Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Profile for estimating risk of heart failure.

CONTEXT We devised a risk appraisal function to assess the hazard of heart failure in persons who are predisposed by coronary disease, hypertension, or valvular heart disease. OBJECTIVE To provide general practitioners and internists with a cost-effective method to select people at high risk who are likely to have impaired left ventricular systolic function and may therefore require further evaluation and aggressive preventive measures. METHODS The routinely measured risk factors used in constructing the heart failure profile include age, electrocardiographic left ventricular hypertrophy, cardiomegaly on chest x-ray film, heart rate, systolic blood pressure, vital capacity, diabetes mellitus, evidence of myocardial infarction, and valvular disease or hypertension. Based on 486 heart failure cases during 38 years of follow-up, 4-year probabilities of failure were computed using the pooled logistic regression model for each sex; a simple point score system was employed. A multivariate profile was also produced without the vital capacity or chest x-ray film because these may not be readily available in some clinical settings. RESULTS Using the risk factors that make up the multivariate risk formulation-derived from ordinary office procedures-the probability of developing heart failure can be estimated and compared with the average risk for persons of the same age and sex. Using this risk profile, 60% of events in men and 73% in women occurred in subjects in the top quintile of multivariate risk. CONCLUSIONS Using this multivariate risk formulation, it is possible to identify high-risk candidates for heart failure who are likely to have a substantial yield of positive findings when tested for objective evidence of presymptomatic left ventricular dysfunction. The risk profile may also identify candidates who are at high risk for heart failure because of multiple, marginal risk factor abnormalities that might otherwise be overlooked.
Exploratory studies of ab initio protein structure prediction: Multiple copy simulated annealing, AMBER energy functions, and a generalized born/solvent accessibility solvation model

A theoretical and computational approach to ab initio structure prediction for polypeptides in water is described and applied to selected amino acid sequences for testing and preliminary validation. The method builds systematically on the extensive efforts applied to parameterization of molecular dynamics (MD) force fields, employs an empirically well‐validated continuum dielectric model for solvation, and an eminently parallelizable approach to conformational search. The effective free energy of polypeptide chains is estimated from AMBER united atom potential functions, with internal degrees of freedom for both backbone and amino acid side chains explicitly treated. The hydration free energy of each structure is determined using the Generalized Born/Solvent Accessibility (GBSA) method, modified and reparameterized to include atom types consistent with the AMBER force field. The conformational search procedure employs a multiple copy, Monte Carlo simulated annealing (MCSA) protocol in full torsion angle space, applied iteratively on sets of structures of progressively lower free energy until a prediction of a structure with lowest effective free energy is obtained. Calibration tests for the effective energy function and search algorithm are performed on the alanine dipeptide, selected protein crystal structures, and united atom decoys on barnase, crambin, and six examples from the Rosetta set. Specific demonstration cases of the method are provided for the 8‐mer sequence of Ala residues, a 12‐residue peptide with longer side chains QLLKKLLQQLKQ, a de novo designed 16 residue peptide of sequence (AAQAA)3Y, a 15‐residue sequence with a β sheet motif, GEWTWDATKTFTVTE, and a 36 residue small protein, Villin headpiece. The Ala 8‐mer readily formed an α‐helix. An α‐helix structure was predicted for the 16‐mer, consistent with observed results from IR and CD spectroscopy and with the pattern in ψ/ϕ angles of known protein structures. The predicted structure for the 12‐mer, composed of a mix of helix and less regular elements of secondary structure, lies 2.65 Å RMS from the observed crystal structure. Structure prediction for the 8‐mer β‐motif resulted in form 4.50 Å RMS from the crystal geometry. For Villin, the predicted native form is very close to the crystal structure, RMS values of 3.5 Å (including sidechains), and 1.01 Å (main chain only). The methodology permits a detailed analysis of the molecular forces which dominate various segments of the predicted folding trajectory. Analysis of the results in terms of internal torsional, electrostatic and van der Waals and the electrostatic and non‐electrostatic contributions to hydration, including the hydrophobic effect, is presented. Proteins 2002;46:128–146. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Local and Visitor Physical Activity through Media Messages: A Specialized Benefits-Based Management Application at Acadia National Park

The National Parks System’s (NPS) abundance of trails and other outdoor recreation opportunities makes the NPS ideally suited to enable visitors’ attainment of healthy physical activity. Given the physiological and psychological benefits of leisure, their availability in outdoor settings and the efficiencies of market segmentation, media campaigns may be an effective means of influencing visitor physical activity behavior. However, research is first needed to identify visitor market segments based on importance of physical and mental benefits, to evaluate the relationships between visitor demographics and physical activity, and investigate the effects of media campaigns on benefitsbased visitor market segments. We identified the perception of importance Acadia National Park visitors attached to a suite of mental and physical health benefits within the benefits-based management framework. Data were collected through an onsite questionnaire during July (pre-media) and August (postmedia) of 2007. In addition to demographic information, the questionnaire included questions about use history, access transportation, recreation activities, group size, time on the trail, preferable trail attributes, social and personal constraints, and benefit importance. Relying on Driver’s (1983) Recreation Experience Preference (REP) scale, the questionnaire included a total of 20 benefit items: five items measured the perceptions of importance visitors had of physical health benefits, four items measured mental health benefits, four items measured social experience benefits, four items measured escape benefits, two items measured nature experience benefits, and one item measured creative benefits. During the pre-media time period, a total of 158 people were contacted and 131 questionnaires were completed. During the post-media time period, 229 people were contacted and 213 questionnaires were collected. Visitors could be segmented into four primary benefits-based market segments: Fitness Isolates, Trail Moderates, Casual Social Groups, and Trail Enthusiasts. These 60 market segments exhibited several key differences. The effects of the media campaign also had varied impacts on the four visitor market segments. Understanding benefit importance among different visitor segments can assist park planners and managers in providing more desirable experience opportunities. In addition, an evaluation of visitor segments identified potential relationships with physical activity behavior. The results are helpful in identifying how knowledge, attitudes, and behavior can help guide future media campaigns. Park planners and managers can use the results to anticipate how different visitor market segments may respond to other media campaigns. The outcomes of the research can include better communication with visitors, and improved benefit opportunity provision.
What kind of argument are we going to have today?

This paper is concerned with argumentation-based dialogues between agents. Much work in this area has been based upon an influential taxonomy of dialogue types developed by Walton and Krabbe. This paper re-examines the Walton and Krabbe framework, concentrating on the preconditions for different types of dialogue and analyzing these in a systematic way. Doing so uncovers some inconsistencies in previous interpretations of the preconditions and, in resolving these inconsistencies, identifies a number of new kinds of dialogue. We discuss some of the more interesting of these new kinds of dialogue and give protocols for them.
Retinoic Acid as a Modulator of T Cell Immunity

Vitamin A, a generic designation for an array of organic molecules that includes retinal, retinol and retinoic acid, is an essential nutrient needed in a wide array of aspects including the proper functioning of the visual system, maintenance of cell function and differentiation, epithelial surface integrity, erythrocyte production, reproduction, and normal immune function. Vitamin A deficiency is one of the most common micronutrient deficiencies worldwide and is associated with defects in adaptive immunity. Reports from epidemiological studies, clinical trials and experimental studies have clearly demonstrated that vitamin A plays a central role in immunity and that its deficiency is the cause of broad immune alterations including decreased humoral and cellular responses, inadequate immune regulation, weak response to vaccines and poor lymphoid organ development. In this review, we will examine the role of vitamin A in immunity and focus on several aspects of T cell biology such as T helper cell differentiation, function and homing, as well as lymphoid organ development. Further, we will provide an overview of the effects of vitamin A deficiency in the adaptive immune responses and how retinoic acid, through its effect on T cells can fine-tune the balance between tolerance and immunity.
Virtualizing the CIC Floppy Disk Project : an Experiment in Digital Preservation Using Emulation

The CIC floppy disk project (FDP) is a partnership between the U.S. Government Printing Office and Indiana University Bloomington to make publications that were distributed to federal depository libraries on floppy disk available on the Internet. The FDP does not provide software to access these publications many of which depend upon obsolete application and operating system software. This paper describes an experiment to provide support for the publications in the FDP using obsolete software executing within off-the-shelf virtualization tools. These tools provide for the creation of “software images” consisting of an operating system and application software which can be executed in conjunction with data files by an application program to provide an “original” execution environment within a modern operating system. Virtualization is a special case of emulation which has frequently been discussed in the context of digital preservation, but has not been applied on any large heterogeneous data sets such as those in the FDP. The results of this paper apply equally to the emulation.
New Approach to the Stability of Chemical Reaction Networks: Piecewise Linear in Rates Lyapunov Functions

Piecewise-linear in rates (PWLR) Lyapunov functions are introduced for a class of chemical reaction networks (CRNs). In addition to their simple structure, these functions are robust with respect to arbitrary monotone reaction rates, of which Mass-Action is a special case. The existence of such functions ensures the convergence of trajectories towards equilibria, and can be used to establish their asymptotic stability with respect to the corresponding stoichiometric compatibility class. We give the definition of these Lyapunov functions, prove their basic properties, and provide algorithms for constructing them. Examples are provided, relationship with consensus dynamics are discussed, and future directions are elaborated.
Bimanual Passive Movement: Functional Activation and Inter-Regional Coupling

The aim of this study was to investigate intra-regional activation and inter-regional connectivity during passive movement. During fMRI, a mechanic device was used to move the subject's index and middle fingers. We assessed four movement conditions (unimanual left/right, bimanual symmetric/asymmetric), plus Rest. A conventional intra-regional analysis identified the passive stimulation network, including motor cortex, primary and secondary somatosensory cortex, plus the cerebellum. The posterior (sensory) part of the sensory–motor activation around the central sulcus showed a significant modulation according to the symmetry of the bimanual movement, with greater activation for asymmetric compared to symmetric movements. A second set of fMRI analyses assessed condition-dependent changes of coupling between sensory–motor regions around the superior central sulcus and the rest of the brain. These analyses showed a high inter-regional covariation within the entire network activated by passive movement. However, the specific experimental conditions modulated these patterns of connectivity. Highest coupling was observed during the Rest condition, and the coupling between homologous sensory–motor regions around the left and right central sulcus was higher in bimanual than unimanual conditions. These findings demonstrate that passive movement can affect the connectivity within the sensory–motor network. We conclude that implicit detection of asymmetry during bimanual movement relies on associative somatosensory region in post-central areas, and that passive stimulation reduces the functional connectivity within the passive movement network. Our findings open the possibility to combine passive movement and inter-regional connectivity as a tool to investigate the functionality of the sensory–motor system in patients with very poor mobility.
Influence of product return lead-time on inventory control

We consider a production-inventory system with capacity constraint and item returns correlated to demand. The system is modelled by an M/M/1 make-to-stock queue with lost sales. A satisﬁed demand incurs an item return with a certain probability, after an exponentially distributed return lead-time. We distinguish two cases: When the number of items to be returned is observable and when it is not observable. For the ﬁrst case, we partially characterize the optimal policy. For the second case, we consider a simple base-stock policy as a heuristic. Finally, we carry out a numerical study in order to investigate the impact of return lead-time on these policies. In particular, we exhibit interesting limit behavior, when the return lead-time is either small or large.
Ameliorating Effect of Ginseng on Epididymo-Orchitis Inducing Alterations in Sperm Quality and Spermatogenic Cells Apoptosis following Infection by Uropathogenic Escherichia coli in Rats

Objective Epididymo-orchitis (EO) potentially results in reduced fertility in up to 60% of affected patients. The anti-inflammatory effects of Korean red ginseng (KRG) and its ability to act as an immunoenhancer in parallel with the beneficial effects of this ancient herbal medicine on the reproductive systems of animals and humans led us to evaluate its protective effects against acute EO. Materials and Methods This animal experimental study was conducted in the Department of Anatomical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Zanjan University of Medical Sciences (ZUMS), Zanjan, Iran during 2013-2015. We divided 50 Wistar rats into five following groups (n=10 per group): i. Control-intact animals, ii. Vehicle-phosphate buffered saline (PBS) injection into the vas deferens, iii. KRG-an intraperitoneal (IP) injection of KRG, iv. EO-an injection of uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC) strain M39 into the vas defer- ens, and v. EO/ KRG-injections of both UPEC strain M39 and KRG. The treatment lasted seven days. We then evaluated sperm parameters, number of germ cell layers, Johnson’s criteria, germ cell apoptosis, body weight and relative sex organs weight. Results Acute EO increased the relative weight of prostate and seminal vesicles (P≤0.05). It also reduced sperm quality such as total motility, sperm concentration (P≤0.01), and the percentage of normal sperm (P≤0.001). Moreover, acute EO decreased Miller’s (P≤0.05) and Johnsen’s scores and increased apoptotic indexes of spermatogenic cells (P≤0.001). KRG treatment decreased prostate weight gain (P≤0.05) and improved the percentage of sperm with normal morphology, total motility (P≤0.01), and progressive motility (P≤0.05). The apoptotic indexes of spermatogenic cells reduced (P≤0.001), whereas both Johnsen’s (P≤0.01) and Miller’s criteria increased in the KRG-treated EO testis (P≤0.05). Conclusion Consequently, KRG ameliorated the devastating effects of EO on the sperm retrieved from either epididymis or testicle in rats.
Hydroxychloroquine therapy in patients with primary Sjögren's syndrome may improve salivary gland hypofunction by inhibition of glandular cholinesterase.

OBJECTIVE To determine whether (i) cholinesterase activity is increased in the saliva of patients with primary Sjogren's syndrome (pSS), (ii) increased levels of cholinesterase of lymphocyte origin could interfere with the secretory activity of submandibular acinar cells, and (iii) hydroxychloroquine at therapeutic doses could interfere with cholinesterase activity. METHODS The Ellman method was used to determine the levels of salivary cholinesterase activity and the K(i) of both chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine for serum cholinesterase. The ability of lymphocyte cholinesterase to inhibit the acetylcholine (ACh)-evoked rise in [Ca(2+)](i) in mouse submandibular acinar cells was determined using fura-2 microfluorimetry. RESULTS Patients with pSS had significantly higher levels of cholinesterase activity in both their unstimulated (P < 0.05) and stimulated saliva (P < 0.0001) compared with control subjects. Lymphocyte cholinesterase was capable of inhibiting the ACh-evoked rise in [Ca(2+)](i). The in vitro K(i) for hydroxychloroquine inhibition of cholinesterase was 0.38 +/- 1.4 microM. CONCLUSION These data suggest that increased levels of cholinesterase present in the salivary glands of patients with pSS may contribute to glandular hypofunction and provide evidence that the therapeutic enhancement of salivary secretion in patients with pSS by hydroxychloroquine may be mediated by inhibition of glandular cholinesterase activity, although further in vivo investigation is needed.
An ant colony based system for data mining: applications to medical data

This work describes an algorithm for rule discovery in databases called AntMiner. The objective of the algorithm is the extraction of classification rules to be applied to unseen data as a decision aid. The algorithm used to discover such rules is inspired in the behavior of a real ant colony, as well as some concepts of information theory and data mining. AntMiner was applied to medical databases to obtain classification rules.
A STUDY ON POPULATION GENETICS AND MOLECULAR MARKERS WITH ITS APPLICATIONS IN CONSERVATION OF WILDLIFE

Genetic diversity and its measurement have vital importance in analysis, appreciative and management of population and individuals. Allozymes electrophoresis has ability to observe genetic variation and it is also considered as a standard tool in population genetic studies of conservation. But in the recent year, it has been increasingly replaced by DNA markers. Various molecular markers, protein or DNA (mitochondrial or nuclear DNA) such as minisatellite, microsatellites, RAPDs, are now being used in conservation. In this review, we have provided basics of population genetics (DNA) and overview of commonly used molecular markers in the conservation of wild life.
Genetic diversity analysis of sugarcane (Saccharum sp.) clones using simple sequence repeat markers of sugarcane and rice.

Molecular markers are powerful tools, which help in differentiating plant varieties at the DNA level and have been widely used for genetic diversity studies in a number of crop species’. Understanding the genetic diversity of available clones of S. officinarum and S. spontaneum will be helpful in breeding programs. In the present study, a set of 48 sugarcane clones from National Hybridization Garden, Sugarcane Breeding Institute, Coimbatore was subjected to genetic diversity analysis involving 40 SSR markers of sugarcane and rice. SSR analysis involving a set of 20 sugarcane and 20 rice primer pairs generated 147 and 114 markers with average polymorphism information content (PIC) value of 0.665 and 0.532 respectively. Cluster analysis using rice marker across 48 genotypes revealed two major clusters with ISH 23 remaining a deviant from the rest of the cultivars. Cluster analysis based on sugarcane SSR markers were found to be more or less similar to that based on rice SSR markers showing minor difference in grouping. Hence, similar results obtained for characterizing the sugarcane clones by using SSR markers from sugarcane and rice reveal that markers with better discriminating power from other cereals can bring out better characterization of sugarcane clones.
Ratio between Negative and Positive Lymph Nodes Is Suitable for Evaluation the Prognosis of Gastric Cancer Patients with Positive Node Metastasis

Objective To date, there is no consensus to evaluate the most appropriate category of the nodal metastasis for precise predication the prognosis of gastric cancer patients with positive node metastasis after curative surgery. Methods We retrospectively analyzed the clinicopathologic characteristics and overall survival (OS) of 299 gastric cancer patients with positive node metastasis after curative surgery for evaluation the optimal category of the nodal metastasis. Results With the univariate and multivariate survival analyses, the depth of primary tumor invasion was identified as the independent predicators with the OS of 299 gastric cancer patients with nodal metastasis postoperatively, as were the number of positive lymph nodes (PLNs), the number of negative lymph nodes (NLNs), and the ratio between negative and positive lymph nodes (RNPL). The RNPL was identified to be more suitable for predication the OS of gastric cancer patients with positive node metastasis than the ratio between positive and dissected lymph nodes (RPDL) by using the stratum procedure of survival analysis. Besides, we found both PLNs and NLNs were independently correlated with OS of gastric cancer patients with nodal metastasis when RNPL, instead of RPDL, was controlled in the partial correlation model. Conclusions RNPL, a new category of the nodal metastasis, was suitable for predication the OS of gastric cancer patients with nodal metastasis after curative resection, as were the PLNs, and NLNs.
Exact distribution of the sample variance from a gamma parent distribution

Several representations of the exact cdf of the sum of squares of n independent gamma-distributed random variables Xi are given, in particular by a series of gamma distribution functions. Using a characterization of the gamma distribution by Laha, an expansion of the exact distribution of the sample variance is derived by a Taylor series approach with the former distribution as its leading term. In particular for integer orders alpha some further series are provided, including a convex combination of gamma distributions for alpha = 1 and nearly of this type for alpha > 1. Furthermore, some representations of the distribution of the angle Phi between (X1,.,Xn) and (1,.,1) are given by orthogonal series. All these series are based on the same sequence of easily computed moments of cos(Phi).