Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Human milk IgA concentrations during the first year of lactation

AIMS To measure the concentrations of total IgA in the milk secreted by both breasts, throughout the first year of lactation, in a cohort of Gambian mothers of infants at high risk of infection. SUBJECTS AND METHODS Sixty five women and their infants were studied monthly from the 4th to 52nd postpartum week. Samples of milk were obtained from each breast by manual expression immediately before the infant was suckled. Milk intakes were measured by test weighing the infants before and after feeds over 12 hour periods; IgA concentrations were determined by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay. RESULTS A total of 1590 milk samples was measured. The median (interquartile range) concentration of IgA for all samples was 0.708 (0.422–1.105) g/l; that in milk obtained from the left breast was 0.785 (0.458–1.247) g/l, and that in milk obtained from the right breast was 0.645 (0.388–1.011) g/l (p < 0.0001). There was no significant change in milk or IgA intakes with advancing infant age, but there was a close concordance of IgA concentrations between the two breasts, with “tracking” of the output of the left and right breasts. There was a significant (p < 0.01) negative correlation between maternal age and parity, and weight of milk ingested by infants. During the dry season (December to May) the median (interquartile range) IgA concentration was significantly higher at 0.853 (0.571–1.254) g/l than during the rainy season (June to November), when it was 0.518 (0.311–0.909) g/l (p < 0.0001). CONCLUSIONS Sustained IgA secretion is likely to protect suckling infants from microbial infection. Key messages Human milk is rich in protective proteins, including IgA, which plays a part in the prevention of microbial infection in suckling infants IgA secretion is maintained at around 0.5 g/day by Gambian mothers throughout the first year of lactation There is a negative correlation between maternal age and parity, and weight of milk ingested by infants During the dry season, when food is most plentiful, milk IgA concentrations are higher than during the rainy season, when food is scarcer There is a close concordance of milk IgA concentrations between the two breasts, with “tracking” of output of the left and right breasts, suggesting control of secretion above the level of the mammary gland
ifferential regulation of the Na +-Ca 2 + exchanger 3 ( NCX 3 ) by protein inase PKC and PKA auriane

Isoform 3 of the Na+-Ca2+ exchanger (NCX3) participates in the Ca2+ fluxes across the plasma membrane. Among the NCX family, NCX3 carries out a peculiar role due to its specific functions in skeletal muscle and the immune system and to its neuroprotective effect under stress exposure. In this context, proper understanding of the regulation of NCX3 is primordial to consider its potential use as a drug target. In this study, we demonstrated the regulation of NCX3 by protein kinase A (PKA) and C (PKC). Disparity in regulation has been previously reported among the splice variants of NCX3 therefore the activity of Ca2+ uptake and extrusion of the two murine variants was measured using fura-2-based Ca2+ imaging and revealed that both variants are similarly regulated. PKC stimulation diminished the Ca2+ uptake performed by NCX3 in the reverse mode, triggered by a rise in [Ca]i or [Na]i, whereas an opposite response was observed upon PKA stimulation, with a significant increase of the Ca2+ uptake after a rise in [Ca]i. The latter stimulation affected similarly the efflux capacity of NCX3 whereas Ca2+ extrusion capacity remained unaffected under activation of PKC. Next, using site-directed mutagenesis, the sensitivity of NCX3 to PKC was abolished by singly mutating its predicted phosphorylation sites T529 or S695. The sensitivity to PKC might be due to the influence of T529 phosphorylation on the Ca2+-binding domain 1. Additionally, we showed that stimulation of NCX3 by PKA occurred through residue S524. This effect may well participate in the fight-or-flight response in skeletal muscle and the long-term potentiation in hippocampus. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Editorial: DNA Vaccination: A Simple Concept with Challenges Regarding Implementation

Infectious diseases have plagued society from the beginning of civilization and have shaped civilization by altering the balance of power during crusades, as well as being used as biological weapons. However, development of methods to control infectious disease was not implemented until 1796 when Jenner recognized that individuals exposed to cow pox were apparently protected from the deadly scourge of small pox. This observation ushered in the era of vaccination. Approximately 100 years later, Pasteur further advanced the concept of vaccination by proposing that many of the diseases were caused by microorganisms. Based on this observation, he proposed that if one crippled or inactivated the microorganism and exposed an individual to this ‘‘vaccine,’’ the body would develop resistance against the specific disease. Indeed, Pasteur’s first success was dramatic when he saved the life of a boy bitten by a rabid dog. Since these humble beginnings,
Unit Commitment With Probabilistic Spinning Reserve and Interruptible Load Considerations

This paper demonstrates how a probabilistic criterion could be explicitly integrated in the unit commitment (UC) formulation. Both spinning reserve and interruptible load are taken into account as the operating reserve facilities. Incorporating the interruption notice time of interruptible load involves some complexities in the evaluation procedure and problem formulation which is considered in this paper. The expected energy not supplied (EENS) is considered as a probabilistic criterion and a new method is proposed to calculate this index in the presence of interruptible load. The reliability-constrained unit commitment (RCUC) problem is formulated based on the mixed-integer programming (MIP) method that can be solved using large-scale commercial solvers. The effectiveness of the proposed formulation is examined using the IEEE-RTS. Numerical results are presented and the implementation issues are discussed. A number of analyses are examined to evaluate the impact of some important factors on the problem solution.
Feather Pecking in Laying Hens : Environmental and Endogenous Factors

Sedlaãková M. , Bi lã ík B. , Ko‰Èál , a. : Feather Pecking in Laying Hens: Environmental and Endogenous Factors. Acta Vet. Brno 2004, 73: 521-531. Feather pecking, pecking directed to and damaging the feathers of other birds, is a behavioural disorder occurring in laying hens and other poultry species and breeds. Feather pecking is both a welfare and economic problem. Pulling out feathers causes pain, a higher risk of injuries and can trigger an outbreak of cannibalism. Extensive loss of feather cover is accompanied by increased heat loss that results in increased food consumption. The 1999 EU Directive laying down minimum standards for the protection of laying hens approved banning of conventional battery cages from 2012. Thus in the next few years major changes to the housing of laying hens in Europe will occur. Therefore there is an urgent need to develop feasible alternative housing systems. An increased risk of feather pecking is a main obstruction to the wide adoption of alternative housing systems, such as free range, aviaries or percheries. There is a continuous effort of many research teams in Europe and elsewhere to expand our knowledge of this behavioural disturbance and maximize the chances to solve the problem. In this review we have attempted to summarise the present status of knowledge about feather pecking. Hypotheses on causation (redirected ground pecking or dustbathing), environmental factors (feeding, lighting, housing, group size, density) and endogenous factors (sex, age, genetic factors, physiological control mechanisms) are discussed and possible ways of prevention via changing environment, management practices or genetic selection are pointed out. Chicken, feather pecking, abnormal behaviour, cannibalism, housing systems
Primary and Secondary Control-Enhancing Strategies

Objectives:The major goal of this article was to assess the link between controlenhancing strategies and health in an older population. In particular, the use of primarycontrol strategies, which involve modifying the environment (e.g., actively persisting) and compensatory secondary-control strategies, which involve modifying the self (e.g., expecting less of oneself) was studied. Methods:Participants (n= 241) in a large-scale longitudinal study were interviewed to assess their use of strategies and their health. Results:Health (physical and perceived) was found to vary for those using primary and compensatory secondary-control strategies; however, the nature of this variation depended on age. Discussion:The findings may indicate that primary-control strategies have positive health implications for the young-old but that these same strategies become detrimental to health in late life. The findings could further suggest that compensatory secondary-control strategies become increasingly more adaptive in late life.
Biliary papillary tumors share pathological features with intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasm of the pancreas

Recently, attention has been drawn to papillary neoplasm of the pancreatobiliary systems. In the pancreas, the disease entity of intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasm (IPMN‐P) is widely recognized. In contrast, the pathological characteristics of biliary papillary tumors, such as biliary papilloma(tosis) and papillary cholangiocarcinoma, have not yet been well documented. In this study, we compared the pathological features and post‐operative prognosis among biliary papillary tumors (10 cases of biliary papilloma(tosis) and 22 cases of papillary cholangiocarcinoma), conventional non‐papillary cholangiocarcinoma (15 cases), and IPMN‐P (31 cases). Macroscopically, all biliary papillary tumors were characterized by the prominent intraductal papillary proliferation, and macroscopic mucin‐hypersecretion was seen in 9 of 32 cases (28%). Histologically, biliary papillary tumors consisted of three types of tumor cells (pancreaticobiliary, intestinal and gastric types), whereas only the pancreaticobiliary type was observed in non‐papillary cholangiocarcinoma. Immunohistochemically, biliary papillary tumors were characterized by the common expression of MUC2, CDX2 and cytokeratin 20. In addition, biliary papillary tumors could be associated with two types of invasive lesions: tubular adenocarcinoma (9 cases) and mucinous carcinoma (5 cases). Patients with tubular adenocarcinoma had a poor prognosis compared to non‐invasive papillary tumor or papillary tumor with mucinous carcinoma. These pathological characteristics and the survival status of biliary papillary tumors were different from those of non‐papillary cholangiocarcinoma, and rather closely resembled those of IPMN‐P. In conclusion, biliary papillary tumors may be the biliary counterpart (intraductal papillary neoplasm of the bile duct) of IPMN‐P. (HEPATOLOGY 2006;44:1333–1343.)
The police-based crisis intervention team (CIT) model: II. Effects on level of force and resolution, referral, and arrest.

OBJECTIVE The crisis intervention team (CIT) model is a widely implemented police-based program to improve officers' responses to individuals with behavioral disorders. The authors examined levels of force used by officers with or without CIT training and disposition decisions in a large sample of encounters with individuals whom they suspected of having a serious mental illness, a drug or an alcohol problem, or a developmental disability. METHODS A total of 180 officers (91 with CIT training and 89 without) in six departments reported on 1,063 encounters, including level of force and disposition (resolution at the scene, referral or transport to services, or arrest). RESULTS CIT training status was generally not predictive of level of force, although CIT-trained officers were significantly more likely to report verbal engagement or negotiation as the highest level of force used (odds ratio [OR]=2.00, p=.016). For CIT-trained officers, referral or transport was a more likely outcome (OR=1.70, p=.026) and arrest was less likely (OR=.47, p=.007) than for officers without CIT training; these findings were most pronounced when physical force was necessary. Analyses of disposition differences by officers' perceptions of subjects' primary problem (for example, mental illness only versus a drug or an alcohol problem) found some effects of CIT training status. CONCLUSIONS CIT training appears to increase the likelihood of referral or transport to mental health services and decrease the likelihood of arrest during encounters with individuals thought to have a behavioral disorder. Research should address subject- and system-level outcomes that complement this early evidence of successful prebooking jail diversion.
Perceptually relevant grouping of image tokens on the basis of constraint propagation from local binary patterns

Abstract. Grouping image tokens is an intermediate step needed to arrive at meaningful image representation and summarization. Usually, perceptual cues, for instance, gestalt properties inform token grouping. However, they do not take into account structural continuities that could be derived from other tokens belonging to similar structures irrespective of their location. We propose an image representation that encodes structural constraints emerging from local binary patterns (LBP), which provides a long-distance measure of similarity but in a structurally connected way. Our representation provides a grouping of pixels or larger image tokens that is free of numeric similarity measures and could therefore be extended to nonmetric spaces. The representation lends itself nicely to ubiquitous image processing applications such as connected component labeling and segmentation. We test our proposed representation on the perceptual grouping or segmentation task on the popular Berkeley segmentation dataset (BSD500) that with respect to human segmented images achieves an average F-measure of 0.559. Our algorithm achieves a high average recall of 0.787 and is therefore well-suited to other applications such as object retrieval and category-independent object recognition. The proposed merging heuristic based on levels of singular tree component has shown promising results on the BSD500 dataset and currently ranks 12th among all benchmarked algorithms, but contrary to the others, it requires no data-driven training or specialized preprocessing.
Ly9 (CD229)-Deficient Mice Exhibit T Cell Defects yet Do Not Share Several Phenotypic Characteristics Associated with SLAM- and SAP-Deficient Mice1

Signaling lymphocyte activation molecule (SLAM) family receptors are critically involved in modulating innate and adaptive immune responses. Several SLAM family receptors have been shown to interact with the adaptor molecule SAP; however, subsequent intracellular signaling is poorly defined. Notably, mutations in SLAM-associated protein (SAP) lead to X-linked lymphoproliferative disease, a rare but fatal immunodeficiency. Although the SLAM family member Ly9 (CD229) is known to interact with SAP, the functions of this receptor have remained elusive. Therefore, we have generated Ly9−/− mice and compared their phenotype with that of SLAM−/− and SAP−/− mice. We report that Ly9−/− T cells exhibit a mild Th2 defect associated with reduced IL-4 production after stimulation with anti-TCR and anti-CD28 in vitro. This defect is similar in magnitude to the previously reported Th2 defect in SLAM−/− mice but is more subtle than that observed in SAP−/− mice. In contrast to SLAM−/− and SAP−/− mice, T cells from Ly9−/− mice proliferate poorly and produce little IL-2 after suboptimal stimulation with anti-CD3 in vitro. We have also found that Ly9−/− macrophages exhibit no defects in cytokine production or bacterial killing as was observed in SLAM−/− macrophages. Additionally, Ly9−/− mice differ from SAP−/− mice in that they foster normal development of NKT cells and mount appropriate T and B cell responses to lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus. We have identified significant phenotypic differences between Ly-9−/− mice as compared with both SLAM−/− and SAP−/− mice. Although Ly9, SLAM, and SAP play a common role in promoting Th2 polarization, Ly-9 is uniquely involved in enhancing T cell activation.
As a Potentially Functional Food: Goats’ Milk and Products

It is important for food materials to be delicious as well as nutritious and natural but, healthy nutrition refers to efficient and balanced nutrition, that is, efficient intake of nutrient elements (lipids, carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins, minerals) for body cells to work smoothly. In the recent years the factors such as the sociological, economic and nutritional value are been significiantly impact on the food industry, as a result of these new foods is produced which has the required properties with health-related and is marketed. The products using goats’ milk are included this new foods. Goats’ milk point of view the nutritional is a valuable dairy product. Goats’ milk production is a dynamic and growing industry that is fundamental to the wellbeing of hundreds of millions of people worldwide and is an important part of the economy in many countries. Thus, the lack of at industrial scale increasing the use of goats’ milk will be encouraged to more consumption by the community. The aim of the present review is focus on quality and the composition of goats’ milk, discuss specialty products made from goats’ milk around the world, the importance of goats’ milk and usage of goats’ milk in food industry were examined.
Cigarette purchases at pharmacies by patients at high risk of smoking-related illness.

Cigarette Purchases at Pharmacies by Patients at High Risk of Smoking-Related Illness Cigarette smoking can make managing chronic diseases more difficult. For instance, in patients with certain respiratory conditions, smoking increases the risk of acute exacerbation, can worsen disease control, and may limit the effectiveness of inhaled corticosteroids.1 Similarly, by raising blood pressure, smoking can make it challenging to effectively control hypertension and may increase the risk of atherosclerosis and coronary heart disease.2 Smoking can also increase the risk of serious adverse drug events. Oral contraceptive (OC) users older than 35 years who smoke have a 9-fold higher risk of myocardial infarction and venous thromboembolism compared with nonsmokers.3,4 A visit to the pharmacy to fill a prescription is, paradoxically, often an opportunity to purchase cigarettes. Using a deidentified database of linked retail pharmacy purchases and prescription data, we estimated the incidence and frequency of cigarette purchases made in retail pharmacies by individuals filling prescriptions for asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), hypertension, and OC medications.
Remote rehabilitation monitoring with an IoT-enabled embedded system for precise progress tracking

We present an embedded system designed for enabling telemedicine and remote monitoring of the people's progresses during physical rehabilitation tasks. The system consists of a modular electronics designed to interface a matrix of 32 bendable force sensors (piezoresistive or piezoelectric) assembled on a flexible PCB. It implements the analog conditioning and digital processing of sensors readout to build a pressure map of the patients' activity with up to 62.5 ksps sampling rate. Moreover, the Wi-Fi interface integrated on the microcontroller allows a live communication between user and physician, in addition to standard local logging of workout information. The reduced power consumption in live streaming conditions (less than 750mW) permits more than 8 hours autonomy of the system with a standard battery supply. Results demonstrate the performance of the proposed mapping system.
All-Fiber Q-Switched Erbium-Doped Fiber Ring Laser Using Phase-Shifted Fiber Bragg Grating

We propose a unique all-fiber Q-switched erbium-doped fiber ring laser. It consists of a phase-shifted fiber Bragg grating (FBG) and an apodized FBG reflector. By using the piezoelectric transducer (PZT) to periodically stretch the apodized FBG and detune it with the phases-shifted FBG, the cavity loss of the fiber ring laser is switched between high and low states to achieve Q-switching. This Q-switched fiber laser has advantages of narrow spectral bandwidth, stable oscillation wavelength, and the repetition rate of the Q-switched pulses can be double of the PZT modulation frequency. A numerical model is developed and presented to simulate and analyze this FBGs-based Q-switched fiber ring laser with consideration of the dynamic response of FBGs during Q-switching. We experimentally demonstrate 10 and 20 kHz Q-switching operation with 10 kHz PZT modulation frequency. The experimental result is similar to the simulation result.
Connectionist Modelling of Asthma Incidence in New Zealand

This paper describes an investigation of the patterns of self-reported asthma symptoms in relation to demographic and environmental factors in New Zealand. The subjects of the study consisted of 25,000 adults aged 20-44 who responded to a postal questionnaire. For each respondent, physical and social environmental conditions in the meshblock of residence were estimated using a Geographic Information System. The measured outcome was the 12-month prevalence of asthma. An artificial neural-network was constructed to model this outcome on the basis of the 13 environmental and demographic inputs, using a randomly selected sample of the data and tested on the remaining set of data. The modelling results indicated that there was different behaviour for the 20-25 and 26-44 age-groups, and separate neural-network models were constructed for each of these two age-groups. A set of inference rules were then extracted from each of the two neural networks. When applied to test data, the inference rules predicted the occurrence of asthma correctly in approximately 70% of the cases. Our approach may prove to be useful in simulating the effect of scenarios of environmental change on the occurrence of asthma.