Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Footwear and Sex Differences in Performance and Joint Kinetics During Maximal Vertical Jumping.

Smith, RE, Paquette, MR, Harry, JR, Powell, DW, and Weiss, LW. Footwear and sex differences in performance and joint kinetics during maximal vertical jumping. J Strength Cond Res XX(X): 000-000, 2018-This investigation examined the effects of footwear and sex on vertical jump displacement and joint power contributions. Twenty-three young adults with basketball experience performed 3 maximal countermovement vertical jumps in minimal and standard footwear. Ground reaction force and 3D kinematic data were collected during jumping. Footwear by sex analysis of variance for all dependent variables and effect sizes (d) was computed. An interaction effect showed that men produced greater lower-limb-positive work than women in standard footwear. Men jumped higher than women (d = 2.53) and produced greater peak ankle, knee and hip joint moments (d > 0.99), positive joint powers (d > 1.07) and, positive knee and hip joint work (d > 1.04) with no sex differences for negative joint powers and work (p > 0.05). Minimal footwear produced less peak-positive knee power (d = 0.27) and less positive ankle (d = 0.34) and knee (d = 0.21) joint work than standard footwear. Because negative joint power and work were similar between sexes, men may be better able to use the stretch-shortening cycle compared with women. Higher joint mechanical demands may provide a better vertical jumping training stimulus in standard compared with minimal footwear. Future studies should investigate footwear training effects on performance and joint mechanics during jumping.
MR Imaging of the Knee using Fat Suppression Technique : A Preliminary Report

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the usefulness of fat suppressiontechnique for MR imaging ofthe knee. Materials and Methods: Twenty-eight knees of 26 patientswere imaged at a 1.5 T MR system. Sagittal and coronal T2-Weighted spin echo images (SET2) and sagittal fat suppression SET2{FSSE) were obtained in all cases. We used a chemical shift imaging method for fat suppression. We compared FSSE with SET2 in terms of the conspicuity of lesions of menisci, cruciate ligaments, cartilage, bone and softtissue ofthe knee. Results: Meniscal lesions were detected on FSSE and SET2 as well. FSSE depicted the lesion more conspicuously in 6 cases. For the depiction of ACl tear, SET2 was superior to FSSE in 5 cases. FSSE was better for the visualization of the normal structure of cartilage and it also depicted the cartilaginous lesions more conspicuously in 3 cases . Though bone bruise could be detected on both techniques, FSSEwas better. Conclusion: FSSE could provide the improved delineation of menisci , cartilage, bone bruise and other soft tissues except the injuries of anterior cruciate ligament. Although FSSE is a reliable method, it can not replace SET2. It may be used as a complemental method in the imaging ofthe knee.
Follicular placenta and embryonic growth of the viviparous four‐eyed fish (Anableps)

In the four‐eyed fish, Anableps (Atheriniformes, Anablepidae), eggs are fertilized and embryos develop to term within the ovarian follicles. Development is highly matrotrophic. During gestation, the largest term embryo of A. anableps examined had grown to a total length of 51 mm and attained a dry weight of 149 mg. The postfertilization weight increase is 298,000%. The largest term embryo of A. dowi examined had grown to a total length of 77 mm and attained a dry weight of 910 mg. The postfertilization weight increase is 843,000%. Embryonic weight increases result from nutrient transfer across the follicular placenta. This structure is formed by apposition of the maternal follicular epithelium to absorptive surface cells of the embryo's pericardial trophoderm. The latter, a ventral ramification of the pericardial somatopleure, replaces the yolk sac during early gestation. The external surface of the pericardial trophoderm develops hemispherical projections, termed vascular bulbs. Within each bulb, the vascular plexus of the trophoderm expands to form a blood sinus. Cells of the external surface of the bulbs possess microplicae. Microvilli are absent. During middle to late gestation, the juxtaembryonic follicular epithelium differentiates into two regions. One region consists of shallow, pitlike depressions within which vascular bulbs interdigitate in a “ball and socket” arrangement. Follicular pits are formed by the curvilinear distortion of the apical surfaces of follicle cells. The second region in contact with the dorsal and lateral surfaces of the embryo, is comprised of villous extensions of the hypertrophied follicular epithelium. In both regions, follicle cells appear to constitute a transporting rather than a secretory epithlium. In terms of percentage of weight increase, the follicular placenta of Anableps appears to be the most efficient adaptation for maternal‐embryonic nutrient transfer in teleost fishes and closely approaches the efficiency (1.2 × 106%) of oophagy and embryonic cannibalism in lamnoid sharks.
Zinc Deficiency among Lactating Mothers from a Peri-Urban Community of the Ecuadorian Andean Region: An Initial Approach to the Need of Zinc Supplementation

Zinc is an important mineral for biological and physiological processes. Zinc deficiency (ZD) is one of the most common micronutrient deficiencies worldwide and a crucial determinant of pregnancy outcomes and childhood development. Zinc levels and the zinc supplementation rate among lactating women have not been assessed neither in Ecuador nor in the Andean region. We conducted a pilot study including 64 mothers of infants between eight days to seven months old from a primary care center located in Conocoto, a peri-urban community of Quito, Ecuador. The mothers were interviewed and a fasting blood sample was taken to determine plasma zinc levels. The prevalence of ZD was calculated and compared with the prevalence of ZD among Ecuadorian non-pregnant non-lactating women, and the sample was analysed considering zinc supplementation during pregnancy. The prevalence of ZD among the participants was 81.3% (95% CI: 71.7–90.9), higher than the reported among non-pregnant non-lactating women (G2 = 18.2; p < 0.05). Zinc supplementation rate was 31.2%. No significant differences were found comparing the groups considering zinc supplementation. The insights obtained from this study encourage extending studies to document zinc levels and its interactions among breastfeeding women in areas with a high prevalence of ZD in order to determine the need of zinc supplementation.
Quantum Electrodynamics in Photonic Crystal Nanocavities towards Quantum Information Processing

Yun-Feng Xiao1,2, Xu-Bo Zou3, Qihuang Gong1, Guang-Can Guo3, and Chee Wei Wong2 1State Key Lab for Artificial Microstructure and Mesoscopic Physics, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, 2Optical Nanostructures Laboratory, Center for Integrated Science and Engineering, SolidState Science and Engineering, and Department of Mechanical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, 3Key Laboratory of Quantum Information, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, 1,3People’s Republic of China 2USA
Attitudes toward Money among Mental Health Workers: Extension and Exploration of The Money Ethic Scale.

Money has significant impacts on people's motivation, behavior, and performance. This study was conducted to further validate and explore the Money Ethic Scale (MES), an instrument developed to examine the meaning of money, in a sample of mental health workers in Tennessee. It examined mental health workers' (N=155) attitudes toward money, as measured by the MES, exploring how those attitudes related to demographic, personality, and organizational variables. The results of separate step-wise multiple regression analyses for the six factors of the MES scale (money is good, money is evil, money represents achievement, money represents respect, money represents freedom/power, and "I budget my money carefully") showed that males tended to feel more strongly that money represented respect and freedom/power than did females. The respect factor also was associated with Type A personality. Respondents who endorsed the Protestant Work Ethic tended to think that money represented achievement and that money was good. Respondents who claime/A that they budgeted their money carefully tended to have high self7esteem, Type A personalities, be older, have low organizational stress, and have low incomes. Intrinsic job satisfaction was related to the attitude that money represented freedom/power, whereas extrinsic job satisfaction was related to the notion than money is not evil. (Author/NB) *************** ************ ****** ***** ********** ***** *** *************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ******************* ******** ************ ***** ***wit*** ******* ************
Student-Designed High-Throughput Assays to Assess Effects of Growth Insults in Budding Yeast †

Modern high-throughput screening is a versatile method used widely in academic and industrial labs for genetic and pharmacological testing, but is underutilized in undergraduate laboratories. We designed an open inquiry-based laboratory activity exploiting a small-scale high-throughput screening assay of the budding yeast S. cerevisiae to promote active learning and introduce students to modern data collection and analysis techniques. In this activity, students at both the high school and university levels generate growth curves of S. cerevisiae using a microplate reader after treatment with their insult of choice. This lab presents an ideal opportunity for both high school and university students to actively learn about the process of science as well as high-throughput data collection and analysis in a cost-effective manner.
A Lytic Bacteriophage for Controlling Pseudomonas lactis in Raw Cow's Milk

Suppression of bacterial growth in raw milk under cold storage is crucial for the quality control of commercially supplied milk. The use of lytic phages as low-cost microbicides is an attractive prospect. Due to strict host specificities, phages must be isolated from the raw milk where the host bacteria are growing. We first isolated the P. lactis bacterial strain and then the phage infecting that strain. Partial phage genomic analysis showed that this is a newly isolated phage, different from any previously reported. This study reports a lytic phage for P. lactis, and we have presented evidence here that this phage reduced viable bacterial cell counts not only in rich medium but also in skim and whole milk. As a result, we have concluded that the phage reported in this study would be useful in milk processing. ABSTRACT The control of bacterial growth during milk processing is crucial for the quality maintenance of commercial milk and milk products. During a period of cold storage prior to heat treatments, some psychrotrophic bacteria grow and produce extracellular heat-resistant lipases and proteases that cause product defects. The use of lytic bacteriophages (phages) that infect and kill bacteria could be a useful tool for suppressing bacterial growth during this cold storage phase. In this study, we isolated a Pseudomonas lactis strain and a phage from raw cow's milk. Quantitative characterization of the phage was used to elucidate whether this phage was active under low temperatures and neutral pH and whether it was inactivated during pasteurization. Phage titer determination was possible under conditions ranging from pH 4 to 9 and from 3°C to 25°C; the phage was inactivated under pasteurization conditions at 63°C for 30 min. Furthermore, we showed that this phage reduced viable bacterial cell counts in both skim and whole milk. The results of this study represent the potential uses of phages for controlling psychrotrophic bacterial growth in raw cow's milk during cold storage. IMPORTANCE Suppression of bacterial growth in raw milk under cold storage is crucial for the quality control of commercially supplied milk. The use of lytic phages as low-cost microbicides is an attractive prospect. Due to strict host specificities, phages must be isolated from the raw milk where the host bacteria are growing. We first isolated the P. lactis bacterial strain and then the phage infecting that strain. Partial phage genomic analysis showed that this is a newly isolated phage, different from any previously reported. This study reports a lytic phage for P. lactis, and we have presented evidence here that this phage reduced viable bacterial cell counts not only in rich medium but also in skim and whole milk. As a result, we have concluded that the phage reported in this study would be useful in milk processing.
Efficient Differentiation of Human Pluripotent Stem Cells to Endothelial Cells

Endothelial cells (ECs) line the interior surface of blood and lymphatic vessels, and play a key role in a variety of physiological or pathological processes such as thrombosis, inflammation, or vascular wall remodeling. Human‐induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSCs)‐derived ECs provide a new opportunity for vascular regeneration and serve as a model to study the mechanism and to screen for novel therapies. We use developmental cues in a monolayer differentiation approach to efficiently generate mesoderm cells from iPSCs via small‐molecule activation of WNT signaling in chemically defined medium for 4 days, and subsequent EC specification using vascular endothelial growth factor and fibroblast growth factor for another 4 days. After 8 days of differentiation, mature ECs are further purified using magnetic‐activated cell sorting for the EC surface marker CD144. These ECs exhibit molecular and cellular characteristics consistent with native ECs, such as expression of specific surface markers, formation of tube‐like structures and acetylated low‐density lipoprotein uptake. © 2018 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Age-dependent Pavlovian biases influence motor decision-making

Motor decision-making is an essential component of everyday life which requires weighing potential rewards and punishments against the probability of successfully executing an action. To achieve this, humans rely on two key mechanisms; a flexible, instrumental, value-dependent process and a hardwired, Pavlovian, value-independent process. In economic decision-making, age-related decline in risk taking is explained by reduced Pavlovian biases that promote action toward reward. Although healthy ageing has also been associated with decreased risk-taking in motor decision-making, it is currently unknown whether this is a result of changes in Pavlovian biases, instrumental processes or a combination of both. Using a newly established approach-avoidance computational model together with a novel app-based motor decision-making task, we measured sensitivity to reward and punishment when participants (n = 26,532) made a ‘go/no-go’ motor gamble based on their perceived ability to execute a complex action. We show that motor decision-making can be better explained by a model with both instrumental and Pavlovian parameters, and reveal age-related changes across punishment- and reward-based instrumental and Pavlovian processes. However, the most striking effect of ageing was a decrease in Pavlovian attraction towards rewards, which was associated with a reduction in optimality of choice behaviour. In a subset of participants who also played an independent economic decision-making task (n = 17,220), we found similar decision-making tendencies for motor and economic domains across a majority of age groups. Pavlovian biases, therefore, play an important role in not only explaining motor decision-making behaviour but also the changes which occur through normal ageing. This provides a deeper understanding of the mechanisms which shape motor decision-making across the lifespan.
A Contemporary Survey on Energy Harvesting Techniques for Next Generation Implantable Bio-Medical Devices

Providing a constant and perpetual energy source is a key design challenge for implantable medical devices. Harvesting energy from the human body and the surrounding is one of the possible solutions. Delivering energy from outside the body through different wireless media is another feasible solution. In this paper, we review different state-of-the-art methods that process “in-body” energy harvesting as well as “out-of-body" wireless power delivery. Details of the energy sources, transmission media, energy harvesting, coupling techniques and the required energy transducers will also be discussed. The merits and disadvantages of each approach will be presented. Different types of mechanisms have very different characteristics on their output voltage, amount of harvested power and power transfer efficiency. Therefore different types of power conditioning circuits are required. Issues of designing the building blocks for the power conditioning circuits for different energy harvesting or coupling mechanisms will be compared.
Spatial pooling inherent to intrinsic signal optical imaging might cause V2 to resemble a solution to the stereo correspondence problem

Using intrinsic signal optical imaging, Chen et al. (1) show that disparity information in visual area V2 is decodable from correlated random dot stereograms (cRDSs), but not from anticorrelated RDSs (aRDSs). The authors conclude that “V2 is the initial locus of false matching elimination,” indicating that the correspondence problem is solved within or immediately after V2. We disagree with this conclusion based on previous single-unit studies. Two immediate downstream areas of V2, middle temporal area (MT) and V4, still encode disparities of aRDSs. Anticorrelation reduces the disparity selectivity by only ∼50% in MT (2, 3) and ∼60% in V4 (3, 4) (as evaluated by the mean amplitude ratio between the tuning curves for aRDSs and cRDSs). These findings suggest … [↵][1]1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: fujita{at}fbs.osaka-u.ac. jp. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1
The effects of obesity on skeletal muscle contractile function

ABSTRACT Obesity can cause a decline in contractile function of skeletal muscle, thereby reducing mobility and promoting obesity-associated health risks. We reviewed the literature to establish the current state-of-knowledge of how obesity affects skeletal muscle contraction and relaxation. At a cellular level, the dominant effects of obesity are disrupted calcium signalling and 5′-adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase (AMPK) activity. As a result, there is a shift from slow to fast muscle fibre types. Decreased AMPK activity promotes the class II histone deacetylase (HDAC)-mediated inhibition of the myocyte enhancer factor 2 (MEF2). MEF2 promotes slow fibre type expression, and its activity is stimulated by the calcium-dependent phosphatase calcineurin. Obesity-induced attenuation of calcium signalling via its effects on calcineurin, as well as on adiponectin and actinin affects excitation–contraction coupling and excitation–transcription coupling in the myocyte. These molecular changes affect muscle contractile function and phenotype, and thereby in vivo and in vitro muscle performance. In vivo, obesity can increase the absolute force and power produced by increasing the demand on weight-supporting muscle. However, when normalised to body mass, muscle performance of obese individuals is reduced. Isolated muscle preparations show that obesity often leads to a decrease in force produced per muscle cross-sectional area, and power produced per muscle mass. Obesity and ageing have similar physiological consequences. The synergistic effects of obesity and ageing on muscle function may exacerbate morbidity and mortality. Important future research directions include determining: the relationship between time course of weight gain and changes in muscle function; the relative effects of weight gain and high-fat diet feeding per se; the effects of obesity on muscle function during ageing; and if the effects of obesity on muscle function are reversible. Summary: We review how obesity affects skeletal muscle function, thereby reducing mobility and quality of life and exacerbating the ageing process.
Increasing Human Papillomavirus Vaccination Among Young Gay and Bisexual Men: A Randomized Pilot Trial of the Outsmart HPV Intervention.

PURPOSE The study purpose was to pilot test a web-based human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination intervention among young gay and bisexual men (YGBM). METHODS In 2016, we recruited 150 unvaccinated YGBM aged 18-25 years from the United States. We randomized participants to the Outsmart HPV intervention or a control group. RESULTS HPV vaccine initiation was higher among the intervention group than the control group (45% vs. 26%; odds ratio [OR] = 2.34, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.18-4.67). We observed a trend toward higher HPV vaccine completion among the intervention group (11% vs. 3%; OR = 4.24, 95% CI: 0.87-20.66). CONCLUSIONS Outsmart HPV is a promising strategy for increasing HPV vaccination among YGBM.
The Impact of Patient Online Access to Computerized Medical Records and Services on Type 2 Diabetes: Systematic Review

Background Online access to computerized medical records has the potential to improve convenience, satisfaction, and care for patients, and to facilitate more efficient organization and delivery of care. Objective The objective of this review is to explore the use and impact of having online access to computerized medical records and services for patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus in primary care. Methods Multiple international databases including Medline, Embase, CINAHL, PsycINFO and the Cochrane Library were searched between 2004 and 2016. No limitations were placed on study design, though we applied detailed inclusion and exclusion criteria to each study. Thematic analysis was used to synthesize the evidence. The Mixed Methods Appraisal Toolkit was used to appraise study quality. Results A search identified 917 studies, of which 28 were included. Five themes were identified: (1) disparities in uptake by age, gender, ethnicity, educational attainment, and number of comorbidities, with young men in full-time employment using these services most; (2) improved health outcomes: glycemic control was improved, but blood pressure results were mixed; (3) self-management support from improved self-care and shared management occurred especially soon after diagnosis and when complications emerged. There was a generally positive effect on physician-patient relationships; (4) accessibility: patients valued more convenient access when online access to computerized medical records and services work; and (5) technical challenges, barriers to use, and system features that impacted patient and physician use. The Mixed Methods Appraisal Toolkit rated 3 studies as 100%, 19 studies as 75%, 4 studies as 50%, and 1 study scored only 25%. Conclusions Patients valued online access to computerized medical records and services, although in its current state of development it may increase disparities. Online access to computerized medical records appears to be safe and is associated with improved glycemic control, but there was a lack of rigorous evidence in terms of positive health outcomes for other complications, such as blood pressure. Patients remain concerned about how these systems work, the rules, and timeliness of using these systems.