Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
For Personal Use. Only Reproduce with Permission from the Lancet Publishing Group. Effect of Washing Hands with Soap on Diarrhoea Risk in the Community: a Systematic Review

We set out to determine the impact of washing hands with soap on the risk of diarrhoeal diseases in the community with a systematic review with random effects meta-analysis. Our data sources were studies linking handwashing with diarrhoeal diseases. Seven intervention studies, six case-control, two cross-sectional, and two cohort studies were located from electronic databases, hand searching, and the authors' collections. The pooled relative risk of diarrhoeal disease associated with not washing hands from the intervention trials was 1·88 (95% CI 1·31–2·68), implying that handwashing could reduce diarrhoea risk by 47%. When all studies, when only those of high quality, and when only those studies specifically mentioning soap were pooled, risk reduction ranged from 42–44%. The risks of severe intestinal infections and of shigellosis were associated with reductions of 48% and 59%, respectively. In the absence of adequate mortality studies, we extrapolate the potential number of diarrhoea deaths that could be averted by handwashing at about a million (1·1 million, lower estimate 0·5 million, upper estimate 1·4 million). Results may be affected by the poor quality of many of the studies and may be inflated by publication bias. On current evidence, washing hands with soap can reduce the risk of diarrhoeal diseases by 42–47% and interventions to promote handwashing might save a million lives. More and better-designed trials are needed to measure the impact of washing hands on diarrhoea and acute respiratory infections in developing countries. Diarrhoeal diseases are amongst the top three killers of children in the world today. 1 At least 20 viral, bacterial, and protozoan enteric pathogens, including Salmonella spp, Shigella spp, Vibrio cholerae, and rotavirus, multiply in the human gut, exit in excreta, and transit through the environment, causing diarrhoea in new hosts. Because diarrhoeal diseases are of faecal origin, interventions that prevent faecal material entering the domestic environment of the susceptible child are likely to be of greatest significance for public health. 2 The key primary barriers to the transmission of enteric pathogens are safe stool disposal and adequate handwashing (figure 1), especially after contact with faecal material during anal cleansing of adults and children. 3 Hands serve as vectors, transmitting pathogens to foodstuffs and drinks and to the mouths of susceptible hosts. In a 1997 review Huttly quoted five studies on handwashing with a median reduction in diarrhoea incidence of 35%. 4 We carried out a systematic review of the effects of washing hands …
A Bayesian Approach for Constructing Ensemble Neural Network

Ensemble neural networks (ENNs) are commonly used in many engineering applications due to its better generalization properties compared with a single neural network (NN). As the NN architecture has a significant influence on the generalization ability of an NN, it is crucial to develop a proper algorithm to design the NN architecture. In this paper, an ENN which combines the component networks by using the Bayesian approach and stochastic modelling is proposed. The cross validation data set is used not only to stop the network training, but also to determine the weights of the component networks. The proposed ENN searches the best structure of each component network first and employs the Bayesian approach as an automating design tool to determine the best combining weights of the ENN. Peak function is used to assess the accuracy of the proposed ensemble approach. The results show that the proposed ENN outperforms ENN obtained by simple averaging and the single NN.
THE EFFECT OF CIGARETTE SMOKING ON NASAL RESPIRATORY MUCOSA AND NASAL BACTERIAL FLORA

INTRODUCTION: Recently it was shown that, the most important environmental factor which threat people's health is cigarette smoking and it has detrimental effect on body system. Most studies concerning smoking were directed to its carcinogenic effect on the lower respiratory tract. However the effects of smoking on nasal respiratory mucosa have not been widely studied, although the nose is one of the most exposed organs. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this work is to study the effect of cigarette smoking on nasal respiratory mucosa and nasal bacterial flora in different studied groups. METHODS AND MATERIAL: This study was performed on 80 participants divided into four groups, twenty participants in each group: (A non-smokers, B mild smokers, C moderate smokers and D heavy smokers). All participants in this study were subjected to the following:  Nasal mucociliary clearance evaluation by saccharin test.  Nasal swab for culture: Swab specimens were obtained by sterile Calgi swabs, for each participant four swabs had been taken (from bilateral nasal vestibule and bilateral middle meatus).  Biopsy from Nasal mucosa: Minute biopsy 1mm specimens had been taken with a special punch forceps 1cm behind the anterior edge of inferior turbinate. RESULTS: Prolonged mucociliary clearance was shown in smokers group than non smokers group with highly significant difference between heavy smokers and non smokers group. Microorganisms isolated from nasal vestibule showed no significant difference in between different studied groups. Staphylococcus aureus and Neisseria meningitides isolated from middle meatus which considered as potential pathogenic bacteria were more isolated from smokers group than non smokers group and showed significant difference between heavy smokers and non smokers group. Histological changes in nasal mucosa include loss of cilia; mixed cuboid/ squamous epithelium, stratified squamous epithelium and mild dysplasia were shown more in smokers groups than non smokers group with significant difference between heavy smokers and non smokers group. Hypertrophy/hyperplasia of goblet cells and submucosal glands were more percentage in smokers groups than in non smokers group with significant difference between heavy smokers and non smokers group. CONCLUSIONS: Cigarette smoking has several histopathological effects on nasal mucosa including, loss of cilia, hyperplasia of mucosal gland, prolonged mucociliary clearance and structural variation in respiratory epithelium. Also cigarette smoking may be a cause of nose and sinuses disease by affecting the nasal flora.
A robust estimator of the small-scale galaxy correlation function

We present a new estimator, ω, of the small-scale galaxy correlation function that is robust against the effects of redshift-space distortions and large-scale structures. The estimator is a weighted integral of the redshift space or angular correlation function and is a convolution of the real-space correlation function with a localized filter. This allows a direct comparison with theory, without modelling redshift-space distortions and the large-scale correlation function. This has a number of advantages over the more traditional wp estimator, including (i) an insensitivity to large-scale structures and the details of the truncation of the line-of-sight integral, (ii) a well-localized kernel in ξ(r) and (iii) being unbinned. We discuss how this estimator would be used in practice, applying it to a sample of mock galaxies selected from the Millennium simulation.
Multi-Step Multi-Sensor Hider-Seeker Games

We study a multi-step hider-seeker game where the hider is moving on a graph and, in each step, the seeker is able to search c subsets of the graph nodes. We model this game as a zero-sum Bayesian game, which can be solved in weakly polynomial time in the players' action spaces. The seeker's action space is exponential in c, and both players' action spaces are exponential in the game horizon. To manage this intractability, we use a column/constraint generation approach for both players. This approach requires an oracle to determine best responses for each player. However, we show that computing a best response for the seeker is NP-hard, even for a single-step game when c is part of the input, and that computing a best response is NP-hard for both players for the multi-step game, even if c = 1. An integer programming formulation of the best response for the hider is practical for moderate horizons, but computing an exact seeker best response is impractical due to the exponential dependence on both c and the horizon. We therefore develop an approximate best response oracle with bounded suboptimality for the seeker. We prove performance bounds on the strategy that results when column/constraint generation with approximate best responses converges, and we measure the performance of our algorithm in simulations. In our experimental results, column/constraint generation converges to near-minimax strategies for both players fairly quickly.
Things and Places: How the Mind Connects with the World

In Things and Places, Zenon Pylyshyn argues that the process of incrementally constructing perceptual representations, solving the binding problem (determining which properties go together), and, more generally, grounding perceptual representations in experience arise from the nonconceptual capacity to pick out and keep track of a small number of sensory individuals. He proposes a mechanism in early vision that allows us to select a limited number of sensory objects, to reidentify each of them under certain conditions as the same individual seen before, and to keep track of their enduring individuality despite radical changes in their properties -- all without the machinery of concepts, identity, and tenses. This mechanism, which he calls FINSTs (for "Fingers of Instantiation"), is responsible for our capacity to individuate and track several independently moving sensory objects -- an ability that we exercise every waking minute, and one that can be understood as fundamental to the way we see and understand the world and to our sense of space. Pylyshyn examines certain empirical phenomena of early vision in light of the FINST mechanism, including tracking and attentional selection. He argues provocatively that the initial selection of perceptual individuals is our primary nonconceptual contact with the perceptual world (a contact that does not depend on prior encoding of any properties of the thing selected) and then draws upon a wide range of empirical data to support a radical externalist theory of spatial representation that grows out of his indexing theory.
Empowering products: personal identity through the act of appropriation

This paper explores the relationship between personal identity and the act of appropriating digital objects in the home--specifically do-it-yourself--to inform the design of empowering products. It reports ongoing research and provides a preliminary analysis of the Steampunk movement as a case study for personal appropriation. Appropriation-identity design guidelines are provided as a result of the data analysis.
Regulation of photosynthesis by reversible phosphorylation of the light-harvesting chlorophyll a/b protein.

Photosynthetic CO2 fixation in chloroplasts is driven by ATP and NADPH generated by electron and proton transport within the thylakoid membrane. The movement of an electron from water to NADP+ along the electron transport chain requires two photons and involves two separate photosystems (PS I and PS II) operating in series. Each photosystem contains a reaction centre consisting of one or two chlorophyll a molecules of producing across the membrane a separation of reductant and oxidant that will initiate electron transport less possess reaction centre direct connection role is to as and channel the resulting excitation energy to the reaction centres. Without these light-harvesting chlorophyll molecules, the electron transport rate would be severely limited under any light intensity less than that of full sunlight. LHC, light-harvesting chlorophyll a/b complex; LHCP, light-harvesting chlorophyll a/b protein; PQ, plastoquinone; Pr or Pfr red- or far- red-absorbing forms of phytochrome; PS, photosystem;
A metalloproteinase inhibitor as an inhibitor of neovascularization

Metalloproteinases and their endogenous inhibitors are key components of an enzyme system which is important in a number of fundamental biochemical and cellular processes. Our recent work has focused on the role of a particular metalloproteinase, collagenase, and the role of an endogenous inhibitor of this enzyme in the control of neovascularization. The proteolytic degradation of extracellular matrix components by capillary endothelial cells (EC) has been shown to be one of the key prerequisites of the angiogenic process. As part of a study of the effect(s) of the inhibition of collagenase on neovascularization, we have recently reported the purification, characterization and partial NH2‐terminal sequence of a cartilage‐derived inhibitor (CDI) of angiogenesis in vivo and in vitro. Evidence is presented which suggests that one means of controlling deregualted vascular growth characteristic of a number of “angiogenic diseases” may be at the level of the control of metalloproteinase activity.
Thyrotropin induces the acidification of the secretory granules of parafollicular cells by increasing the chloride conductance of the granular membrane

Secretory granules of sheep thyroid parafollicular cells contain serotonin, a serotonin-binding protein, and calcitonin. Parafollicular cells, isolated by affinity chromatography, were found to secrete serotonin when activated by thyrotropin (TSH) or elevated [Ca2+]e. TSH also induced a rise in [Ca2+]i. We studied the effect of these secretogogues on the pH difference (delta pH) across the membranes of the secretory granules of isolated parafollicular cells. The trapping of the weak bases, acridine orange or 3-(2,4 dinitro anilino)-3'-amino- N-methyl dipropylamine (DAMP), within the granules was used to evaluate delta pH. In contrast to lysosomes, which served as an internal control, the secretory granules of resting parafollicular cells displayed a limited and variable ability to trap either acridine orange or 3-(2,4 dinitro anilino)-3'-amino-N-methyl dipropylamine; however, when parafollicular cells were stimulated with TSH or elevated [Ca2+]e, the granules acidified. Weak base trapping was also used to evaluate the ATP-driven H+ translocation into isolated parafollicular granules. The isolated parafollicular granules did not acidify in response to addition of ATP unless their transmembrane potential was collapsed by the K+ ionophore, valinomycin. Secretory granules isolated from TSH- treated parafollicular cells had a high chloride conductance than did granules isolated similarly from untreated cells. Furthermore, ATP- driven H+ translocation into parafollicular granules isolated from TSH- stimulated parafollicular cells occurred even in the absence of valinomycin. These results demonstrate that secretogogues can regulate the internal pH of the serotonin-storing secretory granules of parafollicular cells by opening a chloride channel associated with the granule membrane. This is the first demonstration that the pH of secretory vesicles may be modified by altering the conductance of a counterion for the H+ translocating ATPase.
Correlations among Scores on Measures of Field Dependence-Independence Cognitive Style, Cognitive Ability, and Sustained Attention

The Children's Embedded Figures Test, the Rod and Frame Test to measure the field dependence-independence cognitive style, Cattell's Culture Fair Intelligence Tests to measure cognitive ability, and two cancellation tasks (Zazzo task and Bourdon task) to assess sustained attention were administered to 179 boys and 110 girls whose average age was 9.0 yr. Correlations between scores on measures of field dependence-independence and cognitive ability were moderated. Average correlations between scores on measures of field dependence-independence, cognitive ability, and measures of sustained attention was . 23 for the Zazzo task and quite weak (.06) for the Bourdon task.
The Convoy Effect in Atomic Multicast

Atomic multicast is a group communication primitive that allows disseminating messages to multiple distributed processes with strong ordering properties. As such, atomic multicast is a widely-employed tool to build large-scale systems, in particular when data is geo-distributed and/or replicated across multiple locations. However, all the most efficient atomic multicast algorithms suffer from a convoy effect that slows down the delivery of messages. In this paper, we study the impact of this phenomenon in detail. To this end, we first capture the convoy effect in the critical section problem with a timed automaton. We then extend this approach to the seminal atomic multicast solution of Skeen. Our analytical model shows that the convoy effect quickly degrades the latency of messages. We confirm this claim by fitting our model with empirical data from literature. To sidestep this performance degradation, we advocate the use of message semantics in atomic multicast. In particular, we present a simple protocol that reduces the convoy effect by a factor p, where p is the probability that two messages commute.
Further evidence for the role of the alpha(2)delta subunit of voltage dependent calcium channels in models of neuropathic pain.

1. Current analgesic therapy is dominated by NSAIDs and opiates, however these agents have limited efficacy in the treatment of neuropathic pain. The novel anticonvulsant agent gabapentin (Neurontin) has been shown to be an effective treatment for neuropathic pain in the clinic. Recent studies have demonstrated that gabapentin selectively interacts with the alpha(2)delta subunit of voltage dependent calcium channels (VDCCs) which may be important in its mechanism of action. 2. Previous studies have identified a gabapentin analogue, 3-methyl gabapentin, that stereoselectively interacts with the alpha(2)delta subunit of VDCCs. Thus, whilst (1S, 3R) 3-methyl gabapentin binds to the alpha(2)delta protein with high affinity (IC(50)=42 nM), the corresponding (1R,3R) isomer is 300 times weaker (Bryans et al., 1998: J. Med. Chem., 41, 1838 - 1845). The present study examines the activity of diastereoisomers of 3-methyl gabapentin in two rat models of neuropathic pain to assess the importance of an interaction with the alpha(2)delta subunit of VDCCs. 3. (1S,3R) 3-methyl-gabapentin dose-dependently (10 - 100 mg kg(-1), p.o. ) blocked the maintenance of static allodynia in the rat streptozocin and Chung models of neuropathic pain with MEDs of 30 mg kg(-1). This isomer also dose-dependently blocked the maintenance of dynamic allodynia in both models with respective MEDs of 30 and 100 mg kg(-1). In contrast, (1R,3R) 3-methyl gabapentin (100 mg kg(-1), p.o. ) failed to block either static or dynamic allodynia in the streptozocin model. 4. It is concluded that these data further support the hypothesis that the alpha(2)delta subunit of VDCCs plays an important role in the maintenance of mechanical hypersensitivity in models of neuropathic pain.
Antecedent Predictors of Children's Initiation of Sipping/Tasting Alcohol

Background Sipping or tasting alcohol is one of the earliest alcohol-use behaviors in which young children engage, yet there is relatively little research on this behavior. Previous cross-sectional analyses determined that child sipping or tasting is associated with the child's attitude toward sipping and with a family environment supportive of alcohol use, but not with variables reflecting psychosocial proneness for problem behavior as formulated in Problem Behavior Theory (Jessor and Jessor, Problem Behavior and Psychosocial Development: A Longitudinal Study of Youth, 1977, Academic Press, New York). This study extended these analyses longitudinally to identify antecedent predictors of the childhood initiation of sipping or tasting alcohol in a multiwave study. Methods A sample of 452 children (238 girls) aged 8 or 10 and their families was drawn from Allegheny County, PA, using targeted-age directory sampling and random digit dialing procedures. Children were interviewed using computer-assisted interviews. Antecedent variables collected at baseline (Wave 1) were examined as predictors of the initiation of sipping/tasting alcohol in childhood (before age 12) among Wave 1 abstainers (n = 286). Results Ninety-four children initiated sipping/tasting alcohol in a nonreligious context between baseline and turning age 12. Initiation of sipping/tasting did not generally relate to baseline variables reflecting psychosocial proneness for problem behavior. Instead, as found in the previous cross-sectional analyses, the variables most predictive of initiating sipping/tasting were perceived parents' approval for child sipping, parents' reported approval for child sipping, parents' current drinking status, and children's attitudes toward sipping/tasting alcohol. Conclusions These longitudinal analyses replicate the earlier cross-sectional results. Young children's sipping/tasting of alcohol reflects parental modeling of drinking and parental approval of child sipping and does not represent a precocious manifestation of a psychosocial proneness to engage in problem behavior.
Mapping Forest Biomass Using Remote Sensing and National Forest Inventory in China

Quantifying the spatial pattern of large-scale forest biomass can provide a general picture of the carbon stocks within a region and is of great scientific and political importance. The combination of the advantages of remote sensing data and field survey data can reduce uncertainty as well as demonstrate the spatial distribution of forest biomass. In this study, the seventh national forest inventory statistics (for the period 2004–2008) and the spatially explicit MODIS Land Cover Type product (MCD12C1) were used together to quantitatively estimate the spatially-explicit distribution of forest biomass in China (with a resolution of 0.05°, ~5600 m). Our study demonstrated that the calibrated forest cover proportion maps allow proportionate downscaling of regional forest biomass statistics to forest cover pixels to produce a relatively fine-resolution biomass map. The total stock of forest biomass in China was 11.9 Pg with an average of 76.3 Mg ha−1 during the study period; the high values were located in mountain ranges in northeast, southwest and southeast China and were strongly correlated with forest age and forest density.
Predicting human mobility based on location data modeled by Markov chains

Recently, location-based services have attracted significant attention. Against this background, one pivotal and challenging problem is predicting the future location of a user given his or her current location and associated historical mobility data. Predicting human mobility enables many interesting applications such as navigation services, traffic management and location-based advertisements. In this paper, we first extract the region-of-interest (ROI) from the historical location data. With plenty of statistics the original trajectory is represented by Markov chains composed by many ROIs. To improve the performance of the prediction, we extend 1st-order Markov chains to Kth-order Markov chains by reconstituting the structure of priori knowledge, which is intended to take more significant historical information into consideration. We evaluate the certainty of the prediction outcomes in terms of information entropy. We demonstrate that the prediction using a higher-order Markov chain can be more accurate compared with a 1st-order Markov chain.