Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Disability pension from back pain among social security beneficiaries, Brazil.

OBJECTIVE To describe disability pension from back pain. METHODS Descriptive study based on data from the Brazilian Social Security Beneficiary Database and the Social Security Statistics Annual Report in 2007. The incidence rate of disability pension from back pain was estimated according to gender and age by Brazilian states. There were also estimated working days lost due to back pain disability by occupation. RESULTS Idiopathic back pain was the most common cause of disability among social security pension and accidental retirement. Most pensioners were living in urban areas and were commercial workers. The rate of disability pension from back pain in Brazil was 29.96 per 100,000 beneficiaries. A higher rate was seen among males and older individuals. Rondônia showed the highest rate, four times as high as expected (RR= 4.05) followed by Bahia with a rate about twice as high as expected (RR=2.07). Commercial workers accounted for 96.9% of working days lost due to disability. CONCLUSIONS Back pain was a major cause of disability in 2007 mostly among commercial workers showing great differences between the Brazilian states.
Multiscale agent-based consumer market modeling

Consumer markets have been studied in great depth, and many techniques have been used to represent them. These have included regression-based models, logit models, and theoretical market-level models, such as the NBD-Dirichlet approach. Although many important contributions and insights have resulted from studies that relied on these models, there is still a need for a model that could more holistically represent the interdependencies of the decisions made by consumers, retailers, and manufacturers. When the need is for a model that could be used repeatedly over time to support decisions in an industrial setting, it is particularly critical. Although some existing methods can, in principle, represent such complex interdependencies, their capabilities might be outstripped if they had to be used for industrial applications, because of the details this type of modeling requires. However, a complementary method—agent-based modeling—shows promise for addressing these issues. Agent-based models use business-driven rules for individuals (e.g., individual consumer rules for buying items, individual retailer rules for stocking items, or individual firm rules for advertizing items) to determine holistic, system-level outcomes (e.g., to determine if brand X's market share is increasing). We applied agent-based modeling to develop a multi-scale consumer market model. We then conducted calibration, verification, and validation tests of this model. The model was successfully applied by Procter & Gamble to several challenging business problems. In these situations, it directly influenced managerial decision making and produced substantial cost savings. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Complexity, 2010
Structure-Activity Relationship of Anthelmintic Cyclooctadepsipeptides

The relationship between cyclooctadepsipeptides and their anthelmintic efficacy was examined by converting the natural products, PF1022A, PF1022E and PF1022H. Some analogues substituted at the para position of the phenyllactate moiety showed higher or equivalent activity against the parasitic nematode, Ascaridia galli in chicken when compared with the parent compounds. It is suggested that lipophilicity and the polar surface area, in addition to structural requirements of the derivatives, influenced the anthelmintic efficacy in vivo.
Influences of social support, perceived barriers, and negative meanings of physical activity on physical activity in middle school students.

BACKGROUND A profound decline in physical activity occurs in puberty. This phenomenon is not well understood. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine associations between family/friend social support for physical activity, negative meanings of physical activity (NMPA), and internal /external barriers to physical activity with moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA), and sedentary and light behavior (SLB) in youth. METHODS A total of 350 participants from 7 Los Angeles County middle schools participated in the study (62% Latina, 79% females). Hypothesized pathways were examined using structural equation modeling. Psychosocial variables and participation in MVPA and SLB were assessed by self-reported questionnaires. RESULTS NMPA were related to lower levels of family/friend social support and greater internal/external barriers. Family social support was the only significant indicator of MVPA (β=0.79). Low family social support was related to higher SLB (β=-0.25). CONCLUSIONS Family social support seems crucial to promote MVPA and reduce SLB in adolescents and might be influenced by child's feelings about physical activity. Future research should consider the interrelationship between psychosocial correlates of physical activity.
16.410/16.413 Project Part 2

Your work in building an effective activity planner using a SAT solver was great success, and was wellappreciated in your company. Your hard work has paid off. Given a task including shipping cargo, crude navigation, or science experimentation, your planner figures out a correct sequence of actions that does the job. However, most of the time, the task involves navigating between the sites, for which your robot will need a path planner to actively avoid falling into the giant craters on the moon. The second step to building your fully autonomous system is to design your own path planner. Your path planner will be given a map of the moon (this map is provided in real-time from a set of satellites orbiting the moon), the position of your robot as well as the goal region (i.e., the site that your robot is trying to reach) in this map. The map will show all the craters and rocks that your robot should avoid collision with. The motion planning algorithm has to be executed online using the limited computational power on the robot. In fact, you were amazed when told by the experts in your company that the cpu clock rate will only be 50 Hz (orders of magnitude less than what is present on your laptop). It turns out this is the fastest cpu that can run reliablely under the environmental conditions that are present on the moon.
The Burden of Diabetes in a Developing Country

Introduction: People with diabetes often develop diverse microvascular, macrovascular, and neuropathic complications. Diabetes named high disease because of its high prevalence, high incidence, chronicity and high costs. Accurate projections of diabetes burden are essential for health planning so the aim of this study was to calculate the burden of diabetes in Razavikhorasan population, in Iran. Methodology: We used Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) index using computer model (DisMod) for assessment of burden of diabetes and complications in Razavikhorasan province in Iran in year 2010-2011. Results: Burden of diabetes in Razavikhorasan population was 64,733 DALY in year 2010-2011. The total Years Life Lost (YLL) from diabetes mellitus was 62,883 (34,216 in men and 28,667 in women) due to premature death and the total Years Life Disability (YLD) was 1850. Conclusion: Diabetes mellitus and lesser forms of glucose intolerance can now be found in almost every population and epidemiological evidences suggest that, without effective prevention and control programs, diabetes will continue to increase and therefore advances in all levels of prevention may help reduce the number of people with diabetes.
Development of a P2X1‐purinoceptor mediated contractile response in the aged mouse prostate gland through slowing down of ATP breakdown

An age‐related increase in prostatic smooth muscle tone is partly responsible for the lower urinary tract symptoms associated with benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). Changes in the effectors of prostatic smooth muscle contraction with age may play a role in the development of these symptoms. Using a mouse model of prostate contractility, this study investigated the effect of age on the different components of contractility in the prostate gland.
Leucocyte alkaline phosphatase identifies terminally differentiated normal neutrophils and its lack in chronic myelogenous leukaemia is not dependent on p210 tyrosine kinase activity

Leucocyte alkaline phosphatase (LAP) is a marker of post‐mitotic granulocytes and its activity is reduced or absent in chronic myelogenous leukaemia (CML) granulocytes as a consequence of LAP messenger RNA (mRNA) deficiency. We provide evidence that along the granulocytic maturation in normal marrow, the acquisition of LAP surface expression, identified by the monoclonal antibody 1B12.1, was restricted to CD11bbright/CD16bright positive cells. Moreover, in normal granulocytes, exposure to granulocyte colony‐stimulating factor (G‐CSF) in vitro and in vivo increased the cell surface expression of LAP. Although G‐CSF was able to induce the LAP surface expression in CML granulocytes, the inhibition of p210 tyrosine kinase activity by genistein or CGP75148B failed to restore LAP mRNA expression and LAP protein synthesis. In conclusion, the acquisition of LAP protein on the cell surface of granulocytes follows CD16 antigen expression and can be considered as the last marker of terminally differentiated neutrophils. G‐CSF is a potent regulator of the LAP mRNA expression and protein synthesis in normal and CML‐derived neutrophils. The lack of direct activity of p210 tyrosine kinase on LAP mRNA expression in CML neutrophils supports the notion that the LAP defect in this disease could be related to a precocious and uncontrolled release of white blood cells from the bone marrow into the blood stream.
Use of polymerase chain reaction for detecting DNA contaminants in pharmaceutical recombinant products.

mixture and redissolved the precipitate in 5 pL of formamide/EDTA, 50 mmol/L (4/1 by vol). The DNA was denatured at 94#{176}C for 2 mm before being loaded onto the gel. The products from the LCR reactions were electrophoresed in a fluorescent DNA sequencer (Applied Bioaystems; Model 373A) with a 6% acrylamide/8 mol/L urea gel in Trisborate buffer (per liter, 89 mmol of Tris HC1, 89 mmol of boric acid, and 2 mmol of EDTA, pH 8.3). Electrophoresis was carried out for 2 h at 1500 V. The resulting gel data from the fluorescent sequencer were imported electronically into the GENESCANNERTM (Applied Biosystems; Model 362) and analyzed for peak color, location, and area. The results of these analyses for the blue channel (FAM) are shown in Figure 1. Using this amplification/detection scheme, we can differentially detect iO molecules of normal 13-globin or iO molecules of abnormal p-globin in a mixture of 4 pg of unrelated DNA. The 10 molecules correspond to the amount of a single-copy gene in 10 pL of whole blood. The difference in detection limits between 13-A and 13-Shas also been reported elsewhere (2). We saw no detectable cross-reactivity between the normal and sickle cell mutation sequences, even though there is just a single base-pair change between the two and this A T change does not alter the melting temperature of the oligonucleotides used in the assay. The reaction conditions were carefully chosen also to minimize target-independent ligation of the blunt end (reagent blank). This combination of ligation amplification and fluorescence detection provides a rapid, simple method to identify specific nucleic acid sequences. Product detection on a gel can be completed within 8 h of the beginning of thermal cycling.
Pluronic F127 polymeric micelles for co-delivery of paclitaxel and lapatinib against metastatic breast cancer: preparation, optimization and in vitro evaluation

Abstract The aim of this study was to develop and characterize the paclitaxel (PTX)-lapatinib (LPT) loaded micelles for simultaneous delivery against metastatic breast cancer. Efflux pump-mediated drug resistance influences the efficacy of chemotherapeutic regimens. However, in the newly developed delivery system, LPT was selected to act as chemosensetizer. LPT increases the intracellular level of PTX by inhibition of efflux pumps. Pluronic F127 was selected for the preparation of the micelles, and its critical micelle concentration was determined to be 0.012 mg/ml. D-optimal design was used to analyze the impact of different experimental parameters on PTX and LPT encapsulation ratio. PTX encapsulation ratio was optimized at 68.3%, while LPT encapsulation ratio found to be 70.1%. Transmission electron microscope analyses demonstrate that micelles possess a good core–shell structure without any sharp edge. Laser scattering method results indicated that size of the optimized micelles is 64.81 nm with acceptable polydispersity index (0.309). In vitro release studies showed a sustain release pattern. PTX–LPT-loaded micelles suppressed the proliferation of resistant T-47D cell line (IC50 = 0.6 ± 0.1 µg/ml) compared to binary mixture of PTX and LPT (IC50 = 6.7 ± 1.2 µg/ml). Therefore, it is concluded that the developed formulation might increase the therapeutic efficacy in drug resistant metastatic breast cancer.
Correlation of auditory ‘oddball’ P300 with verbal memory deficits in schizophrenia

Background. The study attempts to recruit well known ‘cognitive’ event related potential measures as an objective estimate of cognitive and specific memory impairment in schizophrenia. Methods. We examined 19 schizophrenic patients and 28 healthy controls using an auditory discrimination task to elicit event related potentials, and a number of neuropsychological tests, including tests of general intellectual ability, putative frontal lobe function and verbal memory. Results. The late positive deflection presumed to be associated with stimulus evaluation (P300) was of lower amplitude and had a longer latency in the patients compared with controls of similar age and sex. We found correlations between P300 amplitude and latency, and neuropsychological performance scores in patients. There were correlations between decreased P300 amplitude and lower IQ and poorer memory performance, in particular, abnormal semantic clustering, discriminability and intrusion errors. Increased P300 latency was correlated with lower pre-morbid IQ, poorer total memory scores and serial clustering, but paradoxically less relative retrieval deficit and fewer intrusion errors. Conclusions. These findings suggest that abnormal P300 is generally more likely to occur in patients with memory impairment.
Effect of spinal cord stimulation on spontaneous and stress-induced angina and 'ischemia-like' ST-segment depression in patients with cardiac syndrome X.

AIMS A significant number of patients with cardiac syndrome X (CSX) present frequent episodes of severe chest pain, refractory to maximal multi-drug therapy. A few, small, uncontrolled data suggested that spinal cord stimulation (SCS) may have favourable clinical benefits in these patients. METHODS AND RESULTS We studied 10 CSX patients who were being treated by SCS for refractory angina pectoris for 17+/-16 months (median 8). Patients were randomized to either continue or withdraw SCS for a period of 3 weeks and were then crossed over to the other condition for a further 3-week period. During each 3-week period patients kept a detailed diary of angina episodes occurring in the last 2 weeks of each phase. Furthermore, at the end of each 3-week period, angina status was also assessed by Seattle Angina Questionnaire (SAQ), a 0-100 visual analogue scale (VAS), and patients underwent 24-h Holter monitoring (HM) and echocardiographic dobutamine stress test (DST). Compared with the withdrawal phase, SCS reduced the number (P=0.01), duration (P=0.022), and severity (P=0.011) of angina episodes, and nitrate consumption (P=0.042). SAQ scores (P< or =0.013 for all) and VAS (P<0.001) were also improved, the number of episodes of ST-segment depression on HM was decreased (P=0.014), and time to angina (P=0.045) and to 1 mm ST-segment depression (P=0.04) during DST were both prolonged by SCS. CONCLUSIONS Our data point out that SCS may be an effective form of treatment in patients with CSX suffering from frequent angina episodes significantly impairing quality of life (QOL) and refractory to maximally tolerated drug therapy.
A digital compensation technique for a current reference in an ultra-wide temperature range

A new digital calibration technique to compensate the process and temperature induced deviation of current reference is presented. The circuit is designed with 0.18-μm CMOS all-digital technology. Temperature and process compensation is achieved by a Digital Calibration (DC) module in which binary search is adopted to accelerate the calibration. The DC dynamically adjusts the digital-controlled resistor array, which is used to regulate the output bias current. No matter how the temperature changes in an ultra-wide ranging from −95°C to 140°C, the output current can be calibrated to 100 μA with a maximum error of 0.3 μA under all the process corners. The same precision can also be obtained when the load voltage is changed from 0.31 V to 1.04 V, and the load sensitivity is about 8000 ppm/V. The digital part consumes little static power and the analog calibration part can be turned off after the calibration is finished, as a result, the power consumption is only 100 μA.
Mobility Management in Vehicular Adhoc Networks : A Review

Vehicular Adhoc Networks (VANET) are gaining importance in vehicular networks and attracting an increasing attraction from both industry and research communities. Mobility Management is one of the most important and challenging research issue in vehicular networks which support various applications of Intelligent Transportation System (ITS). A specific mobility management solution is required for Vehicular Adhoc networks, because traditional mobility management schemes for mobile Adhoc networks (MANET) cannot meet the requirements of vehicular Adhoc networks (VANET) due to its unique characteristic (i.e. high mobility). In this paper, an overview of mobility management techniques in VANET is reviewed in three vehicular communication modes, i.e., Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I) communication, Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) communication and Hybrid Vehicle (HV) communication. Finally, the related open research issues are discussed.
COPOS: Corpus Of Patient Opinions in Spanish. Application of Sentiment Analysis Techniques

Every day more users are interested in the opinion that other patients have about a physician or about health topics in general. According to a study in 2015, 62% of Spanish people access the Internet in order to be informed about topics related to health. This paper is focused on Spanish Sentiment Analysis in the medical domain. Although Sentiment Analysis has been studied for different domains, health issues have hardly been examined in Opinion Mining and even less with Spanish comments or opinions. Thus we have generated a corpus by crawling the website Masquemedicos with Spanish opinions about medical entities written by patients. We present this new resource, called COPOS (Corpus Of Patient Opinions in Spanish). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to deal with Spanish opinions written by patients about medical attention. In order to demonstrate the validity of the corpus presented, we have also carried out different experiments with the main methodologies applied in polarity classification (Semantic Orientation and Machine Learning). The results obtained encourage us to continue analysing and researching Opinion Mining in the medical domain.
Risk Assessment Models and Contamination Management: Implications for Broad-Range Ribosomal DNA PCR as a Diagnostic Tool in Medical Bacteriology

Molecular methods have now become established as accepted methods for the detection of causal agents of infection (viral, bacterial, fungal, and protozoal). In particular, the use of a combination of rRNA genes from bacteria, fungi, and protozoa, i.e., universal or broad-range targets, has become
Optically enhanced acoustophoresis

Regenerative medicine has the capability to revolutionise many aspects of medical care, but for it to make the step from small scale autologous treatments to larger scale allogeneic approaches, robust and scalable label free cell sorting technologies are needed as part of a cell therapy bioprocessing pipeline. In this proceedings we describe several strategies for addressing the requirements for high throughput without labeling via: dimensional scaling, rare species targeting and sorting from a stable state. These three approaches are demonstrated through a combination of optical and ultrasonic forces. By combining mostly conservative and non-conservative forces from two different modalities it is possible to reduce the influence of flow velocity on sorting efficiency, hence increasing robustness and scalability. One such approach can be termed "optically enhanced acoustophoresis" which combines the ability of acoustics to handle large volumes of analyte with the high specificity of optical sorting.
A Statistical Evaluation of Sediment Quality Triad Benthic Community Measurements in PAH-Impacted Sediments at a Manufactured Gas Plant Site along the Hudson River

The sediment quality triad (SQT) assumes that three measurements (sediment chemistry, laboratory bioassay, and benthic macroinvertebrate counts) comprise an independent assessment of impact, which when integrated using a weight-of-evidence approach provides a comprehensive assessment of risk. An SQT assessment was conducted on 41 sediment samples collected adjacent to a manufactured gas plant site on the freshwater reach of the Hudson River in New York State. The assessment shows that the benthic macroinvertebrate data did not correlate with either sediment or pore water polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) concentrations, nor did these data show consistent relationships to the results of laboratory bioassay testing (Hyalella azteca 28-day survival or biomass). The benthic community across the site and reference areas was comprised of few taxa, all of which were pollution-tolerant organisms with tolerance values greater than or equal to five. Only in significantly impacted sediment samples with PAH concentrations in the thousands of milligrams per kilogram, pore water concentrations above 100 toxic units, and visible non-aqueous phase liquid present in the sample did the benthic macroinvertebrate data show a response. In contrast, sediment and pore water PAH measurements and H. azteca toxicity testing provided consistent interpretation of impact. These results illustrate that benthic macroinvertebrate data may contain less information value and be a more challenging line of evidence to interpret in triad studies conducted in certain ecological settings; in this case, a large-order river with a relatively depauperate benthic community dominated by species tolerant of PAHs.