Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Increased fluid intake does not augment capacity to lay down new collagen in nursing home residents at risk for pressure ulcers: A randomized, controlled clinical trial

Prevention of pressure ulcers is fundamental to safe care of nursing home residents yet the role of hydration in pressure ulcer prevention has not been systematically examined. This randomized clinical trial was undertaken to determine whether administration of supplemental fluid to nursing home residents at risk for pressure ulcers would enhance collagen deposition, increase estimated total body water, augment subcutaneous tissue oxygenation, and was safe. After a baseline period, 64 subjects were randomized to receive the fluid volume prescribed or additional fluid (prescribed plus 10 mL/kg) for 5 days. Participants' potential to heal as measured with hydroxyproline was low at baseline and did not increase significantly during treatment when additional fluid was systematically provided. Fluid intake increased significantly during treatment. Estimates of total body water and subcutaneous oxygen did not increase, indicating hydration was not improved. Supplemental fluid did not result in overhydration as measured by clinical parameters. Further work is needed to examine the relationship between fluid intake and hydration in nursing home residents as well as the role of hydration in pressure ulcer prevention.
Resource Revocation in Apache Mesos

We demonstrate how adding resource revocation to Mesos allows the system to provide latency and resource guarantees to frameworks. Mesos, which uses dominant resource fairness to offers of new resources, was designed initially for primarly MapReduce-like and found to provide weak guarantees with more general workloads. This project resolved this issue by allowing frameworks to explicitely state resource minimums needed to constrain their task latency and then use these constraints to guide Mesos in revoking resources. This solution both minimizes work lost from revocation and leverages the pre-existing DRF algorithm in Mesos to already provide long-term fairness. Offer revocation after a timeout was employed to minimize resource waste due to indecisive frameworks. These adjustments were evaluated on a single machine using synthetic benchmarks designed to simulate problem scenarios that occur when running Mesos in production on large 1000+ node clusters. Evalutation demonstrated frameworks running latency sensitive tasks were able to start new jobs on a fully-utilized Mesos cluster employing revocation as if they were the only framework in the system even in the presence of resource-heavy or indecisive frameworks.
Mast cells and local resistance to Russell's viper venom.

It was observed that the subcutaneous injection of Russell's Viper venom initiated an explosive release of heparin-containing granules from local tissue mast cells and that the shed granules were subsequently ingested by fibroblasts and various other cell types involved in the connective tissue response to venom injury. Investigations of the significance of these cellular events indicated that heparin can form acid-base complexes with noxious factors of the venom in vitro and inhibit both local and systemic injury by this venom in mice. Inasmuch as this antivenom effect of heparin is only one aspect of a more general antitoxic activity of this mucopolysaccharide, it is suggested that the degranulation of mast cells may serve an important function in local resistance to injury by various cationic substances.
Progress of visual dysfunction in Parkinson's disease

Studies on progression of Parkinson's disease (PD) mainly focus on the nigrostriatal dopaminergic decline, but not on the visual system. We determined progression of (i) disturbed color vision, assessed with the Farnsworth–Munsell 100 Hue test (FMT) and (ii) intensity of PD in 18 patients. Significant differences occurred between (i) initial FMT error scores and follow‐up results 3 years later (P=0.002) and analogously (ii) scored intensity of PD (P=0.002). A relation between computed differences of FMT error scores and rated activities of daily living appeared. Deterioration of color vision progresses in PD.
Demanda de productos cárnicos en la Comunidad Valenciana

En el articulo se realiza un analisis de la demanda de productos carnicos en la Comunidad Valenciana a partir de la informacion suministrada por las Encuestas de Presupuestos Familiares. Se estudia la influencia sobre el gasto en diversos tipos de productos carnicos de las siguientes variables: renta de las familias, estacionalidad en el consumo, numero de componentes y composicion de la familia y numero de habitantes del municipio de residencia de la misma.
Attenuation of maternal psychophysiological stress responses and the maternal cortisol awakening response over the course of human pregnancy

The effects of maternal stress during pregnancy may depend, in part, on the timing in gestation of the occurrence of stress. The aim of the present study was to examine the effect of stage of gestation on maternal psychophysiological responses to stress using a standardized laboratory paradigm and on the cortisol response to awakening (CAR). A longitudinal design was employed to quantify maternal psychophysiological stress reactivity [changes in heart rate (HR), blood pressure, salivary cortisol, and psychological distress in response to the trier social stress test (TSST)] and the CAR at approximately 17 and 31 weeks gestation in a sample of 148 women. To account for the possible effects of habituation when being exposed to the same stress protocol twice, a non-pregnant comparison group (CG, N = 36) also underwent these assessments at two time points, with a comparable time interval between the assessments. In both groups, the TSST elicited significant changes in maternal HR, mean arterial pressure, and psychological distress levels but not a significant increase in cortisol levels. Among the pregnant women (pregnant group(PG)), the stressor-induced increases in HR, blood pressure, and psychological distress were significantly lower at the second (31 weeks gestation) compared to the first (17 weeks gestation) assessment of pregnancy (all p < 0.01). The maternal CAR was also significantly attenuated in later compared to earlier gestation (p = 0.003). In the CG, there were no significant differences in psychophysiological stress responses and in the CAR across the two assessments. Among pregnant women there is a progressive attenuation of psychophysiological stress responses with advancing gestation. This attenuation is unlikely to be attributable to habituation. Individual differences in the degree of attenuation of stress responses over gestation may represent a novel marker of stress susceptibility in human pregnancy.
Management of Fibromyalgia: Rationale for the Use of Magnesium and Malic Acid

Primary fibromyalgia (FM) is a common clinical condition affecting mainly middle-aged women. of the etiologies previously proposed, chronic hypoxia seems the one best supported by recent biochemical and histological findings. We postulate that FM symptoms are predominantly caused by enhanced gluconeogenesis with breakdown of muscle proteins, resulting from a deficiency of oxygen and other substances needed for ATP synthesis. We present data supporting a critical role for magnesium and malate in ATP production under aerobic and hypoxic conditions; and indirect evidence for magnesium and malate deficiency in FM. After treating 15 FM patients for an average of 8 weeks with an oral dosage form with dosages of 1200–2400 mg of malate and 300–600 mg of magnesium, the tender point index (TPI) scores (x±) were 19–6±2–1 prior to treatment and 8±1.1 and 6–5±0.74. respectively, after an average of 4 and 8 weeks on the magnesium malate combination (p < 0.001). Subjective improvement of myalgia occurred within 48 h of .
Machine Translation on the Medical Domain: The Role of BLEU/NIST and METEOR in a Controlled Vocabulary Setting

The main objective of our project is to extract clinical information from thoracic radiology reports in Portuguese using Machine Translation (MT) and cross language information retrieval techniques. To accomplish this task we need to evaluate the involved machine translation system. Since human MT evaluation is costly and time consuming we opted to use automated methods. We propose an evaluation methodology using NIST/BLEU and METEOR algorithms and a controlled medical vocabulary, the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS). A set of documents are generated and they are either machine translated or used as evaluation references. This methodology is used to evaluate the performance of our specialized Portuguese-English translation dictionary. A significant improvement on evaluation scores after the dictionary incorporation into a commercial MT system is demonstrated. The use of UMLS and automated MT evaluation techniques can help the development of applications on the medical domain. Our methodology can also be used on general MT research for evaluating and testing purposes.
Targeting of EZH2 to a defined genomic site is sufficient for recruitment of Dnmt3a but not de novo DNA methylation

Polycomb-mediated gene silencing and DNA methylation underlie many epigenetic processes important in normal development as well as in cancer. An interaction between EZH2 of the Polycomb repressive complex 2 (PRC2), which trimethylates lysine 27 on Histone 3 (H3K27me3), and all three DNA methyltransferases (DNMTs) has been demonstrated, implicating a role for PRC2 in directing DNA methylation. Interestingly, however, the majority of H3K27me3 marked genes lack DNA methylation in ES cells, indicating that EZH2 recruitment may not be sufficient to promote DNA methylation. Here, we employed a Gal4DBD/gal4UAS-based system to directly test if EZH2 binding at a defined genomic site is sufficient to promote de novo DNA methylation in a murine erythroleukaemia cell line. Targeting of a Gal4DBD-EZH2 fusion to an intergenic transgene bearing a gal4 binding-site array promoted localized recruitment of SUZ12 and BMI1, subunits of PRC2 and PRC1, respectively, and deposition of H3K27me3. Further analysis of the H3K27me3-marked site revealed the persistence of H3K4me2, a mark inversely correlated with DNA methylation. Strikingly, while DNMT3a was also recruited in an EZH2-dependent manner, de novo DNA methylation of the transgene was not observed. Thus, while targeting of EZH2 to a specific genomic site is sufficient for recruitment of DNMT3a, additional events are required for de novo DNA methylation.
Evaluation of relationship between balance parameters and bone mineral density

In the present study, a group of people aged 20-85 who visited the bone mineral densitometry center of the Shariati Hospital, were analyzed. Participants were asked to stand up barefoot on Wii balance board and in front of a Kinect sensor. We calculated the center of pressure (COP) and center of mass (COM) using the data from Wii balance board and Kinect, respectively. By evaluating balance parameters, we show that there is a reverse relationship between center of mass acceleration and femur's bone mineral density. Further research in the subject may facilitate the design of equipment that can reduce the rate of falling in patients.
Competitive Wakeup Scheme for Distributed Devices

Wakeup is the primary function in voice interaction which is the mainstream scheme in man-machine interaction (HMI) applications for smart home. All devices will response if the same wake-up word is used for all devices. This will bring chaos and reduce user quality of experience (QoE). The only way to solve this problem is to make all the devices in the same wireless local area network (WLAN) competing to wake-up based on the same scoring rule. The one closest to the user would be selected for response. To this end, a competitive wakeup scheme is proposed in this paper with elaborately designed calibration method for receiving energy of microphones. Moreover, the user orientation is assisted to determine the optimal device. Experiments reveal the feasibility and validity of this scheme.
Refugia, colonization and diversification of an arid‐adapted bird: coincident patterns between genetic data and ecological niche modelling

Phylogeographical studies are common in boreal and temperate species from the Palaearctic, but scarce in arid‐adapted species. We used nuclear and mitochondrial markers to investigate phylogeography and to estimate chronology of colonization events of the trumpeter finch Bucanetes githagineus, an arid‐adapted bird. We used 271 samples from 16 populations, most of which were fresh samples but including some museum specimens. Microsatellite data showed no clear grouping according to the sampling locations. Microsatellite and mitochondrial data showed the clearest differentiation between Maghreb and Canary Islands and between Maghreb and Western Sahara. Mitochondrial data suggest differentiation between different Maghreb populations and among Maghreb and Near East populations, between Iberian Peninsula and Canary Islands, as well as between Western Sahara and Maghreb. Our coalescence analyses indicate that the trumpeter finch colonized North Africa during the humid Marine Isotope Stage 5 (MIS5) period of the Sahara region 125 000 years ago. We constructed an ecological niche model (ENM) to estimate the geographical distribution of climatically suitable habitats for the trumpeter finch. We tested whether changes in the species range in relation to glacial–interglacial cycles could be responsible for observed patterns of genetic diversity and structure. Modelling results matched with those from genetic data as the species' potential range increases in interglacial scenarios (in the present climatic scenario and during MIS5) and decreases in glacial climates (during the last glacial maximum, LGM, 21 000 years ago). Our results suggest that the trumpeter finch responded to Pleistocene climatic changes by expanding and contracting its range.
Effects of low-density lipoproteins extracted from different avian yolks on boar spermatozoa quality following freezing–thawing

Summary Low-density lipoproteins (LDL) is known to protect boar sperm during freezing–thawing, but little information is known about the effects of LDL extracted from different avian egg yolks on post-thaw boar semen quality. The purpose of this study was to compare and analyze the effects of LDL at various concentrations and different species on boar sperm quality after freezing–thawing. LDL extracted from the yolk of hen egg, duck egg, quail egg, pigeon egg or ostrich egg was added to the extender at the concentrations of 0.06, 0.07, 0.08, 0.09 and 0.1 g/ml, respectively, and their effects on frozen–thawed boar sperm quality were assessed. According to all measured parameters, the results showed that sperm motility, acrosome integrity and plasma membrane integrity were 43.20%, 52.57% and 48.13%, respectively, after being frozen–thawed with 0.09 g/ml LDL extracted from pigeon egg yolk. All these quality parameters were higher than that of other groups (P < 0.05). In conclusion, our results confirmed that LDL extracted from pigeon egg yolk had the best cryoprotective effects on frozen–thawed boar sperm among all of the groups supplemented with LDL from five kinds of avian egg in extender. The optimum concentration of LDL extracted from pigeon egg in boar semen freezing extender was 0.09 g/ml.
Teamwork Climate and Patient Safety Attitudes: Associations Among Nurses and Comparison With Physicians in Taiwan

The TeamSTEPPS Teamwork Attitudes Questionnaire and Safety Attitudes Questionnaire were distributed to the nurses in a county hospital in Taiwan. Nurses (n = 407) had lower scores in Team Structure, Communication, and Situation Monitoring than physicians (n = 76). A structural equation model demonstrated a positive association between teamwork climate and safety attitudes (&bgr; = 0.78, P < .01). Teamwork climate is the most important determinant for patient safety attitudes among nurses.
Use of droplet plating method and cystine-lactose-lactng electrolyte-deficient medium in routine quantitative urine culturing procedure

Droplet plating of 0.01 ml of 10(-2) dilutions of mixed sonically treated urines onto cystine-lactose electrolyte-deficient agar permits formation of discrete, easily counted colonies within a small circumscribed area without interference by Proteus overswarm. Each colony is considered as arising from a single viable cell. The single dilution permits precise reproducible quantitation of urine bacteria population within the range 10(4) to 10(6) cells/ml of sample. Droplet-plated counts were found to be consistently (approximately) double those determined by standard pour plate quantitation. The method requires only inexpensive readily available materials and has been performed routinely in a large-volume clinical laboratory for several years.
Cell type-independent mitosis event detection via hidden-state conditional neural fields

This paper proposes a cell type-independent mitosis event detection method based on hidden-state conditional neural fields in time-lapse phase contrast microscopy sequences of stem cell populations. This method proceeds through three steps. First, we apply the imaging model-based microscopy image segmentation method and volumetric region growing to extract candidate sequences. Then, we extract the GIST feature of each frame within a candidate sequence for visual representation. Finally, a hidden-state conditional neural field classifier is trained to classify each candidate as mitosis or not. The main contribution is that the proposed method can jointly realize non-linear feature learning for different types of cells and temporal dynamic modeling of mitotic progression. The comparison experiments demonstrated the proposed method can benefit the detection of cell type-independent mitosis.
Isotropic incompressible hyperelastic models for modelling the mechanical behaviour of biological tissues: a review

Abstract Modelling the mechanical behaviour of biological tissues is of vital importance for clinical applications. It is necessary for surgery simulation, tissue engineering, finite element modelling of soft tissues, etc. The theory of linear elasticity is frequently used to characterise biological tissues; however, the theory of nonlinear elasticity using hyperelastic models, describes accurately the nonlinear tissue response under large strains. The aim of this study is to provide a review of constitutive equations based on the continuum mechanics approach for modelling the rate-independent mechanical behaviour of homogeneous, isotropic and incompressible biological materials. The hyperelastic approach postulates an existence of the strain energy function – a scalar function per unit reference volume, which relates the displacement of the tissue to their corresponding stress values. The most popular form of the strain energy functions as Neo-Hookean, Mooney-Rivlin, Ogden, Yeoh, Fung-Demiray, Veronda-Westmann, Arruda-Boyce, Gent and their modifications are described and discussed considering their ability to analytically characterise the mechanical behaviour of biological tissues. The review provides a complete and detailed analysis of the strain energy functions used for modelling the rate-independent mechanical behaviour of soft biological tissues such as liver, kidney, spleen, brain, breast, etc.
IMMA-Emo: A Multimodal Interface for Visualising Score- and Audio-synchronised Emotion Annotations

Emotional response to music is often represented on a two-dimensional arousal-valence space without reference to score information that may provide critical cues to explain the observed data. To bridge this gap, we present IMMA-Emo, an integrated software system for visualising emotion data aligned with music audio and score, so as to provide an intuitive way to interactively visualise and analyse music emotion data. The visual interface also allows for the comparison of multiple emotion time series. The IMMA-Emo system builds on the online interactive Multi-modal Music Analysis (IMMA) system. Two examples demonstrating the capabilities of the IMMA-Emo system are drawn from an experiment set up to collect arousal-valence ratings based on participants' perceived emotions during a live performance. Direct observation of corresponding score parts and aural input from the recording allow explanatory factors to be identified for the ratings and changes in the ratings.
Improved cognitive performance and event-related potential changes following working memory training in patients with multiple sclerosis

Background Few studies of cognitive rehabilitation in multiple sclerosis (MS) have targeted working memory specifically. Objective We examined the effects of n-back working memory training on cognitive performance and brain function in patients with MS. Methods Patients with MS (n = 12) and healthy controls (HC; n = 12) underwent 20 sessions of n-back working memory training. Before and after training (pre- and posttest) cognitive event-related potential (ERP) measures were obtained during a 3-back task. In addition, a battery of cognitive tests was administered. Results Following n-back training, both MS patients and HCs showed significant improvement on tests of working memory, processing speed, complex attention, and reasoning ability. MS and HCs also exhibited an enhancement of N2 ERP component amplitude, and earlier N2 and P3 latencies, following n-back training. Conclusions Targeted training of working memory with the n-back task may improve cognitive function in MS. Enhancement of N2 ERP component amplitude and shorter N2 and P3 latency following training in patients with MS is consistent with plasticity of neural processes that are involved in working memory.
Amino terminal hydrophobic import signals target the p14ARF tumor suppressor to the mitochondria

The p14ARF tumour suppressor is frequently targeted for inactivation in many human cancers and in individuals predisposed to cutaneous melanoma. The functions of p14ARF are closely linked with its subcellular distribution. Nucleolar p14ARF dampens ribosome biosynthesis and nucleoplasmic forms of p14ARF activate the p53 pathway and induce cell cycle arrest. p14ARF can also be recruited to mitochondria where it interacts with many mitochondrial proteins, including Bcl-xL and p32 to induce cell death. It has been suggested that the movement of p14ARF to mitochondria requires its interaction with p32, but we now show that the ARF-p32 interaction is not necessary for the accumulation of p14ARF in mitochondria. Instead, highly hydrophobic domains within the amino-terminal half of p14ARF act as mitochondrial import sequences. We suggest that once this hydrophobic pocket is exposed, possibly in a stimulus-dependent manner, it accelerates the mitochondrial import of p14ARF. This allows the interaction of p14ARF with mitochondrial proteins, including p32 and enables p53-independent cell death.