Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Neonatal Programming of Neuroimmunomodulation – Role of Adipocytokines and Neuropeptides

Programming is an epigenetic phenomenon by which nutrition, environment and stress acting in a critical period earlier in life change the organism‘s development. This process was evolutionarily selected as an adaptive tool for the survival of organisms living in nutritionally deficient areas and submitted to stressful conditions. Thus, perinatal malnutrition turns on different genes that provide the organism with a thrifty phenotype. In conditions of abundant supply of nutrients, those programmed organisms can be at risk of developing metabolic diseases (obesity, dyslipidemia, diabetes and hypertension). How nutrition or neonatal stress can program the immune system is less well known. Here, we discuss some of the hormonal and metabolic changes that occur in mothers and neonates and how those factors can imprint hormonal or metabolic changes that program neuroimmunomodulatory effects. Some of these changes involve thyroid hormones, leptin, insulin, glucocorticoids and prolactin as potential imprinting factors. Most of them can be transferred through the milk and may change with malnutrition or stress. We discuss the programming effects of these hormones upon body weight, body composition, insulin action, thyroid, adrenal and immune and inflammatory responses, with special emphasis on leptin, a cytokine that seems to play a central role in these events.
Defense Against Secondary User Emulation Attack in Cognitive Radio Networks Using MCMC Method

Cryptography is the process of transforming an intelligible message into one that's unintelligible and then re transforming that message back to its original form. This transformation along cryptography is done by using an algorithm. In this we propose a reliable Advanced Encryption Standard algorithm for the process of encryption and decryption. The AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) algorithm supports up to 256 bits which increases the number of rounds along encryption and decryption. The security level of the plaintext increases with respect to the number of rounds. These rounds are generated by using Markov Chain Monte Carlo method. Then the Affine transformation is used for the purpose of matrix generation this is used as a prior to cipher and inverse cipher. We propose a public key cryptography based primary user identification mechanism that prevents malicious secondary users from masquerading as primary users. We show that the proposed identification mechanism and the associated key management are computationally good. We also discuss some advantages and limitations of the proposed identification mechanism. Due to these functions we can reduce the primary user emulation attack with high accuracy. Keywords— AES Algorithm, MC-MC Method, Cognitive radios, Affine Transformation, Secondary User Emulation Attack.
Code-division multiplexing and frequency-division multiplexing for nonlinear inverse scattering

This paper presented a new scheme for nonlinear inverse scattering. We have applied the code-division multiplexing (CDM) and frequency-division multiplexing (FDM) schemes to reduce the CPU run time and memory requirement of the time-domain nonlinear inverse scattering solvers, the distorted Born iterative method (DBIM) and LSF, by a factor proportional to the number of transmitters. This novel approach for inverse scattering is a major advancement because of the large reduction of the memory requirement and the computational time of the nonlinear inverse scattering.
Clustering stability and ground truth: Numerical experiments

Stability has been considered an important property for evaluating clustering solutions. Nevertheless, there are no conclusive studies on the relationship between this property and the capacity to recover clusters inherent to data (“ground truth”). This study focuses on this relationship resorting to synthetic data generated under diverse scenarios (controlling relevant factors). Stability is evaluated using a weighted cross-validation procedure. Indices of agreement (corrected for agreement by chance) are used both to assess stability and external validation. The results obtained reveal a new perspective so far not mentioned in the literature. Despite the clear relationship between stability and external validity when a broad range of scenarios is considered, within-scenarios conclusions deserve our special attention: faced with a specific clustering problem (as we do in practice), there is no significant relationship between stability and the ability to recover data clusters.
Predictors of alcohol abusers' inconsistent self-reports of their drinking and life events.

Although considerable research supports the veridicality of alcohol abusers' self-reports, all studies find that some proportion of self-reports are inaccurate. Recently, a few studies have examined variables predictive of inaccurate self-reports and found considerable intersubject variability. The present study examined predictors of alcohol abusers' inconsistent reports of life events and drinking using test-retest reliability data from two questionnaires. Results indicated that inconsistent self-reports were associated with the type (i.e., objective versus subjective) and amount (i.e., more drinking involvement at the first interview was associated with greater discrepant reports at the second interview) of information to be recalled. It appears that the nature of the questions asked may be as much or more of a contributing factor to inaccurate self-reports as subject or setting factors, especially for individuals who report high levels of alcohol use, for whom special efforts may be necessary to gather valid self-report data.
Influence of the Preparation Method on the Physicochemical Properties of Tolbutamide/Cyclodextrin Binary Systems

Tolbutamide (TBM) was found to form an inclusion complex with β-cyclodextrin (β-CD) in solution and in solid state. Inclusion complex formation between tolbutamide and β-cyclodextrin in aqueous solution was studied by phase solubility and spectral shift methods. The apparent stability constant Ks calculated by these techniques, in water, were estimated as 195.7 and 236.5 M−1, respectively. The phase solubility studies revealed a BS-type diagram with an inclusion complex of 1:2 molar ratio. The solid inclusion complexes of TBM and β-CD were prepared at a molar ratio of 1:2 by kneading, coprecipitation, freeze-drying, and spray-drying methods. In addition, the physical mixture was prepared. Characterization of TBM:β-CD inclusion was performed using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), Raman spectroscopy, and X-ray diffractometry and by application of a so-called ether wash method. All the inclusion systems investigated led to a significant improvement in the dissolution over free TBM, and the dissolution rate of the active material was observed to be independent of the preparation method.
Parasitism at the ecosystem level in the Baltic Sea

The Baltic Sea is characterized by organisms that can tolerate brackish water. Because of the Sea's history during glacial times, its flora and fauna (and also their parasites) can be traced to marine, freshwater and genuine brackish elements beside glacial relics. Snails, planktonic copepods, benthic amphipods and isopods are important intermediate hosts of diverse helminths; in addition polychaetes, bivalves and fishes may also act as final hosts. The most important final hosts, beside fishes, were seals and birds; these were able to disperse the parasites over the whole of the Baltic. Decreasing salinity from west to east limits the distribution of many parasites. Several marine and genuine brackish water species have almost spread over the whole Baltic. Freshwater species, however, have a lower tolerance than marine species and are only rarely found in the western part. A serious problem in the Baltic is eutrophication which can lead to massive abundances of generalist parasites, in host populations as well as host individuals. The final stage of this influence can cause a general decrease of host abundance and, as a consequence, of all kinds of parasites, due to oxygen deficiency. In comparison with the species spectrum of other brackish waters in Europe, the Baltic presents some endemic parasites as well as sharing parasite species with the Mediterranean and even the Black Sea.
A Perinatal Intervention Program for Urban American Indians—Part 1: Design, Implementation, and Outcomes

High infant mortality rates among American Indians are disproportionate to state statistics for other races and higher than the national average. These findings prompted a community health center in a large Midwestern city to create and provide an American Indian infant mortality reduction project in the early 1990s. Strategies for program implementation included networking with local organizations, communicating with reservation health clinics throughout the state, educating American Indian mothers and their community about factors contributing to American Indian infant mortality, and providing individual case management to American Indian women and infants. We offer this article for three reasons: This grant project was successful, disparity in rates of infant mortality among peoples of color continues, and a paucity of information exists about the health behaviors of American Indian women.
Prevalence of fragile X syndrome.

The much-quoted prevalence figure of 1:1,000 males for fragile X syndrome is an overestimate in a mixed ethnic population. A reexamination of the individuals from whom those data were derived using molecular diagnostic techniques demonstrates a more realistic figure of 1:4,000 males. © 1996 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
Text Simplification for Enhanced Readability

Our goal is to perform automatic simplificationof a piece of text to enhance readability. We combine the two processes of summarizationandsimplificationon the input text to effect improvement. We mimic the human acts of incremental learning and progressive refinement. The steps are based on: (i) phrasal units in the parse tree, yield clues (handles) on paraphrasing at a local word/phrase level for simplification, (ii) phrasal units also provide the means for extracting segments of a prototype summary, (iii) dependency lists provide the coherence structures for refining a prototypical summary. A validation and evaluation of a paraphrased text can be carried out by two methodologies: (a) standardized systems of readability, precision and recall measures, (b) human assessments. Our position is that a combined paraphrasing as above, both at lexical (word or phrase) level and a linguistic-semantic (parse tree, dependencies) level, would lead to better readability scores than either approach performed separately.
Transformation of Bacillus subtilis by DNA bound on montmorillonite and effect of DNase on the transforming ability of bound DNA

The equilibrium adsorption and binding of DNA from Bacillus subtilis on the clay mineral montmorillonite, the ability of bound DNA to transform competent cells, and the resistance of bound DNA to degradation by DNase I are reported. Maximum adsorption of DNA on the clay occurred after 90 min of contact and was followed by a plateau. Adsorption was pH dependent and was greatest at pH 1.0 (19.9 micrograms of DNA mg of clay-1) and least at pH 9.0 (10.7 micrograms of DNA mg of clay-1). The transformation frequency increased as the pH at which the clay-DNA complexes were prepared increased, and there was no transformation by clay-DNA complexes prepared at pH 1. After extensive washing with deionized distilled water (pH 5.5) or DNA buffer (pH 7.5), 21 and 28%, respectively, of the DNA remained bound. Bound DNA was capable of transforming competent cells (as was the desorbed DNA), indicating that adsorption, desorption, and binding did not alter the transforming ability of the DNA. Maximum transformation by bound DNA occurred at 37 degrees C (the other temperatures evaluated were 0, 25, and 45 degrees C). DNA bound on montmorillonite was protected against degradation by DNase, supporting the concept that "cryptic genes" may persist in the environment when bound on particulates. The concentration of DNase required to inhibit transformation by bound DNA was higher than that required to inhibit transformation by comparable amounts of free DNA, and considerably more bound than free DNase was required to inhibit transformation by the same amount of free DNA. Similarly, when DNA and DNase were bound on the same or separate samples of montmorillonite, the bound DNA was protected from the activity of DNase.
School Gardens: Can a Hands-on Teaching Tool Affect Students' Attitudes and Behaviors Regarding Fruit and Vegetables?

Nutrition in the Garden is a garden program designed to help teachers integrate nutrition education into their classroom using a hands-on tool, the garden. The objectives of this research project were to 1) develop a garden activity guide to help teachers integrate nutrition education, specifically as it relates to fruit and vegetables, into their curricula, 2) evaluate whether students developed more positive attitudes towards fruit and vegetables by participating in the garden program, and 3) evaluate whether students developed better nutritional behavior by eating more fruit and vegetables after participating in the garden program. Students’ nutritional attitudes regarding fruit and vegetables were measured with a fruit and vegetable preference questionnaire divided into three sections targeting vegetables, fruit, and fruit and vegetable snacks. Students’ nutritional behaviors regarding fruit and vegetables were evaluated through 24-hour recall journals. After gardening, students’ attitudes towards vegetables became significantly more positive. In contrast, no differences were detected in attitudes towards fruit. Students also had more positive attitudes towards fruit and vegetable snacks after gardening, with female students and younger students having the greatest improvement in snack attitude scores. Even though school gardening improved students’ attitudes towards vegetables, fruit and vegetable consumption of students did not significantly improve due to gardening. Overall, the average daily fruit and vegetable consumption of the students participating in the Nutrition in the Garden study was 2.0 servings per day. This falls short of the estimated national average for daily fruit and vegetable consumption for this age group (3.4 servings) and extremely short of the nationally recommended 5.0 servings per day.
Heat stress produces an early phase of protection against oxidative damage in human muscle

Background: It has been rarely reported that heat stress induces an early phase of protection against oxidative damage, whereas a delayed phase of protection is shown in heat stress. To explore the early effect of heat stress against oxidative damage, we evaluated the changes in contractility, lipid peroxidation, and ultrastructure induced by hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) with or without heat stress (HS) in human skeleton muscle.
Characterization of a Mycobacterium tuberculosis ESX-3 Conditional Mutant: Essentiality and Rescue by Iron and Zinc

ABSTRACT Recently, a novel type of secretory pathway, type VII secretion systems (T7SSs), has been characterized in mycobacteria. The chromosomes of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Mycobacterium bovis encode five T7SSs (ESX-1 to ESX-5). The best characterized of them, ESX-1, is involved in host-pathogen interactions, and its deletion is one of the main causes of M. bovis BCG attenuation. Another T7SS, ESX-3, has been previously shown to be transcriptionally controlled by the zinc uptake repressor (Zur) and by the iron-dependent transcriptional repressor (IdeR), suggesting that it might be involved in zinc and iron homeostasis. In this study, we characterized an M. tuberculosis conditional mutant in which transcription of the ESX-3 gene cluster can be downregulated by anhydrotetracycline. We showed that this T7SS is essential for growth and that this phenotype can be complemented by zinc, iron, or supernatant from a wild-type parental strain culture, demonstrating that the ESX-3 secretion system is responsible for the secretion of some soluble factor(s) required for growth that is probably involved in optimal iron and zinc uptake.
Lesions of the pitching arm in adolescents.

This communication focuses on lesions of the throwing arm in adolescents which occur during participation in organized youth baseball. While it is apparent that multiple injuries may be possible in this sport, this communication centers on those lesions unique to the act of throwing—those lesions which occur as a direct result of prolonged and repetitious delivery of a baseball. Insight into these lesions may be gained by an understanding of the basic act of pitching. This is best demonstrated in the professional pitcher. The Pitching Act The professional pitcher in the act of pitching demonstrates several distinct phases. First, there is the windup; then the arm is cocked; the arm and shoulder are accelerated and the ball is released; and finally, there is the follow-through (Fig 1). The Cocking Phase. — To further clarify the process, we arbitrarily divided the pitching act into three phases. In the initial phase, the arm
Estimation of Reservoir Simulation Responses for Different Relative Permeability Curves using Machine Learning

In oil and gas reservoir simulators, using reasonable relative permeability curves is crucial to properly represent reservoir models and predict future reservoir performance. Initial relative permeability curves can be obtained from core flooding experiments or estimated using various correlations. However, applying the initial relative permeability often leads to significant errors between simulation results and actual production history data due to inherent uncertainties in the initial relative permeability.
Infectious mononucleosis prior to acute leukemia: A possible role for the epstein‐barr virus

Three cases of ALL preceded by IM are reported. One patient developed leukemia associated with an apparent recurrence of IM 17 months later. The other two patients, who were diagnosed as having IM one month prior to the appearance of their leukemia, had a poor response to chemotherapy and died after a brief illness. All patients had antibody to the EBV viral capsid antigen, and two had antibody to the EBV‐associated early antigen. Although IM and ALL are suspected of being caused by a virus, epidemiologic and laboratory studies indicate that the etiology of these diseases is distinct. Since IM has been well documented as a preceding event in cases of ALL as well as other lymphocytic neoplasms, it is possible that EBV may be able to activate or “switch‐on” an oncogenic process in a manner similar to that described for murine leukemia.
Numerical simulation of selected semiconductor devices

We present a review of industrial heterostructure devices, based on SiGe/Si and III-V compound semiconductors, analyzed by means of numerical simulation. Critical modeling issues are addressed. Results from 2D hydrodynamic analyses of heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs) and field-effect transistors (FETs) are presented, and are in good agreement with measured data.
Rephrasing the Problem of Robotic Social Navigation

We put forward the idea that to achieve robotic social navigation, it is necessary to consider different points of view (e.g. passenger and passer-by). We explore this idea in the context of controlling an intelligent powered wheelchairs in an environment with other pedestrians. We present results for a pilot study showing that the assessment of robot behaviour is dependent on these points of view. Failure to consider all potential actors could lead to situations of social awkwardness and the alienation of the primary user or others in the environment. Finally, we propose to examine predictability as a valid indicator of subjective experience and describe a theoretical model that would allow to identify features of unpredictable movement from different perspectives.
Measurement of Exhaled Nitric Oxide and Exhaled Breath Condensate in the Diagnosis and Management of Respiratory Disorders

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The natural history of the metabolic syndrome in young women with the polycystic ovary syndrome and the effect of long‐term oestrogen–progestagen treatment

Little is known about the natural history of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), although preliminary data indicate that affected women are more susceptible than the general population to diabetes and cardiovascular diseases at post‐menopausal ages. The aim of this study was to follow‐up all main features of the metabolic syndrome in a group of young women with PCOS and to investigate the long‐term effects on metabolism and body composition of oestrogen–progestagen (OP) compounds, which are frequently used in these women to treat hyperandrogenism and related clinical features.
Binge drinking among US adults.

CONTEXT Binge drinking (consuming > or =5 alcoholic drinks on 1 occasion) generally results in acute impairment and has numerous adverse health consequences. Reports indicate that binge drinking may be increasing in the United States. OBJECTIVES To quantify episodes of binge drinking among US adults in 1993-2001, to characterize adults who engage in binge drinking, and to describe state and regional differences in binge drinking. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a random-digit telephone survey of adults aged 18 years or older that is conducted annually in all states. The sample size ranged from 102 263 in 1993 to 212 510 in 2001. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Binge-drinking prevalence, episodes, and episodes per person per year. RESULTS Between 1993 and 2001, the total number of binge-drinking episodes among US adults increased from approximately 1.2 billion to 1.5 billion; during this time, binge-drinking episodes per person per year increased by 17% (from 6.3 to 7.4, P for trend =.03). Between 1995 and 2001, binge-drinking episodes per person per year increased by 35% (P for trend =.005). Men accounted for 81% of binge-drinking episodes in the study years. Although rates of binge-drinking episodes were highest among those aged 18 to 25 years, 69% of binge-drinking episodes during the study period occurred among those aged 26 years or older. Overall, 47% of binge-drinking episodes occurred among otherwise moderate (ie, non-heavy) drinkers, and 73% of all binge drinkers were moderate drinkers. Binge drinkers were 14 times more likely to drive while impaired by alcohol compared with non-binge drinkers. There were substantial state and regional differences in per capita binge-drinking episodes. CONCLUSIONS Binge drinking is common among most strata of US adults, including among those aged 26 years or older. Per capita binge-drinking episodes have increased, particularly since 1995. Binge drinking is strongly associated with alcohol-impaired driving. Effective interventions to prevent the mortality and morbidity associated with binge drinking should be widely adopted, including screening patients for alcohol abuse in accordance with national guidelines.