Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of resistance training with and without caloric restriction on physical function and mobility in overweight and obese older adults: a randomized controlled trial.

BACKGROUND Resistance training (RT) improves muscle strength and overall physical function in older adults. RT may be particularly important in the obese elderly who have compromised muscle function. Whether caloric restriction (CR) acts synergistically with RT to enhance function is unknown. OBJECTIVE As the primary goal of the Improving Muscle for Functional Independence Trial (I'M FIT), we determined the effects of adding CR for weight loss on muscle and physical function responses to RT in older overweight and obese adults. DESIGN I'M FIT was a 5-mo trial in 126 older (65-79 y) overweight and obese men and women who were randomly assigned to a progressive, 3-d/wk, moderate-intensity RT intervention with a weight-loss intervention (RT+CR) or without a weight-loss intervention (RT). The primary outcome was maximal knee extensor strength; secondary outcomes were muscle power and quality, overall physical function, and total body and thigh compositions. RESULTS Body mass decreased in the RT+CR group but not in the RT group. Fat mass, percentage of fat, and all thigh fat volumes decreased in both groups, but only the RT+CR group lost lean mass. Adjusted postintervention body- and thigh-composition measures were all lower with RT+CR except intermuscular adipose tissue (IMAT). Knee strength, power, and quality and the 4-m gait speed increased similarly in both groups. Adjusted postintervention means for a 400-m walk time and self-reported disability were better with RT+CR with no group differences in other functional measures, including knee strength. Participants with a lower percentage of fat and IMAT at baseline exhibited a greater improvement in the 400-m walk and knee strength and power. CONCLUSIONS RT improved body composition (including reducing IMAT) and muscle strength and physical function in obese elderly, but those with higher initial adiposity experienced less improvement. The addition of CR during RT improves mobility and does not compromise other functional adaptations to RT. These findings support the incorporation of RT into obesity treatments for this population regardless of whether CR is part of the treatment. This trial was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT01049698.
Micro-scale environmental variation amplifies physiological variation among individual mussels

The contributions of temporal and spatial environmental variation to physiological variation remain poorly resolved. Rocky intertidal zone populations are subjected to thermal variation over the tidal cycle, superimposed with micro-scale variation in individuals' body temperatures. Using the sea mussel (Mytilus californianus), we assessed the consequences of this micro-scale environmental variation for physiological variation among individuals, first by examining the latter in field-acclimatized animals, second by abolishing micro-scale environmental variation via common garden acclimation, and third by restoring this variation using a reciprocal outplant approach. Common garden acclimation reduced the magnitude of variation in tissue-level antioxidant capacities by approximately 30% among mussels from a wave-protected (warm) site, but it had no effect on antioxidant variation among mussels from a wave-exposed (cool) site. The field-acclimatized level of antioxidant variation was restored only when protected-site mussels were outplanted to a high, thermally stressful site. Variation in organismal oxygen consumption rates reflected antioxidant patterns, decreasing dramatically among protected-site mussels after common gardening. These results suggest a highly plastic relationship between individuals' genotypes and their physiological phenotypes that depends on recent environmental experience. Corresponding context-dependent changes in the physiological mean–variance relationships within populations complicate prediction of responses to shifts in environmental variability that are anticipated with global change.
Establishing Normative Data for the Visual Skills of Gaelic Footballers

II DECLARATION III ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS IV ABBREVIATIONS V LIST OF TABLES 4 LIST OF FIGURES 6 CHAPTER I 9 INTRODUCTION 9 1.1 Background 9 1.2 Introduction to vision 11 1.2.1 The Iris 12 1.2.2 The Crystalline Lens 12 1.2.3 The Optic Nerve 13 1.2.4 The Visual Pathway 13 1.2. 5 The Visual Field 14 1.2. 6 Myopia 16 1.2. 7 Hyperopia 17 1.2. 8 Astigmatism 17 1.2. 9 Extraocular Muscles: 18 1.2.10 Binocular Vision 20 1.2.11 Colour Vision 21 1.3 Aims and Objectives 21 CHAPTER II 23 REVIEW OF LITERATURE 23 2.1 Social Benefits of Sport 23 2.2 History of Sports Vision Research 24 2.3 Norms for Visual Screenings 25 2.4 Visual Skills for Sports 27 2.4. 1 Dynamic and Non-Dynamic Sports 29
A Fuzzy Group Decision Making Model for Ordinal Peer Assessment

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are becoming an increasingly popular choice for education but, to reach their full extent, they require the resolution of new issues like assessing students at scale. A feasible approach to tackle this problem is peer assessment, in which students also play the role of assessor for assignments submitted by others. Unfortunately, students are unreliable graders so peer assessment often does not deliver accurate results. In order to mitigate this issue, we propose a new model for ordinal peer assessment based on the principles of fuzzy group decision making. In our approach, each student is asked to rank a few random submissions from the best to the worst and to specify, with a set of intuitive labels, at what extent each submission is better than the following one in the ranking. Students’ provided rankings are then transformed in fuzzy preference relations, expanded to estimate missing values and aggregated through OWA operators. The aggregated relation is then used to generate a global ranking between the submissions and to estimate their absolute grades. Experimental results are presented and show better performances with respect to other existing ordinal and cardinal peer assessment techniques both in the reconstruction of the correct ranking and on the estimation of students’ grades.
Reproducibility of Heart Rate Variability Is Parameter and Sleep Stage Dependent

Objective: Measurements of heart rate variability (HRV) during sleep have become increasingly popular as sleep could provide an optimal state for HRV assessments. While sleep stages have been reported to affect HRV, the effect of sleep stages on the variance of HRV parameters were hardly investigated. We aimed to assess the variance of HRV parameters during the different sleep stages. Further, we tested the accuracy of an algorithm using HRV to identify a 5-min segment within an episode of slow wave sleep (SWS, deep sleep). Methods: Polysomnographic (PSG) sleep recordings of 3 nights of 15 healthy young males were analyzed. Sleep was scored according to conventional criteria. HRV parameters of consecutive 5-min segments were analyzed within the different sleep stages. The total variance of HRV parameters was partitioned into between-subjects variance, between-nights variance, and between-segments variance and compared between the different sleep stages. Intra-class correlation coefficients of all HRV parameters were calculated for all sleep stages. To identify an SWS segment based on HRV, Pearson correlation coefficients of consecutive R-R intervals (rRR) of moving 5-min windows (20-s steps). The linear trend was removed from the rRR time series and the first segment with rRR values 0.1 units below the mean rRR for at least 10 min was identified. A 5-min segment was placed in the middle of such an identified segment and the corresponding sleep stage was used to assess the accuracy of the algorithm. Results: Good reproducibility within and across nights was found for heart rate in all sleep stages and for high frequency (HF) power in SWS. Reproducibility of low frequency (LF) power and of LF/HF was poor in all sleep stages. Of all the 5-min segments selected based on HRV data, 87% were accurately located within SWS. Conclusions: SWS, a stable state that, in contrast to waking, is unaffected by internal and external factors, is a reproducible state that allows reliable determination of heart rate, and HF power, and can satisfactorily be detected based on R-R intervals, without the need of full PSG. Sleep may not be an optimal condition to assess LF power and LF/HF power ratio.
Performance Analysis of High Speed Domino CMOS Logic Circuits

the demand of low power high performance arithmetic circuits multiplies, during this paper, we aim to introduce a style of latest MT-CMOS domino logic and FTL dynamic logic technique to style adder circuit. The MT-MOS transistors cut back the facility dissipation by minimizing sub threshold run current in the introduced domino logic circuits. The MT-NMOS semiconductor connected in discharging path of output electrical converter may be applied for pipeline structure to scale back the facility consumptions and increase fan-out. Dynamic logic vogue CMOS circuit is employed to enhance the speed and cut back the world of style by decreasing the device count. The introduced FTL dynamic logic circuit improves the performance by evaluating the computational blocks partially before its input signals are formalized and then rapidly perform a final evaluation as soon as the inputs arrive. This dynamic logic formation is like minded for an arithmetic circuit wherever the important path s created of an outsized cascade of inverting gates is created. The mixture of MT-CMOS and dynamic logic circuit provides high fan-out, high change frequencies with each lower delay and dynamic power consumption. The simulation results of those projected low power high performance circuits provide 75% power reduction, three times redoubled high speed operation and active space reduction, whereas revealing lower sensitivity to power provide, temperature, electrical phenomenon load and method variations than the dynamic domino CMOS technologies.
La recherche action : oubliée de la recherche dans le domaine de l'entrepreneuriat

La recherche action est une demarche de recherche qualitative visant a resoudre un probleme concret d’entreprise tout en contribuant a la production de connaissances scientifiques grâce a l’action volontaire d’un chercheur dans une organisation ayant accepte son intervention. La resolution de ce probleme passe par la mise en œuvre d’un changement dans l’organisation, lequel, selon la forme de recherche action adoptee par le chercheur, suppose l’implication plus ou moins grande des membres de celle-ci. La recherche action implique donc, de la part du chercheur, la volonte de changer l’organisation et d’apprendre quelque chose de ce changement alors qu’il se produit (et non a posteriori). La recherche action produit des connaissances pratiques, inherentes a l’objectif de resolution d’un probleme, et theoriques, puisque l’engagement du chercheur dans l’action collective le place en situation privilegiee d’observateur des pratiques. L’etude des methodes de recherche en entrepreneuriat revele que la recherche action n’a quasiment pas ete mobilisee, ce qui pose a la fois la question de son adequation aux problematiques du domaine et de son acceptation par la communaute scientifique concernee. Sur la base d’un rappel des fondements de cette demarche d’investigation scientifique, l’objectif de l’article est de montrer sa pertinence dans le domaine de l’entrepreneuriat et plus particulierement dans celui de la creation d’entreprise. Ce faisant, il propose une synthese des travaux de recherche parlant de la recherche action ou la mobilisant.
The Threat of Instability: Neurodegeneration Predicted by Protein Destabilization and Aggregation Propensity

In 1961, elegant experiments by Christian Anfinsen first demonstrated that a protein, the enzyme ribonuclease A, could be reversibly denatured (unfolded) and subsequently renatured (refolded) to its functional native state [1]. This and subsequent similar findings for many other proteins gave rise to a central tenet of protein folding, that the information specifying how a protein attains its native state is encoded in its primary amino acid sequence. Thus was posed “The Protein Folding Problem,” which remains a central unsolved problem in biology: exactly how does a protein's primary sequence determine its structure and function, or its misfolding and misfunction? Until the late 1980s, protein folding was studied by relatively few scientists, and the problem was generally regarded as fundamental, but of minimal immediate, practical importance. With the advent of massive genome sequencing efforts and the concomitant recognition that many diseases are caused by single amino acid substitutions in many different proteins, the drive to understand how primary sequence governs folding and function greatly intensified. A common feature of numerous mutation-linked diseases is the deposition of misfolded protein aggregates. Extensive studies have shown that protein aggregates are often misfunctional, i.e., toxic to cells, but the nature and targets of the toxic aggregated species are not well understood and are still under intense investigation. Anfinsen's and related experiments also established that the folding of an unfolded protein is not trivial, depending strongly on solution conditions, and protein misfolding and aggregation reactions typically compete with folding reactions. Furthermore, the difference in energy between the native folded state and the unfolded state of a protein, which defines its thermodynamic stability, is typically small (20–40 kJ mol−1), corresponding to the energy of one to several noncovalent interactions (such as a hydrogen bond, or salt bridge) among the myriad of such interactions occurring in both the folded and unfolded states [2]. As a consequence, it is quite easy to significantly alter the relative proportions of protein occupying the folded versus fully or partially unfolded states, for example by substitution of a single amino acid, or by a covalent modification such as proteolysis (as is also frequently observed for proteins associated with misfolding diseases). Thus, it appears that many proteins have evolved to be only as stable as they need to be in order to remain largely folded and active, but also sufficiently unstable to be easily turned over or regulated. Some proteins are not even folded into a defined globular shape, and instead populate a fluctuating, natively unfolded state that can switch to a folded state upon binding of a suitable partner molecule. Such natively unfolded proteins have different characteristics from native globular proteins, such as a higher proportion of charged amino acids and lower proportion of hydrophobic amino acids, which decrease their tendency to aggregate [3].
Tendon-transfer Surgery for Ulnar-median Nerve Palsy Using Embedded Adaptive Engineering Mechanisms

INTRODUCTION Upper-extremity tendon-transfer surgeries are performed when muscle function is lost due to muscle or peripheral nerve trauma [1-4]. The surgeries, which were established over forty years ago, partially restore hand function by re-routing tendons from the affected muscle and suturing them to a still-functioning donor muscle. A tendon-transfer surgery of particular interest is that which is commonly performed for patients afflicted by median-ulnar nerve palsy. Median-ulnar nerve palsy, amongst its many effects, disables the flexor digitorum profundus (FDP) muscle, weakening grip strength and adversely affecting the performance of the activities of daily living. To recover full flexion capability in all the fingers, the tendon transfer surgery currently performed directly sutures the extensor carpi radialis longus (ECRL) muscle to the FDP tendons of the fingers (see Fig 1a), so that as the ECRL muscle contracts, the fingers flex. However, this procedure results in an undesired behavior. Since the ECRL muscle is directly sutured (coupled) to multiple recipient tendons, if one distal joint is stopped when the hand makes contact with an object during grasping, all other joints are also rendered immobile. This prevents the joints from adapting independently to the object shape during the grasping process, resulting in poor grasping ability and may require unnatural wrist and arm movement to complete the grasp. We propose to rectify this drawback in current tendon-transfer procedures by using simple passive engineering mechanisms called “adaptive coupling mechanisms” to interface between the donor muscle and the recipient tendons. Adaptive coupling mechanisms belong to the class of differential mechanisms [5] and take different forms, such as moving pulley systems. Recently they have made a strong impact in robot hand design [6-8]. Our proposed tendon-transfer surgical procedure for medianulnar nerve palsy will use a hierarchical seesaw mechanism to interface between the ECRL muscle and the FDP tendons (Figure 1b). As the ECRL muscle contracts, the entire seesaw mechanism will translate. But as each finger makes contact, each seesaw mechanism will naturally rotate to allow continued flexion of the other fingers. We hypothesize that adaptive mechanisms, when utilized in tendontransfer surgeries, enable the finger joints powered by the donor muscle to adapt independently, travel through greater angles, and produce greater forces on the object during physical interaction, even if actuated by a single donor muscle. As a first step towards exploring the proposed procedure, a biomechanical simulation was built in OpenSim, an open-source biomechanics software platform [9].
Syndrome d'apnée du sommeil: cognition, locomotion et effets du traitement par pression positive continue

Cette etude s'interesse a la quantification de diverses dimensions du fonctionnement executif et attentionnel et des parametres temporels de la marche chez des sujets souffrant d'un Syndrome d'Apnee du Sommeil. Les fonctionnements executif et attentionnel sont evalues au moyen d'une batterie neuropsychologique et d'un paradigme de double tâche (marche seule et marche avec realisation simultanee d'une tâche cognitive). Le fonctionnement locomoteur est evalue a l'aide d'un systeme a capteurs (SMTEC FootSwitch®). Deux hypotheses sont verifiees. La premiere, testee sur 12 sujets (âge moyen 51.5), enonce que l'execution d'une double tâche a des effets sur les tâches cognitives et sur les parametres temporels de la marche. Ces effets seraient entraines par un deficit au niveau du fonctionnement cognitif (attentionnel et executif). La deuxieme hypothese, testee sur 7 sujets (âge moyen 52.4), postule qu'apres 6 semaines de traitement en ventilation par pression positive continue, les sujets presentent une amelioration des performances cognitives (attentionnelles et executives) et motrices en condition de double tâche. Les resultats confirment partiellement les deux hypotheses. Pour ce qui concerne la premiere hypothese, on trouve un effet de la double tâche sur la vitesse de marche. De plus, on remarque, chez quelque sujet, des deficits visuo-constructifs, psychomoteurs et dans les temps d'execution de certaines epreuves. Quant a la deuxieme hypothese, apres 6 semaines de traitement on observe des ameliorations dans les tests evaluant ces composantes cognitives
Expression of the Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor in Growth Plate Cartilage and the Impact of Its Local Modulation on Longitudinal Bone Growth

Although dioxin has been reported to impair bone growth in both humans and animals, the underlying mechanisms have not been clarified. We conducted this study to rule out if dioxin may directly target the growth plate, via local modulation of the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR). Initial studies in rare tissue samples of the human growth plate confirmed that the AhR protein is widely expressed in growth plate cartilage. To explore the local role of the AhR, mechanistic studies were performed in a well-established model of cultured fetal rat metatarsal bones. The longitudinal growth of these bones was monitored while being exposed to AhR modulators. The AhR agonist, 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin, did not affect bone growth at any concentrations tested (1 pM–10 nM). In contrast, the AhR antagonist, alpha-naphthoflavone, suppressed bone growth and increased chondrocyte apoptosis, although only at a high, potentially cytotoxic concentration (50 µM). We conclude that although the AhR is widely expressed in the growth plate, bone growth is not modulated when locally activated, and therefore, dioxin-induced growth failure is likely mediated through systemic rather than local actions.
Analysis of fluorouracil-based adjuvant chemotherapy and radiation after pancreaticoduodenectomy for ductal adenocarcinoma of the pancreas: results of a large, prospectively collected database at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.

PURPOSE To examine the efficacy of adjuvant chemoradiotherapy after pancreaticoduodenectomy (PD) for pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PC) in patients undergoing resection at Johns Hopkins Hospital (JHH; Baltimore, MD). PATIENTS AND METHODS Between August 30, 1993, and February 28, 2005, a total of 908 patients underwent PD for PC at JHH. A prospective database was reviewed to determine which patients received fluorouracil (FU) -based CRT. Excluded patients had metastatic disease, died 60 or fewer days after PD, received preoperative therapy, an experimental vaccine, adjuvant chemotherapy or radiation alone. The final cohort includes 616 patients. RESULTS The median follow-up was 17.8 months (interquartile range, 9.7 to 33.5 months). Overall median survival was 17.9 months (95% CI, 16.3 to 19.5 months). Groups were similar with respect to tumor size, nodal status, and margin status, but the CRT group was younger (P < .001), and less likely to present with a severe comorbid disease (P = .001). Patients with carcinomas larger than 3 cm (P = .001), grade 3 and 4 (P < .001), margin-positive resection (P = .001), and complications after surgery (P = .017) had poor long-term survival. Patients receiving CRT experienced an improved median (21.2 v 14.4 months; P < .001), 2-year (43.9% v 31.9%), and 5-year (20.1% v 15.4%) survival compared with no CRT. After controlling for high-risk features, CRT was still associated with improved survival (relative risk = 0.74; 95% CI, 0.62 to 0.89). CONCLUSION These data suggest that adjuvant concurrent FU-based CRT significantly improves survival after PD for PC when compared with patients not receiving CRT. These data support the use of combined adjuvant CRT for PC.