Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparison of the antioxidant potential in urine, saliva and skin

Aim: Free radicals, oxidative stress and their possible consequences for health are becoming increasingly important in modern medicine. Reactive species influence the organism, potentially causing oxidative cell damage. They can be produced by exogenous sources, or be a product of a variety of not only physiological metabolic processes, such as immune response, but also pathological processes. The antioxidant protection system protects the organism from oxidative damage caused by reactions producing an excess of free radicals. The analysis of antioxidant potential (AOP) is therefore becoming increasingly important for the diagnosis of individual vitality. Method: The photochemoluminescence method was used to measure the AOP in urine and saliva, spectrometry was employed to measure the β-carotene content of the skin. In addition, it was investigated whether the AOPsaliva correlated with the AOPUurine (uric-acid independent AOP) as well as the β-carotene content of the skin. Results: The AOP was significantly higher in urine than in saliva, and both values were significantly positively correlated with each other. However, there was no significant correlation to the β-carotene content of the skin. Discussion: The components of the AOPUurine are accumulated over time (night), whereas AOP measurement in saliva is like a snapshot, which explains why AOPUurine was significantly higher than AOPsaliva, although the two parameters are correlated with each other. β-carotene is a fat-soluble antioxidant, whereas in our study, only water-soluble antioxidants were determined in the urine. This explains why there is no positive correlation between β-carotene of the skin and AOP. Conclusion: For the characterization of the AOP in epidemiological studies, we recommend determining the AOPUurine and parallel to this, the β-carotene content of the skin.
Biodegradable and compostable alternatives to conventional plastics

Packaging waste forms a significant part of municipal solid waste and has caused increasing environmental concerns, resulting in a strengthening of various regulations aimed at reducing the amounts generated. Among other materials, a wide range of oil-based polymers is currently used in packaging applications. These are virtually all non-biodegradable, and some are difficult to recycle or reuse due to being complex composites having varying levels of contamination. Recently, significant progress has been made in the development of biodegradable plastics, largely from renewable natural resources, to produce biodegradable materials with similar functionality to that of oil-based polymers. The expansion in these bio-based materials has several potential benefits for greenhouse gas balances and other environmental impacts over whole life cycles and in the use of renewable, rather than finite resources. It is intended that use of biodegradable materials will contribute to sustainability and reduction in the environmental impact associated with disposal of oil-based polymers. The diversity of biodegradable materials and their varying properties makes it difficult to make simple, generic assessments such as biodegradable products are all ‘good’ or petrochemical-based products are all ‘bad’. This paper discusses the potential impacts of biodegradable packaging materials and their waste management, particularly via composting. It presents the key issues that inform judgements of the benefits these materials have in relation to conventional, petrochemical-based counterparts. Specific examples are given from new research on biodegradability in simulated ‘home’ composting systems. It is the view of the authors that biodegradable packaging materials are most suitable for single-use disposable applications where the post-consumer waste can be locally composted.
Relationship between acetaldehyde concentration in mouth air and tongue coating volume

Objective Acetaldehyde is the first metabolite of ethanol and is produced in the epithelium by mucosal ALDH, while higher levels are derived from microbial oxidation of ethanol by oral microflora such as Candida species. However, it is uncertain whether acetaldehyde concentration in human breath is related to oral condition or local production of acetaldehyde by oral microflora. The aim of this pilot study was to investigate the relationship between physiological acetaldehyde concentration and oral condition in healthy volunteers. Material and Methods Sixty-five volunteers (51 males and 14 females, aged from 20 to 87 years old) participated in the present study. Acetaldehyde concentration in mouth air was measured using a portable monitor. Oral examination, detection of oral Candida species and assessment of alcohol sensitivity were performed. Results Acetaldehyde concentration [median (25%, 75%)] in mouth air was 170.7 (73.5, 306.3) ppb. Acetaldehyde concentration in participants with a tongue coating status score of 3 was significantly higher than in those with a score of 1 (p<0.017). After removing tongue coating, acetaldehyde concentration decreased significantly (p<0.05). Acetaldehyde concentration was not correlated with other clinical parameters, presence of Candida species, smoking status or alcohol sensitivity. Conclusion Physiological acetaldehyde concentration in mouth air was associated with tongue coating volume.
Behavioral Analysis of a Proposed Reputation System for Peer-to-Peer Network

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networking technologies have gained popularity as a mechanism for users to share files without the need for centralized servers. A P2P network provides a scalable and fault-tolerant mechanism to locate nodes anywhere on a network without maintaining a large amount of routing state. The increasing availability of high bandwidth Internet connections and low-cost, commodity computers in people's homes has stimulated the use of resource sharing peer- to-peer networks. These systems employ scalable mechanisms that allow anyone to offer content and services to other system users. This allows for a variety of applications beyond simple file sharing. Examples include multicast systems, anonymous communications systems, and web caches.In this paper we propose a reputation system for peerto-peer network with free rider sensitivity.
Determination of Global Minima of Some Common Validation Functions in Support Vector Machine

Tuning of the regularization parameter C is a well-known process in the implementation of a support vector machine (SVM) classifier. Such a tuning process uses an appropriate validation function whose value, evaluated over a validation set, has to be optimized for the determination of the optimal C. Unfortunately, most common validation functions are not smooth functions of C. This brief presents a method for obtaining the global optimal solution of these non-smooth validation functions. The method is guaranteed to find the global optimum and relies on the regularization solution path of SVM over a range of C values. When the solution path is available, the computation needed is minimal.
B2B Infrastructures in the Process of Drug Discovery and Healthcare

In this paper we describe a demonstration of an innovative B2B infrastructure which can be used to support collaborations in the pharmaceutical industry to achieve the drug discovery goal. Based on experience gained in a wide range of collaborative projects in the areas of grid technology, semantics and data management we show future work and new topics in B2B infrastructures which arise when considering the use of patient records in the process of drug discovery and in healthcare applications.
Electric stress analysis of a contaminated polymeric insulating surface in presence of dry bands

In this contribution, influence of dry bands on electric field distribution on a polymeric insulating surface has been carried out using Finite Element Method. Formation of dry bands on insulating surfaces result in electric field enhancement leading to surface discharges, dry-band arcing etc. which in turn affects the long term performance of the insulators. Hence, in the present work, a polymeric insulating surface is modeled as sheath model using Comsol Multiphysics software. Electric stress analysis is performed in presence of dry bands of different length and at different locations on a contaminated insulating surface. Moreover, the effect of different contamination levels on electric field distribution in presence of dry bands have also been investigated.
Testing-Based Selection Method for Integrability on Service-Oriented Applications

Service-Oriented Computing allows building applications by reusing web-accessible services. However, current approaches still involve a large effort both at discovery of services and their successful integration. This paper presents a novel approach to help developers to easily deal with discovery, selection and integration of services, and it is based on two recent approaches addressing software maintainability. The first one, called EasySOC, provides specific semi-automated methods for both discovery and integration of services. The second one, initially developed for substitutability of component-based systems, supplies a method for selection of an appropriate third-party candidate component or service, by applying black-box testing techniques. In this paper we present the usefulness of the selection method within the whole approach.
Bioinformatics: Protein structure prediction

Proteins are essential parts of our life and participate in virtually every process within a cell. The understanding of protein structures is vital to determine the function of a protein. Protein structure prediction (PSP) from amino acid sequence is one of the high focus problems in bioinformatics today. This is due to the fact that the biological function of the protein is determined by its three dimensional structure. Thus, protein structure prediction is a fundamental area of computational biology. Its importance is intensed by large amounts of sequence data coming from PDB (Protein Data Bank) and the fact that experimentally methods such as X-ray crystallography or Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR)which are used to determining protein structures remains very expensive and time consuming. For minimizing the time, computational methods are used for protein folding and structure prediction problem. In this paper results of protein p53 are discussed.
Hierarchical sparse coded surface models

In this paper, we describe a novel approach to construct textured 3D environment models in a hierarchical fashion based on local surface patches. Compared to previous approaches, the hierarchy enables our method to represent the environment with differently sized surface patches. The reconstruction scheme starts at a coarse resolution with large patches and in an iterative fashion uses the reconstruction error to guide the decision as to whether the resolution should be refined. This leads to variable resolution models that represent areas with few variations at low resolution and areas with large variations at high resolution. In addition, we compactly describe local surface attributes via sparse coding based on an overcomplete dictionary. In this way, we additionally exploit similarities in structure and texture, which leads to compact models. We learn the dictionary directly from the input data and independently for every level in the hierarchy in an unsupervised fashion. Practical experiments with large-scale datasets demonstrate that our method compares favorably with two state-of-the-art techniques while being comparable in accuracy.
Changes in autonomic nervous system activity and in electro-cortical activity during sleep onset

This study is aimed at investigating the behavior of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) at sleep onset (SO) and to correlate it with higher brain activity captured as surface electroencephalogram (EEG). The study was performed on data obtained from 16 healthy subjects who underwent standard polysomnography (PSG). The instantaneous heart rate variability (HRV) provided a measure of ANS activity, and EEG was quantified by time-frequency analysis measuring power in alpha and delta frequency bands. The results revealed a power decrease in the VLF component of the inter-beat (RR) interval to a minimal level around SO, similar changes, though to a lesser degree in the LF component, and almost no change in the HF component. These changes correlated with a drop in alpha and a surge in delta EEG power. The sympathovagal balance, as reflected by LF/HF ratio, pointed towards an increase in the parasympathetic activity after SO.
The importance of confidence in leadership role: A qualitative study of the process following two Swedish leadership programmes

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand the influence of leadership programmes on leaders and co-workers, as well as which mechanisms are involved in the process. Design/methodology/approach An analysis was done into 431 free-text answers to questionnaires given to 120 participants in two different leadership programmes and their co-workers six months after their participation, using a grounded theory inspired approach. Findings The result is a model, linking internal psychological and external behavioural aspects, with the central outcome that leaders gained more confidence in their leadership role through theoretical models learned, and reflection. Research limitations/implications The course participants as well as the co-workers seemed to experience a positive leadership development indicating a value of participating in the courses. Practical implications Confidence in leadership role seems important for having positive outcomes of leadership. Although this needs further research, it is something organisations should consider when working with leadership questions. Social implications The co-workers perceived their leaders to be calmer, more open for discussions, and willing both to give and receive feedback post training. There appears to be an increase in trust both in the leader and reciprocally from the leader in the co-workers. Originality/value Until now there has not been any systematic research into the effects on participants and co-workers following the programmes, despite the fact that over 100,000 have participated in the courses.
Occupational Pesticide Exposures and Respiratory Health

Pesticides have been widely used to control pest and pest-related diseases in agriculture, fishery, forestry and the food industry. In this review, we identify a number of respiratory symptoms and diseases that have been associated with occupational pesticide exposures. Impaired lung function has also been observed among people occupationally exposed to pesticides. There was strong evidence for an association between occupational pesticide exposure and asthma, especially in agricultural occupations. In addition, we found suggestive evidence for a link between occupational pesticide exposure and chronic bronchitis or COPD. There was inconclusive evidence for the association between occupational pesticide exposure and lung cancer. Better control of pesticide uses and enforcement of safety behaviors, such as using personal protection equipment (PPE) in the workplace, are critical for reducing the risk of developing pesticide-related symptoms and diseases. Educational training programs focusing on basic safety precautions and proper uses of personal protection equipment (PPE) are possible interventions that could be used to control the respiratory diseases associated with pesticide exposure in occupational setting.
Conditional Random Fields based Named Entity Recognition for Sinhala

Named Entity Recognition (NER) plays an important role in Natural Language Processing (NLP). Named Entities (NEs) are special atomic elements in natural languages belonging to predefined categories such as persons, organizations, locations, expressions of times, quantities, monetary values and percentages etc. These are referring to specific things and not listed in grammar or lexicons. NER is the task of identifying such NEs. This is a task entwined with number of challenges. Entities may be difficult to find at first, and once found, difficult to classify. For instance, locations and person names can be the same, and follow similar formatting. This becomes tough when it comes to South and South East Asian languages. That is mainly due to the nature of these languages. Even though Latin languages have accurate NER solutions those cannot be directly applied for Indic languages, because the features found in those languages are different from English. Therefore the research was based on producing a mathematical model which acts as the integral part of the Sinhala NER system. The researchers used Sinhala News corpus as the data set to train the Conditional Random Fields (CRFs) algorithm. 90% of the corpus was used in training the model, 10% is used in testing the resulted model. The research makes use of orthographic word-level features along with contextual information, which are helpful in predicting three different NE classes namely Persons, Locations and Organizations. The findings of the research were applied in developing the NE Annotator which identified NE classes from unstructured Sinhala text. The prominent contribution of this research for NER could benefit Sinhala NLP application developers and NLP related researchers in near future.
Prospective follow-up of girls with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder into early adulthood: continuing impairment includes elevated risk for suicide attempts and self-injury.

OBJECTIVE We performed a 10-year prospective follow-up of a childhood-ascertained (6-12 years), ethnically and socioeconomically diverse sample of girls with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD; N = 140: combined type [ADHD-C] n = 93; inattentive type [ADHD-I] n = 47) plus a matched comparison group (N = 88). Girls were recruited from schools, mental health centers, pediatric practices, and via advertisements; extensive evaluations confirmed ADHD versus comparison status. METHOD Ten-year outcomes (age range 17-24 years; retention rate = 95%) included symptoms (ADHD, externalizing, internalizing), substance use, eating pathology, self-perceptions, functional impairment (global, academic, service utilization), self-harm (suicide attempts, self-injury), and driving behavior. RESULTS Participants with childhood-diagnosed ADHD continued to display higher rates of ADHD and comorbid symptoms, showed more serious impairment (both global and specific), and had higher rates of suicide attempts and self-injury than the comparison sample, with effect sizes from medium to very large; yet the groups did not differ significantly in terms of eating pathology, substance use, or driving behavior. ADHD-C and ADHD-I types rarely differed significantly, except for suicide attempts and self-injury, which were highly concentrated in ADHD-C. Domains of externalizing behavior, global impairment, service utilization, and self-harm (self-injury and suicide attempts) survived stringent control of crucial childhood covariates (age, demographics, comorbidities, IQ). CONCLUSIONS Girls with childhood ADHD maintain marked impairment by early adulthood, spreading from symptoms to risk for serious self-harm. Our future research addresses the viability of different diagnostic conceptions of adult ADHD and their linkages with core life impairments.
An Accurate and Provably Efficient GARCH Option Pricing Tree

The trinomial-tree GARCH option pricing algorithms of Ritchken and Trevor (1999) and Cakici and Topyan (2000) are claimed to be efficient and accurate. However, this thesis proves that both algorithms generate trees that explode exponentially when the number of partitions per day, n, exceeds a typically small number determined by the model parameters. Worse, when explosion happens, the tree cannot grow beyond a certain maturity, making it useless for pricing derivatives with a longer maturity. Meanwhile, a small n has accuracy problems and does not prevent explosion. This thesis then presents a trinomial-tree GARCH option pricing algorithm that solves the above problems. The algorithm provably does not have the short-maturity problem. Furthermore, the tree size is guaranteed to be quadratic if n is less than a threshold easily determined by the model parameters. This result for the first time puts a tree-based GARCH option pricing algorithm in the same complexity class as binomial and trinomial trees under the Black-Scholes model. Extensive numerical evaluation is conducted to confirm the analytical results and the accuracy of the algorithm.
Probing the Galactic Bulge with Deep Adaptive Optics Imaging: The Age of NGC 6440

We present first results of a pilot project aimed at exploiting the potentiality of ground-based adaptive optics imaging in the near-infrared to determine the age of stellar clusters in the Galactic bulge. We have used a combination of high-resolution adaptive optics (ESO-VLT NAOS-CONICA) and wide-field (ESO-NTT-SOFI) photometry of the metal-rich globular cluster NGC 6440 located toward the inner bulge, to compute a deep color-magnitude diagram from the tip of the red giant branch down to J ∼ 22, 2 magnitudes below the main-sequence turnoff (TO). The magnitude difference between the TO level and the red horizontal branch has been used as an age indicator. It is the first time that such a measurement for a bulge globular cluster has been obtained with a ground-based telescope. From a direct comparison with 47 Tuc and with a set of theoretical isochrones, we concluded that NGC 6440 is old and likely coeval to 47 Tuc. This result adds a new evidence that the Galactic bulge is ≈2 Gyr younger at most than the pristine, metal-poor population of the Galactic halo.
Biochemical reactions in crowded environments: revisiting the effects of volume exclusion with simulations

Molecular crowding is ubiquitous within cells and affects many biological processes including protein-protein binding, enzyme activities and gene regulation. Here we revisit some generic effects of crowding using a combination of lattice simulations and reaction-diffusion simulations with the program ReaDDy. Specifically, we implement three reactions, simple binding, a diffusion-limited reaction and a reaction with Michaelis-Menten kinetics. Histograms of binding and unbinding times provide a detailed picture how crowding affects these reactions and how the separate effects of crowding on binding equilibrium and on diffusion act together. In addition, we discuss how crowding affects processes related to gene expression such as RNA polymerase-promoter binding and translation elongation.
Underrepresentation in the profession: What’s been done and what are the priorities going forward? Commentary on Celia Grace Smith’s Ethics Column

Celia Smith and Richard Pemberton rightly draw our attention to the continuing underrepresentation of individuals from BME backgrounds in the profession, and we are pleased to note recognition of the various efforts that have taken place to address this issue to date. As members of the training community, we would like to further highlight ways in which the profession as a whole can move forward in a targeted, resource-efficient and effective manner, building upon existing initiatives.