Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Feasibility of Implementing an Exercise Program in a Geriatric Assessment Unit: the SPRINT Program

Background An exercise program involving patients, caregivers, and professionals, entitled SPecific Retraining in INTerdisciplinarity (SPRINT), has been developed to prevent functional decline during hospitalization of older patients. Goal Assess the feasibility of implementing SPRINT in the context of a Geriatric Assessment Unit (GAU). Methods GAU’s health-care professionals were instructed with the SPRINT. All new patients were evaluated by a physiotherapist shortly after admission to validate the eligibility criteria and allocation category of exercises. Questionnaires on physical activities were filled out by professionals, patients, and caregivers at baseline and after intervention. Quantitative and qualitative information was collected on adherence to the program. Results SPRINT was applied to 19 of the 50 patients admitted during the three-month pilot study. A daily average of one exercise session per patient was performed, most frequently with a nurse (37%), physician (20%), care attendant (13%) or by the patient alone (22%). The caregivers participated only 4% of the time. Barriers and facilitators in applying SPRINT have been identified. Conclusions SPRINT appears relevant and applicable within GAUs. Future studies should be conducted to assess its safety and effectiveness in preventing hospital-related functional decline.
CHANGES IN HOUSEHOLD SAVINGS IN 2005-2017

The key goal of the study is to present changes in the way households managed their money in 2005-2017 As a thesis, it was assumed that, as a result of positive changes in the economy, the propensity to save households increases. On the basis of literature studies, technological analysis in this diagnosis, as well as at Barometr, ING Bank Śląski has proved this thesis. It was shown that the increase in savings in households is directly related to the reduction of the unemployment rate, the increase in average income, as well as the launch of social programs that positively affected household finances.
Cooccurrence of prey species alters the impact of predators on prey performance through multiple mechanisms

Abstract When prey are differentially affected by intra and interspecific competition, the cooccurrence of multiple prey species alters the per capita availability of food for a particular prey species which could alter how prey respond to the threat of predation, and hence the overall‐effect of predators. We conducted an experiment to examine the extent to which the nonconsumptive and overall effect of predatory water bugs on snail and tadpole traits (performance and morphology) depended on whether tadpoles and snails cooccurred. Tadpoles and snails differed in their relative susceptibility to intraspecific and interspecific competition, and predators affected both prey species via consumptive and nonconsumptive mechanisms. Furthermore, the overall effect of predators often depended on whether another prey species was present. The reasoning for why the overall effect of predators depended on whether prey species cooccurred, however, differed for each of the response variables. Predators affected snail body growth via nonconsumptive mechanisms, but the change in the overall effect of predators on snail body growth was attributable to how snails responded to competition in the absence of predators, rather than a change in how snails responded to the threat of predation. Predators did not affect tadpole body growth via nonconsumptive mechanisms, but the greater vulnerability of competitively superior prey (snails) to predators increased the strength of consumptive mechanisms (and hence the overall effect) through which predators affected tadpole growth. Predators affected tadpole morphology via nonconsumptive mechanisms, but the greater propensity for predators to kill competitively superior prey (snails) enhanced the ability of tadpoles to alter their morphology in response to the threat of predation by creating an environment where tadpoles had a higher per capita supply of food available to invest in the development of morphological defenses. Our work indicates that the mechanisms through which predators affect prey depends on the other members of the community.
Sedentary Lifestyle and Nonspecific Low Back Pain in Medical Personnel in North-East Poland

Introduction The sedentary lifestyle is defined as prolonged sitting both at work and during leisure time, with energy expenditures of below 600 MET · min/week. The sedentary lifestyle is a well-known predictor of obesity and other components of the metabolic syndrome. The influence of the sedentary lifestyle and associated factors on nsLBP is still being discussed. Aim The aim of this study was to assess the influence of a sedentary lifestyle and its associated metabolic predictors on the prevalence of nsLBP in nurses and paramedics. Materials and Methods The study included 609 participants, aged 30-60 years, who were residents of north-east Poland. Data was collected using a questionnaire (based, in part, on the Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire), and included details of sociodemographic profile, chronic illnesses, and a short version of the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ). Results Nearly half (49.59%) of the respondents reported decreased physical activity, and in the group with recurring nsLBP this figure was 67.59%. Univariate logistic regression modelling found that leading a sedentary lifestyle caused a 3.5-fold increase in the incidence of recurring nsLBP (p<0.001). Excessive coffee consumption significantly increased the likelihood of recurring LBP (OR=16.44, 95% CI: 8.55-31.61), and cigarette smoking increased the likelihood of both recurrent and chronic LBP. The likelihood of chronic low back pain was significantly increased by components of metabolic syndrome such as high blood pressure (over 9-fold), type 2 diabetes (over 3-fold), and hyperlipidemia (over 2-fold) (p<0.001, p<0.001, and p<0.01, respectively). Conclusions A sedentary lifestyle significantly increased the incidence of recurring low back pain, while increased physical activity had a significant effect on the presence of chronic low back pain. In the sedentary lifestyle group, conditions classified within metabolic syndrome were found to significantly increase the chances of developing nonspecific low back pain.
Malaria pigment accelerates MTT – formazan exocytosis in human endothelial cells

Abstract Haemozoin is a by-product of haemoglobin digestion by intraerythrocytic malaria parasites, which induces immunologic responses on different tissues, including endothelial cells. In the present paper, the incubation of human microvascular endothelial cells with haemozoin significantly inhibited MTT reduction, a measure of cytotoxicity, without increasing the release of cytoplasmic lactate dehydrogenase. Moreover, haemozoin did not induce apoptosis or cell cycle arrest nor decreased the number of live cells, suggesting that cells viability itself was not affected and that the inhibition of MTT reduction was only apparent and probably due to accelerated MTT-formazan exocytosis. After 30 min of MTT addition, a significant increase in the % of cells exocytosing MTT formazan crystals was observed in haemozoin-treated cells compared with control cells. Such an effect was partially reversed by the addition of genistein, an inhibitor of MTT-formazan exocytosis. The rapid release of CXCL-8, a preformed chemokine contained in Weibel–Palade bodies, confirmed that haemozoin induces a perturbation of the intracellular endothelial trafficking, including the exocytosis of MTT-formazan containing vesicles. The haem moiety of haemozoin is responsible for the observed effect. Moreover, this work underlines that MTT assay should not be used to measure cytotoxicity induced by haemozoin and other methods should be preferred.
Compact broadband silicon 3  dB coupler based on shortcuts to adiabaticity.

We proposed and experimentally demonstrated a compact, broadband, and low-loss-mode-evolution-based 2×23 dB coupler on a silicon-on-insulator platform. The waveguide widths and separations of the coupler were tapered in an optimal manner using the shortcuts to the adiabaticity method. The coupler, with a ∼70 μm total length and 200 nm feature size, exhibited <0.3 dB measured excess loss over a broadband wavelength range from 1500 to 1600 nm. Balanced and unbalanced Mach-Zehnder interferometers fabricated for validation showed extinction ratios larger than 27 and 23 dB, respectively, over a 100 nm bandwidth. The extracted splitting ratio was between 0.48 and 0.52.
Effect of buffer additives on solubilization and refolding of reteplase inclusion bodies

Reteplase is a non-glycosylated and recombinant form of tissue type plasminogen activator, which is produced in Escherichia coli. However, its overexpression usually leads to formation of inactive aggregates or inclusion bodies. In the present study, we report on the development of optimized processes for isolation, solubilization, and refolding of reteplase inclusion bodies to recover active protein. After protein overexpression in E. coli BL21 (DE3) inclusion bodies were isolated by cell disruption and repeated wash of pellet with buffer containing Triton X-100. To solubilize the inclusion bodies, different types, concentrations, pHs, and additives of denaturing agents were used. Rapid micro dilution method was applied for refolding of solubilized reteplase. Different chemical additives including sugars, alcohols, polymers, detergents, amino acids, kosmotropic, and chaotropic salts, reducing agents, and buffering agents were used in the refolding buffer. To evaluate the biological activity of refolded reteplase, an indirect chromogenic assay was performed. The best solubilizing agent for dissolving reteplase inclusion bodies was 6 M urea at pH 12. The optimized buffer for refolding of solubilized reteplase was found to be 1.15 M glucose, 9.16 mM imidazole, and 0.16 M sorbitol which resulted in high yield of biologically active protein. Our results indicate type, concentration, and pH of solvent and type, concentration, and combination of chemical additives can significantly influence the yield of inclusion bodies solubilization and refolding.
Parallel In-Loop Filtering in HEVC Encoder on GPU

In-loop filtering is an important part of high efficiency video coding (HEVC), which consists of deblocking filter and sample adaptive offset (SAO) filter. It can not only improve the compression efficiency of HEVC, but also improve the visual quality of the reconstructed videos significantly. However, the high computational complexity hampers its applications for real-time encoding scenarios. In this paper, we propose a parallel strategy for in-loop filtering in HEVC encoder on graphics processing unit (GPU). In the proposed strategy, the pipeline structure for HEVC encoding by parallel processing deblocking filter and SAO on GPU is described first. Then, the joint optimization for deblocking filter and SAO on GPU is detailed by parallel processing of deblocking filter and parallel processing of SAO separately. The joint optimization can improve the degree of parallelism and ease the computational burden of the CPU. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can achieve about 47% (up to 67%) time saving on average for test sequences.
Online Handwritten New Tai Lue Character Recognition Using SVM

T36 character recognition technology has been widely developed during these years, but the character recognition study for the new Tai Lue has been lagged. As a result, the digital processes of new Tai Lue have been in troubles. To solve this problem, this paper proposed an online handwritten character recognition method of new Tai Lue based on SVM. Firstly, the handwritten new Tai Lue characters are preprocessed, and then the features of these characters are extracted. Furthermore, the feature set is optimized by Sequential floating backward selection to get a new feature set with small size. Finally, SVM is used to train and test the handwritten new Tai Lue characters with the optimal parameters which obtained by Cross-Validation method. The experimental results whose Top-5 recognition rate reaches 98.86% show that SVM is effective in online handwritten character recognition for new Tai Lue.
Effects of Prefrontal Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation on Lexical Access in Chronic Poststroke Aphasia

Background. A successful interplay between prefrontal and domain-specific language areas is critical for language processing. Previous studies involving people with aphasia have shown that executive control processes might act on lexical-semantic representations during retrieval. Modulating the prefrontal control network by means of noninvasive brain stimulation might, therefore, improve lexical access in people with aphasia. Objective. The present study investigates the effects of prefrontal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on lexical access in chronic poststroke aphasia. Methods. We report data of 14 participants with chronic poststroke aphasia. We used a sham-tDCS (S-tDCS) controlled and double-blind within-subjects design. Performances in picture naming, verbal fluency, and word repetition were assessed immediately after stimulation. Results. As compared with S-tDCS, anodal tDCS (A-tDCS) improved verbal fluency as well as the speed of naming high frequency words, but not word repetition. Conclusion. The results of our study suggest that the brain network dedicated to lexical retrieval processing can be facilitated by A-tDCS over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. This finding supports the notion that strengthening executive control functions after stroke could complement speech and language-focused therapy.
Novel ecological and climatic conditions drive rapid adaptation in invasive Florida Burmese pythons

Invasive species provide powerful in situ experimental systems for studying evolution in response to selective pressures in novel habitats. While research has shown that phenotypic evolution can occur rapidly in nature, few examples exist of genomewide adaptation on short “ecological” timescales. Burmese pythons (Python molurus bivittatus) have become a successful and impactful invasive species in Florida over the last 30 years despite major freeze events that caused high python mortality. We sampled Florida Burmese pythons before and after a major freeze event in 2010 and found evidence for directional selection in genomic regions enriched for genes associated with thermosensation, behaviour and physiology. Several of these genes are linked to regenerative organ growth, an adaptive response that modulates organ size and function with feeding and fasting in pythons. Independent histological and functional genomic data sets provide additional layers of support for a contemporary shift in invasive Burmese python physiology. In the Florida population, a shift towards maintaining an active digestive system may be driven by the fitness benefits of maintaining higher metabolic rates and body temperature during freeze events. Our results suggest that a synergistic interaction between ecological and climatic selection pressures has driven adaptation in Florida Burmese pythons, demonstrating the often‐overlooked potential of rapid adaptation to influence the success of invasive species.
Exploring Macroscopic Fluctuation of Facial Expression for Mood Disorder Classification

In clinical diagnosis of mood disorder, a large portion of bipolar disorder patients (BDs) are misdiagnosed as unipolar depression (UDs). Clinicians have confirmed that BDs generally show ``reduced affect’’ during clinical treatment. Thus, it is expected to build an objective and one-time diagnosis system for diagnosis assistance by using machine-learning techniques. In this study, facial expressions of BD, UD and control group (C) elicited by emotional video clips are collected for exploring temporal fluctuation characteristics of intensities of facial muscles expression among the three groups. The differences of facial expressions among mood disorders are investigated by observing macroscopic fluctuations. To deal with these problems, the corresponding methods for feature extraction and modeling are proposed. From the viewpoint of macroscopic facial expression, action unit (AU) is applied for describing the temporal transformation of muscles. Then, modulation spectrum is used for extracting short-term variation of AU. The multilayer perceptron (MLP)-based disorder prediction model is then applied to obtain the prediction results. For evaluation of the proposed method, 12 subjects for three group are included in the K-fold (K=12) cross validation experiments. The experiment results reached 61.1\% classification accuracy, and outperformed the other baseline methods.
A 0.6-V Minimum-Supply, 23.5 ppm/°C Subthreshold CMOS Voltage Reference With 0.45% Variation Coefficient

In this brief, a low-voltage low-temperature- coefficient (TC) subthreshold CMOS voltage reference (CVR) is presented. The proposed CVR employs the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${\Delta }\text{V}_{\mathbf{GS}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> of different-threshold and same-threshold nMOS transistor pairs to generate the complementary-to-absolute-temperature and proportional-to-absolute-temperature voltages, respectively. Low TC with small variations and high power supply ripple rejection (PSRR) are achieved. The proposed design is fabricated in a standard 0.18-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$ {\mu }\text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> CMOS process. It measures an average reference voltage of 218.3 mV with a deviation of 0.97 mV and variation coefficient of 0.45%. It achieves an average TC of 23.5 ppm/°C for a temperature range of −40 °C to 125 °C. The measured PSRR is −66.4 dB, −42.4 dB and −42.3 dB at 10 Hz, 1 kHz and 10 MHz, respectively. The measured line sensitivity is 0.40%/V for 0.6 V to 2.0 V supply. The consumed power is 30.5 nW at 0.6-V supply.
Simulation of the Dynamics of Renewable Energy Sources with Energy Storage Systems

The intermittency of renewable energy sources (RES) constitutes a challenge for effective power system control. Fossil-fuel-based units offering ancillary power services to meet the short-term power imbalance are a financial and environmental burden for the society. Energy storage systems (ESS) can be the solution in view of the electricity market development and growing environmental concern. The major questions are, in what circumstances participation in the day-ahead market (DAM) by means of the RES-ESS co-operation is technically feasible and how to size ESS for PV participation in DAM. This paper is an attempt of addressing these questions. To provide the answer, the simulation model of solar power generation system with battery ESS (BESS) was developed using DIgSILENT Power Factory environment.
Spectrum Efficiency of Jointing Adaptive Modulation Coding and Truncated ARQ With QoS Constraints

Spectrum efficiency (SE) and QoS guarantee are two critical issues in wireless communication systems. The truncated ARQ and the adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) are often used to improve the SE and transmission reliability in wireless communications. In this paper, we study the SE and QoS performance of a system with a cross-layer combining of the truncated ARQ with the AMC. First, we analyze the performance of current combinations of the ARQ and the AMC. The analysis results indicate that the current combination is too “ineffectiveness” or “conservative. ” Then, based on the analysis, we design a new rule for the AMC, which is used to adaptively choose transmission mode. Through analyzing the AMC and the combination algorithm using the proposed rule, both the SE and the packet dropped probability of the system are improved. Furthermore, the analysis result also point outs the suitable scenario of each algorithm. Simulation results verify the analysis result and demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can achieve higher SE while the QoS requirement is guaranteed. At last, to further improve the SE of the system, we propose an algorithm jointing power control and the combination of the ARQ with the AMC under the QoS constraint.
Anemarrhena asphodeloides Bunge ameliorates osteoporosis by suppressing osteoclastogenesis.

Anemarrhena asphodeloides Bunge has been traditionally used in Korean medicine for its antipyretic, diuretic, sedative, and antitussive effects. In the present study, the effects of an ethanol extract of A. asphodeloides Bunge (AAB) on osteoporosis and its underlying mechanisms on bone remodeling were investigated. Osteoporosis was induced in ICR strain mice by ovariectomy. The mice were divided into four groups: sham, ovariectomized, 17β‑estradiol and 100 mg/kg AAB. The treatment was continued for 4 weeks. Bone mineral density (BMD) and bone mineral content (BMC) were measured using dual‑energy X‑ray absorptiometry. In addition, Raw 264.7 cells were treated in the presence of 0.1, 1 and 10 µg/ml AAB with 100 ng/ml receptor activator of nuclear factor κΒ ligand (RANKL) to induce osteoclast formation and stained with tartrate resistant acid phosphatase. In addition, levels of osteoclast‑related factors were analyzed to investigate the signaling cascades in osteoclasts. The results demonstrated that AAB treatment reversed the decreases of both BMD and BMC in osteoporotic femurs. Additionally, the formation of osteoclasts was significantly suppressed by the AAB treatment in RANKL‑stimulated Raw 264.7 cells. Compared with cells treated with RANKL alone, the AAB‑treated osteoclasts had significantly decreased tumor necrosis factor‑α and interleukin‑6. The protein levels of c‑fos were also decreased in the AAB‑treated osteoclasts. Furthermore, the RANKL‑induced nuclear translocation of nuclear factor‑κB was attenuated in osteoclasts by the AAB treatment compared with cells treated with RANKL alone. Finally, AAB treatment downregulated the phosphorylation of mitogen‑activated protein kinases. The present results demonstrated that AAB exhibited ameliorative effects on osteoporosis by inhibiting osteoclastogenesis, and suggested that AAB may be a potential candidate for the treatment of osteoporosis.
A Robust Real-Time System for Multi-Intensity AU Detection in Facial Expression Recognition

In this paper, we introduce a fully automated and robust real-time system that can detect multiple Action Units (AUs) in racial expression recognition and give an accurate evaluation of AUs’ intensity simultaneously from camera stream. The proposed system initializes with the frontal face and racial landmarks detected respectively by a frontal face detector based on haar features and a face alignment algorithm based on an ensemble of regression trees, and then keeps track of the racial landmarks using an object tracking algorithm based on kernelized correlation filters. Variations of landmarks’s movement are captured as the representation of the pertinent frame and fed into well-tuned multi-AU classifiers based on Support Vector Machines. We obtain fast and accurate AU detection results from the output of the classifier and employ a mapping transformation to calculate AU intensity with a continuous variable, which can give a more accurate account of AU intensity than the conventional discrete representation on a six-point ordinal scale. By examining the dataset and the real-time performance of the proposed system, we can prove that the proposed system shows effectiveness on dataset, and has an outstanding feature of real-time multi-AU recognition and simultaneous intensity estimation