Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Thyroid-Stimulating Hormone, Triiodotyronine and Thyroxine Concentrations and Their Relationship with Metabolic Parameters, Anthropometric Variables and Body Composition in Premenopausal Euthyroid Obese Women

Purpose: This study was performed to evaluate the potential relationships of thyroid hormones, metabolic parameters, and anthropometric variables with body composition in premenopausal women. Material and Method: A total of 84 women with a mean age of 35.12±8.11 years were investigated. Subjects with a history of diabetes, hyperthyroidism and hypothyroidism, chronic liver, and renal disease were excluded from the study. In all subjects, anthropometric parameters were evaluated and body composition was analyzed by bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA). Fasting serum thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH), triiodothyrionine (T3), thyroxine (T4), fasting blood glucose (FBG), total cholesterol (TC), triglyceride (TG), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), C-reactive protein (CRP), and interleukin 6 (IL-6) were measured by enzymatic methods. Serum low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) was determined by Friedewald formula. Results: Serum TSH, CRP and TC levels in obese subjects were significantly higher than in non-obese subjects (p<0.05). Serum TSH concentration was positively associated with waist to hip ratio (WHR) and fat mass and, negatively associated with fat-free mass (p<0.05). There was also a positive relationship between T3 and TG and between T4 and LDL-C in all participants. In comparison of subjects with different body fat percentage, subjects with higher body fat had also higher amount of TSH concentrations (p=0.015). Discussion: Our results showed a relationship of fat mass and lipid profile with thyroid function in premenopausal women. Further researches are needed to clarify the nature and mechanism of these relationships. Turk Jem 2015; 19: 1-6
Information system for a secondary school in Nigeria: a case study on CHSA

Information system for a secondary school in Nigeria: A case study on CHSA School Management System (SMS) is a Computer-Based Information System (CBIS) that attempts to consolidate all departments and operations of Comprehensive High School, Ayetoro (CHSA) into a single computer system that services each department’s specific needs. SMS is a convergence of people, hardware and software into an efficient and service delivery system that increases the productivity of the school. Based on the author’s own preliminary research among major schools (primary and secondary) in Nigeria in June 2012, it was discovered that various problems are associated with manual processing, administration and management of schools. During the author’s own preliminary research, it was found out that the existing system employed a file system of storing data and manual retrieval of information. However, the existing mode of operation was inefficient and less productive. The developed information system for school management automates all operations performed by the administrators (Bursar, Registrar, Vice-principal and Principal) of CHSA, thereby improving productivity and workflow. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT My gratitude goes to Skarli Poppy, and all the lecturers who have imparted knowledge to me all these years. I also want to thank my Supervisor Ferm Tiina for being with me through my thesis. CONTENTS Abstract Acknowledgment Table of
The Benefits of Using ISO 13407: Human Centred Design Process for Interactive Systems

ISO 13407 is a description of best practice in user centred design. It provides guidance on design activities that take place throughout the life cycle of interactive systems. It describes an iterative development cycle where product requirements specifications correctly account for user and organisational requirements as well as specifying the context in which the product is to be used. Design solutions are then produced which can be evaluated by representative users, against these requirements.
Somatic Symptoms in Gulf War Mortuary Workers

Objective The objective of this article is to examine the relationship between exposures to the dead and the development of somatic symptoms. Methods We studied the pre-post responses of 352 military men and women who worked in the mortuary that received the dead from the Persian Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm) in 1990 to 1991. Symptoms of somatization were measured before and after exposure to the dead. The respondents were volunteers and nonvolunteers for assignment to the mortuary; some had prior experience in handling the dead and some did not. Four groups of participants were examined based on the degree of exposure to remains. Age, sex, volunteer status, prior experience handling remains, and preexposure measures of depression and mutilation fear were statistically controlled. Results Postexposure somatic symptoms increased significantly over preexposure levels for the two groups with the most exposure to the dead. Conclusions These results provide additional evidence that exposure to the dead is related to somatic distress.
New environment-friendly and cost-saving fertiliser recommendation system for supporting sustainable agriculture in Hungary and beyond

In the current economic situation the former, intensive fertiliser recommendation system is unfit to help Hungarian farmers in their fertilising practice. The aim of the new system has been to apply the lowest possible NPK rates required to achieve safe and high yields as well as allowing minimal agricultural NP losses to surface and subsurface waters. The new system was developed by using the correlations revealed by analyzing the results of long-term fertilisation experiments set up in Hungary between 1960 and 2000. Several field experiments as well as comparative analyses confirmed the correctness of the basic principles as well as of the methods of calculating fertiliser rates of the new system. An estimated amount of 3,200,000 € was saved for the Hungarian farmers in 2007 alone by giving recommendations for more than 160,000 ha arable land applying the new system.
Inhibition of Janus kinases by tyrosine phosphorylation inhibitor, Tyrphostin AG-490

Janus kinases (JAKs) belong to a crucial family of tyrosine kinases, implicated in the patho-physiology of multiple cancer types, and serve as striking therapeutic targets. To date, many potent, either ATP-competitive (PTK domain) or non-ATP-competitive JAK inhibitors have been identified. Among them, Tyrphostin AG-490 (2-cyano-3-(3,4-dihydroxyphenyl)-N-(phenylmethyl)-2-propenamide) is a well-known ATP-competitive inhibitor. However, its mode of action, details of interacting residues, and induced conformational changes in JAK-specific binding sites remain elusive. Here, through comparative structure analysis, molecular docking, and molecular dynamics simulation assays, we explored comparative binding patterns of AG-490 against JAK1, JAK2, and JAK3. Our results entail noteworthy observations about the binding affinity of AG-490 by illustrating distinctive amino acid residues lying at the conserved ATP-binding domains of JAK family members. By subsequent assessment of their structural homology and conserved structural folds, we highlight intriguing prospects to design more specific and potent inhibitors for selective targeting of JAK family members. Our comparative study provides a platform for the rational design of precise and potent inhibitor for selective targeting of JAK family members.
Integrated 3-D Silicon Electrodes for Electrochemical Sensing in Microfluidic Environments: Application to Single-Cell Characterization

A microtechnology allowing the integration of thin metal electrodes and three dimensional highly doped bulk silicon electrodes on a hybrid PDMS/glass fluidic microchip has been developed. The fabrication involved anodic bonding of a silicon wafer onto glass substrate, deep reactive ion etching of 3-D bulk silicon electrodes, and plasma bonding of a PDMS microfluidic structure on a silicon/gold/glass substrate. The devices realized using this technology have been used for electrical impedance characterization of chemical and biological material. Microdevices with typical dimensions of hundreds of micrometers have been fabricated and tested in the determination of the conductivity of NaCl solutions. Smaller sensors, with critical dimensions under 10 m, have been achieved for single-cell characterization. Human hepatocellular liver carcinoma cells have been introduced in the microimpedance sensors. Measurements show the interfacial relaxation of the cellular membrane in the range. It is expected that other electrochemical sensors and electrokinetic actuators can benefit from this technology.
Enhanced Osteoclastogenesis in 4‐1BB—Deficient Mice Caused by Reduced Interleukin‐10

Enhanced osteoclastogenesis was observed in bone marrow—derived macrophage cells from 4‐1BB—deficient mice than in those from wildtype mice. 4‐1BB and 4‐1BB ligand interaction may play a role at a certain stage of osteoclast formation through increased level of IL‐10, a negative regulator of osteoclastogenesis.
In vitro unfolding, refolding, and polymerization of human γD crystallin, a protein involved in cataract formation

Human γD crystallin (HγD‐Crys), a major protein of the human eye lens, is a primary component of cataracts. This 174‐residue primarily β‐sheet protein is made up of four Greek keys separated into two domains. Mutations in the human gene sequence encoding HγD‐Crys are implicated in early‐onset cataracts in children, and the mutant protein expressed in Escherichia coli exhibits properties that reflect the in vivo pathology. We have characterized the unfolding, refolding, and competing aggregation of human wild‐type HγD‐Crys as a function of guanidinium hydrochloride (GuHCl) concentration at neutral pH and 37°C, using intrinsic tryptophan fluorescence to monitor in vitro folding. Wild‐type HγD‐Crys exhibited reversible refolding above 1.0 M GuHCl. The GuHCl unfolded protein was more fluorescent than its native counterpart despite the absence of metal or ion‐tryptophan interactions. Aggregation of refolding intermediates of HγD‐Crys was observed in both equilibrium and kinetic refolding processes. The aggregation pathway competed with productive refolding at denaturant concentrations below 1.0 M GuHCl, beyond the major conformational transition region. Atomic force microscopy of samples under aggregating conditions revealed the sequential appearance of small nuclei, thin protofibrils, and fiber bundles. The HγD‐Crys fibrous aggregate species bound bisANS appreciably, indicating the presence of exposed hydrophobic pockets. The mechanism of HγD‐Crys aggregation may provide clues to understanding age‐onset cataract formation in vivo.
Improving residents' handovers through just-in-time training for structured communication

Abstract In a recent quality assurance project we learned that nearly half of the handovers we examined were characterized as unsatisfactory by our residents, who provided examples in which their anxiety had been piqued and patient care had been affected. These reports substantiated a growing body of literature on the relationship between the quality of handover and the quality of patient care, so we sought to improve the quality and consistency of the in-hosptial handovers undertaken by our internal medicine residents. Senior residents attended morning report for three consecutive month long blocks and evaluated the quality of the handovers using an observational protocol comprised of 16 aspects of effective handover. During the first block, the resident observed a median of eight of the 16 practices occurring across the 46 handovers, and a large amount of variability. At the beginning of the subsequent block we presented a concise introduction to a structured handover procedure (SBARR). The median quality of the subsequent 33 handovers rose to 11, and the variability decreased considerably. In the next block we refined the SBARR orientation to focus on the errors observed in the previous blocks, and the improvement in the quality and variability was sustained. The minor change, which requires few resources to sustain, had a favourable impact on the quality of our residents' in-hospital handovers.
A novel video-based application for road markings detection and recognition

Advanced Driving Assistant System (ADAS) was widely learned nowadays. As crucial parts of ADAS, video-based application like lane markings detection and other objects detection, have become more popular than before. However, most methods implemented in such areas cannot perfectly balance the performance of accuracy versus efficiency, and the mainstream methods (e.g. Machine Learning) suffer several limitations which can hardly break the wall between partial automation and fully automation. This paper proposed a real-time lane marking detection framework for ADAS, which included 4-extreme points set descriptor and a rule-based cascade classifier. Several experiments were conducted in highway and urban roads in Ottawa. The detection rate of the markings by the proposed algorithm reached an average accuracy rate of 96.77% while F1 Score (harmonic mean of precision and recall) also attained a rate of 90.57%. In summary, the proposed method exhibited a state-of-the-art performance and represents a significant advancement of understanding.
New l1-Norm Relaxations and Optimizations for Graph Clustering

In recent data mining research, the graph clustering methods, such as normalized cut and ratio cut, have been well studied and applied to solve many unsupervised learning applications. The original graph clustering methods are NP-hard problems. Traditional approaches used spectral relaxation to solve the graph clustering problems. The main disadvantage of these approaches is that the obtained spectral solutions could severely deviate from the true solution. To solve this problem, in this paper, we propose a new relaxation mechanism for graph clustering methods. Instead of minimizing the squared distances of clustering results, we use the l1-norm distance. More important, considering the normalized consistency, we also use the l1-norm for the normalized terms in the new graph clustering relaxations. Due to the sparse result from the l1-norm minimization, the solutions of our new relaxed graph clustering methods get discrete values with many zeros, which are close to the ideal solutions. Our new objectives are difficult to be optimized, because the minimization problem involves the ratio of nonsmooth terms. The existing sparse learning optimization algorithms cannot be applied to solve this problem. In this paper, we propose a new optimization algorithm to solve this difficult non-smooth ratio minimization problem. The extensive experiments have been performed on three two-way clustering and eight multi-way clustering benchmark data sets. All empirical results show that our new relaxation methods consistently enhance the normalized cut and ratio cut clustering results.
Recognition of Handwritten Tifinagh Characters Using a Multilayer Neural Networks and Hidden Markov Model

In this paper, we propose a system for recognition handwritten characters Tifinagh, with the use of neural networks (the multi layer perceptron MLP), the hidden Markov model (HMM), the hybrid Model MLP/HMM and a feature extraction method based on mathematical morphology, this method is tested on the database of handwritten isolated characters Tifinagh size consistent (1800 images in learning and 5400 test examples). The recognition rate found is 92.33%. The MLP, HMM and MLP+HMM classifiers show good enough results.
Paxillin controls directional cell motility in response to physical cues

Physical cues from the extracellular environment that influence cell shape and directional migration are transduced into changes in cytoskeletal organization and biochemistry through integrin-based cell adhesions to extracellular matrix (ECM). Paxillin is a focal adhesion (FA) scaffold protein that mediates integrin anchorage to the cytoskeleton, and has been implicated in regulation of FA assembly and cell migration. To determine whether paxillin is involved in coupling mechanical distortion with directional movement, cell shape was physically constrained by culturing cells on square-shaped fibronectin-coated adhesive islands surrounded by non-adhesive barrier regions that were created with a microcontact printing technique. Square-shaped cells preferentially formed FAs and extended lamellipodia from their corner regions when stimulated with PDGF, and loss of paxillin resulted in loss of this polarized response. Selective expression of the N- and C-terminal domains of paxillin produced opposite, but complementary, effects on suppressing or promoting lamellipodia formation in different regions of square cells, which corresponded to directional motility defects in vitro. Paxillin loss or mutation was also shown to affect the formation of circular dorsal ruffles, and this corresponded to changes in cell invasive behavior in 3D. This commentary addresses the implications of these findings in terms of how a multifunctional FA scaffold protein can link physical cues to cell adhesion, protrusion and membrane trafficking so as to control directional migration in 2D and 3D. We also discuss how microengineered ECM islands and in vivo model systems can be used to further elucidate the functions of paxillin in directional migration.
Essentials of Investments

Part 1: Elements of Investments 1- Investments: Background and Issues 2- Asset Classes and Financial Instruments 3- Securities Markets 4- Mutual Funds and Other Investment Companies Part 2: Portfolio Theory 5- Risk and Return: Past and Prologue 6- Efficient Diversification 7- Capital Asset Pricing and Arbitrage Pricing Theory 8- The Efficient Market Hypothesis 9- Behavioral Finance and Technical Analysis Part 3: Debt Securities 10- Bond Prices and Yields 11- Managing Bond Portfolios Part 4: Security Analysis 12- Macroeconomic and Industry Analysis 13- Equity Valuation 14- Financial Statement Analysis Part 5: Derivative Markets 15- Options Markets 16- Option Valuation 17- Futures Markets and Risk Management Part 6: Active Investment Management 18- Portfolio Performance Evaluation 19- Globalization and International Investing 20- Hedge Funds 21- Taxes, Inflation, and Investment Strategy 22- Investors and the Investment Process
The Survival of Small Business Enterprise

This paper considers three themes central to the survival of small business enterprise. Firstly, the incentive for entrepreneurship, which is discussed within a theoretical framework that draws on cooperative market games analysis, and finds a rationale for entrepreneurship in facilitating coalition formation. Secondly, the determinants of survival of a small firm, which is discussed whithin a statistical framework, providing estimates of the influence of key factors like gearing and product range on survival over a three year period. Thirdly, the political economy of enterprise stimulation, which looks at enabling institutions for fostering the inception and growth of small firms (like the Scottish Development Agency and Scottish Enterprise), considered from the standpoint of comparative institutional analysis. The treatment is informal, being based on an Inaugural Lecture, and is designed to be accesssible to the non-specialist.
Towards a Glossary of Activities in the Ontology Engineering Field

The Semantic Web of the future will be characterized by using a very large number of ontologies embedded in ontology networks. It is important to provide strong methodological support for collaborative and context-sensitive development of networks of ontologies. This methodological support includes the identification and definition of which activities should be carried out when ontology networks are collaboratively built. In this paper we present the consensus reaching process followed within the NeOn consortium for the identification and definition of the activities involved in the ontology network development process. The consensus reaching process here presented produces as a result the NeOn Glossary of Activities. This work was conceived due to the lack of standardization in the Ontology Engineering terminology, which clearly contrasts with the Software Engineering field. Our future aim is to standardize the NeOn Glossary of Activities.
A generative graph model for electrical infrastructure networks

We propose a generative graph model for electrical infrastructure networks that accounts for heterogeneity in both node and edge type. To inform the design of this model, we analyze the properties of power grid graphs derived from the U.S. Eastern Interconnection, Texas Interconnection, and Poland transmission system power grids. Across these datasets, we find subgraphs induced by nodes of the same voltage level exhibit shared structural properties atypical to small-world networks, including low local clustering, large diameter and large average distance. On the other hand, we find subgraphs induced by transformer edges linking nodes of different voltage types contain a more limited structure, consisting mainly of small, disjoint star graphs. The goal of our proposed model is to match both these inter and intra-network properties by proceeding in two phases: we first generate subgraphs for each voltage level and then generate transformer edges that connect these subgraphs. The first phase of the model adapts the Chung-Lu random graph model, taking desired vertex degrees and desired diameter as inputs, while the second phase of the model is based on a simpler random star graph generation process. We test the performance of our model by comparing its output across many runs to the aforementioned real data. In nearly all categories tested, we find our model is more accurate in reproducing the unusual mixture of properties apparent in the data than the Chung-Lu model. We also include graph visualization comparisons, as well as a brief analysis of edge-deletion resiliency. Ultimately, our model may be used to generate synthetic graph data, test hypotheses and algorithms at different scales, and serve as a baseline model on top of which further electrical network properties, device models, and interdependencies to other networks, may be appended.
Safe patient handling protects employees too

www.Nursing2015. com August l Nursing2015 l 65 LEADERSHIP ROUNDING through the nursing units can provide insight into the safety concerns of clinical staff.1 During leadership rounds, the CNO and other leaders of a 461-bed acute care teaching hospital in rural South Carolina identified staff concerns about employee injuries, patient falls, and hospital-acquired pressure ulcers. Considering our aging workforce and the increased weight of our patients, we clearly needed to initiate an organization-wide procedure for safe patient handling.2 A safe patient-handling program implemented at our facility has reduced employee injuries and been associated with a decrease in patient falls and healthcare-acquired pressure ulcers. This article describes our program, including how we implemented it and achieved positive results.