Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The cardiovascular risks of physical activity.

The incidence of sudden death, serious arrhythmias, and myocardial infarction in connection with both recreational and rehabilitative physical activity is small. However, the incidence of e.g. sudden death is several times higher in exercise than at other times. This relative risk is highest in middle-aged men, and higher in strenuous than in nonstrenuous exercise. In the vast majority of the cases the underlying cause is advanced coronary heart disease, which in large proportion of the cases has been asymptomatic and has allowed regular strenuous training. Attempts to prevent the complications by special large scale screening programs would be ineffective and individual counselling limited by lack of resources. These measures should, however, be used in selected groups and individuals. Another approach is to inform the exercisers and their families at large by systematic, well-planned and repeated messages of the risks of physical activity, of the symptoms and findings indicating this risk, of the individual and environmental factors increasing the risk, and of the necessary measures to be taken to minimize the risk. Even if all available measures at present were used, the cardiovascular complications of physical activity could not be totally prevented. Fortunately, preliminary evidence suggests that at population level the cardiovascular hazards of physical activity are outweighed by its cardiovascular benefits.
Strong spatial genetic structure in peripheral but not core populations of Sitka spruce [Picea sitchensis (Bong.) Carr.]

We examined spatial genetic structure within eight populations of Sitka spruce classified as core or peripheral based on ecological niche, and continuous or disjunct based on species distribution. In each population, 200 trees were spatially mapped and genotyped for eight cDNA‐based sequence tagged site (STS) codominant markers. Spatial autocorrelation was assessed by estimating pij, the average co‐ancestry coefficient, between individuals within distance intervals. The distribution of alleles and genotypes within core populations was almost random, with nonsignificant co‐ancestry values among trees as close as 50 m in core populations. In contrast, the distribution of alleles and genotypes within peripheral populations revealed an aggregation of similar multilocus genotypes, with co‐ancestry values greater than 0.20 among trees up to 50 m apart and significant, positive values between trees up to 500 m. The relatively high density of reproductive adults in core populations may lead to highly overlapping seed shadows that limit development of spatial genetic structure. However, in peripheral populations with a lower density of adults, the distribution of alleles and genotypes was highly structured, likely due to offspring establishment near maternal trees and subsequent biparental inbreeding, as well as more recent population establishment at the leading edge of post‐Pleistocene range expansion. Conserving genetic diversity in peripheral populations may require larger reserves for in situ conservation than required in core populations. These data on spatial genetic structure can be used to provide guidance for sampling strategies for both ex situ conservation and research collections.
Biocontrol of Postharvest Anthracnose of Mango Fruit with Debaryomyces Nepalensis and Effects on Storage Quality and Postharvest Physiology.

Anthracnose is presently recognized as one of the most important postharvest disease of mango worldwide. To control the disease, chemical fungicides for a long time was widely used among fruit farmers, but recently found that pathogen had developed increasingly resistance to it. With people's growing desire of healthy and green food, finding new and environmentally friendly biological control approach was very necessary. In this paper, we provided a kind of new antagonistic yeast which enriched the strain resources and the efficacy of Debaryomyces nepalensis against postharvest anthracnose of mango fruit and the influence on quality parameters were investigated. The results showed that the decay incidence and lesion diameter of postharvest anthracnose of mango treated by D. nepalensis were significantly reduced compared with the control fruit stored at 25 °C for 30 d or at 15 °C for 40 d, and the higher concentration of D. nepalensis was, the better the efficacy of the biocontrol was. Study also found that 1 h was the best treatment duration and antagonistic yeast inoculated earlier had good biocontrol effect on anthracnose. Meanwhile, treatment by D. nepalensis could significantly reduce postharvest anthracnose of mango, delay the decrease in firmness, TSS, TA, and ascorbic acid value, and do not impair surface color during postharvest storage. Moreover, the increase in MDA (malondialdehyde) content and increase in cell membrane permeability of fruit treated by D. nepalensis was highly inhibited. The results suggested D. nepalensis treatment could not only maintain storage quality of mango fruit, but also decrease the decay incidence to anthracnose disease. All these results indicated that D. nepalensis has great potential for development of commercial formulations to control postharvest pathogens of mango fruit.
Pitch trajectories of English vowels produced by American men, women,
 and children

Pitch trajectories reflect a continuous variation of vocal fold movements over time. This study examined the pitch trajectories of English vowels produced by 139 American English speakers, statistically analyzing their trajectories using the Generalized Additive Mixed Models (GAMMs). First, Praat was used to read the sound data of Hillenbrand et al . (1995). A pitch analysis script was then prepared, and six pitch values at the corresponding time points within each vowel segment were collected and checked. The results showed that the group of men produced the lowest pitch trajectories, followed by the groups of women, boys, then girls. The density line showed a bimodal distribution. The pitch values at the six corresponding time points formed a single dip, which changed gradually across the vowel segment from 204 to 193 to 196 Hz. The normality tests performed on the pitch data rejected the null hypothesis. Nonparametric tests were therefore conducted to discover the significant differences in the values among the four groups. The GAMMs, which analyzed all the pitch data, produced significant results among the pitch values at the six corresponding time points but not between the two groups of boys and girls. The GAMMs also revealed that the two groups were significantly different only at the first and second time points. Accordingly, the methodology of this study and its findings may be applicable to future studies comparing curvilinear data sets elicited by experimental conditions.
Effects of Story Marketing and Travel Involvement on Tourist Behavioral Intention in the Tourism Industry

Story marketing has been widely applied to modern societies. As a matter of fact, attraction is a critical part of tourism for any visitor attractions throughout the world. A visitor attraction requires sufficient attraction to appeal to customers’ interests. Story marketing is currently the most popular marketing strategy. The success of using stories in visitor attractions as a marketing tactic for tourism attraction lies in the fact that story-telling is able to best attract people. Both adults and children love listening to stories, which can lead a way to people’s hearts and stories are also the best strategy for communication with others. Aimed at visitors to the Wushe Township as the research participants, a total of 500 copies of questionnaires were distributed, and 287 valid ones retrieved, with a retrieval rate of 57%. The research results show: (1) a significantly positive effect of story marketing on travel involvement; (2) a notably positive effect of travel involvement on behavioral intention; (3) remarkably positive effect of story marketing on behavioral intention.
Topographic Quantification of the Transcorneal Electrical Stimulation (TES)-Induced Protective Effects on N-Methyl-N-Nitrosourea-Treated Retinas.

PURPOSE To quantify the transcorneal electrical stimulation (TES)-induced effects on regional photoreceptors and visual signal pathway of N-methyl-N-nitrosourea (MNU)-treated retinas via topographic measurements. METHODS N-methyl-N-nitrosourea-administered mice received TES or sham stimulations and were subsequently subjected to electroretinography (ERG), multielectrode array (MEA), and histologic and immunohistochemistry examinations. Quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) analyses were also performed to determine the mRNA levels of Bax, Bcl-2, Calpain-2, Caspase-3, brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), and ciliary neurotrophic factor (CNTF). RESULTS Amplitudes of ERG b-wave in the TES-treated mice were significantly larger than those in the sham controls (P < 0.01). Microelectrode array examination revealed that the photoreceptors in TES-treated retina were efficiently preserved (P < 0.01). Morphologic measurements showed that the central retina region was more consolidated than the other areas in the TES-treated mice. Together with the disproportionate distribution of immunostaining in retinal flat mounts, these findings indicated that different rescuing kinetics existed among regional photoreceptors. Compared with the sham controls, a significantly increased signal-to-noise ratio was also found in the TES-treated mice (TES100: 2.02 ± 1.12; TES200: 4.42 ± 1.51; sham: 0.25 ± 0.13; P < 0.01). Moreover, qRT-PCR measurements suggested that the altered expression of several apoptotic factors and neurotrophic cytokines was correlated with TES-induced protection. CONCLUSIONS Regional photoreceptors in the MNU-administered retinas exhibit different sensitivities to TES. Transcorneal electrical stimulation is capable of ameliorating MNU-induced photoreceptor degeneration and rectifying abnormalities in the inner visual signal pathways.
Modeling the rise in Internet-based

Contemporary collective action, much of which involves social media and other Internet-based platforms, leaves a digital imprint which may be harvested to better understand the dynamics of mobilization. Petition signing is an example of collective action which has gained in popularity with rising use of social media and provides such data for the whole population of petition signatories for a given platform. This paper tracks the growth curves of all 20,000 petitions to the UK government over 18 months, analyzing the rate of growth and outreach mechanism. Previous research has suggested the importance of the rst day to the ultimate success of a petition, but has not examined early growth within that day, made possible here through hourly resolution in the data. The analysis shows that the vast majority of petitions do not achieve any measure of success; over 99 percent fail to get the 10,000 signatures required for an ocial response and only 0.1 percent attain the 100,000 required for a parliamentary debate. We analyze the data through a multiplicative process model framework to explain the heterogeneous growth of signatures at the population level. We dene and measure an average outreach factor for petitions and show that it decays very fast (reducing to 0.1% after 10 hours). After 24 hours, a petition’s fate is virtually set. The ndings seem to challenge conventional analyses of collective action from economics and political science, where the production function has been assumed to follow an S-shaped curve.
Analysis of Growth Factors and Inflammatory Cytokines in Exhaled Breath Condensate from Asthmatic Children

Background: Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), AA isoform of platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF-AA), and epidermal growth factor (EGF) are involved in the pathogenesis of airway inflammation in asthma. These molecules are closely associated with cytokines such as tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) and interleukin (IL)-4. This study investigates the relation between childhood asthma and levels of these mediators in exhaled breath condensate (EBC). Methods: EBC was collected from asthmatic children and controls using a disposable collection kit, and the concentrations of VEGF, PDGF-AA, EGF, TNF-α and IL-4 in EBC were measured using sandwich enzyme immunoassays. Exhaled nitric oxide concentration was measured by a chemiluminescence analyzer. Results: Thirty-five asthmatic patients aged between 7 and 18 years and 11 controls were recruited. Sixteen patients had intermittent asthma (IA) whereas 19 of them suffered from persistent asthma (PA). A significant correlation was found between IL-4 and TNF-α in EBC (ρ = 0.374, p = 0.010). PDGF-AA levels in EBC were higher in subjects with diminished FEV1 (p = 0.023) whereas IL-4 concentrations were increased in asthmatics (p = 0.007) as well as subjects with increased plasma total IgE (p = 0.033). Patients with PA receiving high-dose inhaled corticosteroid (ICS) had higher EBC IL-4 concentration than those on low-dose ICS (p = 0.007). Linear regression revealed that PDGF-AA levels in EBC were negatively associated with FEV1 percentage (β = –0.459, p = 0.006) among the asthmatic patients. Conclusions: IL-4 in EBC is increased in childhood asthma, and growth factors are detectable in a significant proportion of these children. Increased PDGF-AA is found in asthmatics with more severe airflow limitation.
An Iterative Search based Technique to Find or Predict Older Face Images of a Child

The major variations in the appearance of human faces is because of age changes. Due to many lifestyle issues, it is difficult to precisely predict how individuals may look in older years. This work aims to develop a technique for predicting older face images from a given childrens face image. This method requires only one input face image of a child and produces different age progressed images of the child at different target ages. This technique might be very helpful to find the missing children. In this method we have proposed a technique to find or construct a synthesize older face images from a given face image dataset. In the proposed work the FG-NET image dataset has been classified with different age groups of face images. Age groups are named by AgeGroup IDs 10-14, 15-19,. , 50-54. For a given child image we have applied an iterative approach to find the face images in higher age groups. At the first step an input of a child image of age that is below of the first age group has been taken and searched that image in the face dataset of higher age group. If the face is found, then the founded image is considered as the target image at that age group and that new face is searched in the next higher aged group data set. If it is not found, then a synthesized mean image is constructed with the input image and the founded nearest image. The same technique is repeated until the construction of the oldest (of age 50-60) synthesized image computation is completed. Here age group 50-60 has been considered as the oldest image in the experiment. In this way the older images of all the respective age groups can be found. Here PCA face recognition algorithm is used for searching an image from a given dataset.
Continuous infusion vs. intermittent bolus injection of furosemide in acute decompensated heart failure: systematic review and meta‐analysis of randomised controlled trials

Loop diuretics remain a fundamental pharmacological therapy to remove excess fluid and improve symptom control in acute decompensated heart failure. Several recent randomised controlled trials have examined the clinical benefit of continuous vs. bolus furosemide in acute decompensated heart failure, but have reported conflicting findings. The aim of this review was to compare the effects of continuous and bolus furosemide with regard to mortality, length of hospital stay and its efficacy profile in acute decompensated heart failure. All parallel‐arm randomised controlled trials from MEDLINE, EMBASE, PubMed and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews from inception until May 2017 were included. Cross‐over randomised controlled trials, observational studies, case reports, case series and non‐systematic reviews that involved children were excluded. Eight trials (n = 669) were eligible for inclusion. There was no difference between furosemide continuous infusion and bolus administration for all‐cause mortality (four studies; n = 491; I2 = 0%; OR 1.65; 95%CI 0.93–2.91; p = 0.08) or duration of hospitalisation (six studies; n = 576; I2 = 71%; mean difference 0.27; 95%CI −1.35 to 1.89 days; p = 0.74). Continuous infusion of intravenous furosemide was associated with increased weight reduction (five studies; n = 516; I2 = 0%; mean difference 0.70; 95%CI 0.12–1.28 kg; p = 0.02); increased total urine output in 24 h (four studies; n = 390; I2 = 33%; mean difference 461.5; 95%CI 133.7–789.4 ml; p < 0.01); and reduced brain natriuretic peptide (two studies; n = 390; I2 = 0%; mean difference 399.5; 95%CI 152.7–646.3 ng.l−1; p < 0.01), compared with the bolus group. There was no difference in the incidence of raised creatinine and hypokalaemia between the two groups. In summary, there was no difference between continuous infusion and bolus of furosemide for all‐cause mortality, length of hospital stay and electrolyte disturbance, but continuous infusion was superior to bolus administration with regard to diuretic effect and reduction in brain natriuretic peptide.
Evaluating folksonomy information sources for genre prediction

Automatic genre identification is a task which plays a crucial role in many domains such as automatic storytellers, recommender systems and web page topic detectors. Genre classification is especially interesting in the domain of narrative content which is characterized by a large number of ambiguous and overlapping categories. The rise in popularity of social tagging systems forms a rich source of input information which could be harnessed for this task. In this paper we investigate two different information folksonomy sources for the movie domain namely: keywords and tags, the first of which is user annotated and expert monitored whereas the latter is non-monitored. A comparison is performed to assess the efficacy of both sources in solving this multi-label classification problem and it is found that the in spite of being expert monitored and better structured, keywords are worse predictors of the genres of movies than tags in most cases.
Infectivity of respiratory syncytial virus by various routes of inoculation

To understand the transmission of respiratory syncytial virus, we examined the frequency of infection in volunteers after inoculation by different routes with varying doses of virus. Thirty-two adult volunteers received serial dilutions of a safety-tested live strain of respiratory syncytial virus instilled into nose, eye, or mouth. The highest inoculum, 5.2 log10 50% tissue culture infective dose (TCID50), was administered to four groups of four subjects each, by nose to one group, by eye to one group, and by mouth to two groups. Subsequently, 1:100 and 1:1,000 dilutions of this inoculum were administered by nose and eye. At the highest inoculum, infection occurred in three of four subjects inoculated by nose and in three of four subjects inoculated by eye. Infection occurred in one of eight subjects inoculated by mouth, but this subject most likely was infected by secondary spread. With an inoculum of 3.2 log10 TCID50, the proportion of subjects infected by either route diminished to 25%. When the inoculum was further reduced to 2.2 log10 TCID50, no infections occurred by either route. Infections after the highest inoculum were characterized by earlier and greater shedding. These findings suggest that respiratory syncytial virus may infect by eye or nose and that both of these routes appear equally sensitive. In comparison, the mouth appears to be an insensitive route of inoculation. This is of potential import in infection control procedures and in the development of vaccines or other prophylactic measures.
Effects of annual influenza vaccination on winter mortality in elderly people with chronic heart disease.

AIMS Although there is general agreement for the recommendation of the influenza vaccine to elderly and high-risk adults, the magnitude of clinical effectiveness and benefit from the annual vaccination is controversial. In this study, we have assessed the effects of annual influenza vaccination on winter mortality in older adults with chronic heart disease. METHODS AND RESULTS Cohort study that included 1340 Spanish community-dwelling individuals 65 years or older who had chronic heart disease (congestive heart failure or coronary artery disease) followed from January 2002 to April 2005. Annual influenza vaccine status was a time-varying condition and primary outcome was all-cause death during the study period. Multivariable Cox proportional-hazard models adjusted by age, sex, and comorbidity were used to evaluate vaccine effectiveness. Influenza vaccination was associated with a significant reduction of 37% in the adjusted risk of winter mortality during the overall period 2002-2005. The attributable mortality risk reduction in vaccinated people was 8.2 deaths per 1000 person-winters. We estimated that one death was prevented for every 122 annual vaccinations (ranging between 49 in Winter 2005 and 455 in Winter 2003). CONCLUSION Our results suggest a benefit from the influenza vaccination and support an annual vaccination strategy for elderly people with cardiac diseases.
Modeling and analysis of IEEE 802.15.4 CSMA/CA with sleep mode enabled

According to the widely used IEEE 802.15. 4, one of the most effective ways to reduce the power consumption of sensor nodes is to enable the optional sleep mode by radio shutdown. In this paper, we propose an extended Markov-based analytical model for IEEE 802.15. 4 slotted carrier sense multiple access/collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) algorithm considering the newly enabled sleep mode. For taking account of the active/sleep transitions in our model, we particularly analyze the impact of duty cycle on throughput and power consumption. Moreover, some discussion based on the numerical results of the model is carried out for further understanding. It is showed that the results given by our model have an accurate match with the simulations, and the impacts of the sleep mode on IEEE 802.15. 4 can be studied by the model well.
KTa/sub 0.6/Nb/sub 0.4/O/sub 3/ ferroelectric thin film behavior at microwave frequencies for tunable applications

In this study about the relationships between structural and microwave electrical properties of KTa1-xNbxO3 (KTN) ferroelectric materials, a KTN thin film was deposited on different substrates to investigate how KTN growth affects the microwave behavior. Interdigital capacitors and stubs were made on these films through a simple engraving process. Microwave measurements under a static electric field showed the importance of the substrate on the circuit behavior and, notably, on the tuning factor
Using the analysis of covariance to increase the power of priming experiments.

Although priming paradigms are widely used in cognitive psychology, the statistical analyses typically applied to priming data may not be optimal. Conceiving of priming paradigms as change-from-baseline designs suggests that the analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), using baseline performance as the covariate, is a more efficient (i.e., powerful) analysis. Specifically, ANCOVA provides more powerful tests of 1) the presence of priming and 2) between-group differences in priming. In addition, for within-subject designs with multiple baseline conditions, ANCOVA may increase the power of within-subjects effects. Efficiency gains are demonstrated with a re-analysis of priming datasets from implicit memory research. It is suggested that similar gains may be realized in other areas of priming research. Important assumptions of this procedure, which must be evaluated for the appropriate application of ANCOVA, are discussed.