Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of Cigarette Smoking on some Liver Functions Test WALAA

Background: Cigarette smoking is one of the 10 greatest contributors to global death and disease. Cigarette contains harmful chemicals such as carcinogenic, cytotoxic and free radicals, which are affect many organs. Our study aimed to assess the effects of dose response of tobacco exposure on liver function among male population in Khartoum-Sudan. Methodology: It is case control study which include hundred Sudanese participant smoker male, aged between (25 60 years), the participant divided into two groups, (50 smoker) and (50 non smoker) as control. The smoker group were further divided into moderate (0.5 1 pack/day) and heavy smoker (>1 pack/day) according to WHO classification. Blood sample was drawn for assessment of some liver function test, Aspartase amino transferase (AST), Alanine amino transferase (ALT), Alkaline phosphatase (ALP), serum total bilirubin and serum albumin. Results: The results showed that there was statistically significant in AST, ALT, ALP, serum total bilirubin and serum albumin, (pvalue 0.00,0.00,0.00,0.00 and0.00) respectively, when compared to control group. Conclusion: Cigarette smoking affects liver function regardless of number of Cigarette smoked per day and duration of smoking. Walaa Adil Ahmed, D. Tarig Mohammed Fadul Elmula, Liza Hamdi MohammedEffect of Cigarette Smoking on some Liver Functions Test EUROPEAN ACADEMIC RESEARCH Vol. IV, Issue 4 / July 2016 3872
Social-Aware Energy Harvesting Device-To-Device Communications in 5G Networks

With the emerging wireless technologies, the need of the hour is speed and 5G is the current trend in the field of wireless communication, but the increase of speed brings with it, the need to have energy efficient devices. Nowadays many new cellular communication architectures are adopted which incorporate social networking characteristics and energy harvesting technologies. The paper discusses the various architectures adopted for device to device communication along with the advantages of their use. This architecture is realized under three modules: the physical domain, the energy domain, and the social domain. The manuscript is further inclined towards the discussion on evolution of D2D communication to its present position and social aware energy harvesting in 5G networks. Various challenges faced by the D2D networks are also highlighted along with the efficiency comparison of the D2D communication networks with traditional ones.
Recycled polymers from food packaging in relation to environmental protection

The development of production and application of plastic packages, much connected with their high resistance to the action of environmental factors, is a problem from the point of view of environmental protection. While discussing methods of reuse of plastic waste one has to consider the possibility of food packages' production from recycled polymers. When conditions which ensure the safety of a consumer of packaged food are determined, the problem should be tackled because of its ecological and economic aspects.
Store Availability and In-Store Availability of Basic Diabetic-Healthy Food Options in Selected Barangays in Davao City, Philippines

This study seeks to characterize the local food environment in selected barangays in Davao City, Philippines. Specifically, it is designed to describe the availability of food stores as well as the in-store availability of basic diabetic-healthy food options in these areas. Store presence, location and store inventory were assessed by groundtruthing using an observation checklist and survey questionnaire in the 6 selected barangays in Davao City. Descriptive analysis was used to show the different types and number of food sources at the community level as well as the presence or absence of diabetic-healthy food options that should be available for purchase. A total of 2,315 food sources participated in the survey. Majority of the food sources (79%) were food retailers while the rest were categorized as food establishments (sold cooked food). Among food retailers, bread, eggs, brown sugar and coffee were the most available diabetic-healthy food options while the availability of fresh meats, fruits, vegetables and reduced fat milk were limited at best. Although more than half of the food establishments served vegetables dishes, low-fat and low-salt dishes were not available. Although results indicate that most diabetic-healthy food options are being sold in food stores at the community level, the proliferation of small size food stores constrained the availability of healthier food options, particularly fresh produce and low-salt, low fat dishes. Further research on the policy mechanisms to increase the availability of these products should be explored further.
Dihydroxyflavonol reduces post-infarction left ventricular remodeling by preventing myocyte apoptosis in the non-infarcted zone in goats.

BACKGROUND Myocyte apoptosis is considered to be the major causative factor of left ventricular (LV) remodeling following myocardial infarction (MI). We previously reported that 3', 4'-dihydroxyflavonol (DiOHF), was able to suppress oxidative stress and preserve the expression of endothelial nitric oxide synthase during myocardial reperfusion injury, which may benefit the reduction of myocyte apoptosis. We therefore aimed to evaluate the potential actions of DiOHF against myocyte apoptosis and post-infarction LV remodeling in this study. METHODS Following experimental MI, surgical instrumented goats were randomly assigned into vehicle and DiOHF (2 mg/kg; i.v., daily) groups to receive 4 weeks of reperfusion with corresponding treatments. LV pressure recordings and echocardiogram were performed at baseline, 2 and 4 weeks of reperfusion. Myocardial tissues were collected in the end to determine infarct size and apoptosis related assays. RESULTS LV end-diastolic volume and diameter were significantly increased 4 weeks after MI in the vehicle group, accompanied by reduced posterior wall thickness, septal thickness and LV mass, whereas those changes were markedly prevented by DiOHF treatment. Similarly, significantly reduced infarct size was found in DiOHF group as compared to vehicle group, and DiOHF dramatically inhibited the increase in LV end-diastolic pressure and the reductions in ejection fraction, fraction shortening and dP/dt(max). Moreover, DiOHF treatment significantly reduced the extent of myocyte apoptosis detected by TUNEL assay, enhanced the protein expression of caspase-3, Fas, Bax and cytochrome c in the non-infarcted myocardium in comparison to vehicle. CONCLUSIONS Daily DiOHF treatment during the reperfusion period after MI in the ovine hearts markedly reduced the magnitude of post-infarction LV remodeling through the inhibition of myocyte apoptosis in the remote non-infarcted myocardium.
Liquidity costs and the information content of calls of warrants: Intra-industry evidence.

Calls of in-the-money warrants elicit a negative stock price reaction at the call announcement date and a positive price reaction at the completion date. We examine two theories that can explain this pattern of stock price behavior: liquidity costs and information effects. We find that calls that surprise the market result in a greater negative abnormal return at the call announcement date and a corresponding lower abnormal return from the call announcement to completion date. Thus, returns are associated with characteristics of the calling firms themselves. In addition, we find that industry rivals experience statistically significant negative abnormal returns around warrant calls. Overall, our evidence is inconsistent with liquidity costs as the sole explanation for the stock price reaction around calls of warrants and supports the notion that the call is an informative event.
Conformational Transitions of Spherical Polymer Brushes: Synthesis, Characterization, and Theory

We examine the structure of densely grafted polymer layers grown from the surfaces of spherical nanoparticles over a broad range of graft densities and chain lengths. Dynamic light scattering (DLS) experiments show that the hydrodynamic thickness of the polymer layer, h, scales as h ∝ N4/5 for short chains and high grafting densities, that is, in the concentrated polymer brush (CPB) regime, whereas h ∝ N3/5 for long enough chains (semidilute polymer brush, SDPB). The mean field theory of Wijmans and Zhulina is able to collapse approximately all of our data and those in the existing literature (even on other polymers) into an apparently universal form. From these findings, we conclude that the result h ∝ N4/5 for the CPB is an intermediate crossover scaling, relevant to particles of finite curvature, analogous to the h ∝ N observed for concentrated flat brushes. Second, the scaling h ∝ N3/5 uniquely reflects the increased space available to the chain segments as one proceeds away from a curved grafting sur.
Probabilistic prediction of credit ratings: a filtering approach

Abstract In a financial market, to analyze the credit quality of firms, this note proposes a dynamical model. The population of firms is divided into a finite number of classes, depending on their credit status. The cardinality of the population can increase during the time, since new firms can enter in the market. Due to changes in credit quality and to the defaults, each firm can move from a class to another, or can go to the class of the defaulted firms. Different rating agencies are considered, each of them defines its own partition of the population. Aim of this note is to find the probabilistic prediction of the actual partition of the population, and of the conditional distribution of the distance to defaults. In a partial observing setting, this topic is discussed using stochastic filtering techniques.
Analysis of a Control Mechanism for a Variable Speed Processor

One limitation on the operating speed of electronic circuits is the rate at which the packaging can dissipate heat. In CMOS technology, the heat generated by a processor is approximately proportional to its clock rate. The paper examines the idea of using a variable speed processor (VSP) that can be operated at a high clock speed, and then slowed down to a lower speed before heat accumulation destroys the circuit. Under a workload consisting of bursts of work alternating with idle periods (corresponding to cache misses or other delays), this results in a higher average operating speed. The paper shows the optimality of a bang bang control for the clock rate. It also examines an easier to implement policy that estimates the junction temperature through an upper bound, and uses this to control the clock rate. Closed form expressions are derived for the mean rate of instructions executed by a VSP using each control method. Numerical studies show that both policies give substantial improvements in performance over a single speed processor. Furthermore, the studies suggest that a VSP with a maximum clock rate of 2-4 times that of the single speed processor would suffice to obtain the bulk of the performance improvement. In many cases, the average throughput gain is on the order of 40-60%, without exceeding thermal limits.
Foreign Direct Investment in the Philippines and the Pitfalls of Economic Nationalism

Recent trends in Philippine growth and foreign direct investment (FDI) reveal only modest achievements, when compared with other ASEAN countries, and little impact on income inequality. These outcomes are attributed to the policy of economic nationalism in the Philippines’ constitutional and legislative framework for FDI, whereby government reserves ‘strategic’ fields to Filipinos, while foreigners face hurdles in making investments. The account doubts whether foreign nationals can safeguard investments by recourse to Philippine BITs as those reinforce economic nationalism by requiring FDI to comply with Philippine law. Poulsen’s observation that developing countries entered into bilateral investment treaties (BITs) oblivious of the risks does not seem applicable to the Philippines, which has deftly used BITs to advance economic nationalism. Litigation before domestic courts is not an alternative for protecting investor rights, but international commercial arbitration may become so in due course. The account concludes with proposals for future policy.
A New Design of Access Control in Wireless Sensor Networks

Nodes in a sensor network may be lost because of power exhaustion or malicious attacks. To extend the span of sensor network, new nodes deployment is necessary. To prevent malicious nodes from joining the sensor networks, access control is a designed requirement for controlling sensor node deployment. Based on elliptic curve cryptography (ECC), this paper presents a new access control protocol for secure wireless sensor networks. The proposed scheme not only prevents malicious nodes from joining sensor networks, but also key establishment is included in the authentication procedure. Compared to the previously proposed schemes, the authentication procedure and common key generation of the proposed method are very simple and efficient. It could offer computational efficiency, energy, and bandwidth savings. In addition, it can be easily implemented as a dynamic access control, because all the old secret keys and information in existing nodes should not be updated once a new node is added or an old node is lost.
Insulin‐like growth factor‐1 (IGF‐1) protects NOD mice from insulitis and diabetes

To evaluate the effect of IGF‐1 on the autoimmune process of d cell destruction, permissive non‐obese diabetic (NOD) recipients were adoptively transferred with 7 × 106 autoreactive T cells from diabetic NOD mice and were administered subcutaneously 10μ;g rhIGF‐1, twice daily for 3 weeks. Administration of rhIGF‐1 reduced the final incidence of successful transfers of diabetes observed in only 6/24 mice (25%) versus 12/21 (57%) in control mice. A marked reduction of insulitis during histological analysis of pancreatic glands was also observed. Mice treated with rhIGF‐1 had a higher percentage of intact islets (486 ± 12% versus 16 ± 1·1%. P= 0·001) and a lower percentage of infiltrated islets. Islets from rhIGF‐1‐treated mice had a more intense insulin staining reflecting a higher β cell mass, but no difference was observed in the amount of insulin content of pancreatic extracts and in the amounts of mRNA transcripts for proinsulin. No difference was also observed in the titres of three islet cell antibody (ICA)‐positive sera and in the pattern of A2B5 staining. Some mice developed diabetes and severe islet cell infiltration despite rhIGF‐1, thus indicating that some committed T cells were still able to invade the islets and cause β cell destruction. The percentages of CD4+ and CD8+ T cells in the spleen of experimental mice were similar. To evaluate the effects of rhIGF‐1 on cell trafficking in recipient mice, T cells from diabetic NOD Thy‐1,2 mice injected into congenic NOD‐N Thy‐1,1 mice were monitored 3 weeks after adoptive cell transfer. The percentage of Thy‐1,2+ T cells was significantly reduced in the spleen (10·8 ± 1·3%versus 17·2 ± 3·9%, P= 0·004) of rhIGF‐1 treated mice in contrast to the thymus (68·4 ± 7·9%versus 72·87 ± 6·2%, P= 0·306), suggesting that rhIGF‐1 could influence T cell trafficking to the lymphoid organs. The findings that rhIGF‐1 has protective effects in autoimmune diabetes opens new perspectives for future experiments as well as for preventive strategies in human type I diabetes.
Knowledge Transfer and Firm’s Performances in Learning Organization

Transferring of knowledge is how the knowledge can be shared effective and efficiently within the organization by providing communications tools and promote information sharing procedure within the staffs. Knowledge can be transfer to others by using the non-IT or IT methods such as through the process of mentoring, brainstorming, and technologies in order to make the transferring of knowledge effective and efficient that can affect the firm’s performances. The problem statements of this study are related with the unaware of brainstorming method for knowledge transfer, lack of mentoring in the learning organization, and poor usage of technologies in the learning organization in the learning organization. The purpose of this study is to make sure that all the learning organization aware the importance transferring it knowledge that is vital and important from getting exposes to others and making the knowledge sharing to be much more effective. The main objective is to identify the relationship of brainstorming, mentoring, and technologies towards firm’s performances. The finding indicates that dimension of knowledge transfer (mentoring, brainstorming, and technologies) and firm’s performances are significantly correlated. The insight may create awareness among leaders at learning organization in the process of capturing tacit knowledge.
Reconsolidation‐induced rescue of a remote fear memory blocked by an early cortical inhibition: Involvement of the anterior cingulate cortex and the mediation by the thalamic nucleus reuniens

Systems consolidation is a time‐dependent reorganization process involving neocortical and hippocampal networks underlying memory storage and retrieval. The involvement of the hippocampus during acquisition is well described; however we know much less about the concomitant contribution of cortical activity levels to the formation of stable remote memories. Here, after a reversible pharmacological inhibition of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) during the acquisition of a contextual fear conditioning, retrieval of both recent and remote memories were impaired, an effect that was reverted by a single memory reactivation session 48 h after training, through a destabilization‐dependent mechanism interpreted as reconsolidation, that restored the normal course of systems consolidation in order to rescue a remote memory. Next we have shown that the integrity of both the anterior cingulate cortex and the thalamic nucleus reuniens (RE) were required for this reactivation‐induced memory rescue. Because lidocaine infused into the RE inhibited LTP induction in the CA1‐anterior cingulate cortex pathways, it seems that RE is a necessary component of the circuit underlying systems consolidation, mediating communication between dorsal hippocampus and cortical areas. To our notice, this is the first demonstration of the rescue of remote memories disrupted by ACC inhibition during acquisition, via a reconsolidation‐driven mechanism. We have also shown the importance of RE to ensure the interconnection among brain areas that collectively seem to control the natural course of systems consolidation and allow the persistence of relevant emotional engrams. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
The use of sheep as a model for studying peripheral nerve regeneration following nerve injury: review of the literature

Abstract Peripheral nerve injury and regeneration is a challenging scientific field with relevant clinical implications. Most peripheral nerve regeneration studies have been mainly carried out on rodents. However, it is important to note that the validity of the rodent as a model to study nerve injury and regeneration and translate these results into clinical practice has been questioned by several researchers. To overcome this problem, some investigators have used companion animals and large animal species as models for experimental peripheral nerve regeneration studies. Live sheep are often used in biomedical research because of availability, simplicity of care and housing, cost and body weight similar to humans and acceptance by society as a research animal. Despite these advantages, studies on nerve regeneration and repair in sheep have only been undertaken a few decades ago and compared to rat and mice experimental studies, there are much fewer investigations. The authors have compiled and sorted the available literature on experimental ovine nerve studies in order to guide the peripheral nerve investigator in choosing clinically relevant and interpretable models for studies on neural regeneration that are much needed in order to make progress towards new surgical and medical treatment of peripheral nerves.
Autonomic resource provisioning in rocks clusters using Eucalyptus cloud computing

Data centers always face challenges of peak and fluctuating resource demand from time to time. Building a data center that is large enough to meet a peak demand is not cost effective. The emerging of Cloud computing model allows the data center to dynamically acquire additional resources on demand and pay only for what resources having been used. So, the data center has a flexibility to satisfy users with higher QoS while keeping the investment on IT infrastructure at an affordable cost. In this work, we present an architecture of autonomic provisioning in High Throughput Cluster (HTC) computing system using resources from Cloud. The system is developed as an extension to Rocks Clusters. It allows a data center to transparently and securely extend a local cluster into remote Cloud computing resources on demand through dynamic provisioning mechanism. We also introduce a set of provisioning policies that are aware of the different resource requirement in each job and adapt the system accordingly. Experiments have been carried out in our testbed to show that the proposed system is self-configured and self-organized.
Vestibular Atelectasis

The temporal bone collection at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary includes specimens from several cases in which the only reasonable explanation for vertigo is collapse of the walls of the ampullae and utricle, a disorder we have termed vestibular atelectasis. The clinical histories and temporal bone studies support the existence of a primary type that may have a paroxysmal or insidious onset, and a secondary type that occurs in association with other inner ear disorders. The principal clinical symptom is chronic unsteadiness, precipitated or aggravated by head movement, and sometimes associated with short episodes of spinning vertigo. It is presumed that the collapsed membranes interfere with the motion mechanics of the cupulae and otolithic membranes.
A portable single-pixel camera based on coarse-to-fine coding light

Single-pixel imaging based on compressive sensing theory is a novel technique that emerged in the past decade. However, the majority of existing single-pixel cameras are too complex to realize out of laboratory. In this paper, we propose a portable compressive imaging camera platform consisting of a pocket projector and an optical power sensor. We use the projector to cast the flexible compressive sensing pattern generated by the computer program. In addition, this work introduces a quick coarse-to-fine model that can explore the object outline information and consequently reduce redundant computations in advance. Simulation and real experiments show that compared with existing techniques, the proposed platform and approach demonstrates higher recovery accuracy with less time consumption.
Fasle data injection attacks in cyber-physical systems based on inaccurate model

This paper is concerned with the problem of designing successful false data injection attacks in cyber-physical systems from the attacker's angle. A discrete linear time-invariant system is considered, which is equipped with a Kalman filter and a χ2 failure detector. It is assumed that the attacker cannot obtain the accurate model of the control system. Based on the inaccurate model, the method of designing stealthy false data injection attacks, which can compromise the system without being detected is proposed. A sufficient condition under which the attacker can successfully compromise the system is also proposed. A numerical example is provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.