Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Does gender influence quality of life in children with atopic dermatitis?

Introduction: Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a chronic skin disease that has a significant impact on quality of life (QoL). The aim of this paper was to evaluate if gender affects some aspects of QoL in children with AD. Materials and methods: The cross-sectional study was conducted at the Clinic of Dermatology and Venereology, Clinical Center of Montenegro, between August 2017 and July 2018 and included 200 children aged 5−16 years with AD diagnosis. The severity of disease was measured by the Three Item Severity (TIS) score, while QoL was assessed with the Children’s Dermatology Life Quality Index (CDLQI). Socio-demographic data on children with AD were collected by a short questionnaire. Results: The difference in overall CDLQI between boys and girls was not statistically significant. The domains that were most affected by AD were school/holidays (mean score 2.27 ± 0.65), and symptoms (mean score 2.22 ± 0.70). Swimming/ sports activities, school/holidays, teasing/bullying and sleep disturbance were more affected in girls. Overall CDLQI score and CDLQI subscale scores (except school/holidays and sleep in boys) significantly correlated with TIS. According to multivariate logistic regression analyses statistically significant differences between two genders were not found for age, AD severity, concomitant atopic disease, and family history of atopic disease. Conclusion: Although we did not find differences between the two genders in the overall health related QoL, this study confirmed the tendency for AD to have a more severe impact on girls' lives. These results may influence treatment and counselling of children affected with AD.
Antibacterial and Cytotoxic Activities of Pinus tropicalis and Pinus elliottii Resins and of the Diterpene Dehydroabietic Acid Against Bacteria That Cause Dental Caries

Considering the impact of dental caries on public health and the wide biological potential described for species belonging to the genus Pinus, here we investigate the antibacterial activity of the P. elliottii and P. tropicalis resins and of the diterpene dehydroabietic acid (DHA) against cariogenic bacteria. For this purpose, we have determined the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and the minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC) of the resins and of the diterpene. We have also investigated the biofilm inhibition ability (through MBIC50 determination), as well as the synergistic effect (through fractional inhibitory concentration index) and the cytotoxic potential (through XTT assay) of the P. elliottii and P. tropicalis resins. The resins gave promising MIC and MBC values, which ranged from 12.5 to 400 μg/mL; DHA provided MIC and MBC values ranging from 25 to 400 μg/mL. The MICB50 values ranged from 0.78 to 400 μg/mL for the resins. Neither additive nor synergistic effects emerged for the combinations of one of the resins with chlorhexidine. The cytotoxic activity was ≥312.5 and ≥156.3 μg/mL for the P. elliottii and P. tropicalis resins, respectively. The resins showed antibacterial activity against planktonic and sessile cariogenic bacteria. These data are relevant and encourage further research into these plants, which may contribute to the discovery of new substances that can inhibit the growth of cariogenic microorganisms and reduce the incidence of dental caries.
Modernized Mathematical Model of Text Document Classification

The modernized mathematical model of the main stages of the text document classification is proposed. It takes into account the characteristics of certain categories. A mathematical description of the document data set creating stages, a document classification into categories is proposed. The principles of reducing the feature space dimension are described and the proposed method what used for determining the term weights is argued. The application of the method proposed in the article leads to reduce the analysis time of each document in order to make a decision about its category. This leads to decrease the resulting time for the analysis of the entire document set.
Physiology, Blood Volume

Blood volume refers to the total amount of fluid circulating within the arteries, capillaries, veins, venules, and chambers of the heart at any time. The components that add volume to blood include red blood cells (erythrocytes), white blood cells (leukocytes), platelets, and plasma. Plasma accounts for about 60% of total blood volume while erythrocytes make up roughly 40% along with leukocytes and platelets. The amount of blood circulating within an individual depends on their size and weight, but the average human adult has nearly 5 liters of circulating blood. Women tend to have a lower blood volume than men. However, a woman's blood volume increases by roughly 50% during pregnancy. Blood volume is tightly regulated and related to multiple organ systems. Furthermore, it is closely associated with sodium content and hydration status. The maintenance of blood volume is crucial to normal function as it is necessary for the constant perfusion of body tissues. Blood volume can be increased or decreased by systemic dysfunction. Changes in blood volume can result in various clinical scenarios such as hypovolemic shock or edema. Two equations exist for estimating blood volume given the gender, height (H), and weight (W) of the patient. The Nadler equation is built upon the work of Dr. Allen in 1962 while the Lemmens-Bernstein-Brodsky equation is more accurate for higher ranges of body weight and body mass indices in patients without critical illnesses.Nadler Equation:Lemmens-Bernstein-Brodsky Equation:
Software Complex for Automated Diagnostics of Internal Parameters of Technical Systems

We offer an information technology for diagnosing technical systems by monitoring the values of their internal parameters and comparing with the maximum allowable values. Diagnosed parameters of the internal elements of the technical system are determined by the mathematical calculations based on the well-known mathematical model of the system and the measured values of its output characteristics. Optimization methods are used for calculating the values of the internal parameters of the system.
The Use of Domain Knowledge in Reinforcement Learning (Het gebruik van domeinkennis in reinforcement learning)

Reinforcement Learning is the branch of Artificial Intelligence concerned with an agent learning optimal behavior in sequential decision problems where it is only after a number of decisions that it becomes clear how good a choice of action was. In most of the classical Reinforcement Learning techniques the environment is treated like a black box where it is completely unknown which states of the environment performing different actions in a given state can lead to. For many environments, however, there is plenty of information available from domain experts. The first part of this thesis investigates numerous ways in which existing domain knowledge could be used to speed up the Reinforcement Learning process. This includes: having a complete and accurate model of the environment, having a way to compare different states and treat similar states as if they were equal, and using a restricted set of possible policies or strategies that is constructed using expert knowledge about the environment. We introduce two new algorithms, one which solves a completely and accurately known sequential decision problem efficiently, and one which uses a measure of difference between different state-action pairs to construct a partitioning of the total state-action space. We prove that treating all state-action pairs within one partition as if they were the same will still entail a limited error. In the second part of this work we look into the problem setting where obtaining information about the sequential decision problem or about the current state of the environment entails a cost. Having more information can be expected to give a higher expected reward, but at a higher price. This part will concern itself with the balance between the cost and the value of information, both in standard prediction tasks as in sequential decision problems. Three algorithms for costsensitive prediction are introduced using resp. linear regression, regression trees and linear model trees. Of all these algorithms it is shown that no information is used which is not worth its cost.
Care during Breastfeeding: Perceptions of Mothers and Health Professionals

Abstract Purpose. To know the perceptions of mothers and health professionals in relation to the care provided and received during breastfeeding at primary health care level. Methods. A qualitative exploratory study was conducted with breastfeeding mothers (10) and primary health care professionals (24). Data was gathered through in-depth interviews and focus groups. Data analysis was performed through thematic content analysis. The rigor of the study was ensured by the Guba and Lincoln criteria for qualitative research. Ethical aspects were addressed through the informed consent process, confidentiality, and methodological rigor. Results. The experience of providing/receiving breastfeeding support was revealed as a dynamic, multidimensional care and support process, through three central themes: 1. Influence of previous care and support experiences during the breastfeeding process; 2. Importance of the context within which care is framed; and 3. Addressing emotions to establish trust between professionals and mothers. Conclusion. The study findings contribute to further understanding a complex phenomenon, such as breastfeeding support and care for mothers/families, from the experience of the actors involved, deepening the experiences of both in integrated manner. In addition, the relational, organizational, and contextual dimensions that influence support, and that should guide care, are also highlighted.
A framework for access control and resource allocation in federations

In this thesis we address the access control and resource allocation problems in computational federations, such as testbeds and cloud computing federations. The computational federations of today are growing in their number of participant organizations, where one challenge is to allow organizations participate autonomously by expressing how much of their resources should be used and by whom, through complex policies. In addition, such organizations should be able to exchange resources with any other organizations without necessarily knowing all of them beforehand. We introduce our federation framework which allows to build federations in varying complexities easily, by synthesizing trust management, policy languages and resource discovery into a single system. Although these three have been studied separately in the past, we show that they are in fact related, and can be viewed as separate layers of a more general system. We argue that complex agreements that involve indirect trust relationships is one key way to enable resource exchange in a federation with numerous organizations, and this can be realized by our synthesis architecture that provides usability as well as expressiveness. As part of our framework, federation policy language (FPL) is used to express both the security and allocation policies, by providing simple primitives such as contracts that hide the underlying complexity. FPL primitives allow system administrators to express policies such as indirect trust and resource restrictions within the same construct. Underneath, FPL uses our distributed trust management system (CERTDIST) to implement and impose policy primitives. CERTDIST uses digital certificates to allow or deny resource requests and a DHT for complex distributive proofs in an efficient way. The Resource discovery part of our framework (CODAL) is layered on top of FPL, and uses contracts to discover peers, FPL security and allocation policies to authorize for resources that are located possibly in many different organizations. We evaluate the federation framework with a realistic emulation of a large scale federation using real PlanetLab traces, that shows that complex policies can be expressed with a minimal amount of code, and we can efficiently perform the access control and resource discovery operations in a federation.
Model-Driven Development of REST APIs

The report is a first part of the research on applying Model-Driven Development on developing REST APIs. The motivation to do this is because font-end programming is different from the server-side programming and since single-page applications using REST API are becoming more and more popular, a way how to develop high quality REST APIs in the least time is needed. The method should be based on something similar to both client-side and serverside developers. Model-Driven Development is a perfect candidate to solve this. The article describes the notation for REST endpoints connected to data structure they work with. An editor has been developed to support this notation. This editor exports the model to JSON so the model can be used in code generation. This paper covers the implementation of the editor and shows the functionality including JSON output. A study case has been used to evaluate the editor’s functionality and ability to keep the important information related to the case. As has been already mentioned, this is the first part of the research and it prepares the ground for the code generation of REST APIs.
The effect of oleuropein on working and passive avoidance memory in the pentylenetetrazole-induced seizure animal model

Introduction: Epileptic seizures are product of abnormal electrical discharges of the brain. Electrical wave productive of epileptic seizure generates disturbances in brain data processing circuits and these patients suffer from memory impairment. In this study, the effect of different doses of oleuropein on the treatment of memory impairment Caused by frequent seizures was in male rats investigated. Materials and methods: Forty rats were randomly divided into four groups of 10 (the negative control group received normal saline, the positive control group received diazepam 1 mg/kg and the two treatment groups received doses 10 and 20 mg/kg of oleuropein). Thirty minutes after administration of different doses of oleuropein or saline or diazepam, pentylenetetrazole (PTZ) at a dose of 85 mg/kg was injected intraperitoneal into rats, and after creating seizure and animal survival, tests of memory were performed. One-way ANOVA and Tukey's tests were the procedures used to analyze the results. Results: In both tests, the memory of the control group (normal saline recipient) decreased significantly (P<0.001). The administration of 10mg/kg oleuropein shows a significant increase in periodic behavior measurements by maze y (P<0.01). Both doses of 10 and 20 mg/kg increased passive avoidance memory (P<0.001). Conclusion This study shows that the oleuropein has an appropriate anticonvulsant effect and improves the working memory and passive avoidance in epileptic rat and Future studies appear to be necessary to understand further how the mechanism of its effect.
Evaluation of Anti-Nociceptive and Anti-Inflammatory Activities of Apium graveolens L. Roots Extract in Mice

Background and objectivesPain is an unpleasant feeling which affects the quality of life and relieving from pain is an important goal in many treatment protocols. Apium graveolens L. (celery) has been considered as sedative, analgesic, carminative, antispasmodic and diuretic in Iranian traditional medicine. The aim of present study was to evaluate the anti-nociceptive and anti-inflammatory effect of celery root in mice.MethodRepeated maceration was employed as extraction method. Hot plate and acetic acid writhing test were conducted to assess analgesic effect of celery root. The extract was also evaluated for anti-inflammatory probable effect by formalin induced ear edema and xylene induced paw edema tests.ResultsTotal flavonoid content determined by aluminum chloride colorimetric method was 0.0625 mg quercetin/g extract. No significant difference was observed between the positive control group which received morphine and test group in hot plate test and the most effective dose of celery root extract was 200 mg/kg, while the frequency of writhings was significantly different in all test groups in comparison with control group (p value< 0.05), the extract (100, 200 and 400 mg/kg) significantly suppressed inflammation in formalin induced edema assay, 60 and 120 min after injection. The results of xylene test also demonstrated notable antiedematogenic effect in applying 200 and 400 mg/kg of extract.ConclusionCelery root has analgesic and anti-inflammatory effects which might be related to the flavonoids and resins present in the species.
Clinical and Imaging Markers Associated With Hemorrhagic Transformation in Patients With Acute Ischemic Stroke.

Background and Purpose- Hemorrhagic transformation (HT) after acute ischemic stroke may cause severe neurological deterioration and affects functional outcome. Identifying patients most likely to suffer from this complication could potentially be used for future treatment selection. Reperfusion after endovascular therapy could be associated with different risk factors for HT than intravenous thrombolytics as these treatments largely differ. In this study, we aimed to identify clinical and imaging markers that are associated with HT subtypes in the MR CLEAN (Multicenter Randomized Clinical Trial of Endovascular Treatment for Acute Ischemic Stroke in the Netherlands) population. Methods- In this post hoc analysis, all patients with follow-up imaging were included. HT was classified according to ECASS II (European Cooperative Acute Stroke Study). Variables with an association of P<0.1 were included in the multivariable logistic regression to identify clinical and radiological variables associated with petechial hemorrhagic infarction, parenchymal hematoma (PH), and symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage. Results- Of the 478 out of 500 included patients in this subanalysis, 46% had HT (n=222). Of these, 66% had hemorrhagic infarction (n=147) and 34% PH (n=75). Symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage was observed in 7.3% (n=35) of all patients. Baseline National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (odds ratio [OR], 1.05,95% CI, 1.01-1.09 per point) and absent/poor collaterals (OR, 1.90; 95% CI, 1.05-3.42) were significantly associated with hemorrhagic infarction. Increased systolic blood pressure (OR, 1.17; 95% CI, 1.05-1.31 per 10 mm Hg) and atrial fibrillation (OR, 1.94; 95% CI, 1.08-3.48) were associated with PH. Increased systolic blood pressure (OR, 1.28; 95% CI, 1.12-1.48) and antiplatelet use (OR, 2.6; 95% CI, 1.08-6.3) were associated with symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage. Conclusions- Clinical and imaging stroke severity parameters were associated with HT, both in hemorrhagic infarction and PH, whereas baseline patients characteristics like systolic blood pressure, atrial fibrillation, and antiplatelet use were only associated with PH or symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage. Clinical Trial Registration- URL: http://www.controlled-trials.com. Unique identifier: ISRCTN10888758.
Service-Oriented Computing: From Web Services to Service-Oriented Components

The visionary promise of Service-Oriented Computing (SOC) is a world-scale network of loosely coupled services that can be assembled with little effort in agile applications that may span organizations and computing platforms. In practice, services are assembled in a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) that provides mechanisms and rules to specify, publish, discover and compose available services. The aim of this chapter is to present the different technologies implementing the new paradigm of SOA: Web Services, UPnP, DPWS, and service-oriented component OSGi and iPOJO. These technologies have been developed and adapted to multiple domains: application integration, pervasive computing and dynamic application integration.
Approaches And Theory In International Relations

approaches and theory in international relations is available in our digital library an online access to it is set as public so you can download it instantly. Our books collection spans in multiple locations, allowing you to get the most less latency time to download any of our books like this one. Merely said, the approaches and theory in international relations is universally compatible with any devices to read.
Creating an assessment and feedback strategy for problem based learning chemistry courses

Introduction Since the first implementations of Problem Based Learning (PBL) in medical teaching in the 1960s, the pedagogical approach has become increasingly popular in the teaching on physical science programmes. PBL approaches to learning and teaching are based on student-focused enquiry with a particular emphasis on the development of high level skills, including the application of abstract discipline specific knowledge to vaguely defined interdisciplinary research questions and, the ability to communicate the findings of a project to a range of diverse audience types. A PBL-based assessment and feedback strategy was developed for chemistry students at the University of Leicester, based upon a cyclic process which integrated formative assessment and feedback throughout the problem solving process and providing students with regular opportunities for self-reflection. This case study examines and evaluates the success of this initiative.
Role of Toll-like receptor 4 in critical limb ischaemia

4 IMPACT STATEMENT.6 CHAPTER 1: GENERAL INTRODUCTION.13 1.1. Peripheral Arterial Disease.14 1.1.1. Definition & epidemiology.14 1.1.2. Management options & clinical outcomes.14 1.1.3. Pathology: Atherosclerosis and skeletal muscle changes.16 1.2. Toll-like Receptors (TLRs). 18 1.2.1. Innate immune system.18 1.2. 2. TLR structure.19 1.2. 3. TLR ligands.20 1.2. 4. TLR downstream signalling.20 1.2. 5. TLR, chronic inflammation & autoimmunity.21 1.2. 6. Therapeutic role of TLR modulation in cardiovascular dysfunction 1.2. 6.1. Cardiac dysfunction.22 1.2. 6.2. Vascular dysfunction.26 1.2. 7. TLR4 and ischaemia-induced injury.31 1.3. Aims & Hypothesis.32 CHAPTER 2: METHODS AND MATERIALS.39 2.1. Human tissue collection & preparation.41 2.1.1. Ethics and patient groups.41