Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of intraluminal pH on cholesterol and oleic acid absorption from micellar solutions in the rat.

We have studied the effects of intraluminal pH on micellar solubilization and on absorption rate of oleic acid (OA) and cholesterol in proximal small bowel segments and the total small bowel in rats. In addition, pH effect on fecal excretion of [3H]cholesterol was studied over a period of 4 days after duodenal administration of cholesterol in solutions at different pH using beta-sitosterol as a nonabsorbable marker. Rates of absorption of OA and cholesterol were, respectively, 1.8 and 1.9 times higher at pH 5.5 in both proximal bowel segments as compared with pH 6.5 (P less than 0.001). Similar observations were made when the whole small bowel was perfused. At pH 5.5, 1.8 times more OA was absorbed and 1.5 times more cholesterol than at pH 6.5 (P less than 0.001). Also, fecal output of radioisotope following administration of pH 5.5 solution was only 47% of the excretion using the pH 6.5 solution. Excretion of beta-sitosterol, which serves as a nonabsorbable marker, was not affected by pH differences. In vitro measurements of micellar solubility at the two pH levels by ultracentrifugation showed that an increase of one pH unit resulted in a decreased number of particles in the oil phase (oleic acid and cholesterol in the emulsified particles in pH 6.5 solution is 37 and 34%, respectively, of that in the pH 5.5 solution) due to increased solubilization into the micellar phase. Measurements of monomer activities of OA and cholesterol using a polyethylene disk technique showed a significantly higher activity at the lower pH. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Pecuniary Value of Disability-Adjusted-Life-Years in the Arab Maghreb Union in 2015

This study bridges extant information gap on the pecuniary value of disability-adjusted-life-years (DALYs) lost in the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU). The DALYs lost in 2015 are converted into money using human capital (lost output) approach. The AMU total value of DALYs lost from all causes is the sum of each of the five country’s pecuniary value of DALYs (PVD) lost from all causes. The PVD associated with DALYs lost due to jth disease among persons of a specific age group is the product of the per capita non-health GDP in international dollars (Int$) and the total DALYs lost. The 27,175,610 DALYs lost in AMU in 2015 had a pecuniary value of Int$ 289,033,271,814, which is equivalent to 25.6% the sub-region’s 2015 GDP. The average pecuniary value per DALY lost was Int$ 10,636, which ranged from a minimum of Int$ 4226 in Mauritania to a maximum of Int$ 13,852 in Algeria. The pecuniary value of DALYs lost from all causes in the AMU sub-region annually is substantive.
Developing a new case based computer-aided detection scheme and an adaptive cueing method to improve performance in detecting mammographic lesions

The purpose of this study is to evaluate a new method to improve performance of computer-aided detection (CAD) schemes of screening mammograms with two approaches. In the first approach, we developed a new case based CAD scheme using a set of optimally selected global mammographic density, texture, spiculation, and structural similarity features computed from all four full-field digital mammography images of the craniocaudal (CC) and mediolateral oblique (MLO) views by using a modified fast and accurate sequential floating forward selection feature selection algorithm. Selected features were then applied to a ‘scoring fusion’ artificial neural network classification scheme to produce a final case based risk score. In the second approach, we combined the case based risk score with the conventional lesion based scores of a conventional lesion based CAD scheme using a new adaptive cueing method that is integrated with the case based risk scores. We evaluated our methods using a ten-fold cross-validation scheme on 924 cases (476 cancer and 448 recalled or negative), whereby each case had all four images from the CC and MLO views. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was AUC = 0.793 ± 0.015 and the odds ratio monotonically increased from 1 to 37.21 as CAD-generated case based detection scores increased. Using the new adaptive cueing method, the region based and case based sensitivities of the conventional CAD scheme at a false positive rate of 0.71 per image increased by 2.4% and 0.8%, respectively. The study demonstrated that supplementary information can be derived by computing global mammographic density image features to improve CAD-cueing performance on the suspicious mammographic lesions.
Cognitive effects of GABAergic antiepileptic drugs

Abstract Many patients undergoing long-term treatment of epilepsy complain of memory disorders, which entail worse quality of life. The risk factors generating memory disorders include: morphological brain damage, the duration and course of epileptic seizures (conscience disorders), the time of diagnosis (the risk is greater if epileptic seizures start early in life), drug resistance, the presence of interseizure changes in the EEG in the form of sharp-wave discharges or sharp spike-wave/slow spike-wave complexes and improper pharmacotherapy (exceeding the admissible concentration of drugs in blood serum, polytherapy). GABAergic neurotransmission of older antiepileptic drugs (barbiturates, benzodiazepines) makes them particularly prone to produce modest, but statistically significant disruption of cognitive processes. This explains the search for new antiepileptic drugs that will improve, or at least not impair, cognitive functions. The improvement of cognitive functions by new generation antiepileptic drugs results, among others, from their non-GA-BAergic mechanisms: they influence the ion channels and glutaminergic transmission.
Efficient fast convolution architectures for convolutional neural network

Due to the world-wide interests on artificial intelligence, many acceleration architectures for convolutional neural network (CNN) have been proposed recently. However, few of them focus on reducing convolution computation strength. In this paper, we first present fast convolution algorithm and its matrix form. Then based on the fast convolution algorithm, a fully parallel architecture with high throughput is proposed. To further increase efficiency and reduce computation redundancy, output data reuse scheme corresponding to CNN is also considered by introducing affordable adders and buffers. The hardware implementation and complexity comparison are conducted among different convolution architectures. Implementation results on Zynq XC7Z045 platform demonstrate the effectiveness of proposed fast convolution architectures in the reduction of complexity. Compared to conventional 2-D convolver, our 3-parallel fast convolution filter reduces 28% hardware resources and improves throughput by 17%. After deploying data reuse scheme, our fast convolution architecture is 10.56× faster.
Breeding Practice Improves the Mycorrhizal Responsiveness of Cotton (Gossypium spp. L.)

Maximizing the function of indigenous arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi by choosing specific crop genotypes offers one of the few untapped opportunities to improve the sustainability of agriculture. In this study, the differences in mycorrhizal responsiveness (MR) in plant growth and shoot phosphorus (P) content among cotton (Gossypium spp. L.) genotypes from different release dates were compared and then the relationships between MR and P uptake-related traits were determined. The experimental design in a greenhouse included 24 genotypes released from 1950 to present in Xinjiang Province, inoculation with or without AM fungi, and P levels (15 and 150 mg P kg–1 added as KH2PO4). Results showed that the modern cotton genotypes exhibited a higher degree of mycorrhizal colonization, the hyphal length density (HLD), and mycorrhizae-induced changes in shoot growth than the old genotypes when inoculated with indigenous AM fungi at both the P levels. Moreover, MR was highly correlated with the HLD at low P levels and the HLD may provide useful insights for future cotton breeding aimed at delivering crop genotypes that can benefit more from AM fungi.
Effect of exogenous testosterone on oxidative status of the testes in adult male rats

The aim of this study was to investigate the testosterone‐induced changes in the oxidative status of testes in adult male rats treated either with testosterone or after blockade of androgen receptors with cyproterone acetate. A total of 40 intact rats were divided into four groups: a control group receiving sterile oil, the testosterone group receiving testosterone isobutyras, the cyproterone group receiving cyproterone acetate and the combination group receiving both testosterone isobutyras and cyproterone acetate. Treatments were carried out for 2 days by intramuscular application. Parameters of oxidative stress and the expression levels of the steroidogenic acute regulatory protein (StAR) gene were measured in testes. Significantly increased TBARS and advanced glycation end products (AGEs) levels were found in the testosterone group when compared to the control group. The °1 ferric‐reducing ability of the tissue and total antioxidative capacity were lower in the testosterone group in comparison with the control group. Gene expression analysis revealed significant downregulation of the StAR gene in the testes of rats in the testosterone and combination groups with respect to control animals. In conclusion, administration of exogenous testosterone influences the lipid peroxidation and carbonyl stress and decreases the antioxidant defence in the testes. These data might have implications for male fertility in humans.
Efficient 3D placement of a UAV using particle swarm optimization

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can be used as aerial wireless base stations when cellular networks go down. Prior studies on UAV-based wireless coverage typically consider an Air-to-Ground path loss model, which assumes that the users are outdoor and they are located on a 2D plane. In this paper, we propose using a single UAV to provide wireless coverage for indoor users inside a high-rise building under disaster situations (such as earthquakes or floods), when cellular networks are down. We assume that the locations of indoor users are uniformly distributed in each floor and we propose a particle swarm optimization algorithm to find an efficient 3D placement of a UAV that minimizes the total transmit power required to cover the indoor users.
Standardization activities in the field of thyroid function tests: a status report

Abstract Background: Laboratory testing is an essential tool for diagnosis and management of thyroid diseases. However, the current status of standardization hampers the interchangeability of results. To improve this situation, the Working Group for Standardization of Thyroid Function Tests was established. Methods: Method comparisons were organized for measurement of human thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH), and free and total thyroid hormone in serum from apparently healthy donors. The aim was to assess the status of standardization and the quality of the performance of current routine assays. A second objective was to investigate the effect of mathematical recalibration of the results using their relationship to the overall mean (TSH) or the reference measurement procedure values (other thyroid hormones). Results: The need for standardization was shown to be highest for free thyroid hormone and total triiodothyronine measurements, while the majority of TSH and total thyroxine assays agreed within 10% of the reference. Most assays showed good performance. However, some could benefit from improved precision, consistency of calibration, or within- and between-run stability. Recalibration eliminated assay-specific bias. Thus, the residual spread was due to within-method effects. Not withstanding, sample-related effects remained. Conclusions: These studies confirmed the feasibility of standardization based on method comparison with native sera, but highlighted the need to resolve issues, such as sample-related effects. In view of the fact that in this phase the project worked with samples from individuals with euthyroid status, the next method comparison shall place emphasis on challenging the performance of the assays with clinical samples and expanding the covered measurement range. Clin Chem Lab Med 2010;48:1577–83.
Popular Music and Multimodal Critical Discourse Studies: Ideology, Control and resistance in Turkey since 2002

Popular music has long been used to entertain, provoke, challenge and liberate but also to oppress and control. This book asks what is the nature of relations between music and meanings, and more specifically, between music and political meanings. Can popular music be political? What types of popular music work best with politics? What types of politics work best with popular music? This book considers the extent popular music can articulate ideas about society, identities and events, questions which are commonly asked across the field of popular music studies. These issues are explored in this book by considering exactly how popular music is perceived by fans to be political. That is, this book considers how a song, a video, a concert, a band or any other musical commodity conveys meanings about power, politics and identity. By answering how this is done, questions about what become clear. Leaning on Multimodal Critical Discourse Studies (MCDS), this book reveals the deeply political role played by some popular music. The book demonstrates how MCDS can provide an important and timely step forward due to its attention to the details of how communication takes place, its interest in discourse and how ideologies are naturalised and legitimised. It is set in contemporary Turkish society, with its complex and deep ideological divisions increasingly obvious under the stewardship of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his centre-right political party in power since 2002. It looks at how the authorities seek to harness and control popular music and how a wide range of popular music genres such as rock, rap, protest and folk music expressed in official promotional videos, protest cut-and-paste offerings, party-political election songs, live music events and internet discussions about popular music emerge as sites of power and resistance in certain venues and particularly across social media.
Gallic Villages in the Bologna Area Reasons and Strategies for Resisting the Bologna Reform in Selected Fields of Study

Since the implementation of the Bologna model in 1999, the vast majority of German higher education institutions has introduced the two-tier system leading to the bachelor and master degree. Only a very small group of departments explicitly rejected reforming their study programs according to the new Bologna system and decided to maintain the old diploma and magister programs. Based on neo-institutional theory, this paper seeks to investigate the departments resisting the reform in more detail. The purpose of this study is to explore the backgrounds, motivations and strategies in resisting a powerful “rationalized myth” in the European higher education area. Using a qualitative research design, this study draws on six case examples with departments that have avoided adopting the new study degrees. The results suggest that a variety of stakeholders as well as micro-political factors within the university department influence the decision to resist the Bologna Reform.
Improving Professional Skills for Trainers Working with Unemployed Adult Learners in Austria

Trainers in New Star Vocational College (name changed) in Austria are employees who teach unemployed learners. Usually, they have advanced qualifications in other disciplines but not related to adult education. The Austrian labour policy focuses on retraining unemployed people to enter the labour market, a key concern that is given high priority. Therefore, New Star Vocational College relies on these trainers to implement the type of courses offered. In this thesis the perspective is that the trainer has a key role to play and should be adequately prepared in terms of unemployed learners, so as to have an impact on learning outcomes and to improve teaching quality. The research study aims to assess the perception of learners, trainers and the management on how adult learning is viewed in New Star Vocational College, qualities of a good trainer, teaching quality and how improvements can be made to equip the trainers through continuing professional development. Data was collected and analysed using Grounded Theory influenced by the interpretive paradigm, which is discussed in Chapter 3.3. I utilised semi-structured interviews, open-ended questionnaires and documents. Twenty semi-structured interviews were carried out with trainers and managers, while open-ended questionnaires were distributed to 12 adult learners, who all responded. The study finds that trainers are essential to the success of retraining the adult learners. Furthermore, the study was able to identify detailed difficulties and challenges of teaching long- term unemployed learners, and to understand the trainers’ need to find ways to improve their professional skills necessary to teach this target learner. This study concludes that trainer professional development is important with support from managerial systems and other stakeholders. Key suggestions to facilitate improvements to support trainers, learners and institution are well defined. In future research, more data that reflects on this particular situation should be collected.
DYNAMIC PREDICTOR SELECTION AND ORDER SPLITTING IN A LIMIT ORDER MARKET

Recent empirical research has documented the clustered volatility and fat tails of return distribution in stock markets, yet returns are uncorrelated over time. Certain agent-based theoretical models attempt to explain the empirical features in terms of investors' order-splitting or dynamic switching strategies, both of which are frequently used by actual stock investors. However, little theoretical research has discriminated among the behavioral assumptions within a model and compared the impacts of the assumptions on the empirical features. Nor has the research simultaneously replicated the return features and empirical features on market microstructure, such as patterns of order choice. This study constructs an artificial limit order market in which investors split orders into small pieces or use fundamental and trend-following predictors interchangeably over time. We demonstrate that, on one hand, the market that features strategies with order splitting and dynamic predictor selection can independently replicate clustered volatility and fat tails with near-zero return autocorrelations. However, we also show that patterns of order choice do not match those found in certain previous empirical studies in both types of economies. Thus, we conclude that, in reality, the two strategies can work to generate the empirical return features but that investors may also use other strategies in actual stock markets. We also demonstrate that the impact of both strategies on the volatility persistence tends to be greater as the number of traders increases in the market; this finding implies that the order-splitting strategy and dynamic predictor selection are more crucial for the empirical phenomena pertaining to larger capital stocks.
Evaluation of various approaches to the isolation of steroid hormones from urine samples prior to FASS‐MEKC analysis

The goal of this study was to assess various analytical approaches for the simultaneous and efficient extraction of steroid hormones (cortisone, cortisol, prednisolone, corticosterone, testosterone, 17α‐methyltestosterone, epitestosterone, progesterone) from urine samples prior to separation based on field‐amplified sample stacking MEKC (FASS‐MEKC). FASS‐MEKC successfully allowed the compounds to be separated within 12 min using a BGE composed of 5 mM sodium tetraborate, 150 mM boric acid, 50 mM SDS, and 15% methanol. Therefore, many procedures such as solid‐phase microextraction, SPE, and dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction (DLLME) were tested and compared using a multivariate tool, namely, cluster analysis. Finally, DLLME‐FASS‐MEKC was validated and proved a good linearity of calibration curves (R2 above 0.9948) in a concentration range from 50 to 1000 ng/mL for all analytes. The LOD was established at 15 ng/mL, whereas the LOQ was 50 ng/mL. The intra‐ and interday precision, expressed as RSD%, did not exceed 9.97%. The DLLME‐FASS‐MEKC method was successfully applied to the analysis of urine samples from healthy volunteers and sportsmen. This methodology could prove to be useful in clinical studies and/or doping control depending on the steroid concentrations required in biomedical applications.
Effects of xenobiotics and peroxisome proliferator‐activated receptor‐α on the human UDPglucose dehydrogenase gene expression

During drug metabolism, UDPglucuronate, a product of the reaction catalyzed by the enzyme UDPglucose dehydrogenase (UGDH), is conjugated with the metabolites to facilitate their elimination. So far, it is not known whether xenobiotics can modulate the UGDH gene expression. This question was tested by treating the human hepatoma cells HepG2 with several medicinal compounds and the UGDH gene expression analyzed by using real‐time PCR. Both eugenol and rifampicin showed activation of the gene expression. Piperine showed slight down‐regulation of the UGDH gene expression, whereas no effect was observed with acetaminophen treatment. Through promoter–reporter gene assays, we found that rifampicin showed multiple‐folds activation of a 1.23‐kb UGDH promoter construct, the region likely to respond to rifampicin treatment is located within the range −632 to −1050. A bioinformatics search for xenobiotic response element in this region has predicted a binding motif for the peroxisome proliferator‐activated receptor‐α(PPARα) at position −1003. A mutation at the predicted PPAR recognizing motif eliminated normal suppression as well as the rifampicin activation effect on the UGDH promoter activity. Cotransfection with the PPARα and retinoid X receptor‐α expression vectors and subsequent treatment with the PPARα agonist led to the suppression of the UGDH promoter activity either in the presence or absence of rifampicin. Our study, for the first time, shows the UGDH gene to be under xenobiotic regulation and delineates a motif responsible for rifampicin response and transcriptional repression of the UGDH gene. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biochem Mol Toxicol 19:279–288, 2005; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/jbt.20099