Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Growth in utero and blood pressure levels in the next generation.

Epidemiological studies have consistently shown an inverse association between birth weight and systolic blood pressure in later life [1]. It is not known whether the cause of this association is intra-uterine programming in response to fetal malnutrition [2] or a genetic factor influencing both birth weight and blood pressure [3]. Family studies offer an important opportunity to distinguish between intra-uterine and genetic influences. If intra-uterine factors determine the inverse association between birth weight and blood pressure, it could be expected that offspring's systolic blood pressure is associated with maternal birth weight, but not with paternal birth weight. If, however, genetic factors do play a role, offspring's blood pressure would also be associated with paternal birth weight. Barker et al. [4] investigated these associations in 106 children of 70 fathers and 123 children of 77 mothers. Birth weight and blood pressure data in the parents were described previously [5]. In the present study, their offspring was divided in five parental birth weight strata and, according to Barker et al., the offspring's systolic blood pressures fell with increasing maternal birth weight (P for trend = 0.05), but were unrelated to paternal birth weight (P = 0.7) [4]. On the basis of these findings, the authors concluded that constrained growth of a female fetus by lack of nutrients causes persisting changes in its physiology and metabolism which lead to reduced fetal growth and raised blood pressure in the next generation. Therefore, public health policies to improve fetal growth in one generation may benefit succeeding generations. However, a closer look at their data shows that the opposite may be true. Using the three birth weight strata as defined for men and women in the original article describing the parents [5], it can be visualized that offspring's systolic blood pressure fell with increasing maternal as well as paternal birth weight (Fig. 1). This may suggest that genetic factors also play a role in the association between birth weight and blood pressure. It would be informative to test whether the association of parental birth weight with offspring's blood pressure is significantly different between mothers and fathers before and after adjustment for gestational age. If the relationship between low birth weight and raised blood pressure is caused by genetic factors, improvement of fetal growth may neither prevent the development of raised blood pressure in the first generation, nor in succeeding generations. Low birth weight may only serve …
Understanding the Success of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) - The Perspective of Post-Adoption Use

Understanding the antecedents and consequences of trust in an online and on-demand outsourcing context is important. This study explores the effects of service quality on trust, which in turn affects a client firm’s post-adoption use in SaaS. A research model was developed based on the dedication-constraint framework of social exchange theory to measure service quality, trust, and SaaS post-adoption as multiple dimensions. We empirically examined the model by collecting data from 246 firms (key informants) that have adopted SaaS. Results show that while all three dimensions of service quality (client orientation quality, client response quality, environment quality) positively affect trust in service quality, client orientation and environment quality have positively influence on trust in provider. Both types of trust positively influence post-adoption intention. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and practical implications.
Characterisation of electroless nickel plated titanium powder

In this study, pure titanium powder with an average size of 20 μm was treated by electroless nickel plating to obtain titanium–nickel composite/duplex powder. Two plating procedures were applied; continuous short period (CSP) and discontinuous long period (DLP) processes. The plated titanium powder particles as well as unplated ones were characterised by energy dispersive spectrometry (EDS), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), particle size analysis and X-ray mapping analysis methods. The nickel plated titanium powder was sprayed on the steel substrate by atmospheric plasma spray technique. Furthermore, the mixed titanium–nickel powder was also sprayed. The morphology of sprayed powders was compared with each other. It was found that nickel forms fine dispersed nodules on the surface of titanium powder particles in the CSP process, whereas it appeared as homogeneous layers on the surface of all the particles in the DLP process. Also, it was found that the mass deposited on the powder increased with the plating period. The sprayed nickel plated powder showed better microstructure than the sprayed nickel mixed one.
A Novel Allosteric Inhibitor of the Uridine Diphosphate N-Acetylglucosamine Pyrophosphorylase from Trypanosoma brucei

Uridine diphosphate N-acetylglucosamine pyrophosphorylase (UAP) catalyzes the final reaction in the biosynthesis of UDP-GlcNAc, an essential metabolite in many organisms including Trypanosoma brucei, the etiological agent of Human African Trypanosomiasis. High-throughput screening of recombinant T. brucei UAP identified a UTP-competitive inhibitor with selectivity over the human counterpart despite the high level of conservation of active site residues. Biophysical characterization of the UAP enzyme kinetics revealed that the human and trypanosome enzymes both display a strictly ordered bi–bi mechanism, but with the order of substrate binding reversed. Structural characterization of the T. brucei UAP–inhibitor complex revealed that the inhibitor binds at an allosteric site absent in the human homologue that prevents the conformational rearrangement required to bind UTP. The identification of a selective inhibitory allosteric binding site in the parasite enzyme has therapeutic potential.
Tips, dones and todos: uncovering user profiles in foursquare

Online Location Based Social Networks (LBSNs), which combine social network features with geographic information sharing, are becoming increasingly popular. One such application is Foursquare, which doubled its user population in less than six months. Among other features, Foursquare allows users to leave tips (i.e., reviews or recommendations) at specific venues as well as to give feedback on previously posted tips by adding them to their to-do lists or marking them as done. In this paper, we analyze how Foursquare users exploit these three features - tips, dones and to-dos - uncovering different behavior profiles. Our study reveals the existence of very active and influential users, some of which are famous businesses and brands, that seem engaged in posting tips at a large variety of venues while also receiving a great amount of user feedback on them. We also provide evidence of spamming, showing the existence of users that post tips whose contents are unrelated to the nature or domain of the venue where the tips were left.
Effectiveness of a rapid response service for frail older people.

AIM Many innovative community-based intermediate care services have been initiated to address the care needs of older people with chronic health conditions, but there is little evidence about their outcomes or how they are best configured and delivered. This study aimed to evaluate one practice innovation, a rapid response service (RRS). METHOD This study focused on the RRS's clinical and therapeutic achievements, and patients' satisfaction with its care. A mixed design of quantitative and qualitative methods was used. RESULTS Patients were satisfied with staff attitudes; being treated at home or in a home-like environment; and receiving a quick response to their needs and access to services/ help. Aspects of care that they were dissatisfied with were inconvenient facilities and insufficient equipment or material supplies; arrangements for their care and recovery; lack of communication; inappropriate medical care; and insufficient or limited duration of care. CONCLUSION The RRS provided holistic assessments for a previously under-served group of older people with chronic health problems and disabilities, and identified and responded to several unmet needs, partly through its own treatment and partly by referring patients to other health and social services.
The News that Matters to You: Design and Deployment of a Personalized News Service

With the growth of online information, many people are challenged in finding and reading the information most important for their interests. From 2008-2010 we built an experimental personalized news system where readers can subscribe to organized channels of information that are curated by experts. AI technology was employed to radically reduce the work load of curators and to efficiently present information to readers. The system has gone through three implementation cycles and processed over 16 million news stories from about 12,000 RSS feeds on over 8000 topics organized by 160 curators for over 600 registered readers. This paper describes the approach, engineering and AI technology of the system.
Open innovation in digital journalism: Examining the impact of Open APIs at four news organizations

This article examines the relative value of open innovation principles for digital media, exemplified by the emergence of Open Application Programming Interfaces (Open APIs) at four news organizations: The New York Times, The Guardian, USA Today and NPR. The use of Open APIs represents a shift toward an open innovation paradigm that may help address twin challenges facing the news industry: the need for improved R&D and the need for new revenue streams. This paper extends the interdisciplinary study of open innovation to digital communication. Findings indicate that the use of Open APIs has accelerated R&D through knowledge-sharing with web developers; generated new means of commercializing content by extending a firm’s product portfolio; and forged innovation networks that function as external R&D departments. The article discusses the constant negotiation between openness and control, and open and closed paradigms in journalism.
Analysis of General Composition and Harmful Material of Protaetia brevitarsis

To evaluate Protaetia brevitarsis as a food material, we investigated its composition of nutritional and harmful components. Analysis of nutritional composition (moisture, crude protein, crude fat, crude ash, crude fiber, and carbohydrates) showed that the content of crude protein, fat, fiber, and ash were 57.86±0.01%, 16.57±1.81%, 5.31±0.10%, and 8.36±0.10% in Protaetia brevitarsis powder, respectively. Amino acids were composed of 17.68% essential and 33.97% non-essential in Protaetia brevitarsis powder. Protaetia brevitarsis powder contained 61.10% unsaturated fatty acid with oleic acids. Additionally, Protaetia brevitarsis powder had a large quantity of minerals related to body organization, such as K (1597 mg/100 g), P (724.1 mg/100 g), Mg (366.3 mg/100 g), and so on. We also confirmed that all bacteria and all heavy metals analyzed in this study, except for very small amount of Hg (0.1±0.042 mg/kg), were not detected in the lysophilized Protaetia brevitarsis powder.
Does Psychological Treatment Help Only Those Patients with Severe Irritable Bowel Syndrome Who Also Have a Concurrent Psychiatric Disorder?

Objective: We have previously reported improved health-related quality of life in patients with severe irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) following psychological treatments. In this paper, we examine whether this improvement was associated with improvement in psychological symptoms and was confined to those patients who had concurrent psychiatric disorder. Method: Two hundred and fifty-seven patients with severe IBS entering a psychological treatment trial were interviewed using the Schedules for Clinical Assessment in Neuropsychiatry. At entry to the trial and 15 months later, patients were also assessed using the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, Symptom Cheecklist-90 (SCL-90) and Short Form-36 (SF36) physical component summary score as the main outcome measure. Partial correlation was used to compare changes in SF36 score and changes in psychological scores while controlling for possible confounders, treatment group and baseline scores. Multiple regression analysis was used to examine whether changes in psychological scores, changes in pain and a history of abuse could account for most of the variance of change in SF36 physical component score. Results: Of 257 patients with severe IBS, 107 (42%) had a depressive, panic or generalized anxiety disorder at trial entry. There were moderate but significant correlations (0.21–0.47) between change in the psychological scores and the change in SF36 physical component scores. The correlation coefficients were similar in the groups with and without psychiatric disorder. The superiority of psychotherapy and antidepressant groups over treatment as usual was similar in those with and without psychiatric disorder. Multiple regression found significant independent effects of change in depression, anxiety, somatization and abdominal pain but there was still variance explained by treatment group. Conclusions: In severe IBS improvement in health-related quality of life following psychotherapy or antidepressants is correlated with, but not explained fully by reduction of psychological scores. A more complete understanding of how these treatments help patients with medically unexplained symptoms will enable us to refine them further.
An Asymmetric Multi-core Architecture for Accelerating Critical Sections

To improve the performance of a single application on Chip Multiprocessors (CMPs), the application must be split into threads which execute concurrently on multiple cores. In multi-threaded applications, critical sections are used to ensure that only one thread accesses shared data at any given time. Critical sections can serialize the execution of threads, which significantly reduces performance and scalability. This paper proposes Accelerated Critical Sections (ACS), a technique that leverages the high-performance core(s) of an Asymmetric Chip Multiprocessor (ACMP) to accelerate the execution of critical sections. In ACS, selected critical sections are executed by a high-performance core, which can execute the critical section faster than the other, smaller cores. As a result, ACS reduces serialization: it lowers the likelihood of threads waiting for a critical section to finish. Our evaluation on a set of 12 critical-section-intensive workloads shows that ACS reduces the average execution time by 34% compared to an equal-area 32-core symmetric CMP and by 23% compared to an equal-area ACMP. Moreover, for 7 out of the 12 workloads, ACS improves scalability by increasing the number of threads at which performance saturates.
Dynamic mechanical properties of particulate‐filled composites

The relative shear moduli of composites containing glass spheres in a rubbery matrix obey the Mooney equation, analogous to the relative viscosity of similar suspensions in Newtonian liquids. However, when the matrix is a rigid epoxy, the relative shear moduli are less than what the Mooney equation predicts but greater than what the Kerner equation predicts. Relative moduli are less for rigid matrices than for rubbery matrices because (1) the modulus of the filler is not extremely greater compared to that of the rigid matrix; (2) Poisson's ratio is less than 0.5 for a rigid matrix; (3) thermal stresses in the matrix surrounding the particles reduce the apparent modulus of the polymer matrix because of the nonlinear stress—strain behavior of the matrix. This latter effect gives rise to a temperature dependence of the relative modulus below the glass transition temperature of the polymer matrix. Formation of strong aggregates increases the shear modulus the same as viscosity is increased by aggregation. Torsion or flexure tests on specimens made by casting or by molding give incorrect low values of moduli because of a surface layer containing an excess of matrix material; this gives rise to a fictitious increase in apparent modulus as particle size decreases. The mechanical damping can be markedly changed by surface treatment of the filler particles without noticeable changes in the modulus. The Kerner equation, which is a lower bound to the shear modulus, is modified and brought into closer aggrement with the experimental data by taking into account the maximum packing fraction of the filler particles.
DEGRADATION RATE CONSTANTS OF STEROIDS IN SEWAGE TREATMENT WORKS AND RECEIVING WATER

Abstract Steroid estrogens are one of the most important groups of endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) which can cause adverse effects on wildlife species and humans. Natural estrogens, including estrone (E1) and estradiol (E2), and synthetic estrogen 17α‐ethinylestradiol (EE2) together contribute to most of the estrogenic activity in sewage effluents and receiving water. Degradation, particularly aerobic biodegradation was found to be the dominant removal mechanism in these environments. There are a number of factors such as temperature, pH, SRT, HRT and biomass concentration that can affect the rate of biodegradation. This paper reports the results of investigations in to the relationship between the equivalent biomass concentration and degradation rate constants for compounds E1, E2 and EE2 in various environments. It was found that a higher biomass concentration leads to higher rate constants, and relatively good linear correlations (R2 =0.73, 0.79 and 0.73) between the logarithm of the rate constants and the corresponding logarithm equivalent biomass concentration (EBC) values were obtained.
Determination of Oxygen Content in Pervoskite-Type Cathode Coatings

In this paper, La0.75Sr0. 25MnO3-δ (LSM) and La0.6Sr0. 4CoO3–δ (LSCO)coatings were prepared by the atmospheric plasma spraying method andflame spraying method. Both coatings were annealedat 800 °C, 900 °C, 1000 °C for 5 h, 10h, 15 h and 20 h. Oxygen content of LSM and LSCO coatings weredetermined by redox titration. It is interesting to noted that, oxygen content of LSM and LSCO coatings strongly varied with the annealing temperature andannealing time. The experimental results show that, at same annealingtemperature, oxygen vacancy decreases with the increase of annealing time. For LSM coatings, at 800 °C,the oxygen vacancy, δ, were decreased from 0.419 to 0.353, 0.310 and to 0.258 with theannealing time increased from 5 hto 10 h, 15 h and to 20 h. Under the same annealing time, oxygen vacancydecreased with increase of annealingtemperature. For LSCO coatings, the oxygen vacancy, δ, were decreased from0.698 to 0.573 and to 0.535 after annealed at 800 °C, 900°C and 1000 °C for 5 h.
Behavioural Dimensions for Discovering Knowledge Actor Roles Utilising Enterprise Social Network Metrics

The identification of distinct user roles is an important theme in social media research. However, for Enterprise Social Networks (ESN), the use of social media within organisations, research identifying such roles is still lacking. Yet, understanding user roles, in particular regarding their knowledge contributions and communication behaviour, might usefully support companies in managing critical knowledge resources. Against this backdrop, in this research-in-progress paper we derive 16 metrics characterising the participation behaviour, message content and structural position of ESN users of an Australian professional services firm. Based on a factor analysis, we identify four distinct dimensions of ESN user behaviour: Contribution & networking, information provision, contact dispersion and invisible usage. With this research we contribute to the literature by transferring concepts and methods of organisation science and social media research to an ESN context. Further, our approach forms the basis for the identification of different types of knowledge actors, which might ultimately help to improve organisational knowledge transparency.
Making Architecture Reviews Work in the Real World

This article explores the nontechnical aspects of formal architecture reviews-social, psychological, and managerial. Architecture reviews differ from other technical reviews because of their close relationship to a system's business goals, so they need to be approached differently. The authors draw lessons from their experiences in reviewing and evaluating software and system architectures in a wide variety of application domains. They discuss the issues architects face when running such reviews, common pitfalls to avoid, and ways of increasing an organization's chances of a successful review.
Interleukin 10 (IL-10) and viral IL-10 strongly reduce antigen-specific human T cell proliferation by diminishing the antigen-presenting capacity of monocytes via downregulation of class II major histocompatibility complex expression

Interleukin 10 (IL-10) and viral IL-10 (v-IL-10) strongly reduced antigen-specific proliferation of human T cells and CD4+ T cell clones when monocytes were used as antigen-presenting cells. In contrast, IL- 10 and v-IL-10 did not affect the proliferative responses to antigens presented by autologous Epstein-Barr virus-lymphoblastoid cell line (EBV-LCL). Inhibition of antigen-specific T cell responses was associated with downregulation of constitutive, as well as interferon gamma- or IL-4-induced, class II MHC expression on monocytes by IL-10 and v-IL-10, resulting in the reduction in antigen-presenting capacity of these cells. In contrast, IL-10 and v-IL-10 had no effect on class II major histocompatibility complex (MHC) expression on EBV-LCL. The reduced antigen-presenting capacity of monocytes correlated with a decreased capacity to mobilize intracellular Ca2+ in the responder T cell clones. The diminished antigen-presenting capacities of monocytes were not due to inhibitory effects of IL-10 and v-IL-10 on antigen processing, since the proliferative T cell responses to antigenic peptides, which did not require processing, were equally well inhibited. Furthermore, the inhibitory effects of IL-10 and v-IL-10 on antigen-specific proliferative T cell responses could not be neutralized by exogenous IL-2 or IL-4. Although IL-10 and v-IL-10 suppressed IL-1 alpha, IL-1 beta, tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF- alpha), and IL-6 production by monocytes, it was excluded that these cytokines played a role in antigen-specific T cell proliferation, since normal antigen-specific responses were observed in the presence of neutralizing anti-IL-1, -IL-6, and -TNF-alpha mAbs. Furthermore, addition of saturating concentrations of IL-1 alpha, IL-1 beta, IL-6, and TNF-alpha to the cultures had no effect on the reduced proliferative T cell responses in the presence of IL-10, or v-IL-10. Collectively, our data indicate that IL-10 and v-IL-10 can completely prevent antigen-specific T cell proliferation by inhibition of the antigen-presenting capacity of monocytes through downregulation of class II MHC antigens on monocytes.