Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Association of serum levels of p,p’- Dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (DDE) with type 2 diabetes in African American and Caucasian adult men from agricultural (Delta) and non-agricultural (non-Delta) regions of Mississippi

ABSTRACT Epidemiological associations were reported in several studies between persistent organochlorine organic pollutants and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2D). Mississippi is a highly agricultural state in the USA, particularly the Delta region, with previous high usage of organochlorine (OC) insecticides such as p,p’- dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT). In addition, there is a high proportion of African Americans who display elevated prevalence of T2D. Therefore, this State provides an important dataset for further investigating any relationship between OC compounds and metabolic diseases. The aim of this study was to assess whether soil and serum levels of OC compounds, such as p,p’- dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (DDE), arising from the heavy historical use of legacy OC insecticides, might serve as an environmental public health indicator for T2D occurrence. Soil samples from 60 Delta and 60 non-Delta sites randomly selected were analyzed for the presence of OC compounds. A retrospective cohort study of adult men (150 from each region) was recruited to provide a blood sample for OC compound quantitation and select demographic and clinical information including T2D. Using multivariable logistic regression, an association was found between increasing serum DDE levels and T2D occurrence in non-Delta participants (those subjects with lower serum DDE levels), as opposed to Delta participants (individuals with higher serum DDE levels). Thus, while there was a relationship between serum DDE levels and T2D in those with lower burdens of DDE, the lack of association in those with higher levels of DDE indicates a complex non-monotonic correlation between serum DDE levels and T2D occurrence complicating the goal of finding a public health marker for T2D. Abbreviations: BMI, body mass index; CVD, cardiovascular disease; CDC, Center for Disease Control, United States of America; DDE, p,p’- dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene; DDT, p,p’- dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane; GC/MS, gas chromatography/mass spectrometry; GIS, geographic information system; GPS, global positioning system; HDL, high-density lipoprotein; HTN, hypertension; IDW, inverse distance weighting; IRB, Institutional Review Board; LDL, low-density lipoprotein; LOQ, limit of quantitation; NHANES, National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys; POPs, persistent organic pollutants; OC, organochlorine; PCB, polychlorinated biphenyl; SIM, single-ion monitoring; T2D, type 2 diabetes mellitus; USA, United States of America.
Risk management of seasonal influenza during pregnancy: current perspectives

Influenza poses unique risks to pregnant women, who are particularly susceptible to morbidity and mortality. Historically, pregnant women have been overrepresented among patients with severe illness and complications from influenza, and have been more likely to require hospitalization and intensive care unit admission. An increased risk of adverse outcomes is also present for fetuses/neonates born to women affected by influenza during pregnancy. These risks to mothers and babies have been observed during both nonpandemic and pandemic influenza seasons. During the H1N1 influenza pandemic of 2009–2010, pregnant women were more likely to be hospitalized or admitted to intensive care units, and were at higher risk of death compared to nonpregnant adults. Vaccination remains the most effective intervention to prevent severe illness, and antiviral medications are an important adjunct to ameliorate disease when it occurs. Unfortunately, despite national guidelines recommending universal vaccination for women who are pregnant during influenza season, actual vaccination rates do not achieve desired targets among pregnant women. Pregnant women are also sometimes reluctant to use antiviral medications during pregnancy. Some of the barriers to use of vaccines and medications during pregnancy are a lack of knowledge of recommendations and of safety data. By improving knowledge and understanding of influenza and vaccination recommendations, vaccine acceptance rates among pregnant women can be improved. Currently, the appropriate use of vaccination and antiviral medications is the best line of defense against influenza and its sequelae among pregnant women, and strategies to increase acceptance are crucial. This article will review the importance of influenza in pregnancy, and discuss vaccination and antiviral medications for pregnant women.
SELECTIVE SEROTONIN REUPTAKE INHIBITORS FOR CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS WITH MAJOR DEPRESSION: CURRENT CONTROVERSIES AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Recent warnings about potential serious adverse effects with the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors in children and adolescents with depression raises questions about the risk-benefit ratio of these drugs in this population. Published safety and efficacy trials of SSRIs for the treatment of youth with depression are critically reviewed. These data were augmented by information from regulatory hearings in 2003–2004 and selected open-label reports. Based on this review, recommendations for medication treatment and monitoring of children and adolescents with major depression on SSRIs are provided. Emerging data from several clinical trials show that the SSRIs provide moderate benefits for youth with depression. In addition, SSRI treatment may be associated with increased risk of behavioral activation, self-harm, and suicidal ideation. Appropriate use of the SSRIs in children and adolescents requires careful diagnostic assessment, evaluation of comorbidity, and close monitoring, especially early in treatment.
Thermus thermophilus as a Source of Thermostable Lipolytic Enzymes

Lipolytic enzymes, esterases (EC 3.1.1.1) and lipases (EC 3.1.1.3), catalyze the hydrolysis of ester bonds between alcohols and carboxylic acids, and its formation in organic media. At present, they represent about 20% of commercialized enzymes for industrial use. Lipolytic enzymes from thermophilic microorganisms are preferred for industrial use to their mesophilic counterparts, mainly due to higher thermostability and resistance to several denaturing agents. However, the production at an industrial scale from the native organisms is technically complicated and expensive. The thermophilic bacterium Thermus thermophilus (T. thermophilus) has high levels of lipolytic activity, and its whole genome has been sequenced. One esterase from the T. thermophilus strain HB27 has been widely characterized, both in its native form and in recombinant forms, being expressed in mesophilic microorganisms. Other putative lipases/esterases annotated in the T. thermophilus genome have been explored and will also be reviewed in this paper.
General practitioners’ concepts on issuing out-of-pocket prescriptions for hypnotics and sedatives in Germany

Abstract Background In Germany, almost 50% of prescriptions for benzodiazepines and drugs as Zolpidem and Zopiclone are as out-of-pocket (OOP) prescriptions—requiring patients to buy the drug at their own expense—although almost 90% of the population has statutory health insurance covering medication costs. Objective To understand why general practitioners (GPs) choose this prescribing method since needed medications are insurance covered, and unnecessary drugs should not be prescribed at all. Methods In this qualitative study, 17 semi-structured interviews with GPs were conducted, audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. Transcripts were analysed with grounded theory to extract a model explaining the described behaviour. Results Knowing the significant medical risks and insecurity about regulations makes GPs wish to avoid hypnotics and sedatives. They achieve this by ‘Creating a barrier’ (central phenomenon) and employing the strategy ‘Using an out-of-pocket prescription’, which not only generates costs for the patient but also reduces the physicians´ legal and financial accountability. The perceived patient type, expected problem duration and diagnosis influence the decision about the prescription form: patients with an alcohol or drug addiction or those with ‘uncomplicated’ insomnia are more likely to receive an OOP prescription. Patients with any psychiatric diagnosis will likely receive a statutory health insurance prescription. Discussion Current regulations do not provide guidance to GPs regarding hypnotics and sedatives. A clear regulatory framework and guidelines could possibly reduce physicians’ defensive attitudes about these drugs and their use of OOP prescriptions. The approach to use OOP prescriptions as a barrier to reduce patients’ medication use lacks evidence regarding effectiveness.
Persistence of associated gram-negative bacteria in experimental actinomycotic lesions in mice

Mixed actinomycotic infections were established in a susceptible weanling mouse model by using combinations of Actinomyces israelii and Eikenella corrodens or A. israelii and Actinobacillus actinomycetemcomitans. Acute lesions caused by either of the gram-negative organisms alone were resolved within a few weeks; however, these organisms persisted up to 3 months in chronic lesions in combination with A. israelii.
Enhancement of vitamin B6 levels in rice expressing Arabidopsis vitamin B6 biosynthesis de novo genes

Summary Vitamin B6 (pyridoxine) is vital for key metabolic reactions and reported to have antioxidant properties in planta. Therefore, enhancement of vitamin B6 content has been hypothesized to be a route to improve resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses. Most of the current studies on vitamin B6 in plants are on eudicot species, with monocots remaining largely unexplored. In this study, we investigated vitamin B6 biosynthesis in rice, with a view to examining the feasibility and impact of enhancing vitamin B6 levels. Constitutive expression in rice of two Arabidopsis thaliana genes from the vitamin B6 biosynthesis de novo pathway, AtPDX1.1 and AtPDX2, resulted in a considerable increase in vitamin B6 in leaves (up to 28.3‐fold) and roots (up to 12‐fold), with minimal impact on general growth. Rice lines accumulating high levels of vitamin B6 did not display enhanced tolerance to abiotic stress (salt) or biotic stress (resistance to Xanthomonas oryzae infection). While a significant increase in vitamin B6 content could also be achieved in rice seeds (up to 3.1‐fold), the increase was largely due to its accumulation in seed coat and embryo tissues, with little enhancement observed in the endosperm. However, seed yield was affected in some vitamin B6‐enhanced lines. Notably, expression of the transgenes did not affect the expression of the endogenous rice PDX genes. Intriguingly, despite transgene expression in leaves and seeds, the corresponding proteins were only detectable in leaves and could not be observed in seeds, possibly pointing to a mode of regulation in this organ.
Observability of quaternionic quantum mechanics.

Beginning with the quaternionic generalization of the Schrodinger equation, we present a simple system consisting of two successive square barriers of general (quaternionic) height, and discuss situations in which the predictions of quaternionic quantum mechanics differ from those of the usual complex theory. Specifically, we show that the transmission coefficient may pick up a phase change on reversal of the barrier order. We comment on why this phase change would not necessarily be observed in experiments
Smooth pursuit in infants: maturation and the influence of stimulation

Purpose To investigate the development of smooth pursuit in infants and to assess the influence of different stimulus characteristics. Methods A total of 131 eye movement recordings were obtained from 71 infants between 1 and 18 months of age using infrared photo-oculography. Smooth pursuit eye movements (SPEM) were stimulated using targets of different sizes (1.2° and 4.7° of visual angle) and velocities (7.5°/s, 15°/s and 30°/s). Results Smooth pursuit maturation peaked between 2 and 6 months of age with smooth pursuit gain showing a steep rise for all stimulus velocities and target sizes within this age range (p<0.0001). Higher stimulus velocities were associated with shorter durations of the longest smooth pursuit (p<0.0001) and higher saccadic frequencies (p<0.0001). A larger stimulus size led to an increased saccadic frequency (p=0.035). Tracking time was highest when the larger stimulus of 4.7° of visual angle was applied (p=0.022) and when it moved at a medium stimulus velocity of 15°/s (p=0.0002). The choice between a schematic face and a scrambled face did not influence the quality of the infants' smooth pursuit. Conclusion SPEM show an intensive maturation between 2 and 6 months of life. By 6 months of age SPEM have already reached an almost adult-like gain of 0.8 or higher. Further maturation is slow and still incomplete by the age of 18 months. Stimulus velocity and size have an important impact on the smooth pursuit quality, which should be considered in smooth pursuit testing in infants.
POSTER: Abusing URL Shortening Services for Stealthy and Resilient Message Transmitting

URL shortening services (USS) have been widely used on the Internet, but are currently prone to abuse. In this poster, we exploit the possibility of building a novel stealthy and robust message transmission channel through use of USS. A text string or binary file can be transmitted stealthily using this channel. Our preliminary results show that the proposed channel is feasible and affects many popular USS, thus posing a practical threat to attackers.
Can health promotion videos ‘go viral’? A non-randomised, controlled, before-and-after pilot study to measure the spread and impact of local language mobile videos in Burkina Faso

ABSTRACT Background: Mobile phones present a new health communications opportunity but use of mobile videos warrants more exploration. Our study tested a new idea: to produce health promotion videos in languages for which films have never previously been produced to see if they were widely shared. Objective: To investigate whether the novelty of films in local languages focusing on health messages would be shared ‘virally’ among the target population. Methods: A non-randomised, controlled, before-and-after study was used to evaluate the reach and impact of the intervention. We gave short health promotion videos on memory cards to distributors in eight intervention villages. Ten control villages, where no video distribution took place were randomly selected. We conducted cluster-level difference-in-difference logistic regression to assess self-reported knowledge indicators. We calculated odds ratios for intervention relative to control at baseline and endline and p-values for the change in odds ratios. Results: Seven hundred and eight mothers were interviewed across all villages at baseline and 728 different mothers and 726 men were interviewed in the same villages a year later in October 2015. At endline, 32% of women and 44% of men in the intervention arm had ever seen a film on a mobile phone in Lobiri, compared to 1% of women and 2% of men in the control arm. There was a significant increase in the odds of knowing about giving Orasel to a child with diarrhoea in the intervention area relative to the control area. Awareness of the need to take a child with fever or symptoms of pneumonia to a health centre increased in the intervention area, but not significantly. Conclusions: Viral sharing of films on mobile phones has the potential to be an effective health promotion tool for communities whose languages are not served by existing mass media channels.
An acceleration of a graph cut segmentation with FPGA

Image segmentation is one of the most important steps in image processing. The graph cut is an effective method for the image segmentation. For calculating the graph cut, the max-flow algorithm is widely used, but it requires long computation time. To execute the graph cut in real-time, the acceleration of max-flow algorithm with hardware is necessary. In this paper, we propose an implementation of a max-flow problem for the image segmentation on FPGA. In this system, the push-relabel method and the gap relabeling are used in order to achieve high performance on FPGA. The performance is 20-30 fps for standard benchmark images.
Cross-Limb Dynamics of Postural Tremor due to Limb Loading to Fatigue: Neural Overflow but not Coupling.

Many experiments have shown independence of the index finger dynamics under bilateral postural tremor protocols. Here we investigated in young adults the dynamics of bilateral multi-directional postural tremor and forearm muscle activity under the progressively fatiguing conditions supporting an external weight to the point of induced postural failure. When no loads were applied, tremor in the vertical (VT) and medio-lateral (ML) directions was similar with prominent peaks within 2-4Hz and 8-12Hz bandwidths. Contrastingly tremor in the anterior-posterior (AP) direction was characterized by a single peak between 0-2Hz. Although no tremor coupling occurred cross-limbs, strong within-limb coupling was found between ML and VT directions when no loads were applied (coherence range:0.77-0.85), implying that these oscillations are related and likely derived from mechanical sources. Applying an external load to the index finger(s) led to significant increases in the amplitude of VT tremor and EMG activity within that limb, but also caused increases in tremor directions not aligned with the gravitational vector (AP and ML). Significant increases in VT and ML tremor and EMG activity in the contralateral (unloaded) limb were also found when a single index finger was loaded, however, this bilateral increase did not align with increases in inter-limb coupling (coherence<0.21). The effects of fatigue caused by prolonged loading were widespread, affecting tremor and muscle activity in both limbs through a combination of neural and mechanical mechanisms. The single- and dual-limb loading to fatigue increased neural overflow but not tremor coupling between the index fingers.
Stripe Noise Separation and Removal in Remote Sensing Images by Consideration of the Global Sparsity and Local Variational Properties

Remote sensing images are often contaminated by varying degrees of stripes, which severely affects the visual quality and subsequent application of the data. Unlike with conventional methods, we achieve the destriping by separating the stripe component based on a full analysis of the various stripe properties. Under an optimization framework, an ℓ0-norm-based regularization is used to characterize the global sparse distribution of the stripes. In addition, difference-based constraints are adopted to describe the local smoothness and discontinuity in the along-stripe and across-stripe directions, respectively. The alternating direction method of multipliers is applied to solve and accelerate the model optimization. Experiments with both simulated and real data demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model, in terms of both qualitative and quantitative perspectives.
Long‐term evaluation of a compliant cushion form acetabular bearing for hip joint replacement: A 20 million cycles wear simulation

Soft bearing materials that aim to reproduce the tribological function of the natural joint are gaining popularity as an alternative concept to conventional hard bearing materials in the hip and knee. However, it has not been proven so far that an elastic cushion bearing can be sufficiently durable as a long term (∼20 years) articulating joint prosthesis. The use of new bearing materials should be supported by accurate descriptions of the implant following usage and of the number, volume, and type of wear particles generated. We report on a long‐term 20 million cycle (Mc) wear study of a commercial hip replacement system composed of a compliant polycarbonate‐urethane (PCU) acetabular liner coupled to a cobalt–chromium alloy femoral head. The PCU liner showed excellent wear characteristics in terms of its low and steady volumetric wear rate (5.8–7.7 mm3/Mc) and low particle generation rate (2–3 × 106 particles/Mc). The latter is 5–6 orders of magnitude lower than that of highly cross‐linked polyethylene and 6–8 orders of magnitude lower than that of metal‐on‐metal bearings. Microscopic analysis of the implants after the simulation demonstrated a low damage level to the implants' articulating surfaces. Thus, the compliant PCU bearing may provide a substantial advantage over traditional bearing materials. © 2011 Orthopaedic Research Society Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Orthop Res 29:1859–1866, 2011
From Smart Grid to Super Grid: Solutions with HVDC and FACTS for grid access of renewable energy sources

Innovative solutions with HVDC (High Voltage Direct Current) and FACTS (Flexible AC Transmission Systems) have the potential to cope with the system planning and operational challenges of global climate developments and the call for changes in the way electricity is supplied. New power electronic technologies with self-commutated converters make advanced technical features possible, such as independent control of active and reactive power, and the capability to supply weak or passive networks. As part of the overall planning considerations, this paper presents the fundamental system planning, modeling and operational challenges of connecting large wind farms (both onshore and offshore) via long transmission systems, as well as the practical applications of traditional and new power electronic technologies.
LASSO-Patternsearch Algorithm with Application to Ophthalmology Data

The LASSO-Patternsearch is proposed, as a two-stage procedure to identify clusters of multiple risk factors for outcomes of interest in large demographic studies, when the predictor variables are dichotomous or take on values in a small finite set. Many diseases are suspected of having multiple interacting risk factors acting in concert, and it is of much interest to uncover higher order interactions when they exist. The method is related to Zhang et al(2004) except that variable flexibility is sacrificed to allow entertaining models with high as well as low order interactions among multiple predictors. A LASSO is used to select important patterns, being applied conservatively to have a high rate of retention of true patterns, while allowing some noise. Then the patterns selected by the LASSO are tested in the framework of (parametric) generalized linear models to reduce the noise. Notably, the patterns are those that arise naturally from the log linear expansion of the multivariate Bernoulli density. Separate tuning procedures are proposed for the LASSO step and then the parametric step and a novel computational algorithm for the LASSO step is developed to handle the large number of unknowns in the problem. The method is applied to data from the Beaver Dam Eye Study and is shown to expose physiologically interesting interacting risk factors. In a study of progression of myopia in an older cohort, it is found in this group that the risk for smokers is reduced by taking vitamins, while the risk for non-smokers is independent of the “taking vitamins” variable, which is in agreement with the general result that smoking reduces the absorption of vitamins, and certain vitamins have been