency-selective Nakagami-m fading for the UWB link). The proposed model captures all the essential physical parameters that impact UWB-NB interference, but is simple enough to allow a tractable analysis and provide fundamental insights
Phenolic content variability and its chromosome location in tritordeum

For humans, wheat is the most important source of calories, but it is also a source of antioxidant compounds that are involved in the prevention of chronic disease. Among the antioxidant compounds, phenolic acids have great potential to improve human health. In this paper we evaluate the effect of environmental and genetic factors on the phenolics content in the grain of a collection of tritordeums with different cytoplasm and chromosome substitutions. To this purpose, tritordeum flour was used for extraction of the free, conjugates and bound phenolic compounds. These phenolic compounds were identified and quantified by RP-HPLC and the results were analyzed by univariate and multivariate methods. This is the first study that describes the composition of phenolic acids of the amphiploid tritordeum. As in wheat, the predominant phenolic compound is ferulic acid. In tritordeum there is great variability for the content of phenolic compounds and the main factor which determines its content is the genotype followed by the environment, in this case included in the year factor. Phenolic acid content is associated with the substitution of chromosome DS1D(1Hch) and DS2D(2Hch), and the translocation 1RS/1BL in tritordeum. The results show that there is high potential for further improving the quality and quantity of phenolics in tritordeum because this amphiploid shows high variability for the content of phenolic compounds.
Minimax properties of Fréchet means of discretely sampled curves

We study the problem of estimating a mean pattern from a set of similar curves in the setting where the variability in the data is due to random geometric deformations and additive noise. We propose an estimator based on the notion of Frechet mean that is a generalization of the standard notion of averaging to non-Euclidean spaces. We derive a minimax rate for this estimation problem, and we show that our estimator achieves this optimal rate under the asymptotics where both the number of curves and the number of sampling points go to infinity.
Realistic fault analysis of CMOS analog building blocks

High quality analog and mixed signal integrated circuits (ICs) require high quality testing. It is shown that test preparation, and test quality improvement of analog building blocks must be layout driven. For this, an IC defects-based analysis is used to study the impact of catastrophic faults on basic CMOS analog blocks. The impact on circuit behavior is analyzed for functional test and for i/sub DD/ power supply fault signatures. It is also demonstrated that a significant part of catastrophic faults cause out of specs performance, and may thus decrease the yield of the product, by an apparent parametric yield degradation. Finally, it is shown that layout level DFT (design for testability) can be rewardingly used to increase test confidence and product quality.
Improved and Balanced LEACH for heterogeneous wireless sensor networks

While wireless sensor networks (WSN) is a power constrained system, since nodes run on limited power batteries which shorten its lifespan. Prolonging the network lifetime depends on efficient management of sensing node energy resource. Energy consumption is therefore one of the most crucial design issues in WSN. Hierarchical routing protocols are best known in regard to energy efficiency. By using a clustering technique hierarchical routing protocols greatly minimize energy consumed in collecting and disseminating data. In this paper we propose Improved and Balanced LEACH (IB-LEACH), a heterogeneous-energy protocol propose a new method to decrease probability of failure nodes and to prolong the time interval before the death of the first node (we refer to as stability period) and increasing the lifetime in heterogeneous WSNs, which is crucial for many applications. We study the impact of heterogeneity of nodes, in terms of their energy, in wireless sensor networks that are hierarchically clustered. In these networks some high-energy nodes called NCG nodes (Normal node/Cluster Head/ Gateway) become "cluster heads" to aggregate the data of their cluster members and transmit it to the chosen "Gateways" that requires the minimum communication energy to reduce the energy consumption of cluster head and decrease probability of failure nodes. The simulation results demonstrated that new protocol is more energy efficient and is more effective in prolonging the network life time and a stability period compared to LEACH and SEP. monitoring. It is noted that, to maintain a reliable information delivery, data aggregation and information fusion that is necessary for efficient and effective communication between these sensor nodes. Only processed and concise information should be delivered to the sinks to reduce communications energy, prolonging the effective network life-time with optimal data delivery. An inefficient use of the available energy leads to poor performance and short life cycle of the network. To this end, energy in these sensors is a scarce resource and must be managed in an efficient manner. We present a novel protocol which is an extension of the LEACH (2), to properly distribute energy and ensure maximum network life time. Our simulation result shows an improvement in effective network life time and increased robustness of performance in the presence of energy heterogeneity.
Coccidioides immitis fractions which are antigenic for immune T lymphocytes

The principal mechanism of resistance to coccidioidomycosis in experimental animals has been reported to be T-cell-mediated immunity. We have generated a Coccidioides immitis antigen-specific murine T-cell line to identify specific macromolecules capable of eliciting an immune mouse T-cell proliferative response. The murine T cells were stimulated in vitro with a soluble conidial wall fraction (SCWF), which has been previously characterized by humoral and cellular immunoassays. The SCWF was separated by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and electrotransferred to a nitrocellulose membrane, and the stained blot was cut into seven pieces based on the molecular size of the SCWF components. The nitrocellulose membrane strips were converted into antigen-bearing particles and tested in a T-cell proliferation assay. Antigenic components of the SCWF in the molecular size range of 43 to 66 kDa were identified as the most immunoreactive. In a parallel study, we used a cDNA expression library derived from mRNA of the mycelial phase of C. immitis, which was constructed in lambda gt11 to identify clones that encoded T-cell-reactive fusion proteins (FPs). The cDNA library was screened by using anti-SCWF rabbit serum, and the FPs expressed in Escherichia coli were isolated and tested for T-cell response in the same manner as the SCWF components. The nucleotide sequence of a 0.2-kb cDNA insert encoding a protein which elicited vigorous T-cell response was determined. The isolated cDNA insert hybridized to a single 1.9-kb mRNA band in a Northern blot of the total RNA fraction of the mycelial phase of C. immitis. Antibody with affinity for the T-cell-reactive FP was isolated from anti-SCWF rabbit serum by solid-phase immunoadsorption. The FP-specific antibody reacted with a 47-kDa polypeptide in Western blots (immunoblots) of the SCWF. The same antibody preparation was used for immunoelectron microscopy to show that the FP was localized in the walls of arthroconidia and spherules of C. immitis. Attempts to clone and sequence the entire gene which encodes the T-cell-reactive protein are under way. The results of this study should lead to the determination of the complete structure of an important T-cell-stimulating antigen of C. immitis.
Using Super-Resolution Methods to Solve a Novel Multi-Sinusoidal Signal Model

Sinusoidal signal models are a useful representation of local image structure, as sinusoid phase describes symmetry separately from strength and orientation. Existing models consist of one or two oriented sinusoids, calculated using the 0th to 3rd order Riesz transforms. We propose an expanded signal model consisting of a larger number of oriented sinusoids. The model parameters are estimated using higher-order Riesz transforms and a novel application of super-resolution theory. Image features consisting of multiple lines or edges can be analysed using the method, which compares favourably to existing approaches.
AN IMPROVED ION CHROMATOGRAPHY METHOD FOR ANALYSIS OF ACETIC AND FORMIC ACID VAPOURS

museum galleries and storage environments is commonly conducted using passive sampling and ion chromatography (IC). We report development of a rapid IC method with 2 to 60-fold improvement in detection limits for acetate and formate. Baseline resolution is achieved in 4.5 min using an AS11-HC anion exchange column with 4 mM NaOH eluent at 1.5 mL/min flow rate. The detection limits are 12 μg/mL (0.24 ng) for acetate and 11 μg/mL (0.21 ng) for formate. The method was successfully used for air quality monitoring in a Los Angeles museum warehouse.
Proportional Fairness in LTE-Advanced Heterogeneous Networks with eICIC

The enhanced Inter-Cell Interference Coordination (eICIC) techniques introduced for LTE-Advanced HetNets yield significant gains by offloading macro cell users to small cells. Interference management is enabled via Almost Blank Subframes (ABS) on which the high power macro cells mute. This creates two different interference patterns corresponding to non-ABS and ABS subframes, which makes analyzing resource allocation and throughput performance non-trivial. We introduce a utility model for the eICIC framework that enables us to study resource allocation with different interference patterns. We use a semi-analytical method using this model to study resource allocation of pico cell-center users on both non-ABS and ABS subframes. We show for proportional fairness, the pico cell-center users may need to be scheduled on ABS subframes. We also demonstrate that this model can be used to determine the optimal ABS configuration for a given deployment.
Die Bedeutung von Unsicherheitsintoleranz für die Generalisierte Angststörung Modellüberlegungen und Entwicklung einer deutschen Version der Unsicherheitsintoleranz-Skala

Zusammenfassung. Theoretischer Hintergrund: In der neueren Literatur wird Unsicherheitsintoleranz (UI) als ein wichtiger Faktor bei der Entstehung und Aufrechterhaltung der Generalisierten Angststorung diskutiert. Die Skala zur Erfassung von UI fehlt bisher in deutscher Sprache. Fragestellung: Welche psychometrischen Eigenschaften weist die deutsche Ubersetzung der „Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale” auf? Welche Faktorenstruktur liegt der Skala zugrunde? Kann das Instrument gekurzt werden? Ist die neu gewonnene Faktorenstruktur in einer unabhangigen Stichprobe zu replizieren? Welchen Anteil der Varianz der Sorgenaktivitat (PSWQ) kann UI erklaren? Wie lasst sich UI mit anderen relevanten Konstrukten in ein Modell der GAS integrieren? Methode: Mit Hilfe einer explorativen Faktorenanalyse wurde an einer studentischen Stichprobe (N = 682) die Faktorenstruktur des deutschen UI Fragebogens gewonnen. Auf Grundlage dieser Faktorenstruktur wurde eine gekurzte Version (UI-18) erstellt. Diese Faktorenstruktur wurde i.
Predictors of individual differences in mail-coding skills and their variation with ability level

Personality and cognitive predictors of mail coding were investigated in 2 samples, 1 of high coding ability (N=56) and 1 of mixed ability (N=158). Two approaches to predicting correlates of skill within groups of differing ability were compared: Ackerman's (1988) ability theory, and Norman and Shallice's (1985) account of levels of action control. The predictors of mail-coding skill varied with ability: Personality variables were more predictive among higher ability subjects, and cognitive measures were more predictive among lower ability subjects. Implications of the findings for theories of individual differences in skill are discussed.
Cerebellar Contributions to Adaptive Control of Saccades in Humans

The cerebellum may monitor motor commands and through internal feedback correct for anticipated errors. Saccades provide a test of this idea because these movements are completed too quickly for sensory feedback to be useful. Earlier, we reported that motor commands that accelerate the eyes toward a constant amplitude target showed variability. Here, we demonstrate that this variability is not random noise, but is due to the cognitive state of the subject. Healthy people showed within-saccade compensation for this variability with commands that arrived later in the same saccade. However, in people with cerebellar damage, the same variability resulted in dysmetria. This ability to correct for variability in the motor commands that initiated a saccade was a predictor of each subject's ability to learn from endpoint errors. In a paradigm in which a target on the horizontal meridian jumped vertically during the saccade (resulting in an endpoint error), the adaptive response exhibited two timescales: a fast timescale that learned quickly from endpoint error but had poor retention, and a slow timescale that learned slowly but had strong retention. With cortical cerebellar damage, the fast timescale of adaptation was effectively absent, but the slow timescale was less impaired. Therefore, the cerebellum corrects for variability in the motor commands that initiate saccades within the same movement via an adaptive response that not only exhibits strong sensitivity to previous endpoint errors, but also rapid forgetting.
Computation Service Misc Hardware Service Storage Service Standardized Elementary Services

Along with the growth of Grid infrastructures over the last years, ubiquitous service provision and consumption has received wide attention in literature and practice. Although the number of available services rises rapidly, concepts and standards for an economical efficient service allocation remain in their infancy. Most proposed mechanisms lack of an interdisciplinary analysis that accounts for economical and technical requirements of the underlying trading objects. In this paper we attempt to reduce this gap by introducing concepts and prescriptive languages for describing services as trading objects. Our contribution is a thorough classification of potential trading objects in Grid markets, an analysis of formal languages to describe these objects, and an evaluation of potential trading mechanisms.
Tinnitus and underlying brain mechanisms

Purpose of reviewTinnitus is the sensation of hearing a sound when no external auditory stimulus is present. Most individuals experience tinnitus for brief, unobtrusive periods. However, chronic sensation of tinnitus affects approximately 17% (44 million people) of the general US population. Tinnitus, usually a benign symptom, can be constant, loud and annoying to the point that it causes significant emotional distress, poor sleep, less efficient activities of daily living, anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation/attempts. Tinnitus remains a major challenge to physicians because its pathophysiology is poorly understood and there are few management options to offer to patients. The purpose of this article is to describe the current understanding of central neural mechanisms in tinnitus and to summarize recent developments in clinical approaches to tinnitus patients. Recent findingsRecently developed animal models of tinnitus provide the possibility to determine neuronal mechanisms of tinnitus generation and to test the effects of various treatments. The latest research using animal models has identified a number of abnormal changes, in both auditory and nonauditory brain regions, that underlie tinnitus. Furthermore this research sheds light on cellular mechanisms that are responsible for development of these abnormal changes. SummaryTinnitus remains a challenging disorder for patients, physicians, audiologists and scientists studying tinnitus-related brain changes. This article reviews recent findings of brain changes in animal models associated with tinnitus and a brief review of clinical approach to tinnitus patients.
Fast SCI fusion steady-state Kalman filters for multiple time-delayed systems with colored measurement noises

This paper is concerned with the fusion estimation problem for multi-sensor discrete time-invariant linear systems with multiple time delays and colored measurement noise. A fast sequential covariance intersection (SCI) fusion Kalman filter is given based on the augmented Kalman filter in the linear minimum variance sense, which avoids the calculation of the cross covariance matrices between local sensors. It is proved that the presented fused steady-state Kalman filter has higher accuracy than those local filters. The simulation result reveals that the actual accuracy of the SCI fusion steady-state Kalman filter approximates to the SCI fused optimal Kalman filter, and based on the covariance ellipse, the geometric interpretation with respect to accuracy relation of the local and the fused Kalman filter is shown.
The Relation of Present and Possible Academic Selves during Early Adolescence to Grade Point Average and Achievement Goals

In this article we describe 2 studies examining the role of present and possible (future) academic selves. In the first study, the relations between present and future selves and changes in grade point average between the sixth and seventh grades were examined. Survey data were collected from a sample of 315 seventh-grade students. Results indicated that positive present and future academic self-concepts were related to positive changes in grade point average. In addition, when adolescents' present perceived academic selves were higher than their future academic selves, GPA increased, whereas when present perceived social selves were higher than future perceived social selves, GPA decreased. In the second study, survey data were collected from a different sample of 220 sixth, seventh, and eighth graders. The relations between present and future selves, and mastery and performance-approach achievement goals were examined. Results indicated that a present good-student self-concept was related positively to both performance and mastery goals, whereas a future good-student self-concept was related positively only to performance goals.