Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Understanding the Impact of Chemical Variability and Calibration Algorithms on Prediction of Solid Fraction of Roller Compacted Ribbons Using Near-Infrared (NIR) Spectroscopy

The study is aimed at developing a near-infrared (NIR) method for predicting solid fraction (SF) of dry granulated ribbons manufactured with formulation variability. The study investigated the impact of unmodeled chemical variability and regression approaches on method performance. The study utilized an excipient-only formulation system. Calibration compacts were created with chemical and processing variability; followed by collection of NIR spectra. Partial least squares (PLS) and spectral slope algorithms were utilized to model compact SF. Later, the models were deployed to predict SF of test ribbons and compacts containing an API at various concentrations. The risk associated with unmodeled chemical variation manifested itself through generation of new peaks and decreased baseline absorbance in the NIR spectra. The spectral slope was able to better manage this risk, as demonstrated by relatively higher robustness to the increasing load of the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API). The reduced robustness of the PLS approach was attributed to the impact of chemical variability on both spectral baseline and peak absorbance. A prediction error of approximately 5% was observed at 10% drug load using the spectral slope approach. An understanding of the risk associated with unmodeled variability will enable NIR method development as an API sparing technique for low-dose product development.
Thermodynamic characterization of the multivalent interactions underlying rapid and selective translocation through the nuclear pore complex

Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) play important roles in many biological systems. Given the vast conformational space that IDPs can explore, the thermodynamics of the interactions with their partners is closely linked to their biological functions. Intrinsically disordered regions of Phe–Gly nucleoporins (FG Nups) that contain multiple phenylalanine–glycine repeats are of particular interest, as their interactions with transport factors (TFs) underlie the paradoxically rapid yet also highly selective transport of macromolecules mediated by the nuclear pore complex. Here, we used NMR and isothermal titration calorimetry to thermodynamically characterize these multivalent interactions. These analyses revealed that a combination of low per-FG motif affinity and the enthalpy–entropy balance prevents high-avidity interaction between FG Nups and TFs, whereas the large number of FG motifs promotes frequent FG–TF contacts, resulting in enhanced selectivity. Our thermodynamic model underlines the importance of functional disorder of FG Nups. It helps explain the rapid and selective translocation of TFs through the nuclear pore complex and further expands our understanding of the mechanisms of “fuzzy” interactions involving IDPs.
Obesity Survival Paradox in the Critically Ill.

e872 www.ccmjournal. org August 2017 • Volume 45 • Number 8 The authors reply: We thank Dr. Pepper (1) for the insightful questions regarding our recently published article in Critical Care Medicine on the obesity paradox in the ICU (2). As is correctly pointed out, diagnoses based on clinical criteria and billing data are not always consistent. The admission diagnoses used in our study (2) are not derived from International Classification of Diseases, 9th Edition codes in billing data; they are entered by experienced ICU clinicians trained in the Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation (APACHE) methodology. In short, the admission diagnoses represent the primary reason for the patient being admitted to the ICU, as understood on the day of admission. However, there are limitations to this. The concept of “septic shock” does not exist as an APACHE admission diagnosis and therefore our analysis could only describe those identified as having sepsis at admission. Several important questions are also raised regarding how diagnoses and interventions may differ across body mass index (BMI) categories. As noted with the example of sepsis and septic shock, interest in specific diagnoses would likely require a more detailed analysis to standardize ambiguous diagnoses or those which evolve over time. The scope of our study (2) was a population-based study, rather than detailed analyses of specific subpopulations. We agree a subsequent study or studies may be warranted to explore the relationship between BMI, mortality, and nutrition in subpopulations such as those with septic shock or those receiving specific ICU treatments. Obesity Survival Paradox in the Critically Ill
Molecular Analysis of ATP-sensitive K Channel Gating and Implications for Channel Inhibition by ATP

The β cell KATP channel is an octameric complex of four pore-forming subunits (Kir6.2) and four regulatory subunits (SUR1). A truncated isoform of Kir6.2 (Kir6.2ΔC26), which expresses independently of SUR1, shows intrinsic ATP sensitivity, suggesting that this subunit is primarily responsible for mediating ATP inhibition. We show here that mutation of C166, which lies at the cytosolic end of the second transmembrane domain, to serine (C166S) increases the open probability of Kir6.2ΔC26 approximately sevenfold by reducing the time the channel spends in a long closed state. Rundown of channel activity is also decreased. Kir6.2ΔC26 containing the C166S mutation shows a markedly reduced ATP sensitivity: the K i is reduced from 175 μM to 2.8 mM. Substitution of threonine, alanine, methionine, or phenylalanine at position C166 also reduced the channel sensitivity to ATP and simultaneously increased the open probability. Thus, ATP does not act as an open channel blocker. The inhibitory effects of tolbutamide are reduced in channels composed of SUR1 and Kir6.2 carrying the C166S mutation. Our results are consistent with the idea that C166 plays a role in the intrinsic gating of the channel, possibly by influencing a gate located at the intracellular end of the pore. Kinetic analysis suggests that the apparent decrease in ATP sensitivity, and the changes in other properties, observed when C166 is mutated is largely a consequence of the impaired transition from the open to the long closed state.
Blood‐feeding behaviour of the malarial mosquito Anopheles arabiensis: implications for vector control

Abstract Feeding behaviour of the malaria vector Anopheles arabiensis Patton (Diptera: Culicidae) was monitored for 12 months (March 2003−February 2004) in the Konso District of southern Ethiopia (5°15′N, 37°28′E). More than 45 000 An. arabiensis females were collected by host‐baited sampling methods (light‐traps, human landing catches, cattle‐baited traps) and from resting sites (huts and pit shelters). In the village of Fuchucha, where the ratio of cattle : humans was 0.6 : 1, 51% of outdoor‐resting mosquitoes and 66% of those collected indoors had fed on humans, human baits outdoors caught > 2.5 times more mosquitoes than those indoors and the mean catch of mosquitoes from pit shelters was about five times that from huts. Overall, the vast majority of feeding and resting occurred outdoors. In the cattle camps of Konso, where humans slept outdoors close to their cattle, ∼ 46% of resting mosquitoes collected outdoors had fed on humans despite the high cattle : human ratio (17 : 1). In both places, relatively high proportions of bloodmeals were mixed cow + human: 22–25% at Fuchucha and 37% in the cattle camps. Anthropophily was also gauged experimentally by comparing the numbers of mosquitoes caught in odour‐baited entry traps baited with either human or cattle odour. The human‐baited trap caught about five times as many mosquitoes as the cattle‐baited one. Notwithstanding the potential pitfalls of using standard sampling devices to analyse mosquito behaviour, the results suggest that the An. arabiensis population is inherently anthropophagic, but this is counterbalanced by exophagic and postprandial exophilic tendencies. Consequently, the population feeds sufficiently on humans to transmit malaria (sporozoite rates: 0.3% for Plasmodium falciparum and 0.5% for P. vivax, by detection of circumsporozoite antigen) but also takes a high proportion of meals from non‐human hosts, with 59–91% of resting mosquitoes containing blood from cattle. Hence, classical zooprophylaxis is unlikely to have a significant impact on the malaria vectorial capacity of An. arabiensis in Konso, whereas treating cattle with insecticide might do.
Effects of prescribing 1,000 versus 1,500 kilocalories per day in the behavioral treatment of obesity: A randomized trial

Controversy exists regarding the optimal energy prescription to promote successful long‐term behavioral management of obesity. Prescribing intake of 1,000 (vs. 1,500) kcal/day may produce larger initial weight reduction, but long‐term advantage remains unclear. The effects of prescribing 1,000 versus 1,500 kcal/day on 6‐ and 12‐month weight changes within behavioral treatment of obesity were examined.
Liraglutide ameliorated peripheral neuropathy in diabetic rats: Involvement of oxidative stress, inflammation and extracellular matrix remodeling

Diabetic peripheral neuropathy is one of the most common microvascular complications that occurs with both type 1 and type 2 diabetes mellitus. It has a significant negative impact on patients’ quality of life; as it starts with loss of limbs’ sensation and may lead to lower limb amputation. This study aimed at investigating the effect of liraglutide on peripheral neuropathy in diabetic rats. Experimental diabetes was induced by single intraperitoneal injections of nicotinamide (50 mg/kg) and streptozotocin (52.5 mg/kg). Rats were allocated into five groups. Two groups were given saline or liraglutide (0.8 mg/kg, s.c.). Three diabetic groups were either untreated or treated with liraglutide (0.8 mg/kg, s.c.) or pregabalin (10 mg/kg, i.p.). After 2 weeks of treatment, behavioral, biochemical, histopathological, and immunohistochemical investigations were performed. Treatment with liraglutide‐restored animals’ body weight, normalized blood glucose, decreased glycated hemoglobin, and increased insulin levels. In parallel, it normalized motor coordination and the latency withdrawal time of both tail flick and hind paw cold allodynia tests and reversed histopathological alterations. Treatment with liraglutide also normalized malondialdehyde, matrix metalloproteinase‐2 and ‐9 contents in sciatic nerve. Likewise, it decreased sciatic nerve nitric oxide and interleukin‐6 contents, DNA fragmentation and expression of cyclooxygenase‐2. Meanwhile, it increased superoxide dismutase and interleukin‐10 contents in sciatic nerve. These findings indicate the neuroprotective effect of liraglutide against diabetic peripheral neuropathy probably via modulating oxidative stress, inflammation, and extracellular matrix remodeling.
Effects ofPlant Litter Type and Additions ofNitrogen and Phosphorus on Bacterial Community-Level Physiological Profiles in a Brown Forest Soil

using BIOLOG EcoPlates'i'"', Both the litter and nutrient additions significantly increased color dcvelopment in most ef the wells in the BIOLOG microplates, with the effect of the latter being especial]y great for soils amended witb plant leaves low in nutrients. Nitrogen addition to soils decreased the color development of some nitrogenous substrates. Litter type had a dorninant etTect on the CLPPs. The addition of nitrogen also strongly affected the CLPPs.
Daily Spousal Responsiveness Predicts Longer-Term Trajectories of Patients’ Physical Function

Everyday interpersonal experiences may underlie the well-established link between close relationships and physical health, but multiple-timescale designs necessary for strong conclusions about temporal sequence are rarely used. The current study of 145 patients with knee osteoarthritis and their spouses focused on a novel pattern in everyday interactions, daily spousal responsiveness—the degree to which spouses’ responses are calibrated to changes in patients’ everyday verbal expression of pain. Using couple-level slopes, multilevel latent-variable growth models tested associations between three types of daily spousal responsiveness (empathic, solicitous, and punishing responsiveness), as measured during a 3-week experience-sampling study, and change in patients’ physical function across 18 months. As predicted, patients whose spouses were more empathically responsive to their pain expression showed better physical function over time compared with those whose spouses were less empathically responsive. This study points to daily responsiveness, a theoretically rooted operationalization of spousal sensitivity, as important for long-term changes in patients’ objective physical function.
Modeling of data security in cloud computing

The paper describes the modeling design of data security in Cloud Computing. Data security can be defined as confidence and integrity maintenance of data processed by an organization. In the paper, dealing with data security in all layers of cloud computing is discussed. The standard cloud storage uses three-level data security model in cloud computing which can be extended by a forth level responsible for the data integrity check. The model of data security in cloud computing was designed as an expansion of the present standard use of data storage model in cloud computing. The paper presents the design of a four-level data security model in cloud computing within which by the use of Petri nets it describes each part of data security in cloud computing.
Percutaneous tumor ablation with radiofrequency

Radiofrequency thermal ablation (RFA) is a new minimally invasive treatment for localized cancer. Minimally invasive surgical options require less resources, time, recovery, and cost, and often offer reduced morbidity and mortality, compared with more invasive methods. To be useful, image‐guided, minimally invasive, local treatments will have to meet those expectations without sacrificing efficacy.
Challenges associated with studying nonlinear distortion of acoustic waveforms emitted by high-speed jets

Discrepancies between linear predictions and direct measurements of the far-field sound produced by highspeed jet flows are typically ascribed to nonlinear distortion. Here we employ an effective Gol’dberg number to investigate the likelihood of nonlinear distortion in the noise fields of supersonic jets. This simplified approach relies on an isolated view of a ray tube along the Mach wave angle. It is known that the acoustic pressure obeys by cylindrical spreading in close vicinity to the jet before advancing to a spherical decay in the far-field. Therefore, a ‘piecewise-spreading regime’ model is employed in order to compute effective Gol’dberg numbers for these jet flows. Our first-principal approach suggests that cumulative nonlinear distortion can only be present within 20 jet exit diameters along the Mach wave angle when laboratory-scale jets are being considered. Effective Gol’dberg numbers for full-scale jet noise scenarios reveal that a high-degree of cumulative distortion can likewise be present in the spherical decay regime. Hence, full-scale jet noise fields are more affected by cumulative distortion.
Architectural support for high-performance distributed computing

Software and hardware support are presented to transform a local area network of workstations into a high-performance distributed computing environment. A host interface processor (HIP) and a communication protocol (HCP) are presented to improve the application-level transfer rates. The authors analyze the performance of a distributed application when it runs on computers of HIP-based local networks and compare it with the performance of a single computer execution. <<ETX>>
Simulation of Several Round-Robin Variants in M / G / 1 queues

The concept of processor sharing introduces a heuristics to prevent long jobs from blocking short jobs in queue. In practice, round-robin has to be used. In the literature, it is generally assumed that newly arrived jobs are put at the end of the queue. However, for highly varying job demands, such an approach may perform poorly. By favoring newly arrived jobs, which are more likely to be short, the performance of round-robin can be improved considerably. In this paper, we study the performance of several round-robin variants as a function of time slice values for different classes of service time distributions.
Tagging French - comparing a statistical and a constraint-based method

In this paper we compare two competing approaches to part-of-speech tagging, statistical and constraint-based disambiguation, using French as our test language. We imposed a time limit on our experiment: the amount of time spent on the design of our constraint system was about the same as the time we used to train and test the easy-to-implement statistical model. We describe the two systems and compare the results. The accuracy of the statistical method is reasonably good, comparable to taggers for English. But the constraint-based tagger seems to be superior even with the limited time we allowed ourselves for rule development.
Comparative Global Governance : Interest Groups and Transnational Governance

The role of interest groups in the policymaking process is a fundamental issue in the understanding of political systems. This paper considers the emerging network of global governance organizations from the interest group perspective. Drawing upon literature devoted to interest groups in domestic contexts, hypotheses are generated regarding transnational interest group dynamics. In particular, issues of mobilization, alignment, participation and influence are highlighted. These hypotheses are assessed based on ongoing empirical investigation of global governance organizations including the World Health Organization, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the International Telecommunications Union and the World Intellectual Property Organization.
Sex-Based Differences in Vascular Function

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality for both men and women in the USA. However, there are differences between the sexes in age-dependent onset, severity, symptoms and outcomes. Basic research into the causes of sex-dependent differences in cardiovascular disease is ongoing and includes investigation into genetic variation in expression and distribution of receptors for the sex steroids; specificity of natural and synthetic ligands that activate the sex steroid receptors; and intracellular mechanisms that are activated by the receptors in all components of the vessel wall and blood elements, which integrate to regulate vascular tone, vascular repair and remodeling in health and disease. In this era of personalized medicine, basic research into mechanisms of sex differences in vascular function will result in improved prevention, detection and treatment of cardiovascular disease in both men and women.
When learners become teachers: a review of peer teaching in medical student education.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Peer teaching engages students as teachers and is widely used in K-12 education, many universities, and increasingly in medical schools. It draws on the social and cognitive congruence between learner and teacher and can be attractive to medical schools faced with a growing number of learners but a static faculty size. Peer teachers can give lectures on assigned topics, lead problem-based learning sessions, and provide one on one support to classmates in the form of tutoring. METHODS We undertook a narrative review of research on peer teachers in medical school, specifically investigating how medical students are impacted by being peer teachers and how having a peer teacher impacts learners. RESULTS Studies have shown that peer teaching has a primarily positive impact on both the peer teacher and the learners. In the setting of problem-based learning courses or clinical skills instruction, medical students' performance on tests of knowledge or skills is similar whether they have faculty instructors or peer teachers. There is also strong evidence that being a peer teacher enhances the learning of the peer teacher relative to the content being taught. It is common for peer teachers to lack confidence in their abilities to successfully teach, and they appreciate receiving training related to their teaching role. CONCLUSIONS We find evidence from several different educational settings that peer teaching benefits both the peer teachers and the learners. This suggests that peer teaching is a valuable methodology for medical schools to engage learners as teachers.
A Literature Review on Current and Proposed Technologies of Noninvasive Blood Pressure Measurement.

BACKGROUND Noninvasive continuous blood pressure (BP) measurement has become an evolving topic in the field of remote healthcare. The classical noninvasive BP measurement techniques provide spontaneous values of systolic and diastolic BP. On the other hand, intrusive type BP measurement techniques provide continuous values of systolic and diastolic BP. However, these techniques are very painful, cannot be used for long-term monitoring, and are obtainable only in an intensive care unit environment. With the advancement of the remote healthcare industry, there is a growing demand for noninvasive continuous BP monitoring. OBJECTIVE The objective of this research was to present a compact literature review on the various prospective approaches of noninvasive continuous BP measurement techniques. MATERIALS & METHODS The most contemporary and advanced technologies on noninvasive continuous BP measurement are Tactile Sensing, Vascular Unloading Technique, Pulse Transit Time, Photoplethysmography, Ultrasound-based BP measurement, BP measurement from image processing, etc. The literature search based on these technologies was conducted in EMBASE, Web of Science, IEEE, PubMed, and Ovid MEDLINE databases. In this study, each selected approach was evaluated and characterized using the following criteria: (1) accuracy; (2) cost; (3) portability; (4) comfort and convenience of use; (5) clinical health and safety; and (6) ability to integrate with the remote healthcare system. RESULTS A detailed technical analysis was done to determine the advantages and limitations of each technique in the context of the abovementioned parameters. It was observed that BP measurement, using photoplethysmography (using camera or sensor or both), perhaps was the most promising technique among all. CONCLUSION The study emphasized the fact that the noninvasive, continuous BP measurement technique needs to evolve further to make it reliable, accurate, and user-friendly. Lastly, a possible direction toward a more reliable and comfortable noninvasive continuous BP measurement technique has been discussed.
Electrical properties of conductive network in carbon fibers/polymer composites

The electrical properties of PAN-based carbon fibers/polycarbonate composites were studied using the AC impedance technique. Impedance, dielectric constant, dielectric loss, relaxation time, and AC-conductivity showed frequency, temperature, and carbon fiber-concentrations dependence. It was found that the dielectric constant and dielectric loss of the prepared composites increase with the increase in the carbon fiber concentration and decreasing frequency. The thermoelectrical behavior was studied as a function of temperature for the composite of 18 wt% fibers concentration. It was found that the dielectric constant and AC-conductivity increase with temperature, while the activation energy decreases. The observed AC electrical results are explained as a function of fiber concentration and temperature, based on the hopping of conducting impurities and complexes into localized energy states.