Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Tumor necrosis factor gene polymorphisms and endometriosis in Asians: a systematic review and meta‐analysis

Background Numerous studies have described the association between polymorphisms in the tumor necrosis factor (TNF) gene and risk of endometriosis. However, the results remain controversial. Here we reviewed studies reporting the association between TNF gene polymorphisms and endometriosis risk in Asians. Methods PubMed and Embase were searched. Twelve case‐control studies assessing the role of multiple TNF gene polymorphisms in endometriosis were included. If no less than two articles evaluated one variant, meta‐analysis was conducted; otherwise, narrative analysis was chosen. A fixed‐ or random‐effects model was employed according to the heterogeneity among studies. The strength of the association between TNF gene polymorphisms and endometriosis risk was assessed by odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals. Results For TNF‐&agr; ‐238G>A, ‐308G>A, ‐857C>T, and ‐863C>A, no significant associations were identified from all genetic models. For TNF‐&agr; ‐850T>C, results from one study showed that patients harboring the heterozygote TC were less susceptible to endometriosis than patients harboring the homozygote TT. For TNF‐&agr; ‐1031T>C, a mild increase in endometriosis risk was found in the Asian population. Meta‐analysis from two studies found that the TNF‐&bgr; +252>G polymorphism had a protective effect in Chinese individuals. Due to the limitations of the included studies, it is necessitated to perform more studies to elucidate the possible roles of TNF gene polymorphisms in the pathogenesis of endometriosis. Conclusions TNF‐&agr; ‐1031T>C and TNF‐&bgr; +252A>G were significantly associated with the risk of endometriosis in Asian and Chinese populations, respectively. To further evaluate these associations, more large‐scale, rigorously designed studies are needed.
Recent trials of lipid lowering

The global burden of coronary artery disease has pushed lipid‐lowering therapy to the forefront of medical management of this condition. Recent clinical trials have compared the efficacy of more intensive lipid lowering with statins against the normal standard of care. Other agents such as fibrates, glitazones, which also favourably modify lipid levels have also been assessed recently. This narrative review summarises the key recent clinical trials of lipid lowering since 2004 and their implications for future patient care.
Analysis of Duodenal Drainage Fluid After Cholecystokinin (CCK) Stimulation in Healthy Volunteers

Introduction and Aims Hormonal stimulatory agents are used to assess pancreatic function. Biologically derived secretin, the most widely used pancreatic secretagogue, is no longer available in the United States. Existing secretory tests using cholecystokinin alone are cumbersome, requiring a unique dual tube (gastric and duodenal) collection system and constant perfusion of a nonabsorbable marker to calculate enzyme output (in international units [IU]). A simpler, quantitative cholecystokinin stimulation test that measures enzyme concentrations (in international units per liter [IU/L]) instead of total output would obviate need for marker perfusion/collection. The aim of our experiment was to study the secretory patterns of pancreatic enzyme concentration in duodenal fluid after cholecystokinin stimulation in healthy volunteers. Methodology Healthy subjects had a Dreiling tube inserted endoscopically into the ligament of Treitz. Gastric and duodenal aspiration ports were connected to low intermittent suction. A 20-minute baseline was obtained to clear the gastric and duodenal lumina of residual fluid. Cholecystokinin was infused at a constant rate of 40 ng/kg per hour. Duodenal fluid was collected on ice for 80 minutes in four 20-minute aliquots. Aspirated fluid was analyzed for enzyme concentration with an automated chemistry analyzer in the hospital biochemistry laboratory. Results Nineteen healthy volunteers were studied. The mean volume (±SEM) of duodenal fluid collected was 85 ± 4.4 mL (range, 48 to 118 mL). Fluid analysis revealed a significant rise in mean lipase concentration (±SEM) from a baseline of 595,680 ± 11,930 IU/L to a peak of 1,778,847 ± 171,204 IU/L (mean difference = 1,183,167 IU/L; 95% CI= 664,459 IU/L to 1,701,875 IU/L;p < 0.001, Student t test). Increases in amylase concentrations were markedly less pronounced and did not reach statistical significance. Mean peak lipase concentration occurred within 50 minutes of acinar cell stimulation. All patients tolerated tube placement, and there were no episodes of acute pancreatitis or abdominal pain. Conclusions Pancreatic lipase concentrations in duodenal fluid increase nearly threefold after cholecystokinin stimulation in healthy volunteers. This magnitude of enzyme secretory response may be a marker of pancreatic function and could potentially lead to a more clinically useful and simpler pancreatic function test. This physiologic study serves as the basis for our further investigations of cholecystokinin-stimulated lipase concentrations as a new test in the assessment of pancreatic insufficiency.
Can electronic health records help improve patients' understanding of medications?

OBJECTIVES To present pilot data from an ongoing electronic health record (EHR) quality improvement study to improve medication management using patient previsit review of the EHR medication list and a plain-language new medication information sheet to provide with every new EHR prescription. STUDY DESIGN Postvisit survey of 191 patients at an academic general internal medicine clinic. METHODS Patients were asked about discrepancies and problems, concerns, and questions (PCQs) in their EHR summary for up to 10 current medications and about knowledge of new prescriptions. Findings describe the extent of medication discrepancies, perceived PCQs about current medications, and patient knowledge about new medications. RESULTS Overall, 78.0% of patients had at least 1 discrepancy, more than half had a drug listed that they were not taking or dose or frequency discrepancies, and 8.9% reported an omission; 41.9% indicated at least 1 PCQ about their current medications. Among patients who received a new prescription, most knew what the new medication was for and how to take it. However, 66.0% indicated uncertainty about potential adverse effects that they should telephone the physician about. CONCLUSIONS Discrepancies can be efficiently categorized by previsit review of EHR medication lists. Prereview offers physicians the opportunity to better address important medication PCQs. Testing the value of EHR-generated plain-language medication information sheets requires follow-up interviews after medications are filled. Patients may not understand the actual benefits of new medications.
Recurrent Generative Adversarial Networks for Proximal Learning and Automated Compressive Image Recovery

Recovering images from undersampled linear measurements typically leads to an ill-posed linear inverse problem, that asks for proper statistical priors. Building effective priors is however challenged by the low train and test overhead dictated by real-time tasks; and the need for retrieving visually "plausible" and physically "feasible" images with minimal hallucination. To cope with these challenges, we design a cascaded network architecture that unrolls the proximal gradient iterations by permeating benefits from generative residual networks (ResNet) to modeling the proximal operator. A mixture of pixel-wise and perceptual costs is then deployed to train proximals. The overall architecture resembles back-and-forth projection onto the intersection of feasible and plausible images. Extensive computational experiments are examined for a global task of reconstructing MR images of pediatric patients, and a more local task of superresolving CelebA faces, that are insightful to design efficient architectures. Our observations indicate that for MRI reconstruction, a recurrent ResNet with a single residual block effectively learns the proximal. This simple architecture appears to significantly outperform the alternative deep ResNet architecture by 2dB SNR, and the conventional compressed-sensing MRI by 4dB SNR with 100x faster inference. For image superresolution, our preliminary results indicate that modeling the denoising proximal demands deep ResNets.
La concurrence imparfaite comme source de fluctuations endogènes : une analyse en générations imbriquées

Depuis les annees 1970, les theories macroeconomiques du cycle economique ont comme cadre de reference des modeles a fondements microeconomiques dans lesquels les agents ont des comportements rationnels. Si des explications exogenes des fluctuations economiques se sont developpees, certains economistes ont propose une approche endogene. Cette approche explique les fluctuations economiques par l'existence de non-linearites et d'equilibres a taches solaires. Dans les modeles a generations imbriquees, les premiers travaux ont analyse l'emergence de fluctuations endogenes dans un cadre de concurrence parfaite. Cependant, les conditions sous lesquelles il existe de telles fluctuations, apparaissent souvent comme restrictives et semblent manquer de validite empirique. L'introduction de la concurrence imparfaite a pour objectif de montrer que les rendements croissants et l'existence d'un taux de marge, eventuellement variable, favorisent l'emergence de fluctuations endogenes. Les imperfections du marche du travail creent aussi des non-linearites supplementaires qui permettent d'expliquer l'existence de cycles endogenes. En choisissant comme cadre de reference le modele a generations imbriquees, nous presentons, dans un premier temps, les resultats existants qui analysent l'emergence de fluctuations endogenes dans une economie monetaire et dans une economie avec capital productif. Les modeles de concurrence parfaite sont d'abord envisages, puis nous discutons des apports de la concurrence imparfaite deja mis en evidence par les economistes. Nous developpons ensuite quatre nouvelles analyses qui cherchent a montrer que la concurrence imparfaite et l'imperfection du marche du travail contribuent a expliquer l'existence de fluctuations endogenes. Nous exploitons notamment la variabilite du taux de marge, l'existence de rendements croissants et celle d'un differentiel de salaire.
The aging suprachiasmatic nucleus and cytokines: functional, molecular, and cellular changes in rodents

The aging process brings about a switch to a low‐grade chronic inflammatory condition in the periphery and brain, a condition which may prime brain cells, including those of the hypothalamic suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN). Little information is available, however, on the responses of the SCN to neuroinflammation and immune‐related challenges, and such responses have not been hitherto investigated during aging. We here provide an overview of these issues and summarize data we obtained in the study of the SCN of young and aged mice. In particular, we analyzed: i) the electrophysiological properties of the SCN core (the retino‐recipient region) in tissue slices; ii) expression and day/night variation of transcripts encoding the receptors for the cytokines interferon‐γ and tumor necrosis factor‐α, as well as the expression of transcripts encoding the proteins “suppressors of cytokine signaling” SOCS1 and SOCS3, by means of quantitative real‐time polymerase chain reaction; levels of mRNAs were correlated with neuronal activation, revealed by Fos induction, elicited in the SCN by intracerebroventricular injections of a mixture of interferon‐γ and tumor necrosis factor‐α during the daytime and nighttime; and iii) response of astrocytes and microglia in the SCN to the same paradigm of cytokine administration. Marked changes of all the above‐mentioned parameters were found in the aged SCN, indicating that the circadian pacemaker is a target of the aging process. In addition, the findings indicate that neurons and glial cells of the biological clock are sensitive to inflammatory signals, and that the response to such signals is altered during senescence.
Applying Price Analysis to Marketing Systems: Methods and Examples from the Indonesian Rice Market

There is pressure in developing countries for less regulated staple food markets. Public sector parastatals are being asked to justify their operations, streamline their operations and costs and to release many of their previous functions to the private market. This pressure raises issues about the ability of private markets to take on these roles and what is the optimal parastatal operational size. The answers to these questions depend upon the level of temporal, spatial and vertical integration of the food staple markets. Applying Price Analysis to Marketing Systems: Methods and Examples from the Indonesian Rice Market is intended as a comprehensive training manual for the various methodologies available to address the question of market integration. All methods are applied in a step-by-step, easy-to-follow manner to Indonesian rice market data. The book assumes only a rudimentary level of statistical knowledge and will be of interest to researchers and organizations concerned with the assessment of agricultural market performance in developing countries.
PRTS: A Passive RFID Real-Time Tracking System Under the Conditions of Sparse Measurements

In many logistics and manufacturing applications, tracking of moving objects with radio frequency identification (RFID) tags on a conveyor belt is a premise for many other processes, e.g., sorting procedures, stamping IDs in a surveillance video. However, in complex industrial environments, a sharp decline in Tag Read Record (TRR) often results in severe spatial ambiguity. In this type of scenarios, existing systems cannot work effectively owing to the prevalent existence of noise. This paper proposes a Passive RFID Real-time Tracking System (PRTS) with tolerance of a small TRR, which is designed for tracking RFID-tagged mobile objects. We use detailed deduction to convert the tracking problem into a sparse signal reconstruction one. To solve this problem, we devise a novel normal sparse signal reconstruction method based on greedy pursuit by making the best of the available prior knowledge and further ameliorate it via calibration of the phase deviation from frequency and angle-of-arrival responses. Furthermore, we leverage the simplified particle filters to facilitate the real-time tracking of mobile objects on conveyor belts. We implement the prototype PRTS with commercial-off-the-shelf RFID devices and evaluate it in various scenarios. Experimental results demonstrate that PRTS achieves a mean relative error of 7 cm under the conditions of extremely sparse measurements.
IEEE 802.11ac DBCA: A Tug of War between Channel Utilization and Fairness

IEEE 802.11ac supports Dynamic Bandwidth Channel Access (DBCA), where a wireless station dynamically selects the channel bandwidth based on the availability of the secondary channels. Although DBCA reduces the possibility of starvation due to non-availability of secondary channels, however, to the best of our knowledge, no existing works look into the performance benefits of IEEE 802.11ac DBCA based on theoretical modeling. In this paper, we develop a two dimensional Markov chain approach to model the performance of DBCA under various channel bonding conditions. We validate the proposed model based on a real testbed implementation. From the thorough analysis of the numerical results obtained from the model, we show that although DBCA improves channel utilization for secondary channels, it requires proper channel allocations and bonding level distributions across the wireless channels for reducing unfairness in the network. We observe that under certain circumstances, the secondary channel users can affect the throughput of primary channel users, which may introduce a short-term unfairness and a significant performance drop in the network.
Insulin status differentially affects energy transduction in cardiac mitochondria from male and female rats

Aim: The incidence of coronary heart diseases (CHD), congestive heart failure (CHF) and myocardial infarction is higher in diabetic patients than in non‐diabetic groups, with these incidences being more in women than in the men. Hence, we examined involvement of mitochondrial energy transduction functions.
Recreation at Work: More than Fun and Games?

Recreation at Work: More than Fun and Games? Andrew Lacanienta Department of Recreation Management, BYU Master of Science The purpose of this study was to examine the efficacy of Duerden, Courtright, and Widmer’s (n.d.) Recreation at Work (RAW) Model and explore the relationship between RAW and employee flourishing (i.e., resilience, work engagement, organizational identification). This study explored the unique contribution from RAW and work activities in relation to employee flourishing. Structural equation modeling revealed RAW and leisure as a state of mind (LSM) perceptions (i.e., intrinsic motivation, perceived freedom, positive affect) had positive relationships with personal expressiveness (β = .704, p < .001) and organizational identification (β = .164, p = .002). Additionally, RAW had a positive relationship with resilience mediated by personal expressiveness (β = .157, p = .001). Results suggest RAW provides added value to the workplace by facilitating personal expressiveness, resilience, and organizational identification. Comparisons are discussed around the benefits of LSM perceptions during work and RAW activities. Practical applications and suggestions for future research are discussed.
Role of cardiac output in ethanol-evoked attenuation of centrally mediated hypotension in conscious rats.

Our previous studies have shown that ethanol selectively counteracts centrally mediated hypotensive responses. This study investigated the role of cardiac output and peripheral resistance in the antagonistic interaction between ethanol and antihypertensive drugs. Changes in blood pressure, heart rate, cardiac index, stroke volume, and peripheral resistance elicited by clonidine and subsequent ethanol or saline administration were evaluated in conscious rats. The aortic barodenervated rat was employed because it exhibits greater hypotensive responses to clonidine compared with the intact rat. Aortic barodenervation elicited acute rises in blood pressure, heart rate, and peripheral resistance, whereas cardiac index and stroke volume were not altered. The blood pressure of conscious aortic barodenervated rats returned to sham-operated levels by 48 hours due to concomitant reductions in cardiac index and stroke volume; the peripheral resistance, however, remained significantly elevated. Clonidine (30 microg/kg, I.V.) elicited greater decreases in blood pressure in aortic barodenervated compared with sham-operated rats. The hypotension was caused by decreases in cardiac index and stroke volume because peripheral resistance did not change. Ethanol (1 g/kg, I.V.) counteracted the hypotensive effect of clonidine and raised blood pressure to levels higher than preclonidine values. Significant (P<.05) increases in cardiac index and stroke volume and decreases in peripheral resistance accompanied the pressor effect of ethanol. Additional control groups were included in the study to determine the selectivity of the interaction. A dose of hydralazine (0.5 mg/kg, I.V.) was used that produced similar hypotension to that evoked by clonidine in aortic barodenervated rats. Hydralazine-evoked hypotension was similar in denervated and control rats and resulted from significant reductions in peripheral resistance. Reflex increases in heart rate and stroke volume and hence cardiac output were observed. Ethanol given after hydralazine produced a short-lived pressor effect (<5 minutes versus 40 minutes in the case of clonidine) and counteracted the sympathetically mediated increases in cardiac output, stroke volume, and heart rate. These findings support our hypothesis that ethanol selectively counteracts hypotensive responses of central origin by reversing the reduction in cardiac output elicited by clonidine.
The impact of certification on the natural and financial capitals of Ghanaian cocoa farmers

ABSTRACT While an increasing number of large food companies commit themselves to source only certified cocoa, research on the impacts of certification on cocoa farmers is falling behind. We investigate how Rainforest Alliance (RA) certification of small-scale cocoa farmers in Ghana has affected both the financial and the natural capitals of the farmers. Across two villages, certified farmers were compared to conventional farmers, using both qualitative and quantitative data collected through farmer and key informant interviews and participatory rural appraisals. A combination of the Sustainable Livelihood Framework and the input–output–outcome–impact framework was used for the analysis. Results indicate that the RA certification scheme has a positive influence on the certified farmers in terms of cocoa production, yield, income, and farmers’ perception of changes in their natural and financial capitals. The positive influence is a result of inputs from the RA certification, including financial support, information and knowledge, technical assistance, and increased access to farm inputs and credit. However, these positive impacts are conditioned by the presence of active farmer organizations and access to agricultural inputs and credit through associations and government institutions, and may be undermined by certified farmers who sell their produce outside the premium value chain.
Addition of the Long-Axis Information to Short-Axis Contours Reduces Interstudy Variability of Left-Ventricular Analysis in Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Studies

Objectives:To reduce interstudy variability using long-axis information for correcting short-axis (SA) contours at basal and apical level for left-ventricular analysis by magnetic resonance imaging. Materials and Methods:A total of 20 patients with documented heart failure and 20 volunteers underwent magnetic resonance imaging examination twice for measuring endocardial end-diastolic volume, endocardial end-systolic volume, mass, and ejection fraction. The boundary of the left ventricle, the mitral valve plane, and apex were marked manually on the 2- and 4-chamber long-axis images. Automatic epicardial and endocardial contour detection was performed on the SA images using the intersection of the outlines from the long axis as starting positions. The same observer compared the interstudy variability of this method with analysis that was based on the SA images only. Results:The interstudy variability decreased when information from the long axis was included; for end-systolic volume, 9.6% versus 4.7% (P = 0.00014); for end-diastolic volume, 4.9% versus 2.5% (P = 0.0011); for mass, 7.4% versus 5.0% (P = 0.11); and for ejection fraction 12.2% versus 5.6% (P = 0.0017), respectively. Conclusions:Identification of the mitral valve plane and apex on long-axis images to limit the extent of volume at the base and the apex of the heart reduces interstudy variability for left-ventricular functional assessment.