Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Upper Bound on the Global Optimum in Parameter Estimation

Learning graphical model parameters from incomplete data is a non-convex optimization problem. Iterative algorithms, such as Expectation Maximization (EM), can be used to get a local optimum solution. However, little is known about the quality of the learned local optimum, compared to the unknown global optimum. We exploit variables that are always observed in the dataset to get an upper bound on the global optimum which can give insight into the quality of the parameters learned by estimation algorithms.
Prevalence of osteoporosis in Thai men.

BACKGROUND Osteoporosis is a growing health problem not only in women but also in men. However, there is a scarcity of epidemiologic data to study osteoporosis in Thai men. OBJECTIVES To examine the bone mineral density (BMD) and to determine the prevalence of osteoporosis in Thai men. MATERIAL AND METHOD A total of 412 men (159 from Bangkok and 253 from Khon Kaen, respectively) averaging 51 +/- 16 years of age, were measured for BMD at the femoral neck and lumbar spine by dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (LUNAR Corporation, WI, USA). RESULTS The peak BMD was observed in men 20-29 years of age at both the femoral neck (mean +/- SD, 1.10 +/- 0.15 g/cm2) and lumbar spine (mean +/- SD, 1.17 +/- 0.13 g/cm2). The prevalence of osteoporosis in the entire group of subjects was 12.6, 4.6 and 3.9 per cent at the femoral neck, lumbar spine and both sites, respectively. The prevalence of osteoporosis increased with advancing age and was significantly higher at the femoral neck in urban men than rural men (18.2 vs 9.2 per cent, p < 0.05) but comparable at the lumbar spine (5.0 vs 4.3 per cent, p = 0.81). The correlation between femoral neck and lumbar spine BMDs was 0.53 (p < 0.001). In univariate analysis, increased age, lower weight and lesser height were each associated with lower femoral neck BMD, whereas only lower weight and lesser height were associated with lower lumbar spine BMD. However, when the three factors were entered simultaneously, only increased age and lower weight were significantly associated with lower femoral neck BMD and only lower weight had a significant association with lower lumbar spine BMD. CONCLUSION The present study demonstrated descriptive BMD data, normal BMD reference values for diagnosis and reported the prevalence of osteoporosis in Thai men.
Fostering constructivist communities of learners in the amalgamated multi‐discipline of social studies

This paper shows how the knowledge structures and traditions of the amalgamated multi‐discipline of social studies at once help and hinder the use of constructivist instructional models. I interpret the planning process of two ‘Fostering a Community of Learners’ units and examine how these two units are implemented by four teachers, given their domain‐specific knowledge and modes of thinking. The data suggest that the pragmatism of social studies, as well as the idea of multiple perspectives constituting social scientific and social studies knowledge, makes this field a prime candidate for constructivist modes of thinking and the design of expert and jigsaw sequences. But the weak relationship of the subject to referent disciplines and the pragmatic reliance on proven activities makes for weak conceptual synthesis in the teaching units.
Lengths of hamstrings and psoas muscles during crouch gait: Effects of femoral anteversion

Recent studies of muscle lengths measured by means of gait analysis data and musculoskeletal models have suggested that in many cases of crouch gait in patients with cerebral palsy, the hamstrings are of normal length and the psoas muscles are short. In these studies, however, muscle lengths were calculated by applying kinematic data from a child's joint to a normal adult model. Children with cerebral palsy and other disorders generally do not have normal bone architecture but instead have muscle attachment points and muscle paths altered by osseous deformities. In this study, we explored the consequences of using normal adult musculoskeletal models to calculate hamstring and psoas lengths for children with cerebral palsy. Specifically, for a group of subjects with cerebral palsy who walk with a crouch gait, we investigated the changes in muscle lengths that arise when a patient‐specific representation of clinically measured femoral anteversion was added to a model of normal musculoskeletal geometry. The calculation of psoas muscle length was found to be very sensitive to femoral anteversion, whereas the calculation of hamstrings length was found to be relatively insensitive to this osseous deformity.
Canonical Polyadic Decomposition: From 3-way to N-Way

Canonical Polyadic (or CANDECOMP/PARAFAC, CP) decompositions are widely applied to analyze high order data, i.e. N-way tensors. Existing CP decomposition methods use alternating least square (ALS) iterations and hence need to compute the inverse of matrices and unfold tensors frequently, which are very time consuming for large-scale data and when N is large. Fortunately, once at least one factor has been correctly estimated, all the remaining factors can be computed efficiently and uniquely by using a series of rank-one approximations. Motivated by this fact, to perform a full N-way CP decomposition, we run 3-way CP decompositions on a sub-tensor to estimate two factors first. Then the remaining factors are estimated via an efficient Khatri-Rao product recovering procedure. In this way the whole ALS iterations with respect to each mode are avoided and the efficiency can be significantly improved. Simulations show that, compared with ALS based CP decomposition methods, the proposed method is more efficient and is easier to escape from local solutions for high order tensors.
EFFECT OF INCUBATION TEMPERATURE ON BIOCHEMICAL TESTS IN THE GENERA PSEUDOMONAS AND ACHROMOBACTER

The influence of temperature on both the growth of microorganisms and the activity of their enzymes is well known, but its effect on the synthesis of different enzymes has not been extensively investigated. Gale (1940), in studies on decarboxylation of amino acids, observed that washed suspensions of Escherichia coli grown at 27 C were more active than those from cultures grown at 37 C. The loss by a pseudomonad culture of its ability to liquefy gelatin when the temperature was raised has been reported (Greene and Jezeski, 1954). Nashif and Nelson (1953) found little lipase activity in cultures of Pseudomonas fragi which were grown at 30 C even though high counts were obtained. Alford and Elliott (1960) have shown that elevated temperatures inhibit the production of lipase rather than its activity since the enzyme has its optimal activity around 45 C. Stuart et al. (1942) found that many coliforms grew in the Eijkman test at 45.5 C without acid or gas production, and Tittsler (1931) found that temperatures above 34 C inhibited H2S production by Salmonella pullorum. In spite of these indications of a temperature effect on the synthesis of enzyme systems, the usual recommendation for incubation of routine tests for the identification of bacteria is that they be held at or near their optimal temperature (SAB, 1957). This temperature is usually defined as the one at which most rapid growth occurs (Oginsky and Umbreit, 1959). The recent development of quicker methods for the identification of bacterial cultures (Smith and Goodner, 1958), which depend upon rapid growth for their maximal usefulness, emphasizes the need for more detailed information on the effect of temperature on biochemical activity. The work reported here indicates that with several biochemical tests a false negative reaction may occur at optimal incubation temperatures. MATERIALS AND METHODS
Endocrine responses to insulin hypoglycaemia in the young calf.

1. Variations in the output of glucocorticoids and catecholamines from the right adrenal gland, in response to insulin hypoglycaemia, have been investigated in calves 2‐5 weeks after birth. These have been correlated with changes in the concentration of glucocorticoids and glucagon in arterial plasma. 2. Moderate hypoglycaemia for a limited period (0–1 u. insulin/kg), elicited a prompt increase in steroid output from the adrenal gland followed by a significant rise in plasma glucagon concentration. By comparison, changes in both catecholamine output and peripheral plasma glucocorticoid concentrations were found to be trivial in this group of animals. 3. Administration of a larger dose of insulin (0–5 u./kg) produced a more substantial fall in plasma glucose concentration followed by spontaneous recovery within 2‐3 hr. This stimulus elicited the release of greater amounts of both cortisol and corticosterone, followed by a significant increase both in the output of adrenaline and in plasma glucagon concentration. Increase in steroid output was accompanied by an increase in adrenal blood flow and was associated with elevated concentrations of both steroids in arterial plasma. 4. The adrenal cortical response and associated changes in plasma steroid concentration were found to be transient even in response to persistent and intense hypoglycaemia (4 u. insulin/kg). The increase in plasma glucagon concentration in this group of animals was not significantly greater than that produced by smaller doses of insulin. However, substantial amounts of adrenaline (78 plus or minus 14 ng. kg‐minus 1 min‐minus 1; maximum; n equals 9) together with a little noradrenaline (10 plus or minus 3 ng.kg‐minus 1 min‐minus 1; maximum; n equals 9) were released from the right adrenal gland under these conditions. 5. Changes in adrenal blood flow could be related to adrenal glucocorticoid output in calves given 0–1 or 0–5 u. insulin/kg. In animals given the largest dose of insulin adrenal blood flow was found to increase coincidentally with rising steroid output but this hyperaemia then persisted after steroid output had subsided to values within the normal range. 6. Calves given the largest dose of insulin (4–0 u./kg) invariably collapsed and convulsed after 2‐3 hr, but these symptoms could not be related to any particular endocrine response. No clinical signs of hypoglycaemia were observed in the other animals. 7. The results are discussed in relation to previous studies of adrenal function in this and other species.
Subclinical atherosclerosis: what it is, what it means and what we can do about it

Atherosclerosis is a chronic, progressive, inflammatory disease with a long asymptomatic phase. Disease progression can lead eventually to the occurrence of acute cardiovascular events such as myocardial infarction, unstable angina pectoris and sudden cardiac death. While the disease is still in a subclinical stage, however, the presence of atherosclerosis can be identified by several methods, including coronary angiography, intravascular ultrasonography, B‐mode ultrasonography, computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging. Based on the results of imaging studies, statin therapy can slow, halt or even reverse the progression of atherosclerotic disease, depending on the intensity of treatment. Whether to screen and treat patients for subclinical atherosclerosis remains controversial. Although atheromatous plaque burden reduction has not yet been definitively correlated with significant decreases in risk for acute coronary events in asymptomatic patients, statin therapy contributes significantly to the risk reduction observed in clinical trials in patients with and without overt coronary disease.
Diversity and convergence in the mechanisms establishing L/R asymmetry in metazoa

Differentiating left and right hand sides during embryogenesis represents a major event in body patterning. Left–Right (L/R) asymmetry in bilateria is essential for handed positioning, morphogenesis and ultimately the function of organs (including the brain), with defective L/R asymmetry leading to severe pathologies in human. How and when symmetry is initially broken during embryogenesis remains debated and is a major focus in the field. Work done over the past 20 years, in both vertebrate and invertebrate models, has revealed a number of distinct pathways and mechanisms important for establishing L/R asymmetry and for spreading it to tissues and organs. In this review, we summarize our current knowledge and discuss the diversity of L/R patterning from cells to organs during evolution.
Graph Signatures for Evaluating Network Models

Complex networks are finding increasing use in many scientific fields as a data representation. They are used to describe social networks, power grids, transportation networks, food webs and protein interactions in organisms, for example. A number of network models have been proposed to describe and explain the structure of these networks. In this paper we explore the problem of determining how well these models fit to the data, by using graph descriptors and signatures to define graph similarity and then using a model sampling approach to assess model similarity. We compare well known descriptors such as heat kernel based methods with some new signatures and propose a new method of constructing a global signature. We evaluate the performance of these descriptors on the problem of modelling protein-protein interaction networks.
Acceptability of the use of iron cooking pots to reduce anaemia in developing countries

Abstract Objective: To evaluate acceptability, compliance and attitude towards the use of iron pots compared with aluminium pots, for cooking in a community that traditionaly did not use iron pots. Design: Randomised trial. Setting: Two rural Malawian villages. Subjects: Fifty-two households received iron pots and 61 aluminium pots. Results: Pot characteristics were assessed by a questionnaire after 3, 6, 11 and 20 weeks of use. Within households using iron pots there was a significant decrease in acceptability score with usage, from an initial value of 13.7 to 11.4 (range 1–20) (P = 0.01). Answers to questions concerning cooking characteristics showed that after 3 weeks' use the aluminium pot scored better, whereas after 20 weeks fewer answers differed between the iron and aluminium pot groups. Almost a third of the households planned to continue using iron pots daily after 20 weeks, although they had ready access to their former aluminium pot. The presence of a group of consistent pot users suggests that if households were convinced about daily use, then they were likely to maintain consistent use. Some householders considered that iron pots required less firewood for cooking than aluminium pots. The main problems related to lower acceptability were rusting and pot weight. About 25% of problems with iron pots were unrelated to their cast iron characteristics. Overall 23.4% of the households indicated they would buy an iron pot. Conclusions: The low acceptability of iron pots for cooking could limit their value as an intervention to control iron-deficiency anaemia. Design modifications and better instructions on pot use should improve acceptability. The study highlights the need to assess the acceptability of interventions in order to facilitate their adoption in traditional communities.
Performance Evaluation of Container-based Virtualization for High Performance Computing Environments

Virtualization technologies have evolved along with the development of computational environments. Virtualization offered needed features at that time such as isolation, accountability, resource allocation, resource fair sharing and so on. Novel processor technologies bring to commodity computers the possibility to emulate diverse environments where a wide range of computational scenarios can be run. Along with processors evolution, developers have implemented different virtualization mechanisms exhibiting enhanced performance from previous virtualized environments. Recently, operating system-based virtualization technologies captured the attention of communities abroad because their important improvements on performance area. In this paper, the features of three container-based operating systems virtualization tools (LXC, Docker and Singularity) are presented. LXC, Docker, Singularity and bare metal are put under test through a customized single node HPL-Benchmark and a MPI-based application for the multi node testbed. Also the disk I/O performance, Memory (RAM) performance, Network bandwidth and GPU performance are tested for the COS technologies vs bare metal. Preliminary results and conclusions around them are presented and discussed.
Antecedents to team member commitment from near and far: A comparison between collocated and virtual teams

Purpose – The paper has two primary purposes: the first is to determine antecedents to commitment to a work team; the second to compare how antecedents to commitment differ between collocated and virtual teams.Design/methodology/approach – Survey data were collected using 52 three‐member teams – 28 collocated teams and 24 virtual teams using graduate students from three countries.Findings – Results indicate that team work processes and member effort have a significant, positive relationship with trust in collocated teams, but results for virtual teams show that member efforts is not a significant predictor of trust. Comparing collocated teams and virtual teams, collocated teams had stronger relationships (compared to virtual teams) between member effort and trust, and between trust and normative commitment. Virtual teams had stronger relationships (compared to collocated teams) between work processes and trust, and between trust and affective commitment.Research limitations/implications – Additional studi.
Probiotics, prebiotics, synbiotics: ecological treatment for inflammatory bowel disease?

Ecological treatment may be beneficial in patients with ulcerative colitis A clinical study published previously in Gut suggests for the first time that an ecological treatment combining a prebiotic mixture of fructo-oligosaccharides (FOS) of different chain length with a Bifidobacterium longum (a synbiotic) could have therapeutic benefits in the distal colon of patients with acute ulcerative colitis.1 In this randomised double-blind pilot trial, a marked decrease in endoscopic lesions in the distal colon was observed in the ecological treatment group but not in the placebo group. The biological markers of inflammation in the mucosa, tumour necrosis factor α, interleukin (IL) 1-α and the human β-defensins 2, 3 and 4, decreased (ie, were ameliorated) in the group receiving the ecological treatment. This study will probably not convince most clinicians because of the low number of subjects, the use of concomittent treatments and the lack of histological inflammation score. However, pilot studies such as this one will hopefully bridge the expanding animal data and still limited human clinical research and help select products for powered randomised controlled trials. Many ecological treatments have now been shown to be effective in the treatment of experimental inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in rodents.2 The term probiotic defines “live microorganisms which when administered in adequate amounts confer a health benefit on the host”. Efficient probiotic strains have been found in different bacterial genera including bifidobacteria, …
Pain and the Use of Health Services among the Elderly

This study examined pain management strategies and the relationship of pain to the use of health services in a sample of community-resident Canadian elderly. Analyses with the Andersen-Newman framework of need, enabling and predisposing variables revealed that pain did not make an incremental contribution to explaining service use. Traditional measures of need for services accounted for the majority of explained variance in health service use. The substantial number of participants who were found to be coping with chronic, frequent pain relied on themselves as much as formal health services for dealing with their pain. The most common coping style for these pain sufferers was a combination of analgesics and accepting mild pain as part of daily life. This combination of medical intervention and attitudinal factors appears to make the coping process very manageable.
Effects of marmin isolated from Aegle marmelos Correa on L-histidine decarboxylase enzyme in RBL-2 H 3 cells

Marmin or (7-(6û,7û-dihydroxygeranyl-oxy) coumarin is a compound isolated from Aegle marmelos Correa. In the study, we investigated the effects of marmin on the L-histidine decarboxylase (HDC), a rate-limiting histamine synthesizing enzyme, in rat mast cell. The study was performed by using rat basophilic leukemia (RBL-2H3) cell line, a tumor analog of mast cells. Dinitrophenylated bovine serum albumin (DNP24-BSA), a specific antigen for monoclonal IgE antibody, and phorbol myristate acetate (PMA), a protein kinase C (PKC) activator, were used as inducers for histamine release from mast cell. In the present study, marmin (10 and 100 μM) inhibited the histamine release from RBL-2H3 cells induced by DNP24-BSA by 17.0 ± 5.0% and 94.6 ± 1.0%, respectively. Besides, the compound at a concentration of 100 μM inhibited the synthesis of histamine in RBL-2H3 cells induced by DNP24-BSA by 62.37 ± 2.19%. However, marmin did not influence mRNA expression of HDC enzyme in these experiments. It indicates that the inhibitory effect of marmin on the synthesis of histamine in RBL-2H3 cells is not related to mRNA transcription of HDC enzyme. However, it may involve in an inhibition process on the enzyme activity. The result of these studies may provide useful information in pharmaceutical science and an alternative anti-allergy drug.
Comparison of the properties of the E6 and E7 genes of low- and high-risk cutaneous papillomaviruses reveals strongly transforming and high Rb-binding activity for the E7 protein of the low-risk human papillomavirus type 1

A comparative analysis of different properties of the E6 and E7 proteins of high-risk and low-risk cutaneous papillomaviruses was performed. The corresponding genomic regions of human papillomavirus types 1 and 8 (HPV1 and HPV8) and of the cottontail rabbit papillomavirus (CRPV) were cloned into the eucaryotic expression vector pZipNeo-SV(X)-1 and into vectors for in vitro transcription and translation. With the help of these vectors, the individual proteins were investigated for their ability to transform C127 and NIH 3T3 rodent fibroblasts, bind the Rb protein in vitro, transactivate the adenovirus E2 promoter, and cooperate in the immortalization of primary human keratinocytes. Expression vectors for HPV16 E6 and E7 were used as a positive control. A highly transformed phenotype could be observed with rodent cell lines expressing HPV8 E6, HPV16 E6 and E7, and, surprisingly, HPV1 E7. In contrast, no transformation was detected with CRPV long E6 and HPV8 E7, whereas cells expressing HPV1 E6 and CRPV short E6 exhibited a weakly transformed phenotype. Although neither CRPV E6 nor CRPV E7 caused morphological transformation of C127 cells, CRPV E6 was able to induce anchorage-independent growth in both rodent cell lines, whereas CRPV E7 led to high cloning efficiencies only in NIH 3T3 cells. The in vitro Rb-binding affinities relative to that of HPV 16 E7 were 66% for HPV1 E7, 34% for HPV8 E7, and 11% for CRPV E7. In spite of its high Rb-binding affinity, HPV1 E7 did not trans activate the adenovirus E2 promoter, whereas HPV8 E7 and CRPV E7 showed low activities. Complementation studies in primary human keratinocytes revealed a weak immortalizing potential for HPV8 E7 and indicated a low degree of cooperativity between CRPV E7 and CRPV or HPV16 E6.