Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Calorie and protein restriction in mammals : a review and comparison on respect to aging

Calorie restriction (CR), a 10-50% (typically 30%) reduction in calorie intake with adequate nutrients, is the most widely accepted intervention to delay aging and increase lifespan in many model organisms. Recently, there has been an emerging interest for the possibility that protein restriction (PR) can provide the same effects on aging and lifespan. This literature thesis aims to explore if the positive effects and knowledge of CR from model organisms are relevant for mammals and especially humans, and if the same benefits could be achieved with PR. A non-systematic search was done to explore the effects and relevancy of CR to mammals including humans, while in evaluating the effects of PR, a systematic search was performed. The evaluation of studies uncovered in this thesis, support that much of the knowledge of CR from model organisms seem to be relevant also for mammals and humans. In addition, there is strong evidence that CR in rodents can lead to many of the same effects as seen in other model organisms, including increased lifespan. For CR in non-human primates, high quality prospective studies have uncovered a strong trend of increased lifespan and health, although results are not consistent. Several randomized controlled trials up to two years of length in humans have also uncovered multiple positive effects of CR. It is therefore possible that CR could lead to many of these same effects in both non-human primates and humans. Findings from the systematic search on effects of PR show a strong trend for increased median lifespan in rodents, and this is also the case for selective amino acid restriction (AAR) of methionine or tryptophan. Collectively, PR, including AA-R, seem to result in increased lifespan and improved health in rodents. For humans, findings indicate that PR may lead to many of the same positive effects on lifespan and health at old age, but the PR regimen may have a negative contribution after a certain age, and should perhaps not be lifelong. Findings indicate that PR seems to provide many of the same effects as seen with CR, but these effects appear to have a lower impact. This might occur because both PR and CR can lead to downregulated GH/IGF-1 and mTOR signaling, while only CR appears to result in an activation of sirtuin and AMPK signaling. In this context, PR can possibly be the cause, or contributor to some, but not all the effects seen with CR. More research is needed before any of these two dietary interventions can be recommended for healthy individuals.
Effects of Obesity on Serum Concentration of Methylation and Oxidative/ Nitrosative Stress Metabolites Following DMBA Treatment of Female Zucker Rats

Obesity has been an epidemic in the United States for more than two decades. Studies in humans and animals have suggested that obesity is major risk for breast cancer development. It is well established that increased oxidative stress and changes in DNA methylation can contribute to carcinogenesis. Low molecular weight antioxidant glutathione plays exceptional role in protection of cells from oxidative damage. S-adenosylmethionine, a metabolite of amino acid methionine, is a key methyl group donor for numerous of methylation reaction including DNA. The main objective of this experiment was to investigate the effects of obesity on serum concentration of oxidative stress markers and products of oxidative damage and methylation-reaction donor S-adenosylmethionine following 7,12-dimethylbenz(a) anthracene (DMBA) treatment. Obese and lean female Zucker rats were maintained on a regular chow diet for two weeks. All rats were orally gavaged at age 50 days with 65 mg/kg DMBA. Twenty four hours after DMBA treatment, all rats were sacrificed and serum was collected. Highly sensitive HPLC method with CoulArray electrochemical detector was utilized for determination of thiols, 3-NT and SAM, SAH, and Adenosine. The obese rats had a 40% increased level of oxidized glutathione (P=0.007), decreased GSH/GSSG ratio (P=0.003), increased SAH (P=0.025) and also a 30% increased level of Ado (P=0.005) compared to lean rats. The lean animals showed a slightly higher (20%) concentration of SAM and 50% higher SAM: SAH ratio (P=0.02) compared to obese animals. These results showed that by using DMBA-induced mammary tumor development obesity can contribute to a significant imbalance in oxidative/reduction homeostasis in serum and depression in serum SAM: SAH ratio, known as "methylation ratio", and increase SAH level, known as potent inhibitor methylases. These data suggest that changes plasma concentrations of glutathione, SAH and SAM reflect intracellular changes that possibly can contribute to carcinogenesis.
The Schrödinger equation on a star-shaped graph under general coupling conditions

We investigate dispersive and Strichartz estimates for the Schrödinger time evolution propagator on a star-shaped metric graph. The linear operator, , taken into consideration is the self-adjoint extension of the Laplacian, subject to a wide class of coupling conditions. The study relies on an explicit spectral representation of the solution in terms of the resolvent kernel which is further analyzed using results from oscillatory integrals. As an application, we obtain the global well-posedness for a class of semilinear Schrödinger equations.
Modes of Governance: A Note Towards Conceptual Clarification

Recently, political science has seen an intense debate about the phenomenon of “governance”. The aim of this paper is to clarify the basic concepts that are at the heart of this debate, notably “governance” and “modes of governance”. It argues that most contributions share a common concern for the relationship between state intervention and societal autonomy. But different strands of the literature highlight different facets of this continuum. Existing understandings may be classified according to whether they emphasise the politics, polity or policy dimensions of governance. We use these categories to present a structured overview of different dimensions of modes of governance as they may be found in the literature. In this context, we argue that the classification of modes of governance as “old” or “new” is of little analytical value. Some modes of governance may have been relatively new in some empirical contexts. But the same governing modes may turn out to be long-established practice in other areas. Moving from individual dimensions to systematic classification schemes and typologies of modes of governance, the paper highlights a number of shortcomings of existing schemes and suggests an approach that could avoid these weaknesses. As a first step in this approach, we take a closer look at different policy properties of governance and develop a systematic typology of four modes of governance in the policy dimension: coercion, voluntarism, targeting and framework regulation.
Spirometric Lung Function Tests in School Children with Asthma

Background: Asthma is one of the important chronic disorder in childhood, the incidence of paediatric asthma is increasing in many countries. Atopy is highly associated with childhood asthma. Spirometric measurements of lung function are playing a key role in the diagnosis and management of asthma in children. Objective: To observe the lung function status in asthmatic children aged 6-15 years of both sexes. Method: The present observational study was carried out in the Department of Physiology, Ibrahim Medical College, Dhaka between January 2010 and June 2010. For this, 30 asthmatic children were selected from Out Patient Department of Paediatric, Dhaka Medical College as a case and 30 apparently healthy children were taken as control. Subjects with history of pneumonia, congenital heart disease were excluded from the study. Spirometry was conducted on all patients by using Spirolab a new generation spirometer according to American Thoracic Society standards FEV 1 , FVC, FEV 1 /FVC% were measured. Measurement of PEFR was also done at the same time by using a new Mini-Wright Peak Flow Meter. Serum Ig-E level was measured by ELISA method and circulating eosinophil count was also measured by observing in peripheral blood flim. Data were analyzed by using SPSS. Statistical analysis was performed by unpaired student t test. Results: The mean percentages of predicted values FEV 1 , FVC, FEV 1 /FVC%, PEFR were significantly lower in asthmatic children compared to those of apparently healthy children(P<0.001). Statistically significant differences of mean circulating eosinophil count and Ig E level( P<0.001) were observed between the groups. Again significant number of parents of the subject had history of allergic rhinitis. Conclusion: The outcome of this study shows lung function status were lower in asthmatic children. DOI: 10.3329/jbsp.v5i2. 6781 J Bangladesh Soc Physiol. 2010 December; 5(2): 75-79
Effects of reduced-impact logging on medium and large-bodied forest vertebrates in eastern Amazonia

Standard line-transect census techniques were deployed to generate a checklist and quantify the abundance of medium and large-bodied vertebrate species in forest areas of eastern Amazonia with and without a history of reduced-impact logging (RIL). Three areas were allocated a total of 1,196.9 km of line-transect census effort. Sampling was conducted from April to June 2012 and from April to August 2013, and detected 29 forest vertebrate species considered in this study belonging to 15 orders, 20 families and 28 genera. Additionally, eight species were recorded outside census walks through direct and indirect observations. Of this total, six species are considered vulnerable according to IUCN (Ateles paniscus, Myrmecophaga tridactyla, Priodontes maximus, Tapirus terrestris, Tayassu peccary, Chelonoidis denticulata). Observed species richness ranged from 21 to 24 species in logged and unlogged areas, and encounter rates along transects were highly variable between treatments. However, the relative abundance of species per transect did not differ between transects in logged and unlogged forests. Of the species detected during censuses, only three showed different relative abundance between the two treatments (Saguinus midas, Tinamus spp. and Dasyprocta leporina). Our results show that the effect of RIL forest management was a relatively unimportant determinant of population abundance for most medium and large vertebrates over the time period of the survey.
Subspace Noise Estimation and Gamma Distribution Based Microphone Array Post-filter Design

This paper presents a novel method to design the microphone array post-filter. The key issue of post-filter is to accurately estimate the noise power spectrum, thus a subspace based noise estimation method is proposed. Furthermore, the Gamma probability density function is used to describe the signal power spectrum distribution and the signal-plus-noise subspace dimension is determined by maximizing the probability density signal to noise ratio. The noise power spectrum can be computed either with the speech or without the speech, using the eigenvalues corresponding to the noise subspace. With the same Gamma distribution assumption, a post-filter estimation method is proposed. Experiments show that the proposed noise estimation performs better than the conventional VAD based method. The post-filter can obtain a significant gain over the comparing methods in terms of quality measures of the enhanced speech.
Rmixmod: The R Package of the Model-Based Unsupervised, Supervised and Semi-Supervised Classification Mixmod Library

Mixmod is a well-established software package for fitting mixture models of multivariate Gaussian or multinomial probability distribution functions to a given dataset with either a clustering, a density estimation or a discriminant analysis purpose. The Rmixmod S4 package provides an interface from the R statistical computing environment to the C++ core library of Mixmod (mixmodLib). In this article, we give an overview of the model-based clustering and classification methods implemented, and we show how the R package Rmixmod can be used for clustering and discriminant analysis.
Monte Carlo Simulation of Interlayer Molecular Structure in Swelling Clay Minerals. 2. Monolayer Hydrates

Monte Carlo (MC) simulations of interlayer molecular structure in monolayer hydrates of Nasaturated Wyoming-type montmorillonites and vermiculite were performed. Detailed comparison of the stimulation results with experimental diffraction and thermodynamic data for these clay-water systems indicated good semiquantitative to quantitative agreement. The MC simulations revealed that, in the monolayer hydrate, interlayer water molecules tend to increase their occupation of the midplane as layer charge increases. As the percentage of tetrahedral layer charge increases, water molecules are induced to interact with the siloxane surface O atoms through hydrogen bonding and Na+ counter-ions are induced to form inner-sphere surface complexes. These results suggest the need for careful diffraction experiments on a series of monolayer hydrates of montmorillonite whose layer charge and tetrahedral isomorphic substitution charge vary systematically.
Resampled Proposal Distributions for Variational Inference and Learning

Learning generative models of unlabelled data using black-box stochastic variational inference leads to learning objectives involving intractable expectations and hence, critically relies on efficient Monte Carlo evaluation of the gradients. This task is challenging when the approximate posterior is far from the true posterior, due to high variance in the gradient estimates. In this paper, we demonstrate that resampling proposed samples from the variational posterior which are assigned low likelihoods by the model (and hence, unrepresentative of the true posterior) can improve learning and trade-off extra computation for accuracy adaptively. We show that explicitly rejecting samples, while technically challenging to analyze due to the implicit nature of the resulting unnormalized proposal distribution, can have benefits over the competing state-of-the-art alternatives based on multi-sample objectives. We evaluate the proposed approach and demonstrate its effectiveness in comparison to state-of-theart alternatives both via experiments on synthetic data and a benchmark density estimation task with sigmoid belief networks over the MNIST dataset.
Challenges in using GPUs for the real-time reconstruction of digital hologram images

In-line holography has recently made the transition from silver-halide based recording media, with laser reconstruction, to recording with large-area pixel detectors and computer-based reconstruction. This form of holographic imaging is an established technique for the study of fine particulates, such as cloud or fuel droplets, marine plankton and alluvial sediments, and enables a true 3D object field to be recorded at high resolution over a considerable depth. The move to digital holography promises rapid, if not instantaneous, feedback as it avoids the need for the time-consuming chemical development of plates or film film and a dedicated replay system, but with the growing use of video-rate holographic recording, and the desire to reconstruct fully every frame, the computational challenge becomes considerable. To replay a digital hologram a 2D FFT must be calculated for every depth slice desired in the replayed image volume. A typical hologram of ∼100 μm particles over a depth of a few hundred millimetres will require O(103) 2D FFT operations to be performed on a hologram of typically a few million pixels. In this paper we discuss the technical challenges in converting our existing reconstruction code to make efficient use of NVIDIA CUDA-based GPU cards and show how near real-time video slice reconstruction can be obtained with holograms as large as 4096 by 4096 pixels. Our performance to date for a number of different NVIDIA GPU running under both Linux and Microsoft Windows is presented. The recent availability of GPU on portable computers is discussed and a new code for interactive replay of digital holograms is presented.
Evaluation of a regional air quality model using satellite column NO 2 : treatment of observation errors and model boundary conditions and emissions

Abstract. We compare tropospheric column NO2 between the UK Met Office operational Air Quality in the Unified Model (AQUM) and satellite observations from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) for 2006. Column NO2 retrievals from satellite instruments are prone to large uncertainty from random, systematic and smoothing errors. We present an algorithm to reduce the random error of time-averaged observations, once smoothing errors have been removed with application of satellite averaging kernels to the model data. This reduces the total error in seasonal mean columns by 10–70%, which allows critical evaluation of the model. The standard AQUM configuration evaluated here uses chemical lateral boundary conditions (LBCs) from the GEMS (Global and regional Earth-system Monitoring using Satellite and in situ data) reanalysis. In summer the standard AQUM overestimates column NO2 in northern England and Scotland, but underestimates it over continental Europe. In winter, the model overestimates column NO2 across the domain. We show that missing heterogeneous hydrolysis of N2O5 in AQUM is a significant sink of column NO2 and that the introduction of this process corrects some of the winter biases. The sensitivity of AQUM summer column NO2 to different chemical LBCs and NOx emissions data sets are investigated. Using Monitoring Atmospheric Composition and Climate (MACC) LBCs increases AQUM O3 concentrations compared with the default GEMS LBCs. This enhances the NOx–O3 coupling leading to increased AQUM column NO2 in both summer and winter degrading the comparisons with OMI. Sensitivity experiments suggest that the cause of the remaining northern England and Scotland summer column NO2 overestimation is the representation of point source (power station) emissions in the model.
Puberty and ejaculate characteristics of native toms subjected to increasing photoperiods.

The study was carried out to determine the effect of photoperiod (PTP) on age and body weight at first ejaculation and on first and overall ejaculate characteristics of pubertal native toms. Thirty healthy grower native toms, 28 weeks old, were used for the study. The birds were assigned to one of 5 photoperiods or treatments (T): control or 12L:12D (T1), 14L:10D (T2), 16L:8D (T3), 18L:6D (T4) and 20L:4D (T5). Data included age and body weight at first ejaculation (AFE and BFE, respectively), first and subsequent ejaculate volumes (EV), sperm concentration (SPC), sperm motility (SPM), percent live sperm (LSP), dead sperm (DSP), normal sperm (NSP) and abnormal sperm (ASP). Analysis for effect of PTP on AFE and BFE and on first ejaculate characteristics involved initial body weight as a covariate. AFE for toms in 20L:4D was 36.95±0.43 wk compared to 41.59±0.46 wk for the control (P<0.05). BFE and weight gain up to first ejaculation did not vary with PTP. First ejaculate characteristics were affected by PTP except LSP, NSP and ASP. Effect of PTP on overall ejaculate characteristics was however, significant (P<0.05) for all traits with PTP 18L:6D and 20L:4D having the highest overall EV, SPC, LSP, SPM and NSP but least ASP and DSP. Significant (P<0.05) correlations existed between PTP, AFE and BFE and some semen quality traits in the first and overall ejaculates of the toms. It was concluded that photoperiod significantly affected the age at first ejaculation as well as first and subsequent ejaculate characteristics of native toms.
Opacity, liquidity and disclosure requirements

We present a model that links the opacity of an asset to its liquidity. While low opacity assets are liquid, intermediate levels of opacity provide incentives for investors to acquire private information, causing adverse selection and illiquidity. High opacity, however, benefits liquidity by reducing the value of a unit of private information to investors. The cross-section of bid-ask spreads of U.S. firms is shown to be consistent with this hump-shape relationship between opacity and illiquidity. The analysis suggests that uniform disclosure requirements may not be desirable; optimal information provision can be achieved by subsidizing information. The model also delivers predictions about when it is optimal for asset originators to sell intransparent products or pools composed of correlated assets.
Systematic bundle adjustment of hrsc image data

The European Mars Express mission was launched in June 2003 and sent into orbit around Mars. On board the orbiter is the German High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). This multi-line sensor images the Martian surface with a resolution of up to 12m per pixel in three dimensions and provides RGB and infra-red color information. The usage of the stereoscopic image information for the improvement of the observed position and attitude information via bundle adjustment is important to derive high quality 3D surface models, color orthoimages and other data products. In many cases overlapping image strips of different orbits can be used to form photogrammetric blocks, thus allowing the simultaneous adjustment of the exterior orientation data. This reduces not only local, but also regional inconsistencies in the data. With the growing number of HRSC image strips in this ongoing mission, the size and complexity of potential blocks is increasing. Therefore, a workflow has been built up for the systematic improvement of the exterior orientation using single orbit strips and regional blocks. For a successful bundle adjustment of blocks using multiple image strips a sufficient number of tie points in the overlapping area is needed. The number of tie points depends mainly on the geometric and radiometric quality of the images. This is considered by detailed analysis of the tie point accuracy and distribution. The combination of methods for image pre-processing, tie point matching, bundle adjustment and evaluation of the results in an automated workflow allows for all HRSC images a global assessment of the quality and a systematic selection of data for larger blocks.
Nanotechnology in nutraceuticals and functional foods

environment, and human lives. New initiatives have been launched by governments, academia, and private sectors in the United States, Europe, Japan, and most other countries around the globe to ensure rapid development and deployment of nanotechnology to improve the quality of life of all citizens, create jobs, promote economic growth, and enhance the security of our society (Baeumner, 2004; Moraru et al., 2003). In a visionary presentation, Feynman (1959) suggested that we should be able to manipulate matter down to the atomic level with great control and precision so that novel materials with designed properties could be obtained. However, the real breakthrough that eventually led to the flourishing of the fledgling area in research laboratories did not occur until the mid-1980s, when some key analytical tools such as scanning tunneling microscopy and atomic force microscopy were developed. The newfound ability to see and move atoms and molecules in