Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Vegetarian Diets in the Prevention and Treatment of Type 2 Diabetes

Observational studies show that prevalence of type 2 diabetes is 1.6 to 2 times lower in vegetarians than in the general population, even after adjustment for differences in body mass index (BMI). Clinical interventional trials demonstrated that vegetarian diets lead to a greater weight loss and greater reduction in fasting plasma glucose, HbA1c, blood lipids, and hypoglycemic medication than a conventional hypocaloric diet in subjects with type 2 diabetes. We found a greater reduction in visceral fat and greater improvements in insulin resistance and oxidative stress markers with a vegetarian compared to a conventional hypocaloric diabetic diet. Vegetarian diets are sustainable in the long term and may elicit desirable improvements not only in physical health but also in mental health. The American Dietetic Association states that well-planned vegetarian diets are healthy and nutritionally adequate and they may be beneficial in prevention and treatment of some illnesses. Larger clinical trials are needed to confirm the effectiveness and promote the inclusion of vegetarian diets in dietary guidelines for prevention and treatment of type 2 diabetes.
A crisis of expectations : UN peacekeeping in the 1990s

UN peace-keeping in the new world disorder, Ramesh Thakur peace-keeping in the Middle East, Carl Grundy-Warr and Richard Schofield the UN force in Cyprus, Alan James the UN protection force in former Yugoslavia, Susan R. Lamb the UN operation in Somalia, Robert G. Patman UN peace-keeping in Africa, Samuel M. Makinda the UN transitional authority in Cambodia, Carlyle A. Thayer UN peace-keeping in Central America, Larman C. Wilson and Raul Gonzalez Diaz UN peace-keeping - a participant's point of view, Gerald Hensley reforming the UN's organizational capacity for peace-keeping, Mats R. Berdal peace-keeping operations - problems of command and control, Andrei Raevsky regional organizations and UN peace-keeping, Amitav Acharya peace-keeping in civil wars, Paul F. Diehl peace-keeping and peace-making, William Maley peace-keeping or peace-enforcement? , Kenneth Christie peace-keeping, peace-enforcement and national sovereignty, Alan James reconciling national international interests in UN peace-keeping, Robert C. Johansen.
Seizures and the Developing Brain

ABSTRACT Seizures are more common early in life than in adulthood. Bidirectional interactions between seizures and normal developmental processes define their expression and outcomes. Several developmentally regulated factors control neuronal excitability. GABAA receptors hold a central role as they control neuronal activity in an age-specific manner. Early in development, GABAA receptors have depolarizing effects, which contribute to the increased susceptibility of immature neurons to seizures but they are also essential for normal brain development. During development, there is a gradual shift to the “adult-type” hyperpolarizing GABAA receptor signaling, creating more efficient inhibition. Seizures may disrupt GABAA receptor signaling by changing the expression of their subunits and by changing the direction of GABAA responses, which, in certain situations, may be detrimental for brain development. Furthermore, subcortical nuclei, such as the substantia nigra, control the expression and propagation of s.
A smart embedded control unit for electro-hydraulic aircraft actuators

The design and experimental characterization of a novel electronic control unit for fly-by-wire aircraft actuators are presented. Thanks to a carefully-engineered compact volume, it is embedded in the actuator body, providing local closed-loop control. Various digital control laws can be implemented in the easily reconfigurable digital platform. After system modeling and tuning, a variable-gain controller has been selected. Beyond reduction of weight (900g), power dissipation (7W) and cabling connections (required only for power supply and digital communication bus), the advantages provided by this smart unit are both in terms of performance and safety improvement. In fact, fast (1Hz) and precise (1mm resolution, 2mm accuracy, no overshoot) closed-loop linear displacement regulation is here demonstrated. Furthermore, this robust and rugged unit is endowed with self-diagnostic capabilities: fault detection of all critical electronic and electro/mechanical sections is implemented by dedicated analog circuits. It is suitable for fully-electrical and hybrid electro-hydraulic actuators. Extensive thermal characterization has confirmed the fulfillment of specifications over the whole −40°C ÷ +70°C operating range.
Clinical Features of Opticospinal Multiple Sclerosis with Anti-Aquaporin 4 Antibody

Background: We have followed 9 Japanese patients with opticospinal multiple sclerosis (OSMS), some of whom showed longitudinally extensive spinal cord lesions, deep sensory disturbances and resistance to treatment. We investigated the patients for anti-aquaporin 4 (AQP4) antibodies and related this to their neuroimaging, clinical and laboratory features. Methods: We studied the clinical course, neurological findings, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), and electrophysiological findings, and determined the presence of anti-AQP4 antibody and human leukocyte antigen DPB1 and DRB1 alleles. Results: Five patients (56.6%) had anti-AQP4 antibody. Antibody-positive patients displayed female predominance, longitudinally extensive spinal cord lesions, higher frequency of exacerbations, severe disability, and higher cell counts and total protein content without IgG oligoclonal bands in the CSF. They also showed poor steroid responsiveness and poor therapeutic response to interferon β1b. Conclusions: The presence of anti-AQP4 antibodies correlates with clinical severity and poor prognosis in OSMS.
N-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid and neuroinflammation in aging and Alzheimer's disease

The innate immune system of the brain is mainly composed of microglial cells, which play a key role in the maintenance of synapses and the protection of neurons against noxious agents or lesions owing to their phagocytic activity. In the healthy brain, microglia are highly motile and strongly interact with neurons either by physical contact, induction of oxidative stress or through specific mediators, such as chemokines and cytokines. In response to inflammatory insult however, microglial cells get activated and produce inflammatory cytokines. The action of cytokines on specific receptors expressed in the brain triggers the development of sickness behavior and altered cognitive and emotional processes. The effects are acute and reversible as normal behavior is restored once the synthesis of inflammatory brain cytokines returns to baseline after a few hours. However, in pathological situations, these cytokines may reach toxic levels and have irreversible consequences such as neuronal death, as observed in neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease. Omega-3 (n-3) polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) are essential nutrients and fundamental components of neuronal and glial cell membranes. They accumulate in the brain during the perinatal period in a dietary supply-dependent fashion. Their brain levels may diminish with age, but can be increased by diets enriched in n-3 PUFAs. Changes in the immune profile have been associated with n-3 PUFAs intake in humans and animal models. Therefore, the increasing exposure of the population to diets low in n-3 PUFAs could contribute to the deleterious effects of the chronic activation of microglia in the brain.
Eliminating conflict misses using prime number-based cache indexing

Using alternative cache indexing/hashing functions is a popular technique to reduce conflict misses by achieving a more uniform cache access distribution across the sets in the cache. Although various alternative hashing functions have been demonstrated to eliminate the worst-case conflict behavior, no study has really analyzed the pathological behavior of such hashing functions that often results in performance slowdown. We present an in-depth analysis of the pathological behavior of cache hashing functions. Based on the analysis, we propose two new hashing functions, prime modulo and odd-multiplier displacement, that are resistant to pathological behavior and yet are able to eliminate the worst-case conflict behavior in the L2 cache. We show that these two schemes can be implemented in fast hardware using a set of narrow addition operations, with negligible fragmentation in the L2 cache. We evaluate the schemes on 23 memory intensive applications. For applications that have nonuniform cache accesses, both prime modulo and odd-multiplier displacement hashing achieve an average speedup of 1.27 compared to traditional hashing, without slowing down any of the 23 benchmarks. We also evaluate using odd-multiplier displacement function with multiple multipliers in conjunction with a skewed associative L2 cache. The skewed associative cache achieves a better average speedup at the cost of some pathological behavior that slows down four applications by up to 7 percent.
Random Walks on Sensor Networks

We consider the mobile data gathering problem in large-scale wireless sensor networks with static sensor nodes and a mobile patrol node. Based on the assumptions that (a) the sensor positions are unknown and (b) the network may not be entirely connected, we formulate the problem as one of random walks in random geometric graphs and derive analytical bounds for the node coverage, i.e. the number of queried sensor nodes within a given time frame. Based on this metric, we propose an algorithm that improves the data gathering performance by generating constrained random walks, in which the probability mass function at each step reflects the available side information (e.g. the memory of past visited sites).
Child maltreatment in Greece: a review of research

Child maltreatment can be traced in Greek mythology, history and literature. Greek society has always used passive or active violence towards its dependent members, including children. In the last 17 years there have been a number of studies describing child maltreatment in contemporary Greece. Most have used small clinical samples; nevertheless, their findings are comparable to those of other countries and their results support the psychopathological causality of child maltreatment. A number of studies on child-rearing practices and on children's socialization have revealed an extensive use of physical punishment related to the child's opposition to parental authority and high parental expectations often linked with the child's school performance. Another small set of studies assessed the effectiveness of social policy and the appropriateness of the child protection system. On the basis of the studies on child maltreatment in Greece, the author proposes firstly the adoption of an operational definition which takes into consideration community attitudes and culture. A second proposal relates to the application of an ecological theoretical model stressing the mutual interaction of different systems and their cumulative effects. Lastly, it is suggested that social policy measures should be introduced in the field of primary, secondary and tertiary prevention. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
TstI, a Type II restriction–modification protein with DNA recognition, cleavage and methylation functions in a single polypeptide

Type II restriction–modification systems cleave and methylate DNA at specific sequences. However, the Type IIB systems look more like Type I than conventional Type II schemes as they employ the same protein for both restriction and modification and for DNA recognition. Several Type IIB proteins, including the archetype BcgI, are assemblies of two polypeptides: one with endonuclease and methyltransferase roles, another for DNA recognition. Conversely, some IIB proteins express all three functions from separate segments of a single polypeptide. This study analysed one such single-chain protein, TstI. Comparison with BcgI showed that the one- and the two-polypeptide systems differ markedly. Unlike the heterologous assembly of BcgI, TstI forms a homotetramer. The tetramer bridges two recognition sites before eventually cutting the DNA in both strands on both sides of the sites, but at each site the first double-strand break is made long before the second. In contrast, BcgI cuts all eight target bonds at two sites in a single step. TstI also differs from BcgI in either methylating or cleaving unmodified sites at similar rates. The site may thus be modified before TstI can make the second double-strand break. TstI MTase acts best at hemi-methylated sites.
Morbidity among human immunodeficiency virus-1-infected and -uninfected African children.

OBJECTIVE To assess patterns of morbidity and associated factors in late infancy and early childhood among human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected and -uninfected African children. DESIGN Prospective study. SETTING The Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital, Blantyre, Malawi. PARTICIPANTS Children with known HIV status from an earlier perinatal intervention trial were enrolled during the first year of life and followed to approximately 36 months of age. OUTCOME MEASURES Morbidity and mortality information was collected every 3 months by a questionnaire. A physical examination was conducted every 6 months. Blood to determine CD4(+) values was also collected. Age-adjusted and Kaplan-Meier analyses were performed to compare rates of morbidity and mortality among infected and uninfected children. RESULTS Overall, 808 children (190 HIV-infected, 499 HIV-uninfected but born to infected mothers, and 119 born to HIV-uninfected mothers) were included in this study. Of these, 109 died during a median follow-up of 18 months. Rates of childhood immunizations were high among all children (eg, lowest was measles vaccination [87%] among HIV-infected children). Age-adjusted morbidity rates were significantly higher among HIV-infected than among HIV-uninfected children. HIV-infected children were more immunosuppressed than were uninfected children. By 3 years of age, 89% of the infected children died, 10% were in HIV disease category B or C, and only approximately 1% were without HIV symptoms. Among HIV-infected children, median survival after the first occurrence of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome-related conditions, such as splenomegaly, oral thrush, and developmental delay, was <10 months. These same conditions, in addition to frequent bouts of fever, were the main morbidity predictors of mortality. CONCLUSIONS The frequency of diseases was high, and progression from asymptomatic or symptomatic HIV disease to death was rapid. Management strategies that effectively reduce morbidity for HIV-infected children are needed.
Distinguer les requêtes pour améliorer la recherche d'information XML

RESUME. Cet article s’appuie sur une methode de recherche d’information dans des collections de documents XML. Cette approche est configurable dans le but de pouvoir s’adapter a differents contextes de recherche. Au regard des resultats obtenus lors de differentes campagnes d’evaluations, l’efficacite de la methode est inegale d’une requete a l’autre. De plus, differentes configurations de la methode ne conduisent pas a la meme efficacite pour la meme requete. Nous introduisons dans cet article differents criteres pour distinguer differents types de requete. Nous tentons de recenser des criteres ayant une influence sur la methode et de definir la configuration la plus adaptee a un type de requete. Cet article s’appuie sur des experimentations menees sur les jeux de tests proposes lors des campagnes INEX d’evaluations des systemes de recherche d‘information XML.
A study of teacher change

ByButts, David P.; Raun, Chester E. A STUDY IN TEACHER CHANGE Texas Univ., Austin. Science Education Center. Spons Agency-Office of Education (NEV). Washington, D.C. Bureau of Research Report NoSIP-RR-1 Bureau NoBR50249 Pub Date (671 ContractOEC-610108 Note20p. EDRS Price MF-$0.25 HC-$0.88 Descriptors-*CHANGING ATTITUDES CURRICULUM PROBLEMS EFFECTIVE TEACHING, *ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHERS *INSERVICE TEACHER EDUCATION, *SCIENCE CURRICULUM Identifiers-Classroom Observation Rating .Form. Science--A Process Approach Semantic Differential, Teacher Process Measure Implementatioo of curriculum innovations requires that teachers have both knowledge of :he change and commitment to use it. In order to determine what type of teacher is most likely to perceive and practice a curriculum innovation effectively, an in-service project was set up and studied. Nineteen elementary school teachers with varying degrees of teaching.experience and previous preparation in science participated in the teacher education program developed for the new curriculum, "Science-A Process Approach," sponsored by the Commission on Science Education of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Correlation analysis of preand posttest scores and classroom observation yielded the conclusion that this in-service program was most -successful for teachers with several years previous teaching experience but with few hours of previous science courses, suggesting that the longer a teacher has taught, the more receptive he is to new and fresh approaches to teaching and the more valuable such in-service programs are. A teacher's competency in science was found to effect positive change in the teacher's attitude toward and practice of the new curriculum, but the grade level taught appeared to be unrelated to attitude and curriculum changes. Correlation tables and a 14-item bibliography are included. (JS)
Rapid exploration with multi-rotors: A frontier selection method for high speed flight

Exploring and mapping previously unknown environments while avoiding collisions with obstacles is a fundamental task for autonomous robots. In scenarios where this needs to be done rapidly, multi-rotors are a good choice for the task, as they can cover ground at potentially very high velocities. Flying at high velocities, however, implies the ability to rapidly plan trajectories and to react to new information quickly. In this paper, we propose an extension to classical frontier-based exploration that facilitates exploration at high speeds. The extension consists of a reactive mode in which the multi-rotor rapidly selects a goal frontier from its field of view. The goal frontier is selected in a way that minimizes the change in velocity necessary to reach it. While this approach can increase the total path length, it significantly reduces the exploration time, since the multi-rotor can fly at consistently higher speeds.
Calcium Channel Blockers for Reducing Cardiac Morbidity After Noncardiac Surgery: A Meta-Analysis

Cardiac complications are the leading cause of death after noncardiac surgery. Despite theoretical benefits, calcium channel blockers (CCB) are not widely used in the perioperative setting. This systematic review assessed the efficacy of CCBs during noncardiac surgery. MEDLINE, EMBASE, Science Citation Index, PubMed, and reference lists were searched without language restriction for randomized controlled trials (RCT) evaluating CCBs during noncardiac surgery. Two reviewers independently abstracted data on death, myocardial infarction (MI), ischemia, supraventricular tachyarrhythmia (SVT), and congestive heart failure (CHF). Treatment effects were calculated as relative risks (RR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI). Eleven studies (1007 patients) were included. CCBs significantly reduced ischemia (RR, 0.49; 95% CI, 0.30–0.80; P = 0.004) and SVT (RR, 0.52; 95% CI, 0.37–0.72; P < 0.0001). CCBs were associated with trends towards reduced death and MI. In post hoc analyses, CCBs significantly reduced death/MI (RR, 0.35; 95% CI, 0.15–0.86; P = 0.02) and major morbid events (MME), defined as death, MI, or CHF (RR, 0.39; 95% CI, 0.17–0.89; P = 0.02). In subgroup analyses, diltiazem significantly reduced ischemia, SVT, death/MI, and MMEs. This meta-analysis shows CCBs significantly reduced ischemia, SVT, and combined end-points in the setting of noncardiac surgery. The majority of these benefits are attributable to diltiazem, suggesting the need for further evaluation of this drug in a large RCT.
High-technology augmentative communication for adults with post-stroke aphasia: a systematic review

ABSTRACT Introduction: Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems were introduced into clinical practice by therapists to help compensate for persistent language deficits in people with aphasia. Although, there is currently a push towards an increased focus on compensatory approaches in an attempt to maximize communication function for social interaction, available studies including AAC systems, especially technologically advanced communication tools and systems, known as ‘high-technology AAC’, show key issues and obstacles for these tools to become utilized in mainstream clinical practice. Areas covered: The current review synthesizes communication intervention studies that involved the use of high-technology communication devices to enhance linguistic communication skills for adults with post-stroke aphasia. The review focuses on compensatory approaches that emphasized functional communication. It also summarizes recommendations for the report of studies evaluating high-technology devices that may be potentially relevant for other researchers working with adults with post-stroke aphasia. Expert commentary: Taken together with positive results in heterogeneous studies, high-technology devices represent a compensatory strategy to enhance communicative skills in individuals with post-stroke aphasia. Improvements in the design of studies and reporting of results may lead to better interpretation of the already existing scientific results from aphasia management.
Constrained simulations of the local universe: II. The nature of the local Hubble flow

Using a suite of N-body simulations in different Cold Dark Matter (CDM) scenarios, with cosmological constant (\LCDM) and without (OCDM, SCDM), we study the Hubble flow (\sigh) in Local Volumes (LV) around Local Group (LG) like objects found in these simulations, and compare the numerical results with the most recent observations. We show that \LCDM and OCDM models exhibit the same behavior of \sigh. Hence, we demonstrate that the observed coldness of the Hubble flow is not likely to be a manifestation of the dark energy, contrary to previous claims. The coldness does not constitute a problem by itself but it poses a problem to the standard \LCDM model only if the mean density within the Local Volume is greater than twice the mean matter cosmic density. The lack of blueshifted galaxies in the LV, outside of the LG can be considered as another manifestation of the coldness of the flow. Finally, we show that the main dynamical parameter that affects the coldness of the flow is the relative isolation of the LG, and the absence of nearby Milky Way like objects within a distance of about $3\mpc$.
Effects of language modeling on speech-driven question answering

We integrate automatic speech recognition (ASR) and question answering (QA) to realize a speech-driven QA system, and evaluate its performance. We adapt an Ngram language model to natural language questions, so that the input of our system can be recognized with a high accuracy. We target WH-questions which consist of the topic part and fixed phrase used to ask about something. We first produce a general N-gram model intended to recognize the topic and emphasize the counts of the N-grams that correspond to the fixed phrases. Given a transcription by the ASR engine, the QA engine extracts the answer candidates from target documents. We propose a passage retrieval method robust against recognition errors in the transcription. We use the QA test collection produced in NTCIR, which is a TREC-style evaluation workshop, and show the effectiveness of our method by means of experiments.