Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prevalence of Diabetes Mellitus in Bukuru Metropolis of Plateau State

This study aimed to determine the prevalence of diabetes mellitus (DM) and its associated risk factors in Bukuru Metropolis in jos south L.G. A of Plateau state. Personal and demographic data were obtained through the use of questionnaire. Blood samples were collected from participants after an overnight fast. Weight, height, and blood pressure (BP) measurements were taken. Results were analysed statistically by t-test, Chy square test, and analysis of variance. A total of 998 individuals aged 25-70 years comprising of 487(48.8%) men and 511(51.2%) women were recruited for the study. Subjects were classified into diabetic and control groups based on the laboratory findings. DM was defined according to 1999 WHO criteria. Individuals who were previously known to have diabetes based on history and laboratory data were classified as having diabetes without oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT). Thirty-six subjects were found to be diabetic for a prevalence of 3.6%, made up of 2.2% previously known cases and 1.4% newly diagnosed, majority being asymptomatic. The prevalence rates were 1.9% and 1.7% for males and females respectively. There was no significance difference (p>0.05) in the prevalence between the sexes. Body mass index (BMI) ≥25 kg/ m, BP >140/90 mm Hg, family history of diabetes, physical inactivity and older age were associated with significantly (p<0.05) higher prevalence of type 2 diabetes. The asymptomatic nature of diabetes recorded in this study points to the need to improve health services and awareness in the general population.
Inorganic Carbon Accumulation Stimulates Linear Electron Flow to Artificial Electron Acceptors of Photosystem I in Air-Grown Cells of the Cyanobacterium Synechococcus UTEX 625

The effect of inorganic carbon (Ci) transport and accumulation on photosynthetic electron transport was studied in air-grown cells of the cyanobacterium Synechococcus UTEX 625. When the cells were depleted of Ci, linear photosynthetic electron flow was almost completely inhibited in the presence of the photosystem I (PSI) acceptor N,N-dimethyl-p-nitrosoaniline (PNDA). The addition of Ci to these cells, in which CO2 fixation was inhibited with glycolaldehyde, greatly stimulated linear electron flow and resulted in increased levels of photochemical quenching and O2 evolution. In aerobic conditions substantial quenching resulted from methyl viologen (MV) addition and further quenching was not observed upon the addition of Ci. In anaerobic conditions MV addition did not result in quenching until Ci was added. Intracellular Ci pools were formed when MV was present in aerobic or anaerobic conditions or PNDA was present in aerobic conditions. There was no inhibitory effect of Ci depletion on electron flow to 2,6-dimethylbenzoquinone and oxidized diaminodurene, which accept electrons from photosystem II. The degree of stimulation of PNDA-dependent O2 evolution varied with the Ci concentration. The extracellular Ci, concentration required for a half-maximum rate (K1/2) was 3.8 [mu]M and the intracellular K1/2 was 1.4 mM for the stimulation of PNDA reduction. These values agreed closely with the K1/2 values of extracellular and intracellular Ci for O2 photoreduction. Linear electron flow to artificial electron acceptors of PSI was enhanced by intracellular Ci, which appeared to exert an effect on PSI or on the intersystem electron transport chain.
A strain gauge tactile sensor for finger-mounted applications

This paper describes a strain gauge-based sensor used for measuring finger force. The theory, design, and sensor construction details are presented. It was constructed using metallic strain gauges and a carefully designed structure which has a protection device that impedes the sensor damage when forces higher than 100 N are applied. Its dimensions are suitable for measuring thumb force, but the same design can be used for constructing smaller sensors for other fingers. It is rugged, presents linear response, good repeatability, resolution of 0.3 N, low hysteresis, and sensitivity of 0.12 V/N. It can be useful in rehabilitation engineering, biomechanics, robotics, and medicine.
Smoking ban in public areas is associated with a reduced incidence of hospital admissions due to ST-elevation myocardial infarctions in non-smokers. Results from the BREMEN STEMI REGISTRY

Introduction Laws banning tobacco smoking from public areas have been passed in several countries, including the region of Bremen, Germany at the end of 2007. The present study analyses the incidence of hospital admissions due to ST-elevation myocardial infarctions (STEMIs) before and after such a smoking ban was implemented, focusing on differences between smokers and non-smokers. In this respect, data of the Bremen STEMI Registry (BSR) give a complete epidemiological overview of a region in northwest Germany with approximately 800,000 inhabitants since all STEMIs are admitted to one central heart centre. Methods and results Between January 2006 and December 2010, data from the BSR was analysed focusing on date of admission, age, gender, and prior nicotine consumption. A total of 3545 patients with STEMI were admitted in the Bremen Heart Centre during this time period. Comparing 2006–2007 vs. 2008–2010, hence before and after the smoking ban, a 16% decrease of the number of STEMIs was observed: from a mean of 65 STEMI/month in 2006–2007 to 55/month in 2008–2010 (p < 0.01). The group of smokers showed a constant number of STEMIs: 25/month in 2006–2007 to 26/month in 2008–2010 (+4%, p = 0.8). However, in non-smokers, a significant reduction of STEMIs over time was found: 39/month in 2006–2007 to 29/month in 2008–2010 (−26%, p < 0.01). The decline of STEMIs in non-smokers was consistently observed in all age groups and both sexes. Adjusting for potentially confounding factors like hypertension, obesity, and diabetes mellitus did not explain the observed decline. Conclusions In the BSR, a significant decline of hospital admissions due to STEMIs in non-smokers was observed after the smoking ban in public areas came into force. No reduction of STEMI-related admissions was found in smokers. These results may be explained by the protection of non-smokers from passive smoking and the absence of such an effect in smokers by the dominant effect of active smoking.
Fast and Robust Design of Time-Optimal k-Space Trajectories in MRI

Many applications in MRI such as accelerated receive and transmit sequences require the synthesis of nonuniform 3-D gradient trajectories. Several methods have been proposed to design these gradient trajectories in a time-optimal manner, subject to hardware specific gradient magnitude and slew rate constraints. In this work a novel method is derived that designs time-optimal trajectories, solely based on a set of arbitrarily chosen control points in k-space. In particular, no path constraint is required for the k-space trajectory. It is shown that the above problem can be formulated as a constrained optimization problem. The fact that the objective function is derived in an analytic manner allows for designing time-optimal 3-D gradient trajectories within only few seconds without any significant numerical instabilities. The utilization of the shape of the trajectory-serving as a degree of freedom-results in significantly accelerated trajectories compared to current standard methods. This is proven in an extensive evaluation of the proposed method and in comparison with what can be considered the current Gold Standard method. The proposed Gradient Basis Function method provides significant benefits over current standard methods in terms of the duration of the trajectory (in average 9.2% acceleration), computation time (acceleration by at least 25% up to factors of 100), and robustness (no significant numerical instabilities).
Metallogeny, exploitation and environmental impact of the Mt. Amiata mercury ore district (Southern Tuscany, Italy)

The Mt. Amiata mining district (Southern Tuscany, Italy) is a world class Hg district, with a cumulate production of more than 100,000 tonnes of Hg, mostly occurring between 1870 and 1980. The Hg mineralization at Mt. Amiata is younger than 0.3 Ma, and is directly related to shallow hydrothermal systems similar to presentday geothermal fields of the region. There is likely a continuum of Hg deposition to present day, because Hg emission from geothermal power plants is on-going. In this sense, the Mt. Amiata deposits present some analogies with hot-spring type deposits of western USA, although an ore deposit model for the district has not been established. Specifically, the source of Hg remains highly speculative. The mineralizing hydrothermal fluids are of low temperature, and of essentially meteoric origin. Recent results by our research group indicate that, 30 years after mine closure, the environmental effects of Hg contamination related to mining are still recorded by the ecosystem, namely on waterways of the Paglia and Tiber River basins. In particular, the close spatial connection between the town of Abbadia San Salvatore, the Hg mine within its immediate neighborhood, and the drainage catchment of the Paglia River has an influence also on Hg speciation, transported mainly in the particulate form by the river system. The extent of Hg contamination has been identified at least 100 km from Abbadia San Salvatore along the Paglia-Tiber River system. Estimated annual Hg mass loads transported by the Paglia River to the Tiber River were about 11 kg yr-1. However, there is evidence that flood events may enhance Hg mobilization in the Paglia River basin, increasing Hg concentrations in stream sediment. The high methyl-Hg/Hg ratio in water in this area is an additional factor of great concern due to the potential harmful effects on human and wildlife health. Results of our studies indicate that the Mt. Amiata region is at present a source of Hg of remarkable environmental concern at the local, regional (Tiber River), and Mediterranean scales. Ongoing studies are aimed to a more detailed quantification of the Hg mass load input to the Mediterranean Sea, and to unravel the processes concerning Hg transport and fluid dynamics.
Using machine learning to improve information access

The explosion of on-line information has given rise to many query-based search engines (such as Alta Vista) and manually constructed topic hierarchies (such as Yahoo! ). But with the current growth rate in the amount of information, query results grow incomprehensibly large and manual classification in topic hierarchies creates an immense information bottleneck. Therefore, these tools are rapidly becoming inadequate for addressing users' information needs. In this dissertation, we address these problems with a system for topical information space navigation that combines the query-based and taxonomic approaches. Our system, named SONIA (Service for Organizing Networked Information Autonomously), is implemented as part of the Stanford Digital Libraries testbed. It enables the creation of dynamic hierarchical document categorizations based on the full-text of articles. Using probability theory as a formal foundation, we develop several Machine Learning methods to allow document collections to be automatically organized at a topical level. First, to generate such topical hierarchies, we employ a novel probabilistic clustering scheme that outperforms traditional methods used in both Information Retrieval and Probabilistic Reasoning. Furthermore, we develop methods for classifying new articles into such automatically generated, or existing manually generated, hierarchies. In contrast to standard classification approaches which do not make use of the taxonomic relations in a topic hierarchy, our method explicitly uses the existing hierarchical relationships between topics, leading to improvements in classification accuracy. Much of this improvement is derived from the fact that the classification decisions in such a hierarchy can be made by considering only the presence (or absence) of a small number of features (words) in each document. The choice of relevant words is made using a novel information theoretic algorithm for feature selection. Many of the components developed as part of SONIA are also general enough that they have been successfully applied to data mining problems in different domains than text. The integration of hierarchical clustering and classification will allow large amounts of information to be organized and presented to users in a individualized and comprehensible way. By alleviating the information bottleneck, we hope to help users with the problems of information access on the Internet.
A simulation tool for automated platooning in mixed highway scenarios

Automated platooning is one of the most challenging fields in the domain of ITS. Conceptually, platooning means creating clusters of vehicles which closely follow each other autonomously without action of the driver, neither for accelerating, nor for braking. This leads to several important benefits from substantially improved road throughput to increased safety. The control of such platoons depends on two components: First, radar is typically to be used to control the distance between the vehicles, and secondly, IVC helps managing the entire platoon allowing cars to join or to leave the group whenever necessary. Platooning systems have been mostly investigated in controlled environments such as dedicated highways with centralized management. However, platooning-enabled cars will be deployed gradually and might have to travel on highways together with other non-automated vehicles. We developed a combined traffic and network simulator for studying strategies and protocols needed for managing platoons in such mixed scenarios. We show the models needed and present first results using a simple IVC-based platoon management as a proof of concept.
Natjam: design and evaluation of eviction policies for supporting priorities and deadlines in mapreduce clusters

This paper presents Natjam, a system that supports arbitrary job priorities, hard real-time scheduling, and efficient preemption for Mapreduce clusters that are resource-constrained. Our contributions include: i) exploration and evaluation of smart eviction policies for jobs and for tasks, based on resource usage, task runtime, and job deadlines; and ii) a work-conserving task preemption mechanism for Mapreduce. We incorporated Natjam into the Hadoop YARN scheduler framework (in Hadoop 0.23). We present experiments from deployments on a test cluster, Emulab and a Yahoo! Inc. commercial cluster, using both synthetic workloads as well as Hadoop cluster traces from Yahoo! Our results reveal that Natjam incurs overheads as low as 7%, and is preferable to existing approaches.
Loss of the Plasma Membrane-Bound Protein Gas1p inSaccharomyces cerevisiae Results in the Release of β1,3-Glucan into the Medium and Induces a Compensation Mechanism To Ensure Cell Wall Integrity

ABSTRACT Deletion of GAS1/GGP1/CWH52 results in a lower β-glucan content of the cell wall and swollen, more spherical cells (L. Popolo, M. Vai, E. Gatti, S. Porello, P. Bonfante, R. Balestrini, and L. Alberghina, J. Bacteriol. 175:1879–1885, 1993; A. F. J. Ram, S. S. C. Brekelmans, L. J. W. M. Oehlen, and F. M. Klis, FEBS Lett. 358:165–170, 1995). We show here that gas1Δ cells release β1,3-glucan into the medium. Western analysis of the medium proteins with β1,3-glucan- and β1,6-glucan-specific antibodies showed further that at least some of the released β1,3-glucan was linked to protein as part of a β1,3-glucan–β1,6-glucan–protein complex. These data indicate that Gas1p might play a role in the retention of β1,3-glucan and/or β-glucosylated proteins. Interestingly, the defective incorporation of β1,3-glucan in the cell wall was accompanied by an increase in chitin and mannan content in the cell wall, an enhanced expression of cell wall protein 1 (Cwp1p), and an increase in β1,3-glucan synthase activity, probably caused by the induced expression of Fks2p. It is proposed that the cell wall weakening caused by the loss of Gas1p induces a set of compensatory reactions to ensure cell integrity.
Beyond the Routine Influenza Surveillance

Influenza surveillance systems have been developed to monitor antigenic changes in influenza viruses, guide the selection of annual influenza vaccine strains, and provide viral samples for vaccine production [1]. Subsequently, the need for epidemiological information has complemented virologic data collection. To adequately understand the burden and impact of influenza, morbidity- and mortality-related data are essential. Such data can be obtained from sentinel healthcare providers at outpatient clinics and emergency departments, influenza hospitalization surveillance networks, and health statistics offices for mortality surveillance [2]. The accumulation of annual surveillance data allows rapid assessment of influenza burden, and it may detect the beginning of a pandemic. These data will provide timely information for public health-related decision-making. For the adequate measurement and comparison of disease burden, standardization of surveillance data is critical. Influenza-like illness (ILI) and severe acute respiratory illness (SARI) are the most commonly used proxy respiratory syndrome indexes of influenza surveillance. ILI is generally intended for use in outpatient settings and the SARI, in hospital settings that provide inpatient treatment. SARI is used with the aim of capturing both cases of pneumonia and aggravation of chronic diseases such as asthma, chronic obstructive lung disease, or congestive heart failure. Influenza epidemiology can differ depending on various factors including region, ethnicity, proportions of age groups, and influenza vaccination rate.
RealReflect - Real-time Visualization of Complex Reflectance Behaviour in Virtual Protoyping

Conventional Virtual Reality (VR) is already being used in the design process for styling reviews on a daily basis, but until now only object shape can be assessed in a meaningful way, and neither the look and feel, nor the quality of surface materials can be adequately reproduced. Therefore, most interior design decisions in the automotive industry are still performed on expensive real prototypes. Apart from being costly and wasteful, this practice also significantly increases the time to market of the overall end products. The RealReflect project is an endeavor to increase the realism of VR technology to levels where it can be used for meaningful qualitative reviews of real objects. The technology developed in the project covers all stages of an advanced image synthesis process, ranging from the acquisition and further processing of reflectance data over texture synthesis and compression of the measurement data to high quality light simulations and real-time image-based rendering. The resulting improved quality especially provides a considerable benefit to those VR users groups - such as the automotive industry or architecture - who routinely have to make important design decisions about object appearance long before the actual product is first assembled. In this presentation, we will provide details both on the project’s goals and the results that were achieved by the various participants ‐ representing industry as well as research institutes ‐ of the RealReflect project already.
Nesfatin-1 stimulates renal sympathetic nerve activity in rats

Earlier examination reported that central injection of nesfatin-1 elevated blood pressure and suppressed food intake in conscious rats. In this study, we analyzed the effects of the intracerebroventricular injection of nesfatin-1 on the sympathetic nerve outflow to the kidney in urethane-anesthetized rats. An intracerebroventricular injection of nesfatin-1 significantly stimulated renal sympathetic nerve activity and blood pressure in a dose-dependent manner. Moreover, we examined the role of the melanocortin system on the sympathoexcitation caused by the nesfatin-1 injection. Pretreatment with the melanocortin-3/4 receptor antagonist, SHU9119, abolished the increase in nerve activity and blood pressure induced by nesfatin-1. Thus, the stimulating effects of nesfatin-1 administration on the sympathetic nerve activity of the kidney may depend on the central melanocortin system.
Historic Preservation and Development in Banjul, The Gambia

Abstract The city of Banjul and Gambia colony were established as part of the British abolition efforts on the West African coast in 1816. Unfortunately, the role of Banjul and Gambia in ending the trans-Atlantic slave trade is overshadowed by the current emphasis within the heritage tourism sector on the local dynamics of the slave trade. This, coupled with the continual expansion of port facilities within the capital city of Banjul, has led to the rapid disappearance of much of the nation’s colonial past. This article addresses the challenges and possibilities for cultural resource management as an aid to development and interpretation in Banjul and The Gambia.
Basement gabbro from the Lord Howe Rise

Abstract In 1975 a French expedition dredged a seamount on the Lord Howe Rise and recovered basalt with gabbro xenoliths. New analytical work indicates that the basalt is a strongly alkaline lava, similar to Neogene intraplate basalts that are widespread across Zealandia. The gabbro is a cumulate leucogabbro containing augite, plagioclase, titanomagnetite and, in some parts, rare olivine (now entirely pseudomorphed by clay). Whole rock and clinopyroxene element concentrations and ratios indicate that the gabbro is weakly alkaline to transitional in composition and is not petrologically related to the basalt. Attempts to date the gabbro by the Rb‐Sr method have been unsuccessful but clinopyroxene has an initial 87Sr/86Sr of c. 0.7036, that varies little with age. Whole rock and mineral chemistry, and Sr, Nd, and Pb isotopic ratios support an origin for the gabbro as part of an intraplate mafic pluton (of probable Late Cretaceous age), rather than as a continuation of the Devonian‐Cretaceous convergent margin Median‐New England Batholith.
Face evaluation : perceptual and neurophysiological responses to pro-social attributions

The pro-sociality of humans is manifested by the existence of cooperation in levels not common with any other species. Previous studies suggest that snap judgements of individuals are enough to determine if someone is a potential partner for cooperation. In addition to the often studied facial characteristics affecting cooperativeness and trustworthiness attribution (kin resemblance; attractiveness and emotional expression), the experimental work reported here examined the influence of head posture; gaze direction and skin colour on the attribution of trustworthiness and cooperation. A slightly tilted head (less than 3° downward) increased the perception of cooperativeness, especially for male and hostile looking faces. The importance of head tilt increased with decreased self-assessed dominance. Furthermore, even though some evidence that the effect of head posture is independent of gaze direction was found, gaze direction was also a strong indicator of cooperative intentions. Direct gaze and gaze slightly looking down (3°) were perceived as more cooperative than deviations of gaze outside this range (3° up or 6°9° down). Skin colour, a putative cue to current health status, was also found to impact on trustworthiness perception with a healthy skin colour increasing trustworthiness ratings. Additionally, as cooperative and trust decisions are vital for survival and social interactions, decisions based on facial appearance are made quickly and automatically as demonstrated by a trustworthiness modulation on an early face related component with 170 ms of exposure. Collectively, these findings suggest that facial characteristics employed to infer trust and cooperativeness help the observer to assess the motives and intentions of the individuals and assist the choice of partners that will lead to increased benefits and reduced costs in collaborative actions. Such considerations fit well with the evolutionary theory of cooperation as reciprocated social exchange.