Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Outbreak of Gastroenteritis in Tibetan Transit School, Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh, India, 2006

Background: On 28th June, 2006, 55 cases of the gastroenteritis were reported among the hostellers of the Tibetan Transit School, Dharamshala. We investigated the outbreak to identify the source, propose control and preventive measures. Materials and Methods: We defined a case of the gastroenteritis as the occurrence of more than three smelly loose motions between 28th June to 2nd July, 2006 among some sections of the resident hostellers. We determined age and sex specific attack rate. We hypothesized it as a food borne beef meat outbreak. We conducted the case control study and collected the information about the food items consumed inside and outside the hostel at dinner using the standardized questionnaire. We calculated floor wise incidences of four hostels, odds ratios and attributable fractions. We interviewed food handlers. We lifted the seven rectal stool, four water and three samples from floor, kitchen and meat chopper room for culture and sensitivity. Results: 116 cases patients of 802 hostellers met the case definition. The maximum attack rate (16%) was in the youngest group (15-20yrs) and nil in staff and 31-40 years age group with 5 overall attack rate as 14%. Sex specific attack rate was more (18%) in females. The floor wise incidences of the case patients were the highest in 2nd and 3rd floors, occupied by the youngest group. The median age was 20 yrs (Range 17-40 yrs). The most common symptoms were watery diarrhea (71/116, 61%) and bloody diarrhea-(45/116, 39%); abdominal pains-(87/116, 75%). Of the six food/water items examined, the food specific attack rate was highly statistically significant in the beef meat eaters (82% with PAF 71%), and Odds Ratio 19.19 (95% C.I. as 9.3-140). The food handlers & their cooking conditions in the kitchen were unhygienic. The food was not available for testing. Escherichia coli were detected in the samples from rectal stools, kitchen and meat chopper room. No fatality was reported. Conclusion/Recommendation: The beef meat purchased from outside was implicated for the explosive common source outbreak. The school authorities were counseled for hygienic food handling.
The artificial neural network structure selection algorithm in the direct task of spectral reflection prediction

Novel methods of digital image processing demand various approaches to spectral reflection prediction. The continuing complexity of the models leads to high requirements for computing power; however, this does not always contribute to the convenience and accuracy of forecasts. We offer an easy-to-use method for solving the direct problem of spectral reflection prediction using artificial neural networks. For color practitioners, prediction accuracy in terms of color difference is highly important. For researchers of artificial intelligence, the organization of the network learning process is of overriding interest. Those and other interoperates the necessary and sufficient minimum of the training sample to ensure satisfactory forecast accuracy. In this paper, we determine the size of such a sample. When training a network, we use spectral density instead of spectra. This provides a simplified simulation and improved accuracy of the forecast, which is confirmed experimentally. Key-Words: Spectrum, Color, Prediction, Artificial neural network, Image processing
Highly Conductive PEDOT : PSS Flexible Film with Secondary Doping and Spray Pyrolysis Method

Conductive polymers are become widely known amongst researches for practical application. Poly(3,4ethylenedioxythiophene) poly(styrene sulfonate) or PEDOT:PSS is one of the most successful and widely known conducting polymer for practical application. But, PEDOT:PSS has an issue because its low electrical conductivity. In order to developed a continuous process for industrial scale and high electrical conductivity, we have proposed a spray pyrolysis and secondary doping method to synthesis a flexible conductive film of PEDOT:PSS on poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) with dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) as dopant. The optimum condition that resulting a best morphology PEDOT:PSS film was anneal at 90oC and 20 cm distance with electrical conductivity 4.5 S/cm. Solvent addition method (SAM) also prove that the conductivity can increased up to 770 S/cm with 75% DMSO. It was found that annealing at temperature higher than 90oC will resulting a stress to a film and formed crack due to a different thermal expansion, while at the distance higher than 20 cm resulting a loss of PEDOT:PSS droplets. Also, solvent vapor method (SVM) and post spray rinsing method (PSRM) was fail to make a good film morphology. IR spectra shows that there is no any sign of PEDOT:PSS degradation up to 110oC and a peak shifting related to SO3H group.
Potential protection from Alzheimer’s disease by wheat germ and rice bran nano-form in rat model

The protective effect of nano-wheat germ (NWG) and nano-rice bran (NRB) was evaluated in Alzheimer’s like disease (AD) model associated with dyslipidemia in rats. Both NWG and NRB were analyzed for phenolic compounds, fatty acids, tocopherols, and B-vitamins. Plasma lipid profile and butyrylcholinesterase (BChE), brain oxidative stress and inflammatory biomarkers, as well as nutritional parameters, were assessed. The results showed linoleic acid as the major fatty acid while linolenic acid was <7% of the total fatty acids. Alpha, gamma, and delta tocopherols were present in both powders; the alpha form was of the highest level. Ferulic, sinapic, and vanillic were the predominant phenolic acids, while rutin and kaempferol were the major flavonoids in both powders. Animal experiment showed the induction of significant dyslipidemia and elevation of plasma BChE and brain oxidative stress and inflammatory biomarkers in AD control rats with associated dyslipidemia (AD-DL) compared with normal control. Body weight and food intake were reduced significantly in AD-DL rats compared with normal control. When AD rats were fed on a dyslipidemic diet supplemented with 30% of either NWG or NRB; all the studied biochemical and nutritional parameters showed significant improvement with different degrees compared with AD-DL control. NWG powder was more promising than NRB.
EXPLORER A Procedural Modeler Based on Architectural Knowledge

Cet article est consacre a la modelisation procedurale de configurations architecturales. Les outils de CAO actuels reproduisent et figent la pratique traditionelle du projet architectural, leurs modeles de representation sous-jacents sont considerablement eloignes de la representation usuelle de l'objet architectural. Il nous apparait que les modes d'acces et de constitution "alternatifs" du modele informatique (description textuelle et modelisation procedurale) representent un champ d'experimentation privilegie susceptible de questionner ces problemes de representation du savoir architectural. Nous commencerons par l'examen de modelisations par description textuelle (notamment de facades neoclassiques et de l'architecture palladienne) pour ensuite nous interesser a une serie de modelisations procedurales a base de connaissances architecturales. Nous verrons enfin comment cette reflexion, dans un cadre pedagogique, confronte nos etudiants a la fois a l'analyse architecturale, a une approche de la programmation structuree ou orientee-objet ainsi qu'a une utilisation "critique" des outils de conception assistee.
RUNX1 gene mutation in primary myelodysplastic syndrome – the mutation can be detected early at diagnosis or acquired during disease progression and is associated with poor outcome

Mutations of Runt‐related transcription factor 1 (RUNX1) have been detected in patients with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS). However, the prognostic implication of RUNX1 mutations in primary MDS is limited. The stage of the disease at which the mutations are acquired and whether they persist during the disease course also remain unclear. We analysed mutations of RUNX1 exons 3–8 in 132 patients with primary MDS and correlated the results with clinical features. Serial studies were performed during the follow‐up period. Sixteen patients (12%) had RUNX1 mutations at the time of diagnosis. All RUNX1 mutations that were detected at diagnosis remained unchanged during the clinical course. Two other patients acquired RUNX1 mutations at leukaemic transformation 34 months and 35 months after the diagnosis of MDS. Patients with RUNX1 mutations at diagnosis had higher neutrophil counts and higher frequency of −7/7q deletion than those without. Furthermore, RUNX1 mutation was closely associated with a short overall survival (P = 0·039). This is the first report to demonstrate that RUNX1 mutation can not only be detected early at diagnosis but also acquired during disease progression and is associated with poor prognosis in patients with primary MDS. It may play a role in the development and progression of a subset of primary MDS.
Interstitial MR lymphography with iron oxide particles: results in tumor-free and VX2 tumor-bearing rabbits.

OBJECTIVE MR lymphography with interstitial injection of superparamagnetic iron oxide particles was optimized in normal rabbits by investigating the pattern of signal reduction in lymph nodes as a function of dose and time after administration. The optimized examination procedure was then used in a rabbit tumor model to study the potential of superparamagnetic iron oxide--enhanced MR lymphography in the detection of metastatic lymph node involvement. MATERIALS AND METHODS The popliteal and iliac lymph nodes of 18 normal rabbits were imaged to study the dose response and time course of the effect of the contrast agent. For the dose response study, six doses of 2-50 mumol of iron per extremity were administered to three animals per dose, and MR images were obtained before and 12 hr after administration. For the time course study, 20 mumol of iron per extremity was administered to four animals, and images were obtained before and 6 hr to 42 days after administration. VX2 tumor-bearing rabbits were examined 12 hr after administration of 20 mumol (10 animals) and 50 mumol (three animals) of iron per extremity. Superparamagnetic iron oxide was injected into the foot pad of the hind limb. T1-, T2-, and proton density-weighted MR images were obtained with a 1.5-T unit. RESULTS In normal rabbits, a profound and homogeneous loss of signal intensity was found with doses of 2-5 mumol of iron per extremity in popliteal lymph nodes and with doses of 20-30 mumol in the iliac lymph nodes. Superparamagnetic iron oxide caused maximal loss of signal intensity in both popliteal and iliac lymph nodes 12 hr after administration. In tumor-bearing rabbits, different degrees of metastatic displacement of lymph nodes were discernible, and even small metastases (3 mm in diameter) could be visualized when using the optimized examination protocol and the proton density-weighted spin-echo sequence. CONCLUSION We conclude that interstitial MR lymphography with superparamagnetic iron oxide enables the detection of lymph node metastases and therefore is a promising technique for improved diagnostic imaging of lymph nodes in the staging of tumors.
Transverse shear along myocardial cleavage planes provides a mechanism for normal systolic wall thickening.

Recent studies in humans and other species show that there is substantial transverse shear strain in the left ventricular myocardium, and others have shown transverse myocardial laminae separated by cleavage planes. We proposed that cellular rearrangement based on shearing along myocardial cleavage planes could account for > 50% of normal systolic wall thickening, since < 50% can be explained by increases in myocyte diameter. To test this hypothesis, we measured strains at two sites with different cleavage-plane anatomy in eight open-chest dogs. Columns of radiopaque markers were implanted in the left ventricular anterior free wall and septum. Markers were tracked with biplane cineradiography, and strains were quantified by using finite deformation techniques. Hearts were perfusion-fixed with glutaraldehyde, and cleavage-plane orientations at the bead sites were measured in three orthogonal planes. At subendocardial sites of the anterior left ventricular wall, where the cleavage planes approach the endocardium obliquely from the apical side of the surface normal in the longitudinal-radial plane (-67 +/- 11 degrees), systolic longitudinal-radial transverse shear (E23) was positive (0.14 +/- 0.08). At the septal sites where the subendocardial cleavage planes approach the endocardium obliquely from above the surface normal (44 +/- 12 degrees), E23 was negative (-0.12 +/- 0.08). The differences in cleavage-plane angle and E23 at the two sites were each highly significant (P < .0005). At both sites, the transverse shear strain accompanied substantial systolic wall thickening at the subendocardium (anterior, E33 = 0.44 +/- 0.16; septum, E33 = 0.22 +/- 0.14). These data are not representative of the behavior in midwall and outer wall sites, where cleavage-plane orientation was not consistently different between anterior left ventricle and septum. Our data indicate that rearrangement of myocytes by slippage along myocardial cleavage planes is in the correct direction and of sufficient magnitude in the subendocardium (inner third) to account for a substantial proportion (> 50%) of systolic wall thickening. Furthermore, three-dimensional reconstruction of the myocardial laminae and local comparison with maximum strain vectors indicate that for the inner third of the ventricular wall the maximum shear deformation is a result of relative sliding between myocardial laminae.
Multi-sensor fusion based unscented attitude estimation method for MAVs

MAVs (Micro Aerial Vehicles) usually adopts the low cost of MEMS (Micro-electromechanical Systems) devices for attitude calculation, which has the feature of low precision and high noise, and error accumulated over time quickly. Aiming at this problem, the attitude estimation method based on UKF (Unscented Kalman Filter) is designed. The algorithm treats attitude as filter state, and update state with measured angular rate. Then update attitude state by gravitational and geomagnetic data for inhibiting the error divergence. The simulation results show that the attitude estimation accuracy is up to 0.027 radians around which is better than EKF, and the calculation speed of single calculation is approximately 0.0005s, and it is far less than sampling interval which equals to 0.1s, meet the real-time requirements of operation.
Up-date Dietary prevention of allergic diseases in infants and small children

Høst A, Halken S, Muraro A, Dreborg S, Niggemann B, Aalberse R, Arshad SH, von Berg A, Carlsen KH, Duschén K, Eigenmann PA, Hill D, Jones C, Mellon M, Oldeus G, Oranje A, Pascual C, Prescott S, Sampson H, Svartengren M, Wahn U, Warner JA, Warner JO, Vandenplas Y, Wickman M, Zeiger RS. Dietary prevention of allergic diseases in infants and small children. Pediatr Allergy Immunol 2008: 19: 1–4. 2008 The Authors Journal compilation 2008 Blackwell Munksgaard
Adjusting the Retry Limit for Congestion Control in an Overlapping Private BSS Environment

Since 802.11 wireless LANs are so widely used, it has become common for numerous access points (APs) to overlap in a region, where most of those APs are managed individually without any coordinated control. This pattern of wireless LAN usage is called the private OBSS (Overlapping Basic Service Set) environment in this paper. Due to frame collisions across BSSs, each BSS in the private OBSS environment suffers severe performance degradation. This study approaches the problem from the perspective of congestion control rather than noise or collision resolution. The retry limit, one of the 802.11 attributes, could be used for traffic control in conjunction with TCP. Reducing the retry limit causes early discard of a frame, and it has a similar effect of random early drops at a router, well known in the research area of congestion control. It makes the shared link less crowded with frames, and then the benefit of fewer collisions surpasses the penalty of less strict error recovery. As a result, the network-wide performance improves and so does the performance of each BSS eventually. Reducing the retry limit also has positive effects of merging TCP ACKs and reducing HOL-like blocking time at the AP. Extensive experiments have validated the idea that in the OBSS environment, reducing the retry limit provides better performance, which is contrary to the common wisdom. Since our strategy is basically to sacrifice error recovery for congestion control, it could yield side-effects in an environment where the cost of error recovery is high. Therefore, to be useful in general network and traffic environments, adaptability is required. To prove the feasibility of the adaptive scheme, a simple method to dynamically adjust the value of the retry limit has been proposed. Experiments have shown that this approach could provide comparable performance in unfriendly environments.
Unexpected 13 C-enrichment of organic components from wheat crop soils : evidence for the in situ origin of soil organic matter

Various organic constituents extracted from wheat and from soil organic matter have been analysed for their carbon content, their absolute concentration and their stable carbon isotope ratios. Most organic subfractions from plants, or soil, are 13C-depleted by up to 9.4‰ relative to bulk organic matter, mainly as a result of their higher lipid content. Furthermore, soil organic constituents are unexpectedly 13C-enriched by +1.5‰ to +4.3‰ relative to homologous plant constituents. Indeed, the selective preservation of plant lignin and lipids, following incorporation into the soil biomass, should have led to the accumulation of 13C-depleted compounds. Hence, these results favour the in situ formation of soil organic matter either by recondensation of small molecules or by selective preservation of biopolymers from soil microorganisms.
A self-calibrating telemetry system for measurement of ventricular pressure-volume relations in conscious, freely moving rats

[PDF] [Full Text] [Abstract] , October 1, 2006; 291 (4): H1580-H1586. Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol Duncker, J. M. J. Lamers and W. A. Helbing M. J. Faber, M. Dalinghaus, I. M. Lankhuizen, P. Steendijk, W. C. Hop, R. G. Schoemaker, D. J. with biventricular pressure-volume loops Right and left ventricular function after chronic pulmonary artery banding in rats assessed [PDF] [Full Text] [Abstract] , December 1, 2009; 107 (6): 1693-1703. J Appl Physiol Trevino, J. W. Valvano, J. A. Pearce and M. D. Feldman J. E. Porterfield, A. T. G. Kottam, K. Raghavan, D. Escobedo, J. T. Jenkins, E. R. Larson, R. J. murine left ventricular volume measurements Dynamic correction for parallel conductance, GP, and gain factor, {alpha}, in invasive
New Pattern for Architectural Computing Education - Positivist vs. Constructivist Approaches

The paper discusses the possibilities of replacing the prevailing, positivistic approach in the field of architectural computing education with the constructivist one. The mentioned approaches represent radically different philosophies of what knowledge is and how it is produced. In the field of professional education they also differently define the competencies of the professional. Nowadays, in architecture, where the design digital platforms producers force the philosophy of `standards', the need for rethinking our general approach to architectural computing becomes an urgent issue.
Optoelectronics Suitable factorization of the total intersubband scattering rates for efficient calculation of the current densities and gain characteristics in quantum cascade lasers

Abstract. Suitable factorization of the intersubband scattering rates is performed for the temperature dependent electron transport model of mid-infrared quantum cascade lasers (QCL). In this case, the total intersubband scattering rate is presented as a sum of individual processes: longitudinal optical phonon, roughness interface, and acoustic phonon scatterings. The individual scattering rate is reduced to a product of the overlap integral for the squared moduli of the envelope functions and the temperature factor that depends on the transition energy and material. This presentation significantly reduces computational efforts in comparison with the ab initio models of full quantum transport in QCL preserving good agreement between the theory and experiment, as well.
Do antimicrobials increase the carriage rate of penicillin resistant pneumococci in children? Cross sectional prevalence study

Abstract Objective: To study the correlation of antimicrobial consumption with the carriage rate of penicillin resistant and multiresistant pneumococci in children. Design: Cross sectional and analytical prevalence study. Setting: Five different communities in Iceland. Main outcome measure: Prevalence of nasopharyngeal carriage of penicillin resistant pneumococci in children aged under 7 years in relation to antibiotic use as determined by information from parents, patient's records, and total sales of antimicrobials from local pharmacies in four study areas. Results: Total antimicrobial sales for children (6223 prescriptions) among the four areas for which data were available ranged from 9.6 to 23.2 defined daily doses per 1000 children daily (1.1 to 2.6 courses yearly per child). Children under 2 consumed twice as much as 2-6 year olds (20.5 v 10.9 defined daily doses per 1000 children daily). Nasopharyngeal specimens were obtained from 919 children, representing 15-38% of the peer population groups in the different areas. Pneumococci were carried by 484 (52.7%) of the children, 47 (9.7%) of the isolates being resistant to penicillin or multiresistant. By multivariate analysis age (<2 years), area (highest antimicrobial consumption), and individual use of antimicrobials significantly influenced the odds of carrying penicillin resistant pneumococci. By univariate analysis, recent antimicrobial use (two to seven weeks) and use of co-trimoxazole were also significantly associated with carriage of penicillin resistant pneumococci. Conclusions: Antimicrobial use, with regard to both individual use and total antimicrobial consumption in the community, is strongly associated with nasopharyngeal carriage of penicillin resistant pneumococci in children. Control measures to reduce the prevalence of penicillin resistant pneumococci should include reducing the use of antimicrobials in community health care. Key messages Study of the carriage of penicillin resistant pneumococci in 919 children in five different com- munities clearly showed the association of anti- microbial use with the level of resistance Repeated antimicrobial treatment courses and selective antimicrobial pressure may be particular risks for carrying resistant pneumococci Reducing the usage of antimicrobials, especially in children, is likely to be effective in preventing or reducing the spread of penicillin resistant and multiresistant pneumococci