Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Air Pollution and Defensive Expenditures: Evidence from Particulate-Filtering Facemasks

Rational individuals take preventive measures to avoid costly air pollution exposure. This paper provides new empirical evidence of pollution avoidance that Chinese urban residents purchase particulate-filtering facemasks against ambient air pollution. The analysis is conducted with detailed and comprehensive data available on daily facemask purchases and air quality that became available only very recently. We find that this transitory air pollution avoidance behavior exhibits dynamics and nonlinearities, with significant increases of facemask purchases during extreme pollution episodes. The daily model shows that a 100-point increase in Air Quality Index (AQI) increases the consumption of all masks by 54.5 percent and anti-PM2.5 masks by 70.6 percent. The estimates from the aggregated model with flexible pollution levels are used to simulate the benefit of air quality improvement. If 10 percent of heavy pollution days were eliminated, the total savings on facemasks alone would be approximately 187 million USD in China. This result suggests that reducing the occurrence of "airpocalypse" events represents a significant opportunity to improve social welfare. Nevertheless, our estimates are likely only the lower bound of the benefit of clean air because facemasks can only partially reduce the negative health effects of air pollution and the costs of other avoidance behaviors are not included.
Selenium-Dependent Antioxidant Enzymes: Actions and Properties of Selenoproteins

Unlike other essential trace elements that interact with proteins in the form of cofactors, selenium (Se) becomes co-translationally incorporated into the polypeptide chain as part of 21st naturally occurring amino acid, selenocysteine (Sec), encoded by the UGA codon. Any protein that includes Sec in its polypeptide chain is defined as selenoprotein. Members of the selenoproteins family exert various functions and their synthesis depends on specific cofactors and on dietary Se. The Se intake in productive animals such as chickens affect nutrient utilization, production performances, antioxidative status and responses of the immune system. Although several functions of selenoproteins are unknown, many disorders are related to alterations in selenoprotein expression or activity. Selenium insufficiency and polymorphisms or mutations in selenoproteins’ genes and synthesis cofactors are involved in the pathophysiology of many diseases, including cardiovascular disorders, immune dysfunctions, cancer, muscle and bone disorders, endocrine functions and neurological disorders. Finally, heavy metal poisoning decreases mRNA levels of selenoproteins and increases mRNA levels of inflammatory factors, underlying the antagonistic effect of Se. This review is an update on Se dependent antioxidant enzymes, presenting the current state of the art and is focusing on results obtained mainly in chicken.
Extreme-user approach and the design energy feedback systems

New automatic meter reading and smart home devices can provide increasingly detailed information about electricity consumption in households. This information can be considered as feedback about electricity use, which implies that in can be useful in raising energy awareness and promoting electricity conservation practices. For three decades, feedback methods have been studied a considerable literature exists about effective feedback. However, applying the principles of successful feedback to in the design of electricity feedback products is never straight forward, because the feedback must coupled with some product or service that the user finds useful or entertaining. In this paper the extreme-user design method is introduced as a way of discovering what requirements users have for feedback systems. Through a case study of 20 electric power meter users, I illustrate the potential of this method in providing ideas for design. Through a semi-structured interview I examined how the power meters are used, user satisfaction with the meters, and motivations underlying the loan. Three categories of users were discovered and labeled wisdom seekers, detectives, and judges. They had different attitudes towards electric devices, being interested in learning, revealing, or evaluating energy consumption facts. These differences in user attitudes indicate that different users likely require dissimilar functionalities from the feedback application. It was also discovered that loaning the meter changed the attribution of consumption from devices to habits. Initially the participants were looking for a faulty device that could explain their electricity bill. However, after the measurements, their attribution changed and they understood that their own habits would need to change in order to reduce consumption.
Dietary calcium and non-phytate phosphorus requirements of broiler chickens in the prestarter phase

Modern strains of broilers may require greater dietary concentrations of calcium (Ca) and phophorus (P) to allow for the increased rates of growth being achieved today. The Ca and non phytate P (nPP) requirements vary with growth phase and may be different for depending on broiler strain. Most published research on Ca and P requirements has focused on a starter phase that ranges from hatch (H) to an end age from 16 to 21 days and does not take into account the prestarter (PreSt) phase (H to 7 or 10 d of age), where bone growth rate is most rapid (WILLIAMS et al., 2000, RATH et al., 2000). Deficiencies in dietary Ca and P in the PreSt phase may limit bone mineralization and compromise the structural formation of the skeleton. The aim of this study was to determine requirements for dietary Ca and nPP based on growth performance and bone ash in broilers during the PreSt phase (H to 10 days of age) for two commercial broiler strains (Hubbard 99M × Cobb 500F cross and Ross 708).
Contaminant-induced lysosomal membrane damage in blood cells of mussels Mytilus galloprovincialis from the Venice Lagoon: an in vitro study

Damage to blood cell lysosomes was investigated in vitro in mussels Mytilus galloprovincialis collected from a series of sites in the Lagoon of Venice, Italy, and correlated with total tissue burdens for a range of contaminants. Retention of the cationic probe neutral red within the lysosomal compartment over time was used as a measure of damage to the lysosomal membrane. Multi-stepwise regression analysis was used to explore the relationship between altered cellular physiology and total body burdens of contaminants. Organochlorines (DDT, HCH and Aroclor 1254), mercury and cobalt were the principle factors involved in evoking pathological responses.
Sulfur gases and aerosols in and above the equatorial African rain forest

We determined the distribution of gaseous and particulate sulfur compounds in the canopy of the tropical rain forest of northern Congo and the overlying atmosphere during February 12–25, 1988. Hydrogen sulfide and dimethylsulfide decayed exponentially with altitude from approximately 30–40 ppt at ground level to 3–5 ppt at around 3 km altitude. Emission fluxes from the forest to the atmosphere were estimated by fitting a one-dimensional time-dependent numerical model of chemistry and transport of the sulfur compounds to their observed vertical profiles. Emission fluxes of 0.6–1.0 nmol H2S m−2 min−1 and 0.3–0.7 nmol DMS m−2 min−1 were consistent with the observed vertical profiles of H2S and DMS. These fluxes compare well with fluxes reported previously for the Amazon rain forest during the dry season and support the view of a subordinate role of land biota in the global cycling of sulfur. The particulate sulfur concentration of 248 ppt was found below the forest canopy. Biomass burning is considered to be an important contributor to this particulate sulfur. Carbonyl sulfide was found to be enhanced above the 500 ppt tropospheric background throughout the mixing layer of 2–3 km depth, likely due to biomass burning.
SALIENT REGION DETECTION USING BACKGROUND AND FOREGROUND PRIORS

In this paper, we present a new saliency detection method which incorporates foreground and background priors. We consider the center region as the foreground prior and the border as the background prior. A unique saliency measurement is given which measures the dissimilarity from the background region versus the similarity to the foreground region. The final saliency map is obtained through iterative refinement starting from the priors. Experimental results demonstrated that the proposed algorithm, while simple, is robust in terms of the salient object location and outperforms many state-of-the-art methods on the public benchmark dataset.
Recommending for Groups in Decentralized Collaborative Filtering

This paper deals with the process of recommending movies for groups of people in a mobile, decentralized scenario. Many participating peers exchange their individual rating vectors and build up their own internal prediction model. A stationary device allows a group of peers to receive group recommendations and input explicit group ratings. After a brief introduction into the field of recommender systems, we show in particular the problems of group recommender systems and their evaluation. We propose two different approaches for generating movie recommendations to a group of people and introduce an extension to the usual datastructure of rating vectors in form of weighting factors in order to be able to take into account different types of rating information. An offline analysis of the presented algorithms by means of the MovieLens dataset is conducted afterwards and the results are presented and discussed. The paper concludes with a few recommendations on algorithm design based on our findings.
Effectiveness and safety of lixisenatide for treatment of diabetes in the real world: data from the Monitoring Registry in a Real-Life Cohort in the Czech and Slovak Republic.

INTRODUCTION GLP1 receptor agonist lixisenatide has demonstrated its efficacy in numerous clinical trials, nevertheless its real-life effectiveness data is limited. AIM To describe effectiveness and safety of lixisenatide in routine clinical practice in the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic, as recorded by the Registry-Based Observational Study. METHODS Multinational, multicenter, observational, non-interventional, 6-month prospective product registry of patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus aged > 18 years who were initiating therapy with lixisenatide. Patients were enrolled into this registry, provided written informed consent, between 1 May 2013 and 31 December 2015. Evaluations were performed at baseline and after 3 and 6 months of lixisenatide treatment. The primary objective of the study was the absolute change in glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) from baseline to month 6 after lixisenatide initiation. The study was approved by responsible ethics committees and performed in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration. Informed consent was obtained from all patients before enrolment in the study. RESULTS Overall 772 eligible patients (51.4 % males), mean age 56.7 (± 9.3) years, with mean diabetes duration 7.7 (± 5.5) years, mean duration of treatment with oral antidiabetic drugs 6.8 (± 4.9) years, and body mass index 37.6 (± 5.9) kg/m2 were enrolled in the study. Overall, 93.6 % were obese, 86.3 % subject were treated for hypertension, and 76.0 % for dyslipidemia. In total 96.1 % of patients completed the 6 months therapy. Lixisenatide significantly reduced HbA1c (decrease by 9.7 ± 14.4 mmol/mol [3.1 ± 0.2 % DCCT] after 6 months in per protocol population), and body weight (decrease by 3.5 ± 5.4 kg). The best responders to the treatment were younger patients with higher BMI, who had a shorter duration of diabetes. Overall safety profile of lixisenatide was satisfactory in the study. The most frequent adverse events were functional disorders affecting the gastrointestinal system. There was no episode of severe hypoglycemia reported throughout the study. CONCLUSION In a real-life practice cohort of patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus 6 months treatment with once-daily GLP1 receptor agonist lixisenatide significantly improved glucose control and decreased body weight without increasing the risk of symptomatic and/or severe hypoglycemia risk. FUNDING Sanofi Czech Republic.Key words: GLP1 receptor agonist - glycated hemoglobin - HbA1c - lixisenatide - oral antidiabetic drugs (OAD) - observational study - hypoglycemia - type 2 diabetes mellitus.
Antibacterial and Antifungal Activities of Different Lichens Extracts

Due to increasing microbial resistance to commonly used antibiotics and reduced effectiveness of common and reliable standard drugs, achievement of natural bioactive compounds has been paid more attention [1]. One of the biological compounds could be lichens, which have been used as natural sources of drugs since antiquity [2]. Lichens are a mutualistic symbiont consisting of a fungus (the mycobiont) and an alga or/and cyanobacteria (the photobiont) [3]. They have been used in traditional medicines for centuries. Up to now, about 200 characterized components have been identified from 13.500 species of described lichen-forming fungi in the world [4, 5]. They have various exclusive biological activities, such as antimicrobial, antifungal (especially against pathogen fungi), antiviral, antiprotozoal anti-proliferative, anti-tumor, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, analgesic, and antipyretic activities [1, 6-8]. Lichens are valuable resources for food, dyes, perfumes, and spices. Some of them are also used in folk medicine and treatment of various diseases, such as stomach diseases, diabetes, cough, pulmonary tuberculosis, wounds healing, and dermatological diseases [9].
Six degree-of-freedom haptic rendering for the surgical incision training

In surgical incision, it is known that the surgeons control surgical knives by feeling of its reaction force, therefore it is necessary to render realistic haptic for development of the surgical incision training system. In our previous paper, we reported that the surgical incision training system used three translational degree-of-freedom (3-DOF) haptic rendering without consideration of rotational forces, distribution of hardness and viscosity of tissue. In this paper, we propose 6-DOF haptic rendering model for development of incision training system with three translational and rotational forces considered hardness and velocity. In this model, it is possible to render the cut, friction and clamping force acting on a surgical knife and those forces can be displayed on the 6-DOF haptic interface device in real time. It is shown the effectiveness of 6-DOF rendering model in comparison with 3-DOF by subjective rating experiment.
Causality and stability of cosmic jets

In stark contrast to their laboratory and terrestrial counterparts, cosmic jets appear to be very stable. They are able to penetrate vast spaces, which exceed by up to a billion times the size of their central engines. We propose that the reason behind this remarkable property is the loss of causal connectivity across these jets, caused by their rapid expansion in response to fast decline of external pressure with the distance from the "jet engine". In atmospheres with power-law pressure distribution, pext / z , the total loss of causal connectivity occurs, when > 2 { the steepness which is expected to be quite common for many astrophysical environments. This conclusion does not seem to depend on the physical nature of jets- it applies both to relativistic and non-relativistic flows, both magnetically-dominated and unmagnetised jets. In order to verify it, we have carried out numerical simulations of moderately magnetised and moderately relativistic jets. The results give strong support to our hypothesis and provide with valuable insights. In particular, we find that the z-pinched inner cores of magnetic jets expand slower than their envelopes and become susceptible to instabilities even when the whole jet is stable. This may result in local dissipation and emission without global disintegration of the flow. Cosmic jets may become globally unstable when they enter at sections of external atmospheres. We propose that the Fanaro -Riley morphological division of extragalactic radio sources into two classes is related to this issue. In particular, we argue that the low power FR-I jets become re-confined, causally connected and globally unstable on the scale of galactic X-ray coronas, whereas more powerful FR-II jets re-confine much further out, already on the scale of radio lobes, and remain largely intact until they terminate at hot spots. Using this idea, we derived the relationship between the critical jet power and the optical luminosity of the host galaxy, which is in a very good agreement with the observations.
ABORDAGEM TELEFÔNICA COMO ESTRATÉGIA PARA PROMOÇÃO DA SAÚDE

A adocao de habitos saudaveis como a pratica de atividades fisicas e um dos comportamentos que ajudam os individuos a melhorarem a saude, alem de prevenir doencas cronicas. O desenvolvimento de tecnicas que facilitem a adocao de habitos mais saudaveis pela populacao e uma importante estrategia na busca da melhoria da saude da populacao. Este estudo tem a finalidade de avaliar a eficacia de uma abordagem telefonica na promocao da pratica de atividade fisica. Foram aconselhados 14 individuos em 5 ligacoes com o intervalo de um a dois meses. A metodologia utilizada mostrou-se eficaz, produzindo efeitos positivos na mudanca de comportamento. Concluiu-se que metade dos sedentarios passou a praticar atividade fisica.
Chapter 1 Microbial Perspectives in the Twenty-First Century

The final quarter of the nineteenth century was arguably the golden age of medical microbiology. The groundbreaking work of Pasteur, Koch, and others led to the development of broth and agar media that were able to support the growth in the laboratory of major bacterial pathogens affecting man. The ability to grow these organisms in pure culture led to the production of vaccines for many of the diseases they caused. These advances, and the subsequent discovery and development of antimicrobials, led to the mistaken belief that infectious disease had been beaten. Of course, it is now realized that this optimistic viewpoint is not justified, not least because of the rapid emergence of bacterial resistance to antimicrobials. Indeed, the consensus view is that the battle against bacterial resistance is currently being lost, because of both the difficulty and costs associated with developing new antimicrobials and the indiscriminate use of those currently available. The predicted ultimate failure of antimicrobial strategies has led to renewed interest in elucidating the pathogenic mechanisms used by bacteria to cause disease, with the ultimate aim of devising new methods of disease prevention and treatment. At the same time, interest in the microbial populations of the earth has been intense and new techniques have become available to characterize the bacterial communities found in every ecosystem on the planet. These have revealed the quite astonishing diversity of microbial life on earth and the extreme complexity of most bacterial communities. Furthermore, the extent of subspecific diversity is only now being fully appreciated. Bacteria readily exchange DNA and can “shuffle” their own genomes to generate diversity, with the ultimate aim of responding and adapting to environmental changes. As discussed below, bacteria in communities communicate with each other and, in the case of commensals living with plants and animals, their hosts. These interactions operate at various levels and can be remarkably sophisticated. The twenty-first century will be a period of tremendous advances in our understanding of the microbial world. The aim of this chapter is to review recent developments in microbiology and to highlight selected areas that are likely to change our conceptual view of infectious disease as a whole and oral and endodontic infections in particular. Inevitably, a single short chapter cannot provide a comprehensive overview of an entire discipline, but the interlinked topics covered are those that will undoubtedly change our view of the
Betaine in Inflammation: Mechanistic Aspects and Applications

Betaine is known as trimethylglycine and is widely distributed in animals, plants, and microorganisms. Betaine is known to function physiologically as an important osmoprotectant and methyl group donor. Accumulating evidence has shown that betaine has anti-inflammatory functions in numerous diseases. Mechanistically, betaine ameliorates sulfur amino acid metabolism against oxidative stress, inhibits nuclear factor-κB activity and NLRP3 inflammasome activation, regulates energy metabolism, and mitigates endoplasmic reticulum stress and apoptosis. Consequently, betaine has beneficial actions in several human diseases, such as obesity, diabetes, cancer, and Alzheimer’s disease.
Electron spectral functions in a quantum dimer model for topological metals

We study single electron spectral functions in a quantum dimer model introduced by Punk, Allais and Sachdev (Ref. [1]). The Hilbert space of this model is spanned by hard-core coverings of the square lattice with two types of dimers: ordinary bosonic spin-singlets, as well as fermionic dimers carrying charge +e and spin 1/2, which can be viewed as bound-states of spinons and holons in a doped resonating valence bond (RVB) liquid. This model realizes a metallic phase with topological order and captures several properties of the pseudogap phase in hole-doped cuprates, such as a reconstructed Fermi surface with small hole-pockets and a highly anisotropic quasiparticle residue in the absence of any broken symmetries. Using a combination of exact diagonalization and analytical methods we compute electron spectral functions and show that this model indeed exhibits a sizeable antinodal pseudogap, with a momentum dependence deviating from a simple d-wave form, in accordance with experiments on underdoped cuprates.
Castration induces satellite cell activation that contributes to skeletal muscle maintenance

Sarcopenia, the age‐related loss of skeletal muscle, is a side effect of androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) for prostate cancer patients. Resident stem cells of skeletal muscle, satellite cells (SCs), are an essential source of progenitors for the growth and regeneration of skeletal muscle. Decreased androgen signaling and deficits in the number and function of SCs are features of aging. Although androgen signaling is known to regulate skeletal muscle, the cellular basis for ADT‐induced exacerbation of sarcopenia is unknown. Furthermore, the consequences of androgen deprivation on SC fate in adult skeletal muscle remain largely unexplored.