Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Physicochemical and Antioxidant Assays of Methanol and Hydromethanol Extract of Ariel Parts of Indigofera tinctoria Linn

Free radicals or reactive oxygen indices give rise to oxidative injury, which is a fundamental mechanism underlying a number of disease like diabetes, cancer, neurodegenerative disorders. Deleterious effects of reactive oxygen species can be nullified by using different natural antioxidants derived from plants Indigofera tinctoria is such plant. This study was planned in order to trace and determine the antioxidant capability of Indigofera tinctoria. All the reagents and chemicals used in this study were obtained from reliable firms. The plant extracts were subjected to phytochemical screening, quantitative assays and antioxidant profiling. The results suggested that plant extracts contained all pharmacologically important phytoconstituents in appreciable amounts and having excellent antioxidant capabilities.
Ultrasound Modulated Bioluminescence Tomography and Controllability of the Radiative Transport Equation

We propose a method to reconstruct the density of an optical source in a highly scattering medium from ultrasound-modulated optical measurements. Our approach is based on the solution to a hybrid inverse source problem for the radiative transport equation (RTE). A controllability result for the RTE plays an essential role in the analysis.
Assessment of the quality of care and financial impact of a virtual renal clinic compared with the traditional outpatient service model

Background: Patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) have better outcomes when they have access to specialist nephrology services early in the course of their disease. However, up to 30% of patients with advanced kidney disease face late referral. Virtual clinics represent a potentially innovative mechanism for early assessment of high patient volumes efficiently and cost effectively while maintaining high standards of care.
Effect of omega-3 fatty acid-containing phospholipids on blood catecholamine concentrations in healthy volunteers: a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind trial.

OBJECTIVE We previously reported that administration of fish oil rich in docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) increased the plasma ratio of epinephrine to norepinephrine (NE) at rest in young adults who were under chronic stress and that this effect was achieved mainly through depression of NE. However, not many reports have documented the effects of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and DHA on blood catecholamine levels in healthy humans. Therefore, we performed another intervention study to test their effect on catecholamines with healthy subjects under no chronic stress. METHODS Twenty-one healthy young adults (15 men and 6 women) were randomly assigned to an omega-3 group (n = 9) or a control group (n = 12) in a double-blind manner. Twenty capsules of shellfish-derived lipids containing 762 mg of EPA plus DHA per day were administered to the omega-3 group for 2 mo. The controls took the same amount of placebo capsules. Fasting blood samples after a 30-min rest with a catheter in a forearm vein were obtained at the start and the end of the study for catecholamine measurements. RESULTS EPA but not DHA concentrations in red blood cells significantly increased in the omega-3 group compared with the control group (P < 0.001). Plasma NE concentrations were significantly decreased in the omega-3 group (from 1.49 +/- 0.39 nmol/L to 1.05 +/- 0.14 nmol/L) compared with the control group (from 1.12 +/- 0.24 nmol/L to 1.39 +/- 0.32 nmol/L) with analysis of covariance (P < 0.001). The differences remained significant (P = 0.01) even after deletion of three subjects in the omega-3 group who had the highest baseline NE values and one in the control group who had the lowest baseline NE value to nullify a significant baseline differences in NE between groups. CONCLUSION This study demonstrated that EPA plus DHA supplementation lowered plasma NE concentrations in normal volunteers even at the small dose of 762 mg of EPA plus DHA per day. This effect of EPA plus DHA to lower plasma NE concentrations may be important to understand some of the effects of fish oils on diseases.
The influence of PEEP and tidal volume on central blood volume

Background and objective: Measurement of central blood volumes (CBV), such as global end‐diastolic volume (GEDV) and right ventricular end‐diastolic volume (RVEDV) are considered appropriate estimates of intravascular volume status. However, to apply those parameters for preload assessment in mechanically ventilated patients, the influence of tidal volume (TV) and positive endexpiratory airway pressure (PEEP) on those parameters must be known. Methods: In 13 mechanically ventilated piglets, the effect of low (10 mL kg−1) and high (20 mL kg−1) TVs on CBV was investigated in absence and presence of PEEP (0 and 15 cmH2O). GEDV, RVEDV, right heart (RHEDV) and left heart end‐diastolic volume (LHEDV) were measured by thermodilution. Blood flow on the descending thoracic aorta measured with an ultrasonic flow‐probe served to determine stroke volume (SV). Measurements were performed during baseline conditions, after volume loading with previously extracted haemodilution blood (20 mL kg−1) and following haemorrhage (30 mL kg−1). Results: Application of PEEP decreased GEDV and SV significantly (P < 0.05). Augmenting TV did not reduce GEDV systematically, but significantly reduced SV (P < 0.05). Changes in ventilator settings only influenced RVEDV following volume loading (P < 0.05). RHEDV and LHEDV decreased following application of PEEP, but only RHEDV decreased after augmenting TV at baseline and following volume loading. Correlation of SV with parameters of CBV was r = 0.487 (P < 0.01) for GEDV, r = 0.553 (P < 0.01) for RVEDV, r = 0.596 (P < 0.01) for RHEDV and r = 0.303 (P < 0.01) for LHEDV. Conclusion: Application of PEEP decreases CBV and SV. Augmenting TV reduces SV but not CBV. There is a moderate correlation between parameters of CBV and cardiac performance.
R&D Subsidization E ect and Network Centralization: Evidence froman Agent-Based Micro-Policy Simulation

This paper presents an agent-based micro-policy simulation model assessing public R&D policy effect when R&D and non-R&D performing companies are locatedwithin a network. We set out by illustrating the behavioural structure and the computational logic of the proposed model; then, we provide a simulation experiment where the pattern of the total level of R&D activated by a fixed amount of public support is analysed as function of companies’ network topology. More specifically, the suggested simulation experiment shows that a larger “hubness” of the network is more likely accompanied with a decreasingmedian of the aggregated total R&D performance of the system. Since the aggregated firm idiosyncratic R&D (i.e., the part of total R&D independent of spillovers) is slightly increasing, we conclude that positive cross-firm spillover e ects – in the presence of a given amount of support – have a sizeable impact within less centralized networks, where fewer hubs emerge. This may question the commonwisdom suggesting that larger R&D externality e ects should be more likely to arise when few central champions receive a support.
Effects of formal education for patients with inflammatory bowel disease: a randomized controlled trial.

BACKGROUND Patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) suffer physical dysfunction and impaired quality of life (QOL), and need frequent health care. They often lack knowledge about their disease and desire more education. Educational interventions for other chronic diseases have demonstrated reduced health care use and increased knowledge, medication adherence and QOL. METHOD Sixty-nine participants were randomly assigned to formal IBD education and standard of care (pamphlets and ad hoc physician education) or standard of care alone. Assessment of IBD knowledge and QOL occurred at baseline, immediately posteducation and eight weeks posteducation. Participants documented medication adherence and health care use in diaries. Patient satisfaction was assessed at the end of the study. RESULTS The education group had higher knowledge scores (P=0.000), perceived knowledge ratings (P=0.01) and patient satisfaction (P=0.001). There was a lower rate of medication nonadherence and health care use for the education group, but the differences were not significant. QOL indices did not change. Significant correlations were found for increased health care use in patients with poorer medication adherence (P=0.01) and lower perceived health (P=0.05). CONCLUSION Formal IBD patient education improves knowledge, perceived knowledge and patient satisfaction. Further study of long-term effects may better demonstrate potential benefits for QOL, medication adherence and health care use.
From the Casimir Limit to Phononic Crystals: 20 Years of Phonon Transport Studies Using Silicon-on-Insulator Technology

Silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology has sparked advances in semiconductor and MEMs manufacturing and revolutionized our ability to study phonon transport phenomena by providing single-crystal silicon layers with thickness down to a few tens of nanometers. These nearly perfect crystalline silicon layers are an ideal platform for studying ballistic phonon transport and the coupling of boundary scattering with other mechanisms, including impurities and periodic pores. Early studies showed clear evidence of the size effect on thermal conduction due to phonon boundary scattering in films down to 20 nm thick and provided the first compelling room temperature evidence for the Casimir limit at room temperature. More recent studies on ultrathin films and periodically porous thin films are exploring the possibility of phonon dispersion modifications in confined geometries and porous films. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4023577]
Adaptive Energy-Efficient QoS-Aware Scheduling Algorithm for TCP/IP Mobile Cloud

The expected pervasive use of mobile cloud computing and the growing number of Internet data centers have brought forth many concerns, such as, energy costs and energy saving management of both data centers and mobile connections. Therefore, the need for adaptive and distributed resource allocation schedulers for minimizing the communication-plus-computing energy consumption has become increasingly important. In this paper, we propose and test an efficient dynamic resource provisioning scheduler that jointly minimizes computation and communication energy consumption, while guaranteeing user Quality of Service (QoS) constraints. We evaluate the performance of the proposed dynamic resource provisioning algorithm with respect to the execution time, goodput and bandwidth usage and compare the performance of the proposed scheduler against the exiting approaches. The attained experimental results show that the proposed dynamic resource provisioning algorithm achieves much higher energy-saving than the traditional schemes.
Oscillatory correlates of controlled speed‐accuracy tradeoff in a response‐conflict task

In making decisions, people have to balance between the competing demands of speed and accuracy, a balance generally referred to as the speed‐accuracy tradeoff (SAT). In this study, we investigated the role of controlled SAT in a two‐choice task in which manual responses were either validly or invalidly cued. Examining electrophysiological measurements of oscillatory brain activity, theta power in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), alpha power in the occipital cortex, and beta power in the motor cortex were found to be related to SAT. Because oscillatory effects of SAT were found to emanate from the SAT baseline interval preceding the two‐choice task, the results indicate that SAT is modulated by a change of visuo‐motor baseline activities rather than a change of response threshold. Moreover, in the two‐choice task, conflict‐induced theta power in the ACC was found to be more pronounced in speed than in accuracy trials, whereas priming‐related beta power dynamics in the motor cortex were unaffected by SAT. These results indicate that conflict processing, but not response priming, depends on SAT. Hum Brain Mapp, 2012. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc
A Decision Support System for Production/ Distribution Planning in Continuous Manufacturing

This paper presents a decision support system (DSS) for managing production/distribution planning in a continuous manufacturing environment. The vendor has multiple plants and distribution centers (DCs). The trading partners have widely varying independent demand patterns. The DSS is designed for use in a multiproduct environment with overlapping raw materials and processing requirements. The production and distribution lead times at plants may span multiple planning periods. The impact of any manual override of a suggested solution can also be evaluated. The DSS is based on a linear programming model with a rolling horizon and was originally designed for a large process industry. Results of a pilot implementation using actual data are also presented, which show potential for significant savings for the company.
AC or DC OPF based LMP's in a competitive electricity market?

In this paper five-bus test system as well as Polish power system consisting of 2750 nodes and 3500 branches have been used for calculations. For each case LMP values were determined by three methods: AC OPF with direct respecting voltage constraints, DCL OPF with power losses and DC OPF without power losses. Based on the results obtained, it can be concluded that the proposed method for determining the branch real power capacity limit it possible to meet voltage constraints in the network during DC optimization. It can also be stated that in the Polish power system it is possible apply both the exact AC model and a simplified DCL model, while the use of the DC model is not appropriate for the Polish system
Combination of Multiple K-NNCS by Fuzzy Integral

The k-NNC error varies with the value of k, when the number of training patterns is fixed. Therefore the combination of multiple k-NNCs with different k may improve the accuracy of the whole system. In this paper, multiple k-NNCs with different k are combined by fuzzy integral. The value of k and the density value for each classifier are automatically learned by GA. Experiments on three UCI databases have shown that the combined classification accuracy outperforms that of the single NNC
Local adaptation within a population of Hydrocotyle bonariensis

Local adaptation may occur when selection for heritable traits differs from environment to environment and gene flow among environments is restricted. In this study, we used reciprocal transplants to explore both the existence and possible causes of local adaptation in the clonal plant Hydrocotyle bonariensis at high and low elevations of sand dunes on St. George Island, Florida. Individuals found in high dune areas had substantially longer and more internodes and produced larger leaves than those from low dune areas. Reciprocal transplants used 10 genets from high dunes and 10 from low dunes. Greenhouse-grown, replicate plants from each genet were transplanted to high and low dune sites in the field, with and without the natural vegetation removed. The resulting plant growth was consistent with patterns of local adaptation: plants from high sites grew better in high sites than did plants from low sites and vice versa. A significant source × site interaction was found for final below-ground, but not above-ground, biomass. In plots with surrounding vegetation removed, plants from high and low dunes performed similarly in both environments, suggesting that local adaptation was related to interactions with other plants at each dune height. Small-scale local adaptation may be more likely in clonal plants undergoing little gene flow in spatially heterogeneous environments.
A rapid separation technique for overcoming suppression of triacylglycerols by phosphatidylcholine using MALDI-TOF MS

Phospholipids and triacylglycerols (TAGs) are important classes of lipids in biological systems. Rapid methods have been developed for their characterization in crude samples, including MALDI time-of-flight MS. For mixtures, MALDI often selectively shows only some components. For example, phosphatidylcholine (PC) suppresses detection of other lipids. Most rapid MS methods detect either TAGs or phospholipids but not both. Herein, we demonstrate a simple approach to rapidly screen mixtures containing multiple lipid classes. To validate this approach, reference lipids [PC, tripalmitin (PPP), and phosphatidyl-ethanolamine (PE)] and real samples (beef, egg yolk) were used. In a binary mixture with a strong suppressor (PC), PPP was greatly suppressed. After a simple separation, suppression was virtually eliminated. A mixture of nominally nonsuppressing lipids (PE and PPP) was not adversely affected by separation. Ground beef and egg yolk were used to demonstrate detection of known lipid compositions where other methods have missed one or more lipids or lipid classes. Separation was performed using solid phase extraction with a PrepSep florisil column. A 10 min separation allows rapid screening for lipids and changes in lipids. It is sufficient to clearly detect all lipids and overcome suppression effects in complex lipid mixtures.
Distance spectrum computation for equalized MIMO multipath fading channels

We estimate bit error probability bounds for finite-length delay-optimised multi-input multi-output (MIMO) equalizers. These equalizers shorten the impulse response memory of frequency-selective MIMO channels by minimizing the average energy of the error sequence between the equalized MIMO channel impulse response and the target impulse response. We answer an important question in this paper namely, how much asymptotic loss in SNR do we expect as a result of this shortening? A partial distance spectrum for a 2/spl times/2 MIMO channel is evaluated with or without channel shortening equalisers. The union bound is then used to upper bound the bit error probability. Similarly, the lower bound is computed from the squared minimum Euclidean distance. Numerical results show that the expected loss is in the order of 2.5 dB for realistic wireless channel environments.
A 3D avatar modeling of realworld objects using a depth camera

In this paper, we propose a novel 3D avatar generation scheme using a depth camera. Depth camera can capture both visual and depth information of moving objects by using infrared light source at video frame rate. Our method consists of two main steps: alpha matting and mesh generation. We present a novel alpha matting algorithm that combines visual and range information. It improves an existing natural alpha matting methods. After alpha matting is performed a triangular mesh is created by using RGB, depth, and alpha images. Our method can represent any real world objects including a furry one. Experimental results show that ourmatting method demonstrates better results than the previous approaches. Especially our method provides a viable solution to model a scene with fuzzy objects.
Self as an antecedent of mobile phone addiction

Employing a survey, the study examined self-esteem, self-efficacy, and self-control as antecedents of mobile phone addiction. The findings indicate that self-control is the most significant predictor of mobile phone addiction. Gender and age demonstrate a statistically significant relationship with a particular dimension of mobile phone addiction, compulsive anxiety. The findings are expected to help practitioners delineate elaborated approaches aimed at relieving a dimension of the addiction-like symptoms of technology use. In addition, scholars can utilise dimensions composed of mobile phone addiction and self-traits to examine the detailed and respective causality that exists between them.
De-identification algorithm for free-text nursing notes

All personally identifiable information must be removed from patient medical records before the data can be shared with other researchers. We present an automated method of removing protected health information (PHI) from free-text nursing notes taken from a U.S. hospital. We have previously shown that one clinician can locate PHI in nursing notes with an average sensitivity of 0.81, and for teams of two clinicians the sensitivity is 0.94. Our method uses lexical look-up tables, regular expressions, and simple heuristics to locate PHI with an overall sensitivity of 0.92 (0.98 for names, 0.96 for dates), which is significantly better than the average sensitivity of a single human. The algorithm has a positive predictive value of only 0.44, so additional software was developed to allow the user to review the terms identified as PHI and manually eliminate false positives. The algorithm is open-source and will be made freely available on PhysioNet together with a re-identified corpus of nursing notes
4 Coagulation Abnormalities in Acute Pancreatitis

Acute pancreatitis (AP) is a potentially lethal disorder with no specific medical treatment. AP is characterized by a spectrum of symptoms, ranging from a local inflammatory process to the more severe form (acute necrotizing pancreatitis) which is associated with a systemic inflammatory response and a mortality rate of 27-45%. A number of risk factors have been identified for AP including alcohol abuse, gallstones, abdominal surgery/injury, cigarette smoking, cystic fibrosis, endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography, hypercalcemia, hyperparathyroidism, hypertriglyceridemia, infection, pancreatic cancer, and injury to the abdomen (Pandol et al., 2007). Alcohol abuse and the development of gallstones account for the majority of AP cases. In AP, inappropriate intracellular activation of digestive enzymes within the pancreas (e.g. trypsin, chymotrypsin, elastase) is the main initiating event. The development of acute necrotizing pancreatitis is usually associated with pancreatic glandular necrosis. Acinar cell apoptosis, the release of cytokines, activation of coagulation, tissue ischemia, and tissue necrosis are key factors in the progression of the condition, as well as in the development of associated extrapancreatic complications (Steinberg & Tenner, 1994; McKay & Buter, 2003; Pandol et al., 2007).
Treatment of acute stroke: an update

Stroke is the second leading cause of global mortality after coronary heart disease, and a major cause of neurological disability. About 17 million strokes occur worldwide each year. Patients with stroke often require long‐term rehabilitation following the acute phase, with ongoing support from the community and nursing home care. Thus, stroke is a devastating disease and a major economic burden on society. In this overview, we discuss current strategies for specific treatment of stroke in the acute phase, focusing on intravenous thrombolysis and mechanical thrombectomy. We will consider two important issues related to intravenous thrombolysis treatments: (i) how to shorten the delay between stroke onset and treatment and (ii) how to reduce the risk of symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage. Intravenous thrombolysis has been approved treatment for acute ischaemic stroke in most countries for more than 10 years, with rapid development towards new treatment strategies during that time. Mechanical thrombectomy using a new generation of endovascular tools, stent retrievers, is found to improve functional outcome in combination with pharmacological thrombolysis when indicated. There is an urgent need to increase public awareness of how to recognize a stroke and seek immediate attention from the healthcare system, as well as shorten delays in prehospital and within‐hospital settings.