Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Closer Look at Rural‐Urban Health Disparities: Associations Between Obesity and Rurality Vary by Geospatial and Sociodemographic Factors

BACKGROUND Obesity affects over one-third of older adults in the United States. Both aging and obesity contribute to an increased risk for chronic disease, early mortality, and additional health care utilization. Obesity rates are higher in rural areas than in urban areas, although findings are mixed. The objectives of this study are to assess potential nonlinearity in the association between rurality and obesity, and to evaluate the potential for socioeconomic status and geographic area to moderate the associations between rurality and obesity. METHODS Using a representative sample of adults aged 65 and above from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, obesity (BMI ≥ 30 kg/m2 ) was modeled against the primary exposure of rural-urban status, as measured by the Index of Relative Rurality. Binary logistic regression models were used to estimate the odds of obesity by rurality both as a continuous variable and by decile of rurality. Models were then stratified by per-capita income and state to assess potential moderation by these factors. RESULTS The prevalence of obesity in older adults was highest in intermediate rurality areas (OR in rurality decile #5 1.134, 95% CI: 1.086-1.184) and lowest in the most rural and most urban areas. Obesity was highest in low- and middle-income areas, regardless of rural-urban status. In high-income areas, obesity among older adults was highest in areas of intermediate rurality and lowest in the most rural areas (OR 0.726, 95% CI: 0.606-0.870) and more urban areas, showing a J-shaped association. There were substantial differences in the associations between rurality and obesity in older adults among states. CONCLUSION Associations between rurality and obesity varied by degree of rurality, socioeconomic status, and geography. Therefore, traditional "one-size-fits-all" approaches to reducing rural-urban health disparities in older adults may be more effective if tailored to the area-specific rural-urban gradients in health.
Human Listeriosis Caused by Listeria ivanovii

Two species of Listeria are pathogenic; L. monocytogenes infects humans and animals, and L. ivanovii has been considered to infect ruminants only. We report L. ivanovii–associated gastroenteritis and bacteremia in a man. This isolate was indistinguishable from prototypic ruminant strains. L. ivanovii is thus an enteric opportunistic human pathogen.
Amount or intensity? Potential targets of exercise interventions in patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction

Heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) remains a common condition with no pharmacological treatment. Physical activity (PA) improves symptoms and quality of life (QoL), but no clear recommendations exist on PA in HFpEF patients. We investigated the association of PA (amount/intensity) on clinical phenotype in HFpEF.
Efficient 2-Step Protocol and Its Discriminative Feature Selections in Secure Similar Document Detection

Secure similar document detection (SSDD) identifies similar documents of two parties while each party does not disclose its own sensitive documents to another party. In this paper, we propose an efficient 2-step protocol that exploits a feature selection as the lower-dimensional transformation and presents discriminative feature selections to maximize the performance of the protocol. For this, we first analyze that the existing 1-step protocol causes serious computation and communication overhead for high dimensional document vectors. To alleviate the overhead, we next present the feature selection-based 2-step protocol and formally prove its correctness. The proposed 2-step protocol works as follows: (1) in the filtering step, it uses low dimensional vectors obtained by the feature selection to filter out non-similar documents; (2) in the post-processing step, it identifies similar documents only from the non-filtered documents by using the 1-step protocol. As the feature selection, we first consider the simplest one, random projection (RP), and propose its 2-step solution SSDD-RP. We then present two discriminative feature selections and their solutions: SSDD-LF (local frequency) which selects a few dimensions locally frequent in the current querying vector and SSDD-GF (global frequency) which selects ones globally frequent in the set of all document vectors. We finally propose a hybrid one, SSDD-HF (hybrid frequency), that takes advantage of both SSDD-LF and SSDD-GF. We empirically show that the proposed 2-step protocol outperforms the 1-step protocol by three or four orders of magnitude.
Effect of the Matching Circuit on the Electromechanical Characteristics of Sandwiched Piezoelectric Transducers

The input electrical impedance behaves as a capacitive when a piezoelectric transducer is excited near its resonance frequency. In order to increase the energy transmission efficiency, a series or parallel inductor should be used to compensate the capacitive impedance of the piezoelectric transducer. In this paper, the effect of the series matching inductor on the electromechanical characteristics of the piezoelectric transducer is analyzed. The dependency of the resonance/anti-resonance frequency, the effective electromechanical coupling coefficient, the electrical quality factor and the electro-acoustical efficiency on the matching inductor is obtained. It is shown that apart from compensating the capacitive impedance of the piezoelectric transducer, the series matching inductor can also change the electromechanical characteristics of the piezoelectric transducer. When series matching inductor is increased, the resonance frequency is decreased and the anti-resonance unchanged; the effective electromechanical coupling coefficient is increased. For the electrical quality factor and the electroacoustic efficiency, the dependency on the matching inductor is different when the transducer is operated at the resonance and the anti-resonance frequency. The electromechanical characteristics of the piezoelectric transducer with series matching inductor are measured. It is shown that the theoretically predicted relationship between the electromechanical characteristics and the series matching inductor is in good agreement with the experimental results.
PRODUCTION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF PARTIALLY PURIFIED EXTRACELLULAR THERMOSTABLE α-AMYLASE BY Bacillus subtilis IN SUBMERGED FERMENTATION (SmF)

A Bacillus strain was isolated from soil samples from the campus area of Dicle University. Based on 16S ribosomal RNA sequencing, the microorganism was closely related to Bacillus subtilis. Effects of different culture medium, incubation time, carbon and nitrogen sources, and various starches, flours, and chemicals on α-amylase production were examined. Maximum enzyme production (7516 U/mL) was obtained in a basal medium A containing 0.05% Tween 40 in 24 h. Partially purified enzyme showed maximum activity at 60°C with an optimum pH of 6.0. The effects of 0.2% detergents (sodium dodecyl sulfate [SDS], CHAPS [3-[(3-cholamidopropyl)dimethylammonio]-1-propanesulfonate], and commercial detergent Omo Matic) on partially purified enzyme activity over a period of time (15–150 min) were examined and the order of inhibition effect from the most to the least was found as SDS > Omo Matic > CHAPS. Different metal ions inhibited α-amylase activity at low concentrations (1.5 mM). Co2+ was a mild inhibitor and Hg2+ and Cd2+ were potent inhibitors, whereas Ca2+ and Mg2+ increased the enzyme activity. At 20 mM, Ca2+ enhanced enzyme activity, and different Ca2+ concentrations (10–300 mM) were studied.
Fabrication and testing of a filmy “feelingless” stretchable strain sensor

Development of stretchable sensors has recently attracted significant attention in the field of robotics. It is promising to design an “invisible” and “feelingless” sensor with stretchable capability. This paper presents a new method to fabricate a wearable stretchable sensor, which is relatively simpler than the existing manufacturing methods. The developed sensor has a sandwich structure consisting of two elastomer layers and one soft electrode layer in-between. By applying the new manufacturing method, the whole thickness of the stretchable sensor can be controlled to be less than 0.5mm. Carbon grease is employed as the resistance electrode and copper-tin fabric works as the wires. Due to the soft and stretchable nature, the developed sensor is effective in detecting motions of body joints. For verification, a stretchable skin-like glove with multiple sensors is fabricated as a palm-like measurement system to capture the motions of five fingers simultaneously. Experiments are performed to validate the performance of a single sensor and the integrated soft glove.
Childhood body mass index and blood pressure in prediction of subclinical vascular damage in adulthood: Beijing blood pressure cohort

Objective: Atherosclerosis and arterial stiffness predict cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. We aimed to investigate the influence of BMI and blood pressure (BP) in childhood, and change in BMI and BP, on the development of subclinical atherosclerosis and arterial stiffness in adulthood. Methods: The study consisted of 1252 individuals aged 27–42 years who had 2–10 measurements of BMI and BP from childhood. In the final survey (2010–2011), subclinical markers of vascular damage, including carotid intima–media thickness (cIMT), carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (cfPWV), and brachial-ankle pulse wave velocity (baPWV), were measured. Results: Pearson correlation analyses showed that BMI and BP in childhood and adulthood, and also cumulative and incremental values from childhood to adulthood, were all significantly associated with adult cIMT, cfPWV, and baPWV in males and in females (all P < 0.05). In the multivariate logistical analyses, for both sexes, childhood BMI and systolic BP (SBP) predicted high cIMT in adulthood, and childhood SBP predicted high cfPWV and high baPWV in adulthood. However, these associations were largely attenuated and became nonsignificant after additional adjustment for adult BMI and SBP, except that childhood SBP showed a borderline significant association with high cfPWV in adulthood for males. In addition, for both sexes, incremental BMI and SBP from childhood to adulthood predicted high cIMT in adulthood, and incremental SBP predicted high cfPWV and high baPWV in adulthood, independent of childhood values. Conclusion: The adverse influence of high BMI and high BP on subclinical vascular damage begins in childhood. This study enhances the importance of early prevention and lifelong treatment of excessive weight and elevated BP.
Recognition of Individual Zebrafish Using Speed-Up Robust Feature Matching

Animals' tagging has been widely used to identify their individuality using physical methods. In small swimming animals (e.g. zebrafish), however, physical tagging is considered a painful, costly and impractical. This paper proposes a new tagging method for zebrafish that is based on Speed-Up Robust Feature (SURF) matching. In this method, a set of local features is extracted from a sequence of image frames collected through a computer vision system. The extracted set of features for each free-swimming fish is then compared with pre-extracted sets of features, stored in a database, using the SURF matching method. Feature vectors through SURF are formed by means of local patterns around key points, which are detected using a scaled-up filter. The performance of the proposed tagging method is assessed experimentally using six free-swimming zebrafish. The obtained results demonstrated an average accuracy of 90% which obtained with a matching-features threshold of 15%. These findings are promising towards developing a painless, cost-effective and practical animal tagging system for zebrafish.
Cellular immune function in mice tolerant to or abstinent from l-trans-delta 9-tetrahydrocannabinol.

The effects of tolerance to l-trans-delta 9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) following repeated administration and of subsequent abstinence following drug withdrawal on the cellular immune function were determined in female B6C3F1 mice. Mice were injected with THC (10 mg/kg s.c.) twice daily for 4 days. On day 5, analgesic response to various doses of THC was determined using the tail flick test. Similarly, hypothermic response to THC was also determined. Multiple injections of THC resulted in the development of tolerance to both the analgesic and hypothermic effects of THC. Immune function studies were performed on mice rendered tolerant to or abstinent from THC by these procedures. Neither tolerance nor abstinence subsequent to a 4-day THC administration had any effect on either body weight or thymus weight and cellularity, although both spleen weight and cellularity were decreased in THC-abstinent animals. Likewise, no significant effects on B cell proliferation were observed in either tolerant or abstinent mice. The production of the cytokine interleukin-2 by T helper cells was markedly suppressed in both tolerant and abstinent mice, whereas the production of interleukin-4 was significantly suppressed only in THC-abstinent mice. Significant suppression of tumor cell cytolysis mediated by cytotoxic T cells and natural killer cells was only observed in THC-abstinent mice. These results suggest that THC-mediated modulation of the immune response may result from a differential effect on cellular populations.
Assessment of Bile Salt Export Pump (BSEP) Inhibition in Membrane Vesicles Using Radioactive and LC/MS‐Based Detection Methods

The bile salt export pump (BSEP, ABCB11) belongs to the ATP‐binding‐cassette superfamily of transporters and is predominately found in the liver. BSEP is an efflux transporter that plays a critical role in the secretion of bile salts into the bile. Inhibition of BSEP function by drugs can result in the buildup of bile salts in the liver and eventually leads to cholestasis and drug‐induced liver injury (DILI). DILI is a major cause of withdrawal of drugs from the pharmaceutical market and accounts for >50% of acute liver failures. Therefore, early detection of BSEP inhibition by drugs can help to mitigate the possibility of BSEP‐associated liver injury. This unit describes two assays that investigate the relationship between drug interference with BSEP function and liver injury using membrane vesicles prepared from Hi5 insect cells transfected with human BSEP. Comprehensive protocols for assessing BSEP inhibition in a 384‐well format using radiolabeled and liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS)–based detection methods are described. © 2017 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
MiR200 and miR302: Two Big Families Influencing Stem Cell Behavior †

In this review, we described different factors that modulate pluripotency in stem cells, in particular we aimed at following the steps of two large families of miRNAs: the miR-200 family and the miR-302 family. We analyzed some factors tuning stem cells behavior as TGF-β, which plays a pivotal role in pluripotency inhibition together with specific miRNAs, reactive oxygen species (ROS), but also hypoxia, and physical stimuli, such as ad hoc conveyed electromagnetic fields. TGF-β plays a crucial role in the suppression of pluripotency thus influencing the achievement of a specific phenotype. ROS concentration can modulate TGF-β activation that in turns down regulates miR-200 and miR-302. These two miRNAs are usually requested to maintain pluripotency, while they are down-regulated during the acquirement of a specific cellular phenotype. Moreover, also physical stimuli, such as extremely-low frequency electromagnetic fields or high-frequency electromagnetic fields conveyed with a radioelectric asymmetric conveyer (REAC), and hypoxia can deeply influence stem cell behavior by inducing the appearance of specific phenotypes, as well as a direct reprogramming of somatic cells. Unraveling the molecular mechanisms underlying the complex interplay between externally applied stimuli and epigenetic events could disclose novel target molecules to commit stem cell fate.
Alcohol dosing and total mortality in men and women: an updated meta-analysis of 34 prospective studies.

BACKGROUND Moderate consumption of alcohol is inversely related with coronary disease, but its association with mortality is controversial. We performed a meta-analysis of prospective studies on alcohol dosing and total mortality. METHODS We searched PubMed for articles available until December 2005, supplemented by references from the selected articles. Thirty-four studies on men and women, for a total of 1 015 835 subjects and 94 533 deaths, were selected. Data were pooled with a weighed regression analysis of fractional polynomials. RESULTS A J-shaped relationship between alcohol and total mortality was confirmed in adjusted studies, in both men and women. Consumption of alcohol, up to 4 drinks per day in men and 2 drinks per day in women, was inversely associated with total mortality, maximum protection being 18% in women (99% confidence interval, 13%-22%) and 17% in men (99% confidence interval, 15%-19%). Higher doses of alcohol were associated with increased mortality. The inverse association in women disappeared at doses lower than in men. When adjusted and unadjusted data were compared, the maximum protection was only reduced from 19% to 16%. The degree of association in men was lower in the United States than in Europe. CONCLUSIONS Low levels of alcohol intake (1-2 drinks per day for women and 2-4 drinks per day for men) are inversely associated with total mortality in both men and women. Our findings, while confirming the hazards of excess drinking, indicate potential windows of alcohol intake that may confer a net beneficial effect of moderate drinking, at least in terms of survival.
Unsupervised Off-Topic Essay Detection Based on Target and Reference Prompts

Off-topic essay detection is an important part of the automatic essay scoring systems. Prior works mainly focused on the semantic similarity between the essay and the target prompt without considering the similarities between the essay and the reference prompts, while the latter can provide more semantic information on detecting off-topic essays. In this paper, an improved on-topic scores calculation method is proposed to improve the accuracy of off-topic essay detection. In our approach, we use the semantic difference between the similarities of the essay with the target prompt and that of with the reference prompts to on-topic score calculation, which is used to better distinguish the on-topic essays and the off-topic essays. Based on our new on-topic score method, we realize an unsupervised off-topic essay detection system without large scale of training data. Several experiments on six datasets of Kaggle competition show that our method can effectively detect off-topic essay.
Wireless Sensor Network Reliability and Security in Factory Automation: A Survey

Industries can benefit a lot from integrating sensors in industrial plants, structures, machinery, shop floors, and other critical places and utilizing their sensing and monitoring power, communicating and processing abilities to deliver sensed information. Proper use of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) can lower the rate of catastrophic failures, and improve the efficiency and productivity of factory operations. Ensuring reliability and providing adequate security in these crucial services provided by WSNs will reinforce their acceptability as a viable and dependable technology in the factory and industrial domain. In this paper, we examine the reliability and security challenges of WSNs and survey their practicality for industrial adoption. We discuss the unique characteristics that distinguish the factory environment from the rest, elaborate on security and reliability issues with their respective solution measures, and analyze the existing WSN architectures and standards. A number of challenges and interesting research issues have emerged from this study and have been reported for further investigation.
Comparison of a non‐stationary voxelation‐corrected cluster‐size test with TFCE for group‐Level MRI inference

Two powerful methods for statistical inference on MRI brain images have been proposed recently, a non‐stationary voxelation‐corrected cluster‐size test (CST) based on random field theory and threshold‐free cluster enhancement (TFCE) based on calculating the level of local support for a cluster, then using permutation testing for inference. Unlike other statistical approaches, these two methods do not rest on the assumptions of a uniform and high degree of spatial smoothness of the statistic image. Thus, they are strongly recommended for group‐level fMRI analysis compared to other statistical methods. In this work, the non‐stationary voxelation‐corrected CST and TFCE methods for group‐level analysis were evaluated for both stationary and non‐stationary images under varying smoothness levels, degrees of freedom and signal to noise ratios. Our results suggest that, both methods provide adequate control for the number of voxel‐wise statistical tests being performed during inference on fMRI data and they are both superior to current CSTs implemented in popular MRI data analysis software packages. However, TFCE is more sensitive and stable for group‐level analysis of VBM data. Thus, the voxelation‐corrected CST approach may confer some advantages by being computationally less demanding for fMRI data analysis than TFCE with permutation testing and by also being applicable for single‐subject fMRI analyses, while the TFCE approach is advantageous for VBM data. Hum Brain Mapp 38:1269–1280, 2017. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
A high gas fraction, reduced power, syngas bioprocessing method demonstrated with a Clostridium ljungdahlii OTA1 paper biocomposite

We propose a novel approach to continuous bioprocessing of gases. A miniaturized, coated‐paper strip, high gas fraction, biocomposite absorber has been developed using slowly shaken horizontal anaerobic tubes. Concentrated Clostridium ljungdahlii OTA1 was used as a model system. These gas absorbers demonstrate elevated CO mass transfer with low power input, reduced liquid requirements, elevated substrate consumption, and increased product secretion compared to shaken suspended cells. Concentrated OTA1 cell paste was coated by extrusion onto chromatography paper. The immobilized system shows high, constant reactivity immediately upon rehydration. Cell adhesion was by adsorption to the cellulose fibers; visualized by SEM. The C. ljungdahlii OTA1 coated paper mounted above the liquid level absorbs CO and H2 from a model syngas secreting acetate with minimal ethanol. At 100 rpm shaking speed (7.7 Wm−3) the optimal cell loading is 6.5 gDCW m−2 to maintain high CO absorbing reactivity without the cells coming off of the paper into the liquid phase. Reducing the medium volume from 10 mL to 4 mL (15% of tube volume) did not decrease CO reactivity. The reduced liquid volume increased secreted product concentration by 80%. The specific CO consumption by paper biocomposites was higher at all shaking frequencies <100 rpm than suspended cells under identical incubation conditions. At 25 rpm the biocomposite outperforms suspended cells for CO absorption by 2.5‐fold, with an estimated power reduction of 97% over the power input at 100 rpm. The estimated minimum kLa for miniaturized biocomposite gas‐absorbers is ∼100 h−1, 10 to 104 less power input than other syngas fermentation systems reported in the literature at similar kLa. Specific consumption rates in a biocomposite were ∼14 mmol gDCW−1 h−1. This work intensified CO absorption and reactivity by 14‐fold to 94 mmol CO m−2 h−1 over previous C. ljungdahlii OTA1 work by our group. Specific acetate production rates were 23 mM h−1 or 46 mmol m−2 h−1. The specific rates and apparent kLa scaled linearly with biocomposite coating area. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2016;113: 1913–1923. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.