Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Heart Rate Variability Analysis During Stepwise Hypoxia from 3000 m to 4500 m

In this paper, the aim was to investigate the influence of stepwise hypoxia on HRV during rest and exercise states through sample entropy. SampEn is a powerful way to analyze non-linear biological signal, such as HRV. In ten days, 4 healthy yellow males stayed in the hypoxia cabin for 130 min every day. It’s divided into four periods: two rest periods of 30 minitues and 60 minutes, two exercise periods of 20 min, the rest and exercise periods were across. Heart rate and SaO2 signals were collected. The simulated altitude of hypoxia cabin was from 3000m to 4500m meters. The SampEn of every altitude was calculated and compared. Our results indicate a vagal control withdrawal and a sympathetic activity increase under normobaric hypoxia, that’s how the intermittent stepwise hypoxic training induce the response of the autonomic nervous system. [ Liu YY, Cao ZT, Yang J, Yu MS, Wang BH, Wan YY, Wang HT. Heart Rat Variability Analysis During Stepwise Hypoxia from 3000m to 4500m. Life Sci J 2013; 10(3): 1127-1131] (ISSN: 1097-8135). http://www.lifesciencesite. com. 164
Detection of Stress and Relaxation Magnitudes for Tweets

The ability to automatically detect human stress and relaxation is crucial for timely diagnosing stress-related diseases, ensuring customer satisfaction in services and managing human-centric applications such as traffic management. Traditional methods employ stress-measuring scales or physiological monitoring which may be intrusive and inconvenient. Instead, the ubiquitous nature of the social media can be leveraged to identify stress and relaxation, since many people habitually share their recent life experiences through social networking sites. This paper introduces an improved method to detect expressions of stress and relaxation in social media content. It uses word sense disambiguation by word sense vectors to improve the performance of the first and only lexicon-based stress/relaxation detection algorithm TensiStrength. Experimental results show that incorporating word sense disambiguation substantially improves the performance of the original TensiStrength. It performs better than state-of-the-art machine learning methods too in terms of Pearson correlation and percentage of exact matches. We also propose a novel framework for identifying the causal agents of stress and relaxation in tweets as future work.
Layer-by-Layer Assembly (Putting Molecules to Work)

The properties of amaterial arise from the structural arrangement of its constituents and their dynamics. In nature, a hierarchical organization assures that a required property of amaterial is realized with a minimum of constituents and a minimum of complexity through processes of evolutionary selection. In the living world functional entities exist on any length scale ranging from atoms to whole organisms, complex properties of biological materials such as cellular life emerging at the upper end of the nanoscale (Figure 1.1). Chemistry, Physics and Materials Science are increasingly approaching maturity on the molecular and macroscopic length scales, shifting importance toward new nanoscale materials and nanoorganized systems. New materials properties, a prerequisite for responding to the emerging problems of the world population, will require materials design at the nanoscale, forcing the development of new multimaterial nanocomposites. In complex systems, new properties appear that are not observed for each individual component. While it is trivial that electrons and nuclei form atoms (sub-A ngstromscale), that atoms formmolecules (A ngstromscale) or thatmonomers can be transformed into polymers (early nanometer scale), we are just beginning to explore the potential of supramolecular assemblies of multifunctional objects. Figure 1.1 summarizes how complex materials properties evolve hierarchically over a length scale of several orders of magnitude.
Risk factors for cervical precancer detection among previously unscreened HIV‐infected women in Western Kenya

HIV and cervical cancer are intersecting epidemics in many low‐resource settings, yet there are few accurate estimates of the scope of this public health challenge. To understand disease prevalence and risk factors for cervical intraepithelial neoplasia 2 or greater (CIN2+), we conducted a cross‐sectional study of women undergoing cervical cancer screening as part of routine HIV care in Kisumu, Kenya. Women were offered screening with visual inspection with acetic acid, followed by confirmation with colposcopy and biopsy as needed. Univariable and multivariable analyses were carried out to determine clinical and demographic predictors of prevalent CIN2+. Among 3,241 women screened, 287 (9%) had an initial diagnosis of biopsy‐confirmed CIN2+. On multivariable analysis, combined oral contraceptives remained significantly associated with detection of CIN2+ among women on HAART (AOR 1.84, CI 1.20–2.82), and not on HAART (AOR 1.72, 95% CI 1.08–2.73), while use of a progesterone implant was associated with increased detection of CIN2+ (AOR 9.43, 95% CI 2.85–31.20) only among women not on HAART. CD4+ nadir over 500 cells/mm3 was associated with reduced detection of CIN2+ (AOR 0.61, CI 0.38, 0.97) in the overall group, but current CD4+ was only associated with reduced detection of CIN2+ among women not on HAART (AOR 0.42, CI 0.22, 0.80). In conclusion, a history of less severe immunosuppression appeared to reduce the risk of CIN2+ detection, but current CD4+ count was significant only in non‐HAART users. The association of CIN2+ with hormonal contraception should be explored more in prospective studies designed to better control for confounding factors.
Noncoder: a web interface for exon array-based detection of long non-coding RNAs

Due to recent technical developments, a high number of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been discovered in mammals. Although it has been shown that lncRNAs are regulated differently among tissues and disease statuses, functions of these transcripts are still unknown in most cases. GeneChip Exon 1.0 ST Arrays (exon arrays) from Affymetrix, Inc. have been used widely to profile genome-wide expression changes and alternative splicing of protein-coding genes. Here, we demonstrate that re-annotation of exon array probes can be used to profile expressions of tens of thousands of lncRNAs. With this annotation, a detailed inspection of lncRNAs and their isoforms is possible. To allow for a general usage to the research community, we developed a user-friendly web interface called ‘noncoder’. By uploading CEL files from exon arrays and with a few mouse clicks and parameter settings, exon array data will be normalized and analysed to identify differentially expressed lncRNAs. Noncoder provides the detailed annotation information of lncRNAs and is equipped with unique features to allow for an efficient search for interesting lncRNAs to be studied further. The web interface is available at http://noncoder.mpi-bn.mpg. de.
A simulation study on some confidence intervals for the population standard deviation

In this paper a robust estimator against outliers along with some other existing interval estimators are considered for estimating the population standard deviation. An extensive simulation study has been conducted to compare and evaluate the performance of the interval estimators. The exact and the proposed robust method are easy to calculate and are not overly computer-intensive. It appears that the proposed robust method is performing better than other confidence intervals for estimating the population standard deviation, specifically in the presence of outliers and/or data are from a skewed distribution. Some real-life examples are considered to illustrate the application of the proposed confidence intervals, which also supported the simulation study to some extent.
Understanding the Thermal Properties of Precursor-Ionomers to Optimize Fabrication Processes for Ionic Polymer-Metal Composites (IPMCs)

Ionic polymer-metal composites (IPMCs) are one of many smart materials and have ionomer bases with a noble metal plated on the surface. The ionomer is usually Nafion, but recently Aquivion has been shown to be a promising alternative. Ionomers are available in the form of precursor pellets. This is an un-activated form that is able to melt, unlike the activated form. However, there is little study on the thermal characteristics of these precursor ionomers. This lack of knowledge causes issues when trying to fabricate ionomer shapes using methods such as extrusion, hot-pressing, and more recently, injection molding and 3D printing. To understand the two precursor-ionomers, a set of tests were conducted to measure the thermal degradation temperature, viscosity, melting temperature, and glass transition. The results have shown that the precursor Aquivion has a higher melting temperature (240 °C) than precursor Nafion (200 °C) and a larger glass transition range (32–65 °C compared with 21–45 °C). The two have the same thermal degradation temperature (~400 °C). Precursor Aquivion is more viscous than precursor Nafion as temperature increases. Based on the results gathered, it seems that the precursor Aquivion is more stable as temperature increases, facilitating the manufacturing processes. This paper presents the data collected to assist researchers in thermal-based fabrication processes.
Mammographic density and the risk and detection of breast cancer.

BACKGROUND Extensive mammographic density is associated with an increased risk of breast cancer and makes the detection of cancer by mammography difficult, but the influence of density on risk according to method of cancer detection is unknown. METHODS We carried out three nested case-control studies in screened populations with 1112 matched case-control pairs. We examined the association of the measured percentage of density in the baseline mammogram with risk of breast cancer, according to method of cancer detection, time since the initiation of screening, and age. RESULTS As compared with women with density in less than 10% of the mammogram, women with density in 75% or more had an increased risk of breast cancer (odds ratio, 4.7; 95% confidence interval [CI], 3.0 to 7.4), whether detected by screening (odds ratio, 3.5; 95% CI, 2.0 to 6.2) or less than 12 months after a negative screening examination (odds ratio, 17.8; 95% CI, 4.8 to 65.9). Increased risk of breast cancer, whether detected by screening or other means, persisted for at least 8 years after study entry and was greater in younger than in older women. For women younger than the median age of 56 years, 26% of all breast cancers and 50% of cancers detected less than 12 months after a negative screening test were attributable to density in 50% or more of the mammogram. CONCLUSIONS Extensive mammographic density is strongly associated with the risk of breast cancer detected by screening or between screening tests. A substantial fraction of breast cancers can be attributed to this risk factor.
Long non-coding RNA XIST regulates PDCD4 expression by interacting with miR-21-5p and inhibits osteosarcoma cell growth and metastasis

lncRNA-X-inactive specific transcript (lncRNA XIST) has been demonstrated to be a tumor suppressor involved in the pathogenesis and development of various cancers. However, the function of XIST and its working mechanism in osteosarcoma (OS) remain enigmatic. Firstly, we determined the expression of XIST in OS tissues and cell lines by quantitative reverse transcription-PCR (qRT-PCR) and explored whether aberrant XIST expression was associated with recurrence and short overall survival. Furthermore, the effects of XIST on osteosarcoma cells were studied by lentivirus mediated overexpression approach in vitro and in vivo. Detection of a set of epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) markers was performed to explore whether XIST is involved in EMT. Finally, we investigated the regulatory mechanism of XIST acting as a competitive endogenous RNA (ceRNA) of miR-21-5p in OS progression and metastasis. lncRNA XIST was significantly downregulated in osteosarcoma tissues and osteosarcoma cells, and associated with recurrence and short overall survival in OS patients. XIST overexpression remarkably inhibited the proliferation of OS cells as well as the xenograft tumor formation in vivo. Both cell invasion and migration were inhibited by XIST overexpression via suppressing the EMT process. These results indicated that XIST functioned as a tumor suppressor in OS. Moreover, we found that miR-21-5p interacted with XIST by directly targeting the miRNA-binding site in the XIST sequence, and qRT-PCR results showed XIST and miR-21-5p could affect each other's expression, respectively. The following assays verified that the tumor suppressor, PDCD4 was a functional target of miR-21-5p in OS cells. Finally, we affirmed that XIST regulated PDCD4 expression by competitively binding to miR-21-5p. XIST inhibited cell proliferation and cell mobility by competitively binding to miR-21-5p and upregulating PDCD4 in OS. Our study demonstrated that lncRNA-XIST, which acts as a miRNA sponge, impedes miR-21-5p to maintain the expression of PDCD4, which contributes to the progression of OS. Our findings suggest that the newly identified XIST/miR-21-5p/PDCD4 axis could be a potential biomarker or therapeutic target for OS.
The role of oxidative stress in activity of anticancer thiosemicarbazones

Thiosemicarbazones are chelators of transition metals such as iron or copper whose anticancer potency is intensively investigated. Although two compounds from this class have entered clinical trials, their precise mechanism of action is still unknown. Recent studies have suggested the mobilization of the iron ions from a cell, as well as the inhibition of ribonucleotide reductase, and the formation of reactive oxygen species. The complexity and vague nature of this mechanism not only impedes a more rational design of novel compounds, but also the further development of those that are highly active that are already in the preclinical phase. In the current work, a series of highly active thiosemicarbazones was studied for their antiproliferative activity in vitro. Our experiments indicate that these complexes have ionophoric properties and redox activity. They appeared to be very effective generating reactive oxygen species and deregulating the antioxidative potential of a cell. Moreover, the genes that are responsible for antioxidant capacity were considerably deregulated, which led to the induction of apoptosis and cell cycle arrest. On the other hand, good intercalating properties of the studied compounds may explain their ability to cleave DNA strands and to also poison related enzymes through the formation of reactive oxygen species. These findings may help to explain the particularly high selectivity that they have over normal cells, which generally have a stronger redox equilibrium.
Characterization of CYP76M5–8 Indicates Metabolic Plasticity within a Plant Biosynthetic Gene Cluster*

Background: Biosynthetic gene clusters are unusual in plants, yet may provide insight into the associated evolution of secondary metabolism. Results: The cytochromes P450 CYP76M5–8, found in one such cluster, have multiple functions in rice diterpenoid metabolism. Conclusion: Plant biosynthetic gene clusters can encode metabolic plasticity. Significance: Such plasticity may enable further evolution, and be a broader feature of plant secondary metabolism. Recent reports have revealed genomic clustering of enzymatic genes for particular biosynthetic pathways in plant specialized/secondary metabolism. Rice (Oryza sativa) carries two such clusters for production of antimicrobial diterpenoid phytoalexins, with the cluster on chromosome 2 containing four closely related/homologous members of the cytochrome P450 CYP76M subfamily (CYP76M5–8). Notably, the underlying evolutionary expansion of these CYP appears to have occurred after assembly of the ancestral biosynthetic gene cluster, suggesting separate roles. It has been demonstrated that CYP76M7 catalyzes C11α-hydroxylation of ent-cassadiene, and presumably mediates an early step in biosynthesis of the derived phytocassane class of phytoalexins. Here we report biochemical characterization of CYP76M5, -6, and -8. Our results indicate that CYP76M8 is a multifunctional/promiscuous hydroxylase, with CYP76M5 and -7 seeming to provide only redundant activity, while CYP76M6 seems to provide both redundant and novel activity, relative to CYP76M8. RNAi-mediated double knockdown of CYP76M7 and -8 suppresses elicitor inducible phytocassane production, indicating a role for these monooxygenases in phytocassane biosynthesis. In addition, our data suggests that CYP76M5, -6, and -8 may play redundant roles in production of the oryzalexin class of phytoalexins as well. Intriguingly, the preceding diterpene synthase for oryzalexin biosynthesis, unlike that for the phytocassanes, is not found in the chromosome 2 diterpenoid biosynthetic gene cluster. Accordingly, our results not only uncover a complex evolutionary history, but also further suggest some intriguing differences between plant biosynthetic gene clusters and the seemingly similar microbial operons. The implications for the underlying metabolic evolution of plants are then discussed.
Better Diffusion Segmentation in Acute Ischemic Stroke Through Automatic Tree Learning Anomaly Segmentation

Stroke is the second most common cause of death worldwide, responsible for 6.24 million deaths in 2015 (about 11% of all deaths). Three out of four stroke survivors suffer long term disability, as many cannot return to their prior employment or live independently. Eighty-seven percent of strokes are ischemic. As an increasing volume of ischemic brain tissue proceeds to permanent infarction in the hours following the onset, immediate treatment is pivotal to increase the likelihood of good clinical outcome for the patient. Triaging stroke patients for active therapy requires assessment of the volume of salvageable and irreversible damaged tissue, respectively. With Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), diffusion-weighted imaging is commonly used to assess the extent of permanently damaged tissue, the core lesion. To speed up and standardize decision-making in acute stroke management we present a fully automated algorithm, ATLAS, for delineating the core lesion. We compare performance to widely used threshold based methodology, as well as a recently proposed state-of-the-art algorithm: COMBAT Stroke. ATLAS is a machine learning algorithm trained to match the lesion delineation by human experts. The algorithm utilizes decision trees along with spatial pre- and post-regularization to outline the lesion. As input data the algorithm takes images from 108 patients with acute anterior circulation stroke from the I-Know multicenter study. We divided the data into training and test data using leave-one-out cross validation to assess performance in independent patients. Performance was quantified by the Dice index. The median Dice coefficient of ATLAS algorithm was 0.6122, which was significantly higher than COMBAT Stroke, with a median Dice coefficient of 0.5636 (p < 0.0001) and the best possible performing methods based on thresholding of the diffusion weighted images (median Dice coefficient: 0.3951) or the apparent diffusion coefficient (median Dice coefficeint: 0.2839). Furthermore, the volume of the ATLAS segmentation was compared to the volume of the expert segmentation, yielding a standard deviation of the residuals of 10.25 ml compared to 17.53 ml for COMBAT Stroke. Since accurate quantification of the volume of permanently damaged tissue is essential in acute stroke patients, ATLAS may contribute to more optimal patient triaging for active or supportive therapy.
Bioceramic Nanofibres by Electrospinning

Nanoscale three-dimensional (3D) scaffolds offer great promise for improved tissue integration and regeneration by their physical and chemical property enhancements. Electrospinning is a versatile bottom-up technique for producing porous 3D nanofibrous scaffolds that could closely mimic the structure of extracellular matrix. Much work has been committed to the development of this process through the years, and the resultant nanostructures have been subjugated to a wide range of applications in the field of bioengineering. In particular, the application of ceramic nanofibres in hard tissue engineering, such as dental and bone regeneration, is of increased research interest. This mini-review provides a brief overview of the bioceramic nanofibre scaffolds fabricated by electrospinning and highlights some of the significant process developments over recent years with their probable future trends and potential applications as biomedical implants.
Aid, policy and peace

This paper analyzes theoretically and empirically the effects of economic policy and the receipt of foreign aid on the risk of civil war. The research finds that aid and policy do not have direct effects upon conflict risk. However, both directly affect the growth rate and the extent of dependence upon primary commodity exports, and these in turn affect the risk of conflict. Simulating the effect of a package of policy reform and increased aid on the average aid recipient country, the study finds that after five years the risk of conflict is reduced by nearly 30%.
Use of FLUXNET in the Community Land Model development

of 0.5–0.6 to the range of 0.7–0.9. RMSE of the simulated sensible heat fluxes decrease by 20–50%. Primary production is overestimated during the wet season in mediterranean and tropical ecosystems. This might be related to missing carbon-nitrogen dynamics as well as to site-specific parameters. The new model (CLM3.5) with an improved terrestrial water cycle should lead to more realistic land-atmosphere exchanges in coupled simulations. FLUXNET is found to be a valuable tool to develop and validate land surface models prior to their application in computationally expensive global simulations.
Endofenotipos e expressividade da personalidade do doente alcoólico: a actividade enzimática da monoamina oxidase (MAO)

Research on platelet MAO B as a potential trait marker for alcoholism and personality has been broadly discussed. Our study aims to clarify the relationship between MAO B activity and personality dimensions according to different alcoholic phenotypes (type I/II). A sample of 112 consecutive alcohol-dependent patients was recruited from the alcoholism unit of the Psychiatric Department of HSM. Low levels of platelet MAO-B activity were related to neuroticism and alexithymia dimensions, after controlling for gender, alcoholism subtypes and cigarette consumption. The results give additional evidence to the involvement of platelet MAO-B activity in the personality traits expression of alcoholic patients, particularly, in the further development of an impulsive
Three phase quasi-Z-source inverter controlled by MicroLabBox system

In this paper the control system of a grid connected quasi-Z-Source inverter (qZSI) is described. The control system was implemented with the MicroLabBox development system, which was used for the first time for the realization of this kind of control system. The basic operating principle of the qZSI and the corresponding control system is given. Both the architecture and description of the MicroLabBox are included in this paper. The simulation model of the qZSI has been built as a co-simulation of MATLAB-Simulink and Simplorer. The laboratory setup has been built and the comparison between the experimental results and the simulation results is provided.