Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Chronic Hypoxia Stimulates Periarterial Sympathetic Nerve Development in Chicken Embryo

BackgroundEpidemiological findings suggest an association between low-for-age birth weight and the risk to develop coronary heart diseases in adulthood. During pregnancy, an imbalance between fetal demands and supply may result in permanent alterations of neuroendocrine development in the fetus. We evaluated whether chronic prenatal hypoxia increases arterial sympathetic innervation. Methods and ResultsChicken embryos were maintained from 0.3 to 0.9 of the 21-day incubation period under normoxic (21% O2) or hypoxic conditions (15% O2). At 0.9 incubation, the degree of sympathetic innervation of the embryonic femoral artery was determined by biochemical, histological, and functional (in vitro contractile reactivity) techniques. Chronic hypoxia increased embryonic mortality (32% versus 13%), reduced body weight (21.9±0.4 versus 25.4±0.6 g), increased femoral artery norepinephrine (NE) content (78.4±9.4 versus 57.5±5.0 pg/mm vessel length), and increased the density of periarterial sympathetic nerve fibers (14.4±0.7 versus 12.5±0.6 counts/104 &mgr;m2). Arteries from hypoxic embryos were less sensitive to NE (pD2, 5.99±0.04 versus 6.21±0.10). In the presence of cocaine, however, differences in sensitivity were no longer present. In the embryonic heart, NE content (156.9±11.0 versus 108.1±14.7 pg/mg wet wt) was also increased after chronic hypoxia. ConclusionsIn the chicken embryo, chronic moderate hypoxia leads to sympathetic hyperinnervation of the arterial system. In humans, an analogous mechanism may increase the risk for cardiovascular disease in adult life.
Probing Vividness Increment through Imagery Interruption

The purpose of the present study was to trace how visual experience changes over time during mental image generation, by using an interruption paradigm. In one experiment, participants were asked to read the verbal descriptions of eight common objects and imagine these objects. Changes in the quality of the images evoked by the eight stimuli were probed by interrupting the visual mental image generation process at various times from 0 to 1.7 s, and asking participants to rate the vividness of their image at the time of interruption. We found that vividness increased as the time allowed for image generation was augmented. This relationship was consistently detected in half of the participants and for all stimuli. The present findings support the implicit assumption of some current imagery models positing that mental images “improve” over time, and reject the alternative that images are generated in full detail before becoming accessible to consciousness. However, the “incremental” view is unsatisfactory for imagery models which make no (or not enough) room for individual differences.
Approaches for Automatic Speaker Recognition in a Binaural Humanoid Context

This paper presents two methods of Automatic Speaker Recognition (ASkR). ASkR has been largely studied in the last decades, but in most cases in mono-microphone or microphone array contexts. Our systems are placed in a binaural humanoid context where the signals captured by both ears of a humanoid robot will be exploited to perform the ASkR. Both methods use Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coding (MFCC), but one performs the classification with Predictive Neural Networks (PNN) and the other performs it with Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM). Tests are made on a database simulating the functioning of the human ears. They study the influence of noise, reverberations and speaker spatial position on the recognition rate.
Ablation of Isthmus Dependent Atrial Flutter:

Typical atrial flutter is a common reentrant atrial arrhythmia. The critical portion of the reentrant circuit is the rim of tissue between the tricuspid valve (TV) annulus and the inferior vena cava (IVC) (Fig.1). 1,2 The reentrant circuit can operate in either clockwise or counterclockwise directions (Figs. 2–3). Elimination of conduction across the TV-IVC isthmus eliminates the tachycardia.3 The endpoint of ablation is to achieve bidirectional TVIVC isthmus block. Successful ablation of TV-IVC
Systematic Review of Current Intimate Partner Violence Prevention Programs and Applicability to Homeless Youth

This systematic review explores empirical research published between 2002 and 2012 regarding the effectiveness of prevention programs for intimate partner violence. To assess whether and to what extent programs might be applicable to implementation with a homeless youth population, we categorize studies as being tested with the general youth population or with at-risk youth populations. Quality of the research is assessed by comparing participant selection, study design, assessment instruments, and program outcomes. Applicability to homeless youth is assessed by examining setting, participants, curriculum, duration of intervention, target outcomes, measures and instruments, and results. After retrieving abstracts from various databases using search words that reflected our research questions, we identified 14 studies that met the review inclusion criteria. Of the 14 programs reviewed, 7 were implemented with the general youth population and 7 programs were implemented with “at-risk” youth. Although some programs show sufficient promise to warrant further research (e.g., efficacy and effectiveness trials), whether these programs can be adapted to fit the needs of homeless youth remains unclear. Therefore, preventing intimate partner violence among homeless youth might require efforts to develop a new intervention that not only meets the needs of homeless youth but also meets the needs of those providing services for homeless youth.
GET: NOT MANY MEANINGS

Quoique les informations donnoes dans differents dictionnaires anglais indiquent une grande polys6mie du verbe GET, Pauteur de cet article präsente des arguments en faveur de l'opinion que toutes les valeurs de GET remontent au sens fondamental 'retenir qc Otake hold of sth)· Cest surtout le deuxidme sens fondamental de GET comme resultat de l'action de la retention qui en est d6riv6: 'recevoir qch'Cobtain sth)· Et c'est ä l'aide de differents procds m^taphoriques que presque tous les autres sens de GET se laissent deriver des ces deux, modifies en plus, au besoin, par divers facteurs contextuels. La fin de l'article est consacree ä une discussion des implications pedagogiques de ces resultats, dans l'enseignement des langues et en lexicographie.
On Independent Circuits Contained in a Graph

A family of circuits of a graph G is said to be independent if no two of the circuits have a common vertex; it is called edge-independent if no two of them have an edge in common. A set of vertices will be called a representing set for the circuits (for the sake of brevity we shall call it a representing set), if every circuit of G passes through at least one vertex of the representing set. Denote by I(G) = k the maximum number of circuits in an independent family and by R(G) the minimum number of vertices of a representing set. Dirac and Gallai asked whether there is any relation between I(G) and R(G) (trivially R(G) ≥ I(G)).
Sepsis and coagulation

Purpose of reviewThere is considerable evidence that dysregulation of the coagulation and fibrinolytic systems plays a major role in the pathophysiology of severe sepsis, with a special focus on the protein C system. Conversely, there is an approval for use of recombinant human activated protein C in the more severe patients. This review highlights recent findings about the biology of the protein C system and of other important coagulation components such as tissue factor, platelets, and protein S, with an effort to link fundamental data and recent clinical findings. Recent findingsThere is a better comprehension of the biology of the thrombomodulin-protein C-endothelial protein C receptor complex, and mainly of its cellular effects via the protease activated receptor 1 receptor and of its implication in the generation of anticoagulant microparticles. The implications of other important agents such as platelets and von Willebrand factor, tissue factor, and protein S are also becoming increasingly evident, both from experimental and clinical studies. From a clinical point of view, the more immediately promising approach could be the ability to identify the fraction of severe sepsis patients exhibiting an impaired ability to activate protein C, raising the possibility to select the better candidates for activated protein C infusion. SummaryThe comprehension of the protein C pathway is undoubtedly progressing both in experimental and clinical settings. In parallel, some promising other coagulant pathways are also under investigation in the sepsis context, with a hope for major clinical implications in the future.
Youth Transitions and Social Exclusion: Developments in Social Capital Theory

A theoretical perspective of individualized systems of social capital is proposed to explain the relationship between the agency exercised by socially excluded young people and the contribution made by social ‘structures' in shaping their school-to-work transitions. An individualized system of social capital is a dynamic, social, spatially, culturally, temporally and economically embedded group, network, or constellation of social relations, that has the young person at the core of the constellation and that provides authentic opportunities for everyday learning. This perspective recognizes that such systems of social relations both support and constrain individual actions and outcomes. It identifies the potential for some control by young people over their development and change but also accepts that the extent of individual development and change is heavily dependent on the way the individualized system of social capital evolves for each individual young person, and that this in turn is conditioned by the material and symbolic resources available to these networks or constellations. Different typologies of weak, strong, changing and fluid individualized systems of social capital are explored in relation to our empirical data and a range of theoretical perspectives, including socialization, individualization and underclass theses.
Progressive aphasia and surface Alexia in Japanese

Abstract We report the reading performance of a patient, NK, with selective left-temporal atrophy and progressive aphasia. NK showed surface alexlc reading with the following pattern: flawless oral reading of kana words; a deficit in reading of two-character kanji words that was particularly severe for lower frequency words with an unpredictable correspondence between the component characters and their pronunciations; a predominance of kanji-word reading errors In which characters were assigned pronunciations appropriate to other words containing these characters. These features were predicted and are interpreted on the basis of (a) recent studies of patients with progressive aphasia in English, (b) recent analyses of surface alexia in terms of an interaction between word frequency and neighbourhood-based consistency of spelling-sound correspondences, and (c) characteristics of the Japanese kana and kanji writing systems.
The Incidence of Workplace Bullying

This paper reports on a survey into workplace bullying carried out at Staffordshire University in 1994. The 1137 respondents were part time students at the University. Approximately half the sample reported they had been bullied during their working lives. Apart from the gender of the bully, there were no significant differences in the bullying experience between men and women in the parameters examined in this paper. Many people reported being bullied in groups, which is contrary to the current anecdotal evidence. Those who had not been bullied anticipated a more assertive reaction to the situation than those who had been bullied actually took. Data are presented and the findings are discussed, and future research potential identified.
Induction and termination of inflammatory signaling in group B streptococcal sepsis

Summary: Group B streptococcus (GBS) is part of the normal genital and gastrointestinal flora in healthy humans. However, GBS is a major cause of sepsis and meningitis in newborn infants in the Western world and an important pathogen in many developing countries. The dissection of the host response to GBS may increase the general understanding of innate immunity in sepsis, because newborn infants lack a sufficient adaptive response. Inflammatory signal induction in macrophages by GBS seems largely preserved in newborn infants, as shown both in vitro and in vivo. The engagement of Toll‐like receptor 2 (TLR2) by lipoproteins and a myeloid differentiation factor 88 (MyD88)‐dependent pathway induced by GBS cell wall are both important in this context. TLR2 activation of microglia by GBS induces neuronal damage, which might account for the high morbidity of GBS meningitis. At the same time, TLR2 mediates activation‐induced cell death (AICD), a process involved in the containment of inflammation. In newborn infants, AICD and anti‐bacterial polymorphonuclear leukocyte activity appears to be compromised. Accordingly, neonatal aberrations in the pathogen‐specific negative control of inflammatory signaling are likely to contribute to excessive inflammation and neurological sequelae in GBS sepsis and meningitis.
An efficient community detection method using parallel clique-finding ants

Attractiveness of social network analysis as a research topic in many different disciplines is growing in parallel to the continuous growth of the Internet, which allows people to share and collaborate more. Nowadays, detection of community structures, which may be established on social networks, is a popular topic in Computer Science. High computational costs and non-scalability on large-scale social networks are the biggest drawbacks of popular community detection methods. The main aim of this study is to reduce the original network graph to a maintainable size so that computational costs decrease without loss of solution quality, thus increasing scalability on such networks. In this study, we focus on Ant Colony Optimization techniques to find quasi-cliques in the network and assign these quasi-cliques as nodes in a reduced graph to use with community detection algorithms. Experiments are performed on commonly used social networks with the addition of several large-scale networks. Based on the experimental results on various sized social networks, we may say that the execution times of the community detection methods are decreased while the overall quality of the solution is preserved.
FANCM c.5101C>T mutation associates with breast cancer survival and treatment outcome

Breast cancer (BC) is a heterogeneous disease, and different tumor characteristics and genetic variation may affect the clinical outcome. The FANCM c.5101C > T nonsense mutation in the Finnish population associates with increased risk of breast cancer, especially for triple‐negative breast cancer patients. To investigate the association of the mutation with disease prognosis, we studied tumor phenotype, treatment outcome, and patient survival in 3,933 invasive breast cancer patients, including 101 FANCM c.5101C > T mutation carriers and 3,832 non‐carriers. We also examined association of the mutation with nuclear immunohistochemical staining of DNA repair markers in 1,240 breast tumors. The FANCM c.5101C > T mutation associated with poor 10‐year breast cancer‐specific survival (hazard ratio (HR)=1.66, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.09–2.52, p = 0.018), with a more pronounced survival effect among familial cases (HR = 2.93, 95% CI 1.5–5.76, p = 1.80 × 10−3). Poor disease outcome of the carriers was also found among the estrogen receptor (ER) positive subgroup of patients (HR = 1.8, 95% CI 1.09–2.98, p = 0.021). Reduced survival was seen especially among patients who had not received radiotherapy (HR = 3.43, 95% CI 1.6–7.34, p = 1.50 × 10−3) but not among radiotherapy treated patients (HR = 1.35, 95% CI 0.82–2.23, p = 0.237). Significant interaction was found between the mutation and radiotherapy (p = 0.040). Immunohistochemical analyses show that c.5101C > T carriers have reduced PAR‐activity. Our results suggest that FANCM c.5101C > T nonsense mutation carriers have a reduced breast cancer survival but postoperative radiotherapy may diminish this survival disadvantage.
Characteristics associated with prevalent HIV infection among a cohort of sex workers in Cameroon.

OBJECTIVE: To determine prevalence of HIV infection in a cohort of female sex workers in Cameroon, and to describe characteristics associated with HIV infection in this population. METHODS: In a cross sectional study, 2260 female sex workers in Cameroon were interviewed and screened for HIV serostatus. A standardised questionnaire was used to collect information on sociodemographic characteristics and sexual and health behaviours. RESULTS: Seropositive participants (18%) were more likely to be over age 25, have four or more children, live in Yaoundé or Douala for 5 years or less, solicit clients in their homes or on the street, have a low educational level, earn a weekly income of less than $24, and have no other occupation outside of sex work. A logistic regression model of selected sociodemographic characteristics indicated that women at particularly high odds of HIV infection were older, poorer, and new immigrants to their city of residence. CONCLUSION: This seroprevalence study found a lower HIV prevalence than had been previously reported. Although our results are different, this group is still at much higher risk of HIV infection than the population as a whole.
siRNA transfection in larvae of the barnacle Amphibalanus amphitrite

ABSTRACT RNA interference (RNAi) provides an efficient and specific technique for functional genomic studies. Yet, no successful application of RNAi has been reported in barnacles. In this study, siRNA against p38 MAPK was synthesized and then transfected into A. amphitrite larvae at either the nauplius or cyprid stage, or at both stages. Effects of siRNA transfection on the p38 MAPK level were hardly detectable in the cyprids when they were transfected at the nauplius stage. In contrast, larvae that were transfected at the cyprid stage showed lower levels of p38 MAPK than the blank and reagent controls. However, significantly decreased levels of phosphorylated p38 MAPK (pp38 MAPK) and reduced settlement rates were observed only in ‘double transfections’, in which larvae were exposed to siRNA solution at both the nauplius and cyprid stages. A relatively longer transfection time and more larval cells directly exposed to siRNA might explain the higher efficiency of double transfection experiments. Summary: siRNA transfection using RNAfectin at both nauplius VI and cyprid stages is effective in knocking down gene expression in barnacles.
Clinical experience with insulin detemir, biphasic insulin aspart and insulin aspart in people with type 2 diabetes: Results from the West Bengal cohort of the A1chieve study

Background: The A1chieve, a multicentric (28 countries), 24-week, non-interventional study evaluated the safety and effectiveness of insulin detemir, biphasic insulin aspart and insulin aspart in people with T2DM (n = 66,726) in routine clinical care across four continents. Materials and Methods: Data was collected at baseline, 12 weeks and at 24 weeks. This short communication presents the results for patients enrolled from West Bengal, India. Results: A total of 1133 patients were enrolled in the study. Four different insulin analogue regimens were used in the study. Patients had started on or were switched to biphasic insulin aspart (n = 897), insulin detemir (n = 94), insulin aspart (n = 90), basal insulin plus insulin aspart (n = 28) and other insulin combinations (n = 19). At baseline glycaemic control was poor for both insulin naïve (mean HbA1c: 8.5%) and insulin user (mean HbA1c: 8.9%) groups. After 24 weeks of treatment, both the study groups showed improvement in HbA1c (insulin naïve: −1.3%, insulin users: −1.6%). SADRs including major hypoglycaemic events or episodes did not occur in any of the study patients. Conclusion: Starting or switching to insulin analogues was associated with improvement in glycaemic control with a low rate of hypoglycaemia.
A Real-Time 3D Human Body Tracking and Modeling System

In this paper a real-time system for 3D human upper body tracking and modeling is proposed. The system uses multiple cameras to recover the depth maps in real-time, then integrates both color and depth information to track the human body, head, and hands, and finally recovers the 3D upper body model parameters from the tracking results. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the system can track and rebuild human model in complicated situations. The system makes good tradeoff between the accuracy and system simplicity, and can be widely used in many applications, such as desktop interaction and digital entertainments.
Assessing the Influence of Living and Working Conditions on Alcohol Consumption in Migrant Farmworkers in Mexico

Background and Purpose: Inadequate working and living conditions are associated with alcohol consumption in farmworkers in the U.S. However, the influence of these factors on alcohol consumption patterns in migrant farmworkers in Mexico remains unclear. The purpose of this analysis was to assess the influence of housing and working conditions on alcohol use in migrant farmworkers in Mexico. Methods: We used logistic and ordinal logistic regression to examine the association of living and working conditions on alcohol consumption and frequency in 3,132 farmworkers in Mexico with data from a Mexican national farmworker’s survey. Results: Living in inadequately built homes (OR=0.84; 95% CI=0.72, 0.98; p<0.05) and limited access to luxury items (OR=0.69; 95% CI=0.52, 0.94; p<0.01), were associated with a decreased likelihood to consume alcohol compared to living in better conditions. In contrast, living in employer provided housing (OR=1.79; 95% CI=1.40, 2.31; p<0.0001) and experiencing hazards related to safety (OR= 1.69; 95% CI= 1.35, 2.12; p<0.0001), work organization (OR= 1.29; CI= 1.03, 1.63; p<0.05), and ergonomics (OR= 2.04; CI= 1.18, 3.52; p<0.05) increased the likelihood of consuming alcohol. Conclusion: Living and working conditions of farmworkers may affect alcohol consumption. However, these findings require replication and specific mechanisms, which may influence these results warrants investigation. © 2016 Californian Journal of Health Promotion. All rights reserved.
A fuzzy extension of SPARQL based on fuzzy sets and aggregators

SPARQL has been adopted as query language for the Semantic Web. RDF and OWL have also been established as vocabularies to describe ontologies in this setting. While RDF/OWL/SPARQL have been designed for querying crisp information, some contexts require to manage uncertainty, vagueness and imprecise knowledge. In this paper a SPARQL extension, called FSA-SPARQL (Fuzzzy Sets and Aggregators based SPARQL) is proposed, in which queries can involve different fuzzy connectives and (aggregation) operators. The language has been implemented as an extension of the ARQ Jena SPARQL engine and it is equipped with a Web tool from which queries can be executed on-line.
Microstrip reconfigurable antenna for cognitive radio systems

A compact and low profile microstrip antenna is proposed as a framework to design a frequency-reconfigurable radiating device with four distinct and almost independent resonant frequencies with other single or multiple available resonances that can be usefully exploited by the cognitive radio system. The instant frequency reconfiguration is obtained by using pin diodes as RF switches whereas the biasing network comprises four high-impedance microstrip lines and a bias-tee.