Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
MTHFR polymorphisms as risk for male infertility in Pakistan and its comparison with socioeconomic status in the world.

AIM 5,10-MTHFR-single nucleotide polymorphisms are important for normal functioning of the enzyme that plays a key role in DNA synthesis, folate metabolism and methylation reactions. Methodology & results: Male infertility association of C665T and A1298C polymorphisms was explored, this topic is still debatable. Infertile men (232) and controls (114) were genotyped and statistically analyzed. Comparison of patients (6180) and controls (5744) of Caucasian populations was performed by meta-analysis. Pooled results showed A1298C minor allele and homozygous genotype to be of a significantly higher frequency in the low-income group. Increase in per capita income has shown an increasing trend in the minor allele frequency in various world populations, potentially due to dietry-folate compensation. CONCLUSION A1298C seems more relevant marker than C665T for infertility association in Caucasian populations and may be addressed by improving dietary folate.
Current Perspectives and Mechanisms of Relationship between Intestinal Microbiota Dysfunction and Dementia: A Review

Background: Accumulating data suggest a crucial role of the intestinal microbiota in the development and progression of neurodegenerative diseases. More recently, emerging reports have revealed an association between intestinal microbiota dysfunctions and dementia, a debilitating multifactorial disorder, characterized by progressive deterioration of cognition and behavior that interferes with the social and professional life of the sufferer. However, the mechanisms of this association are not fully understood. Summary: In this review, I discuss recent data that suggest mechanisms of cross-talk between intestinal microbiota dysfunction and the brain that underlie the development of dementia. Potential therapeutic options for dementia are also discussed. The pleiotropic signaling of the metabolic products of the intestinal microbiota together with their specific roles in the maintenance of both the intestinal and blood-brain barriers as well as regulation of local, distant, and circulating immunocytes, and enteric, visceral, and central neural functions are integral to a healthy gut and brain. Key Messages: Research investigating the effect of intestinal microbiota dysfunctions on brain health should focus on multiple interrelated systems involving local and central neuroendocrine, immunocyte, and neural signaling of microbial products and transmitters and neurohumoral cells that not only maintain intestinal, but also blood brain-barrier integrity. The change in intestinal microbiome/dysbiome repertoire is crucial to the development of dementia.
Demonstration of a Quasi-Gapless Integrated Visible Light Communication and Positioning System

In this letter, a quasi-gapless integrated visible light communication and positioning (VLCP) system is experimentally demonstrated for the first time based on filter bank multicarrier-based subcarrier multiplexing (FBMC-SCM). Compared with orthogonal frequency division multiplexing-based SCM (OFDM-SCM), FBMC-SCM has lower out-of-band interference and, therefore, requires much smaller guard band (GB) spacing. A low-complexity transmit diversity transmission scheme is adopted here, where all the light emitting diode lamps transmit the same communication signal. Moreover, phase difference of arrival is applied for positioning. The experimental results show that, in a coverage area of $1.2\times 1.2\,\,\text{m}^{2}$ with a height of 2.1 m, the mean position errors using OFDM-SCM and FBMC-SCM for a GB of 0.7 MHz are 10.91 and 6.08 cm, respectively. Moreover, a comparable bit-error-rate performance can be achieved for both OFDM-SCM and FBMC-SCM. Due to the negligible GBs when using FBMC-SCM, the effective bandwidth utilization ratio of the integrated VLCP system is improved from 72% to 98% when OFDM-SCM is replaced by FBMC-SCM.
A Design of Real-Time Multilayered Smart Healthcare Monitoring Framework Using IoT

Internet of Things (IoT) is a perfect model to embed various objects with sensors, actuators, and processors, which compute and communicateover internet. Smart healthcare system explores the utilities of IoT for life saving telemedicine, remote diagnosis, patientmonitoring and treatment. This paper proposed an IoT based smart healthcare monitoring framework for real time patient supervision by computing biomedical signals. The proposed multilayered framework enhance the utilities of biosensor based data collection and aggregation, it also leads to design a real time efficient decision support system in case of any intensive condition.
Predicting the Flu from Instagram

Conventional surveillance systems for monitoring infectious diseases, such as influenza, face challenges due to shortage of skilled healthcare professionals, remoteness of communities and absence of communication infrastructures. Internet-based approaches for surveillance are appealing logistically as well as economically. Search engine queries and Twitter have been the primarily used data sources in such approaches. The aim of this study is to assess the predictive power of an alternative data source, Instagram. By using 317 weeks of publicly available data from Instagram, we trained several machine learning algorithms to both nowcast and forecast the number of official influenza-like illness incidents in Finland where population-wide official statistics about the weekly incidents are available. In addition to date and hashtag count features of online posts, we were able to utilize also the visual content of the posted images with the help of deep convolutional neural networks. Our best nowcasting model reached a mean absolute error of 11.33 incidents per week and a correlation coefficient of 0.963 on the test data. Forecasting models for predicting 1 week and 2 weeks ahead showed statistical significance as well by reaching correlation coefficients of 0.903 and 0.862, respectively. This study demonstrates how social media and in particular, digital photographs shared in them, can be a valuable source of information for the field of infodemiology.
Vehicle Position Estimates by Multi-beam Antennas in Multi-path Environments

Vehicle positions in multipath environments are estimated from the angle of arrival of waves received by multibeam antennas installed at two base stations. The estimated root mean square (RMS) position error is about 350 m. This can be reduced to about 200 m by using two kinds of processes: the averaging of time series data and the averaging of two sets of data. The position estimate error is caused by reflection from buildings near the vehicles, and a large error exceeding 500 m is caused by reflections from high buildings located some distance from the vehicle. Precise estimation of vehicle position in multipath environments by measuring angle-of-arrival is difficult because of building reflection. >
Factores condicionantes de la creación de empresas en Catalunya: un enfoque institucional

Desde la investigacion de Birch (1979) que puso de manifiesto la importancia que tuvieron las nuevas empresas y las PYME en la generacion de puestos de trabajo en el periodo 1969-1976, las administraciones publicas occidentales de todas las ideologias politicas y de todos los niveles empezaron a interesarse por establecer medidas de apoyo a la creacion de empresas, despertando tambien el interes de investigadores. Por otra parte, cada vez tiene mayor relevancia el papel del entorno socio-cultural en la decision de convertirse en empresario. Asi pues, el objetivo principal de esta investigacion es analizar los factores del entorno que condicionan la creacion de empresas en Catalunya, aplicando el enfoque institucional a partir de la distincion de los factores institucionales formales (marco legal, politicas y mecanismos de apoyo a la creacion de empresas) y de los factores institucionales informales (actitudes de la sociedad catalana hacia la creacion de empresas). Previamente, con la finalidad de contextualizar dichos factores del entorno se realizo un analisis de estructura y de demografia empresarial en Catalunya para el periodo 1996-2001. En cuanto a la metodologia utilizada en la investigacion empirica, dada la complejidad que supone el analisis de los factores del entorno que afectan a la creacion de nuevas empresas, se ha creido conveniente realizar una triangulacion. De esta manera, se han utilizado tanto fuentes de datos primarias y secundarias, como metodos cuantitativos y cualitativos de recogida de la informacion.
An adaptive SVM-based real-time scheduling mechanism and simulation for multiple-load carriers in automobile assembly lines

Multiple-load carriers are widely introduced for material delivery in manufacturing systems. The real-time scheduling of multiple-load carriers is so complex that it deserves attention to pursue higher productivity and better system performance. In this paper, a support vector machine (SVM)-based real-time scheduling mechanism was proposed to tackle the scheduling problem of parts replenishment with multiple-load carriers in automobile assembly plants under dynamic environment. The SVM-based scheduling mechanism was trained first and then used to make the optimal real-time decisions between “wait” and “deliver” on the basis of real-time system states. An objective function considering throughput and delivery distances was established to evaluate the system performance. Moreover, a simulation model in eM-Plant software was developed to validate and compare the proposed SVM-based scheduling mechanism with the classic minimum batch size (MBS) heuristic. It simulated both the steady and dynamic environments which are characterized by the uncertainty of demands or scheduling criteria. The simulation results demonstrated that the SVM-based scheduling mechanism could dynamically make optimal real-time decisions for multiple-load carriers and outperform the MBS heuristic as well.
Measurement of Shock Wave and Particle Velocities in Shocked Dielectric Material from Millimeter-Wave Remote Sensing

A millimeter-wave remote sensing technique is used here as a noninvasive and continuous approach for the real-time measurement of shock wave velocity as well as the velocity of the shocked dielectric material during an impact. Experimental results obtained from planar symmetric impacts on PolyMethyl MethAcrylate (PMMA) cylinders are discussed and demonstrate that the proposed millimeter-wave remote sensing technique is highly convenient for deriving both the velocity of the shock wave and velocity of the shocked PMMA material. The proposed approach is applicable to any dielectric material subject to an impact and is an excellent candidate for deriving the equation of state of shocked materials.
Abdominale Adipositas bei Grundschulkindern : Determinanten und Erkenntnisse für die Entwicklung geeigneter Präventionsmaßnahmen

Available online xxxx Objective. To investigate correlates of changes in waist-to-height ratio (WHtR) in primary school children in order to identify modifiable factors usable for prevention. Methods. Outcome evaluation of a statewide health promotion program in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Baseline (2010) and follow-up (2011) measurements provided data for the calculation of changes in WHtR. Further information on the health and living conditions of the childrenwere assessed in parental questionnaires. Anthropometric measures were taken in 1733 (50.8% male) first and second grade children (age at baseline 7.1 ± 0.6 years) by staff trained according to ISAK-standards. Stepwise linear regression analysis was applied to identify variables with influence on changes in WHtR. Results. According to the resulting regression model, changes in WHtR towards an increase were influenced by at least one parent being overweight/obese, at least one parent who smoked, low household income, higher age of the child and the skipping of breakfast. There was no clustering effect in schools observed. Conclusion. A promising target for prevention of gain in WHtR in primary school children is to ensure the regularity of breakfast. Smoking cessation aswell as dietary improvements would not only help children's health but also the health of their parents. The socioeconomic influence on the development of an unhealthy weight status has already been acknowledged and should be extensively targeted by all of society and policy makers. © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Planning in Dynamic Environments with Conditional Autoregressive Models

We demonstrate the use of conditional autoregressive generative models (van den Oord et al., 2016a) over a discrete latent space (van den Oord et al., 2017b) for forward planning with MCTS. In order to test this method, we introduce a new environment featuring varying difficulty levels, along with moving goals and obstacles. The combination of high-quality frame generation and classical planning approaches nearly matches true environment performance for our task, demonstrating the usefulness of this method for model-based planning in dynamic environments.
Improving Gated Recurrent Unit Based Acoustic Modeling with Batch Normalization and Enlarged Context

The use of future contextual information is typically shown to be helpful for acoustic modeling. Recently, we proposed a RNN model called minimal gated recurrent unit with input projection (mGRUIP), in which a context module namelytemporal convolution, is specifically designed to model the future context. This model, mGRUIP with context module (mGRUIP-Ctx), has been shown to be able of utilizing the future context effectively, meanwhile with quite low model latency and computation cost. In this paper, we continue to improve mGRUIP-Ctx with two revisions: applying BN methods and enlarging model context. Experimental results on two Mandarin ASR tasks (8400 hours and 60K hours) show that, the revised mGRUIP-Ctx outperform LSTM with a large margin (11% to 38%). It even performs slightly better than a superior BLSTM on the 8400h task, with 33M less parameters and just 290ms model latency.
Goal Setting in Teams: Goal Clarity and Team Performance in the Public Sector

With the rise of performance management, work in the public sector has changed. An output focus has become more common. Other changes include decentralization and managing organizations more horizontally. Setting performance goals and working in teams exemplify these developments. Despite an extensive literature on goal setting, research on goal setting in teams and empirical studies in public organizations have been largely absent. This study contributes to the fields of public management and teamwork by examining whether and under what team conditions clear goals contribute to team performance in the Dutch public sector. Analyses on survey data (n = 105 teams) show that both goal clarity and self-management positively affect team performance. The effect of goal clarity on team performance is not affected by teamwork though, indicated by insignificant moderation effects of self-management and information elaboration. Suggestions are offered for future research to better understand goal setting in public sector teams.
Coherent phase transfer via fiber using heterodyne optical phase locking as optical amplification.

We demonstrate a coherent phase transfer via a 224 km cascaded fiber link comprising two 112 km links stabilized by two phase-locking loops, respectively. The optical signal is regenerated employing heterodyne optical phase locking (HOPL) after the first 112 km transfer. With a gain of more than 50 dB, the HOPL is capable of tracking the frequency of the incoming carrier with a fluctuation of 0.48 mHz and preserving the instability of the incoming laser to 6×10-20 at 1000 s. The phase noise cancellation of each span is investigated, and the out-loop transfer instability of the 224 km link reaches 7.7×10-19 at 10,000 s. The relation between the transfer instability of each span and that of the whole link is also deduced in the paper, in agreement with experimental results of the 224 km link.
The cosmic ray energy spectrum measured using the Pierre Auger Observatory The Pierre Auger energy spectrum

We present an update of the cosmic ray energy spectrum measured from $3{\times}10^{17}$ eV to over $10^{20}$ eV at the Pierre Auger Observatory. This energy range is covered by combining data from the surface detector (subdividing the events into a vertical and a horizontal data set), from a denser array of stations and from hybrid events simultaneously recorded by the surface and the fluorescence detectors. Data collected to date, with a total exposure exceeding 67,000 $\rm km^2$ sr yr, rely on the energy scale provided by the fluorescence detector. The spectral features, and the impact of systematic uncertainties on their significance, are discussed in detail.
Studies on Limulus Amoebocyte Lysate

A protein that has been isolated from Limuiuspoiyphemus amoebocyte membranes binds endotoxin. The protein was purified by two independent methods, organic solvent extraction and affinity chromatography, both followed by gel filtration. Immunologic studies confirm that the protein is a component of amoebocyte membranes. Although without enzymatic activity, the binding protein enhances Limulus lysate gelation. As a membrane-associated endotoxin binding “protein,” it may be involved in Limulus lysate coagulation, which is initiated by minute amounts of Gram-negative bacterial endotoxin. The protein has an apparent molecular weight of 80,000.
Effects of drugs and chemicals on the fetus.

In caring for a woman during pregnancy a doctor must recognize many potential dangers in the work and home environments occupation and administration of certain drugs. Many drugs and agents such as thiazides nitroprusside and progesterones have been recognized for their teratogenic effects. Progesterone doubles the risk of cardiovascular malformations in the fetus and thiazides and furosemide have the potential for risk after the 1st trimester and have been recommended for use only in cases of cardiovascular disorders. It is the physicians responsibility to constantly keep abreast of the risks and effects of drugs in relation to the women during pregnancy. It is also recommended that consideration is given to all possible outcomes: that the physicians advice is presented in a way that conveys the importance of the information; and that the doctor support the individuals or couples decision concerning the information. 4 basic steps in obstetric counselling are: 1) determine the complicating risks 2) convey the risks to the patient in understandable terms 3) balance out the risks and form alternative plans and 4) provide and encourage follow-up counselling to enable the patient to fully understand the risks processes and alternatives involved.
Investigating the sequence-dependent mechanical properties of DNA nicks for applications in twisted DNA nanostructure design

Abstract DNA nick can be used as a design motif in programming the shape and reconfigurable deformation of synthetic DNA nanostructures, but its mechanical properties have rarely been systematically characterized at the level of base sequences. Here, we investigated sequence-dependent mechanical properties of DNA nicks through molecular dynamics simulation for a comprehensive set of distinct DNA oligomers constructed using all possible base-pair steps with and without a nick. We found that torsional rigidity was reduced by 28–82% at the nick depending on its sequence and location although bending and stretching rigidities remained similar to those of regular base-pair steps. No significant effect of a nick on mechanically coupled deformation such as the twist-stretch coupling was observed. These results suggest that the primary structural role of nick is the relaxation of torsional constraint by backbones known to be responsible for relatively high torsional rigidity of DNA. Moreover, we experimentally demonstrated the usefulness of quantified nick properties in self-assembling DNA nanostructure design by constructing twisted DNA origami structures to show that sequence design of nicks successfully controls the twist angle of structures. Our study illustrates the importance as well as the opportunities of considering sequence-dependent properties in structural DNA nanotechnology.
Non-periodized and Daily Undulating Periodized Resistance Training on Blood Pressure of Older Women

The present study aimed at investigating the effects of a daily undulating periodization (DUP) and non-periodized (NP) resistance training programs on hemodynamic parameters of older women. Forty-two older women were randomized into one of the three experimental groups: NP, DUP, and control group (CG). Evaluations of the hemodynamic parameters occurred before, during and after the intervention. The exercise programs were performed twice a week over 22 weeks. NP and DUP groups were based on 3 sets of 8–10 repetitions in 9 exercises. In NP, the two exercise sessions were based on traditional strength training, which was performed at a Difficult intensity according to the rating of perceived exertion (RPE) method. In DUP, the first session was based on power resistance exercise, in which the concentric muscle contraction was performed as fast as possible at a moderate intensity based on RPE, while the second session was the same that was performed by NP. The findings demonstrated that diastolic blood pressure (90.4 vs. 76.2 mmHg) and mean arterial pressure (108.6 vs. 92.7 mmHg) were significantly reduced after NP, while no significant alterations were observed in DUP. Nevertheless, both training groups seem to have a cardio protective effect, since both training modes prevented the increase in HR reported in the experimental period in CG. In conclusion, our findings indicate that a 22-week NP resistance training program causes beneficial effects on hemodynamic parameters of older women. Trial Registration: NCT03443375.
The Jakinibs in systemic lupus erythematosus: progress and prospects

ABSTRACT Introduction: Multiple pathways are involved in the pathogenesis of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). The Janus kinase-signal transducers and activators of transcription (JAK-STAT) pathway mediates the intracellular signals of more than 60 cytokines, growth factors and hormones from the type I/II cytokine receptors. Dysregulation of the cytokines is a hallmark of SLE; inhibition of downstream signaling mediated by the JAKs is an attractive therapeutic option. Areas covered: This article reviews the preliminary data concerning the efficacy of the JAK inhibitors (Jakinibs) in SLE. JAK inhibition has shown promise in murine lupus dermatitis and nephritis. Ex-vivo studies of human SLE have demonstrated the effect of JAK1/2 inhibition on the activation of the STAT proteins and autoantibody production from B cells. A Phase II trial reported modest efficacy of baricitinib in improving synovitis in SLE patients. Expert opinions: Inhibition of the JAK-STAT pathway is an attractive therapeutic option. The convenience of oral administration and lower production cost of the Jakinibs could replace the biological agents in the treatment hierarchy of autoimmune inflammatory diseases. Additional clinical data are needed; results of ongoing studies of the newer Jakinibs in cutaneous and non-life-threatening lupus are eagerly awaited.