Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Water cost and availability: key determinants of family hygiene in a Peruvian shantytown.

OBJECTIVES This study was conducted to determine whether poor hygiene practices are owing to difficulty in getting enough water and/or to ignorance of sanitary principles. METHODS In a water-scarce shantytown in Lima, Peru, we observed in 12-hour periods over 3 consecutive days the amount of water and soap used for personal and domestic activities in 53 families and the frequency with which direct fecal contamination of hands was interrupted by washing. We also surveyed women in a similar shantytown concerning their knowledge of hygiene to ascertain whether noncompliance was owing to ignorance. RESULTS Three hundred fecal contamination events were registered, of which only 38 (13%) were interrupted by hand washing within 15 minutes. The mean 12-hour per capita amount of water and soap used by the families was low. More than 80% of the water stored by these families had fecal coliforms. Yet the level of knowledge concerning the importance of hand washing and other hygienic practices was high. CONCLUSIONS In water-scarce areas, sanitary education programs probably will not change hygiene practices. In these areas, an adequate supply of water is essential for good hygiene.
Amendment history : Erratum ( May 2003 ) Genotype , phenotype : upstairs , downstairs in the family of cardiomyopathies

I loved Upstairs, Downstairs . you identify with the downstairs people while vicariously enjoying the life of the upstairs people. —Alistair Cooke, Host of Masterpiece Theatre Upstairs, Downstairs was beloved by a generation of Americans who became entranced by this classic story of an upstairs Edwardian family and its downstairs household. The series chronicled the daily repartee and tangled relationships between the upstairs and downstairs contingents, a tale laced with all of the ingredients of human complexity. Despite their diverse perspectives and backgrounds, the lives at 165 Eaton Place became entwined by their core values, conserved traits, and the shared challenges of the day. In terms of human biology, Upstairs, Downstairs was a classic saga of the interplay between genes and environment. In the family of human cardiomyopathies, another complex story is unfolding, this time around the divergent backgrounds and perspectives of clinical cardiology and molecular genetics. In this cardiological version of Upstairs, Downstairs, the theme is Genotype, Phenotype, and the initial storyline revolves around the precept that the primary determinant of the clinical phenotype is the molecular genotype. The clinical viewpoint has been underpinned by noninvasive analyses [. ] Commentary
Effect of acupuncture on smoking cessation or reduction: an 8-month and 5-year follow-up study.

BACKGROUND This study was undertaken to examine whether acupuncture treatment may have a long-term effect on smoking cessation or reduction. METHODS Altogether 46 healthy men and women who reported smoking 20 +/- 6 cigarettes per day (mean +/- SD) volunteered in the study. They were randomly assigned to a test group (TG) or to a control group (CG) in which presumed anti-smoking acupoints were stimulated (TG) or acupuncture was applied to acupoints considered to have no effect on smoking cessation (CG). Before each treatment, after the last one, and 8 months and 5 years after the last one, each subject answered questionnaires about his or her smoking habits and attitudes. Blood samples for measuring variables related to smoking, i.e., serum cotinine and serum thiocyanate, were taken. RESULTS During the treatment period the reported cigarette consumption fell on average by 14 (TG) and 7 (CG) cigarettes per day (P < 0.001). For both groups the reported cigarette consumption rose on average by 5-7 cigarettes during the following 8 months, and there was no systematic change thereafter. Consequently, TG showed a maintained reduction in smoking; no lasting effect was seen for CG. The TG reported that cigarettes tasted worse than before the treatments, and also the desire to smoke fell. For TG the serum concentration of cotinine fell, and the values correlated with the reported smoking. CONCLUSIONS This study confirms that adequate acupuncture treatment may help motivated smokers to reduce their smoking, or even quit smoking completely, and the effect may last for at least 5 years. Acupuncture may affect the subjects' smoking by reducing their taste of tobacco and their desire to smoke. Different acupoints have different effects on smoking cessation.
Social Support and Mental Health in Middle-Aged Men and Women

Objective: The purpose of this study is to examine the association between various aspects of social support and depressive symptoms separately among men and women. Method: Using a sample of 6,767 middle-aged adults from one wave of the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (1992-1993), the authors performed a series of ANCOVAs predicting depressive symptoms and controlling for background variables. Results: The authors found that the receipt of emotional support was associated with mental health in women only, whereas the provision of emotional and instrumental support was associated with mental health among men and women, but with varying patterns. For example, men who provided instrumental support to nonkin only had the highest levels of depressive symptoms, whereas women who provided instrumental support to kin only had the highest levels of symptoms. Discussion: This study helps to clarify if and what types of social support are related to mental health in men and women.
Perceived efficacy of salbutamol by persons with spinal muscular atrophy: A mixed methods study

Introduction: The aim of this study was to assess the perceived effect of salbutamol in adult patients with spinal muscular atrophy and to evaluate the usefulness of the World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule II (WHODAS II) and Fatigue Severity Scale (FSS) for its measurement. Methods: A longitudinal mixed methods study was performed. Ten patients were interviewed and completed WHODAS II and FSS questionnaires to assess disability and fatigue at 2 time‐points. Inductive thematic analysis was used for qualitative data. The non‐parametric Wilcoxon test was performed for quantitative analysis. Results: All participants reported an improvement in their condition after salbutamol consumption. WHODAS II and FSS reliably captured changes in patients' disability and fatigue. Conclusions: The mixed methods design allowed us to identify the functional domains in which participants experienced effects of salbutamol. Patients were satisfied with the treatment as shown by decreased fatigue, improved functioning, and infrequent side effects. Muscle Nerve, 2016 Muscle Nerve 54: 843–849, 2016
LSU Digital Commons LSU Digital Commons Mammalian retroelements Mammalian retroelements

The eukaryotic genome has undergone a series of epidemics of amplification of mobile elements that have resulted in most eukaryotic genomes containing much more of this ‘junk’ DNA than actual coding DNA. The majority of these elements utilize an RNA intermediate and are termed retroelements. Most of these retroelements appear to amplify in evolutionary waves that insert in the genome and then gradually diverge. In humans, almost half of the genome is recognizably derived from retroelements, with the two elements that are currently actively amplifying, L1 and Alu, making up about 25% of the genome and contributing extensively to disease. The mechanisms of this amplification process are beginning to be understood, although there are still more questions than answers. Insertion of new retroelements may directly damage the genome, and the presence of multiple copies of these elements throughout the genome has longer-term influences on recombination events in the genome and more subtle influences on gene expression. Retroelements are endogenous components of eukaryotic ge- nomes that are able to amplify to new locations in the genome through an RNA intermediate. There are two major classes of autonomous retroelements in eukaryotic genomes, and several nonautonomous types of elements that are de- pendent on the autonomous elements for their retroposition capability. Although the autonomous elements are depen- dent on many cellular proteins for their amplification cycle, they do encode one or more of the necessary activities within the element. Nonautonomous elements require at least one activity that is supplied by an autonomous element. The long terminal repeat (LTR) retrotransposons have the basic structure shown in Figure 1A (Flavell et al. 1997). They are similar to retroviruses in structure, with transcrip-tional
Autonomous vehicle public transportation system

Under active research, technology of autonomous vehicles (AVs) is getting mature and many AVs will run on the roads in the near future. With the support of vehicular ad-hoc network, AVs become connected. The ability of high degree of control allows AVs to respond to instantaneous situations cooperatively with high efficiency and flexibility. In this paper, we propose a new public transport offering point-to-point services with ride sharing. It manages a fleet of AVs to accommodate a number of transportation requests. Due to the unmanned nature, AVs operate by following the routes instructed by the control center of the system. With proper scheduling, the control center assigns the transportation requests to appropriate AVs in order to minimize the total operational cost. We formulate the scheduling problem with a mixed-integer program. We study the system performance with a typical artificial scenario. Our results show that ride sharing can effectively lower the operational cost and an increase of the vehicular capacity can further enhance the system performance.
On Analytic Process

An innovative methodology is presented for identifying and assessing change process in psychoanalytic treatments. Using the Psychotherapy Process Q-set (PQS), a panel of experienced psychoanalysts developed a prototype of an ideal psychoanalytic hour. This prototype was then applied to verbatim transcripts of three archived treatment samples: psychoanalyses, long-term analytic therapies, and brief psychodynamic therapies. The degree to which these treatments fostered an analytic process as represented by the prototype was measured quantitatively. Analytic process was significantly more present in psychoanalyses than in the long-term analytic therapies, which, in turn fostered significantly more analytic process than did brief psychodynamic therapies. The study demonstrates that, given descriptive language that does not represent a particular theoretical perspective, analysts can agree on a definition of analytic process, and that analytic process can be operationalized and quantitatively assessed. A second study demonstrates that despite consensus on its definition, there is not just one proper analytic process; rather, there are change processes unique to each dyad. Two quantitative case studies illustrate how each analytic pair has a unique interaction pattern linked to treatment progress. These dyad-unique “interaction structures” are recurrent, mutually influencing patterns of interaction, the experience, recognition, and comprehension of which appear to be a fundamental component of therapeutic action. A bipersonal model is described that attempts to bridge theories of therapeutic action that focus on insight and self-understanding and those that emphasize the patient's experience of the therapist.
Structure of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis type VII secretion system chaperone EspG5 in complex with PE25–PPE41 dimer

The growth or virulence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacilli depends on homologous type VII secretion systems, ESX‐1, ESX‐3 and ESX‐5, which export a number of protein effectors across membranes to the bacterial surface and environment. PE and PPE proteins represent two large families of highly polymorphic proteins that are secreted by these ESX systems. Recently, it was shown that these proteins require system‐specific cytoplasmic chaperones for secretion. Here, we report the crystal structure of M. tuberculosis ESX‐5‐secreted PE25–PPE41 heterodimer in complex with the cytoplasmic chaperone EspG5. EspG5 represents a novel fold that is unrelated to previously characterized secretion chaperones. Functional analysis of the EspG5‐binding region uncovered a hydrophobic patch on PPE41 that promotes dimer aggregation, and the chaperone effectively abolishes this process. We show that PPE41 contains a characteristic chaperone‐binding sequence, the hh motif, which is highly conserved among ESX‐1‐, ESX‐3‐ and ESX‐5‐specific PPE proteins. Disrupting the interaction between EspG5 and three different PPE target proteins by introducing different point mutations generally affected protein secretion. We further demonstrate that the EspG5 chaperone plays an important role in the ESX secretion mechanism by keeping aggregation‐prone PE–PPE proteins in their soluble state.
Hepatocellular carcinoma: present and future.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common malignant tumors in some areas of the world; there is an increasing incidence worldwide, and approximately 500,000 new cases are reported per year. More than 75% of cases occur in the Asia-Pacific region, largely in association with chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection (1).
Implementation of SEPIC / Zeta Three-Port Bidirectional DC-DC Converter for Renewable Energy Applications

In this paper an efficient topology of (Single Ended Primary Inductor Converter) SEPIC/Zeta converter is proposed to interface renewable energy sources and the load. The proposed converter is obtained by the integration of the bidirectional converter and the full-bridge converter. As the output voltage of the proposed converter is not reversed this topology provides remarkable advantages than the other topologies when battery is used as the backup. The output voltage can be used to power the LED light which needs the input voltage not more than 50 V. The control action was implemented by using conventional controller to maintain power mismatch in the system by tracking maximum power and by regulating the battery voltage and the output voltage. The working principles of the proposed converter are also analyzed in detail. The performances of the system are also analyzed under the conditions of different insolation and load current.
How effective is a short-term educational and support intervention for families of an adolescent with type 1 diabetes?

PURPOSE To study adaptation and coping strategies of parents who had adolescents with diabetes and the effect of a short-term educational and support intervention. DESIGN AND METHOD A quasi-experimental design was used in the study on 23 families of adolescents with diabetes. RESULTS A significant difference was found between parents' coping patterns before the intervention. Fathers were, however, found to rate their coping patterns significantly more helpful after the intervention than before. The mothers demonstrated, nevertheless, a significantly greater use of all the coping patterns. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS Educational and support intervention is helpful for parents of adolescents with diabetes.
Unintentional drowning in urban South Africa: a retrospective investigation, 2001–2005

Background Drowning is a major public health concern in low- and middle-income countries. In South Africa there is sound information and an emerging knowledge base for drowning prevention. However, there remains a scarcity of analyses of drowning in the country. Methods The purpose of this analysis was to quantify the magnitude and describe occurrence of unintentional drowning deaths in five major South African cities, recorded between 2001 and 2005 by the National Injury Mortality Surveillance System. Results Drowning in South African cities occurred at rates of between 1.4 and 2.7/100 000 population. The majority of drowning occurred amongst males, while the highest rates were observed among 0–4-year-olds. Most drowning deaths occurred during recreational periods, over weekends and in the afternoon. 41.5% of adult drowning victims were alcohol positive at the time of death. Conclusions This study is based on one of only two known systematic sources of drowning mortality in Africa. It provides an indication of drowning rates in South African cities with young children and males at considerably more risk. The most likely locations for drowning varied from city to city. Amongst adult victims, especially men, alcohol is an important risk factor.
Simulation study of real time 3D synthetic aperture sequential beamforming for ultrasound imaging

This paper presents a new beamforming method for real-time three-dimensional (3-D) ultrasound imaging using a 2-D matrix transducer. To obtain images with sufficient resolution and contrast, several thousand elements are needed. The proposed method reduces the required channel count from the transducer to the main imaging system, by including electronics in the transducer handle. The reduction of element channel count is achieved using a sequential beamforming scheme. The beamforming scheme is a combination of a fixed focus beamformer in the transducer and a second dynamic focus beamformer in the main system. The real-time imaging capability is achieved using a synthetic aperture beamforming technique, utilizing the transmit events to generate a set of virtual elements that in combination can generate an image. The two core capabilities in combination is named Synthetic Aperture Sequential Beamforming (SASB). Simulations are performed to evaluate the image quality of the presented method in comparison to Parallel beamforming utilizing 16 receive beamformers. As indicators for image quality the detail resolution and Cystic resolution are determined for a set of scatterers at a depth of 90mm for elevation and azimuth angles from 0° to 25°. Simulations show that the acoustic performance of the Proposed method is less angle dependent than Parallel beamforming. The Cystic resolution is shown to be more than 50% improved, with a detail resolution on the same order as Parallel Beamforming.
Phocomelia and Internal Defects due to Thalidomide

Phocomelia and Internal Defects due to Thalidomide Thalidomide and its teratogenic effects in utero have been the subject of much discussion during recent months. Recently an infant with gross limb deformities ascribed to thalidomide taken by the mother during early pregnancy died under conditions suggesting inhalation asphyxia and necropsy was performed. A brief account of the findings is recorded.
Why We Use Bad Color Maps and What You Can Do About It

We know the rainbow color map is terrible, and it is emphati-cally reviled by the visualization community, yet its use continues to persist. Why do we continue to use a this perceptual encod-ing with so many known ﬂaws? Instead of focusing on why we should not use rainbow colors, this position statement explores the rational for why we do pick these colors despite their ﬂaws. Often the decision is inﬂuenced by a lack of knowledge, but even experts that know better sometimes choose poorly. A larger issue is the expedience that we have inadvertently made the rainbow color map become. Knowing why the rainbow color map is used will help us move away from it. Education is good, but clearly not sufﬁcient. We gain traction by making sensible color alternatives more convenient. It is not feasible to force a color map on users. Our goal is to supplant the rainbow color map as a common standard, and we will ﬁnd that even those wedded to it will migrate away.
Contribution of Immune Activation to the Pathogenesis and Transmission of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Infection

SUMMARY The life cycle of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) is intricately related to the activation state of the host cells supporting viral replication. Although cellular activation is essential to mount an effective host immune response to invading pathogens, paradoxically the marked systemic immune activation that accompanies HIV-1 infection in vivo may play an important role in sustaining phenomenal rates of HIV-1 replication in infected persons. Moreover, by inducing CD4+ cell loss by apoptosis, immune activation may further be central to the increased rate of CD4+ cell turnover and eventual development of CD4+ lymphocytopenia. In addition to HIV-1-induced immune activation, exogenous immune stimuli such as opportunistic infections may further impact the rate of HIV-1 replication systemically or at localized anatomical sites. Such stimuli may also lead to genotypic and phenotypic changes in the virus pool. Together, these various immunological effects on the biology of HIV-1 may potentially enhance disease progression in HIV-infected persons and may ultimately outweigh the beneficial aspects of antiviral immune responses. This may be particularly important for those living in developing countries, where there is little or no access to antiretroviral drugs and where frequent exposure to pathogenic organisms sustains a chronically heightened state of immune activation. Moreover, immune activation associated with sexually transmitted diseases, chorioamnionitis, and mastitis may have important local effects on HIV-1 replication that may increase the risk of sexual or mother-to-child transmission of HIV-1. The aim of this paper is to provide a broad review of the interrelationship between immune activation and the immunopathogenesis, transmission, progression, and treatment of HIV-1 infection in vivo.
Saliva and Dental Plaque

Dental plaque is being redefined as oral biofilm. Diverse overlapping microbial consortia are present on all oral tissues. Biofilms are structured, displaying features like channels and projections. Constituent species switch back and forth between sessile and planktonic phases. Saliva is the medium for planktonic suspension. Several major functions can be defined for saliva in relation to oral biofilm. It serves as a medium for transporting planktonic bacteria within and between mouths. Bacteria in transit may be vulnerable to negative selection. Salivary agglutinins may prevent reattachment to surfaces. Killing by antimicrobial proteins may lead to attachment of dead cells. Salivary proteins form conditioning films on all oral surfaces. This contributes to positive selection for microbial adherence. Saliva carries chemical messengers which allow live adherent cells to sense a critical density of conspecifics. Growth begins, and thick biofilms may become resistant to antimicrobial substances. Salivary macromolecules may be catabolized, but salivary flow also may clear dietary substrates. Salivary proteins act in ways that benefit both host and microbe. All have multiple functions, and many do the same job. They form heterotypic complexes, which may exist in large micelle-like structures. These issues make it useful to compare subjects whose saliva functions differently. We have developed a simultaneous assay for aggregation, killing, live adherence, and dead adherence of oral species. Screening of 149 subjects has defined high killing/low adherence, low killing/high adherence, high killing/high adherence, and low killing/low adherence groups. These will be evaluated for differences in their flora.