Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION IN PATIENTS WITH TYPE 2 DIABETES MELLITUS, DEPENDING ON SEX AND BODY MASS INDEX.

Objective: The purpose of this survey was the study of the occurrence of anxiety and depression symptoms in patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus with regard to sex and body mass index (BMI). Material and method: 310 individuals with type 2 Diabetes mellitus participated in the study. Their demographic and clinical features were examined. The self–completed questionnaire ΗADS was used for anxiety and depression level evaluation. Results: 56% of the participants were women (n=174), while men percentage was 44% (n=136). Percentages of anxiety symptoms in women were three times higher in comparison to men, 62% (n=136) of women were presented with HADS-A>8 in contrast to 21% (n=29) of men (p8 in comparison to men’s 17,8 % (n=24). When the relation between sex, age and Body Mass Index (BMI) and depression-anxiety symptoms was examined, it was shown that high BMI favors the occurrence of modest or severe symptomatology, as risk increases for any additional BMI unit. Conclusion: The occurrence of anxiety and depression symptoms is strongly related to the sex of individuals with Type 2 Diabetes mellitus, as well as with the Body Mass Index.
LIGHT AND COLOUR IN THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT

In the Book of Genesis there is a dramatic change in the world when God says: Fiat Lux (Let there be light)! Chaos was ended. In our everyday life when we hear a noise while asleep at night, we are afraid because there is no light, and if there is no light we don’t see anything, i.e., we do not know. When we turn on the light, everything around us gets organized: light ends the chaos of darkness. In fact, we rely more than 80% on our sight sense to bring us what is happening around us. Light is the genesis of visual perception, and colour is its vehicle. We understand the world around us by the organization of colour stimuli received by our eyes, transmitted to our brain and interpreted there. We can say that colour is the form of space because it is through colour that we perceive the limits and the forms of our environment. Therefore, colour should be studied, together with light, its origin, as the main actor in space perception, and therefore in architecture. With these assumptions in mind, we have to distinguish between Inherent Colour and Perceived Colour. The first is the colour of the surfaces, which could be read by a colorimeter, without the interference of the human perception or the outside lighting conditions. The second is the colour perceived by the human being, always different according to three variables: light, the observer and the surface. If any of these variables change, the perception will be different: if the light changes its position, or its characteristics, if the observer moves to another place or looks in a different direction, if the surface is placed under or above the observer, or with a different angle, etc. Our work as Colour Consultant proves that the knowledge of this continuous variation in colour perception is a tool that we can use to design better spaces for human life and comfort.
Training and accreditation of interviewers to carry out physical measurements.

Physical measurements are taken on a number of cross-sectional and longitudinal studies in the UK as well as internationally. It is well established that, with appropriate training, field interviewers are able to carry out physical measurements in a home setting. However, to ensure high quality data collection, formal accreditation is becoming increasingly common on many surveys in the US and UK. This paper describes our approach to developing an interviewer accreditation process for conducting physical measurements on the most recent wave of the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), which took place at age 11 in 2012. The approach was informed by formal training and accreditation schemes developed for other similar large-scale and longitudinal studies. Training, practice and accreditation sessions were built into the interviewer briefing programme and supplemented by additional quality control procedures in the field. In combination, these led to improved interviewer training and support for interviewers, and provided some useful lessons and implications for future practice.
The Simplified Human Intestinal Microbiota (SIHUMIx) Shows High Structural and Functional Resistance against Changing Transit Times in In Vitro Bioreactors

Many functions in host–microbiota interactions are potentially influenced by intestinal transit times, but little is known about the effects of altered transition times on the composition and functionality of gut microbiota. To analyze these effects, we cultivated the model community SIHUMIx in bioreactors in order to determine the effects of varying transit times (TT) on the community structure and function. After five days of continuous cultivation, we investigated the influence of different medium TT of 12 h, 24 h, and 48 h. For profiling the microbial community, we applied flow cytometric fingerprinting and revealed changes in the community structure of SIHUMIx during the change of TT, which were not associated with changes in species abundances. For pinpointing metabolic alterations, we applied metaproteomics and metabolomics and found, along with shortening the TT, a slight decrease in glycan biosynthesis, carbohydrate, and amino acid metabolism and, furthermore, a reduction in butyrate, methyl butyrate, isobutyrate, valerate, and isovalerate concentrations. Specifically, B. thetaiotaomicron was identified to be affected in terms of butyrate metabolism. However, communities could recover to the original state afterward. This study shows that SIHUMIx showed high structural stability when TT changed—even four-fold. Resistance values remained high, which suggests that TTs did not interfere with the structure of the community to a certain degree.
Enriching Driving Experience with Cloud Assistance

This paper shows that driver safety technology such as collision detection can be built from sensors that are available on commodity smartphones and a cloud service that processes the data from nearby vehicles. Such technology would help since our analysis of accidents in the US shows that surprisingly many happen due to mundane reasons such as rear-ends, occur at low speeds, and are likely due to human fault. Our proposal is in contrast to high-cost offerings from car manufacturers that require laser, camera or radar equipment. Unlike systems that make vehicles communicate with nearby vehicles or roadside infrastructure, this proposal has fewer technical challenges and requires no further infrastructure deployment or standardization. Our contributions include an experimental feasibility study of smartphone sensors (e.g., availability and accuracy of location and speed); the design of a cloud service to reason about future events involving one or more vehicles based on reports of vehicle state in the past; and the design of algorithms that compensate for missing or inaccurate sensor readings by combining information from multiple sensors, historical trip information and readings from other vehicles. To scale, the cloud service partitions work across many servers yet can respond in near real-time because the partitioning strategy ensures that all the data required to raise any alert is located on the same server with high probability.
The Complexity of Fear

As you are walking home alone late at night, you hear the soft, crackling sound of someone or something stepping on dry leaves nearby. Your heart begins to race as you imagine who or what lurks in the shadows. Are you experiencing fear, or anxiety? The differences between these emotions can be confusing. Even in psychological literature you will frequently find the concepts used interchangeably. Fears of the unknown, a fear of death, contamination fear, a fear of flying, catastrophic fear, a fear of success, and a fear of failure are all commonly noted as a "fear," yet they are actually experienced as the emotion of anxiety. Similarly, phobias are considered to be an anxiety disorder (American Psychiatric Association, 2000), even though we think of a phobia in terms of something that is feared, be it insects, enclosed spaces, heights, or contamination. Yet fear and anxiety are important to differentiate, to the extent that one can do so. These emotions can transform into behaviors that may lead you to avoid situations or into defense mechanisms that may obscure the recognition of reality, and consequently they have been understood as keys to the dynamics of emotional illness (Ohman, 2010).
StreamProbe: A Novel GPU-based Selection Technique for Interactive Flow Field Exploration

Flow visualization aims primarily at the occlusion-free and controllable visual exploration of dense flow fields. Flow fields are usually visualized using streamlines (steady-state fields) or pathlines (time-dependent flows). The challenge is how to highlight crucial features while reducing clutter to convey relevant trends to the expert user in a timely manner. We present a novel querying and selection technique for the ad-hoc exploration of dense flow fields. Our goal is to allow the user to create a geometric shape that acts as a “probe” for the field, displaying only the information that flows through a region covered by the probe. The main contribution of our technique is that it does not require the construction of expensive hierarchical data structures for pathlines representing the flow. Unlike other techniques, ours operates directly on pathlines’ vertices and requires no knowledge of line features. We implemented our technique using GPU-parallelism and new features in OpenGL 4.4 shaders to achieve interactive frame rates.
Amelioration of Hyperglycemia-Induced Nephropathy by 3,3′-Diindolylmethane in Diabetic Mice

Type 1 diabetes mellitus (insulin-dependent diabetes) is characterized by hyperglycemia caused by an insulin deficiency. Diabetic nephropathy is a major complication of hyperglycemia. 3,3′-diindolylmethane (DIM)-a natural compound produced from indole-3-carbinol, found in cruciferous vegetables-enhances glucose uptake by increasing the activation of the insulin signaling pathway in 3T3-L1 adipocytes. In this study, we investigated whether DIM could improve insulin-dependent diabetes and nephropathy in streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetic mice. In mice, STZ induced hyperglycemia, hunger, thirst, and abnormally increased kidney weight and serum creatinine, which is a renal functional parameter. DIM decreased STZ-increased high blood glucose levels and food and water intake in diabetic mice. DIM also improved diabetic nephropathy by inhibiting the expression of PKC-α, the marker of albuminuria, and TGF-β1, an indicator of renal hypertrophy, in diabetic mice. Our findings suggest that DIM may ameliorate hyperglycemia and diabetic nephropathy through the inhibition of PKC-α and TGF-β1 signaling.
CHARACTERIZATION OF ORGANICALLY GROWN SPELT CULTIVARS FOR CRACKER-MAKING APPLICATIONS

The shifting of eating patterns towards more natural and healthy foods governed by health concerns has created a need to broaden the assortment of organic food offered in retail markets. Among cereals, spelt wheat has emerged as a promising alternative due to its suitability for growing under conditions employing environment friendly practices. Spelt is mostly consumed as bread although its bread-making ability is much poorer in comparison to common wheat. Crackers are popular unsweetened biscuits which production requires weaker flours than those necessary in breadmaking but stronger than those in cookie-making. Thus, it seemed challenging to investigate the cracker-making ability of spelt. In this paper, two spelt accessions (differing in bread-making performance) grown under organic conditions were evaluated. It was found that spelt crackers showed lower tendency towards shape deformation but had lower ovenspring. Spelt crackers developed less hard textures without impairing their fracturability in comparison to a cracker made from common wheat.
Nitrogen transfers and losses in integrated agricultural systems in central Mexico

Agricultural systems in Mexico have become more specialized and more intensive in recent decades; these changes have been accompanied by a greater potential for uncontrolled losses of nutrients. The adoption of more integrated agricultural methods is a priority in food production systems as resource degradation has become a major limitation to sustained output (Ventura et al., 2001). Nitrogen (N) is the single most important nutrient for increasing crop yields and is often lost in different forms due to complex processes of transformation and transfer within components of agricultural systems (Dalton & BrandHardy 2003). Nitrogen losses through ammonia volatilization are known to occur in traditional, livestock-based agricultural systems, but little attention has been given to this source of N loss on farms in central Mexico. This study investigated N dynamics in farming systems in the Central Valley of Mexico, in the region of the former Lake of Texcoco, an area characterised by saline and alkaline soils (Beltran-Hernandez et al., 1999).
(HIIT) ICAM-1

Background and Aim: Lack of balance in pattern and activity of quadriceps and hamstring muscles increases the risk of Anterior Cruciate Ligament injury (ACL). The purpose of the present study was to investigate the changes in pattern and activity of vastus medialis and semitendinosus muscles in landing from different heights and to understand if these changes will increase the risk of ACL injury or not. Materials and Methods: Following a semi-experimental method, in the present study, 16 athletes (from volleyball, handball, and basketball sports), 23/1±1/2 years, 178±4/5 cm height, and 64/8±2/4 kg weights, did jump-landing from 20, 40, and 70 cm heights. The results of activity in feed forward and feedback phases and pattern were investigated using ME6000. To compare pattern and activity of each muscle in the three heights use, one way repeated measures ANOVA and to compare pattern and activity between vastus medialis and semitendinosus, independent T test were run in SPSS (version 20) (p≤0/05). Results: Feed forward activity (p=0/001) and onset time (p=0/014) of vastus medialis in 70-cm height were found to be significantly more than those of 20and 40-cm heights, but in activity and onset time of semitendinosus, no significant difference was observed (p>0/05). The results of independent T showed that feed forward and feedback activity of semitendinosus is significantly fewer than those of vastus medialis (p<0/05). Conclusion: Increase in landing height can increase the quadriceps to hamstring activity ratio and onset time of vastus medialis. These negative changes in pattern and activity of muscles increase the shear forces on ACL and the risk of injury.
Home economy heterogeneity in the determinants of China’s inward foreign direct investment

This study explores whether the determinants and motivations of China’s inward foreign direct investment (FDI) are heterogeneous among the home economies. Categorizing the home economies into two sets of groups in terms of their economic development levels and geographic locations, this research found that China’s inward FDI determinants and motivations are different between the groups. Chinese inward FDI from non-OECD developing economies is more likely to be both horizontal and vertical types for efficiency-seeking and market-seeking purposes, while FDI from OECD developed economies is more likely to be horizontal market-seeking. FDI from Europe is more likely to be driven by the large Chinese market, while FDI from North America is more likely to be stimulated by China’s low input costs, and FDI from Asia is more likely to be attracted by both the large Chinese market and its low costs. These findings will be useful to the host government in devising better policies to enhance positive externalities created by the inflows of FDI.
FROM BOOK CULTURE TO DIGITAL CULTURE – CHALLENGES POSED BY ICT TO YOUNG ARAB READERS Zuhaira Najjar and Roseland Da'eem The Arab Academic College for Education in Israel-Haifa

Relying on the data of the Galilee Society, this paper discusses cultural issues regarding book culture and the implications of ICT culture on reading books among Arab Palestinian youth in Israel. The data show clear reduction in book reading among this population, while computers and Internet service are on the increase among Arab families. The accelerated development in ICT dominates the Arab youth life intensively. Therefore, they do not find a meaningful place for books in their everyday life. As educators, who lived through book culture and ICT culture, our big challenge is how to get students to enjoy reading books.
Propagation Properties of Min-closed CSPs

Min-closed constraints are numerical relationships characterised by a simple property. Yet, with ﬁnite-domain variables, min-closed systems give rise to a polynomial class of Constraint Satisfaction Problems. Propagation alone checks them for satisﬁability. Solving is therefore search-free. Can this result be generalized from a discrete to a continuous (or mixed) setting? In this paper, we investigate the use of interval solvers for handling constraints with real variables. We show that the completeness result observed in the discrete case gracefully degrades into a ‘close ap-proximation’ property in the continuous case. When switching from ﬁnite to inﬁnite domains, the pruning power of propagation remains intact in the sense that it provides a box enclosure whose lower bound cannot be further updated (even by domain splitting). Applications of this analysis to scheduling, rule-based reasoning and scientiﬁc simulation are brieﬂy mentioned.
Retention in care among HIV-infected women initiating ART during pregnancy: a cohort study

Background: Recent international guidelines call for universal use of triple-drug antiretroviral therapy (ART) in HIV-infected women during pregnancy and postpartum. There are however concerns regarding potentially high levels of non-adherence and/or loss to follow-up (LTF) that may attenuate the benefits of ART for HIV transmission and maternal health. We investigated missed visits and LTF among women initiating ART during pregnancy in Cape Town, South Africa. Methodology: A cohort study was conducted of women starting ART, January 2011-September 2012, at a large primary care antenatal clinic. Eligible women were identified in PMTCT services based on CD4 ≤350 cells/μL, and women initiated a regimen of tenofovir, lamivudine and efavirenz. Outcomes were measured up to six months postpartum: (i) LTF (no attendance within 56 days of a scheduled visit) and (ii) missed visit (returning to care 14-56 days late for a scheduled visit). Results: A total of 358 women (median age, 28 years; median gestational age at initiation, 26 weeks) initiated ART during pregnancy. By six months postpartum 24% of women (n=86) had missed at least one visit and 32% (n=115) were LTF. Overall, 49% of women had either missed a visit or were LTF by six months postpartum. LTF was more than twice as frequent postpartum compared to in the antenatal period (6.2 vs 2.4 per 100 woman-months, respectively; p=0.0004). In a proportional hazards model, later gestational age at initiation (HR: 1.04; 95% CI: 1.00-1.07; p=0.030) and being newly diagnosed with HIV (HR: 1.57; 95% CI: 1.07-2.33; p=0.022) were significant predictors of LTF after adjusting for patient age, starting CD4 cell count and site of ART initiation. Site of ART initiation was not a significant predictor of LTF. Conclusions: These results demonstrate that missed visits and LTF occur frequently among HIV-infected women initiating ART during pregnancy, particularly post-delivery. Further research is required to understand reasons for non-adherence and LTF and the implications thereof in the context of pregnancy. Women newly diagnosed with HIV and those presenting at later gestational ages may be particularly vulnerable and there is an urgent need for interventions to promote retention among all HIV-infected women during pregnancy and after delivery.
Towards Repayment Prediction in Peer-to-Peer Social Lending Using Deep Learning

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lending transactions take place by the lenders choosing a borrower and lending money. It is important to predict whether a borrower can repay because the lenders must bear the credit risk when the borrower defaults, but it is difficult to design feature extractors with very complex information about borrowers and loan products. In this paper, we present an architecture of deep convolutional neural network (CNN) for predicting the repayment in P2P social lending to extract features automatically and improve the performance. CNN is a deep learning model for classifying complex data, which extracts discriminative features automatically by convolution operation on lending data. We classify the borrower’s loan status by capturing the robust features and learning the patterns. Experimental results with 5-fold cross-validation show that our method automatically extracts complex features and is effective in repayment prediction on Lending Club data. In comparison with other machine learning methods, the standard CNN has achieved the highest performance with 75.86%. Exploiting various CNN models such as Inception, ResNet, and Inception-ResNet results in the state-of-the-art performance of 77.78%. We also demonstrate that the features extracted by our model are better performed by projecting the samples into the feature space.
A trail about construction of secure multiparty computation from exclusive-OR operations based threshold secret sharing schemes

Fast (k, n)-threshold secret sharing schemes with exclusive-OR operations have proposed by Kurihara et al. and Fujii et al. independently. Their method are ideal that share size is equal to the size of the data to be distributed with the benefits that can be handled very fast for using only XOR operation at distribution and restoration processes. Moreover an author extended these schemes and reported existences of (2, 2)-threshold secret sharing schemes with small order. This paper attempts to construct secure multiparty computations by using XOR-based secret sharing schemes.
Enhanced Endothelin A and B Receptor Expression and Receptor-Mediated Vasoconstriction in Rat Mesenteric arteries after Lipopolysaccharide Challenge

During organ culture of intact vessels, endothelin receptors (ETRs) were upregulated in vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) by various stimuli, but whether inflammation alters ETR expression in vivo remains unclear. We aimed to explore the effects of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) challenge on ETR expression in the VSMC in vivo. Male Sprague-Dawley rats received a single intraperitoneal injection of LPS (5 mg/kg body weight) or normal saline (NS) for 6 hrs. The function and expression of ETR type A (ETA) and type B (ETB) were evaluated in the mesenteric arteries without endothelium, by using myograph system, real-time quantitative PCR, Western blot, and immunohistochemical staining, respectively. Serum tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) level was assessed by using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. The results showed that, compared to control (NS) group, LPS treatment potently enhanced the vasoconstriction mediated by ETA or ETB in rat mesenteric artery, with elevated maximum effects. ETA and ETB expressions in the VSMC were increased at both mRNA and protein levels after LPS treatment, paralleled with activation of the NF-κB pathway and augmented serum TNF-α level. Conclusively, in the rat model of immediate systemic inflammation induced by LPS, ETA and ETB expressions were increased in the mesenteric arterial VSMC, paralleled with enhanced receptor-mediated vasoconstriction and activation of the NF-κB pathway. Our data has for the first time demonstrated the upregulation of ETRs in VSMCs by LPS-induced immediate inflammation in vivo.