Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
In/ex copula ejaculatory activities of aqueous and methanolic extracts of Aframomum melegueta (Zingiberaceae) in sexually experienced male rat

This study was undertaken to evaluate the effects of Aframomum melegueta on male rat ejaculation using in/ex copula techniques. For the in copula experiment, rats were orally treated with aqueous or methanolic extract (20 and 100 mg/kg) of A. melegueta for 14 days. Each rat was mated with a primed receptive female on days 0, 7 and 14 of treatment, and the ejaculatory latency and post‐ejaculatory interval were measured. In the ex copula experiment, the electromyography of the bulbospongiosus muscles and intraseminal pressure were recorded in spinal rats after mechanical (urethral and penile) and pharmacological stimulations (intravenous injection of dopamine (5 mg/kg) and, aqueous or methanolic extract of A. melegueta, 2.5; 5; 10 and 20 mg/kg). Furthermore, the effect of dopamine on fictive ejaculation was monitored in rats orally pre‐treated with A. melegueta extracts (20 and 100 mg/kg) for 7 or 14 days. Treatment with the aqueous or methanolic extract of A. melegueta significantly decreased the ejaculatory latency (p < .05) and post‐ejaculatory interval (p < .01) after 14 days. In spinal rats, mechanical or pharmacological stimulations triggered fictive ejaculation. In animals orally pre‐treated with A. melegueta extracts, the pro‐ejaculatory effect of dopamine was more expressed. Present findings show that A. melegueta possesses pro‐ejaculatory effects.
Stylet angulation of 70 degrees reduces the time to intubation with the GlideScope®: A prospective randomised trial

Objective The GlideScope® videolaryngoscope provides a good view of the glottis. However, directing and inserting an endotracheal tube is sometimes difficult during intubation with the GlideScope®. In this study, we compared two GlideScope® stylet angulations (90° vs. 70°) in terms of the time to intubation. Methods In total, 162 patients scheduled for elective surgery under general anaesthesia were randomly assigned to one of two groups. In the 90 group (n = 79), a 90° stylet was used. In the 70 group (n = 78), a 70° stylet was used. The time to intubation was recorded. The number of intubation attempts was assessed. Results The time to intubation was significantly shorter in the 70 than 90 group [26.0 (23.0–32.0) vs. 37.0 (30.0–43.0) s, respectively]. The first-time intubation success rate was significantly higher and the number of failed intubations was significantly lower in the 70 than 90 group (100% vs. 87% and 0% vs. 6%, respectively). Conclusions This investigation suggests that a 70° angle stylet is superior to a 90° angle stylet for GlideScope® intubation. Trial Registration Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT02547064
Eveningness as a risk for behavioral problems in late adolescence

ABSTRACT Circadian preference toward eveningness has been associated with increased risk for mental health problems both in early adolescence and in adulthood. However, in late adolescence, when circadian rhythm naturally shifts to later, its significance for mental health is not clear. Accordingly, we studied how circadian rhythm estimated both by self-reported chronotype and by actigraph-defined midpoint of sleep was associated with self-reported psychiatric problems based on Youth Self Report (YSR). The study builds on a community cohort born in 1998, Helsinki, Finland. At age 17 years (mean age = 16.9, SD = 0.1 years), 183 adolescents (65.6% of the invited) participated in the study. We used the shortened version of the Horne-Östberg morningness–eveningness Questionnaire to define the chronotype, and actigraphs to define the naturally occur circadian rhythm over a 4 to 17 days’ period (mean nights N = 8.3, SD = 1.8). The Achenbach software was used to obtain T-score values for YSR psychiatric problem scales. The analyses were adjusted for important covariates including gender, socioeconomic status, body mass index, pubertal maturation, mother’s licorice consumption during pregnancy, and actigraph-defined sleep duration and quality. Eveningness was associated with higher scores in rule-breaking behavior and conduct problems (as assessed either by midpoint of sleep or by self-reported chronotype, p-values <0.05), attention deficit/hyperactivity problems (by self-reported chronotype, p-values <0.05), with affective problems (by midpoint of sleep and by self-reported chronotype, p-values <0.05) and somatic complaints (by self-reported chronotype, p-values <0.05), as compared to circadian tendency toward morningness. Our results suggest that the association between eveningness and externalizing problem behavior, present in children and younger adolescents, is also present in late adolescence when circadian rhythms shift toward evening.
Comparison of PSO variants applied to large scale optimization problems

In order to address an issue concerning the increasing number of algorithms based on particle swarm optimization (PSO) applied to solve large-scale optimization problems (up to 2000 variables), this article presents analysis and comparisons among five state-of-the-art PSO algorithms (CCPSO2, LSS-PSO, OBL-PSO, SPSO and VCPSO). Tests were performed to illustrate the efficiency and feasibility of using the algorithms for this type of problem. Six benchmark functions most commonly used in the literature (Ackley 1, Griewank, Rastrigin, Rosenbrock, Schwefel 1.2 and Sphere) were tested. The experiments were performed using a high-dimensional problem (500 variables), varying the number of particles (50, 100 and 200 particles) in each algorithm, thus increasing the computational complexity. The analysis showed that the CCPSO2 and OBL-PSO algorithms found significantly better solutions than the other algorithms for more complex multimodal problems (which most resemble real-world problems). However, considering unimodal functions, the CCPSO2 algorithm stood out before the others. Our results and experimental analysis suggest that CCPSO2 and OBL-PSO seem to be highly competitive optimization algorithms to solve large-scale complex and multimodal optimization problems.
The role of heparin in sepsis: much more than just an anticoagulant

Despite progress in antibiotic treatment, mechanical ventilation, fluid resuscitation and blood glucose maintenance, sepsis remains a cause of high mortality in the intensive care unit to date, there are no proven treatment strategies for the routine management of septic patients. The extensive interaction between inflammation and coagulation contributes to the basic pathophysiology of sepsis. Thus, the agents that attenuate the activation of both inflammation and coagulation may improve the outcome in sepsis. Apart from the well‐known anticoagulant effects of heparin, it also possesses various immunomodulatory properties and protects glycocalyx from shedding. Hence, heparin seems to be such an agent. Immunothrombosis plays an important role in early host defence against bacterial dissemination, thus the proper timing for anticoagulant therapy should be determined. We review the available experimental and clinical data supporting the use of heparin in sepsis. At this time the use of heparin in the treatment of sepsis is conflicting. Future trials of heparin therapy for sepsis should concentrate on the very severely ill patients, in whom benefit is most likely to be demonstrated.
Finding Novel Multivariate Relationships in Time Series Data : Applications to Climate and Neuroscience

In many domains, there is significant interest in capturing novel relationships between time series that represent activities recorded at different nodes of a highly complex system. In this paper, we introduce multipoles, a novel class of linear relationships between more than two time series. A multipole is a set of time series that have strong linear dependence among themselves, with the requirement that each time series makes a significant contribution to the linear dependence. We demonstrate that most interesting multipoles can be identified as cliques of negative correlations in a correlation network. Such cliques are typically rare in a realworld correlation network, which allows us to find almost all multipoles efficiently using a clique-enumeration approach. Using our proposed framework, we demonstrate the utility of multipoles in discovering new physical phenomena in two scientific domains: climate science and neuroscience. In particular, we discovered several multipole relationships that are reproducible in multiple other independent datasets, and lead to novel domain insights.
Influence of Unconscious Emotional Control Goals Priming on Anticipatory Anxiety and Physiological Activity

Individuals frequently generate emotion during the anticipation process and the anticipatory emotion has an important adaptive significance, especially the negative anticipative emotion. Many researches used conscious emotion regulation strategy and successfully reduced negative anticipatory emotion. However, it is costly for our limited cognition. In the present study, we used sentence unscrambling tasks to prime unconscious emotion control goal and investigated its effect on anticipatory anxiety, including experience and physiological activity. The results showed that 1) relative to anticipating neutral images, participations’ anxiety experience and skin conductance level were higher when anticipating negative and unknown images; 2) participants who had a unconscious emotion control goal primed achieved the same decrease in skin conductance as those explicitly instructed to reappraise, compared to a control group; 3) heart rate was not affected by experiment condition and anticipation type. Together, these findings suggest that unconscious emotion regulation may provide an effective mean of regulating negative anticipatory emotion.
DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION OF A TERRAIN REPRESENTATION SYSTEM FOR HIGHWAY ROUTE PLANNING

In recent years, mixed or/and augmented reality,which aims to integrate virtual space with real space have be received a significant amount of attention in research and development. In particular, tangible interface is one of the interesting research growth areas. The hypothesis of this research project is that the introduction of a tangible interface should assist designers and planners to recognise the 3-D feature of the terrain and therefore a more efficient highway route planning and construction can be developed. In this context, the objective is to develop and evaluate a tangible terrain representation system (TTRS). The TTRS can represent a terrain surface by controlling the shape of a stretchable screen used to represent the terrain surface by means of a total of 64 actuators (8×8) and projecting an aerial photograph onto the screen. Applying the TTRS to highway planning, a highway alignment is determined by control points which are positioned by a magnetic position device. As a highway planner set the control point of a highway alignment on the TTRS, the image of a highway alignment is projected on the TTRS. The TTRS was evaluated against VR-based visual 3D representation using a group of 9 final year graduate students. A well defined evaluation measures of usability was developed and used in the process. The paper concluded that TTRS is very effective tools for design and construction of highway projects.
Putting Stress into Words: The Impact of Writing on Physiological, Absentee, and Self-Reported Emotional Well-Being Measures

Background and Purpose. Inhibiting or holding back one's thoughts, feelings, or behaviors is associated with long-term stress and disease. Actively confronting upsetting experiences can reduce the negative effects of inhibition. The present study describes a unique approach to aid individuals in dealing with psychological and emotional issues that they must often face. Methods. Forty-one of the 81 university employees who were participating in a wellness program agreed to participate in the present study. Subjects were randomly assigned to write about either personal traumatic experiences (n = 23) or non-traumatic topics (n = 18) for 20 minutes once a week for four consecutive weeks. Results. Results indicate that individuals who wrote about upsetting personal experiences evidenced significant drops in selected blood measures compared to those who wrote about non-traumatic topics (e.g., for SGOT: 4.0% drop among traumatic topic group versus 13.1% increase among non-traumatic topic group, ANOVA p = .029; for SGPT: 24.5% drop versus 7.7% increase, p =. 001). During the month of writing, traumatic topic group subjects evidenced a 28.6% reduction in absentee rates from work relative to the eight months before the experiment compared with a 48.5% increase in absentee rates among non-traumatic topic subjects (p =. 04). Subjects low in emotional inhibition evidenced the greatest reductions in absentee rates following personal disclosure compared to those high in emotional inhibition (p = .011). Discussion. The proposed writing strategy offers a unique tool for health promotion practitioners. Individuals encouraged to let themselves go and confront traumatic experiences in their lives can potentially enhance their own health.
Septic arthritis in children in resource limited and non-resource limited countries: an update on diagnosis and treatment

ABSTRACT Introduction: Septic arthritis (SA) is an orthopedic emergency in childhood. It is uncommon in high resource settings. However, an incidence of 5–20 per 100,000 children has been reported in low-income countries. Area covered: The predictive value of serum markers is still under debate and the proposed diagnostic algorithms for SA are not sufficiently validated in children. Recent data suggest that short-course intravenous treatment, followed by oral therapy, is as effective as traditional long-term treatment. Results from three randomized controlled trials suggest that the addition of systemic steroids may accelerate clinical improvement. Minimally invasive surgical techniques have been proposed for treatment in recent years. Expert commentary: The causes and the epidemiology of septic arthritis will continue to mutate according to the changes in immunization practices, bacterial resistance patterns and the implementation of PCR techniques. Future research should focus on the assessment of appropriate antibiotic regimens and surgical procedures.
Placental-specific sFLT-1: role in pre-eclamptic pathophysiology and its translational possibilities for clinical prediction and diagnosis

Pre-eclampsia is a common obstetric complication globally responsible for a significant burden of maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality. Central to its pathophysiology is the anti-angiogenic protein, soluble fms-like tyrosine kinase-1 (sFLT-1). sFLT-1 is released from a range of tissues into the circulation, where it antagonizes the activity of vascular endothelial growth factor and placental growth factor leading to endothelial dysfunction. It is this widespread endothelial dysfunction that produces the clinical features of pre-eclampsia including hypertension and proteinuria. There are multiple splice variants of sFLT-1. One, known as sFLT-1 e15a, evolved quite recently and is only present in humans and higher order primates. This sFLT-1 variant is also the main sFLT-1 secreted from the placenta. Recent work has shown that sFLT-1 e15a is significantly elevated in the placenta and circulation of women with pre-eclampsia. It is also biologically active, capable of causing endothelial dysfunction and the end-organ dysfunction seen in pre-eclampsia. Indeed, the over-expression of sFLT-1 e15a in mice recapitulates the pre-eclamptic phenotype in pregnancy. Therefore, here we propose that sFLT-1 e15a may be the sFLT-1 variant primarily responsible for pre-eclampsia, a uniquely human disease. Furthermore, this placental-specific sFLT-1 variant provides promise for use as an accurate biomarker in the prediction or diagnosis of pre-eclampsia.
The ADM-Aeolus wind retrieval algorithms

The ADM-Aeolus is primarily a research and demonstration mission flying the first Doppler wind lidar in space. Flexible data processing tools are being developed for use in the operational ground segment and by the meteorological community. We present the algorithms developed to retrieve accurate and representative wind profiles, suitable for assimilation in numerical weather prediction. The algorithms provide a flexible framework for classification and weighting of measurement-scale (1–10 km) data into aggregated, observation-scale (50 km) wind profiles for assimilation. The algorithms account for temperature and pressure effects in the molecular backscatter signal, and so the main remaining scientific challenge is to produce representative winds in inhomogeneous atmospheric conditions, such as strong wind shear, broken clouds, and aerosol layers. The Aeolus instrument provides separate measurements in Rayleigh and Mie channels, representing molecular (clear air) and particulate (aerosol and clouds) backscatter, respectively. The combining of information from the two channels offers possibilities to detect and flag difficult, inhomogeneous conditions. The functionality of a baseline version of the developed software has been demonstrated based on simulation of idealized cases.
Energy-Saving Algorithm with Dimension Reduction on the Uplink for Multimedia Push

Distributed Principal Component Analysis (DPCA) is a useful tool to make a trade-off between the cost of communication and data error. In this paper, DCPA is used for dimension reduction to compress data on the uplink. There is no information but the data error threshold in the base station (BS). Based on it, the relationship between the data error threshold in the BS and in user equipments is proved and revised. The revised relationship is very simply and irrelevant to the quantity of user equipments. After that, a novel energy-saving algorithm on the uplink for multimedia push is proposed. In the algorithm, the dimension reduction is applied in every user equipment with the data error threshold, and the compressed data matrixes would be transmitted to the BS. In simulation, the energy could be saved while using the algorithm, and the effect is changed with different data sets. Afterwards, the upper bound about the ratio of energy saving is estimated.
The Statistical Distribution of Wrist Movements during Sleep

The purpose of this work was to describe the basic statistical properties of the process of production of movements measured with a wrist actimeter, along a complete sleep period in normal human subjects. Two distinct types of random magnitudes were considered to analyze the data, the times between successive groups of movements and the number of movements at each fixed time (1 min) measurement epoch. Suitable probabilistic models for the two variates were chosen, fitting theoretical distribution functions to the observed data. It is concluded that interval data fit a one-parameter exponential distribution, while the number of movements fit a two-parameter negative binomial distribution. The estimated values of these parameters, besides being necessary to perform further statistical analysis, are a measure of the intensity and frequency of the movements. Finally the relationship between polysomnography measures and the elicited parameters was studied.
Treatments for people living with schizophrenia in Sub‐Saharan Africa: an adapted realist review

AIM To identify the treatments and interventions available and their impact on people living with schizophrenia in Sub-Saharan Africa. BACKGROUND Help-seeking behaviour and the choice of treatment are largely influenced by socio-cultural factors and beliefs about the causes of mental illness. This review addresses the gap in knowledge regarding the treatment options available to people living with schizophrenia in Sub-Saharan Africa. DESIGN Adapted realist literature review. DATA SOURCES Electronic databases searched in June 2016 included PubMed, EMBASE, PsycINFO, ProQuest and CINAHL. REVIEW METHODS The adapted realist review approach used to synthesize the published research involved identifying the review aim, searching and selecting relevant studies, extracting, iteratively analysing and synthesizing relevant data and reporting results. RESULTS Forty studies from eight countries were reviewed. Most people were treated by both faith/traditional healers and modern psychiatry. Common treatments included antipsychotics, electroconvulsive therapy and psychosocial interventions. Few treatment options were available outside major centres, there was poor adherence to medication and families reported a high level of burden associated with caring for a relative. LIMITATIONS Major limitations of this review were the lack of studies, variable quality and low level of evidence available from most countries from Sub-Saharan Africa and lack of generalizability. CONCLUSION People living with schizophrenia in Sub-Saharan Africa were treated by faith, traditional healers and modern psychiatry, if at all. Further research is needed to better understand the local situation and the implications for caring for people from this region. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING AND HEALTH POLICY Mental health services in Sub-Saharan Africa are limited by fiscal shortages, lack of mental health services and qualified mental health professionals. This review provides evidence to inform nursing and healthcare policy, including recruiting and training mental health professionals and ensuring access to evidence-based, person-centred and culturally relevant mental health services within the primary care context.
Examining Chlamydia trachomatis and Neisseria gonorrhoeae rates between 2010 and 2015: a population-based observational study

Bacterial sexually transmitted infections including Chlamydia trachomatis and Neisseria gonorrhoeae remain an important public health concern. We aimed to assess the population-based incidence of C. trachomatis and N. gonorrhoeae in an age-standardized cohort over time. A retrospective study of a large Canadian health region was undertaken between 2010 and 2015 using linked census and digital laboratory data. C. trachomatis and N. gonorrhoeae tests were linked to patient data. Sex and age-standardized incidence rates (IR) and ratios (IRR) were calculated for cases and testing rates. The annual mean population was 1,150,556 individuals (50.1% female). A total of 15,109 cases of chlamydia and 981 cases of gonorrhoea occurred. The overall IR for chlamydia ranged from 18.81 to 25.63 cases per 10,000 person-years. The IRR was 1.27 (95% CI 1.20–1.34, p < 0.001) for the comparison of 2015 and 2010 rates. For gonorrhoea, overall rates ranged from 0.92 to 1.86 cases per 10,000 person-years. The IRR for gonorrhoea was 2.02 (95% CI 1.56–2.59, p < 0.001) for 2015 and 2010 rates. In our large population-based study spanning six years, we observed increasing rates of C. trachomatis and N. gonorrhoeae with low testing rates.
The Premium of Marine Protected Areas: A Simple Valuation Model

The article addresses the induced cost, the premium, from establishing a marine protected area in a deterministic model of a fishery. Outside the protected area, the fishery is managed optimally through total allowable catch quotas. The premium is found to be increasing and convex along the protection parameter. Biological measures are introduced to increase the understanding of the mechanisms in the bioeconomic system. Time-series solutions show that the net return per unit offish increases after the protected area is established.