Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A pilot study of a smoking cessation intervention for women living with HIV: study protocol

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Preparation and evaluation of a self-nanoemulsifying drug delivery system loaded with Akebia saponin D–phospholipid complex

Background Akebia saponin D (ASD) exerts various pharmacological activities but with poor oral bioavailability. In this study, a self-nanoemulsifying drug delivery system (SNEDDS) based on the drug–phospholipid complex technique was developed to improve the oral absorption of ASD. Methods ASD–phospholipid complex (APC) was prepared using a solvent-evaporation method and characterized by infrared spectroscopy, differential scanning calorimetry, morphology observation, and solubility test. Oil and cosurfactant were selected according to their ability to dissolve APC, while surfactant was chosen based on its emulsification efficiency in SNEDDS. Pseudoternary phase diagrams were constructed to determine the optimized APC-SNEDDS formulation, which was characterized by droplet size determination, zeta potential determination, and morphology observation. Robustness to dilution and thermodynamic stability of optimized formulation were also evaluated. Subsequently, pharmacokinetic parameters and oral bioavailability of ASD, APC, and APC-SNEDDS were investigated in rats. Results The liposolubility significantly increased 11.4-fold after formation of APC, which was verified by the solubility test in n-octanol. Peceol (Glyceryl monooleate [type 40]), Cremophor® EL (Polyoxyl 35 castor oil), and Transcutol HP (Diethylene glycol monoethyl ether) were selected as oil, surfactant, and cosurfactant, respectively. The optimal formulation was composed of Glyceryl monooleate (type 40), Polyoxyl 35 castor oil, Diethylene glycol monoethyl ether, and APC (1:4.5:4.5:1.74, w/w/w/w), which showed a particle size of 148.0±2.7 nm and a zeta potential of −13.7±0.92 mV after dilution with distilled water at a ratio of 1:100 (w/w) and good colloidal stability. Pharmacokinetic studies showed that APC-SNEDDS exhibited a significantly greater Cmax1 (733.4±203.8 ng/mL) than ASD (437.2±174.2 ng/mL), and a greater Cmax2 (985.8±366.6 ng/mL) than ASD (180.5±75.1 ng/mL) and APC (549.7±113.5 ng/mL). Compared with ASD, Tmax1 and Tmax2 were both remarkably shortened by APC-SNEDDS. The oral bioavailability in rats was enhanced significantly to 183.8% and 431.8% by APC and APC-SNEDDS, respectively. Conclusion These results indicated that APC-SNEDDS was a promising drug delivery system to enhance the oral bioavailability of ASD.
Community study of knowledge of and attitude to mental illness in Nigeria

Background The improvement of community tolerance of people with mental illness is important for their integration. Little is known about the knowledge of and attitude to mental illness in sub-Saharan Africa. Aims To determine the knowledge and attitudes of a representative community sample in Nigeria. Method A multistage, clustered sample of household respondents was studied in three states in the Yoruba-speaking parts of Nigeria (representing 22% of the national population). A total of 2040 individuals participated (response rate 74.2%). Results Poor knowledge of causation was common. Negative views of mental illness were widespread, with as many as 96.5% (s.d.=0.5) believing that people with mental illness are dangerous because of their violent behaviour. Most would not tolerate even basic social contacts with a mentally ill person: 82.7% (s.e.=1.3) would be afraid to have a conversation with a mentally ill person and only 16.9% (s.e.=0.9) would consider marrying one. Socio-demographic predictors of both poor knowledge and intolerant attitude were generally very few. Conclusions There is widespread stigmatisation of mental illness in the Nigerian community. Negative attitudes to mental illness may be fuelled by notions of causation that suggest that affected people are in some way responsible for their illness, and by fear.
Novel high-gain hybrid current-driven DC-DC converter topology

A novel high gain current-driven DC-DC converter topology is proposed in this paper. This circuit is aimed for applications which require wide input and output voltage ranges, such as PV micro-inverters, electric vehicle battery chargers etc. As compared to the resonant converters, the size of inductor can be reduced by an order of magnitude and resonant capacitors eliminated, by the use of current-driven topology. These advantages result in increased power density and higher power conversion efficiency of the converter. A major limitation of the current-driven topology is that it can provide a maximum gain of just over unity. Further, this value of maximum gain also depends on the parasitic capacitances of the converter components. These issues make the converter operation more susceptible to component parasitics (such as the transformer inter-turn capacitance), resulting in degraded converter performance. The high-gain current-driven topology, presented in this paper overcomes the disadvantages of the conventional current-driven converter topology, by the introduction of a parallel capacitor at the high voltage side of the transformer winding. Introduction of parallel capacitor provides a two-fold advantage to the conventional current-driven topology. First it makes the effect of parasitic capacitor small so that the control system is not much sensitive to it, and it provides a high gain due to pre-charging of the network inductances at the beginning of each switching cycle. Simulation and experimental results validate the viability of proposed converter topology for applications requiring wide range of input and output voltages.
A variable step size pre-whitened sign algorithm with quantized normalizing factor. Application to acoustic echo cancellation

In this paper, a variable step size pre-whitened sign algorithm with a quantized normalizing factor is proposed and applied for acoustic echo cancellation. The normalizing factor, introduced in adaptive algorithms, makes filter insensitive to variations in filter input power. The Quantization of this factor to the nearest power of two, leads to a low implementation cost. Furthermore, the concept of input pre-whitening is used to drive the adaptive filter, yielding to a faster convergence rate. To make the acoustic echo canceller robust, a new way of varying the step size is proposed. The main idea of varying the step size is very simple and depends on the state of the algorithm: transient state, steady state, or “double talk” state. It was finding that it improves significantly the ability of the algorithm to tackle the problem of double talk presence, and contributes in increasing the convergence rate by maintaining a good steady state performance. Simulation results are presented to support the proposed algorithm.
Remaining Physiological Barriers in Porcine Kidney Xenotransplantation: Potential Pathways behind Proteinuria as well as Factors Related to Growth Discrepancies following Pig-to-Kidney Xenotransplantation

Considerable shortages in the supply of available organs continue to plague the field of solid organ transplantation. Despite changes in allocation, as well as the utilization of extended criteria and living donors, the number of patients waiting for organs continues to grow at an alarming pace. Xenotransplantation, cross-species solid organ transplantation, offers one potential solution to this dilemma. Previous extensive research dedicated to this field has allowed for resolution of xenograft failure due to acute rejection, leaving new areas of unresolved challenges as barriers to success in large animal models. Specific to kidney xenotransplantation, recent data seems to indicate that graft compromise can occur due to discrepancies in growth between breeds of donors and significant proteinuria leading to nephrotic syndrome in the recipient. Given these potential limitations, herein, we review potential pathways behind proteinuria, as well as potential causative factors related to growth discrepancies. Control of both of these has the potential to allow xenotransplantation to become clinically applicable in an effort to resolve this organ shortage crisis.
Theory of mind in schizophrenia: meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND Mentalising impairment (an impaired ability to think about people in terms of their mental states) has frequently been associated with schizophrenia. AIMS To assess the magnitude of the deficit and analyse associated factors. METHOD Twenty-nine studies of mentalising in schizophrenia (combined n=1518), published between January 1993 and May 2006, were included to estimate overall effect size. Study descriptors predicted to influence effect size were analysed using weighted regression-analysis techniques. Separate analyses were performed for symptom subgroups and task types. RESULTS The estimated overall effect size was large and statistically significant (d=-1.255, P<0.0001) and was not significantly affected by sample characteristics. All symptom subgroups showed significant mentalising impairment, but participants with symptoms of disorganisation were significantly more impaired than the other subgroups (P<0.01). CONCLUSIONS This meta-analysis showed significant and stable mentalising impairment in schizophrenia. The finding that patients in remission are also impaired favours the notion that mentalising impairment represents a possible trait marker of schizophrenia.
Optimizing Power–Frequency Droop Characteristics of Distributed Energy Resources

This paper outlines a procedure to design power–frequency droop slopes for distributed energy resources (DERs) installed in distribution networks to optimally participate in primary frequency response. In particular, the droop slopes are engineered such that DERs respond in proportion to their power ratings and they are not unfairly penalized in power provisioning based on their location in the distribution network. The main contribution of our approach is that a guaranteed level of frequency regulation can be obtained at the feeder head, while ensuring that the outputs of individual DERs conform to some well-defined notion of fairness. The approach we adopt leverages an optimization-based perspective and suitable linearizations of the power-flow equations to embed notions of fairness and information regarding the physics of the power flows within the distribution network into the droop slopes. Time-domain simulations from a differential algebraic equation model of the 39-bus New England test-case system augmented with three instances of the IEEE 37-node distribution network with frequency-sensitive DERs are provided to validate our approach.
Insights into the cellular mechanisms of desiccation tolerance among angiosperm resurrection plant species

Water is a major limiting factor in growth and reproduction in plants. The ability of tissues to survive desiccation is commonly found in seeds or pollen but rarely present in vegetative tissues. Resurrection plants are remarkable as they can tolerate almost complete water loss from their vegetative tissues such as leaves and roots. Metabolism is shut down as they dehydrate and the plants become apparently lifeless. Upon rehydration these plants recover full metabolic competence and ‘resurrect’. In order to cope with desiccation, resurrection plants have to overcome a number of stresses as water is lost from the cells, among them oxidative stress, destabilization or loss of membrane integrity and mechanical stress. This review will mainly focus on the effect of dehydration in angiosperm resurrection plants and some of the strategies developed by these plants to tolerate desiccation. Resurrection plants are important experimental models and understanding the physiological and molecular aspects of their desiccation tolerance is of great interest for developing drought-tolerant crop species adapted to semi-arid areas.
Simultaneous synthesis of FLAIR and segmentation of white matter hypointensities from T1 MRIs

Segmenting vascular pathologies such as white matter lesions in Brain magnetic resonance images (MRIs) require acquisition of multiple sequences such as T1-weighted (T1-w) --on which lesions appear hypointense-- and fluid attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR) sequence --where lesions appear hyperintense--. However, most of the existing retrospective datasets do not consist of FLAIR sequences. Existing missing modality imputation methods separate the process of imputation, and the process of segmentation. In this paper, we propose a method to link both modality imputation and segmentation using convolutional neural networks. We show that by jointly optimizing the imputation network and the segmentation network, the method not only produces more realistic synthetic FLAIR images from T1-w images, but also improves the segmentation of WMH from T1-w images only.
Development of Transducer Unit to Transmit Electrical Action Potential of Plants to A Data Acquisition System

There is a lot of evidence that plants respond to the alteration of the environmental parameters, particu larly with respect to nutrient availability and concomitant changes in partit ioning and growth. Ext racellular electrical signals that produced from p lants have different pattern depending on factors that may cause stress such as water deficiency, nutrient elements shortage, high salin ity level in roots environment etc. Due to very low current level of electrical signal of plant's, the transmission of signal must be without distortion. The objective of this work is the development of a transducer unit to transmit electrical act ion potential of plants to a data acquisition. This transducer could be used to imp rove the efficiency of data acquisition system, in order to avoid: a) the white Gaussian noise (WGN), (50 Hz power line noise as well as the noise of the operating electrical devices, operating in any co mmercial greenhouse), and b) the distortion from RF signals. The results show that electrical action potential measurements on plants, obtained with the use of the design transducer unit had a negligible erro r in contrast to a direct connection of sensors into data acquisition. The measurements are recorded, via a data acquisition system and processed using LabVIEW code.
Xylem cavitation and hydraulic control of stomatal conductance in Laurel (Laurus nobilis L.)

The possible link between stomatal conductance (gL), leaf water potential (ΨL) and xylem cavitation was studied in leaves and shoots of detached branches as well as of whole plants of Laurus nobilis L. (Laurel). Shoot cavitation induced complete stomatal closure in air-dehydrated detached branches in less than 10 min. By contrast, a fine regulation of gL in whole plants was the consequence of ΨL reaching the cavitation threshold (ΨCAV) for shoots. A pulse of xylem cavitation in the shoots was paralleled by a decrease in gL of about 50%, while ΨL stabilized at values preventing further xylem cavitation. In these experiments, no root signals were likely to be sent to the leaves from the roots in response to soil dryness because branches were either detached or whole plants were growing in constantly wet soil. The stomatal response to increasing evaporative demand appeared therefore to be the result of hydraulic signals generated during shoot cavitation. A negative feedback link is proposed between gL and ΨCAV rather than with ΨL itself.
Obesity and the community food environment: a systematic review

Abstract Objective To examine the relationship between obesity and the community and/or consumer food environment. Design A comprehensive literature search of multiple databases was conducted and seven studies were identified for review. Studies were selected if they measured BMI and environmental variables related to food outlets. Environmental variables included the geographic arrangement of food stores or restaurants in communities and consumer conditions such as food price and availability within each outlet. The study designs, methods, limitations and results related to obesity and the food environment were reviewed, and implications for future research were synthesized. Results The reviewed studies used cross-sectional designs to examine the community food environment defined as the number per capita, proximity or density of food outlets. Most studies indirectly identified food outlets through large databases. The studies varied substantially in sample populations, outcome variables, units of measurement and data analysis. Two studies did not find any significant association between obesity rates and community food environment variables. Five studies found significant results. Many of the studies were subject to limitations that may have mitigated the validity of the results. Conclusion Research examining obesity and the community or consumer food environment is at an early stage. The most pertinent gaps include primary data at the individual level, direct measures of the environment, studies examining the consumer environment and study designs involving a time sequence. Future research should directly measure multiple levels of the food environment and key confounders at the individual level.
Broadband Plasmonic Total Light Absorption in an Aldoped ZnO/spacer/silver Stack Patterned with Graded Photonic Super-crystal

For the first time, Al-doped ZnO patterned with graded photonic super-crystals with dual lattice and dual period and stacked on SiO2/ silver films, has been studied for plasmonic total light absorption. Broadband total light absorption occurs due to the gradient size distribution of dot disks in the photonic lattice. Localized surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) are selectively confined in certain dot disks following the SPP formation condition, and total light absorption happens when the SPPs are coupled to the Fabry–Perot resonance which is dependent on the spacer thickness.
STAR FORMATION IN SELF-GRAVITATING DISKS IN ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI. I. METALLICITY GRADIENTS IN BROAD-LINE REGIONS

It has been suggested that the high metallicity generally observed in active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and quasars originates from ongoing star formation in the self-gravitating part of accretion disks around supermassive black holes (SMBHs). We designate this region as the star-forming (SF) disk, in which metals are produced from supernova explosions (SNexp) while at the same time inflows are driven by SNexp-excited turbulent viscosity to accrete onto the SMBHs. In this paper, an equation of metallicity governed by SNexp and radial advection is established to describe the metal distribution and evolution in the SF disk. We find that the metal abundance is enriched at different rates at different positions in the disk, and that a metallicity gradient is set up that evolves for steady-state AGNs. Metallicity as an integrated physical parameter can be used as a probe of the SF disk age during one episode of SMBH activity. In the SF disk, evaporation of molecular clouds heated by SNexp blast waves unavoidably forms hot gas. This heating is eventually balanced by the cooling of the hot gas, but we show that the hot gas will escape from the SF disk before being cooled, and diffuse into the broad-line regions (BLRs) forming with a typical rate of ∼1 M☉ yr−1. The diffusion of hot gas from an SF disk depends on ongoing star formation, leading to the metallicity gradients in BLR observed in AGNs. We discuss this and other observable consequences of this scenario.
Applicability of GPU Computing for Efficient Merge in In-Memory Databases

Column oriented in-memory databases typically use dictionary compression to reduce the overall storage space and allow fast lookup and comparison. However, there is a high performance cost for updates since the dictionary, used for compression, has to be recreated each time records are created, updated or deleted. This has to be taken into account for TPC-C like workloads with around 45% of all queries being transactional modifications. A technique called differential updates can be used to allow faster modifications. In addition to the main storage, the database then maintains a delta storage to accommodate modifying queries. During the merge process, the modifications of the delta are merged with the main storage in parallel to the normal operation of the database. Current hardware and software trends suggest that this problem can be tackled by massively parallelizing the merge process. One approach to massive parallelism are GPUs that offer order of magnitudes more cores than modern CPUs. Therefore, we analyze the feasibility of a parallel GPU merge implementation and its potential speedup. We found that the maximum potential merge speedup is limited since only two of its four stages are likely to benefit from parallelization. We present a parallel dictionary slice merge algorithm as well as an alternative parallel merge algorithm for GPUs that achieves up to 40% more throughput than its CPU implementation. In addition, we propose a parallel duplicate removal algorithm that achieves up to 27 times the throughput of the CPU implementation.
Compartmentalized cAMP Signaling Associated With Lipid Raft and Non-raft Membrane Domains in Adult Ventricular Myocytes

Aim: Confining cAMP production to discrete subcellular locations makes it possible for this ubiquitous second messenger to elicit unique functional responses. Yet, factors that determine how and where the production of this diffusible signaling molecule occurs are incompletely understood. The fluid mosaic model originally proposed that signal transduction occurs through random interactions between proteins diffusing freely throughout the plasma membrane. However, it is now known that the movement of membrane proteins is restricted, suggesting that the plasma membrane is segregated into distinct microdomains where different signaling proteins can be concentrated. In this study, we examined what role lipid raft and non-raft membrane domains play in compartmentation of cAMP signaling in adult ventricular myocytes. Methods and Results: The freely diffusible fluorescence resonance energy transfer-based biosensor Epac2-camps was used to measure global cytosolic cAMP responses, while versions of the probe targeted to lipid raft (Epac2-MyrPalm) and non-raft (Epac2-CAAX) domains were used to monitor local cAMP production near the plasma membrane. We found that β-adrenergic receptors, which are expressed in lipid raft and non-raft domains, produce cAMP responses near the plasma membrane that are distinctly different from those produced by E-type prostaglandin receptors, which are expressed exclusively in non-raft domains. We also found that there are differences in basal cAMP levels associated with lipid raft and non-raft domains, and that this can be explained by differences in basal adenylyl cyclase activity associated with each of these membrane environments. In addition, we found evidence that phosphodiesterases 2, 3, and 4 work together in regulating cAMP activity associated with both lipid raft and non-raft domains, while phosphodiesterase 3 plays a more prominent role in the bulk cytoplasmic compartment. Conclusion: These results suggest that different membrane domains contribute to the formation of distinct pools of cAMP under basal conditions as well as following receptor stimulation in adult ventricular myocytes.