Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Geophagy in the golden-faced saki monkey ( Pithecia pithecia chrysocephala ) in the Central Amazon

The golden-faced saki monkey Pithecia pithecia chrysocephala (Cebidae, Primates) was observed eating soil from termite nests during a long-term study of a family group in a Central Amazonian forest fragment. In this paper we describe the behaviour involved in the geophagy in these monkeys, and the results of geochemical and physical analyses of the termite nest material, as well as root mat and topsoil samples below the trees, in order to clarify the possible reasons for it. The sakis ate soil from nine arboreal termite nests on 26 soil feeding-bouts (in 853 observation hours); 25 soil feeding-bouts occurred in March 1987 (rainy season), during 19 days or 132 observation hours, and occupied 0.7% of the feeding time. Geophagy frequencies did not differ between sexes (17 feeding-bouts of four females and 8 for two males). Mineral composition was higher in arboreal termitaria than in the topsoil. Kaolinite was the major clay component. Tannin adsorptive capacity, tested through a modified radial diffusion method of Hagerman, was around 10–20%, similar to a control with kaolin (10–20%), but lower than bentonite or celite (30–45%). The observations reported here, although inconclusive as to the function of geophagy in this species, indicate that it is not a mineral supplement during times of scarcity or high consumption of leaves, as has been reported for other primates, nor that it is related to fruit consumption (redressing possible mineral imbalance), as has been suggested for some other frugivorous mammals. Our results do not rule out tannin adsorptive hypothesis for the ingestion of clays, but, being an irregular habit, we argue that it is most likely related to rare and occasional dietary components.
Acute effects of interleukin-6 infusion on apo-B-containing lipoprotein subclasses in humans

Abstract IL-6 is believed to mediate the elevation in plasma TG and VLDL lipids in patients with sepsis. Previous studies of lipoprotein density fractions do not reveal the extent to which cytokines change the immunochemically distinct TG-rich (LpB:C, LpB:C:E, LpAII:B:C:D:E) and cholesterol-rich (LpB, LpB:E) apoB-containing subclasses present in VLDL. Therefore, we have directly measured these subclasses following their isolation by sequential immunoprecipitation in seven healthy male subjects during a 3-h infusion with recombinant human (rh) IL-6. Though plasma TG and apoB-containing particle number were unchanged by IL-6, the distribution of TG-rich subclasses was significantly altered. Compared to baseline values, LpB:E + LpB:C:E increased significantly at 0.5 h (p < 0.02) and were higher than saline-infused controls at 0.5 and 1 h (p < 0.05). At 0.5 h LpAII:B:C:D:E reciprocally declined from baseline (p < 0.01). While the pattern of change for total apoB showed an overall decline (p < 0.05), these changes in LpB:E + LpB:C:E and LpAII:B:C:D:E in IL-6 subjects differed from controls (p < 0.05; p < 0.01, respectively). These findings indicate that physiologic concentrations of IL-6 rapidly and selectively regulate the transport of apoB particles that contain apoE. Since apoE has immunomodulatory and host defense functions, these changes may be a previously unrecognized early step in the innate immune response.
Eye complaints in the office environment: precorneal tear film integrity influenced by eye blinking efficiency

To achieve a common base for understanding work related eye complaints in the office environment, it is necessary to merge approaches from indoor air science, occupational health, and ophthalmology. Based on database searches, it is concluded that precorneal tear film (PTF) alteration leads to eye complaints that may be caused by: (1) thermal factors (low relative humidity; high room temperature); (2) demanding task content (attention decreases blinking and widens the exposed ocular surface area); and (3) individual characteristics (for example, tear film alterations, blinking anomalies, gland dysfunctions, and use of contact lenses). These factors and conditions are able to progressively increase water evaporation and faster thinning of the PTF, which causes dryness and dry spot formation on the cornea, possibly followed by corneal and conjunctiva epithelial alterations and eye complaints. Another possible cause of eye complaints is certain irritating chemical compounds, in addition to oxidation mixtures that are formed in reactions between ozone and unsaturated organic compounds (alkenes). The effect may be exacerbated by low relative humidity.
Interviewing alleged victims with intellectual disabilities.

BACKGROUND When interviewing alleged victims of crime, it is important to obtain reports that are as accurate and complete as possible. This can be especially difficult when the alleged victims have intellectual disabilities (ID). This study explored how alleged victims with ID are interviewed by police officers in Sweden and how this may affect their ability to report information as accurately as possible. METHODS Twelve interviews with 11 alleged victims were selected from a larger sample. The complainants were interviewed when their chronological ages ranged from 6.1 to 22 years. A quantitative analysis examined the type of questions asked and the numbers of words and details they elicited in response. RESULTS Instead of open-ended questions, the interviewers relied heavily on focused questions, which are more likely to elicit inaccurate information. When given the opportunity, the witnesses were able to answer directive questions informatively. CONCLUSIONS Interviewers need special skills in order to interview alleged victims who have ID. In addition to using more open-ended questions, interviewers should speak in shorter sentences.
Assessment of fetal lung maturity by ultrasound: objective study using gray-scale histogram

Abstract Objective: To evaluate lung maturity using ultrasound (US), comparing the subjective and gray-scale histogram (GSH) techniques. Methods: A total of 77 single pregnancies were evaluated and divided into the following two groups: 11 women of gestational age 28 to 35 + 6 weeks and 66 women ≥ 36 weeks. The women underwent to emergency or planned cesarean section, according to fetal–maternal indications. The US was performed on the mean sagittal plane of the fetal torso, in order to observe the lung and hepatic areas. Fetal lung maturity was evaluated subjectively and through GSH. After delivery, the incidence of respiratory distress in the newborn was evaluated. The analyses were considered to be correct or incorrect, and comparisons were made using the McNemar test. In order to compare lung/hepatic echogenicity using GSH in groups with and without respiratory distress, the Student's t-test was used. Results: The subjective evaluation identified 41 cases (53.2%) correctly and 36 (46.8%) incorrectly, while GSH found 58 (75.3%) correctly and 19 (24.7%) incorrectly (p = 0.006). There was a significant difference in mean lung/hepatic echogenicity between the groups with and without respiratory distress (1.05 versus 1.26; p = 0.002). In the group of 28 to 35 + 6 weeks, GSH presented sensitivity, specificity and accuracy in predicting respiratory distress of 61.9%, 89.1% and 81.6%, respectively. Conclusion: The evaluation of fetal lung maturity through GSH was more effective than the subjective method in predicting respiratory distress among newborns.
Market-Oriented Cloud Computing: Vision, Hype, and Reality of Delivering Computing as the 5th Utility

Computing is being transformed to a model consisting of services that are commoditised and delivered in a manner similar to utilities such as water, electricity, gas, and telephony. In such a model, users access services based on their requirements without regard to where the services are hosted. Several computing paradigms have promised to deliver this utility computing vision and they include Grid computing, P2P computing, and more recently Cloud computing. The latter term denotes the infrastructure as a “Cloud” in which businesses and users are able to access applications from anywhere in the world on demand. Hence, Cloud computing can be classed as a new paradigm for the dynamic creation of next-generation Data Centers by assembling services of networked Virtual Machines (VMs). Thus, the computing world is rapidly transforming towards developing software for millions to consume as a service rather than creating software for millions to run on their PCs.
Des modèles pour comprendre la réponse des écosystèmes prairiaux au nchangement climatique

Une des attentes forte de la societe et des decideurs politiques est de mieux comprendre et de pouvoir anticiper les reponses des agro-ecosystemes aux changements climatiques et atmospheriques anticipes. La prevision sur le long-terme de ces impacts sur la contribution des agro-ecosystemes a l'effet de serre et sur leur potentiel d'attenuation des emissions permis par le stockage de carbone dans la matiere organique des sols repose necessairement sur l'utilisation de modeles. PaSiM est un modele biogeochimique deterministe a dominante mecaniste se situant a l'echelle de la parcelle de prairie et qui a pour objectif principal de modeliser une prairie spatialement homogene et ses principaux flux de carbone, d'azote et d'eau. Au-dela de cette modelisation ? prairie centree ? , le modele FarmSim permet de simuler le comportement de systemes d'elevage herbagers ou bases sur le mais a l'echelle de la ferme. Resultant du couplage des modeles PaSiM, CERES (culture) et GESTIM (intrans, calcul des flux a l'etable) il fournit un bilan annuel des emissions de GES a l'echelle de l'exploitation. Ce papier se propose de decrire ces deux modeles et l'interet qu'ils presentent pour repondre aux attentes sociales vis-a-vis des impacts du changement climatique sur les prairies et les systemes d'elevage. (Resume d'auteur)
Christ and Community: A Socio-Historical Study of the Christology of Revelation

Christ and Community: A Socio-Historical Study of the Christology of Revelation, by Thomas B. Slater. JSNTSup 178. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999. Pp. 281. $75.00/k46.00. This revised doctoral dissertation at King's College London, University of London (under Graham N. Stanton) uses historical criticism and sociology of knowledge to examine the three major christological images in the Apocalypse: one like a son of man, the Lamb, and the Divine Warrior. The aim of Slater's study is "(1) to ascertain the role and function of Christ within Revelation's symbolic universe through its use of the `one like a son of man,' the Lamb and the Divine Warrior images; (2) to understand how these images affected the life of the Christian communities in Asia in the first century C.E. " (p. 63). In the introduction, Slater describes the characteristics of apocalyptic literature and situates the book of Revelation in the mid-nineties, when Asian Christians were enduring limited oppression for their religious beliefs and for their refusal to participate in the imperial cult. He reviews several major studies of the Christology of the Apocalypse (F. Buchsel, J. Comblin, and T. Holtz) and then describes the benefits of a sociological and historical approach to Revelation. According to Slater, the primary benefit of a sociology-of-knowledge approach is that it identifies the social function of a tradition in Revelation and then demonstrates how this tradition has influenced the imagery of Christ in the book. Slater, however, is aware of the limitations of the method. It is difficult to determine whether the relationship between symbol and community is symmetrical or asymmetrical; whether it denies or intensifies an empirical experience; and whether religious symbols reflect a real situation in a community or an ideal situation for which the author hopes. Chapter 2 reviews the Jewish background for one-like-a-son-of man tradition from Ezekiel to apocalyptic Jewish writings in the early decades of the second century C.E. and concludes with a detailed exegesis of the tradition in Revelation. Chapter 3 demonstrates the similarities between the presentation of the Messiah in Rev 1:1-20 and the messianic figures in the Similitudes of Enoch and 4 Ezra 13. In ch. 4 Slater constructs the social profile of the seven churches: six of the seven letters address internal problems within the churches, and the seventh, the letter to Smyrna, speaks to Jewish oppression of Christians. The second major image of Christ in the Apocalypse, the Lamb, is the subject of ch. 5. Slater concludes that the Lamb's "most important christological function involves leading an eschatological Christian community whose destination is the New Jerusalem" (p. 200). …
Comparing mixing and coherent turbulent features using an OGCM and a nonhydrostatic spectral element model

Mixing and stirring are important processes in the ocean for many reasons, including their influence on climate and their role in distributing nutrients. In ocean general circulation models (OGCMs), one approach for modeling turbulent mixing is the use of second-order closure (SOC) models. Although these have improved over the past few decades, their performance under certain conditions still need to be verified. Climate models, on the other hand, have to parametrize not just the effects of small-scale motions, but also those from larger scales including submesoscale and mesoscale motions. While the latter is relatively well understood, the former is still an active area of research. Before using OGCMs to accurate parametrize the effects of submesoscale flows on large scale motions, we need to assure that these models can represent such flows correctly. In this study we implemented the Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS) for two idealized cases, namely the lock-exchange (LE) and the mixed layer instability (MLI) problems. Our main goals are as follows: (a) apply the LE problem to compare turbulent mixing derived from direct numerical simulations (DNS) with those derived from ROMS under different configurations, and (b) apply the MLI problem to compare the transport and stirring of a passive tracer field using results derived from large eddy simulation (LES) with those derived from ROMS.
Role of antigen‐presenting cells in the polarized development of helper T cell subsets: evidence for differential cytokine production by Th0 cells in response to antigen presentation by B cells and macrophages

Immune challenges can elicit polarized responses skewed towards the development of T helper type 1 (Th1) or Th2 T cell subsets. To determine if distinct antigen‐presenting cells (APC) populations might selectively influence Th subset development, we studied the role of two key APC populations, B cells and macrophages, in the differentiation of effector Th populations from naive precursor Th in vitro. Antigen (Ag)‐specific, naive CD4+ T cells were enriched from a mouse strain, AND, bearing a transgenic α/β T cell receptor (TCR) encoding reactivity with pigeon cytochrome c peptide 88‐104. Peptide Ag was used throughout these studies so that differences in the uptake and processing by the two APC populations would not influence the results. Both APC populations, activated B cells and bone marrow‐derived macrophages, supported the development of effector Th having the capacity to secrete high levels of cytokines when restimulated. Regardless of APC population present during effector development, exogenous interferon‐γ (IFN‐γ) and interleukin‐4 (IL‐4) had dominant effects on Th subset development. Thus, with both APC populations, effector Th generated in the presence of IFN‐γ acquired a Th1‐type cytokine profile, Th generated with IL‐4 acquired a Th2‐type cytokine profile, and Th generated without IFN‐γ or IL‐4 acquired a Th0‐type cytokine profile. B cells and macrophages also had equivalent APC function in the restimulation of Th1 and Th2‐like effectors, since only minor differences in cytokine production were noted for these effector populations when restimulated with the two APC populations. However, in 8 of 19 experiments, the Th0‐like effector population generated in the presence of IL‐2 differentially responded to restimulation with B cells and macrophages, secreting significantly more IFN‐γ when restimulated with B cells, and significantly more IL‐4 when restimulated with macrophages. We also found that Th effector populations recultured in IFN‐γ or IL‐4 assumed a more Th1 or Th2‐like phenotype, respectively, regardless of their initial cytokine profile. We conclude that through a subtle capacity to skew cytokine production by a Th0 subset, different APC may selectively influence Th subset development under conditions of prolonged or chronic stimulation in an autocrine fashion.
Evaluation of the Role of ProKera in the Management of Ocular Surface and Orbital Disorders

Objectives: To report the efficacy and safety profile of sutureless and adhesiveless amniotic membrane device (ProKera, Bio-Tissue, Inc., Miami, FL) in the management of various ocular surface and orbital disorders. Methods: Twenty eyes of 20 patients underwent placement of 21 ProKera implants between March 2006 and July 2007 at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Patient demographics, indications for placement, and duration of ProKera retention were recorded. Outcomes measured included corneal epithelial healing, visual acuity, patient tolerance, and adverse events. Results: ProKera was most commonly used in patients with corneal neovascularization with or without limbal stem-cell deficiency (10 eyes). Other indications included recurrent pterygium or pseudopterygium (three eyes), anophthalmic orbit contraction (two eyes), persistent epithelial defects (two eyes), severe thinning in a corneal ulcer (one eye), benign hereditary intraepithelial dyskeratosis (one eye), and band keratopathy (one eye). The mean duration of ProKera retention was 25.3 days (range, 0–125) visual acuity improved in 12 eyes (60%). Immediate adverse events included residual epithelial defects after removal (five eyes) and spontaneous extrusion of the implant (four eyes). Six patients (30%) reported eye pain or headache and four eyes (20%) had recurrence of the primary pathology. Conclusions: Sutureless and adhesiveless amniotic membrane transplantation is a safe and effective method to promote healing and reconstruction of the ocular surface and orbit with minimal side effects. Recurrence of the underlying primary pathology remains a concern. The advent of a newer, softer conformer ring may improve patient tolerability and limit discomfort.
Neurofeedback training content for treatment of stress

Stress is one of the major problems in society and is being treated using medicine and neurofeedback therapy. Neurofeedback therapy is usually successful. The contents as stimuli for neurofeedback training are not available for stress and anxiety. This paper focuses on giving a comprehensive and critical summary of available contents for neurofeedback training. It also establishes a need for the development of content as a stimulus for neurofeedback which trains the subject on how to control his brain activity, especially in stress condition. The developed content consists of audio and game. The game is used to reduce the power of high-beta brain activity and the audio is used to enhance the amplitude of alpha brainwaves in left-prefrontal lobe. The experimental results show significant improvement in reducing stress level. The outcome is a proposed content for neurofeedback training to reduce stress, and it also improves the neurofeedback training efficacy.
Developing models for cachexia and their implications in drug discovery

Introduction: Cachexia is a complex metabolic syndrome associated with underlying illness and characterized by loss of muscle with or without loss of fat mass. Systemic inflammation plays a central role in its pathophysiology. As millions of patients are in a cachectic state of chronic disease, cachexia is one of the major causes of death worldwide. Difficulties in the recruitment and follow-up of clinical trials mean that well-characterized animal models are of great importance in developing cachexia therapies. However, some of the widely used animal models have limitations in procedural reproducibility or in recapitulating in the cachectic phenotype, which has warranted the development of novel models for cachexia. Areas covered: This review focuses on some of the currently developing rodent models designed to mimic each co-morbidity in cachexia. Expert opinion: Through developing cancer models, researchers have been seeking more targets for intervention. In cardiac cachexia, technical issues have been overcome by transgenic models. Furthermore, the development of new animal models has enabled the elucidation of the roles of inflammation, anabolism/catabolism in muscle/fat tissue and anorexia on cachexia. As metabolic and inflammatory pathways in cachexia may compromise cardiac muscle, the analysis of cardiac function/tissue in non-cardiac cachexia may be a useful component of cachexia assessment common to different underlying diseases and pave the way for novel drug discovery.
Simulation Of A Queueing Model Useful In Crowdsourcing

In this paper we study a multi-server queueing model in the context of crowdsourcing useful in service sectors. There are two types of arrivals to the system such that one group of customers after getting service from the system may serve (with a certain probability) another group. Through simulation we point out, even for a small value of this probability, the significant advantage in considering crowdsourcing by offering more traffic load (through increasing the rate of online customers without violating the stability condition) to the system resulting in more customers served (which in turn increasing the revenues when cost/profits are incorporated). Also, the role of correlation, especially a positive one, present in the inter-arrival times in the system performance measures is highlighted.
Integrating Lexical and Temporal Signals in Neural Ranking Models for Searching Social Media Streams

Time is an important relevance signal when searching streams of social media posts. The distribution of document timestamps from the results of an initial query can be leveraged to infer the distribution of relevant documents, which can then be used to rerank the initial results. Previous experiments have shown that kernel density estimation is a simple yet effective implementation of this idea. This paper explores an alternative approach to mining temporal signals with recurrent neural networks. Our intuition is that neural networks provide a more expressive framework to capture the temporal coherence of neighboring documents in time. To our knowledge, we are the first to integrate lexical and temporal signals in an end-to-end neural network architecture, in which existing neural ranking models are used to generate query-document similarity vectors that feed into a bidirectional LSTM layer for temporal modeling. Our results are mixed: existing neural models for document ranking alone yield limited improvements over simple baselines, but the integration of lexical and temporal signals yield significant improvements over competitive temporal baselines.