Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Measuring effectiveness of dietetic interventions in child obesity: a systematic review of randomized trials.

OBJECTIVES To assess the effectiveness of dietetic treatment for obese children and to report details of dietary interventions. DATA SOURCES English-language articles from 1975 to 2003 available from health and medical databases. STUDY SELECTION Randomized controlled trials with subjects younger than 18 years of age that included a dietary intervention in isolation or in combination with lifestyle modifications and/or psychological therapies. One person searched the databases; 2 people independently critically appraised the articles for methodological quality and then extracted data using standardized tools. DATA EXTRACTION Thirty-seven randomized controlled trials met the inclusion criteria; 17 contained sufficient information for a Forest plot of the standardized effects. Eight studies had a true control and were included in a meta-analysis. The random effects model was reported if the Q noncombinability chi(2) statistic was significant at the 10% level because it has low power as a strict test of homogeneity. DATA SYNTHESIS The 2 strongly qualified meta-analyses suggest that interventions that include a dietary treatment do achieve relative weight loss. Details of the dietary intervention or participant food intake are rarely described. CONCLUSIONS It is not possible to evaluate the effectiveness of dietary treatment for childhood obesity because of the lack of high-quality studies and the heterogeneity of designs, treatment combinations, outcome measures, and follow-up. There is an urgent need to improve the quality of studies in this area because childhood obesity poses major health risks for populations, yet there is limited evidence on which to base treatment strategies.
On a Multivariate Eigenvalue Problem � I Algebraic Theory and a Power Method

Multivariate eigenvalue problems for symmetric and positive de nite matrices arise from multivariate statistics theory where coe cients are to be determined so that the resulting linear combinations of sets of random variables are maximally correlated By using the method of Lagrange multipliers such an optimization problem can be reduced to the multivariate eigenvalue problem For over thirty years an iterative method proposed by Horst has been used for solving the multivariate eigenvalue problem Yet the theory of convergence has never been complete The number of solutions to the multivariate eigenvalue problem also remains unknown This paper contains two new results Using the degree theory we rst prove a closed form on the cardinality of solutions for the multivariate eigenvalue problem We then prove a convergence property of Horst s method by forming it as a generalization of the so called power method The discussion leads to new formulations of numerical methods Introduction Given a symmetric and positive de nite matrix A R n and a set P fn nmg of positive integers with Pm i ni n let A be partitioned into blocks
When the Herd is Smart: The Emergent Behavior of SA

In most parallel supercomputers, submitting a job for execution involves specifying how many processors are to be allocated to the job. When the job is moldable (i.e. there is a choice on how many processors the job uses), an application scheduler called SA can significantly improve job performance by automatically selecting how many processors to use [4] [7]. Since most jobs are moldable, this result has great impact to the current state of practice in supercomputer scheduling. However, the widespread use of SA can change the nature of workload processed by supercomputers. When many SAs are scheduling jobs on one supercomputer, the decision made by one SA affects the state of the system, therefore impacting other instances of SA. In this case, the global behavior of the system comes from the emergent behavior caused by all SAs. In particular, it is reasonable to expect the competition for resources to become tougher with multiple SAs, and this tough competition to decrease the performance improvement attained by each SA individually. This papers investigates this very issue, i.e. the emergent behavior of a supercomputer on which moldable jobs are scheduled by SA. We found that the increased competition indeed makes it harder for each individual instance of SA to improve job performance. Nevertheless, there are two other, less evident, emergent behaviors that override increased competition when the system experiences moderate to high load conditions. These other two emergent behaviors reduce (i) the occurrence of very high load conditions, and (ii) the wait time of jobs that arrive when the supercomputer is experiencing moderate to high load. As the result, in moderate to high load conditions, a single instance of SA benefits from the fact than other jobs are also using SA.
Expressive Spoken Language Development in Deaf Children with Cochlear Implants Who are Beginning Formal Education

Abstract This paper assesses the expressive spoken grammar skills of young deaf children using cochlear implants who are beginning formal education, compares it with that achieved by normally hearing children and considers possible implications for educational management. Spoken language grammar was assessed, three years after implantation, in 45 children with profound deafness who were implanted between ten and 36 months of age (mean age = 27 months), using the South Tyneside Assessment of Syntactic Structures (Armstrong and Ainley, 1983) which is based on the Language Assessment and Remediation Screening Procedure (Crystal et al., 1976). Of the children in this study aged between four and six years, 58 per cent (26) were at or above the expressive spoken language grammatical level of normally hearing three year olds after three years of consistent cochlear implant use: however, 42 per cent (19) had skills below this level. Aetiology of deafness, age at implantation, educational placement, mode of communication and presence of additional disorders did not have a statistically significant effect (accepted at p ≤ 0.05) on the development of expressive spoken grammar skills. While just over half of the group had acquired spoken language grammar skills equivalent to or above those of a normally hearing three year old, there remains a sizeable group who, after three years of cochlear implant use, had not attained this level. Spoken language grammar therefore remains an area of delay for many of the children in this group. All the children were attending school with hearing children whose language skills are likely to be in the normal range for four to six year olds. We therefore need to ensure that the ongoing educational management of these deaf children with implants addresses their spoken grammar delay in order that they can benefit more fully from formal education. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Classification of Brain Matters in MRI by Kernel Independent Component Analysis

An automatic segmentation system for MR imaging is necessary for studies and 3-dimensional visualization of anatomical structures in many clinical and research applications. Since conventional classification systems use a simple linear classifier, non-linear model is not taken into consideration. In this paper, we propose a new method based on kernel independent component analysis (KICA) for classification of phantom and clinical MR datasets. First, we extract kernel independent components from MR datasets by using KICA, and then the extracted components are used for classification of brain tissues. Since KICA, as a non-linear approach, can perform significant enhancement of brain MR datasets, the KICA-based classification method effectively classifies brain tissues and is computationally better than the conventional methods. The proposed method has been successfully applied to MR datasets and the classification performance has also been compared with conventional multi-spectral methods.
The importance for daily occupations of perceiving good health: Perceptions among women with rheumatic diseases

Abstract Objective: The purpose was to describe and characterize what women with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) perceive as important in considering the performance of daily occupations to perceive good health. Methods: By using a phenomenographic research approach with semi-structured interviews with nine women between the ages of 42 and 65 the core category “Being able to be as active as possible in daily occupations” emerged. Results: The women's repertoire of daily occupations had changed as the years had passed. To perceive good health the women expressed the importance of continuing to be active and to perform occupations as independently as possible despite their chronic rheumatic diseases. Conclusions: By adapting to their level of physical function and strength and by compensation with assistive devices, selecting adjusted environment, and by getting support from others, the women perceived good health. The results also suggested that training in different ways, medical treatment, and rheumatologic team care were related to increased performance of daily occupations and the perceptions of good health.
Role of glomerular filtration rate in controlling blood pressure early in diabetes.

Perhaps the most obvious, and least contentious, examples of hypertension caused by the kidneys are renal artery stenosis and diabetic nephropathy, because there are readily identifiable, physical limitations in the ability of the kidneys to excrete sodium in each case. The former is characterized by a global restriction in renal perfusion, and the latter is characterized more specifically by glomerular injury and reduced glomerular filtration rate (GFR), but in each case there must be an increase in arterial pressure to maintain salt and water balance.1–3 Thus, in long-standing diabetes, types 1 and 2, a progressive decline in GFR is matched by a reciprocal increase in arterial pressure, which enables maintenance of sodium balance and body fluid volume homeostasis at the expense of deleterious adverse effects of chronic hypertension.4 In this framework, decreased GFR in diabetic nephropathy is responsible for imparting a chronic sodium-retaining influence on the kidneys, and hypertension is the counterbalancing natriuretic influence required to maintain sodium balance and sustain life. It, therefore, becomes curious that the early stages of diabetes are characterized by increased GFR and sodium balance, yet blood pressure is normal rather than low. For sodium balance to be maintained at normal blood pressure in the face of the chronic natriuretic influence of elevated GFR, there must be a concurrent sodium-retaining influence. If not, then the natriuretic effect of increased GFR would act unopposed and result in the maintenance of sodium balance at a lower blood pressure, similar to the effect of a diuretic. However, the presence of an underlying salt-retaining influence has been difficult to realize conceptually because of the increase in absolute sodium excretion in diabetes and because normal blood pressure typically does not spur research interest. This review focuses on how sodium balance is maintained at the onset of diabetes with …
Unsupervised Decomposition of a Document into Authorial Components

We propose a novel unsupervised method for separating out distinct authorial components of a document. In particular, we show that, given a book artificially "munged" from two thematically similar biblical books, we can separate out the two constituent books almost perfectly. This allows us to automatically recapitulate many conclusions reached by Bible scholars over centuries of research. One of the key elements of our method is exploitation of differences in synonym choice by different authors.
Comparison of teicoplanin disk diffusion and broth microdilution methods against clinical isolates of Staphylococcus aureus and S. epidermidis

The CLSI M100-S19 document has recommended the disuse of vancomycin disks for staphylococci and informed that studies on the action of teicoplanin in disk-diffusion testing should be performed. We describe the comparison of two methods, disk diffusion and broth microdilution, for determining teicoplanin susceptibility in clinical isolates of staphylococci. Overall results showed an aggregation rate of 96.8%; Staphylococcus aureus showed total agreement while S. epidermidis showed 93.8% of agreement. According to these local results, disk diffusion can still be employed to teicoplanin susceptibility determination for staphylococci in our institution.
Site‐Specific Free Energy Changes in Proteins upon Ligand Binding by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance: Ca2+‐Displacement by Ln3+ in a Ca2+‐Binding Protein from Entamoeba histolytica

The study of protein–ligand interaction has been of a great interest in contemporary structural biology. The understanding of the nature of such interaction and determining the associated binding affinities are of utmost importance. Nuclear magnetic resonance has become a powerful tool in deriving information related to such interactions in proteins. Nuclear magnetic resonance data provide the site‐specific information even in the case of proteins having multiple‐binding sites and populations of respective species. In this communication, we set out to use such information to derive the associated microscopic binding constants.
Smooth Muscle Cell Changes During Flow-Related Remodeling of Rat Mesenteric Resistance Arteries

Abstract— To obtain information on the molecular and cellular mechanisms of flow-induced arterial remodeling, we analyzed the morphology and smooth muscle cell (SMC) characteristics in rat mesenteric resistance arteries after interventions that decreased and increased flow. Juvenile male Wistar Kyoto rats were subjected to surgery that, compared with control arteries, provided arteries with chronic low flow and chronic high flow. Low flow resulted in a decreased passive lumen diameter, hypotrophy of the artery wall, and both loss and decreased size of SMCs. Time course studies, with intervention length ranging from 2 to 32 days of altered blood flow, showed that the narrowing of the lumen diameter in low-flow arteries appeared within 2 days and that an early dedifferentiation of SMC phenotype was indicated by markedly reduced levels of desmin mRNA. High flow resulted in an increased passive lumen diameter and in hypertrophy of the artery wall. The hypertrophy resulted from SMC proliferation because SMC number, measured by the 3D-dissector technique, was increased and immunohistochemical assessment of proliferating cell nuclear antigen also showed an increase. The widening of high-flow arteries required 16 days to become established, at which time desmin mRNA was reduced. This time was also required to establish changed wall mass in both low-flow and high-flow arteries. Apoptotic cells detected by TdT-mediated dUTP-biotin nick end labeling staining were mainly located in the medial layer, and evaluation of DNA fragmentation indicated that increased apoptosis occurred in both low flow and high flow. This study shows for the first time direct evidence that reduced and elevated blood flow in resistance arteries produce, respectively, decrease and increase in SMC number, with dedifferentiation of the SMCs in both cases.
Electro-oculographic recording and scoring of smooth pursuit and saccadic eye tracking: a parametric study using monozygotic twins.

Following reports that psychiatric patients and their relatives produced deviant oculomotion, new procedural and quantitative methods were developed and applied in a parametric study of tracking proficiency in 32 monozygotic twin pairs tested twice. Subjects tracked a spot of light across an oscilloscope screen. The target was driven sinusoidally at various frequencies for smooth pursuit tracking and by a modified square wave generator for saccadic tracking. Also included were a smooth pursuit test requiring subjects to “monitor” the aperiodic appearance of a hole in the center of the oscillating target and a psychomotor test requiring subjects to manually center a dot in a moving circle. For pursuit tracking, the electro-oculogram (EOG) and target motion were fed to a computer programmed to calculate root-mean-square differences between EOG and target channels. The saccadic EOG was computer-analyzed by measuring movement latencies. Performance on the various tasks was analyzed with emphasis on the effects of the monitor requirement, which dramatically reduced tracking error. Measures of retest reliability and twin concordance suggested that observed individual differences in performance on these tasks represent stable traits.
From x100 to vectorwise: opportunities, challenges and things most researchers do not think about

In 2008 a group of researchers behind the X100 database kernel created Vectorwise: a spin-off which together with the Actian corporation (previously Ingres) worked on bringing this technology to the market. Today, Vectorwise is a popular product and one of the examples of conversion of a research prototype into successful commercial software. We describe here some of the interesting aspects of the work performed by the Vectorwise development team in the process, and discuss the opportunities and challenges resulting from the decision of integrating a prototype-quality kernel with Ingres, an established commercial product. We also discuss how requirements coming from reallife scenarios sometimes clashed with design choices and simplifications often found in research projects, and how Vectorwise team addressed some of of them.
Expression of the hut operons of Salmonella typhimurium in Klebsiella aerogenes and in Escherichia coli

The normal hut (histidine utilization) operons, as well as those with mutations affecting the regulation of their expression, of Salmonella typhimurium were introduced on an F' episome into cells of S. typhimurium and Klebsiella aerogenes whose chromosomal hut genes had been deleted and into cells of Escherichia coli, whose chromosome does not carry hut genes. The episomal hut operons respond in a manner very similar to induction and catabolite repression in all three organisms. The small differences found reflect both different abilities to take up inducers from the medium and different degrees of catabolite repression exerted by glucose.
Understanding Unfamiliar Literary Aesthetics: White Preservice Teachers Examine Race Through Story

Reading and reflecting upon ethnically unfamiliar literature can provide opportunities for teacher candidates to critically examine assumptions of self and other relative to racial, cultural, and linguistic identities. However, ethnically unfamiliar literatures can be difficult for readers to understand and appreciate due to the aesthetics they embody. This study addresses the struggles White preservice English teachers’ experience in making sense of unfamiliar ethnicities in narrative forms and how this frustration might be mediated through explicit attention to and study of the aesthetic elements of ethnically unfamiliar texts. Findings reveal a keen interest in understanding and engaging with multicultural literature among participants coupled with a persistent hesitation to include it and related conversations of race in their instruction. Participants opened themselves to learning more about others but struggled to implicate themselves in the transfer of new knowledge to teaching practice. The study’s findings contribute to the conversations of scholars in teacher education, multicultural studies, and young adult literature by offering an approach to teaching multicultural literature to preservice teachers that encourages complex, racially informed responses to ethnically unfamiliar texts and revealing potential tensions that may emerge in the process.
Effects of Fixed Minidose Warfarin on Coagulation and Fibrinolysis Following Major Gynaecological Surgery

Summary Coagulation and fibrinolytic studies have been performed in patients who were undergoing major gynaecological surgery and randomised to either fixed minidose warfarin (1 mg daily) or matched placebo. With warfarin, a prolongation of the prothrombin time was observed on day 2 which persisted for at least 5 days and was greater than with placebo. The maximal postoperative mean INR was, however, only 1.2 which is considerably less than the target value for prophylaxis of deep vein thrombosis with full dose warfarin. The warfarin group showed two unexpected findings: significantly elevated fibrin specific degradation products throughout the postoperative period compared with placebo and absence of the expected rise of PAI, the major fibrinolytic inhibitor, on the first day after surgery. Levels of fibrinogen degradation products and FI + 2 prothrombin fragments rose significantly and progressively in both groups in the postoperative period. With placebo, FI + 2 showed an apparent higher percentage increase on each post-operative day but the differences between the groups were not significant. Increased fibrinolysis may be one of the mechanisms for the protective action of minidose warfarin in prophylaxis of DVT after major surgery.
MUSICSTRANDS TM : A PLATFORM FOR DISCOVERING AND EXPLORING MUSIC

MusicStrandsTMhas launched a platform devoted to the discovery and exploration of music for the end-user. The services are freely accessible through our web site www. MusicStrands.com. The goal of this demonstration paper is to describe the main services offered by our proprietary technology which is based on Artificial Intelligence techniques to encode and predict musical users tastes. Our technology allows users to better enjoy music by facilitating the process of discovering and exploring new music.
Differential Localization of VE- and N-Cadherins in Human Endothelial Cells: VE-Cadherin Competes with N-Cadherin for Junctional Localization

The two major cadherins of endothelial cells are neural (N)-cadherin and vascular endothelial (VE)- cadherin. Despite similar level of protein expression only VE-cadherin is located at cell–cell contacts, whereas N-cadherin is distributed over the whole cell membrane. Cotransfection of VE-cadherin and N-cadherin in CHO cells resulted in the same distribution as that observed in endothelial cells indicating that the behavior of the two cadherins was not cell specific but related to their structural characteristics. Similar amounts of α- and β-catenins and plakoglobin were associated to VE- and N-cadherins, whereas p120 was higher in the VE-cadherin complex. The presence of VE-cadherin did not affect N-cadherin homotypic adhesive properties or its capacity to localize at junctions when cotransfectants were cocultured with cells transfected with N-cadherin only. To define the molecular domain responsible for the VE-cadherin–dominant activity we prepared a chimeric construct formed by VE-cadherin extracellular region linked to N-cadherin intracellular domain. The chimera lost the capacity to exclude N-cadherin from junctions indicating that the extracellular domain of VE-cadherin alone is not sufficient for the preferential localization of the molecule at the junctions. A truncated mutant of VE-cadherin retaining the full extracellular domain and a short cytoplasmic tail (Arg621–Pro702) lacking the catenin-binding region was able to exclude N-cadherin from junctions. This indicates that the Arg621–Pro702 sequence in the VE-cadherin cytoplasmic tail is required for N-cadherin exclusion from junctions. Competition between cadherins for their clustering at intercellular junctions in the same cell has never been described before. We speculate that, in the endothelium, VE- and N-cadherin play different roles; whereas VE-cadherin mostly promotes the homotypic interaction between endothelial cells, N-cadherin may be responsible for the anchorage of the endothelium to other surrounding cell types expressing N-cadherin such as vascular smooth muscle cells or pericytes.