Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Rice Growth, Yield and Photosynthetic Responses to Elevated Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration and Drought

SUMMARY Rice is a major food crop that should respond favorably to expected future increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration. Due to uncertainties in the timing and amounts of monsoonal rainfall, drought is common in some rainfed rice production systems. In this paper, we summarize results of experiments conducted by the University of Florida and USDA-ARS at Gainesville, FL, USA, where the effects and interactions of elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and periodic drought were examined in relation to grain yield and canopy-scale gas exchanges, specifically photosynthesis, respiration, and evapotranspiration. Elevated CO2 increased rice growth, grain yield and canopy photosynthesis while reducing evapotranspiration by about 10%. During drought stress cycles, this water savings under elevated CO2 allowed photosynthesis to continue for one to two days longer compared with the ambient CO2 treatment. Rice canopy photosynthesis saturated with respect to CO2 near 500 μmol mol−1 and we found little evidence of photosynthetic acclimation or down-regulation in response to long-term CO2 enrichment treatments of 350 and 700 μmol mol−1. Under a much broader range of long-term CO2 treatments (160 to 900 μmol mol−1), a significant degree of photosynthetic down regulation was detected. Daytime CO2 enrichment resulted in higher canopy dark respiration compared with the ambient grown controls when compared at a common, near ambient nighttime CO2. We also detected a rapid and reversible, direct inhibition of canopy dark respiration rate with rising chamber CO2 at an air temperature of 28°C.
Age of methylphenidate treatment initiation in children with ADHD and later substance abuse: prospective follow-up into adulthood.

OBJECTIVE Animal studies have shown that age at stimulant exposure is positively related to later drug sensitivity. The purpose of this study was to examine whether age at initiation of stimulant treatment in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is related to the subsequent development of substance use disorders. METHOD The authors conducted a prospective longitudinal study of 176 methylphenidate-treated Caucasian male children (ages 6 to 12) with ADHD but without conduct disorder. The participants were followed up at late adolescence (mean age=18.4 years; retention rate=94%) and adulthood (mean age=25.3; retention rate=85%). One hundred seventy-eight comparison subjects also were included. All subjects were diagnosed by blinded clinicians. The Cox proportional hazards model included the following childhood predictor variables: age at initiation of methylphenidate treatment, total cumulative dose of methylphenidate, treatment duration, IQ, severity of hyperactivity, socioeconomic status, and lifetime parental psychopathology. Separate models tested for the following four lifetime outcomes: any substance use disorder, alcohol use disorder, non-alcohol substance use disorder, and stimulant use disorder. Other outcomes included antisocial personality, mood, and anxiety disorders. RESULTS There was a significant positive relationship between age at treatment initiation and non-alcohol substance use disorder. None of the predictor variables accounted for this association. Post hoc analyses showed that the development of antisocial personality disorder explained the relationship between age at first methylphenidate treatment and later substance use disorder. Even when controlling for substance use disorder, age at stimulant treatment initiation was significantly and positively related to the later development of antisocial personality disorder. Age at first methylphenidate treatment was unrelated to mood and anxiety disorders. CONCLUSIONS Early age at initiation of methylphenidate treatment in children with ADHD does not increase the risk for negative outcomes and may have beneficial long-term effects.
Donor type microchimerism is an infrequent event following liver transplantation and is not associated with graft acceptance

Donor‐type microchimerism, the presence of a minority population of donor‐derived haematopoietic cells following solid organ transplantation, has been postulated as a mechanism for induction of donor‐specific graft tolerance. The stability, frequency, and relevance of microchimerism with respect to long‐term outcome, however, remains uncertain. Using a polymerase chain reaction (PCR)‐based method of microsatellite analysis of highly polymorphic short tandem repeat sequences (STRs) to detect donor‐type cells, DNA from 11 patients was analyzed prospectively at specific time points for 12 months following liver transplantation, and from a further six patients retrospectively 2 years after liver transplantation. Using a panel of STRs, transient peripheral blood donor microchimerism was detected in 2 of 11 patients at a single time‐point following transplantation, but persistent evidence of donor‐derived cells was not observed during the study period. Analysis of DNA extracted from skin and duodenum in two patients likewise failed to show donor‐type cells at these sites. None of the six patients in the retrospective arm showed donor microchimerism, resulting in an overall detection rate of 1.58%. These results suggest that donor microchimerism following liver transplantation is an infrequent event, and that the generation of graft tolerance is independent of microchimerism.
Contextualizing cultural competence training of residents: results of a formative research study in Geneva, Switzerland

Medical training programs need to prepare physicians to provide care to increasingly diverse patient populations. While the general concepts and approaches of clinical cultural competence are broadly relevant across contexts, the content of cultural competence training should reflect and respond to the specific needs and challenges of clinicians in their local reality. In order to better understand and respond to the needs and challenges of residents working with diverse patients in Geneva, Switzerland, depth interviews with physicians and professional medical interpreters and direct observations of consultations were combined. Cross-cultural communication difficulties were intertwined with more general difficulties related to primary care in an outpatient context, and physicians’ frustrations reflected the expectations and image of medicine that they developed during their hospital-centered training. Study results point to the need to understand how cross-cultural communication challenges articulate with other aspects of the clinical context.
Genetic toxicity evaluation of octamethylcyclotetrasiloxane

Octamethylcyclotetrasiloxane (OMCTS; CAS No. 556‐67‐2) was evaluated in a genetic toxicity battery. In preincubation tests with Salmonella typhimurium strains TA98, TA100, TA1535, TA1537, and TA1538, no mutagenicity was detected (maximum dose = 5 mg/plate) with or without S9 in two independent trials. Treatment of cultured Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells was limited by cytotoxicity at OMCTS concentrations greater than 0.003 mg/mL without S9 and 0.03 mg/mL with S9. CHO cells treated with up to 0.003 mg/mL without S9 and 0.03 mg/mL with S9 showed no significant dose‐related increases in chromosomal aberration frequencies. No significant dose‐related increases in sister chromatid exchanges (SCEs) occurred in OMCTS‐treated CHO cells (maximum OMCTS concentration = 0.003 mg/mL without S9; 0.03 mg/mL with S9). Therefore, OMCTS was concluded to be negative in the SCE assay. In a screen for in vivo clastogenic potential, Sprague–Dawley rats received 700 ppm OMCTS by whole‐body vapor inhalation 6 hr daily for 5 days. A negative control group received filtered air on the same schedule. A positive control group was exposed to filtered air on the same schedule and received cyclophosphamide 24 hr before termination. The OMCTS‐treated animals were terminated 6 and 24 hr after the final exposure. Positive and negative control animals were terminated 24 hr after the last exposure. No significant, treatment‐related increases in chromosomal aberrations were detected. The results of these studies indicate that OMCTS does not possess significant in vitro genotoxic potential. No adverse genetic findings were seen in the in vivo screen for chromosome aberrations. Environ. Mol. Mutagen. 36:13–21, 2000. © 2000 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Strain differences in alcohol-induced neurochemical plasticity: a role for accumbens glutamate in alcohol intake.

BACKGROUND Repeated alcohol administration alters nucleus accumbens (NAC) basal glutamate content and sensitizes the capacity of alcohol to increase NAC extracellular glutamate levels. However, the relevance of alcohol-induced changes in NAC glutamate for alcohol drinking behavior is under-investigated. METHODS To examine the relationship between genetic variance in alcohol consumption and alcohol-induced neuroadaptations within the NAC, in vivo microdialysis was conducted in the alcohol-preferring C57BL/6J (B6) and alcohol-avoiding DBA2/J (D2) mouse strains on injections 1 and 8 of repeated alcohol treatment (8 x 2 g/kg, IP). To confirm an active role for NAC glutamate in regulating alcohol drinking behavior, the glutamate reuptake inhibitor dl-threo-beta-benzyloxyaspartic acid (TBOA) (300 microM) and the Group 2 metabotropic glutamate autoreceptor agonist (2R,4R)-4-aminopyrrolidine-2,4-dicarboxylate (APDC) (50 microM) were infused into the NAC of B6 and D2 mice prior to alcohol consumption in a 4 bottle-choice test. RESULTS While strain differences were not apparent for NAC basal levels of dopamine, serotonin or gamma-amino butyric acid (GABA), repeated alcohol treatment elevated NAC basal glutamate content only in B6 mice. Strain differences in both the acute and the sensitized neurochemical responses to 2 g/kg alcohol were observed for all neurotransmitters examined. While the alcohol-induced rise in NAC dopamine and glutamate levels sensitized in B6 mice, a sensitization was not observed in D2 animals. Moreover, B6 mice exhibited a sensitized serotonin and GABA response to alcohol followed repeated treatment, whereas neither tolerance nor sensitization was observed in D2 animals. An intra-NAC APDC infusion reduced alcohol intake in both B6 and D2 mice by approximately 50%. In contrast, TBOA infusion elevated alcohol intake selectively in B6 mice. CONCLUSIONS These data indicate an active role for NAC glutamate in regulating alcohol consumption in mice and support the hypothesis that predisposition to high alcohol intake involves genetic factors that facilitate alcohol-induced adaptations in glutamate release within the NAC.
Rheumatoid arthritis

Summary: Therapeutic efficacy of depleting B cells or blocking T‐cell costimulation in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) has confirmed the critical pathogenic role of adaptive immune responses. Yet, RA preferentially affects elderly individuals, in whom adaptive immunity to exogenous antigens begins to fail. Here, we propose that senescence of the immune system is a risk factor for RA, with chronic inflammation resulting from the accumulation of degenerate T cells that have a low threshold for activation and utilize a spectrum of novel receptors to respond to microenvironmental cues. The process of immunosenescence is accelerated in RA and precedes the onset of disease, the acceleration, in part, being conferred by the HLA‐DR4 haplotype. Naive CD4+ T cells in RA are contracted in diversity and restricted in clonal burst. Senescence of effector CD4+ T cells is associated with the loss of CD28 and the de novo expression of KIR2DS2, NKG2D, and CX3CR1, all of which function as costimulatory molecules and reduce the threshold for T‐cell activation. The synovial microenvironment promotes chronic persistent immune responses by facilitating ectopic lymphoid neogenesis, such as the formation of aberrant germinal centers. With the propensity to develop complex lymphoid architectures and to provide optimal activation conditions for senescent CD4+ T cells, the synovium becomes a natural target for pathogenic immune responses in prematurely aged individuals.
Design and Evaluation of a Network-Based Asynchronous Architecture for Cryptographic Devices

This paper presents a network-based asynchronous architecture that improves the physical-level security of cryptographic devices to known side-channel attacks. This is achieved by decorrelating power consumption measurements by exploiting parallel execution and randomised data-forwarding over a network of functional units. Instructions execute in parallel and forward register values between them, thereby avoiding the register bank. A secret-sharing scheme is used in data-forwarding to remove the effect of sending critical register values through the network, which does not significantly degrade performance and has a positive effect of increasing the noise due to network activity. The simulation results show that both the security threshold and the performance are improved, and the network-based architecture is more robust to differential power analysis when compared to the asynchronous pipelined architecture.
Laparoscopic fusion of the lumbar spine: minimally invasive spine surgery. A prospective multicenter study evaluating open and laparoscopic lumbar fusion.

STUDY DESIGN Two hundred-forty consecutive patients underwent laparoscopic instrumented interbody fusion using custom-designed instrumentation and BAK (Sulzer Spine Tech, Minneapolis, MN) fusion cages. The surgeries were performed at eight spine centers during U.S. Food and Drug Administration investigational device evaluation clinical trials. This cohort was compared with 591 consecutive patients undergoing open anterior fusion with the same device. OBJECTIVES To investigate the feasibility and safety of the laparoscopic approach compared with that of open procedures. SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA In other areas of medicine, advances in laparoscopic surgical procedures have resulted in reduced morbidity, expense, and pain when compared with results of the open counterpart. METHODS The open anterior procedure was performed using a retroperitoneal approach. The laparoscopic procedure was performed transperitoneally with carbon dioxide insufflation to provide visualization using a 10-mm endoscope. Two hollow, titanium, threaded interbody implants packed with autologous bone were inserted into the diseased interspace. RESULTS The laparoscopy group had a shorter hospital stay and reduced blood loss but had increased operative time. Operative time improved in the laparoscopy group as surgeons' experience increased. Operative complications were comparable in both groups, with an occurrence of 4.2% in the open approach and 4.9% in the laparoscopic approach. Overall, the device-related reoperation rate was higher in the laparoscopy group (4.7% vs. 2.3%), primarily as a result of intraoperative disc herniation. Conversion to open procedure in the laparoscopy group was 10%, with most cases predictable and preventable. CONCLUSIONS The laparoscopic procedure is associated with a learning curve, but once mastered, it is effective and safe when compared with open techniques of fusion.
Analysis of address layout on Japanese handwritten mail-a hierarchical process of hypothesis verification

This paper describes a new method for analyzing Japanese mail layout. We first classify the many kinds of variations in Japanese mail layout into format variations, extraneous object variations, and arrangement variations of destination address characters. These variations are cyclically dependent on one another, but have insufficient information to fix other variations. To solve these problems, we developed an address layout analysis method using a hierarchical hypothesis verification process, which consists of a format determination process and a destination address character line detection process, hierarchically. This method increased the correct address format determination rate by 5.8% to 86.6% and the correct destination address character line detection rate by 10.2% to 92.8% for 1482 test pieces of mail. This method is practically applied to Japanese mail sorting machine.
Consumption of purple sweet potato leaves modulates human immune response: T-lymphocyte functions, lytic activity of natural killer cell and antibody production.

AIM To study the immunological effects of physiological doses of purple sweet potato leaves (PSPL). METHODS The randomized crossover study (two periods, each lasting for 2 wk) involved 16 healthy non-smoking adults of normal weight. The 6-wk study consisted of a run-in (wk 1) PSPL diet (daily consumption of 200 g PSPL) or a control diet (low polyphenols, with the amount of carotenoids adjusted to the same level as that of PSPL) (wk 2-3), washout diet (wk 4), and switched diet (wk 5-6). Fasting blood was collected weekly in the morning. T-lymphocyte function was assessed via the proliferation and secretion of immunoreactive cytokines. Salivary IgA secretion and the specific cytotoxic activities of cytotoxic T lymphocytes and natural killer (NK) cells were determined. RESULTS The plasma beta-carotene level increased with time in both groups, while the plasma polyphenol level decreased in the control group, and no significant difference was detected between the two groups. Although plasma polyphenol levels did not significantly increase in the PSPL group at the end of the study, they were significantly elevated in urine. PSPL consumption produced a significant increase in proliferation responsiveness of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) and their secretion of immunoreactive IL-2 and IL-4. As well, lytic activity in NK cells was elevated in a time-dependent fashion. Salivary IgA secretion significantly decreased in control group after 2 wk, and returned to baseline following dietary switch to PSPL. CONCLUSION Consumption of PSPL modulates various immune functions including increased proliferation responsiveness of PBMC, secretion of cytokines IL-2 and IL-4, and the lytic activity of NK cells. The responsible determinants of PSPL remain to be elucidated, as does the biological significance of the present observations.
A design theory for information security awareness

When implementing their information security solutions organizations have typically focused on technical and procedural security measures. However, from the information systems (IS) point of view, this is not enough: effective IS security requires that users are aware of and use the available security measures as described in their organizations' information security policies and instructions. Otherwise, the usefulness of the security measures is lost. The research question of this thesis is to explore how IS users' compliance with IS security policies and instructions can be improved. Solving this research question is divided into two steps. Since there is a lack of a comprehensive review of existing IS security awareness approaches, the first step aims at reviewing the existing IS security awareness approaches. This kind of analysis is useful for practitioners as they do not necessarily have the time to go through a large body of literature. For scholars, such an analysis shows what areas of IS security awareness have been studied, and to where the need for future research is of greatest importance. The second step in this dissertation is to address the shortcomings detected by the analysis by developing three novel design theories for improving IS users' security behavior: (1) IS security awareness training, (2) IS security awareness campaigns, and (3) punishment and reward. These design theories aim to help practitioners to develop their own IS security awareness approaches. Finally, testing of the design theory for IS security awareness training (1) in two action research interventions is described. The results of the interventions suggest that this design theory provides a useful and applicable means for developing a training program in organizations. In addition, the results provide empirically evaluated information regarding the obstacles to user compliance with IS security policies and instructions. In the action research studies described, the goal was to solve practical problems experienced by the host organizations and to understand them and the results achieved from the viewpoint of theory. Consequently, the results as such can not be generalized, but they are of use in the host organizations in planning and delivering subsequent IS security awareness training programs. In addition, the results are utilizable in similar organizations as a point of departure in planning IS security awareness
EFFECT OF DIETARY MANNAN OLIGOSACCHARIDES SUPPLEMENTATION LEVEL ON THE CARCASS CHARACTERISTICS , MEAT QUALITY AND INTESTINAL MICROBIAL ECOLOGY OF JAPANESE QUAIL ( COTURNIX JAPONICA )

___________________________________________________________________________ Received at: 15/9/2012 Accepted: 31/10/2012 The effect of three different levels of mannan oligosaccharides (MOS) as a dietary supplement on carcass characteristics, meat quality and intestinal microbial ecology of growing Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) was the main objective of the present experiment. A total of one hundred 1-day-old Japanese quails were randomly divided into 4 experimental groups (25 birds/ each treatment) with 3 replicates (8 birds in two replicates and 9 birds in one replicate) in each group. The birds of experimental groups were fed on four dietary treatments: 1) a basal diet without supplementation (control); 2) a basal diet with 1 g MOS/kg diet (low MOS); 3) a diet with 3 g MOS/kg diet (medium MOS); and 4) a diet with 5 g MOS/kg diet (high MOS). The experimental period extended for 42 days. The data revealed that, birds fed diets containing medium MOS level (3 g /kg feed) recorded significant (P < 0.05) improvements in body weight and weight gain compared with other treatment groups. Medium level of MOS supplementation increased the dressing and edible giblets percentages, while the offal's and carcass abdominal fat percentages were significantly decreased. Crude protein and moisture values of quail’s meat were higher in medium MOS supplemented birds diet than in other groups, while fat and ash values were lower. Total aerobes and E. coli counts were not significantly differed (P>0.05) between the treated groups. A significant increase in lactobacilli counts were detected in duodenum and jejunum of MOS supplemented groups diet. Birds fed medium MOs supplemented diet showed the highest lactobacillus counts. From the results of the current study, it could be concluded that medium level (3g MOS/Kg feed) of mannan oligosaccharide improve the carcass characteristics, meat quality and intestinal microbial ecology of growing Japanese quails by increasing the growth of beneficial microbes and reduction of potential pathogens. ___________________________________________________________________________