Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prevalence of metabolic syndrome in two tribal populations of the sub‐Himalayan region of India: Ethnic and rural–urban differences

This study was undertaken to estimate prevalence of metabolic syndrome in traditional societies in the sub‐Himalayan region and to assess the impact of modernization on the risk to the syndrome. Two tribal populations—Toto and Bhutia—with a shared ancestry and habitat were selected. Some Bhutians have adopted a modern lifestyle. The study design permitted assessment of the relative roles of lifestyle and genetic factors in influencing the prevalence of metabolic syndrome. Our study has revealed that metabolic syndrome (or its contributing variables) can be a major health problem, even in traditional rural ethnic groups, indicating that this syndrome is not necessarily a result of modernization or urbanization. Dyslipidemia seems to be the major contributor to metabolic syndrome. Further, our study indicates that genetic factors that adversely affect the levels of such variables have long antiquities in Indian ethnic groups. We find that there is an additional adverse impact of adoption of urban lifestyles (perhaps primarily mediated through dietary changes) on metabolic syndrome. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 17:814–817, 2005. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Two innovative solutions for fragmented care to multi-problem patients in deprived neighbourhoods: 2 case studies

Theory In Western countries there is a growing awareness that the way in which health professionals work needs to be more responsive to patients’ and population health needs and problems [1] integrated care is seen as the way forward [2–4]. In the Netherlands low patient satisfaction and participation of multi-problem patients and high health care costs in two deprived neighbourhoods, initiated partnerships between one health insurer and two local authorities. Both partnerships led to cooperation between care, preventive services and social services (Amsterdam Noord and Utrecht Overvecht). Little empirical research has been done regarding the ways in which collaboration of health and social services develops. There are some studies within which authors reflect on aspirations analogue to what the partnerships aspire to. From these insights we form a theoretical framework including ideas on generalist approach [1, 5–7] population health orientation [8–10], and on supporting self-management [11–13]. Purpose In two case studies we built a conceptual model in order to conceptualise this cooperation process in both neighbourhoods and explored the different structures both partnerships led to. Methods In a collaborative research we constructed conceptual models and explored the realized structures. Data were drawn from literature review and exploration of the developmental process in both partnerships using qualitative methods (i.e. semi-structured interviews, focus group-interviews, document review, and observations). Results and conclusions With the conceptual models we clarify the different paths taken in the two neighbourhoods, which resulted in two different solutions to fragmented care. We describe both structures the partnerships led to.
Basal metabolic rate of women on the contraceptive pill.

OBJECTIVE To investigate the variability in basal metabolic rate (BMR) of women taking the contraceptive pill, through sequential measurement over the course of one menstrual cycle. DESIGN Randomised. SETTING Metabolic room, School of Biological and Molecular Sciences, Oxford Brookes University. SUBJECTS AND MEASUREMENTS BMR of five weight-stable women taking the contraceptive pill, was measured three to four times each week for a period of five consecutive weeks, BMR was measured using a Douglas bag. RESULTS The pattern of variation in BMR was random for individual subjects throughout the period of measurement. The level of intraindividual variation indicated by the coefficient of variation (CV) ranged from 2.4 to 4.87%. CONCLUSIONS Women taking the contraceptive pill did not exhibit the cyclicity or variation in BMR observed in some normally ovulating subjects. BMR in women taking the contraceptive pill could therefore be considered a 'biological constant'.
Global metabolic profiling for the study of Rhizoma Paridis saponins‐induced hepatotoxicity in rats

Rhizoma Paridis saponins (RPS) is a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) from the plant Paris polyphylla var. yunnanensis (Fr.) Hand. ‐Mazz. Despite its potentially clinical utility such as anticancer and anti‐inflammation, it has slight side effects and toxicity as previous report. In this work, 90‐day administration of RPS induced liver injury. 1H‐NMR‐ and GC/MS‐based metabonomic analyses in conjunction with histopathological examinations, blood biochemistry and hepatic phase I and II enzymes assays were performed to evaluate the toxic mechanisms of RPS induced in rats. As a result, oral administration of RPS possessed certain liver toxicity in SD rats. 1H‐NMR and GC/MS data indicated that RPS inhibited the oxidation of fatty acids, glycolysis, and TCA cycle pathway, and disturbed glycine, serine, and threonine metabolism. Low expression of TG, T‐CHO, and LDL‐C and high levels of ALT and AST indicated that chronic exposure to RPS caused hepatocyte damage, synthesis dysfunction, and transportation failure of lipoproteins. In addition, RPS downregulated the mRNA levels of CYP1A2, CYP2E1, and UGTs. In conclusion, we used metabonomics approach to study the toxicity of RPS for the first time. This research demonstrated that metabonomics method was a promising tool to study and diagnose TCM‐induced toxicity. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Environ Toxicol 32: 99–108, 2017.
Sedimentation of generalized systems of interacting particles. II. Active enzyme centrifugation—theory and extensions of its validity range

The first detailed application of a recently published very general approach to chemical equilibria during sedimentation is presented. As a consequence of the very extensive theoretical treatment, made possible by this approach, the active enzyme analytical centrifugation method can now be used under a far wider set of conditions than before, including the study of many interacting active molecule systems. It has also been shown that this method is as precise as the more conventional ones.
Unilateral transplantation of human primary fetal tissue in four patients with Huntington’s disease: NEST-UK safety report ISRCTN no 36485475

Objectives: Huntington’s disease (HD) is an inherited autosomal dominant condition in which there is a CAG repeat expansion in the huntingtin gene of 36 or more. Patients display progressive motor, cognitive, and behavioural deterioration associated with progressive cell loss and atrophy in the striatum. Currently there are no disease modifying treatments and current symptomatic treatments are only partially effective in the early to moderate stages. Neural transplantation is effective in animal models of HD and offers a potential strategy for brain repair in patients. The authors report a safety study of unilateral transplantation of human fetal striatal tissue into the striatum of four patients with HD. Subjects and methods: Stereotaxic placements of cell suspensions of human fetal ganglionic eminence were made unilaterally into the striatum of four patients with early to moderate HD. All patients received immunotherapy with cyclosporin A, azathioprine, and prednisolone for at least six months postoperatively. Patients were assessed for safety of the procedure using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), regular recording of serum biochemistry and haematology to monitor immunotherapy, and clinical assessment according to the Core Assessment Protocol For Intrastriatal Transplantation in HD (CAPIT-HD). Results: During the six month post-transplantation period, the only adverse events related to the procedure were associated with the immunotherapy. MRI demonstrated tissue at the site of implantation, but there was no sign of tissue overgrowth. Furthermore, there was no evidence that the procedure accelerated the course of the disease. Conclusions: Unilateral transplantation of human fetal striatal tissue in patients with HD is safe and feasible. Assessment of efficacy will require longer follow up in a larger number of patients.
Dynamic Allocation of Finite Automata States for Fast String Recognition

The spatial and temporal locality of reference on which cache memory relies to minimize cache swaps, is exploited to design a new algorithm for finite automaton string recognition. It is shown that the algorithm, referred to as the Dynamic State Allocation algorithm outperforms the traditional table-driven algorithm for strings that tend to repeatedly access the same set of states, provided that the string is long enough to amortize the allocation cost. Further improvements on the algorithm result in even better performance.
Multi-channel design for ILC with robot experiments

In this paper, the design procedure of multi-channel anticipatory learning control is demonstrated via a robot joint example. Technical details such as design of channels, design of filters, are illustrated. One more channel substantially widens the learnable frequency range. Comparisons of the multi-channel learning control with the conventional single channel learning control verify the effectiveness of the learning controller of the additional channel.
Deaf College Students' Reading Comprehension and Strategy Use

Two comprehension studies were conducted with 46 deaf college students. In the first, 20 deaf college students representing higher and lower reading-ability levels were tested for correctly stating the main idea of a passage, answering content questions, indicating their understanding of the words and phrases, and recognizing a topically incongruent sentence embedded in the passage. The results suggest that deaf students profess a better understanding of what they read than they are able to demonstrate. The students' inability to identify a topically incongruent sentence in the passage further suggests a need for them to more carefully and accurately evaluate their understanding of what they are reading. A second study investigated the effect of strategy review instruction on deaf college students' comprehension of short reading passages. Students reading at a higher level showed improved comprehension on the posttraining passage, but students reading at a lower level did not. Similarly, the control group of deaf students comparable to the higher-level readers did not show improved comprehension.
Introduction to the proceedings of CSCL 2011

The Scientific Field of CSCL Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) is a multidisciplinary research field inspired by the power of collaborative learning and by the promise of computer technologies to support collaborative learning. It draws on and explores constructivist and socio-cultural theories, which view learning as a social, interpersonal, meaning-making process that takes place largely through interaction among people and within communities. It also designs, adopts and refines technologies that mediate communication among learners and that help to guide their inquiry or structure their work. As a research field, CSCL builds on conceptual frameworks and analytic approaches of many academic fields, including education, psychology, communication, computer science and social science. It applies a variety of quantitative and qualitative research methods, often combining them to develop richer understandings of complex phenomena. Likewise, it may involve both laboratory and classroom studies, formal and informal learning settings, different temporal scales and the study of a wide range of influential factors.
Flow and heat transfer inside a new diversion-type gas heating device

ABSTRACT The present paper characterizes ethylene glycol flow and heat transfer inside a new diversion-type gas heating device. A two-dimensional (2-D) natural convection heat transfer model was built and solved by the finite volume method with unstructured body-fitted grids. The numerical model was first validated through temperature comparison with the experimental measurements in a conventional device structure. Then analyses and comparisons of the flow fields and temperature distributions with use of different guide plate structures were carried out. The numerical results show that using the guide plate structures can form better organized flow patterns that augment heat transfer. The heat required for heating up the gas passing through the heating device can be reduced by 3% via installing two guide plates.
Functional work breaks in a high-demanding work environment: an experimental field study

Abstract Work breaks are known to have positive effects on employees’ health, performance and safety. Using a sample of twelve employees working in a stressful and cognitively demanding working environment, this experimental field study examined how different types of work breaks (boxing, deep relaxation and usual breaks) affect participants’ mood, cognitive performance and neurophysiological state compared to a control condition without any break. In a repeated measures experimental design, cognitive performance was assessed using an auditory oddball test and a Movement Detection Test. Brain cortical activity was recorded using electroencephalography. Individual’s mood was analysed using a profile of mood state. Although neurophysiological data showed improved relaxation of cortical state after boxing (vs. ‘no break’ and ‘deep relaxation’), neither performance nor mood assessment showed similar results. It remains questionable whether there is a universal work break type that has beneficial effects for all individuals. Practitioner Summary: Research on work breaks and their positive effects on employees’ health and performance often disregards break activities. This experimental field study in a stressful working environment investigated the effect of different work break activities. A universal work break type that is beneficial for this workplace could not be identified.
Multi-level knowledge discovery from rule bases

The discovery of multi-level knowledge is important to allow queries at and across different levels of abstraction. While there are some similarities between our research and that of others in this area, the work reported in this paper does not directly involve databases and is differently motivated. Our research is interested in taking data in the form of rule-bases and finding multi-level knowledge. This paper describes our motivation, our preferred technique for acquiring the initial knowledge known as Ripple-Down Rules, the use of Formal Concept Analysis to develop an abstraction hierarchy, and our application of these ideas to knowledge bases from the domain of chemical pathology. We also provide an example of how the approach can be applied to other prepositional knowledge bases and suggest that it can be used as an additional phase to many existing data mining approaches.
Comparison of single-pill strategies first line in hypertension: perindopril/amlodipine versus valsartan/amlodipine

Objectives: An international double-blind, parallel-group, randomized controlled trial was performed to determine the efficacy and safety of a new first-line strategy in mild to moderate hypertension based on a single-pill combination of perindopril/amlodipine versus a validated stepped-care strategy (initiation with valsartan monotherapy, up-titrating to valsartan/amlodipine after 2 months). Methods: At inclusion, patients received perindopril/amlodipine 3.5/2.5 mg or valsartan 80 mg. At 1, 2, and 3 months, patients were up-titrated if they had uncontrolled hypertension (≥140/90 mmHg). The up-titration steps were: perindopril/amlodipine 7/5 mg, 14/10 mg, and 14/10 mg + indapamide sustained release 1.5 mg; or valsartan 160 mg, valsartan/amlodipine 160/5 mg, and 160/10 mg. The two groups were similar at baseline (55.5 years, 53% men, blood pressure 163.5/100.2 mmHg); 881 perindopril/amlodipine and 876 valsartan/amlodipine patients were analyzed for efficacy. Results: After 1 month, the rate of controlled hypertension was 33% with perindopril/amlodipine versus 27% with valsartan/amlodipine (estimate of difference, +6.1%; P = 0.005); this between-strategy difference remained significant at every visit (P < 0.05). After 3 months, blood pressure was 137.8 ± 12.4/83.3 ± 8.7 and 139.7 ± 13.3/84.8 ± 9.0 mmHg, respectively, with greater reductions from baseline with perindopril/amlodipine (primary endpoint −2.0/−1.5 mmHg; both P < 0.001). Similar results were observed at all other visits (all P ⩽ 0.001). The safety of the two strategies was equivalent. Conclusions: The three-step strategy of initiation with single-pill perindopril/amlodipine produces greater reductions in blood pressure, and better and quicker rates of control of hypertension. This can be expected to be associated with benefits beyond blood pressure control, notably improved compliance and better cardioprotection.
A 3′ cis‐regulatory region controls wingless expression in the Drosophila eye and leg primordia

The precise regulation of wingless (wg) expression in the Drosophila eye disc is key to control the anteroposterior and dorsoventral patterning of this disc. Here, we identify an eye disc‐specific wg cis‐regulatory element that functions as a regulatory rheostat. Pannier (Pnr), a transcription factor previously proposed to act as an upstream activator of wg, is sufficient to activate the eye disc enhancer but required for wg expression only in the peripodial epithelium of the disc. We propose that this regulation of wg by Pnr appeared associated to the development of the peripodial epithelium in higher dipterans and was added to an existing mechanism regulating the deployment of wingless in the dorsal region of the eye primordium. In addition, our analysis identifies a separate ventral disc enhancer that lies adjacent to the eye‐specific one, and thus altogether, they define a 1‐kb genomic region where disc‐specific enhancers of the wg gene are located. Developmental Dynamics 235:225–234, 2006. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Local correlation domains for coupled cluster theory: optical rotation and magnetic-field perturbations.

An approach is described for selecting local-correlation orbital domains appropriate for computing response properties such as optical rotation using frequency-dependent coupled-cluster linear-response theory. This scheme is an extension of our earlier idea [N. J. Russ and T. D. Crawford, Chem. Phys. Lett. , 2004, 400, 104] based on an atom-by-atom decomposition of the coupled-perturbed Hartree-Fock (CPHF) response of the component molecular orbitals to external electric and magnetic fields. We have applied this domain-selection scheme to a series of chiral molecules, including pseudo-linear structures (hydrogen molecule helices, fluoroalkanes, and [n]triangulanes), cage-like structures (beta-pinene, methylnorbornanone, and bisnoradamantan-2-one), and aromatic rings (1-phenylethanol). We find that the crossover points between the canonical- and local-correlation approaches are larger than for the conventional Boughton-Pulay domain scheme, in agreement with our earlier analysis of dipole-polarizabilities. Localization errors are reasonably small (a few percent) for pseudo-linear structures with domain sizes of approximately six to eight atoms. Cage-like molecules are significantly more problematic, requiring natural domain sizes of ten or more to obtain the most reliable localization errors.
Characterization of interaction sites in the Saccharomyces cerevisiae ribosomal stalk components

The interactions among the yeast stalk components (P0, P1α, P1β, P2α and P2β) and with EF‐2 have been explored using immunoprecipitation, affinity chromatography and the two‐hybrid system. No stable association was detected between acidic proteins of the same type. In contrast, P1α and P1β were found to interact with P2β and P2α respectively. An interaction of P0 with P1 proteins, but not with P2 proteins, was also detected. This interaction is strongly increased with the P0 carboxyl end, which is able to form a pentameric complex with the four acidic proteins. The P1/P2 binding site has been located between residues 212 and 262 using different C‐terminal P0 fragments. Immunoprecipitation shows the association of EF‐2 with protein P0. However, the interaction is stronger with the P1/P2 proteins than with P0 in the two‐hybrid assay. This interaction improves using the 100‐amino‐acid‐long C‐end of P0 and is even higher with the last 50 amino acids. The data indicate a specific association of P1α with P2β and of P1β with P2α rather than the dimerization of the acidic proteins found in prokaryotes. In addition, they suggest that stalk assembly begins by the interaction of the P1 proteins with P0. Moreover, as functional interactions of the complete P0 were found to increase using protein fragments, the data suggest that some active sites are exposed in the ribosome as a result of conformational changes that take place during stalk assembly and function.
Noiseless Quantum Codes

In this paper we study a model quantum register $R$ made of $N$ replicas (cells) of a given finite-dimensional quantum system S. Assuming that all cells are coupled with a common environment with equal strength we show that, for $N$ large enough, in the Hilbert space of $R$ there exists a linear subspace ${C}_{N}$ which is dynamically decoupled from the environment. The states in ${C}_{N}$ evolve unitarily and are therefore decoherence-dissipation free. The space ${C}_{N}$ realizes a noiseless quantum code in which information can be stored, in principle, for an arbitrarily long time without being affected by errors.
Polymer principles in protein structure and stability.

Perspectives and Overview . 447 The Configurational Partition Function . 449 Local Interactions. 45 1 Nonlocallnterartions. 455 Exhaustive Lattice Simulations . 459 The Path-Integral Method. 460 Homopolymer Collapse Theories . 464 Heleropo/ymer Collapse . 468 Spin-Glass Models . 473 Internal Structure in Compact Polymers . 478 Conclusions . 485
Nonparametric Redundant Features Removal for Unsupervised Feature Selection : An Empirical Study based on Sparse Feature Graph

It is known that the redundant features existing in high dimensional datasets will affect the performance of learning and mining algorithms. How to detect and remove them is a challenge in machine learning and data mining research. In this work, we propose a graph based approach to search and remove those redundant features automatically for high dimensional data. A sparse graph is generated at feature side and is used to learn the redundant relationship among features. We name this novel graph as sparse feature graph(SFG). To avoid the inaccurate distance information among high dimensional vectors, the construction of SFG does not utilize the pairwise relationship among samples, which means the structure info of the data is not considered. This proposed SFG based redundant feature removal algorithm is also a nonparametric one as the user does not need to tune the learning model. We treat this proposed redundant feature removal algorithm as a data preprocessing approach for existing popular unsupervised feature selection algorithms like Multi-cluster Feature Selection (MCFS) which requires Pengfei Xu College of Information Science and Technology Beijing Normal University E-mail: xupf@bnu.edu. cn Shuchu Han Department of Computer Science Stony Brook University E-mail: shuchu.han@gmail.com Hao Huang Machine Learning Laboratory General Electric Global Research E-mail: haohuanghw@gmail.com Hong Qin Department of Computer Science Stony Brook University E-mail: qin@cs.stonybrook. edu accurate cluster structure information from samples. Our experimental results on benchmark datasets show that the proposed SFG and redundant feature remove algorithm can improve the performance of those unsupervised feature selection algorithms consistently.