Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of Ursodeoxycholic Acid on Indirect Hyperbilirubinemia in Neonates Treated With Phototherapy

Background: Hyperbilirubinemia is a common neonatal problem. The present study aimed to investigate the effect of ursodeoxycholic acid in reducing indirect hyperbilirubinemia of infants under phototherapy. Methods: This double-blind randomized clinical trial was conducted on neonates with jaundice, who had received phototherapy in the hospitals affiliated with the Shiraz University of Medical Sciences in 2013. A total of 80 neonates were enrolled in the study and were randomly divided into 2 groups. The intervention group (n = 40) with indirect hyperbilirubinemia received 10 mg · kg−1 · day−1 divided every 12 hours Ursobil (capsule 300 mg) in addition to phototherapy, whereas the control group (n = 40) received only phototherapy. Total bilirubin levels were measured every 12 hours until reaching <10 mg/dL, and then phototherapy was disrupted. The duration of phototherapy was measured. The 2 groups were compared regarding total bilirubin levels at different time points and duration of phototherapy using the generalized estimating equation (GEE) test. Results: The mean of total bilirubin in the intervention group was 12 ± 1.6, 10 ± 1.1, and 9.8 ± 0.2 mg/dL 12, 24, and 48 hours after the beginning of phototherapy, respectively. On the contrary, these measures were 14.4 ± 1.3, 12.5 ± 1.4, and 10.1 ± 1.1 mg/dL in the control group, respectively, (P < 0.05). The mean time required for phototherapy to decrease the bilirubin level to <10 mg/dL was 15.5 ± 6 and 44.6 ± 13.3 hours in the case and the control group, respectively, (P = 0.001). Conclusions: Ursodeoxycholic acid had additive effect with phototherapy in neonates with indirect hyperbilirubinemia. This drug also reduced the time period needed for phototherapy and, consequently, decreased the hospitalization period.
FaST Sliders: Integrating Marking Menus and the Adjustment

We propose a technique, called FaST Sliders, for selecting and adjusting continuous values using a fast, transient interaction much like pop-up menus. FaST Sliders combine marking menus and graphical sliders in a design that allows operation with quick ballistic movements for selection and coarse adjustment. Furthermore, additional controls can be displayed within the same interaction, for fine adjustments or other functions. We describe the design of FaST Sliders and a user study comparing FaST Sliders to other transient techniques. The results of our user study indicate that FaST Sliders hold potential. We observed that users found FaST Slider easy to learn and made use of and preferred its affordances for ballistic movement and additional controls. A sample program demonstrating our technique can be downloaded at http://www.dgp. toronto.edu/~mjmcguff/research/FaSTSlider/
Linear-time Reductions of Resolution Proofs ( full version )

DPLL-based SAT solvers progress by implicitly applying binary resolution. The resolution proofs that they generate are used, after the SAT solver’s run has terminated, for various purposes. Most notable uses in formal verification are: extracting an unsatisfiable core, extracting an interpolant, and detecting clauses that can be reused in an incremental satisfiability setting (the latter uses the proof only implicitly, during the run of the SAT solver). Making the resolution proof smaller can benefit all of these goals: it can lead to smaller cores, smaller interpolants, and smaller clauses that are propagated to the next SAT instance in an incremental setting. We suggest two methods that are linear in the size of the proof for doing so. Our first technique, called Recycle-Units, uses each learned constant (unit clause) (x) for simplifying resolution steps in which x was the pivot, prior to when it was learned. Our second technique, called Recycle-Pivots, simplifies proofs in which there are several nodes in the resolution graph, one of which dominates the others, that correspond to the same pivot. Our experiments with industrial instances show that these simplifications reduce the core by ≈ 5% and the proof by ≈ 13%. It reduces the core less than competing methods such as run-till-fix, but whereas our algorithms are linear in the size of the proof, the latter and other competing techniques are all exponential as they are based on SAT runs. If we consider the size of the proof graph as being polynomial in the number of variables (it is not necessarily the case in general), this gives our method an exponential time reduction comparing to existing tools for small core extraction. Our experiments show that this result is evident in practice more so for the second method: rarely it takes more than a few seconds, even when competing tools time out, and hence it can be used as a cheap proof post-processing procedure.
Calcific Aortic Valve Stenosis: Methods, Models, and Mechanisms

Calcific aortic valve stenosis (CAVS) is a major health problem facing aging societies. The identification of osteoblast-like and osteoclast-like cells in human tissue has led to a major paradigm shift in the field. CAVS was thought to be a passive, degenerative process, whereas now the progression of calcification in CAVS is considered to be actively regulated. Mechanistic studies examining the contributions of true ectopic osteogenesis, nonosseous calcification, and ectopic osteoblast-like cells (that appear to function differently from skeletal osteoblasts) to valvular dysfunction have been facilitated by the development of mouse models of CAVS. Recent studies also suggest that valvular fibrosis, as well as calcification, may play an important role in restricting cusp movement, and CAVS may be more appropriately viewed as a fibrocalcific disease. High-resolution echocardiography and magnetic resonance imaging have emerged as useful tools for testing the efficacy of pharmacological and genetic interventions in vivo. Key studies in humans and animals are reviewed that have shaped current paradigms in the field of CAVS, and suggest promising future areas for research.
Development and laboratory‐scale testing of a fully automated online flow cytometer for drinking water analysis

Accurate and sensitive online detection tools would benefit both fundamental research and practical applications in aquatic microbiology. Here, we describe the development and testing of an online flow cytometer (FCM), with a specific use foreseen in the field of drinking water microbiology. The system incorporated fully automated sampling and fluorescent labeling of bacterial nucleic acids with analysis at 5‐min intervals for periods in excess of 24 h. The laboratory scale testing showed sensitive detection (< 5% error) of bacteria over a broad concentration range (1 × 103–1 × 106 cells mL−1) and particularly the ability to track both gradual changes and dramatic events in water samples. The system was tested with bacterial pure cultures as well as indigenous microbial communities from natural water samples. Moreover, we demonstrated the possibility of using either a single fluorescent dye (e.g., SYBR Green I) or a combination of two dyes (SYBR Green I and Propidium Iodide), thus broadening the application possibilities of the system. The online FCM approach described herein has considerable potential for routine and continuous monitoring of drinking water, optimization of specific drinking water processes such as biofiltration or disinfection, as well as aquatic microbiology research in general. © 2012 International Society for Advancement of Cytometry
Barriers to Diabetes Self-management Education Programs in Underserved Rural Arkansas: Implications for Program Evaluation

Background Diabetes prevalence has reached epidemic proportions. Diabetes self-management education (DSME) has been shown to improve preventive care practices and clinical outcomes. In this study, we discuss the barriers faced during the implementation of DSME programs in medically underserved rural areas of Arkansas. Context Arkansas is a rural state, with most southeastern counties experiencing a shortage of health care professionals. The Arkansas Diabetes Prevention and Control Program and its partners established 12 DSME programs in underserved counties with a high prevalence of diabetes. Methods DSME programs were delivered by a registered nurse and a dietitian who provided 10 to 13 hours of education to each program participant. Baseline, 6-month, and year-end data were collected on preventive care practices, such as daily blood glucose monitoring, foot examination, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, and glycosylated hemoglobin level, among the participants in newly established DSME programs. Consequences Of the 12 DSME programs established, 11 received American Diabetes Association recognition. The number of participants in the DSME programs increased 138% in 1 year, from 308 in February 2003 to 734 in March 2004. Preventive care practices improved: daily blood glucose monitoring increased from 56% to 67% of participants, and daily foot examinations increased from 63% to 84% of participants. Glycosylated hemoglobin decreased by an average of 0.5 units per participant who completed the program. However, many anticipated and a few unanticipated barriers during the implementation of the program could not be overcome because of the lack of an evaluation plan. Interpretation Although results point to potential benefits of preventive care practices among DSME participants, interpretation of findings was limited by sample size. Sample size limitations are traced to barriers to assessing program outcome. Program evaluation should be integrated into the planning phase to ensure adequate measures of program effectiveness.
Posttranscriptional Regulation of Splicing Factor SRSF1 and Its Role in Cancer Cell Biology

Over the past decade, alternative splicing has been progressively recognized as a major mechanism regulating gene expression patterns in different tissues and disease states through the generation of multiple mRNAs from the same gene transcript. This process requires the joining of selected exons or usage of different pairs of splice sites and is regulated by gene-specific combinations of RNA-binding proteins. One archetypical splicing regulator is SRSF1, for which we review the molecular mechanisms and posttranscriptional modifications involved in its life cycle. These include alternative splicing of SRSF1 itself, regulatory protein phosphorylation events, and the role of nuclear versus cytoplasmic SRSF1 localization. In addition, we resume current knowledge on deregulated SRSF1 expression in tumors and describe SRSF1-regulated alternative transcripts with functional consequences for cancer cell biology at different stages of tumor development.
Average Surface Roughness Measurement Using Photometric Stereo Method

This paper presents a technique for measuring surface roughness (Ra), using photometric stereo method. The method utilizes three or more images of the measured surface from the same view point, taken sequentially under different illumination conditions. The scenes captured by the camera were reconstructed by the least square method to obtain surface normal from surface topography. Three-dimensional surface textural patterns were recovered from those surfaces normal. The system was validated with three standard surface roughness specimens. The Ra calculated from the recovered surface was compared with the nominal value of the standard surface roughness. The best coefficient of the slant angles can also be determined through the linear regression. The experimental results indicate that the technique can be applied to well recover standard surface roughness.
The Paradox of Redistribution and Strategies of Equality: Welfare State Institutions, Inequality and Poverty in the Western Countries

The debates on how to reduce poverty and inequality have focused on two controversial questions. One is whether social policies should be targeted to low- income groups or universal; another whether benefits should be equal for all or earnings-related. Traditional arguments in favor of targeting and flat-rate benefits, focusing on the distribution of the money actually transferred, have neglected three policy-relevant considerations: 1. The size of redistributive budgets is not fixed but reflects the structure of welfare state institutions. 2. there tends to be a tradeoff between the degree of low-income targeting and the size of redistributive budgets. 3. Outcomes of market-based distribution are often even more unequal than those of earnings-related social insurance programs. We argue that social insurance institutions are of central importance for redistributive outcomes. using new data bases, our comparative analyses of the effects of different institutional types of welfare states on poverty and inequality indicate that institutional differences lead to unexpected outcomes and generate the paradox of redistribution: The more we target benefits at the poor and the more concerned we are with creating equality via equal public transfers to all, the less likely we are to reduce poverty and inequality.
Genetic studies of human diversity in East Asia

East Asia is one of the most important regions for studying evolution and genetic diversity of human populations. Recognizing the relevance of characterizing the genetic diversity and structure of East Asian populations for understanding their genetic history and designing and interpreting genetic studies of human diseases, in recent years researchers in China have made substantial efforts to collect samples and generate data especially for markers on Y chromosomes and mtDNA. The hallmark of these efforts is the discovery and confirmation of consistent distinction between northern and southern East Asian populations at genetic markers across the genome. With the confirmation of an African origin for East Asian populations and the observation of a dominating impact of the gene flow entering East Asia from the south in early human settlement, interpretation of the north–south division in this context poses the challenge to the field. Other areas of interest that have been studied include the gene flow between East Asia and its neighbouring regions (i.e. Central Asia, the Sub-continent, America and the Pacific Islands), the origin of Sino-Tibetan populations and expansion of the Chinese.
FEAST at Play: Feature ExtrAction using Score function Tensors

Feature learning forms the cornerstone for tackling challenging learning problems in domains such as speech, computer vision and natural language processing. In this paper, we build upon a novel framework called FEAST(Feature ExtrAction using Score function Tensors) which incorporates generative models for discriminative learning. FEAST considers a novel class of matrix and tensor-valued feature transform, which can be pre-trained using unlabeled samples. It uses an ecient algorithm for extracting discriminative information, given these pre-trained features and labeled samples for any related task. The class of features it adopts are based on higher-order score functions, which capture local variations in the probability density function of the input. We employ ecient spectral decomposition algorithms (on matrices and tensors) for extracting discriminative components. The advantage of employing tensor-valued features is that we can extract richer discriminative information in the form of overcomplete representations (where number of discriminative features is greater than input dimension). In this paper, we provide preliminary experiment results on real datasets.
Evolutionary trees can be learned in polynomial time in the two-state general Markov model

The j-State General Markov Model of evolution M. Steel (1994) is a stochastic model concerned with the evolution of strings over an alphabet of size j. In particular, the Two-State General Markov Model of evolution generalises the well-known Cavender-Farris-Neyman model of evolution by removing the symmetry restriction (which requires that the probability that a '0'' turns into a '1' along an edge is the same as the probability that a '1' turns into a '0' along the edge). M. Farach and S. Kannan (1996) showed how to PAC-learn Markov Evolutionary Trees in the Cavender-Farris-Neyman model provided that the target tree satisfies the additional restriction that all pairs of leaves have a sufficiently high probability of being the same. We show how to remove both restrictions and thereby obtain the first polynomial-time PAC-learning algorithm (in the sense of Kearns et al.) for the general class of Two-State Markov Evolutionary Trees.
A new species of Acartia (Copepoda, Calanoida) from the Yellow Sea

A new species (Acartia hongi) of Acartia (family Acartiidae) predominating in the Korean coastal waters of the Yellow Sea is described. This species closely resembles Acartia bifilosa, from which it can be easily distinguished by the co-occurrence of the following morphological characters: the absence of rostral filaments in both genders; the terminal spine on the female fifth leg toothed only on the inner side; the first exopodal segment of the male right fifth leg with a long seta; the distal segment of the male left fifth leg with a rod-like appendage. Its distribution was discussed in compari- son with two sibling species, Acartia omorii and Acartia hudsonica.
Reaction–diffusion approach to nanostructure formation during thin-film deposition

It is shown that coverage evolution during atomic deposition on a substrate may be described, on mesoscopic scales, by dynamic models of the reaction–diffusion type. Such models combine reaction terms representing adsorption–desorption and chemical processes and nonlinear diffusion terms which are of the Cahn-Hilliard type. This combination may lead, below a critical temperature, to the instability of uniform deposited layers. This instability leads to the formation of nanostructures which correspond to regular spatial variations in substrate coverage. Patterns’ wavelengths and symmetries are selected by the dynamics and not by variational arguments. For increasing coverage, one should observe, in layers with isotropic atomic diffusion, a succession of structures going from hexagonal arrays of high-coverage dots, to stripes and finally to hexagonal arrays of low-coverage dots. For anisotropic diffusion, stripes perpendicular to the high-mobility direction should be selected. The relevance of this approach to the study of deposited Al, Ti and TiN monolayers is discussed.
Generation of Highly Homogeneous Strains of Zebrafish Through Full Sib-Pair Mating

Genetically homogeneous populations, such as inbred strains, are powerful experimental tools that are ideally suited for studying immunology, cancer, and genetics of complex traits. The zebrafish, Danio rerio, has been underutilized in these research areas because homogeneous strains of experimental fish have not been available in tractable condition. Here, we attempted to inbreed two zebrafish wild-type strains, Tübingen and India, through full sib-pair mating. Although the inbred Tübingen strain failed to thrive and was lost after 13 generations, an inbred India strain (IM) has been maintained successfully. The IM strain has endured 16 generations of inbreeding and has maintained a healthy condition. Two additional strains, IM12m and IM14m, were established as closed colonies from the branches of the IM strain. Genotype analyses using genetic markers revealed a dramatic decrease in polymorphisms (62% dropped to 5%) in both IM (generation 14) and the two closed colonies. This indicates a high level of homogeneity in these strains. Furthermore, scale transplantations between individuals within each strain were successful. These data suggest that extremely homogeneous zebrafish strains have been established, thereby creating a valuable resource for practical application.
Local sentences and Mahlo cardinals

Local sentences were introduced by Ressayre in [6] who proved certain remarkable stretching theorems establishing the equivalence between the existence of finite models for these sentences and the existence of some infinite well ordered models. Two of these stretching theorems were only proved under certain large cardinal axioms but the question of their exact (consistency) strength was left open in [4]. Here we solve this problem, using a combinatorial result of J. H. Schmerl [7]. In fact, we show that the stretching principles are equivalent to the existence of n ‐Mahlo cardinals for appropriate integers n. This is done by proving first that for every integer n, there is a local sentence φn having well ordered models of order type τ, for every infinite ordinal τ > ω which is not an n ‐Mahlo cardinal. (© 2007 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)
Mast cell-dependent neutrophil and mononuclear cell recruitment in immunoglobulin E-induced gastric reactions in mice.

BACKGROUND & AIMS Immunoglobulin (Ig) E-dependent reactions elicit an immediate response and can also result in a late-phase reaction that is characterized by the infiltration of leukocytes. This study assessed whether IgE-dependent late-phase responses can be elicited in the stomach wall of mice and examined the role of mast cells in this reaction. METHODS IgE-dependent gastric inflammation was elicited in genetically mast cell-deficient KitW/KitW-v mice, the congenic normal (+/+) mice, and mast cell-deficient KitW/KitW-v mice that had undergone local and selective reconstitution of gastric mast cell populations. RESULTS IgE-dependent gastric reactions were associated with mast cell degranulation and the infiltration of both neutrophils and mononuclear cells in normal mice, but no significant leukocyte infiltration was observed in mast cell-deficient KitW/KitW-v mice. By contrast, in mast cell-reconstituted KitW/KitW-v mice, IgE-dependent reactions were associated with the infiltration of neutrophils and mononuclear cells. CONCLUSIONS These results show that late-phase reactions can occur during IgE-dependent gastric inflammation in the mouse and that the infiltration of both neutrophils and mononuclear cells that are observed during this reaction are mast cell dependent.
Evaluation of the Leaching Behavior of Hexavalent Chromium from Malaysian Electric Arc Furnace Steel Slag

This study investigates the leaching behavior of hexavalent chromium (Cr (VI)) from both industrial electric arc furnace steel slag and steel slag modified with up to 2% wt Cr2O3. The study was performed with European standard batch leaching test for 15 days and the lixiviant used were alkaline, de-ionized and rain water. The experimental work was also complimented with slag characterization using XRF, XRD and SEM/EDX analysis. After 15 days, Cr (VI) was found to be highest in rain water (0.016 mg/L) and lowest in de-ionized water (0.002 mg/L). With more Cr2O3 in EAF slag, more Cr will leach out based on the 2% wt Cr2O3 addition. Besides the lixiviant used, slag stirring speed and liquid to solid ratio also affect the dissolution of Cr (VI). With up to 2 wt % Cr2O3 in EAF slag, Cr (VI) dissolution was still lower than the threshold of 0.1 mg/L set by USEPA for public water systems. The analysis also indicated that the relative amounts of soluble basic and acidic oxides in the slag will affect the dissolution of Cr (VI).