Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparison and evaluation of dietary quality between older and younger Mexican-American women

Abstract Objective To compare and evaluate the dietary quality of young and older sedentary Mexican-American women. Understanding key dietary concerns, while considering developmental transition periods and cultural relevance, can provide insight for developing appropriate nutrition interventions. Design Cross-sectional dietary data were collected using unannounced 24 h diet recalls to assess nutrient intake adequacy (Estimated Average Requirement cut-point method) and dietary quality (Healthy Eating Index (HEI) 2010). Setting Mujeres en Acción and Madres para la Salud, two community-based physical activity interventions. Subjects Participants were 139 young (28 (sd 6) years) and 124 older (55 (sd 7) years) overweight/obese sedentary Mexican-American women (BMI=25·0–35·0 kg/m2) of low socio-economic status. Results Older women consumed less Ca, Fe, folate, empty calories and energy from carbohydrate, but more fruit, vegetables, greens and beans, and fibre than younger women (all P<0·05). Over 60 % of all participants had an intake below recommendations for fibre, Ca, vitamin E, vitamin C and folate. Both groups had low total HEI-2010 scores (62 for older and 63 for younger women; NS), with 57 % of older and 48 % of younger women classified as having a poor diet. Conclusions Despite differences in nutrient requirements according to developmental transition periods (childbearing v. perimenopausal), overall, older and younger Mexican-American women generally had low-quality diets and may benefit from dietary quality improvement.
Effects of Psychiatric Factors on Patient-Reported Outcomes after Surgical Correction of Lumbar Degenerative Kyphosis

Study Design A prospective study. Purpose To identify associations between psychiatric factors and patient-reported outcomes after corrective surgery in patients with lumbar degenerative kyphosis (LDK). Overview of Literature Thus far, to the best of our knowledge, patient factors that may help predict patient-reported outcomes after corrective surgery for LDK have not been studied. Methods We prospectively investigated 46 patients with LDK who underwent surgical correction with a minimum follow-up of 2 years. Demographic data were collected. Short form-36, mental component scores (MCS), physical component scores (PCS), Scoliosis Research Society-22 (SRS-22) scores, and Roland-Morris Disability Questionnaire (RMDQ) scores were determined before the surgery and after 2 years of follow-up. Psychiatric conditions were preoperatively evaluated using the Zung depression scale (ZDS) and Zung anxiety scale (ZAS). Patients were divided into two groups (with or without psychiatric issues), according to baseline ZDS and ZAS scores. Results Patients included 43 women and 3 men. Twelve patients were deemed to have psychiatric problems (P group) and 34 patients had no psychiatric problems (NP group). No significant intergroup differences were found in MCS, PCS, SRS-22, and RMDQ scores preoperatively. However, at the 2-year follow-up, a significant intergroup difference was observed between PCS and RMDQ scores. Multiple regression analysis revealed that only the presence of a preoperative psychiatric problem can predict PCS and RMDQ scores. Other factors, such as, gender, age, body mass index, bone mineral density, osteotomy site, number of fusion segments, and instrumented levels did not affect PCS or RMDQ scores. Conclusions The presence of a psychiatric factor may be an important risk factor underlying poor physical and pain scores after corrective surgery in patients with LDK. The findings presented here suggest that psychiatric factors should be evaluated prior to surgery for determining the risk of a poor outcome.
The Lipocalin LPR-1 Cooperates with LIN-3/EGF Signaling To Maintain Narrow Tube Integrity in Caenorhabditis elegans

Lipocalins are secreted cup-shaped glycoproteins that bind sterols, fatty acids, and other lipophilic molecules. Lipocalins have been implicated in a wide array of processes related to lipophilic cargo transport, sequestration, and signaling, and several are used as biomarkers for human disease, but the functions of most lipocalins remain poorly understood. Here we show that the Caenorhabditis elegans lipocalin LPR-1 is required to maintain apical membrane integrity and a continuous lumen in two narrow unicellular tubes, the excretory duct and pore, during a period of rapid lumen elongation. LPR-1 fusion protein is expressed by the duct and pore and accumulates both intracellularly and in apical extracellular compartments, but it can also function cell nonautonomously when provided from outside of the excretory system. lpr-1 mutant defects can be rescued by increased signaling through the epidermal growth factor (EGF)-Ras-extracellular signal regulated kinase (ERK) pathway, which promotes the more elongated duct vs. less elongated pore tube fate. Spatial and temporal rescue experiments indicate that Ras signaling acts within the duct and pore tubes during or prior to cell fate determination to bypass the requirement for LPR-1. lpr-1 mutations did not disrupt LIN-3/EGF-dependent duct-fate specification, prevent functioning of any specific LIN-3/EGF isoform, or alter LET-23/EGFR localization, and reduced signaling did not phenocopy or enhance lpr-1 mutant defects. These data suggest that LPR-1 protects lumen integrity through a LIN-3/EGF-independent mechanism, but that increased signaling upregulates some target(s) that can compensate for lpr-1 absence.
Efficacy of a Targeted Drug Delivery on‐Demand Bolus Option for Chronic Pain

Intrathecal targeted drug delivery systems historically required physician office visits for dose adjustment to manage fluctuating pain. A wireless device now enables patients to supplement their basal intrathecal infusion with a programmed on‐demand bolus dose. We sought to quantify the change in oral breakthrough opioid need associated with the use of an intrathecal bolus in comparison to those treated with the basal infusion alone.
CALL FOR PAPERS Small Vessels–Big Problems: Novel Insights into Microvascular Mechanisms of Diseases The stress of maternal separation causes misprogramming in the postnatal maturation of rat resistance arteries

Reho JJ, Fisher SA. The stress of maternal separation causes misprogramming in the postnatal maturation of rat resistance arteries. Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol 309: H1468–H1478, 2015. First published September 14, 2015; doi:10.1152/ajpheart.00567. 2015. —We examined the effect of stress in the first 2 wk of life induced by brief periods of daily maternal separation on developmental programming of rat small resistance mesenteric arteries (MAs). In MAs of littermate controls, mRNAs encoding mediators of vasoconstriction, including the 1a-adrenergic receptor, smooth muscle myosin heavy chain, and CPI-17, the inhibitory subunit of myosin phosphatase, increased from after birth through sexual [postnatal day (PND) 35] and full maturity, up to 80-fold, as measured by quantitative PCR. This was commensurate with twoto fivefold increases in maximum force production to KCl depolarization, calcium, and the -adrenergic agonist phenylephrine, and increasing systolic blood pressure. Rats exposed to maternal separation stress as neonates had markedly accelerated trajectories of maturation of arterial contractile gene expression and function measured at PND14 or PND21 (weaning), 1 wk after the end of the stress protocol. This was suppressed by the -adrenergic receptor blocker terazosin (0.5 mg·kg ip ·day ), indicating dependence on stress activation of sympathetic signaling. Due to the continued maturation of MAs in control rats, by sexual maturity (PND35) and into adulthood, no differences were observed in arterial function or response to a second stressor in rats stressed as neonates. Thus early life stress misprograms resistance artery smooth muscle, increasing vasoconstrictor function and blood pressure. This effect wanes in later stages, suggesting plasticity during arterial maturation. Further studies are indicated to determine whether stress in different periods of arterial maturation may cause misprogramming persisting through maturity and the potential salutary effect of -adrenergic blockade in suppression of this response.
Grain Refinement of Aluminium Alloys by Inoculation

A review is given of the studies of aluminium inoculation undertaken within the EU Network “Microstructural Engineering by Solidification Processing” (MEBSP). A wide range of studies of industrial practice of grain refining and of the fundamental mechanisms of nucleation and growth have contributed to improved understanding. Particular advances have been made in understanding the relative performance of different grain refiners.
Deep Reinforcement Learning for Sponsored Search Real-time Bidding

Bidding optimization is one of the most critical problems in online advertising. Sponsored search (SS) auction, due to the randomness of user query behavior and platform nature, usually adopts keyword-level bidding strategies. In contrast, the display advertising (DA), as a relatively simpler scenario for auction, has taken advantage of real-time bidding (RTB) to boost the performance for advertisers. In this paper, we consider the RTB problem in sponsored search auction, named SS-RTB. SS-RTB has a much more complex dynamic environment, due to stochastic user query behavior and more complex bidding policies based on multiple keywords of an ad. Most previous methods for DA cannot be applied. We propose a reinforcement learning (RL) solution for handling the complex dynamic environment. Although some RL methods have been proposed for online advertising, they all fail to address the "environment changing'' problem: the state transition probabilities vary between two days. Motivated by the observation that auction sequences of two days share similar transition patterns at a proper aggregation level, we formulate a robust MDP model at hour-aggregation level of the auction data and propose a control-by-model framework for SS-RTB. Rather than generating bid prices directly, we decide a bidding model for impressions of each hour and perform real-time bidding accordingly. We also extend the method to handle the multi-agent problem. We deployed the SS-RTB system in the e-commerce search auction platform of Alibaba. Empirical experiments of offline evaluation and online A/B test demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.
The SMR reverse shoulder arthroplasty in rotator cuff arthropathy management

Background and aim of the work: Cuff tear arthropathy (CTA) is a well-defined degenerative pathology of the shoulder. When conservative treatments are unable to permit a good quality of life, the reverse shoulder arthroplasty (RSA) can guarantee a good restitution of range of motion, function and strength of the shoulder without pain. In this paper we show our clinical, functional and radiological outcomes, as well as complications of RSA in patients with CTA. Methods: We analyzed 31 patients who underwent to reverse shoulder replacement with Modular Shoulder System (SMR, Systema Multiplana Randelli; Lima-LTO, San Daniele del Friuli, Italy) reverse shoulder system, between August 2010-July 2014. Results: A significant improvement in ROM and functional scores (Constant Shoulder Score and UCLA score) were observed in our cases series. At the time of follow-up pain relief was detected in 28 patients and 3 patients declared mild pain. Overall, 90.3% of patients rated their satisfaction as good or excellent. Although complications occur in a high percentage of patients in literature, no postoperative complications was observed in our cases series. Conclusions: Our results showed how reverse shoulder arthroplasty is a real solution to improve quality of life, to restore pain-free ROM, function and strength of the shoulder in patients where cuff tear arthropathy occurs. (www.actabiomedica.it)
Pulsed power network with inherent operating procedure and multiple relaying of power routers

Pulsed power network is one of the alternatives of smart grid systems. This scheme is applicable especially to localized power grid where only distributed generations supply power to consumers. In this demonstration, a miniature model of the localized pulsed power network is constructed and performed with two distributed generations, four consumers, and eight power routers. This model is operated with inherent procedure for effective power districution over consumers and with multiple relaying of power routers for enhanced power transmission capacity.
A reactive BEMS for reliable power supply with SOFC hydrogen coproduction unit

We address a design of Building Energy Management System (BEMS) that exploits the different energy carriers and achieves reliable power supply to a critical load. The BEMS of our interest includes a Fuel Cell (FC) hydrogen coproduction unit, a FC Vehicle (FCV), a photo-voltaic generation unit, and a battery unit as distributed energy sources, and handles different energy carriers which are a key enabler to realizing reliable supply of power inside the building. The design involves a mechanism to react to a dynamic uncertain environment by time-varying operations of the energy sources and FCV. In this sense, the so-called reactive design of BEMS becomes promising that is a system used in embedded softwares to maintain an ongoing interaction with its environment. For this design, we use the methodology for synthesis of reactive control systems from specifications described by linear temporal logic, which was recently reported in literature.
The use of supermarket till receipts to determine the fat and energy intake in a UK population

Abstract Objectives: To validate the use of supermarket receipts as an index of fat and energy intake in a population that buys most of its food from supermarkets. Design: Cross-sectional, prospective dietary survey – feasibility study. Setting: Households situated within a 20-mile radius of a large (Tesco) supermarket in Leeds. Subjects: Two hundred and fourteen households who spend ≥=60% of their food purse in (Tesco and other) supermarkets. Results: Mean daily household purchase of fat, energy and percentage energy from fat contained in food from supermarkets were 185 g, 19.2 MJ and 35.9%. Mean daily household intakes of fat and energy were 190 g and 20.7 MJ, and 35% of energy was derived from fat. Mean household size was 2.4 persons. The association between the amount of fat and energy purchased from supermarkets and the amount of fat and energy consumed by households was strong. 0.90 MJ (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.8–1.0) of energy were consumed for every 1 MJ purchased from supermarkets and 0.76 g (95% CI: 0.64–0.87) of fat were consumed for every 1 g of fat purchased. Conclusions: The results show a strong association between estimates of the intakes of fat and energy and percentage energy from fat using 4-day food diaries and 28 days of receipts, in populations who buy most of their food from supermarkets. They also show that the fat content of total food purchases from supermarkets is 35.9% energy from fat compared with 33% energy from fat recommended by the Department of Health. This preliminary research indicates the feasibility of and potential for utilising large quantities of readily available data generated from supermarket checkouts in dietary surveys.
Linked Records of Children with Traumatic Brain Injury

Summary Objective: Record linkage may create powerful datasets with which investigators can conduct comparative effectiveness studies evaluating the impact of tests or interventions on health. All linkages of health care data files to date have used protected health information (PHI) in their linkage variables. A technique to link datasets without using PHI would be advantageous both to preserve privacy and to increase the number of potential linkages. Methods: We applied probabilistic linkage to records of injured children in the National Trauma Data Bank (NTDB, N = 156,357) and the Pediatric Health Information Systems (PHIS, N = 104,049) databases from 2007 to 2010. 49 match variables without PHI were used, many of them administrative variables and indicators for procedures recorded as International Classification of Diseases, 9th revision, Clinical Modification codes. We validated the accuracy of the linkage using identified data from a single center that submits to both databases. Results: We accurately linked the PHIS and NTDB records for 69% of children with any injury, and 88% of those with severe traumatic brain injury eligible for a study of intervention effectiveness (positive predictive value of 98%, specificity of 99.99%). Accurate linkage was associated with longer lengths of stay, more severe injuries, and multiple injuries. Conclusion: In populations with substantial illness or injury severity, accurate record linkage may be possible in the absence of PHI. This methodology may enable linkages and, in turn, comparative effectiveness studies that would be unlikely or impossible otherwise.
Structure and Distribution of Centromeric Retrotransposons at Diploid and Allotetraploid Coffea Centromeric and Pericentromeric Regions

Centromeric regions of plants are generally composed of large array of satellites from a specific lineage of Gypsy LTR-retrotransposons, called Centromeric Retrotransposons. Repeated sequences interact with a specific H3 histone, playing a crucial function on kinetochore formation. To study the structure and composition of centromeric regions in the genus Coffea, we annotated and classified Centromeric Retrotransposons sequences from the allotetraploid C. arabica genome and its two diploid ancestors: Coffea canephora and C. eugenioides. Ten distinct CRC (Centromeric Retrotransposons in Coffea) families were found. The sequence mapping and FISH experiments of CRC Reverse Transcriptase domains in C. canephora, C. eugenioides, and C. arabica clearly indicate a strong and specific targeting mainly onto proximal chromosome regions, which can be associated also with heterochromatin. PacBio genome sequence analyses of putative centromeric regions on C. arabica and C. canephora chromosomes showed an exceptional density of one family of CRC elements, and the complete absence of satellite arrays, contrasting with usual structure of plant centromeres. Altogether, our data suggest a specific centromere organization in Coffea, contrasting with other plant genomes.
CALCIUM SILICATE BASED MICROSPHERES OF THEOPHYLLINE FOR GASTRO RETENTIVE FLOATING DRUG DELIVERY: PREPARATION, IN VITRO CHARACTERIZATION AND IN VIVO INVESTIGATIONS

Gastroretentive dosage forms have potential for use as controlledrelease drug delivery systems. Multiple unit systems avoid the all-ornone gastric emptying nature of single-unit systems. Theophylline, a fast and short-acting meglitinide analog used for long term treatment of asthma was chosen as the drug candidate since it is indicated for the development of a dosage form with increased GRT. It has a very short half-life (2-4 h), low bioavailability (49%) and poor absorption in the upper intestinal tract. So a controlled release system designed to increase its residence time in the stomach without contact with the mucosa was achieved through the preparation of floating microspheres by the emulsion solvent diffusion technique consisting of calcium silicate (CaSi) as porous carrier; theophylline (TH), as an antiasthamatic agent; and Eudragit S-100 as polymer. The prepared formulations were characterized for micromeritic property, in vitro floating behavior, and drug loading, and surface morphology, Interaction study by FTIR, DSC and XRD followed by pharmacokinetic study. The microspheres were found to be spherical in shape and porous. The release rate was determined in simulated gastrointestinal fluids at 37±1˚C. The formulation demonstrated favorable in vitro floating and release characteristics. The drug encapsulation efficiency was 88±1.2. The pharmacokinetic study of developed formulation compared with multi dose marketed formulation and reveals maintenance of plasma drug concentration, which is comparable that of marketed formulation. The designed system, combining excellent buoyant
MAPK and NF‐κB signalling pathways regulate the expression of miRNA, let‐7f in human endocervical epithelial cells

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) mediate post‐transcriptional gene suppression and are a critical component of the complex regulatory networks in epithelial immune responses. Transcription of miRNA genes in epithelial cells can be elaborately controlled through Toll‐like receptors (TLRs), and associated nuclear factor kappa‐light‐chain‐enhancer of activated B cells (NF‐κB) and mitogen‐activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathways, leading to nuclear transcription factor associated‐transactivation and transrepression of miRNAs. MiRNA, let‐7f is involved in the regulation of innate immune responses post TLR3 stimulation in human endocervical cells (End1/E6E7) and decreased let‐7f is associated with poor immune activation. Thus, expression of let‐7f is under strict control. However, the mechanism by which let‐7f is regulated in these cells is not known. Therefore, in the present study, we have investigated the role of MAPK and NF‐κB in the transcription of let‐7f. We report that signalling of TLR3, results in activation of multiple signalling pathways including MAPK/ERK, JNK, p38, and NF‐κB. Of these MAPK/ p38 and JNK directly influence the expression of let‐7f in End1/E6E7 cells. Inhibition of ERK and NF‐κB up regulates the expression of let‐7f and its transcription factor, C/EBPβ. In conclusion, we have identified a system through which TLR3 mediated immune response is regulated by C/EBPβ and let‐7f through the temporal activation of MAPK and NF‐κB in human endocervical cells.
Knowledge, attitudes and beliefs towards e-cigarettes among e-cigarette users and stop smoking advisors in South East England: a qualitative study

Aim To explore how e-cigarettes are perceived by a group of e-cigarette users and a group of Stop Smoking Advisors (SSAs), what are the risks and benefits they associate with e-cigarettes and how do these understandings shape participants’ attitude towards e-cigarettes? Method Face-to-face and phone interviews were conducted with 15 e-cigarette users and 13 SSAs in South East England between 2014 and 2015. Transcribed data were analysed inductively through thematic analysis. Findings E-cigarettes were used as a therapeutic aid to stop or cut down smoking and as a smoking substitute. A prominent theme is the uncertainty e-cigarettes have generated. This included ambiguity of e-cigarettes’ status and efficacy, and ambiguity of e-cigarettes’ physical and social risks. Different attitudes towards e-cigarettes were identified. Conclusion E-cigarettes’ benefits and risks should be continuously evaluated, put into perspective and circulated to avoid ambiguity. Stop smoking services need to recognise the benefits that can be gained by using e-cigarettes as a harm reduction tool.