Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Combustion-derived nanoparticulate induces the adverse vascular effects of diesel exhaust inhalation

Aim Exposure to road traffic and air pollution may be a trigger of acute myocardial infarction, but the individual pollutants responsible for this effect have not been established. We assess the role of combustion-derived-nanoparticles in mediating the adverse cardiovascular effects of air pollution. Methods and results To determine the in vivo effects of inhalation of diesel exhaust components, 16 healthy volunteers were exposed to (i) dilute diesel exhaust, (ii) pure carbon nanoparticulate, (iii) filtered diesel exhaust, or (iv) filtered air, in a randomized double blind cross-over study. Following each exposure, forearm blood flow was measured during intra-brachial bradykinin, acetylcholine, sodium nitroprusside, and verapamil infusions. Compared with filtered air, inhalation of diesel exhaust increased systolic blood pressure (145 ± 4 vs. 133 ± 3 mmHg, P< 0.05) and attenuated vasodilatation to bradykinin (P= 0.005), acetylcholine (P= 0.008), and sodium nitroprusside (P< 0.001). Exposure to pure carbon nanoparticulate or filtered exhaust had no effect on endothelium-dependent or -independent vasodilatation. To determine the direct vascular effects of nanoparticulate, isolated rat aortic rings (n= 6–9 per group) were assessed in vitro by wire myography and exposed to diesel exhaust particulate, pure carbon nanoparticulate and vehicle. Compared with vehicle, diesel exhaust particulate (but not pure carbon nanoparticulate) attenuated both acetylcholine (P< 0.001) and sodium-nitroprusside (P= 0.019)-induced vasorelaxation. These effects were partially attributable to both soluble and insoluble components of the particulate. Conclusion Combustion-derived nanoparticulate appears to predominately mediate the adverse vascular effects of diesel exhaust inhalation. This provides a rationale for testing environmental health interventions targeted at reducing traffic-derived particulate emissions.
Explaining Public Attitudes towards the Integration of Muslims in British Society: The ‘Solidarity of the Religious’?

There has been growing concern in recent years about the integration of Muslims and the emergence of ‘Islamophobia’ in Britain. But there has been a lack of research into the sources of public opinion towards Muslims in British society. This article contributes to emerging research in this area by using a nationally representative survey to examine public opinion towards Muslims’ efforts to integrate into British society. It examines the relative impact of social, religious, and attitudinal variables. Religious affiliation has no impact, while greater religious salience and pro-religion attitudes on religious–secular policy issues are related to positive views of Muslims’ efforts to integrate. Women and the university-educated are more positive in their assessments. A traditionalist view of Christianity, socially authoritarian beliefs, and anti-immigrant bias are related to negative views of Muslims’ efforts to integrate. Overall, the findings lend support to the ‘solidarity of the religious’ perspective and should encourage further investigation into attitudes towards religious groups in Britain.
INTRALOBAR PULMONARY SEQUESTRATION ASSOCIATED WITH A CONGENITAL PULMONARY AIRWAY MALFORMATION TYPE II

Intralobar pulmonary sequestration (ILPS) is a rare congenital malformation of the lung. It is described as a segment of lung parenchyma with normal pleura and systemic blood supply and it has poor communication with the tracheobronchial tree. Patients usually present in later childhood or adulthood with a history of recurrent pneumonias. The malformation is rarely associated with other congenital anomalies such as a congenital pulmonary airway malformation (CPAM). A CPAM is a congenital cystic lesion of the lung that presents usually in the newborn period as respiratory distress. We describe the case of a 2-month-old female who presented to the local emergency room with the initial diagnosis of pneumonia, surgical diagnosis of ILPS, and a final pathological diagnosis of ILPS with an associated CPAM.
Trainee clinical psychologists' adaptation and professional functioning: a longitudinal study

Clinical psychology training is a professionally formative period, which provides an opportunity to enable trainees to learn good self-care skills and mature approaches to learning. If realized, this can support lifelong learning and high levels of professional functioning. This study sought to use transactional coping theory and experiential learning theory to improve our understanding of what factors predict changes in psychological adaptation and professional functioning over the course of clinical psychology training. A mixed prospective within-persons and cross-sectional between-persons design was used. A sample of 183 trainee clinical psychologists (60.2% response rate) from 15 British clinical psychology training programmes participated at time one, 167 of whom participated at time 2 a year later (91.3% of the time 1 sample). They completed measures of appraisal, coping, social support and professional functioning at times 1 and 2. Path analyses suggested that trainees who appraised the demands of training as manageable, and reported greater access to appropriate support, engaged in less avoidance coping, reported fewer problems of psychological adaptation and were more likely to approach the task of learning and working appropriately and resiliently. Implications for clinical psychology training are suggested. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Separation Surfaces in the Spectral TV Domain for Texture Decomposition

In this paper, we introduce a novel notion of separation surfaces for image decomposition. A surface is embedded in the spectral total-variation (TV) 3D domain and encodes a spatially varying separation scale. The method allows good separation of textures with gradually varying pattern size, pattern contrast, or illumination. The recently proposed TV spectral framework is used to decompose the image into a continuum of textural scales. A desired texture, within a scale range, is found by fitting a surface to the local maximal responses in the spectral domain. A band above and below the surface, referred to as the texture stratum, defines for each pixel the adaptive scale range of the texture. Based on the decomposition, an application is proposed, which can attenuate or enhance textures in the image in a very natural and visually convincing manner.
Liver Stiffness Measurement by Transient Elastography as a Predictor on Posthepatectomy Outcomes

Background:Liver fibrosis and cirrhosis are well-known risk factors for morbidity after hepatectomy. Liver stiffness measurement (LSM) using transient elastography is a new method for detection of hepatic fibrosis and cirrhosis with high accuracy. Whether LSM can predict posthepatectomy outcomes has not been studied. Methods:This was a prospective cohort study in which consecutive patients underwent hepatectomy for various indications from February 2010 to July 2011. All patients received detailed preoperative assessments including LSM and indocyanine green (ICG) clearance test. The primary outcome was major postoperative complication. Results:One hundred five patients with a mean age of 59 years were included; 75 (71.4%) had chronic viral hepatitis and 76 (72.4%) had hepatocellular carcinoma. Thirty-four patients (32.4%) received major hepatectomy. The median ICG retention rate at 15 minutes was 4.2 (0.1%–32%) and the median LSM was 9.4 (3.3–75 kPa). For posthepatectomy outcomes, only LSM but not ICG showed significant correlation with major postoperative complications on receiver operating characteristic curves, with area under the curve of 0.79 (P < 0.001). Using the calculated cutoff at 12.0 kPa, LSM had sensitivity of 85.7% and specificity of 71.8% in the prediction of major postoperative complications. It was also an independent prognostic factor for major postoperative complications by multivariate analysis. The operative blood loss and transfusion rate were also significantly higher in patients with LSM >12.0 kPa. Conclusions:High LSM (>12.0 kPa) predicted worse posthepatectomy outcomes. Preoperative LSM was better than ICG test in the prediction of major postoperative complications. It was a useful preoperative investigation for risk stratification before hepatectomy.
Nucleic Acids for Ultra-Sensitive Protein Detection

Major advancements in molecular biology and clinical diagnostics cannot be brought about strictly through the use of genomics based methods. Improved methods for protein detection and proteomic screening are an absolute necessity to complement to wealth of information offered by novel, high-throughput sequencing technologies. Only then will it be possible to advance insights into clinical processes and to characterize the importance of specific protein biomarkers for disease detection or the realization of “personalized medicine”. Currently however, large-scale proteomic information is still not as easily obtained as its genomic counterpart, mainly because traditional antibody-based technologies struggle to meet the stringent sensitivity and throughput requirements that are required whereas mass-spectrometry based methods might be burdened by significant costs involved. However, recent years have seen the development of new biodetection strategies linking nucleic acids with existing antibody technology or replacing antibodies with oligonucleotide recognition elements altogether. These advancements have unlocked many new strategies to lower detection limits and dramatically increase throughput of protein detection assays. In this review, an overview of these new strategies will be given.
Radio-triggered solar and RF power scavenging and management for ultra low power wireless medical applications

The design of a dual-source power scavenging and management system for ultra low power wireless medical applications is presented. Power scavenging is achieved by harvesting energy both from solar (primary) and RF power (secondary) sources. Depending on the available energy, the system can supply 1-2mW of power to a wireless device, with up to a 50% duty cycle. A radio-triggering based technique is used to control the activation and shutting down of the complete wireless system, and thus eliminates energy wasting wake-up periods. The system provides a regulated output voltage of 1.5V, with a total power consumption of less than 8.0muW in the sleep mode, and 48muW in the operating mode
The relay carpet: Ubiquitous two-way relaying in cooperative cellular networks

We consider the up- as well as downlink of a cellular network with multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication and propose to turn the entire network into a two-hop network where a large amount of relays assist the bidirectional communication. To this end, many two-way relays are spread over the entire area of the network. In addition to introducing the concept of ubiquitous relaying, different two-way relaying protocols are developed, for amplify-and-forward (AF) as well as decode-and-forward (DF) relays. The goal is to efficiently apply two-way relaying to interference limited cellular networks. To achieve this, relaying is combined with a simple form of base station (BS) cooperation that allows canceling some interference terms. The relays are used to reduce the complexity at the terminal nodes and to improve the overall performance by distributed interference management. Our results show that the proposed concept can offer significant gains compared to a conventional multi-user MIMO strategy without relays.
A novel statistical fusion rule for image fusion and its comparison in non subsampled contourlet transform domain and wavelet domain

Image fusion produces a single fused image from a set of input images. A new method for image fusion is proposed based on Weighted Average Merging Method (WAMM) in the NonSubsampled Contourlet Transform (NSCT) domain. A performance analysis on various statistical fusion rules are also analysed both in NSCT and Wavelet domain. Analysis has been made on medical images, remote sensing images and multi focus images. Experimental results shows that the proposed method, WAMM obtained better results in NSCT domain than the wavelet domain as it preserves more edges and keeps the visual quality intact in the fused image.
Can Carbohydrate Mouth Rinse Improve Performance during Exercise? A Systematic Review

The purpose of this review was to identify studies that have investigated the effect of carbohydrate (CHO) mouth rinse on exercise performance, and to quantify the overall mean difference of this type of manipulation across the studies. The main mechanisms involving the potential benefit of CHO mouth rinse on performance was also explored. A systematic review was conducted in the following electronic databases: PubMed, SciELO, Science Direct, MEDLINE, and the Cochrane Library (Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials), without limit of searches. Eleven studies were classified as appropriate and their results were summarized and compared. In nine of them, CHO mouth rinse increased the performance (range from 1.50% to 11.59%) during moderate- to high-intensity exercise (~75% Wmax or 65% VO2max, ~1 h duration). A statistical analysis to quantify the individual and overall mean differences was performed in seven of the 11 eligible studies that reported power output (watts, W) as the main performance outcome. The overall mean difference was calculated using a random-effect model that accounts for true variation in effects occurring in each study, as well as random error within a single study. The overall effect of CHO mouth rinse on performance was significant (mean difference = 5.05 W, 95% CI 0.90 to 9.2 W, z = 2.39, p = 0.02) but there was a large heterogeneity between the studies (I2 = 52%). An activation of the oral receptors and consequently brain areas involved with reward (insula/operculum frontal, orbitofrontal cortex, and striatum) is suggested as a possible physiological mechanism responsible for the improved performance with CHO mouth rinse. However, this positive effect seems to be accentuated when muscle and liver glycogen stores are reduced, possibly due to a greater sensitivity of the oral receptors, and require further investigation. Differences in duration of fasting before the trial, duration of mouth rinse, type of activity, exercise protocols, and sample size may account for the large variability between the studies.
Political Advertising in the 2004 Election

Although television advertising remained a dominant form of communication in the 2004 presidential election, the Internet reached new levels of campaign importance, providing voters with information from candidates, the media, and independent sources. Internet sites not only provided online viewing of traditional television advertising but also provided voters with the opportunity to seek out additional information about television ads viewed on the Web. Drawing on theory and research related to channel variables, this study compared the reactions of young voters who experienced candidate advertising on television or on the Web. Results indicate that the channel really does make a difference. John Kerry’s ads were more successful in raising his image and learning scores when viewed on the Web with access to additional information sources. However, television viewing reduced feelings of political cynicism and alienation for young voters.
Apoptosis in Coxsackievirus B3-Caused Diseases: Interaction between the Capsid Protein VP2 and the Proapoptotic Protein Siva

ABSTRACT Coxsackievirus B3 (CVB3) is a common factor in human myocarditis. Apoptotic events are present in CVB3-induced disease, but it is unclear how CVB3 is involved in apoptosis and which viral proteins may induce the apoptotic pathway. In this report we demonstrate that the human and murine proapoptotic protein Siva specifically interact with the CVB3 capsid protein VP2. Furthermore, the transcription of Siva is strongly induced in tissue of CVB3-infected mice and is present in the same area which is positively stained for apoptosis, CD27, and CD70. It has been proposed that Siva is involved in the CD27/CD70-transduced apoptosis. Therefore, we suggest a molecular mechanism through which apoptotic events contributes to CVB3-caused pathogenesis.
Bullying: Perceptions of Adolescent Victims in the Midwestern USA

Retrospective data were collected from adolescent students in order to clarify perceptions of victimization by bullies in small-town midwestern schools. Seventy-two percent of females and 81 percent of male respondents felt that they had experienced bullying at some point in their student careers (76.8 percent overall). Fewer students were considered chronic victims as self-reported severity of bullying increased. Though there are some difficulties in making a direct comparison, preliminary results indicate that victimization by bullies is more prevalent in the USA than in European countries.
Aeronautical Communication Systems as Potential Primary Users in Secondary Spectrum Access

Secondary spectrum access emerges as a meansto increase spectrum utilization significantly in a near future.However, the technical availability and the economic value of thesecondary access have not been fully investigated. Particularly,the impact of the secondary access on the real-life primary systemsremains mostly unaddressed. Among the primary systemsof interest are aeronautical communication systems operating inthe radio frequencies under 6 GHz. In this paper, we presentan overview of various aeronautical communication systems asthe potential primary users. We describe the purposes, characteristics,and operational facts of not only existing but alsofuture aeronautical systems. We also discuss the opportunitiesand challenges of secondary access to aeronautical spectrumand suggest a secondary use case suitable for the aeronautical spectrum.
Idiosyncratic reactions and metabolism of sulfur-containing drugs

Introduction: Idiosyncratic drug reactions (IDRs) that involve the formation of toxic metabolites followed by covalent binding to cellular proteins often go undiscovered until after post-marketing. The goal of this article is to review the current status of IDRs, potential mechanisms and the challenges associated with predicting drug toxicity. Areas covered: The authors review the metabolic pathways of five select classes of sulfur-containing drugs (captopril, troglitazone, tienilic acid, zileuton, methimazole and sudoxicam) suggesting that bioactivation plays a crucial role in the occurrence of IDRs. The reader will gain further awareness that the sulfur atom can propagate as the bioactivation site for the formation of reactive and conceivably toxic metabolites. As such, it is the body's capacity to detoxify these drug products that may determine whether IDRs occur. Expert opinion: Incomplete understanding of mechanisms culminating in IDR occurrence represents a monumental impediment toward their abrogation. Moreover, current technology utilized to predict their manifestation (including structure–toxicity relationships) is not infallible and thus, development of novel tools and strategies is indispensible. In an attempt to streamline clinical development and drug approval processes, consortiums have been instated under the US FDA Critical Path Initiative. Collectively, these parameters along with the availability of validated biomarkers and new/updated regulatory guidance could positively influence the outcome of drug toxicity profiles and direct future drug development.
Op-amp Free Sc Biquad Lpf and Delta-sigma Adc

valuable guidance throughout my graduate study. His criticism and advice made me grow not only as an engineer, but as a person. I would also like to thank the members of my thesis committee for their helpful feedback. Thanks to Gil-Cho Ahn for his insights and helpful comments on a wide range of subjects in the analog field. Thanks to Dong-Young Chang for helping me start in their patience and accessibility whenever I had technical questions. I would like to thank the members of Korean Student Association of Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering for their social contribution to my experience as a graduate student at Oregon State University. I would like to thank my ex-roommates Chi-Young Lim and Chong-Kyu Yun for being cool to live under the same roof. I would like to thank my family for their endless support. I would like to thank my parents for patiently listening to my thoughts on my future and advising me. I would like to thank my sister for conversing with me about many different issues of my life. Finally, I would like to thank my wife for endless supporting and encouraging whenever I was in troubles.
eHealth Literacy: Essential Skills for Consumer Health in a Networked World

Electronic health tools provide little value if the intended users lack the skills to effectively engage them. With nearly half the adult population in the United States and Canada having literacy levels below what is needed to fully engage in an information-rich society, the implications for using information technology to promote health and aid in health care, or for eHealth, are considerable. Engaging with eHealth requires a skill set, or literacy, of its own. The concept of eHealth literacy is introduced and defined as the ability to seek, find, understand, and appraise health information from electronic sources and apply the knowledge gained to addressing or solving a health problem. In this paper, a model of eHealth literacy is introduced, comprised of multiple literacy types, including an outline of a set of fundamental skills consumers require to derive direct benefits from eHealth. A profile of each literacy type with examples of the problems patient-clients might present is provided along with a resource list to aid health practitioners in supporting literacy improvement with their patient-clients across each domain. Facets of the model are illustrated through a set of clinical cases to demonstrate how health practitioners can address eHealth literacy issues in clinical or public health practice. Potential future applications of the model are discussed.
Valid Application of EVT in Timing Analysis by Randomising Execution Time Measurements

Intrinsic timing uncertainties present in modern hardware platforms have motivated the use of Extreme Value Theory (EVT) to timing analysis, however, the timing behaviour of a task may not entirely fulfil the necessary assumptions. To deal with this difficulty, randomisation at the hardware level has been proposed as a means of facilitating the use of statistical timing analysis. However, it has been shown that hardware randomisation does not solve all the analysis problems and importantly some projects may not wish to change the hardware that is used to support timing analysis. This paper presents an innovative approach, which does not require hardware randomisation or any special system feature, named Indirect Estimation in Statistical Time Analysis (IESTA). The main difference is that randomised hardware is performed before software instructions actually executes and is applied to parameters (e.g. cache state) only indirectly linked to timing. In contrast, IESTA adds its randomisation directly to the timing measures without affecting the way the software is executed. The IESTA approach is evaluated by experiments on two real case studies for which execution time measurements are taken from an embedded platform and from a Rolls-Royce Full Authority Digital Engine Controller.