Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
University of Dundee Leucine and ACE inhibitors as therapies for sarcopenia ( LACE trial )

Background: Sarcopenia (the age-related loss of muscle mass and function) is a major contributor to loss of mobility, falls, loss of independence, morbidity and mortality in older people. Although resistance training is effective in preventing and reversing sarcopenia, many older people are sedentary and either cannot or do not want to exercise. This trial examines the efficacy of supplementation with the amino acid leucine and/or angiotensin converting enzyme inhibition to potentially improve muscle mass and function in people with sarcopenia. Promising preliminary data exist from small studies for both interventions, but neither has yet been tested in adequately powered randomised trials in patients with sarcopenia. Methods: Leucine and ACE inhibitors in sarcopenia (LACE) is a multicentre, masked, placebo-controlled, 2 × 2 factorial randomised trial evaluating the efficacy of leucine and perindopril (angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitor (ACEi)) in patients with sarcopenia. The trial will recruit 440 patients from primary and secondary care services across the UK. Male and female patients aged 70 years and over with sarcopenia as defined by the European Working Group on Sarcopenia (based on low total skeletal muscle mass on bioimpedance analysis and either low gait speed or low handgrip strength) will be eligible for participation. Participants will be excluded if they have a contraindication to, or are already taking, an ACEi, angiotensin receptor blocker or leucine. The primary clinical outcome for the trial is the between-group difference in the Short Physical Performance Battery score at all points between baseline and 12 months. Secondary outcomes include appendicular muscle mass measured using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry, muscle strength, activities of daily living, quality of life, activity using pedometer step counts and falls. Participants, clinical teams, outcomes assessors and trial analysts are masked to treatment allocation. A panel of biomarkers including microRNAs, neurohormones, genetic polymorphisms and markers of inflammation relevant to muscle pathophysiology will be measured to explore predictors of response and further elucidate mechanisms underlying sarcopenia. Participants will receive a total of 12 months of either perindopril or placebo and either leucine or placebo. Discussion: The results will provide the first robust test of the overall clinical and cost-effectiveness of these novel therapies for older patients with sarcopenia. Trial registration: ISRCTN, ISRCTN90094835. Registered on 18 February 2015.
The Impact of Second Life Experiences on Mathematical Beliefs Relationship with mathematics anxiety and perceived learning potential of Second Life for mathematics learning

Teachers are not cognitive-but-lacking-affect robots. Mathematics education for pre-service teachers, and educationists must address teacher beliefs and affect in addition to acquisition of knowledge and skills (Schoenfeld, 1998). In the present paper, we examine the potential to influence student teacher beliefs around mathematics, drawing on the recommendations of Langrall, Thornton, & Malone (1996). In line with these recommendations, we utilize a constructionist learning environment situated in Second Life, that can be used to provide virtual experiences that rival first life experiences. Teachers are then asked to re-examine their attitudes around mathematics. In addition they are interviewed about the learning potential of the Second Life experience in view of learning mathematics.
Agent-Based Modeling for Influenza H 1 N 1 in an Artificial Classroom

Agent based computational modeling and simulation can capture human behaviors, emergency events, and complex social networks from the bottom up. The construction of artificial society is system engineering that the bottom simulation platform needs to be designed for multi regions’ experiments and engineering realization. Influenza H1N1 that outbreak in 2009 is modeled and simulated in the platform. Based on statistic cases, an artificial classroom with agent student and agent teacher has been constructed in an artificial campus. The artificial classroom is described from three parts: agent, environment, and emergency model. Role based agent demographic catalog, “time-location-behavior” social behaviors mode, and group based social networks have been characterized and built up. Computational experiments are carried on in the artificial classroom, and results indicate that the spread of influenza H1N1 among high density of population is related to demographic attributes, behaviors, and social networks.
Thermal and Visible Video Fusion Using Curvelet Transform

Traditionally, there has been keen interest in human movement from a wide variety of disciplines. Generally, Red Blue Green (RGB) visible cameras are used in surveillance. But the main drawback of Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras arise from their reliance on reflected light. Thermal infrared camera systems are resilient to these effects and are therefore very useful in a security context. However, thermal video cannot detect objects that are at the same temperature as the background and it contains very little texture information. Hence, we overcome these challenges by fusing both thermal and visible camera videos
Parallelized Service Function Chain Orchestration in Data Center Networks

In recent years, much attention has been focused on deploying service function chains (SFCs), each of which is composed of a set of virtual network functions (VNFs) in a specified order. This is a promising approach for enabling cloud service providers to deploy user service requests more flexibly while saving costs. However, less effort has been directed towards meeting heterogeneous needs, such as high throughput or low latency of user service requests with heterogeneous bandwidth demands, especially in data center networks (DCNs). In this paper, we propose an efficient orchestration algorithm for online SFC requests. It first splits a large flow into a number of subflows and replicates the same number of sub-SFCs. Each subflow is redirected to one of these “parallelized” sub-SFCs, which is termed a sub-user request. Then, each sub-user request is deployed based on a worst-fit strategy, and VNFs in the same SFC are instantiated on the same server to the greatest possible extent. Our algorithm is expected to enable network load balancing, reducing the delay experienced by small flows while improving the acceptance ratio for user requests. Finally, simulation results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms other comparable algorithms.
ESTIMATES OF AN ASH FALL LAYER FROM THE AUGUST 2001 ERUPTION OF MT TUNGURAHUA ( ECUADOR )

After eight decades of quiescence, Tungurahua volcano (5023 m a.s.l.) in the Cordillera Real of Ecuador (Hall et aI., 1999) progressively reawakened between August and October 1999. The magmatic activity, which began after a phreatic vent-clearing phase, has been characterized by alternating episodes of gas and ash emissions, short-lived "vulcanian" explosions and strombolian eruptive styles. The intensity of the eruption fluctuated during the year 2000 and decreased drastically in October of the same year. A new eruptive phase started in May 2001 with small-scale lava fountaining, accompanied by occasional "vulcanian" explosions in June and July, and by deep LP seismic events. With no clear immediate precursory warning, a strong increase in tremor amplitude took place on August 04, 200 I, marking the onset of a relatively intense strombolian phase which lasted until August 23. The eruptive event coincided with significant rainfall in the area. Wet ash falls and associated acidic rains severely affected livestock and agricultural resources to the west of the volcano, prompting the intervention of several national and international humanitarian organizations. For various reasons, quantitative tephra volume estimates (ballistics or ash falls) were not obtained during the 1999-2000 eruptive phases. On the contrary, during the relatively intense phase of August 200 I more favorable conditions permitted obtaining reliable thickness measurements within several weeks of the emplacement of the ash fall deposit, which resulted in an isopach map. In this note we present two preliminary estimates of the bulk volume of the ash fall layer. In contrast to most recent studies on tephra fall volume calculations (e.g. Legros, 2000; Pyle, 1995; 1989; Fierstein and Nathenson, 1992), we concentrate here on two simple methods that do not require any mathematical assumption of the thickness decay rate. Estimating the volume of ballistic tephra falls or other eruptive parameters like DRE volumes, magnitude or intensity is beyond the scope of this abstract and will be presented in forthcoming notes.
Exhyalanthrax collarti ( François , 1962 ) , a new species of Bombyliidae for Portugal ( Diptera : Brachycera ) Exhyalanthrax collarti ( François , 1962 ) , una nueva especie de Bombyliidae para Portugal ( Diptera : Brachycera )

In this paper, the bee fly Exhyalanthrax collarti (François, 1962) is recorded as a new species to the fauna of Portugal, along with new records of the species in Spain. A dichotomous key for the Iberian species of the genus Exhyalanthrax Becker, 1916 is also published.
Vitamin K 2 and its Impact on Tooth Epigenetics by

The impact of nutritional signals plays an important role in systemic-based «models» of dental caries. Present hypotheses now focus both on the oral environment and other organs, like the nervous system and brain. The tooth is subjected to shear forces, nourishing and cleansing, and its present “support system” (the hypothalamus/parotid axis) relays endocrine signaling to the parotid gland. Sugar consumption enhances hypothalamic oxidative stress (ROS), reversing dentinal fluid flow, thus creating an enhanced vulnerability to the oral bacterial flora. The acid, produced by the oral bacterial flora, then leads to erosion of the dentine, and an irreversible loss of dental enamel layers. This attack brings about inflammatory responses, yielding metalloproteinase-based “dissolution”. However, vitamin K2 (i.e. MK-4/MK-7) may come to the rescue with its antioxidant property, locally (mouth cavity) or systemically (via the brain), thus sustaining/preserving hormone-induced dentinal fluid flow (encompassing oxidative stress) and boosting/magnifying bodily inflammatory responses. However, sugars may also reduce the tooth’s natural defences through endocrine signaling, thus enhancing acid-supported enamel dentine erosion. Vitamin K2 sustains and improves the salivary buffering capacity via its impact on the secretion/flow of calcium and inorganic phosphates. Interestingly, primitive cultures’ diets (low-sugar and high-K2 diets) preserve dental health.
BANN : A NOVEL INTEGRATION OF SECURITY WITH EFFICIENCY USING BLOWFISH AND ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORKS ON CLOUD

Multimedia data security and storage space allocation on cloud servers is a matter of concern for many CSPs and also has a vast scope for research. Media files generally are encrypted and stored on storage servers due to various security threats. Though recent advancements are in mass storage density of servers and high speed processors have provided a little relaxation to CSPs but still with their limited storage capacity and heavy usage of services by users globally, these storage servers usually pave way for high memory allocations for media files resulting in lack of server space. We argue that uncompressed media such as images take more storage space compared to compressed files and also consume more time for cipher operations, which results in poor performance and considerably high bandwidth usage for operations. We propose a combination of Blowfish encryption algorithm with Artificial Neural Networks to provide an efficient way to store and process media files on servers. We have evaluated the performance of proposed work and compared it in terms of PSNR, compression ratio, mean square error, average difference, maximum difference and normalized absolute error and time efficiency during cipher operations. Through these experimental results we prove the efficiency of system which increases dramatically using BANN technique.
Childhood Adversity and the Problems that Follow : The ACE Study

California within a 3-year period (1995-1997) and completed a survey about childhood abuse and household dysfunction, substance use, depression and suicide, and multiple other health-related issues. The ACE study provides a documented link between childhood exposure to violence and later psychiatric disorders, physical disorders, and substance abuse (Felitti et al., 1998). 1 The researchers asked people to place themselves into eight categories of adverse childhood experiences by answering the following questions. Before the age of eighteen:
Unsupervised Deep Learning of State Representation Using Robotic Priors

Our understanding of the world depends highly on how we represent it. Using background knowledge about its complex underlying physical rules, our brain can produce intuitive and simplified representations which it can easily use to solve problems. The approach of this paper aims to reproduce this simplification process using a neural network to produce a simple low dimensional state representation of the world from images acquired by a robot. As proposed in Jonschkowski & Brock (2015), we train the neural network in an unsupervised way, using the "a priori" knowledge we have about the world as loss functions called "robotic priors" that we implemented through a siamese network. This approach has been used to learn a one dimension representation of a Baxter head position from raw images. The experiment resulted in a 97,7% correlation between the learned representation and the ground truth, and show that relevant visual features form the environment are learned.
coSARA: a computer-based environment for collaborative design, analysis and evaluation of computer systems

This paper describes the design and implementation of coSARA a computer-based collaborative environment for the design, analysis and evaluation of computer systems. The general goal of this work is to create a platform that will encourage fundamental and systematic experimentation towards understanding of techniques to realize collaborative systems and methods for collaborative design of computer systems. In this paper we discuss the environment in which coSARA is assummed to operate; we focus our attention on the the object system implementation; we also provide a review of coSARA's user interface and of its tool integration method.
MOLECULAR GENETIC IDENTIFICATION OF PLANKTONIC BACTERIA IN THE YENISEI RIVER BASIN AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF THEIR BIOGEOCHEMICAL FUNCTIONS

4 Introduction . 6 Methods for determination of species-specific biogeochemical features of planktonic bacteria . 10 1 Analysis of the functional genes, transcripts and proteins . 10 1.1 Omics methods . 10 1.1.1 Metagenomics . 10 1.1.2 Metatranscriptomics . 12 1.1. 3 Metaproteomics . 12 1.1. 4 Metabolomics . 13 1.2 Single amplified genomes . 13 2 Methods with nutrient additions . 14 2.1 Stable isotope probing . 15 2.1.1 Stable isotope probing of lipids . 15 2.1.2 Stable isotope probing of DNA . 16 2.1. 3 Stable isotope probing of RNA . 16 2.2 Application of bromodeoxyuridine and iodonitrotetrazolium violet . 17 2.3 Methods based on fluorescence in situ hybridization . 18 2.3. 1 Combined microautoradiography and FISH . 19 2.3. 2 Combined Raman microscopy and FISH . 20 2.3. 3 Multi-isotope imaging mass spectrometry . 21 2.3. 4 Combination of beta microimaging and FISH . 22 2.4 Microarrays . 23 2.5 Community fingerprinting . 24 3. Selection of an optimal method . 25 Aims of the Thesis . 28 Bacterial biodiversity of the Yenisei River . 29 1. Brief limnological description of the Yenisei River . 29 2. Materials and methods . 31 2.1 Sampling . 31 2.2 Sequencing . 33 2.3 Processing of sequence data . 34
Greenhouse Gas Emission in Jewelry Industry: A Case Study of Silver Flat Ring

This paper describes an assessment of the carbon footprint (CF) of a silver ring, together with an attempt to measure material and energy consumption. The boundary of analyzing CF was defined as Business to Business (B2B). All primary data were obtained from a survey of the case study factory. Acquisition of raw material (silver) was the main GHG contribution to the overall CF and was thus considered as a CF hotspot. Acquisition accounted for 0.9740 kg CO2e or 94.44% of total emissions, followed by production processes (0.0573 kg CO2e) and transportation (0.002 kg CO2e). The total CF amounted to 1.03 kg CO2e per silver ring product. To reduce the CF, it is suggested that choosing low GHG production processes could result in significant reduction in total CF. In addition, the study proposes options for recycling waste and using high performance electronic equipment.
Names of dishes and establishments of Japanese cuisine in Russian linguistic culture : structural features and pragmatics

The article is dedicated to the study of the structural features and pragmatics names of dishes and establishments of Japanese cuisine in the modern Russian linguoculture. This process of naming is analyzed not only in terms of its structural features, but also in terms of propositional-frame modeling and its perception by ordinary native Russian speakers. When describing the material, special attention is paid to the language game, aimed at creating the right impression about the establishment and the specifics of his cuisine. In particular, public catering establishments, specializing in Japanese cuisine, should justify exotics and national character of its assortment with the stylized names. [Araeva L.A. , Denisova E.S. , Evseeva I.V. , Katyshev P.A. , Melnik N.V. , Olenev S.V. Names of dishes and establishments of Japanese cuisine in Russian linguistic culture: structural features and pragmatics. Life Sci J 2014;11(11):362-366] (ISSN:1097-8135). http://www.lifesciencesite. com. 59
10 th Norwegian-German Seminar Public Sector Economics Optimal Paternalism? A New View of the Taxation of Unhealthy Food

This paper analyzes optimal consumption choices and weight when consumers make errors due to self-control problems and naivet´e. Contrary to the existing literature, we show that both types of errors do not determine whether an individual is overweight or underweight. Instead, they aﬀect only the extent of over- or underweight and do not impact a healthy weight consumer. Consequently, a paternalistic tax on unhealthy food that is designed to correct self-control problems and naivet´e cannot induce individuals to have a healthy weight. Moreover, there exists a tax that induces both rational and non-rational individuals to have a healthy weight in steady state. This tax does not depend on the degree of self-control problems or naivet´e.
The Extrapancreatic Effects of Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 and Related Peptides

Context: Glucagon-likepeptide-1(GLP-1)7-36amide,aninsulinotropichormonereleasedfromthe intestinal L cells in response to nutrient ingestion, has been extensively reviewed with respect to (cid:1) -cell function. However GLP-1 receptors are abundant in many other tissues. Thus, the function of GLP-1 is not limited to the islet cells, and it has regulatory actions on many other organs. of
Should We Change the Therapeutic Algorithm of Type 2 Diabetes Based on Accumulating Evidence?

In the last two decades, a dramatic shift in the paradigm of management of type 2 diabetes has been settled. Reduction of diabetic complications became the primary target instead of focusing on the mere glycemic control. The tight blood sugar control among type 1 (T1DM) and type 2 (T2DM) diabetes mellitus patients aimed at avoidance of long-term complications of diabetes. In spite of the significant impact of this approach on the incidence of these complications, the outcome is still not satisfactory. The frequent failure to achieve tight blood sugar control and the lack of hypoglycemic agents that are capable to combat the underlying pathogenic mechanisms of diabetic complications underlie this unsatisfactory outcome. These drawbacks are overcome in the newly introduced hypoglycemic agents. In this review, we are going to discuss these mechanisms and highlight the therapeutic value of the early use of these agents instead of the long-standing traditional approach.
Prophylaxis of neutropenia in elderly patients

Chemotherapy-induced neutropenia is a major dose-limiting toxicity of systemic cancer chemotherapy and can lead to fever and life-threatening infections. Complications of cytotoxic chemotherapy are more common in older patients than in younger. Prospective trials in older patients with lymphomas or solid tumors have found that age is a risk factor for chemotherapy-induced neutropenia and febrile neutropenia. Granulocyte colony-stimulating factors reduce the duration of neutropenia and its febrile complications, frequency of hospitalization and using of therapeutic antibiotics in patients with hematological malignancies. Prophylaxis of neutropenia with granulocyte colony-stimulating factors makes treatment with optimal-dose chemotherapy possible, especially in the elderly patients. © 2013 Polskie Towarzystwo Hematologów i Transfuzjologów, Instytut Hematologii i Transfuzjologii. Published by Elsevier Urban & Partner Sp. z o.o. All rights reserved.
The yen / dollar exchange rate in 1998 : views from options markets

1998 was a period of unprecedented volatility for the yen/dollar exchange rate. To help to assess market participants’ views on exchange rate developments, the Bank of England uses a range of techniques that employ information from the over-the-counter (OTC) currency options markets. This article describes these techniques and shows how they can be used to assist our understanding of market perceptions of the yen/dollar exchange rate over this period.
Distribution patterns of disjunct and endemic vascular plants in the interior wetbelt of northwest North America 1

A region of contrastively wetter and milder climate occurs in inland northwest North America, separated from similar climates of the Pacific coast by 200–400 km. Researchers have long noted that numerous vascular plants divide their ranges between the interior wetbelt and coastal regions, although many such disjunctions have hitherto gone undocumented. Here I summarize all vascular plants shared between coastal and interior wetbelt regions, disjunct by at least 200 km. These disjunct taxa are assigned to north-coast and south-coast lists according to whether the coastal portions of the ranges occur primarily north or south of the southern limits of maximum continental glaciation. A list of interior wetbelt endemic taxa is also presented, focusing on those that occur at forested elevations. Presence/absence for coastal disjunct and endemic taxa were assigned to grid of 18 18 latitude–longitude cells. Using this grid, concentrations of disjunct and endemic taxa were detected, and total values per cell were tested in linear regression for a relationship to mean annual precipitation. In total, 116 coastal disjunct taxa were detected, 31 of them north-coastal and 85 south-coastal. Interior wetbelt endemic and subendemic taxa total 95, and of these, 46 were found primarily at forested elevations. North-coast taxa were found over a wide latitudinal range both north and south of the glacial limits, and their distribution had a weak positive relationship with annual precipitation. South-coast and endemic taxa were found mostly south of the glacial limits, and their distribution did not correlate to annual precipitation. The greatest concentrations of south coastal disjunct and endemic taxa occurred in the Clearwater region of north-central Idaho; a region noted by previous researchers to be a likely ice-age refugium for wet-climate dependent plants and animals. Inferences are made from these patterns, both for biogeographical understanding of the roles played by the interior wetbelt and some regions connecting to the coast, as well as for preservation of biodiversity and ecosystem continuity.