Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluation of Two Fast and Easy Methods for Pesticide Residue Analysis in Fatty Food Matrixes

Two rapid methods of sample preparation and analysis of fatty foods (e.g., milk, eggs, and avocado) were evaluated and compared for 32 pesticide residues representing a wide range of physicochemical properties. One method, dubbed the quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged, and safe (QuEChERS) method for pesticide residue analysis, entailed extraction of 15 g sample with 15 mL acetonitrile (MeCN) containing 1% acetic acid followed by addition of 6 g anhydrous magnesium sulfate and 1.5 g sodium acetate. After centrifugation, 1 mL of the buffered MeCN extract underwent a cleanup step (in a technique known as dispersive solid-phase extraction) using 50 mg each of C18 and primary secondary amine sorbents plus 150 mg MgSO4. The second method incorporated a form of matrix solid-phase dispersion (MSPD), in which 0.5 g sample plus 2 g C18 and 2 g anhydrous sodium sulfate was mixed in a mortar and pestle and added above a 2 g Florisil column on a vacuum manifold. Then, 5 ́ 2 mL MeCN was used to elute the pesticide analytes from the sample into a collection tube, and the extract was concentrated to 0.5 mL by evaporation. Extracts in both methods were analyzed concurrently by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry and liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry. The recoveries of semi-polar and polar pesticides were typically 100% in both methods (except that basic pesticides, such as thiabendazole and imazalil, were not recovered in the MSPD method), but recovery of nonpolar pesticides decreased as fat content of the sample increased. This trend was more pronounced in the QuEChERS method, in which case the most lipophilic analyte tested, hexachlorobenzene, gave 27 ± 1% recovery (n = 6) in avocado (15% fat) with a <10 ng/g limit of quantitation.
A case report of peritoneal tuberculosis with multiple miliary peritoneal deposits mimicking advanced ovarian carcinoma

Background: Peritoneal tuberculosis accounts 1-2% of all forms of tuberculosis. Peritoneal tuberculosis is an important differential diagnosis for ovarian cancer in women with ascites, adnexal mass and elevated cancer antigen 125 (CA125) levels. We report a case of a 32- year -old woman with multiple miliary peritoneal deposits mimicking advanced ovarian carcinoma. Case Presentation: A 32-year-old drug addicted woman presented with menometrorrhagia, fever and shivering, ascites and pelvis mass. Ultrasonography revealed a 53×65 mm cyst in left ovary and ascites. Multiple miliary peritoneal deposits were observed during laparatomy without any mass, histologic examination confirmed tuberculosis of uterus, tubes, omentum, liver and external surfaces of small intestine. Finally, the patient recovered with anti-tuberculosis treatment. Conclusion: These findings highlight considering tuberculosis in the differential diagnosis of any patients with adnexal mass, ascitis and elevated serum CA125 even with negative cytology and bacteriology test results.
Targeted Disruption of the JAK2/STAT3 Pathway in Combination with Systemic Administration of Paclitaxel Inhibits the Priming of Ovarian Cancer Stem Cells Leading to a Reduced Tumor Burden

Chemotherapy resistance associated with recurrent disease is the major cause of poor survival of ovarian cancer patients. We have recently demonstrated activation of the JAK2/STAT3 pathway and the enhancement of a cancer stem cell (CSC)-like phenotype in ovarian cancer cells treated in vitro with chemotherapeutic agents. To elucidate further these mechanisms in vivo, we used a two-tiered paclitaxel treatment approach in nude mice inoculated with ovarian cancer cells. In the first approach, we demonstrate that a single intraperitoneal administration of paclitaxel in mice 7 days after subcutaneous transplantation of the HEY ovarian cancer cell line resulted in a significant increase in the expression of CA125, Oct4, and CD117 in mice xenografts compared to control mice xenografts which did not receive paclitaxel. In the second approach, mice were administered once weekly with paclitaxel and/or a daily dose of the JAK2-specific inhibitor, CYT387, over 4 weeks. Mice receiving paclitaxel only demonstrated a significant decrease in tumor volume compared to control mice. At the molecular level, mouse tumors remaining after paclitaxel administration showed a significant increase in the expression of Oct4 and CD117 coinciding with a significant activation of the JAK2/STAT3 pathway compared to control tumors. The addition of CYT387 with paclitaxel resulted in the suppression of JAK2/STAT3 activation and abrogation of Oct4 and CD117 expression in mouse xenografts. This coincided with significantly smaller tumors in mice administered CYT387 in addition to paclitaxel, compared to the control group and the group of mice receiving paclitaxel only. These data suggest that the systemic administration of paclitaxel enhances Oct4- and CD117-associated CSC-like marker expression in surviving cancer cells in vivo, which can be suppressed by the addition of the JAK2-specific inhibitor CYT387, leading to a significantly smaller tumor burden. These novel findings have the potential for the development of CSC-targeted therapy to improve the treatment outcomes of ovarian cancer patients.
Nestin Reporter Transgene Labels Multiple Central Nervous System Precursor Cells

Embryonic neuroepithelia and adult subventricular zone (SVZ) stem and progenitor cells express nestin. We characterized a transgenic line that expresses enhanced green fluorescent protein (eGFP) specified to neural tissue by the second intronic enhancer of the nestin promoter that had several novel features. During embryogenesis, the dorsal telencephalon contained many and the ventral telencephalon few eGFP+ cells. eGFP+ cells were found in postnatal and adult neurogenic regions. eGFP+ cells in the SVZ expressed multiple phenotype markers, glial fibrillary acidic protein, Dlx, and neuroblast-specific molecules suggesting the transgene is expressed through the lineage. eGFP+ cell numbers increased in the SVZ after cortical injury, suggesting this line will be useful in probing postinjury neurogenesis. In non-neurogenic regions, eGFP was strongly expressed in oligodendrocyte progenitors, but not in astrocytes, even when they were reactive. This eGFP+ mouse will facilitate studies of proliferative neuroepithelia and adult neurogenesis, as well as of parenchymal oligodendrocytes.
Moral Expression in 6- to 7-year-old Children's Stories in Sweden, Hungary and China

The present study examines ethical concepts in children's stories. The subject group of 94 children was derived from three different cultures: Swedish (44 children), Hungarian (18 children) and Chinese (32 children), who were all 6-7 years old. The assembled material consisted of transcribed stories (interviews). The task given to each child was that he or she should make up their own story about a dog. Karlsson's EPP method was used for the analysis of the material. The results consisted of 12 qualitative categories of ethical meaning which gave a vision of the good life formulated briefly as: home: safe and good but also boring, whereas out-in-the world: exciting and enticing but also threatening and dangerous, then home again, to security. Deeper, underlying psychological consequences are discussed from the standpoint of prevailing notions.
Resident Selection for a Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Program: Feasibility and Reliability of the Multiple Mini-Interview

The development of a process to select the best residents for training programs is challenging. There is a paucity of literature to support the implementation of an evidence-based approach or even best practice for program directors and selection committees. Although assessment of traditional academic markers such as clerkship grades and licensing examination scores can be helpful, these measures typically fail to capture performance in the noncognitive domains of medicine. In the specialty of physical medicine and rehabilitation, physician competencies such as communication, health advocacy, and managerial and collaborative skills are of particular importance, but these are often difficult to evaluate in admission interviews. Recent research on admission processes for medical schools has demonstrated reliability and validity of the "multiple mini-interview. " The objective of our project was to develop and evaluate the multiple mini-interview for a physical medicine and rehabilitation residency training program, with a focus on assessment of the noncognitive physician competencies. We found that the process was feasible, time efficient, and cost-efficient and that there was good interrater reliability. The multiple mini-interview may be applied to other physical medicine and rehabilitation residency programs. Further research is needed to confirm reliability and determine validity.
Dietary divercin modifies gastrointestinal microbiota and improves growth performance in broiler chickens

1. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of dietary administration of a divercin AS7 liquid preparation on broiler chicken performance, nutrient digestibility, counts of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) and coliform bacteria, as well as on the microbial activity in the gastrointestinal tract (GIT) as expressed by digesta pH and concentrations of short-chain fatty acids and lactic acid. 2. A total of 450 1-d-old male Ross 308 chickens were randomly distributed to three dietary treatments, with 15 pens per treatment and 10 birds per pen. The dietary treatments consisted of a positive control (PC) supplemented with 60 mg/kg salinomycin, a negative control (NC) without any additives, and the divercin (DIV) supplemented diet containing 0·2 mL/kg of the liquid divercin AS7 preparation. 3. The dietary divercin AS7 supplementation significantly increased body weight gain at 35 d compared to the NC group. Moreover, the pH of crop contents was higher and that of caecal contents lower in birds fed on the divercin supplemented diets. 4. Significantly lower counts of LAB were observed in the crops and caeca of the birds treated with divercin. Further, the divercin supplementation decreased lactic and succinic acid concentrations in the crop and ileum. 5. The present study demonstrates that the use of divercin supplemented diets can influence composition and activity of the microbiota in the broiler chicken GIT even in the lower parts that should otherwise not be targeted due to the peptide structure of the bacteriocin.
Mechanism Design with Bilateral Contracting 1

We consider a setting where a principal cannot commit to a centralized grand-mechanism with all his agents but can only sign bilateral contracts with each of them. The principal can manipulate what he learns by contracting with an agent when dealing with others. Introducing this possibility for manipulations simplifies significantly optimal mechanisms. It restores both the continuity of the principal’s and the agents’ payoffs and that of the optimal mechanism with respect to the information structure. Still, correlation remains useful to better extract the agents’ information rent. A Revelation Principle with bilateral contracting characterizes the set of implementable allocations by means of simple non-manipulability constraints. Equipped with this tool, we derive optimal non-manipulable mechanisms in various environments.
Modelling software process variability: an empirical study

Variability in software process models justifies tailoring them to meet the specific goals and characteristics of organisations and projects. Existing process modelling notations typically do not have constructs which are appropriate for expressing process variability. To fill this gap, the authors have extended software process engineering metamodel (SPEM) to vSPEM, by adding new variability constructs (such as variants and variation points). This article presents an empirical validation to check whether the variability constructs supported through vSPEM are more appropriate for modelling variant-rich processes than SPEM, in terms of understandability of the notation, as well as of their variability mechanisms. The results indicate that the vSPEM variability mechanisms understandability is a 126.99% higher than for SPEM. On the other hand, process diagram understandability is a 34.87% lower with vSPEM than with SPEM. If we compare the relative results obtained with regard to understandability of diagrams and understandability of variation mechanisms of both vSPEM and SPEM, the enhancement just mentioned is 3.64 times that fall. The results indicate accepting that a slight decrease in understandability of the diagrams might lead to a large increase in understandability when using variability mechanisms of vSPEM.
Benefits of syllabic input compression for users of cochlear implants.

Ten users of multielectrode cochlear implants participated in an evaluation of the perceptual effects of input-signal compression. A syllabic compressor was introduced into the microphone circuit of Spectra-22 or SPrint sound processors. The post-compression gain was adjusted to provide similar loudness for speech at an average level of 65 dBA with compression either enabled or disabled. Sentence recognition was measured at three levels. Averaged across all listeners, statistically significant score increases were obtained at each level with compression enabled (45 dBA: 19.6 percentage points, p < .0001; 55 dBA: 16.6 percentage points, p < .0001; 70 dBA: 3.1 percentage points, p = .031). A test of speech intelligibility in noise showed no significant effect of compression. Generally, participants in the trial reported improved perception of low-level sounds with compression, although a few disliked the increased loudness of some background noises. Some participants suggested that the ability to enable or disable compression with a manual switch would be helpful. Overall, the results show that input compression can improve the performance of these sound processors for users of cochlear implants, especially when listening to speech at low levels.
Shared Decision Making and Behavioral Support Interventions for People With Severe Mental Illness and Tobacco Dependence

Objective: People with severe mental illness (e.g., schizophrenia and severe mood disorders) are more likely to smoke tobacco and less likely to quit than the general population. Current recommendations for treatment combine evidence-based medications and behavioral interventions tailored to each individual's needs. One way to individualize treatment is through shared decision making, in which the patient and the provider negotiate a research-based plan that accommodates the patient's preferences and values. This paper examines the current literature and discusses what role shared decision making might have in the treatment of tobacco dependence for people with severe mental illness. Methods: We conducted a search of Ovid/Medline using search terms (decision aid OR shared decision-making OR decision support) AND (smoking cessation OR tobacco dependence OR nicotine dependence). Results: Of the 202 reports found, three met the review criteria of assessing the impact of a decision aid or behavioral support intervention on user initiation of smoking cessation treatments. Two of the studies assessed directive behavioral support interventions intended to increase motivation to quit (including among smokers with severe mental illnesses) and one study assessed a neutral decision support intervention. Users of the decision aid increased quit behaviors, and users of the behavioral support interventions were more likely to initiate cessation treatments. Conclusions: Emerging research suggests that decision aids may increase quit behavior and use of smoking cessation treatment, even among those with severe mental illnesses. Further research is needed to assess whether decision aids increase use of shared decision making in tobacco cessation treatment.
Statistical estimation of higher-order spectral densities by means of general tapering

Given a realization on a finite interval of a continuous-time stationary process, we construct estimators for higher order spectral densities. Tapering and shift-in-time methods are used to build estimators which are asymptotically unbiased and consistent for all admissible values of the argument. Asymptotic results for the fourth-order densities are given. Detailed attention is paid to the nth order case.
Genetic Influences on Alcohol Consumption Patterns and Problem Drinking : Results from the Australian NH & MRC TWin Panel Follow-up Surveya

The role of genetic factors in the etiology of alcoholism, particularly alcoholism in women, remains controversial. Findings consistent with an important genetic influence in males on alcoholism risk, or other measures of alcohol problems, have come from studies of adoptees, 1-4 half-siblings,S and monozygotic and dizygotic twin pairs.6-13 Negative findings or findings suggesting at most a modest genetic contribution to male alcoholism risk have emerged from three adoption samples14 (see also Cadoret, this volume) and three twin samples.l 5--17 Whilst the majority of these studies supports a genetic contribution to male alcoholism risk, the extent to which inconsistencies between studies yielding positive and negative results can be ex_plained by differences in sociocultural environment, differences in assessment procedure (e.g., reliance on official records of hospitalization or temperance board contact versus medical records versus self-report questionnaire versus structured psychiatric interviews), differences in sample ascertainment procedure (epidemiologic sampling versus ascertainment through probands identified through treatment facilities or official records), or merely differences in sample size and consequent statistical power remains uncertain. For alcoholism in females, findings have been even less consistent than those in males. An early consensus emerged that genetic factors were less important in females than in males, supported by the relatively weak evidence for a genetic influence on female alcoholism risk both from adoption studies18•19 and from twin studies.9-11 A recent interview study of an epidemiologic sample of young adult female twin pairs, however, yielded heritability estimates, varying as a function of narrowness or breadth of diagnostic criteria, in the range of 50-60%. 20 A mailed questionnaire assessment of problem drinking by an older, predominantly female, twin panel, likewise found evidence for substantial genetic influence in females. 13•21 Once again, there are many possible reasons for these inconsistencies; however, findings indicating a substantial heritability in females have been restricted to those studies which used an epidemiologic sampling strategy, rather than identifying alcoholic probands through treatment facilities or official records.
BCL: : Contact-Low Confidence Fold Recognition Hits Boost Protein Contact Prediction and De Novo Structure Determination

Knowledge of all residue-residue contacts within a protein allows determination of the protein fold. Accurate prediction of even a subset of long-range contacts (contacts between amino acids far apart in sequence) can be instrumental for determining tertiary structure. Here we present BCL::Contact, a novel contact prediction method that utilizes artificial neural networks (ANNs) and specializes in the prediction of medium to long-range contacts. BCL::Contact comes in two modes: sequence-based and structure-based. The sequence-based mode uses only sequence information and has individual ANNs specialized for helix-helix, helix-strand, strand-helix, strand-strand, and sheet-sheet contacts. The structure-based mode combines results from 32-fold recognition methods with sequence information to a consensus prediction. The two methods were presented in the 6(th) and 7(th) Critical Assessment of Techniques for Protein Structure Prediction (CASP) experiments. The present work focuses on elucidating the impact of fold recognition results onto contact prediction via a direct comparison of both methods on a joined benchmark set of proteins. The sequence-based mode predicted contacts with 42% accuracy (7% false positive rate), while the structure-based mode achieved 45% accuracy (2% false positive rate). Predictions by both modes of BCL::Contact were supplied as input to the protein tertiary structure prediction program Rosetta for a benchmark of 17 proteins with no close sequence homologs in the protein data bank (PDB). Rosetta created higher accuracy models, signified by an improvement of 1.3 A on average root mean square deviation (RMSD), when driven by the predicted contacts. Further, filtering Rosetta models by agreement with the predicted contacts enriches for native-like fold topologies.
USING TRI-LEXICAL DEPENDENCIES IN LFG PARSE DISAMBIGUATION

In this paper we describe experiments where we automatically extract large lists of tri-lexical dependencies. We investigate how effective they are in PP attachment disambiguation by integrating them into a log-linear model for parse disambiguation. We show that we achieve a statistically significant improvement in parse accuracy with the new model that incorporates the trilexical dependencies.
Place-related identity, texts, and transcultural meanings

The spatial turn has been marked by increasing interest in conceptions of space and place in diverse areas of research. However, the important links between place and identity have received less attention, particularly in educational research. This paper reports an 18-month research project that aimed to develop a theory of place-related identity through the textual transactions of reading and writing. The research was an in-depth qualitative study in two phases: the first phase involved the development of an interdisciplinary theory of place-related identity, which was ‘tested’ in a second empirical phase. Two contrasting primary school classes were the site for the research that included the development of a unit of work, inspired by the book My place, as a vehicle for exploring place-related identity. The data were interviews, classroom observations and outcomes from pupils’ work. The construct of transcultural meanings, established from the analytic categories of localising identity, othering identity and identity as belonging, was identified as a defining phenomenon of place-related identity. The conclusions offer reflections on the development of our initial theory as a result of the empirical work, and the implications for practice and future research.
Two‐dimensional spectroscopy. Application to nuclear magnetic resonance

The possibilities for the extension of spectroscopy to two dimensions are discussed. Applications to nuclear magnetic resonance are described. The basic theory of two‐dimensional spectroscopy is developed. Numerous possible applications are mentioned and some of them treated in detail, including the elucidation of energy level diagrams, the observation of multiple quantum transitions, and the recording of high‐resolution spectra in inhomogenous magnetic fields. Experimental results are presented for some simple spin systems.