Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Phylogeography of Biomphalaria glabrata and B. pfeifferi, important intermediate hosts of Schistosoma mansoni in the New and Old World tropics

The historical phylogeography of the two most important intermediate host species of the human blood fluke Schistosoma mansoni, B. glabrata in the New World, and B. pfeifferi in the Old World, was investigated using partial 16S and ND1 sequences from the mitochondrial genome. Nuclear sequences of an actin intron and internal transcribed spacer (ITS)‐1 were also obtained, but they were uninformative for the relationships among populations. Phylogenetic analyses based on mtDNA revealed six well‐differentiated clades within B. glabrata: the Greater Antilles, Venezuela and the Lesser Antilles, and four geographically overlapping Brazilian clades. Application of a Biomphalaria‐specific mutation rate gives an estimate of the early Pleistocene for their divergence. The Brazilian clades were inferred to be the result of fragmentation, due possibly to climate oscillations, with subsequent range expansion producing the overlapping ranges. Within the Venezuela and Lesser Antilles clade, lineages from each of these areas were estimated to have separated approximately 740 000 years ago. Compared to B. glabrata, mitochondrial sequences of B. pfeifferi are about 4× lower in diversity, reflecting a much younger age for the species, with the most recent common ancestor of all haplotypes estimated to have existed 880 000 years ago. The oldest B. pfeifferi haplotypes occurred in southern Africa, suggesting it may have been a refugium during dry periods. A recent range expansion was inferred for eastern Africa less than 100 000 years ago. Several putative species and subspecies, B. arabica, B. gaudi, B. rhodesiensis and B. stanleyi, are shown to be undifferentiated from other B. pfeifferi populations.
Modulation by GTP of Basal and Agonist‐Stimulated Striatal Adenylate Cyclase Activity Following Chronic Blockade of D1 and D2 Dopamine Receptors: Involvement of G Proteins in the Development of Receptor Supersensitivity

Abstract: Rats receiving injections of specific antagonists of dopamine receptors (SCH 23390 for D1, haloperidol for D2, and haloperidol + SCH 23390) once daily for 21 days develop a selective supersensitivity of the blocked receptors. To study the molecular correlates of these adaptive changes, we evaluated the involvement of GTP‐binding proteins in the development of supersensitivity of dopamine receptors. By means of adenylate cyclase studies, we tested whether any of the treatments modified the functional response to GTP in striata dissected from control and treated rats. Our data show that the chronic blockade of D1 and/or D2 receptors potentiates both basal and dopamine receptor‐stimulated adenylate cyclase activity in response to GTP. D1 receptor up‐regulation correlates with an increased adenylate cyclase response to GTP, whereas D2 receptor up‐regulation is accompanied by an enhanced GTP‐induced inhibition of enzyme activity, in both basal and receptor‐activated conditions. This potentiation does not seem to match the changes in mRNA content of Gs and Giã subunits. Unexpectedly, however, a significant increase in Giã subunit mRNA was found after the chronic blockade of D1 receptors; this result could be explained by cross‐regulation between GTP‐binding protein‐mediated pathways. This cross‐regulation could serve as a protective mechanism whereby cells exposing up‐regulated receptors protect themselves from a condition of hyperactivity of the adenylate cyclase enzyme.
Variation of exposure between workers in homogeneous exposure groups.

It is generally assumed that workers employed in the same job at a given location are uniformly exposed, i.e., that they have the same long-term mean exposure. This assumption has led to observational schemes for classifying workers into homogeneous exposure groups (HEGs), based on job title, location, and other identifiable features of the work environment. This paper presents results from analysis of 183 HEGs (comprised of 15,495 personal measurements) in which it was possible to determine the between-worker component of variance in exposure. The results indicate that, contrary to popular belief, only about one fifth of the HEGs were uniformly exposed (less than a two-fold difference among 95% of individual mean exposures) while an equal number showed a high degree of variation between workers (more than 15-fold differences among 95% of individuals). Further analyses indicate that the identifiable features of the work environment, which are typically used to establish HEGs, are only marginally related to the between-person variation (accounting for only 13% of this variance component). It is concluded that industrial hygienists should not rely on observational schemes to guarantee that groups of workers are uniformly exposed. Rather, they should adopt methods of statistical sampling and analysis that allow the variance components to be estimated so that decisions regarding the evaluation of hazard and selection of controls will be appropriate.
Intersection of cardiovascular disease and kidney disease: atrial fibrillation

Purpose of review Atrial fibrillation is the most common sustained arrhythmia in patients with kidney disease. The purpose of this review is to describe the burden of atrial fibrillation in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and end-stage renal disease (ESRD), postulate possible mechanisms to explain this burden of disease, understand the clinical consequences of atrial fibrillation and review the treatment options for atrial fibrillation specific to patients with kidney disease. Recent findings Recent literature has revealed that the clinical multiorgan impact of atrial fibrillation in patients with CKD and ESRD is substantial. Although novel oral anticoagulants to treat atrial fibrillation and prevent associated complications have been tested in large trials in the general population, there is a paucity of data on the efficacy and safety of these agents in patients with advanced CKD and ESRD. Summary Atrial fibrillation is a significant comorbidity in patients with CKD and ESRD with important prognostic implications. More research is needed to understand the mechanisms that contribute to the disproportionate burden of this arrhythmia in patients with kidney disease and in to treatment options specific to this population of high-risk patients.
[Preventive prophylactic treatment in posttraumatic epilepsy].

Posttraumatic epilepsy (PTE) represents about 2 3% of all the etiologies of epilepsy. The so called early seizures , which appear in the first week after the traumatic brain injury (TBI), are related to the severity of the injury; they do not have an strictly epileptic mechanism, but they become a risk factor to the development of PTE. PTE appears in 5% of all the patients suffering from all TBI, and in 15 20% of the patients suffering from a severe TBI. However, the endpoint uses to be to use antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) as prophylactic treatment in all well established PTE. The efficacy of classic antiepileptic drugs (Phenobarbital, Phenytoin, Carbamazepine, Valproate acid) to control the kindling effect has not been confirmed yet as a prophylactic treatment for PTE. Prophylactic efficacy of other drugs, like lipid peroxidation inhibitors, neuroprotectors (especially antioxidants), glutamic receptor blockers, NMDA receptor blockers, and drugs that modulate apoptosis via caspasas inhibition; however, they constitute new ways of therapeutic investigation with a strong experimental basis. Our recommended therapeutic strategy is not to administrate AEDs indiscriminately, but analyzing risk factors, designing a careful prevention for late seizures using AEDs with proven efficacy in partial seizures and with the best achievable tolerability; being also attentive to the possible use of new drugs in the future, like lipid peroxidation inhibitors, and drugs designed to inhibit other excitotoxic, ionic or oxidative processes.
Toward Personalized Activity Recognition Systems With a Semipopulation Approach

Activity recognition is a key component of context-aware computing to support people's physical activity, but conventional approaches often lack in their generalizability and scalability due to problems of diversity in how individuals perform activities, overfitting when building activity models, and collection of a large amount of labeled data from end users. To address these limitations, we propose a semipopulation-based approach that exploits activity models trained from other users; therefore, a new user does not need to provide a large volume of labeled activity data. Instead of relying on any additional information from users like their weight or height, our approach directly measures the fitness of others' models on a small amount of labeled data collected from the new user. With these shared activity models among users, we compose a hybrid model of Bayesian networks and support vector machines to accurately recognize the activity of the new user. On activity data collected from 28 people with a diversity in gender, age, weight, and height, our approach produced an average accuracy of 83.4% (kappa: 0.852), compared with individual and (standard) population models that had accuracies of 77.3% (kappa: 0.79) and 77.7% (kappa: 0.743), respectively. Through an analysis on the performance of our approach and users' demographic information, our approach outperforms others that rely on users' demographic information for recognizing their activities, which may contradict the commonly held belief that physically similar people would have similar activity patterns.
Practical guidelines for the supplementation of vitamin D and the treatment of deficits in Central Europe - recommended vitamin D intakes in the general population and groups at risk of vitamin D deficiency.

INTRODUCTION Adequate Vitamin D intake and its concentration in serum are important for bone health and calcium-phosphate metabolism as well as for optimal function of many organs and tissues. Documented trends in lifestyle, nutritional habits and physical activity appear to be associated with moderate or severe Vitamin D deficits resulting in health problems. Most epidemiological studies suggest that Vitamin D deficiency is prevalent among Central European populations. Concern about this problem led to the organising of a conference focused on overcoming Vitamin D deficiency. METHODS After reviewing the epidemiological evidence and relevant literature, a Polish multidisciplinary group formulated theses on recommendations for Vitamin D screening and supplementation in the general population. These theses were subsequently sent to Scientific Committee members of the 'Vitamin D - minimum, maximum, optimum' conference for evaluation based on a ten-point scale.With 550 international attendees, the meeting 'Vitamin D - minimum, maximum, optimum' was held on October 19-20, 2012 in Warsaw(Poland). Most recent scientific evidence of both skeletal and non-skeletal effects of Vitamin D as well as the results of panellists' voting were reviewed and discussed during eight plenary sessions and two workshops. RESULTS Based on many polemical discussions, including post-conference networking, the key opinion leaders established ranges of serum 25-hydroxyVitamin D concentration indicating Vitamin D deficiency [< 20 ng/mL (< 50 nmol/L)], suboptimal status [20-30 ng/mL(50-75 nmol/L)], and target concentration for optimal Vitamin D effects [30-50 ng/mL (75-125 nmol/L)]. General practical guidelines regarding supplementation and updated recommendations for prophylactic Vitamin D intakes in Central European neonates, infants, children and adolescents as well as in adults (including recommendations for pregnant and breastfeeding women and the elderly) were developed. CONCLUSIONS Improving the Vitamin D status of children, adolescents, adults and the elderly must be included in the priorities of physicians,healthcare professionals and healthcare regulating bodies. The present paper offers elaborated consensus on supplementation guidance and population strategies for Vitamin D in Central Europe.
Homozygosity at the C677T of the MTHFR gene is associated with increased breast cancer risk in the Turkish population.

BACKGROUND Folate deficiency is implicated in cancer development. Single nucleotide polymorphisms in the methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) gene can modulate the effect of folate. In this case-controlled study, a possible effect of the common MTHFR C677T (ala-->val) polymorphism on breast cancer susceptibility in Turkish patients was investigated. MATERIALS AND METHODS Polymorphism analysis was performed by melting curve analysis. RESULTS The variant allele valine (677T) was more frequent among the patients (30.1%) than in controls (23.9%). This difference was weakly significant (p = 0.046; OR = 1.37) and due to a significantly higher frequency of the valine homozygotes (677TT) among the patients (12.1% vs. 5.4%; p = 0.013, OR = 2.5). Among the patients diagnosed at more than 40 years of age, a more pronounced association of the valine homozygotes with breast cancer risk was observed (p = 0.009; OR = 3.3). CONCLUSION Homozygosity for the low-activity C677T genotype (TT) may represent a genetic determinant increasing breast cancer risk.
N-acetyltransferase 2 polymorphisms and risk of anti-tuberculosis drug-induced hepatotoxicity in Caucasians.

OBJECTIVE To analyse slow-acetylation N-acetyltransferase 2 (NAT2) polymorphisms for their association with the risk of anti-tuberculosis drug-induced hepatotoxicity (ATDH). DESIGN A case-control study including Caucasian patients with tuberculosis (TB) treated with isoniazid, rifampicin and pyrazinamide. NAT2 genotype results were compared between ATDH cases and controls and with a healthy Spanish control population of Caucasian origin. RESULTS Fifty cases and 67 controls were included in the study. Slow, intermediate and rapid NAT2 genotypes were found in respectively 72%, 18% and 10% of cases compared with 65.7%, 25.4% and 9% of controls (P> 0.05). On comparing NAT2 genotypes among cases with those among healthy controls (n = 1312), we found more slow NAT2 genotypes and fewer intermediate genotypes among cases (respectively 72% and 18% in cases vs. 54.8% and 38.1% in controls; OR 2.07, 95%CI 1.12-2.79, P = 0.016 and OR 0.37, 95%CI 0.18-0.75, P = 0.003). CONCLUSIONS We could not demonstrate an increased risk of ATDH related to the presence of slow NAT2 polymorphisms among this Caucasian TB cohort. However, we found a significantly greater frequency of slow and a significantly lower frequency of intermediate NAT2 genotypes among the ATDH cases compared with the healthy control population.
Postexercise reduction in lung diffusion capacity is not attenuated by skin cooling

Pulmonary diffusion capacity for carbon monoxide (DLCO) is reduced by approximately 10% 1–6 h after maximal exercise. The mechanisms may be interstitial alveolar oedema and reduced pulmonary capillary blood volume. It was hypothesized that thermal stress following exercise contributes to the reduction in DLCO, and that skin cooling would attenuate the postexercise reduction in DLCO. Cutaneous vascular conductance (CVC), mean surface temperature (MST), rectal temperature and DLCO were measured before and 90 min after maximal incremental cycle exercise. Thereafter, the subjects were exposed to cold air without eliciting shivering one day and another day served as control. The measurements were repeated 120 min after exercise. Twelve healthy subjects (six male) aged 20–27 years were studied. DLCO was reduced by 7·1% (SD = 6·3%, P = 0·003) and 7·6% (SD = 5·3%, P<0·001) 90 and 120 min after exercise in the control experiment. It was reduced by 5·6% (SD = 5·5%, P = 0·014) 90 min after exercise and remained reduced by 6·1% (SD = 6·1%, P = 0·012) after cooling despite a significant reduction in CVC and in MST from 31·9 (SD = 0·6)°C to 27·4 (SD = 1·9)°C. We conclude that the postexercise reduction in DLCO is present when thermal status is restored after exercise, and that it is not influenced by further skin surface cooling.
Latest Trends in PMU Placement Techniques

Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) have become an integral part of contemporary power systems. They provide accurate and efficient measurements with time synchronization, which is important for locating where the PMU is placed. So, for any modern power system it is ideal to have PMUs installed in it for its monitoring and controlling. PMUs in future will replace the present-day technology of SCADA based monitoring systems. The main problem in installing a PMU in any system is that an optimal number of PMUs have to be placed in a power system so that the cost of PMUs does not shoot up astronomically. So, the problem placement of PMUs has to be solved. There are mainly two methods which solve the Optimal PMU Placement (OPP) problem I) Mathematical methods II) Heuristic methods. This paper reviews the two broad methods and provides a comparison along with their characterization.
[Measurement of cerebral blood flow in normal subjects by phase contrast MR imaging].

Global cerebral blood flow (CBF) was quantitatively measured with a two-dimensional phase contrast cine magnetic resonance (MR) imaging technique in 24 normal subjects (mean age, 38.6 years; range, 12-70 years). Cine transverse images of the upper cervical region (32 phases/cardiac cycle) were acquired with a 1.5 Tesla MR imaging unit. In five subjects, measurement of CBF was performed before and after intravenous administration of acetazolamide (DIAMOX, 15 mg/kg). Inter- and intraobserver variations in flow volume measurement were small (r = 0.970, standard error of the estimate (SEE) = 2.9 ml/min, n = 80; r = 0.963, SEE = 4.6 ml/min, n = 40, respectively). In measuring flow velocity, they were inferior to those of flow volume measurement. On a visually determined setting of region of interest (ROI), reproducibly of the measurement of flow velocity was not satisfactory in this study. Thus only the results of flow volume measurement are presented. Mean summed vertebral flow volume (171 ml/min, SD = 40.6) was significantly less than mean summed internal carotid flow volume (523 ml/min, SD = 111). Total blood flow volume showed a significant decline with age (r = 0.45, p < 0.05). The mean proportions of carotid and vertebral flow volume to total flow volume were 75.3% and 24.7%, respectively, and showed no significant change with age. The left-to-right ratio of vertebral flow volume (1.39) was significantly higher than that of internal carotid flow volume (0.99, r = 0.05). After DIAMOX i.v. , the mean rate of increase in total flow volume was 157%. Mean rates of increase in carotid and vertebral flow volume were 154% and 166%, respectively, which were not significantly different. In conclusion, this method is useful for estimating carotid and vertebral flow volume.
Circadian fluctuations in the efficacy of thrombolysis with streptokinase

This study was designed to investigate possible diurnal fluctuations in the efficacy of thrombolysis with streptokinase and whether they follow the circadian periodicity which has already been well documented for the time of onset of acute myocardial infarction, transient myocardial ischaemia, sudden cardiac death, thrombotic stroke, and for the efficacy of thrombolysis with tissue-type plasminogen and urokinase. A total of 156 consecutive patients treated with streptokinase were studied retrospectively; success or failure of thrombolysis was determined according to accepted clinical and angiographic criteria. A definite time peak for successful thrombolysis could be detected at the late afternoon and early evening hours; between 16.00 and 20.00 h, 30.2% of all successful thrombolysis cases were observed compared with 7.0% between 20.00 and 24.00 (p<0.05) or 10.5% between 00.00 and 04.00 (p<0.05). Between 16.00 and 20.00 h, 75.8% of treated patients had successful thrombolysis compared to 15.2% of failed treatments and 9% equivocal results (p<0.001). Multiple regression analysis showed that the independent factor with the major impact on successful reperfusion was the actual time of thrombolysis (p=0.037), followed by the time delay from pain onset to streptokinase administration (p=0.020), while age and gender had much lesser impact (p=0.328 and 0.215, respectively) and the individual risk factors even less. These findings may have several clinical implications; dose adjustment for the time of day may be required, with higher doses during morning hours, or preference for primary coronary angioplasty in order to avoid the increase in bleeding complications related to higher doses of thrombolytic agents.
Training trainees, young activists, to conduct awareness campaigns about prevention of substance abuse among Lebanese/Armenian young people

Alcohol, tobacco and other drugs (ATOD) abuse and addiction are serious problems among Lebanese youth. Peer education on ATOD abuse in several settings has been found to be an effective way of prevention. This paper describes a collaborative project which trained 30 young activists to lead awareness campaigns in the Lebanon about ATOD abuse and healthy alternatives for relieving stress. The project was initiated by the Armenian Relief Cross in Lebanon (ARCL), funded by the Oxfam Canadian Fund for Social Development and implemented in collaboration with stakeholders in the Armenian community and Oum El Nour organization. Following training, the activists offered awareness sessions to a total audience of 5200:1250 secondary students, 50 university students, 1050 scouts, 300 working adolescents, 50 policemen and 2500 parents. Workshop objectives were met and awareness campaigns evaluated positively by the activists, parents of young people, ARCL and other stakeholders: leaders of Armenian institutions dealing with adolescents and the mayor of Bourj Hammoud. Resource constraints precluded seeking feedback from the young people who participated. Collaboration was deemed to have enhanced the capacity of ARCL, Oum El Nour, and the stakeholders in training young trainees to offer awareness campaigns. The author recommends continuing the project; offering another workshop to support the trainees and building in ways to evaluate the impact of the awareness campaigns on knowledge, attitude and behaviors of the young people taking part. To this effect, evaluation of the impact of the awareness campaigns is already started among school students with the use of control/comparison group design.